Annex A
RESPONSE TO "ALTERNATIVES TO PRISON
SENTENCES"
1. The Government's response to the Home
Affairs select Committee's report "Alternatives to Prison
Sentences" was published in December 1998 (Cm 4174).
2. This annex provides more detailed updates
on that response on five areas of particular interest in the 1998
report, women offenders, drug treatment, unpaid work, offender
management and restorative justice.
I. WOMEN OFFENDERS
3. "Alternatives to Prison Sentences"
recommended that the Home Office ensures that credible alternatives
to prison are available for women nationally.
4. The number of females starting community
sentences has increased more sharply than for males over the past
10 years. The number of males starting all community sentences
between 1995 and 2005 increased by some 18% and for females by
some 43%.
5. The Women's Offending Reduction Programme
(WORP) launched in March 2004, tackles women's offending specifically
and aims to reduce the number of women in prison. This programme
of work focuses on improving community based services and interventions
that are better tailored for women, to support greater use of
community disposals rather than short prison sentences.
6. To help support a more effective community-based
response to women's offending; £9.15 million funding was
allocated in March 2005 to establish new initiatives to tackle
women's offending in the community—the Together Women Programme.
The Programme is developing an integrated approach to routing
women to appropriate services to meet their needs at various stages
of their offending history.
7. Women offenders with drug problems can
be given a community sentence with any of the 12 available requirements
including the drug rehabilitation requirement. Offender managers
will construct a sentence plan to ensure that drug treatment is
delivered in a way which accommodates any specific needs of female
offenders.
8. Unpaid Work (the successor to community
punishment orders) seeks to strike a balance between accommodating
the needs of women offenders and ensuring that the demands made
on all offenders subject to Unpaid Work is equitable.
9. The needs of female offenders have been
included in guidance issued to probation areas in a "Manual
on the Delivery of Unpaid Work" (2006).
10. The National Probation Service has a
range of accredited programmes, each designed to address a specific
offending related need including cognitive skills. All programmes
including those under development are subject to an impact assessment
to ensure they are suitable for women as well as men.
11. The Government welcomes Baroness Corston's
recent review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the
criminal justice system. The Report will be used to identify where
there are gaps in current provision and what can be done to build
on the progress that has already been made by initiatives such
as the Women's Offending Reduction Programme.
12. The review's 43 recommendations are
wide-ranging and propose action by a number of different Government
departments and other organisations to address the complex and
multiple needs of women, both in the criminal justice system and
at risk of offending. It must be right that these recommendations
are carefully explored with all the departments and agencies concerned.
The Government will then develop a detailed response setting out
an agreed way forward.
II. DRUG OFFENDERS
13. "Alternatives to Prison Sentences"
recommended that all drug misusing offenders given community sentences
have access to appropriate treatment.
14. The community order with a Drug Rehabilitation
Requirement (DRR) replaced The Drug Treatment and Testing Order
(DTTO) under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 for
offenders aged 18 years and over.
15. The community order with a DRR can be
used to deliver treatment to a much wider group of drug using
offenders than was possible under the DTTO. The DTTO was targeted
primarily at higher levels of offence seriousness. Under the CJA
2003, it is possible to replicate a DTTO for more serious offences
by combining a DRR with two or three other requirements. The DRR
can also be used as stand alone requirement to address drug related
offending at the lowest seriousness level of the community sentencing
band. Numbers starting and completing orders have increased year
on year since the DTTO/DRR was introduced.
16. There has been a 44% increase in the
number of completions and a 19% increase in the number of DRR/DTTO
commencements between April and October 2006 compared with the
same period in 2005.
17. The DRR is managed in accordance with
Home Office National Standards which specify for example, that
treatment must commence within two working days of the order being
made and includes minimum contact times. As with DTTOs, the offender's
progress is reviewed by the court at regular intervals.
18. We expect the vast majority of offenders
with drug problems who are given a community sentence to be suitable
for a DRR. In the few instances where an offender with a drug
problem is given a community sentence without a DRR, they are
entitled to receive drug treatment in the same way as any other
member of the local community. Unlike offenders on DRRs, however,
they will not be given priority access or be subject to minimum
treatment times. NOMS has therefore been working with probation
areas, courts, the National Treatment Agency and the Drugs Intervention
Programme to ensure that most community sentences for drug using
offenders include a DRR.
III. UNPAID WORK
19. Community Service has undergone two
significant legislative changes since the Select Committee made
its recommendations in 1998. Firstly it became known as "Community
Punishment". This was then developed into "Enhanced
Community Punishment" to promote the rehabilitation of offenders
in addition to providing punishment. Secondly, under the Criminal
Justice Act 2003, the name changed to "Unpaid Work"
and it is one of a suite of requirements that can be part of a
Community Order. This has retained the critical developments made
under Enhanced Community Punishment and added a more robust approach
to the assessment and management of risk from offenders undertaking
Unpaid Work.
20. Over the past eighteen months, we have
promoted the use of unpaid work requirements as part of "Community
Payback". The principal aims of Community Payback are to
increase the visibility of the work done by offenders, and consequently
the benefits to the community, and to engage the public in nominating
the work that they would like to see offenders perform in their
communities. This has proved to be particularly successful in
raising awareness among the public through the involvement of
local media and community groups.
21. After the development of National Probation
Service arrangements to communicate with sentencers were increasingly
supported by centrally produced material and innovations, such
as evidence-based "What Works" practice. Progress on
the drive to dramatically improve probation's enforcement performance
was relayed to sentencers and research in 2002 showed that sentencer
perception about the rigour of breach had changed for the better,
with sentencers believing that the Service was dealing promptly
with those who failed to comply with court orders.
