Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MINISTRY OF
JUSTICE, NATIONAL
PROBATION SERVICE
AND HM PRISON
SERVICE
23 APRIL 2008
Q60 Mr Curry: We know that if you
get X as a sentence effectively it is X minus Y if you play your
cards right.
Mr Hill: We do not know that.
The percentage of situations in which that was identified is very
small and we have no information from the inspectorate that would
suggest that that is a concern. As Sir Suma has said quite a few
times, the performance on enforcement in the Probation Service
over the last six or seven years has improved dramatically, but
I do absolutely assure you I take it very seriously and so do
probation staff.
Q61 Mr Davidson: Could I pick up
the point about reconviction rates? Reconviction is not quite
the same thing as reoffending. What percentage of crimes get a
conviction?
Mr Hill: That is the million dollar
question, is it not? I cannot say that I know the answer to that
and I am not sure whether—
Q62 Mr Davidson: That is a do not
know. When you are quoting here reconviction rates it does not
give us any indication of whether or not you have been successful
in stopping reoffending since you do not know. The reconviction
is measured after two years. How long does it normally take somebody
from charging to sentencing? How long does it take for a case
to proceed?
Mr Wheatley: This is why the reconviction
rates are not assessed until six months after the end of the two
years, to take account of the fact that people may be charged
with offences that took place during the two year period.
Q63 Mr Davidson: The two year period
does not include the period of charging and sentencing.
Mr Wheatley: We look, two and
a half years after the event, at who has been convicted of crimes.
You are right. It only measures conviction. We do not know who
has offended.
Q64 Mr Davidson: Certainly this applies
to England and Wales but in my constituency we have large numbers
of people who are caught for burglary, who then ask for 27,000
other offences to be taken into account. Similarly car theft,
assault, a whole number of other things. The fact that you have
not caught them for something during that two years does not mean
to say that they have not offended, does it? A two year period
surely is not sufficiently long to have a genuine assessment of
whether or not they offended during that period.
Mr Hill: I thought the question
was going somewhere slightly different. You talked about somebody
with a very high volume of offending. We would describe that individual
as a prolific offender and we have 10,000 individuals across England
and Wales who are classed as prolific offenders. They are worked
with intensively between the Probation Service and the police.
One of the cases I was going to talk about if I got the opportunity
this afternoon is a prolific offender in Sussex.
Q65 Mr Davidson: If there is a prolific
offender who offends prolifically during the two years but is
not caught until four years later, under your system he would
not be recorded as offending at all?
Mr Hill: That is correct.
Q66 Mr Davidson: These figures are
essentially meaningless in terms of the number of offences committed.
Is that correct?
Mr Wheatley: They are not meaningless.
They have the reservations that you express. People will offend
who are not caught, but they show comparatively how things have
changed, so we know what we could reasonably predict will happen.
We can predict what will happen mainly from age and some very
plain, factual details.
Q67 Mr Davidson: I am interested
in the protection of the public. Can you tell me how the number
of people on probation who go on to commit offences compares with
those who remain in prison in those circumstances? Unless I am
very much mistaken, those who are kept in prison commit far fewer
offences during the same periods.
Mr Wheatley: People who are in
prison will only commit any offences they are committing in prison.
That obviously means that for the period they are inside their
chances of burgling other people are reduced.
Q68 Mr Davidson: You cannot give
me assurances that satisfy me that these people you are putting
on probation are not a threat to the public?
Mr Wheatley: I can tell you that
they reoffend less than the people who go in prison, once the
people in prison are released. From the point of the sentence
and then being free to commit crime, the group on community sentences
will reoffend less than we expected. The people in prison will
offend at almost exactly the rate we expected. That is the difference.
Q69 Mr Davidson: That says something
about the inefficiency of the prison system though, does it not?
People who are kept in prison as distinct from probation do not
offend. When they get out they have a greater chance of offending,
you would suggest.
Mr Wheatley: On short sentences.
