Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MINISTRY OF
JUSTICE, NATIONAL
PROBATION SERVICE
AND HM PRISON
SERVICE
23 APRIL 2008
Q80 Angela Browning: That may be
the case but how are you going to address the problem of them
not attending once there is a breach? Presumably, if you have
already invested a lot of time, effort and money into them, if
there is a possibility of getting them back in line, the target
is discouraging you from doing so?
Mr Hill: The targets on enforcement
and compliance need to be seen as either side of the same coin.
The first priority of the probation officer is to get the offender
to comply. That is why we have targets around compliance. Personally,
I think the compliance target is probably the most important and,
as Sir Suma has said, we get 17 out of 20 appointments kept, 86%.
Enforcement is the process that we then use to try to make compliance
happen if it will not happen. Clearly, you are quite right; we
should be following through and engaging with the offender, identifying—
Q81 Angela Browning: What stops you?
Mr Hill: I do not think anything
does. National standards are clear that probation officers can
and should do that if it is safe to do so.
Q82 Angela Browning: The Report has
picked up that this is a problem area.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: The Report
is suggesting this could be a problem area.
Q83 Angela Browning: Are you saying
you do not think it is?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We have
no evidence to hand that suggests it is, but I do think there
is an interesting issue here. We obviously have national standards
which make it very clear that offender managers should follow
up after the breach. Interestingly in some probation areas they
are doing this through contact with the police and others are
not, so the question that Roger and his team would be asking is:
can we get that more consistent across the probation areas?
Q84 Angela Browning: That is a general
theme picked up in the Report about learning the best practice
from different regions.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Exactly.
Q85 Angela Browning: It requires
somebody to take a grip on that and make sure it happens.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: It goes
back to the first point I made early on about the autonomous approach
to this, which is very important because obviously you want a
decentralised system which learns that what happens in localities
will differ, but you need a centre which also can learn lessons
and pass lessons across.
Q86 Angela Browning: On page five,
item six, on the overall conclusions of the NAO Report, the little
paragraph under six talks about the nature of demands placed on
probation and a funding structure which imperfectly matches demand.
Clearly, we are only looking today at one aspect of the Probation
Service work. There are other areas—and I would be grateful
if you would tell the Committee—things like the Probation
Service role in managing offenders who are released on licence.
Where in the pecking order does this scheme come, given that from
what we read here you have responsibilities which are not matched
by funding? Are some of the problems identified in this document
because of lack of resources and you having to give priority to
other areas of responsibility?
Mr Hill: We would always take
an approach to say resources should follow risk, so it is an individual
decision. You are right to suggest that the riskier offenders
tend to be in the licensed group because of the offence they have
committed. That may not always be the case but we would divide
resources using the tiering system across the community bracket
as well. Whilst it is right to say that the funding system is
imperfect and we have done a lot to try to revise that, it is
a funding formula approach, 85% of which is based on need and
15% on workload. If we based the funding formula entirely on workload,
we would create perverse incentives to fill up the Probation Service
with cases that are unnecessary.
Q87 Angela Browning: This is the
Public Accounts Committee. I am not in any way trying to encourage
you to say that you need more money. I just wanted to try and
balance what has been put in the overall conclusion of the Report
with some of the messages one seems to be picking up further in
the Report.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: The government
has of course just allocated an extra £40 million for the
Probation Service for this new financial year. I think there is
an interesting issue about the funding formula which we are looking
at—and the Report mentions it—as to whether funding
really moves too slowly, if you like, as demand changes. Part
of the problem is the costs in the Probation Service. Most of
them are fixed. It is not easy to shift things around very quickly.
Q88 Angela Browning: You are taking
on new responsibilities like bail hostels in the community on
a wide scale and things like that.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Absolutely.
That is another reason why we need to look at the funding formula
and whether we can have a more flexible system to allocate money.
Q89 Angela Browning: I want to focus
on something other colleagues have touched on and that is in appendix
four, page 54. Mr Hill gave quite a detailed analysis earlier
on about those on alcohol treatment and the difference between
community order requirements as far as alcohol treatment is concerned.
I am quite surprised to see a zero figure across many, many regions,
including my own of Devon and Cornwall, under alcohol treatment.
