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Probation Office (Leighton Buzzard)

Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the probation office in Leighton Buzzard was closed; and what plans there are to re-open it. [182924]

Paul Goggins: The probation office in Leighton Buzzard was closed in 1997. The building has since been demolished and redeveloped as retirement flats. There are no current plans to re-open a probation office in Leighton Buzzard.

Probation Programmes

John McDonnell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the evidential basis was for the decision to separate probation case management and accredited programme work within the National Offender Management Service structure. [178799]

Paul Goggins [holding answer 21 June 2004]: Patrick Carter's independent report "Managing Offenders—Reducing Crime", published along with the Government response "Reducing Crime—Changing Lives" on 6 January 2004, recommended separating offender management from accredited programmes as a way of developing greater contestability.

Project Endurance

Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on Project Endurance. [185435]

 
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Caroline Flint [holding answer 20 July 2004]: Officials from the Home Office and other Government Departments are engaged in talks with industry and law enforcement representatives concerning a possible joint public awareness campaign regarding computer security and staying safe on line. These initial discussions have gone under the title of Project Endurance.

Public Order Act

Mr. Wiggin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what guidance he has given to police and magistrates on interpreting the meaning of what constitutes harassment, alarm and distress in Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. [184065]

Caroline Flint: Home Office Circular 11/1987 provided guidance on section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. The Circular has been supplemented by the decisions of the courts

Recidivism

Mr. Gerrard: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has commissioned research into the effectiveness of programme and case management integration on (a) programme completion and (b) re-offending rates. [181814]

Paul Goggins: The Home Office's National Probation Directorate (NPD) has commissioned one study that looked at the relationship between case management and accredited programme completion in the Probation Service. The research was conducted by Oxford University and it was managed and published by the National Probation Directorate in 2004. The Home Office's Research, Development and Statistics Directorate (RDS) has evaluated it. The published findings "Think First Prospective Research Study: Effectiveness and Reducing Attrition" are available on the National Probation Service website (www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk).

The research found that good case management was associated with improved completion rates of the Think First programme. Of greatest value was when case management involved intense supervision around the start of the programme, support with personal problems, and frequent contact after completion of the programme to assist offenders in using what had been learnt.

NPD is planning to carry out a study to look at the impact of the Think First programme on reconviction rates (an established proxy measure for re-offending). The results should be available in 2005.

Also, the Home Office RDS is carrying out a systematic review of the international evidence in what works in offender management in the delivery of correctional services to reduce re-offending. The results from this are expected to be available in 2005.

Regional Offender Management

Mr. Gerrard: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how he will ensure that Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements boards will continue to function locally under regional offender management arrangements. [181816]

 
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Paul Goggins: The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) will build upon the range of work probation boards undertake at a local level. The significant contribution the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements have made to public protection will form a key part of the core offender management function within NOMS.

Operationally MAPPA usually function at a local rather than area level and will continue to do so under the arrangements for NOMS. The Multi-Agency Public Protection Panels, which oversee the management of the highest risk offenders, will continue to manage the risks posed by the individual offenders in question.

Rehabilitation Regimes

John McDonnell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how he will measure the impact of (a) prison regimes and (b) probation work with individual offenders, if those offenders (i) move prisons and (ii) move probation areas. [167521]

Paul Goggins: Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction (SPCR) is planned as a longitudinal survey of a representative sample of around 4,000 new prisoners. The study will examine the range of interventions that prisoners receive during their sentence and whether these make a difference during and after custody. Tracking the movement of prisoners between establishments will be an important part of this work.

A parallel study of offenders on community sentences is also planned. Investigating Targeting, Tailoring and Sequencing of Interventions on Re-offending of Offenders on Community Sentences (ITTSI) will explore how interventions work in combination to address the range of criminogenic needs of offenders on community sentences. It will track a large and representative sample of offenders; profile offenders and their needs; track experiences of interventions; and evaluate the impact of interventions in combination on reducing re-offending. The research will also aim to track any offender from the cohort who moves out of the study probation areas.

Shotgun Licensing

Mr. Wiggin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the number of people who will be affected by changes to the licensing on shotgun ownership; what assessment he has made of the effect of the proposed changes on the number of crimes committed; how many crimes were committed with licensed shotguns in the last year for which figures are available; and what estimate he has made of the cost of implementation of the new arrangements. [185203]

Caroline Flint: The Government have made no specific proposals for changes to the arrangements for licensing shotgun owners. Our consultation paper on firearms control seeks views by 31 August on a range of issues concerning the use and possession of firearms. We will consider all responses carefully before deciding what needs to be done, if anything, to improve existing controls. There were 561,762 shot gun certificates on
 
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issue at the end of March 2003. Shot guns were used to commit 671 recorded crimes in 2002–03; it is not known how many of these were legally held.

Departmental Publications (Storage)

Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many departmental publications are in storage; and where they are located. [183872]

Fiona Mactaggart: Latest stock records show that 1,745 titles relating to the Home Office are currently in storage. This includes a wide range of departmental publications including policy and consultation documents, crime reduction materials, research documents and other public information literature.

Stock levels are monitored to ensure that only regularly ordered materials are retained.

Publications are stored by our contracted Data Management and Distribution Warehouse Prolog UK (Phase 2), Sherwood Park, Annesley, Nottinghamshire NG15 ODJ.

Crime Victims

Peter Bottomley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) road use related crime victims and (b) non-road use related crime victims there were in the last year for which figures are available. [183549]

Caroline Flint: In Great Britain in 2002, 3,431 people were killed in road traffic incidents, 35,976 were seriously injured and 263,198 were slightly injured. A proportion of these would have involved serious motoring offences such as Careless Driving, Dangerous Driving and Causing Death by Dangerous Driving.

Information is not available on the number of victims of other forms of road use related crime, such as unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle and aggravated vehicle taking or on victims of any other types of criminal offence. However, police recorded crime statistics for 2002–03 show that out of a total of 5,899,450 offences, a range of incidents related specifically to road use, as detailed in the table.

Offence	Number of offences
Dangerous driving	7,551
Aggravated vehicle taking	11,530
Theft from a vehicle	658,740
Vehicle interference and tampering	91,653
Criminal damage to a vehicle	428,110
Theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle	305,654
Total	1,503,238

The remaining 4,396,212 recorded offences related largely to non-road use crime.

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