Q70 Mr Davidson: In paragraph 2.3,
of the 28% that have been reconvicted of a further offence only
26% have committed an offence of lesser severity than the original,
which means the converse is that 74% have gone on to commit an
offence that was worse than the offence that they committed in
the first place, which does not really give me much reassurance,
does it?
Mr Hill: I do not think that is
quite right. This is the data that is collected by the inspectorate
who are the only people who have looked at cases where there is
a reoffence of a lower level of severity or a reoffence that is
less frequent. It is not saying that everybody committed an offence
of greater severity.
Q71 Mr Davidson: If that applies
to 26%, what is the category that the other 74% fall into?
Mr Hill: They did not commit an
offence.
Q72 Mr Davidson: That is more helpful.
It does not make it entirely clear on that. Can I turn to the
question of employment? The figure here is that only 12% secured
a job and maintained the job for at least four weeks. All the
employment studies that are done measure for a much longer period.
I have people working with me in my constituency where six months
is a meaningful period to get somebody into employment. What follow-up
is there to make sure that these people that you get into employment
do not just collapse off the end of it in four weeks? Usually
people can sustain a degree of interest for a relatively short
period.
Mr Hill: It will depend on the
point at which four weeks is measured during the community order.
At the moment, the measure that we use is four weeks so we know
for example that in 2006/7 14,428 offenders got into work and
maintained it for more than four weeks. It is entirely likely
that any probation officer will try to keep that individual in
employment.
Q73 Mr Davidson: This figure is meaningless
then, is it not, really? You cannot tell me what happens beyond
four weeks. What causes me concern is, looking at paragraph 2.4,
where it is said that there is no structure to inform offender
managers of further offences. You just have to rely on the person
telling you. Presumably the same thing applies to employment.
Mr Hill: Firstly, I would disagree
that the figure is meaningless. I do not think it is meaningless;
it tells you exactly what it says. The purpose of giving the shorter
term reconviction information, the three month data, does give
offender managers information that they did not previously have.
Bringing the Probation Service, the Prison Service and the Court
Service together under the Ministry of Justice may allow us to
get information from the courts in an automated way, which I agree
with you would be extremely useful. You would be surprised how
many offenders do tell their probation officers that they have
committed an offence.
Q74 Mr Davidson: Presumably giving
it as an indication as to why they missed one of their appointments,
possibly.
Mr Hill: Not usually.
Q75 Mr Davidson: On this question
of only 12% maintaining this for four weeks, do you accept that
that is an inadequate measure?
Mr Hill: I accept that it is a
measure exactly as it says. It tells you who has been in employment
for four weeks. I think it is better than not having the measure.
Q76 Mr Davidson: That is a bit like
the statistics that we have just had from the Department for Transport.
I suppose it could be argued—possibly not—that having
nothing is better. Four weeks would not be acceptable in any other
area in terms of marking success. Presumably you are trying to
turn these people's lives around and get them into employment.
Washing your hands of it does not seem to me to be adequate. I
would have thought a six month or a yearly follow-up would give
you an indication of whether or not you were genuinely able to
get people into sustainable employment.
Mr Hill: I think you raise a fascinating
point which I will take away and give some thought to. I can assure
you this is a target. Probation officers do not at the completion
of four weeks' employment with somebody who is on their case load
simply turn their back. They try to make sure that those individuals
stay on. I think the point you make is right. I agree with it.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We could
try and build on that point in the longitudinal study we are going
to do because we can try and see whether they stay on over the
next four or five years.
Q77 Mr Davidson: Can I come back
to this question of breaches that some of my colleagues have touched
on? There is a very strong perception that being put on your community
structure is a soft option. This can only surely be corroborated
by the idea that people are able to do self-certificated sick,
forgot, confusion, slept in, no detail, no reasoned detail. People
are trying it on quite clearly and in paragraph 3.16 when you
have the number of contested breaches rising, people are prepared
to work the system by appealing. Many of us see this in a whole
number of different areas. What reassurance can you give us that
you are being sufficiently rigorous on those people that you are
dealing with? I was struck by a point you were making on about
medical lines. We are aware in terms of benefit claims that a
whole number of doctors will tell us privately that they write
sick notes for people who often physically threaten them. Some
of your staff must be pretty often in the same sort of position.
