Examination of Witnesses (Questions 540-557)
12 JANUARY 2005
Mr Simon Boyle, Ms Sue Hall, and Mr Stephen Routledge
Q540 Mr Edwards: Is this the ASBO legal
group?
Ms Hall: Yes, it is.
Q541 Mr Edwards: So you see some benefits
from that?
Ms Hall: It is very, very early
days. They have had all of one meeting. They had their meeting,
I think, either in December or very, very recently. But it is
very clear that there is perceived to be a great need for this
group. There is going to be a formal launch of the group in March
and I will ensure that invitations are sent out widely for that
launch. So obviously we will evaluate it when it has been running
a bit longer, but certainly it fills a gap which exists at the
moment where prosecutors do not have good networks to fall back
on and this, hopefully, will develop good practice across South
Wales.
Q542 Mr Edwards: There have been new
sentencing guidelines on the consistency of magistrates' sentencing
in anti-social behaviour cases. Have you got any comment on that?
Ms Hall: In South Wales the number
of cases which actually go to court for an Anti-Social Behaviour
Order is really the tip of the iceberg. The strategy within South
Wales is very much about trying to tackle the causes of anti-social
behaviour at their root and to try and resolve the problems without
actually resorting to court. So in South Wales cases only come
to court if all the other measures have failed and I think currently
it is only about 5% of all referrals for anti-social behaviour
which actually end up in court. Therefore, I am aware that the
guidelines exist but I am not aware that they have made a big
difference in the way that ASBOs are being dealt with by the courts.
Q543 Mr Edwards: How many ASBOs in South
Wales have there been in, say, the last twelve months?
Ms Hall: Interestingly, as a Criminal
Justice Board we do not monitor that information and I was aware
that we did not in preparation for today's event and I asked CPS
whether they could tell me and even the specialist ASBO prosecutor
was not able to give me an accurate figure for the last twelve
months. It is between twenty-four and thirty, and I think the
reason why it has not been possible to get an accurate figure
is because these figures are collected locally, within the local
authorities. Now that we have a legal group I would hope that
we start to get some more accurate monitoring information coming
out.
Q544 Mr Edwards: I am sure we would welcome
that. Given the high prominence that ASBOs have attracted it would
be reasonable that we or the public could be informed about the
number of ASBOs. In the Gwent evidence to us you say, Mr Boyle,
that you have had 21 in Gwent. Have you any comment on that? It
does not seem to me that many given the sort of nature of some
of the communities in Gwent and some of the problems that we all
confront now and again.
Mr Boyle: I can certainly comment
on that. As Sue has said, it has been regarded not in the same
way as the media would have it, as something you slap around everywhere,
but as a last resort. We are not directly responsible, as Sue
has said. It is initiated by the groups, which include the Police,
the local authorities and the housing associations. They consider
the case at first hearing and they have a sort of toolkit of possible
responses, of which an ASBO is only one. All I know is that the
courts have dealt with them immediately on the day requested,
there have been no delays, and any breaches of ASBOs have resulted
in custody in Gwent. So it is tight at that end. The only comment
I would make is that I became aware that there were about twelve
hundred and something ASBOs issued in the last twelve months in
England and Wales. It was reported to be four times the number
of the year before. If that is correct, twenty-one in Gwent is
actually proportionally high-ish for our population.
Q545 Mr Edwards: I am sure you would
accept that the public perception is that this is probably a very
useful tool.
Mr Boyle: Yes.
Q546 Mr Edwards: My impression is that
the public do not feel very reassured, or certainly not the area
that I represent, that they are actually being deployed as a useful
tool and I can certainly say from my own experience of clearing
up broken vodka bottles on the sports field in Monmouth on a Saturday
morning and thinking about the disruption which under-age drinking
causes in the community, even a small community like Monmouth,
that there might be a few more ASBOs being considered and other
of the techniques which have been introduced in recent legislation.
Mr Boyle: It is a fair point.
The local authority provides a chair of the group which either
initiates ASBOs or other remedies. They have a thirty-five page
protocol of possible ways of dealing with these things. I cannot
answer in detail about Monmouth, you know more about it than I
do. To be quite frank, if I could add, Chairman, I think the public
were oversold a bit on ASBOs because there are lots of other things
which you can do of a preventative nature which must come as a
better choice really if you can prevent people from getting into
court by other remedies.
Q547 Mr Edwards: Yes. My own impression,
and I would like to have the evidence, is that they are probably
used far more in a place like Salford, an inner-city area, than
they are in some of our communities?
Ms Hall: If I could answer that,
I think there is a bit of a postcode lottery around ASBOs. I think
the evidence is clear that in some parts of the country they are
used much more frequently than in other parts of the country.
I would like just to repeat what I said earlier, which is that
the local Criminal Justice Boards are not responsible for ASBO
strategy within communities. They are very much part and parcel
of the Community Safety Partnerships. Obviously we have an interest
and I think we need to find a way of linking in more to the sorts
of decisions which are made around ASBOs, but it is very much
a local issue rather than an LCJB issue.
Q548 Mr Williams: You talk about a postcode
lottery for ASBOs. Do you think that is because there are different
definitions of anti-social behaviour in different areas as opposed
to crime, for instance, which has a legal definition for the crime?