IV. RESTORATIVE
JUSTICE
22. The Government is committed to placing
victims' needs at the centre of the CJS and restorative justice
can help us to deliver this aim.
23. Consistent evidence suggests that restorative
justice increases victim satisfaction: at least 75% of victims
who choose to take part in restorative justice are glad they did
so (Marshall, 1999).[68]
24. Evidence from abroad and in the UK of
the impact of restorative justice on re-offending is more mixed
and we are working to fill existing gaps in research knowledge.
25. The Government launched a consultation
document on its restorative justice strategy on 22 July 2003 (Home
Office, Restorative Justice, the Government's Strategy, 2003).
The strategy aims to:
— encourage, without requiring, further
use of restorative justice in the adult criminal justice system,
particularly as a service to victims;
— ensure quality of delivery, both
to ensure victim satisfaction and as a key building block for
further expansion of restorative justice, in particular by developing
best practice guidance and a training and accreditation framework;
and
— continue to develop the evidence
base on when restorative justice works for adult offenders, particularly
in relation to re-offending.
26. Best practice guidance for practitioners
was published in December 2004 (Home Office, Best practice guidance
for restorative practitioners, and their Case Supervisors and
Line Managers, 2004).
27. In March 2005, the National Criminal
Justice Board issued guidance to Local Criminal Justice Boards
on restorative justice to encourage them to consider the use of
adult restorative justice in delivering their existing targets
relating to victim satisfaction and public confidence in the criminal
justice system (Home Office, Restorative justice: helping to meet
local needs, 2005). The current national roll-out of adult conditional
cautions provides a further opportunity to deliver restorative
justice.
28. The Government invested around £5m
in the Crime Reduction Programme Restorative Justice Pilots (which
ran from 2001 to 2004) and their evaluation. These pilots delivered
restorative justice at all stages in the criminal justice system
and involved both juvenile and adult offenders.
29. Two (of four) research reports have
already been published on, respectively, the setting up of the
pilots and victim and offender attitudes (Shapland et al, 2004
and Shapland et al, 2006).[69]
The third and fourth reports on victim and offender satisfaction,
and the impact of restorative justice on reconviction rates and
cost-effectiveness are expected to be published in 2007. This
research will inform the longer term strategy for adult restorative
justice.
30. Restorative justice is a central part
of the youth justice system and victim contact or reparation can
be part of all youth justice disposals.
V. OFFENDER MANAGEMENT
31. Offender Management contributes to making
sentences more effective by improving the way offenders are managed
with a view to greater compliance, improved completion of programmes
and, ultimately, reduced re-offending.
32. The evidence indicates that continuity
and consistency are important in the effective management of offenders.69,70,71,72[70][71][72][73]
A key element of Offender Management is that, as far as possible,
the same offender manager will be responsible for an offender
for the whole of the sentence, whether it is served in the community,
in custody or a mixture of both.
33. There will be circumstances in which
a change of offender manager is unavoidable (retirement; promotion;
pregnancy etc), but provision will be made for a proper handover
of the case between offender managers
34. The offender manager assesses the offender's
risks and needs, plans the sentence and is responsible for ensuring
that the plan is delivered and kept up to date.
35. The offender manager draws down the
resources needed—eg a particular intervention delivered
by the NPS or by an external provider—and liaises with other
agencies such as the police (eg in MAPPA cases)
36. The offender manager is a probation
officer or a probation service officer and is always based in
the community, even if the offender is in prison. The offender
manager is in the probation area in which the offender lives or
to which the offender is expected to return on release from prison.
37. Offender Management was introduced for
community sentences and licence cases in 2005-06.
38. In November 2006 it was extended to
a small but important section of the prison population, namely
determinate sentence prisoners serving 12 months or more who are
assessed as posing a high or very high risk of serious harm or
who are PPO cases.
39. We plan to extend Offender Management
to lifers and IPP cases in October 2007.
40. Extension to the remaining determinate
sentence prisoners serving 12 months or more is planned for 2008,
the precise date still to be determined.
41. Following the decision to defer Custody
Plus our plans do not, at present, include the under 12 month
prison population.
68 Marshall, T (1999) Restorative Justice: An Overview.
Occasional Paper. Home Office Research Development Statistics.
London: Home Office. Back
69
Shapland, J, Atkinson, A, Colledge, E, Dignan, J, Howes, M, Johnstone,
J, Robinson, G, & Sorsby, A (2004) Implementing restorative
justice schemes (Crime Reduction Programme)-a report on the first
year. Online Report 32/04. London: Home Office. Shapland, J, Atkinson
A, Atkinson, H, Chapman B, Dignan, J, Howes, M, Johnstone, J,
Robinson, G, and Sorsby, A (2006) restorative justice in practice,
findings from the second phase of the evaluation of three schemes.
Findings 274, London: Home Office. Back
70
Holt, P (2000) Case management: context for supervision. (Community
and Criminal Justice Monograph 2), Leicester: De Montfort University. Back
71
Beaumont, B, Caddick, B and Hare-Duke, H (2001) Meeting Offenders'
Needs. Bristol: University of Bristol Scholl for Policy Studies. Back
72
Ricketts, T, Bliss, P, Murphy, K and Brooker, C (2002) The life-course
of the DTTO: Engagement with Drug Treatment and Testing Orders.
Sheffield: University of Sheffield School of Health and Related
Research. Back
73
Partridge, S. (2004) Examining case management models for community
supervision. Home Office Online Report 17/04. London: Home Office. Back
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