What guarantee have we that they are not taking simply the soft
option and not breaching people when really they ought to do so
and it is not just a process that people have to survive?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We have
evidence from the inspectorate reports. They have looked at what
staff do, how they behave and so on. That suggests that there
is not a staff bias, if you like, in favour of letting people
get away with it. We also have all the data that I presented at
the beginning on breaches, which is quite interesting because
it is improving. It is not perfect, clearly, but 86% of appointments
now are kept. I do not think that was the case a few years ago.
It was much, much lower. Timely enforcement was just about 40%
in 2000. It is now 94%. That is a big change, so I think the standards
have tightened up quite a lot in the last few years.
Mr Hill: Can I add the inspectorate's
comments across a wider sample? This is the inspectorate's view
from the offender management inspection, so it is an aggregate
view as they have done inspections across the country. What they
say is that the judgments of a probation officer about whether
absence is acceptable or unacceptable are consistent and appropriate
in 90% of cases. Offender managers monitor attendance across all
the requirements of a community order satisfactorily in 92% of
cases.
Q78 Angela Browning: I wonder if
we could look at the section on the NAO Report that deals with
targets, mainly on pages 35 and 36. On page 35 the heading says,
"Some performance targets need improvement" and then
over on page 36 there is quite a lengthy explanation of why targets
have the potential for unintended consequences. It is those unintended
consequences I want to ask you about, as to how having now received
this Report you might use this report in order to improve those
targets. As you can see under 4.28, from the probation areas that
the NAO visited, there are some very specific issues that clearly
could be addressed. I wonder if you would very briefly like to
just tell us, having read this Report, how you might address those
identified problems.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: On the first
bullet point in 4.28, I think the NAO are very fair here. What
they say is "targets can" and "possible incidences
suggested". They do not state that there is a mass of evidence
out there. We looked at this first bullet. Some of the completion
targets have been overshot by a very long way—drugs rehabilitation,
unpaid work, basic skills—all suggesting that the gaming
that you might get with targets is not happening in that area.
On the second bullet, again there is no strong evidence from the
inspectorate reports we have looked at. Acceptable absences have
not risen in line with increasing accredited programmes, for example,
so these are all possible things that could happen with any target
regime but so far the evidence suggests it is not so. Do you want
to say a bit about the future targets we are setting because the
NAO makes some very good points about outcome targets.
Mr Hill: They do indeed. It is
very thought provoking in terms of the Report. Two of the outcomes
of sentencing are, firstly, punishment. We think that some of
the information around the extent to which unpaid work for example
does provide punishment is a credible outcome target which we
probably ought to report a little more than we do. [Secondly]
reparation is an intended outcome of sentencing. 6.7 million hours
of unpaid work are completed by offenders, which is very reparative,
and would equate to £37 million worth of labour going into
the country if you just take that figure and extrapolate it against
the minimum wage. We have used programme targets as a proxy measure
for reducing reoffending because the research shows us, as I have
said already, that those programmes have a positive impact and
a more positive impact than most things in terms of reducing reoffending,
but we seek to increase the volume of targets.
Q79 Angela Browning: Staff told us
that targets discouraged them from offering offenders further
supervision appointments once breach action had been initiated
so obviously breach action is a very big, significant thing for
somebody who is on this programme. Are you going to look at that
specifically? What I did ask you was: what are you going to look
at in terms of what might need to be changed? You started off
by saying that these people have to be motivated or you have to
encourage them to be motivated. People who are not motivated are
more likely to breach, are they not?
Mr Hill: National standards are
clear that offender managers should continue to work with offenders
through the breach period, assuming that it is safe to do so.
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