Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MINISTRY OF
JUSTICE, NATIONAL
PROBATION SERVICE
AND HM PRISON
SERVICE
23 APRIL 2008
Q20 Dr Pugh: Are you able to say
that Community Service Orders work better with certain groups
of offenders rather than other groups of offenders?
Mr Hill: I think we probably are,
yes.
Q21 Dr Pugh: Which groups do they
work best with?
Mr Hill: First of all, I think
they work best with people who show some motivation, and that
is part of the assessment, with the probation officer writing
the report. If somebody shows no motivation at all, frankly, it
is unlikely that rehabilitation would be effective, but we also
work to try to increase motivation or raise motivation and, generally
speaking, people who are motivated to change, people who I would
say—
Q22 Dr Pugh: To be fair, that is
something of a truism, is it not? Most things work best with motivated
people. I hoped you were going to tell me that it works best with
people guilty of certain types of crime as opposed to, for example,
finance crime; better or worse with violent criminals or better
or worse with criminals who have a supportive family. That sort
of data would be useful. To tell us simply that it works best
with motivated people is not really telling us anything, is it?
Mr Hill: I said we work to try
to motivate people as well. It was not quite as narrow as that.
Q23 Dr Pugh: It works for people
you can motivate. We are not learning much here, are we?
Mr Hill: Not necessarily. We actually
work with a lot of people who are in quite significant denial.
Certainly, the sex offenders we work with are almost always in
denial, and a lot of people who have problematic drinking deny
as well that they have any sort of problem and we have had quite
a lot of success in bringing people round to that. There are different
performance outcomes in terms of the actual re-offending compared
to the predicted rate for different types of intervention. On
a general offending programme, those who complete those programmes,
there is about a 25% difference. So those are people who will
have thinking skills that are distorted, not social. That group
appear to respond well.
Q24 Dr Pugh: So it is groups whose
criminality has this root of alcohol or a drugs problem are probably
being given a Community Service Order than a jail sentence. Would
you go so far as to say the evidence shows that?
Mr Hill: I think I can actually.
Q25 Dr Pugh: There is only a small
number of people who actually get alcohol and drug treatment,
are there not, of the total cohort?
Mr Hill: There are not that many
that get alcohol treatment requirements. There is quite a number
that we would work with on their alcohol issues. We address alcohol
problems through offending behaviour programmes, through supervision,
through referral to other agencies in the community, for example,
Alcoholics Anonymous, that sort of thing. So the alcohol treatment
requirement which I think you are referring to actually is for
the chronic alcoholic, so that is not entirely representative
of the whole spectrum of work that we do. Drink-impaired drivers'
programmes, which are one of the programmes I think arguably dealing
with problematic drinkers who then go on to drive, actually have
a better outturn in terms of reducing re-offending than the general
offending programmes.
Q26 Dr Pugh: It is not just the alcoholics,
but the person who, say, for example, has been led to crime by
alcoholic excess on frequent occasions.
Mr Hill: Yes. I think what you
are demonstrating very clearly is the complexity of the job, and
we work with 200,000 of these people, who many people would cross
the street to avoid, frankly, and they are complex. They have
complicated lives and complicated histories.
Q27 Dr Pugh: Two hundred thousand
is a fairly big sample. Clearly, some people have longer than
others on a CSO. Is there any evidence to show that the longer
the better or that longer supervision orders work better than
shorter supervision orders?
Mr Hill: No, there is no evidence
of that. Probation officers propose a length of Community Order
that is reasonable given the volume of requirements that they
are proposing for completion during that period. It would be folly
really and a waste of public money to propose a much longer period.
Q28 Dr Pugh: So it is quality rather
than length?
Mr Hill: I think so but there
is no direct evidence of that. That is not one of the things that
has been researched.
Q29 Dr Pugh: In the Report it says
some people make quite a slow start. In other words, there is
quite an appreciable gap, sometimes 23 weeks or something like
that, between getting your order and actually serving your order,
and you always believe, do you not, that people learn best if
they are punished immediately. They have had a long wait for trial
and a long wait for punishment. The connection between the crime
and the punishment tends to be that much weaker. Is there any
research that you are aware of, anything in the evidence you have
from your huge sample, that shows starting earlier, more promptly,
immediately after a court sentence has a positive beneficial effect
as opposed to the thing being dragged out?
Mr Hill: Can I just take a step
back for a moment and say we begin the order once the sentence
is passed. We do not wait. The waiting period that you are describing
is the period of time before an offender who is subject to supervision
from day one takes till they start their accredited programme.
