Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MINISTRY OF
JUSTICE, NATIONAL
PROBATION SERVICE
AND HM PRISON
SERVICE
23 APRIL 2008
Q40 Mr Curry: Doing what?
Mr Hill: We try to do what it
is the local community identifies they believe needs doing. A
lot of that is, for example, lowering the height of hedges so
that you do not have alleyways where people cannot be seen. Much
of it is driven by community safety.
Q41 Mr Curry: When you say what the
community wants, how do you know what the community wants? Which
is the bit of the community which tells you what it wants?
Mr Hill: We ask them, generally
through crime and disorder reduction partnerships and police community
safety officers. I did this in Durham, as an assistant chief,
years ago and it is highly effective. I can only say that what
the community wants varies by the community, but we bring basic
skills like painting, gardening, digging, and some slightly more
technical things like bricklaying.
Q42 Mr Curry: Digging is very technical.
Mr Hill: I agree with you, but
most people can dig.
Q43 Mr Curry: You can dig well and
you can dig badly. You say "what the community wants."
Let me give you something which I would like, as a member of the
community. When you go round England, you discover we are one
of the filthiest countries on the planet. Alongside every road
it is like driving through Libya. There is acre after acre of
rubbish and plastic strewn along every single roadside in Britain.
I would like to see your chaps, and ladies for that matter, cleaning
up all this crap.
Mr Hill: They do a great deal
of litter picking, and it is something we used to do in Durham
ten years ago, and the offenders were particularly unhappy about
doing it. We did the removal of chewing gum from pavements.
Q44 Mr Curry: They should be slightly
unhappy about doing it, should they not?
Mr Hill: It should be a punishment,
absolutely, and it is considered a punishment in the majority
of cases.
Q45 Mr Curry: I suppose the Health
and Safety Executive would stop you doing it most of the time,
would they not, because they would have to block off the traffic
for miles in each direction?
Mr Hill: One of the abiding regulations
for unpaid work is health and safety. We used the health and safety
regulations that enabled us to do chewing gum removal in Durham.
You can do it.
Q46 Mr Curry: There are health and
safety regulations relating to the removal of chewing gum, are
there?
Mr Hill: No. The point I was responding
to was you saying that the roads would have to be blocked off
and, no, that was not the case.
Q47 Mr Curry: Can we just look at
the reasons accepted by offender managers for absences? This is
paragraph 3.12 on page 21, and over the page there is a chart.
Who delivers a sick note—not the so-called self-certified
sick note but the sick note? How do they get a sick note?
Mr Hill: From a doctor.
Q48 Mr Curry: In every other sphere
the Government has been tightening up the rules so that doctors
are not so willing to sign the sick notes. Is that true here as
well?
Mr Hill: We use the relationship
with the doctor as far as possible in the same way as anybody
else uses the relationship with the doctor, so what goes on between
the offender who goes to see the doctor and says they are not
well and the doctor themselves I am not privy to and neither are
my staff, but we use that to reflect any normal situation.
Q49 Mr Curry: Does the doctor know
if a person asking for a sick note is on one of these programmes?
Mr Hill: I cannot say that they
necessarily do.
Q50 Mr Curry: The answer is probably
not.
Mr Hill: In routine supervision
of these people on Community Orders I think the answer would be
probably not. We would share information where there are high
risk of harm cases. Actually, a great deal of the work of the
Probation Service is with that type of case, but they do not usually
get on to Community Orders; they tend to be on licence.
Q51 Mr Curry: What is a self-certified
sick note?
Mr Hill: It is the sick note from
the NHS completed by the individual without a visit to a doctor.
Q52 Mr Curry: So he tells you. He
pulls a sicky—right?
Mr Hill: He completes a self-certification.
Q53 Mr Curry: I find it absolutely
incredible that anybody should accept the excuse that they slept
in or forgot. You would not forget you had to appear before the
Public Accounts Committee today, would you?
Mr Hill: I certainly would not.
Q54 Mr Curry: No, and you would not
sleep in if we met early in the morning would you?
Mr Hill: No.
Q55 Mr Curry: These are tossers pulling
it, are they not? They really are, are they not? Do you believe
them? Do you believe that 9% sleep in or forget? I do not believe
it for a second.
Mr Hill: Let me tell you first
of all about the process that we use. The process that we use,
which is rigorous and is governed by national standards, involves—
Q56 Mr Curry: That does not mean
they are rigorous. The fact that they are national standards does
not mean they are rigorous. It means they are national standards.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: The inspectorate
actually think they are rigorously applied. It is not us saying
that.
Mr Hill: They do actually but,
be that as it may, if an individual does not attend for a scheduled
appointment, there is a duty upon the probation officer to follow
up what has happened and there is a duty on the individual who
has not attended to provide an explanation. There are time periods
for that. If those time periods expire, that absence is classed
as unacceptable. Essentially, the probation officer has to make
a judgment. Is the reason given acceptable or unacceptable? I
said right at the beginning we work with a group of people that
a lot of individuals would cross the street to avoid.
Chairman: You keep saying that but it
is your job to deal with these people.
Q57 Mr Curry: The fact that people
might cross the street to avoid them might predispose me as the
chap who might cross the street to want you to be pretty damned
rigorous about this.
Mr Hill: We are rigorous. I was
as concerned as you suggest you are on reading that finding in
the NAO Report. What I did was to ask for a follow-up study. I
am not questioning the Report for a moment. Clearly those absences
have been classed as acceptable, exactly as reported. What I wanted
to know was first of all how many of that group of people—I
am not sure how many absences—slept in and what were the
circumstances in which people forgot. That is what I went to look
at. In terms of those who slept in, we identified one individual.
That individual had a record of attending their community order
perfectly to the point where they slept in. They slept in; they
rang the probation officer within 30 minutes of their scheduled
appointment and they said, I thought rather honestly, that they
had slept in. The probation officer took that at face value, reviewed
their attendance history and made a decision which I think was
probably the right decision.
Q58 Mr Curry: How much does it cost
to buy a cheap alarm clock? It costs under a fiver. The Probation
Service should give them an alarm clock the first time round and
say, "Put it on." You have one on a mobile, as my colleague
says.
Mr Hill: We do a remarkable amount
of things very like that. We do give people diaries. We do text
messaging to remind people to come in. Our job is to try to get
these people to comply. If we cannot engage with them, then the
likelihood of reducing their offending is significantly lower.
Q59 Mr Curry: Other reasons accepted
including the order having less than a week to run and the offender
having had a positive attitude. I have the 38 Engineers in my
constituency. If they phoned up their commanding officer and said,
"End of my leave but I have a few days to run. Is that okay,
boss?" you know what he would say. I find it inconceivable,
just because he is at the end of his term, that he should be allowed
to take the last few days off.
Mr Hill: I agree with you but
it is slightly difficult to know what to do in terms of best value
for the public. Clearly, technically, the probation officer could
breach that person. Their order would be time expired by the time
it got back to court, even if it got back in the minimum time
possible. I think the court would say, "It is really not
clear to us why you have brought this here."
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