Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
TUESDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2003
PROFESSOR ROD
MORGAN, MR
JOHN HUTCHINGS
AND MR
PETER RAMELL
20. You say the jury is out and it is early
days yet, and I can understand that, but in the past two years
are you able to pinpoint your successes and your failures under
the new system?
(Professor Morgan) One thing we can say is that when
you have amalgamations in the private sector, in industry, there
is said often to be a fall-off in performance. We have had significant
amalgamations. The 54 local services have been reduced to 42 areas.
There have been significant amalgamations. Those cause major disruption.
They challenge traditional cultures, ways of working, reorganisation,
etc. There does not seem to have been a dip in performance as
a result of these very significant changes that the Service has
undergone, but performance remains very variable from one part
of the country to another, and no doubt amalgamation is part of
the explanation as to why some areas have not made the progress
that others have made.
21. You have given us a view of some of the
changes you want to see happening in the future. Are there other
matters of the Directorate's policy you would like to see changed
or reformed?
(Professor Morgan) It may be helpful if I say something
about my philosophy first of all in terms of our relationship
with the National Directorate. I think an inspectorate, if it
is going to be effective, should have a close and trusting relationship
with the service that it inspects. If it is not regarded as legitimate
by practitioners and by those who manage the service, if it is
not listened to by the Service, if it is not listened to by ministers,
then it can make itself very popular with sections of the press
and with some of the penal reform groups, but if no-one is listening
to what it is saying and taking heed of its advice, in my judgement,
it is failing to achieve much of what it ought to be achieving.
I aim to have a trusting relationship with the National Directorate.
That must not compromise our independence, but my philosophy is
that we should never surprise them. So if we are detecting problems,
my first line will always be to give them advance notice, that
"We do not think what you are proposing to do here is very
wise", "We are encountering problems in relation to
this issue," and to communicate that directly to them. If
they then fail to heed our advice, if they pursue something which
we do not think to be wise, then we will make that known to the
Minister, and we may make an issue of it in an annual report.
We must be independent but we aim to operate in that way. There
have been issues in my term of the last 18 months where we have
not always agreed with the National Directorate over some aspects
of policy. We brought those issues to their attention, and if
they have not agreed, we have sometimes spoken about it publicly.
I have already mentioned the issue about the lack of advice which
we think is necessary over public protection issues and what constitutes
a high-risk case. We made an issue of that in our annual report.
There will be other issues. There are some that are happening
now. Yes, there will be rubbing points, but that is how we aim
normally to deal with it. Hitherto, it has worked very harmoniously.
There is an issue as well about public confidence. It is one of
the Government's aims that public confidence in the Probation
Service and the criminal justice system generally should be increased,
and I think that places a particular responsibility on the inspectorates
to be judicious in the way they handled their doubts about performance,
and I think it points in the direction that I am suggesting. That
does not lead us to have a cosy relationship, and I do not wish
you to draw that conclusion, but I think it means that we have
to be careful as to how we handle issues where we do not think
things are going as well as they might be.
22. Are there any points of disagreement, or
rubbing points, as you put it, which are current and which you
feel able to share with the Committee?
(Professor Morgan) One issue which you may wish to
follow up in the questioning which is going to follow is my concern
about sentencing drift, which in various articles that I have
personally published I think implies not only prison over-crowding
but also what I have called the "silting up" of probation
caseloads with low-risk offenders. I think that is in the long
term unsustainable. I think it means that, unless we are going
to have a huge increase in resources for the Probation Service,
it will be extremely difficult for the Probation Service to do
the job that I think is required of it in terms of providing more
intensive programmes for higher-risk offenders, many of whom may
currently be serving short prison sentences, unless it gives up
some of the work that it is currently doing for which I do not
think there is need for probation attention. One of the issues
that feeds into that is the Probation Service is about to roll
out something called Enhanced Community Punishment, what we used
to call Community Service. I do not think it will make sense if
that Enhanced Community Punishment programme, which is more intensive
and requires a greater allocation of resources, is devoted to
a very large extent to very low-risk offenders who, frankly, do
not need those attentions. I think we have to watch that, and
one of the issues we have been discussing with the National Directorate
is whether the target for rolling out Enhanced Community Punishment
should include low-risk offenders. They have decided that it should,
on the grounds that the Probation Service does not determine who
gets what sentence; the courts do, so if the courts determine
that low-risk offenders will get what will become Enhanced Community
Punishment, there is nothing the Probation Service can do about
it. They have the task to deliver it and they should be included
in the target. I understand why the National Directorate is arguing
that, and that is their decision. Personally, I think that could
exacerbate the trend of which I am complaining. It could be an
easy win for the Service. So I personally think it is unwise,
though I understand why the National Directorate is pursuing it,
and I think we shall mention this in our forthcoming annual report.