Ms Hall: I think there is a number
of factors. One is, I suppose, the tolerance within a local community
of certain sorts of behaviour and another will be the culture
of the Police, the local authority and courts within that area
and that varies. In some cases areas will want to move much more
to processing things through the courts and having legal sanctions,
whereas in other areas there may be more willingness to try other
measures first. That is what I think leads to the discrepancies
across the country. Anti-Social behaviour itself is actually quite
difficult to define. What one person might call anti-social behaviour
another person might just think is normal boisterousness amongst
young people.
Q549 Mr Williams: My Chief Constable!
Ms Hall: There is a dilemma and
in a way local communities have got to find local solutions to
this.
Mr Williams: Thank you.
Q550 Mrs Williams: On the same topic,
clearly you take an interest in the whole issue but is there evidence,
do you think, in your particular areas that magistrates in some
areas tend to be softer than in other areas, because at the end
of the day it comes before the magistrates and they make a decision
whether they go for an order or not? Is there any evidence of
that in your areas?
Ms Hall: I would have to say for
South Wales, and I have checked this out again before I came,
I am told that where an application is made for an Anti-Social
Behaviour Order in South Wales it is almost invariably granted
and that breaches are treated very seriously. So we do not actually
see any problem with the magistracy in relation to Anti-Social
Behaviour Orders.
Mr Boyle: I think I may have mentioned
before that every ASBO requested by one of the CSPs has been granted
with no delay. Of course, evidence has to be produced and the
court makes the final decision, but every one that has been requested
has been issued. So as Sue says, it does go a little bit back
to the Community Safety Partnerships as to how often they actually
request an ASBO and they have other options for dealing with things.
Mrs Williams: Thank you.
Chairman: In that case, unless there
are any other questions—
Mrs Williams: I would like to ask a question
about the relationship between—
Chairman: Carry on then, Mrs Williams.
Q551 Mrs Williams: I just wanted to follow
up what Mr Edwards has asked really. What I am interested to know
is, and I am sure the Committee is as well, what is the relationship
between the National Assembly for Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government
and the Criminal Justice Board?
Mr Boyle: Not intimate because,
as you know, the Criminal Justice Boards were set up from London,
not from Cardiff, and how this will develop in the future I am
not quite sure because obviously the Welsh Assembly does have
a hand via the local authorities in the Community Safety Partnerships
but not directly in the Criminal Justice Boards.
Ms Hall: Similarly, when the Boards
were conceived and originally set up there were not a lot of points
of contact because so much of the work was being done around the
Criminal Justice System, which is not the responsibility of the
Assembly Government, but as we have now begun to get more initiatives
involved, the CSPs, so we have begun to have greater contact with
the Welsh Assembly Government, largely through the crime reduction
director, that is our main link. As we have said in our submission,
we did receive £8,000 worth of funding from the Assembly
Government to help with our Citizens Panel, which is an extremely
positive move. It is a sort of needs must arrangement at the moment.
Where there is a need to communicate that happens, but there is
not a sort of ongoing day by day relationship.
Q552 Mrs Williams: In paragraph 8 of
your submission you mentioned the creation of a strategic group,
which involves the CJB, the CSP and the crime reduction director
for Wales. What is the purpose of this group and how is it working,
or is it too early to say? Is it making an impact?
Ms Hall: Since this statement
was prepared there have been developments, which I referred to
earlier. We did have a proposal that we would have the strategic
group but on reflection we felt that it actually made more sense
to use the overarching leadership group within Wales as the meeting
point for the Local Criminal Justice Board and the CSPs, and the
crime reduction director attends the overarching leadership group
as well. So we are making use of an existing meeting to do that
piece of business at the moment rather than create a separate
group, which we had initially been discussing. This was to make
better use of everybody's time.
Q553 Mrs Williams: Are there any special
issues which arise for Criminal Justice Boards in Wales that do
not arise for CJBs in England as a result of devolution?
Ms Hall: Without any doubt, and
I worked in England for many years before I came to Wales. Without
doubt it is more complicated in Wales because of the use that
is made of CSPs by the Assembly Government for driving down strategy
in relation to health and community safety, which means that initiatives
can happen within CSPs which are not really paralleled within
England and are not reflected in some of the initiatives which
come through from the Home Office and from London. So there is
more of a balancing act that has to happen here in Wales than
happens in England.
Q554 Mrs Williams: What do you think
in Gwent?
Mr Boyle: I have not seen what
happens in England in the same way, but I do not think the Criminal
Justice Boards themselves actually operate any differently in
Wales to England from what I have gathered. But as Sue says, there
are twenty-two Community Safety Partnerships and four Criminal
Justice Boards in Wales, so there is obviously quite a lot of
intensive liaison and scope for crossed wires just in that structure.
I am not quite sure what proportion of Criminal Justice Boards
to Community Safety Partnerships there are in England.
Ms Hall: I think that the issue
is less the number of local authorities to Boards, it is rather
where the strategy comes from and what the drivers are. It is
just more complicated in Wales because of the existence of the
Assembly Government.
Mrs Williams: Thank you.
Q555 Chairman: Thank you very much for
coming. It has been a very useful session.
Mr Boyle: Chairman, would it be
totally out of order to ask you a question, sir?
Q556 Chairman: It generally is, but I
shall allow it on this occasion.
Mr Boyle: I know you have been
taking evidence from numerous people. What is the end of the process?
Do you produce a sort of report?
Q557 Chairman: Indeed we do, yes.
Mr Boyle: With a hundred recommendations,
that sort of thing?
Chairman: I doubt that it will be a hundred,
Mr Boyle, but there will be a report with recommendations
which goes to the Government and then they have to respond within
two months. They may not have to implement the recommendations.
Thank you.
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