So we would engage—and I entirely agree with you and I have
done this all the time I was a practitioner—I think the
bigger impact you make closer to the point of sentence the better,
but that is about building an effective working relationship between
the offender and the offender manager; it is about making clear
the expectations of supervision; it is about checking the motivation
levels; and ensuring that an appropriate contract of supervision
is in place. It is also about making sure that offenders are—it
is not a very pleasant term but we say that they are "programme
ready", which means to say if somebody has difficulties with
reading and writing and we put them in a programme where we have
to give them handouts or ask them to write something or read something
and they cannot, there is no value whatsoever in putting them
on that programme. We need to deal with the issues that they present
in a logical and sequenced way, so actually going through some
of the other issues, including literacy and numeracy, often initially
is quite important and that may be one of the reasons for delay;
it may not always be that the programme is not there.
Q30 Dr Pugh: On page 53 there is
a very useful chart that has a regional breakdown. MPs are always
interested in how our region does, and I notice for Merseyside
there is a relationship there, as there is for all areas, between
actual and predicted re-offending rates, which seemed to be some
sort of measure of how NOMS and the Probation Service are performing
in those areas. I notice for Merseyside—it is worse for
North Wales just above it—it habitually says higher, statistically
higher, statistically higher and higher; for Wales it is higher
all the way through. In other words, there is an unexpectedly
high rate of re-offending in those areas. That is the correct
assumption, is it not?
Mr Hill: It is, but it is interesting
because the chief officer of Merseyside made exactly the same
comment to me, so I can give you some information about that.
Q31 Dr Pugh: Before you do that,
can you explain what the difference is between "higher"
and "statistically higher"? I do not see how it can
be higher without being statistically higher.
Mr Hill: I would have to say I
cannot do that. It may be that I can talk to the NAO and send
you a note about that.
Ms Murphie: It just means it is
a statistically significant difference. It may be numerically
higher but not statistically higher.
Mr Hill: The figures that are
very helpfully included in this chart actually are the experimental
three-month data that we have recently introduced, and the comment
that the chief officer of Merseyside said to me—he seemed
rather put out by this—was that it all depends on where
your baseline is, and his original baseline, he contends—and
I have no reason to dispute it actually—was a very low baseline,
so actually at the point that we began to measure this, Merseyside
were doing very well. They have got a little worse but remain
actually quite effective at it, and all this is showing you is
whether—
Q32 Dr Pugh: It is not a measure
of effectiveness but a measure of optimism or over-optimism, is
it?
Mr Hill: No, it is a measure of
actual movement but the point from which they began was quite
a good point. It was a low measure.
Q33 Mr Curry: What is the breakdown
between men and women on these orders?
Mr Hill: Approximately 10% are
women.
Q34 Mr Curry: What is the breakdown
ethnically?
Mr Hill: Males and females?
Q35 Mr Curry: Separately.
Mr Hill: I do not know that precisely
but I would estimate—and it is actually varied in both areas
where I was a chief, because the makeup of the area is different.
In Lincolnshire the proportion of black minority ethnic people
on the caseload was very low, probably less than—
Q36 Mr Curry: There are probably
not many in Lincolnshire, are there, really, compared with Poles,
for example?
Mr Hill: That is true. I was then
chief officer in London, and the proportion would be significantly
higher but I can only estimate at 25% to 30%.
Q37 Mr Curry: I was just asking whether
or not the ethnic breakdown on these programmes reflected, for
example, the ethnic breakdown in prison.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Maybe Phil
can give the ethnic breakdown in prison.
Mr Wheatley: This is from memory.
Currently about 24% of prison population are from black and minority
ethnic groups and a percentage of those are foreign nationals,
about 7%, so about 17%, which is a disproportionate number of
BME people in prison, particularly a disproportionate number of
people from an Afro-Caribbean background, and it is quite likely
that probation will mirror that, but there is disproportionality
in prison and I think in other bits of the criminal justice system,
but I cannot give you data on that.
Q38 Mr Curry: So you could not say—I
just throw this out—that these sort of Community Orders
are more sympathetic to good old white Brits than they are to
anybody else?
Mr Hill: No, you could not. We
are very, very focused on trying to make all programmes suitable
for whatever minority group, so, for example, we get quite a few
women who require groups and we would give them a choice. If they
want to do their order quickly, they can do it in a mixed group.
Some of them opt for that. If they want to do it in a women-only
group, that would take a bit longer.
Q39 Mr Curry: What sort of things
do they do? Give me the top five activities. I am not talking
about rehabilitation; I am talking on the punishment bit of it,
actually doing work in the community. What are the top five tasks,
the top five runners?
Mr Hill: In that case, let me
talk about unpaid work, which is absolutely punishment in the
community, and the top task is physical labour.
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