Bridget Prentice
23. You have almost seamlessly brought us into
the area that I want to discuss with you, which is really about
sentencing policy. You have said, and I think it is accepted,
that there has been very little change in the number of people
who appear before the courts, but that the number who are given
custodial sentences in the past ten years has doubled. Do you
think that the magistrates and the judges are actually ignorant
about what their sentencing options might be, and is there anything
that you or others could do about that?
(Professor Morgan) The last thing I would
describe the judiciary as being would be ignorant. I was a magistrate
for 25 years, and they are certainly not ignorant. But there has
been something which I think is best described as sentencing drift.
It is not for me to judge why that drift has taken place. I think
a large number of factors have contributed to it. I think the
evidence draws us inexorably to the conclusion that offenders
who 10 or 12 years ago would have been fined, or even given discharges,
like for like offenders, are today being given community penalties,
and offenders who 10, 12 years ago would have received community
penalties are today getting short prison sentences. I am concerned
about that because, as you will be aware, the short-term prison
population has increased very significantly, and was the preoccupation
of the Halliday Report, whose recommendations are now feeding
through into the Criminal Justice Bill. They pointed out, as we
pointed out in our report called Through the Prison Gate
on prisoner resettlement, which we published last year, that these
offenders are statistically the most likely to be re-convicted;
the shorter your prison sentence, the greater the likelihood that
you will be re-convicted; and they are the offenders for whom
in the current system we do least. We put them generally speaking
into remand centres and local prisons, which are the most depleted
of resources and the most over-crowded. They are the most likely
offenders to be shunted round the country because of over-crowding;
they are the least likely to be the beneficiaries of programmes,
the "What Works" type programmes, that are delivered
within the prison system; and they are the offenders who are not
subject to any statutory supervision when released. So in terms
of public protection, in terms of crime reduction, it is a fairly
disastrous situation and we have to address that. There are proposals
to address that, of course, in the Criminal Justice Bill, but
those proposals will be expensive. They imply significantly increased
work for the Probation Service and they will require substantially
increased resources for the Probation Service. So the question
arises in my mind, if the Probation Service is going to deliver
more intensive programmes, if it is going to supervise offenders
who currently are not subject to supervision on release under
the Custody Plus arrangements, as they are called, that is going
to be a lot more work for the Probation Service. Will it get the
resources to do that, and if not, should we be thinking about
other work that the Probation Service is currently doing which
possibly it should not be doing? Part of my argument therefore
is that if we are going to redistribute resources within correctional
services overall, one of the essential building blocks—and
it is much neglected—is use of the fine, which we have to
resuscitate. Use of the fine has declined disastrously in the
last 12 years. We have the lowest unemployment rate nationally
since 1992-93, and yet use of the fine for indictable offenders
has reduced from 42 per cent to 27-28 per cent in the last 10-12
years. That is the silting up, as I put it, of probation caseloads.
24. You would not say then that part of the
problem is that there are too many sentencing options, but that
in fact some, like the fine, are just not being used as well as
they might?
(Professor Morgan) I find it ironic that we have more
sentencing options in England and Wales than any other jurisdiction
in western Europe, yet the number of persons we have in prison
per head of population is one of the highest. Clearly, one of
the problems is that the judiciary, magistrates in particular,
no longer have confidence that fines imposed on offenders will
be paid and will be collected, and this, I think, was highlighted
by your colleagues in a recent report from the Public Accounts
Committee. My view is that we have to have proposals which give
sentencers confidence once again to fine offenders proportionately,
in a manner which means those fines will subsequently be collected.
25. I have a lot of sympathy with what you have
said there, but are there not two problems? One is the public
demand for custodial sentences, and the other is that the Probation
Service itself has caseload overload. Could the Probation Service
cope with any more people on its books?
(Professor Morgan) I wonder if we can address those
issues separately, because I think the latter question is quite
a complicated one, to which I think we would like between us to
give you a fairly sophisticated answer. I know that there is much
concern about the workload of the Probation Service, and I imagine
this is something that you may wish to concentrate on. If I could
come back to the question of public demand, I am not sure why
you say there is public demand for custodial sentences. One of
the things that I did before I took this job was to do several
pieces of work on surveying public opinion for the Home Office,
because I was an academic researcher before I took this job. I
think if you look at all of the evidence, it is not the case that
there is a ferocious public demand for more custodial sentencing.
