House of Commons - Public Accounts

Select Committee on Public Accounts Forty-Eighth Report

2 Building confidence in community orders

7. Little research had been carried out into the effectiveness of community orders, although there had been recent National Offender Management Service research work on accredited programmes and unpaid work. Historically, research on community orders accounted for around 10% of the budget available for criminal justice research. This had recently been increased to 40%. In particular, the Ministry and the National Probation Service recognised the need for much better data about the types of interventions that worked for different types of offender. The Ministry announced it was spending £1 million in 2008-09 and more in future years on the long term Offender Management Community Cohort study, which is expected to generate the required data. The study was currently being scoped and is due for completion in 2015.[7]

8. Of the 82,500 prisoners currently in prison, around 8,500 (10%) were serving short-term sentences, and yet cohort studies indicated that imprisonment had a weaker effect on reconviction rates. Reconviction for this group of offenders was 3.1% below predicted rates amongst the 2004 cohort. In comparison, reconviction rates amongst offenders on community sentences were 3.6% below predicted rates in the same period. This is a statistically significant difference. Whilst community orders were not a complete solution, National Offender Management Service considered community sentences that were sufficiently challenging to the offender to be a more positive and usually cheaper alternative to the much more expensive use of imprisonment for very short periods.[8]

9. Not all stakeholders considered community sentences to be a strong deterrent, in part because there had been insufficient research into their effectiveness. Some sentencers perceived community sentencing as a soft option, even though the majority of the 6.6 million hours of unpaid work performed each year were spent on challenging and visible tasks, and were considered a punishment by the offenders assigned to them. For example, the most frequently assigned task on unpaid work was physical labour, such as digging or lowering hedges to increase visibility in alleyways. More research was needed to improve the evidence base on the effectiveness of all requirements, such as mental health treatment.[9]

10. Not all offenders were able to complete their requirements before the community order expired. Some programmes were difficult to complete within the order time frame, notably the Integrated Domestic Abuse programme, although waiting for this programme had fallen by 40% since 2003-04. Where possible, Probation Officers utilised the time before an offender could start a programme to address basic literacy needs and assess motivational levels. Probation Officers proposed a length of community order that they considered reasonable given the number and type of requirements proposed.[10]

11. The National Probation Service considered it to be a waste of public money to unnecessarily propose a longer period for a community order, but the order needed to be long enough to allow the offender to complete the requirement. Of the 302 community orders sampled by the National Audit Office, spanning a mix of requirements, the offender failed to complete the requirement in 18 cases (6%). Reasons for non-completion included work and family commitments, lack of probation capacity, and the chaotic lifestyle of many offenders, which disrupted attendance.[11]

12. Around 90% of offenders serving community orders were male. The National Probation Service was unable to provide a breakdown by ethnicity for men or women, and it was unconvincing in its reassurances that women and members of minority groups had equal access to programmes. Women were offered the option of attending women-only groups, although the National Probation Service commented that it was quicker for women to complete their order in a mixed group.[12]

13. The Ministry acknowledged that its completion targets for drugs rehabilitation, unpaid work and basic skills had been overachieved (Figure 3), creating little incentive for staff to motivate offenders to complete their requirements. Similarly, the focus on completions may act as an incentive for staff not to classify absences as unacceptable, as to do so could mean that the offender would not complete the requirement. The Ministry acknowledged the potential for its targets to have perverse effects but commented that, to date, it had found no strong evidence that this risk had materialised.[13]

Figure 3: Volume completions of some order requirements in 2006-07 were greater than in 2005-06 and had exceeded targets

ORDER REQUIREMENT	2005-06 DELIVERED	2006-07 TARGET	2006-07 dELIVERED	INCREASE FROM 2005-06 (%)	2006-07 PERFORMANCE COMPARED TO TARGET (%)
Unpaid work orders	51,026	50,000	55,514	9	111
Offending behaviour programmes	17,127	17,500	19,875	16	114
Drug rehabilitation	3,977	5,000	5,939	50	119

Source: C&AG's Report, Figure 13

14. Another unintentional consequence of the Ministry's targets was the peak in the number of accredited programmes completed between February and March each year (Figure 4). In part, this may reflect offenders completing year end programmes, which had been timed to coincide with the financial year end. More research was needed on whether other factors contributed to the peak, such as a reluctance to breach offenders close to the programme end, a preference for shorter programmes ending by the end of the performance reporting period, or work displaced by the Christmas break.[14]

Figure 4: Completion of accredited programmes reaches a peak just before the end of the financial year.