What the public want is effective sentencing; they want sentencing
to work. It is more a question of providing the evidence that
certain things do work. What I think the public needs to be educated
about is that, frankly, it does not work to place more and more
offenders in short-term custodial sentences where very little
is done to address their offending behaviour, where they are not
subject to supervision and where the likelihood of them re-offending
and being re-convicted at a very high rate is rather high. That
does not provide public protection. So I think we need to be a
bit more sophisticated about the way we use the public opinion
evidence, which I think is much more complex than it is often
described as being, and that we have to seriously address the
whole issue of public education. Let me put it like this. I have
been discomfited in the last six weeks by the fact that I go out
and I meet probation officers who I think are doing a challenging
job and an effective job, and working pretty long hours, delivering
accredited programmes, the evidence of effectiveness of which
is rather good. If it is being said nationally that anything less
than a custodial sentence is being "let off" and if
such statements are not being challenged—and I regret to
say that such statements have been made in the last six weeks
and they have gone unchallenged—I do not think that increases
the morale of the average probation officer. There needs to be
a much higher and more positive media profile from the Probation
Service to explain the work that the Probation Service is doing,
and to defend it as being something that is demanding and is challenging
and is potentially effective. So I think the public opinion evidence
is complex, but we also have a task of public education to undertake.
26. Before we go on to the caseload, can I just
ask you on that, is the Government letting the Probation Service
down by not making that case for them too?
(Professor Morgan) I think it is variable. I think
the Probation Service is currently better supported than it has
been for many a year. After severe cuts in the mid-Nineties, which
had implications for staffing levels overall, and which possibly
we can go on to, there have been significant increases in resources
in the last few years, and I think there is now a high level of
support for the Probation Service, and that this is frequently
being expressed publicly and this is much appreciated by the Probation
Service. But I think there needs to be more. Sometimes, when controversy
is around, it is lost.
27. Would you like to tell me a bit more about
the caseload problem?
(Professor Morgan) Yes. This is something that the
Inspectorate is preoccupied with. There have been quite a few
media reports about the workload of the Probation Service which,
frankly, have been misguided. If you look at the probation statistics,
there is one table which presents the number of offenders being
supervised by the Probation Service in relation to qualified probation
officers, and you might draw the conclusion from that that the
average caseload of the average probation officer has literally
doubled during the period 1991-2001 approximately. But of course,
that does not tell the story, because qualified probation officers
now constitute less than half of all of the staff in the Probation
Service. One of the big changes in recent years has been the introduction
of so-called probation service officers, who perform a wide variety
of functions, including supervision of offenders and the rolling
out of the so-called "What Works" programmes, and their
work is in many respects just as important as that of qualified
probation officers. If you relate the caseload to all front-line
staff, qualified probation officers and probation service officers,
then there has been an increase in the caseload, but it is nowhere
near 100 per cent; it is more like 30 per cent.
Chairman
28. Can you just tell us where you say that
in your report?
(Professor Morgan) We do not say it in
that report. I am drawing your attention to a table in the probation
statistics.
29. The statistics that I remember are that
the caseload has doubled, but I may have taken that from somewhere
else.
(Professor Morgan) This is what I am trying to draw
attention to. I think any suggestion that caseloads have doubled
is frankly fallacious, and is based upon data which are no longer
appropriate. We should be talking about caseloads in relation
to front-line staff and not just qualified probation officers.
30. Are you going to address this point in your
annual report or somewhere?
(Professor Morgan) We are periodically, and we may
indeed talk about it in the annual report. What I am saying is
there has been an increase in the caseload but, if you take realistic
figures of all the staff that are now employed, it is nowhere
near a doubling over the last 12 years.
31. If that is your view, I think you ought
to state that in your report, because if it is a misconception,
it is a fairly major one.
(Professor Morgan) Thank you for that advice. However,
I would like also to say that you can argue the other way. The
workload of the Probation Service is not just represented in terms
of caseload. Over the last 12 years we have introduced national
standards for reporting, for contact, for breach, etc, and there
is no doubt that a community punishment order today is much more
professional and intensive than it was 10 or 12 years ago. In
addition, we have the accredited programmes. So what offenders
now receive by way of contact and programmes in the course of
a community rehabilitation order is much more intensive than it
was hitherto, and that is not adequately reflected in the statistics,
so I am now switching the argument the other way, and I am saying
the caseload figures are misleading in some respects, and you
need to relate it to all the staff, but equally, the caseload
figures do not adequately represent the work that the Service
now undertakes and how that has changed.
Bridget Prentice
32. I do not know if Mr Ramell wants to add
anything to that.
(Mr Ramell) It might just be worth adding
that perhaps the missing piece of information to complete the
picture is an indication of the degree of increase in the workload
involved in an individual case, and that is an issue which we
have raised with our colleagues in the National Probation Directorate
as a matter needing addressing, and they are currently working
on getting better and updated measures of workload for an individual
case, and that will clearly complete the picture in terms of then
giving a clearer view about the overall increase in workload over
the last decade. As Professor Morgan says, on the one hand the
actual increase in caseload has been more modest than is claimed,
but equally the work involved in an individual case has doubtless
increased.
33. Much as I would like to ask you if you can
specify what that workload is, I doubt you can, given that every
individual case will clearly be different, but in some regions
there is some form of industrial action going on at the moment,
is there not, because of workload? What kind of effect is that
having?
(Professor Morgan) I think the broader question needs
to be asked whether the Probation Service has the resources that
it needs, and I think what I was trying to do was to move towards
the suggestion that I cannot give you a definitive answer to that.
We do not have a definitive answer. We think it is an issue that
needs much greater attention, and we need to have much more information.
The National Directorate is developing something called a workload
measurement tool more effectively to look at that. I am sorry
to use the phrase again, but I think the jury is out on the issue.
What is clear is that there are signs of strain. We have industrial
action for the first time for many years taking place in a small
minority of areas. We also have a problem that some probation
areas are not able to deliver to the courts all of the reports
that the courts are requesting of them. This is an issue that
the Inspectorate took up last summer following receipt by me of
a letter from the Lord Chief Justice expressing concern. The Lord
Chief Justice used a rather telling phrase in his letter. He said,
"How can the judiciary have confidence that the Probation
Service can effectively supervise the offenders allocated to them
if they cannot apparently prepare the reports that we request
of them in all cases?" For that reason, we decided we would
look into that issue and try to discover how many areas were unable
to deliver all the reports requested of them by the courts, and
what measures they were taking to prioritise their work, and we
undertook a national survey to do that. What we discovered was
that now most areas have prioritised their work, and we thought
that was necessary, but only a very small minority of areas currently
are unable to deliver in a timely fashion all of the reports requested
of them by the courts.
34. Presumably, you have made that view known
to the Lord Chief Justice.
(Professor Morgan) Indeed we have. Yes, of course.
35. Is that partly because of what you were
saying earlier about the courts perhaps looking for reports where
it might have been better not to look for reports?
(Professor Morgan) One of the issues that I have raised—and
I have raised it incidentally because it is a point that has been
raised with me by many Chief Officers—is that, as you noted
earlier, the number of defendants before the courts is very similar
today to what it was ten years ago, but of course, the number
of reports being requested of the Service has increased. There
was, incidentally, an error in my letter to you, Mr Chairman,
preceding this hearing, when I suggested that the number of court
reports had increased by 40 per cent. In fact, it should be more
in the region of 20-25 per cent. Nevertheless, there has been
a significant increase in the number of court reports requested,
and many Chief Officers take the view that many of those reports
are not necessary. There is something now called a Specific Sentence
Report. You may be aware we have something called a PSR, Pre-Sentence
Report, and an SSR, and the idea of an SSR was that it was going
to be a more focused, briefer and less time-consuming report to
prepare. Regrettably, some of the early evidence suggests that,
instead of displacing PSRs, SSRs are being added, ie SSRs are
being asked for in cases where possibly a PSR would probably never
have been asked for—a familiar net-widening problem. I think
there needs to be an effective dialogue between the Probation
Service and the courts, particularly the magistrates' courts,
where most of these additional reports are being generated, about
the circumstances under which it is necessary to have a report,
because they are very time-consuming to prepare, and if the court
wishes to have a report, what is the most efficient form for it
to take. I think there needs to be a more sophisticated dialogue
about that. That is possibly part of the overload.
36. Final question, to which I suspect the answer
is no: has spending increased in proportion to the caseload in
the last ten years?
(Professor Morgan) I am not sure that we can answer
that question. It is not a figure that I have at my fingertips.
Possibly we could send you a note subsequent to this hearing about
that.[1]
Chairman
37. Yes, that would be helpful. It has increased
actually since 1991 from £334 million to £577 million,
but that is not in real terms.
(Professor Morgan) That is not related
to caseload, and as I have earlier argued, I also think that caseload
as a measure of the needs of the Service is very crude and understates
the increased nature of the work being required of the Probation
Service.
38. Coming back to workload for a moment, is
it a London problem, or perhaps a London and the South East problem?
(Professor Morgan) There is undoubtedly a problem
for the Probation Service in the South East, as there is in the
public sector generally, of recruiting and retaining staff, a
significant problem. Some of the south-eastern areas are significantly
below their complement of staff because of that issue.
39. That is probably the explanation. There
is a danger, I suppose, that the difficulties in London and the
South East are represented in some quarters as applying to the
whole country.
(Professor Morgan) It is a particular problem for
the Probation Service because, as you may be aware, the new amalgamated
London area accounts for some 20-22 per cent of the overall caseload
for the whole country.
(Mr Hutchings) It is about 20 per cent. While the
vacancy situation is at its most acute in the South East, there
has been a national shortage of qualified probation officers.
I know in correspondence this week with the Leicestershire and
Rutland Probation Area, they have not been able to fill all their
probation officer vacancies at the moment. So I would say the
South East has it worst, but there is a national issue as well.
1 See Ev 18-19 Back
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