I think Mr Hill suggested that in this category we are looking
at people with chronic alcoholism as opposed to the binge drinker
on a night out. What can we assume from the fact that there are
so many zeros against this category of people?
Mr Hill: I think the first thing
you should assume is that this was a very early cohort of community
orders. This will be the group of community orders that was probably
the first finishers on the basis that the Act only applied to
offences after 1 April 2005.
Q90 Angela Browning: You cannot say
there are not chronic alcoholics.
Mr Hill: I am not saying that
for a moment. I am saying that getting that requirement in place
takes some time. This will be a worse picture than it is now.
I am also saying that in a great many of the alcohol difficulties
that we encounter we can engage with those without the full NHS
chronic alcoholic treatment.
Q91 Angela Browning: There are not
many NHS places, are there?
Mr Hill: No.
Q92 Angela Browning: Is that not
why there are so many zeros in that column?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Yes, that
is absolutely right. The chronic treatment is provided by the
NHS.
Q93 Angela Browning: Or not.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Or not.
The pace of coverage has definitely improved. It has moved on
from this picture, but it is still not covering the whole of England
and Wales, unlike other requirements which do cover the whole
of England and Wales. This is one area where local PCTs are making
their own choices about local priorities and you get the example
of Wiltshire which has a zero and therefore bought in the service
from the NHS. We are having quite an interesting discussion with
the NHS about how we can do better on this.
Q94 Mr Mitchell: I see from 2.11
on page 17 that research is lacking on the effectiveness of some
community order requirements in achieving a reduction in reconvictions,
reforming and rehabilitating offenders. When it says "some"
which ones is the evidence lacking for?
Mr Hill: The best research is
on accredited programmes. There is some quite strong research
as well on unpaid work. For example, unpaid work annually from
the cohort that began in 2000 through to the most recent which
began in 2004 has demonstrated a more than 10% reduction in reoffending.
In fact, the 2004 cohort—
Q95 Mr Mitchell: It says in table
11 that the quality of studies in unpaid work is low and the evidence
of impact on reoffending is weak for unpaid work.
Mr Hill: I think that is why we
are doing the large cohort study—to confirm the accuracy
of these analyses. These are numbers that are being criticised.
The research I am quoting which is the RDS research took a statistically
significant number of offenders on unpaid work to produce. Absolutely,
research could be stronger.
Q96 Mr Mitchell: The fact that you
do not have this information on several of the areas indicates
that we have rushed into a big expansion of the programme of community
service because of the pressure on space in the prisons and because
suddenly we want to keep people out of prison, so we push them
into these courses. It indicates we have gone into it too quickly
without the knowledge of its effects.
Mr Hill: This is the 2003 Act
implemented in 2005 and being looked at in 2008.
Q97 Mr Mitchell: The immediate pressure
has come from the lack of space in prisons.
Mr Wheatley: To some extent Parliament
enacted these changes. We have had to implement them.
Q98 Mr Mitchell: We plead guilty
straight away. We were misled by The Daily Mail. The fact
is we have gone big into this kind of programme without knowing
that it holds out substantial benefits.
Mr Wheatley: There is certainly
more research to be done to understand precisely why people give
up crime or indeed go back to it. It is very complicated, working
out what the precise motivation is for people. Was it the programme
we gave? Was it the really good probation officer? Was it the
threat of breach? Was it the fact that they were breached and
were allowed to continue the order or did they just meet a good
woman and settle down?
Q99 Mr Mitchell: Some of the courses
look like soft options. Anger management is the kind of thing
that is presumably given to the PLP now we have had this dialogue.
Anger management is nothing, is it?
Mr Wheatley: It is a course that
has some advantages and does appear to reduce with relatively
weak evidence—because I think that is one of the ones that
does not have a strong evidence base—the rate at which people
will lose their temper. We are interested in people who lose their
temper and commit crime as a result. We do not just want to make
offenders charming. We are interested in people who get involved
usually in violent crime. The list of what is the strength of
the evidence is accurate. It is an accurate account of what the
strength of the evidence is. The cohort study that we are doing
is going to follow up in detail a large number of people on which
we are spending £1 million this year and more money in the
future. It will give us a much better evidence base. We must respond
to that if we get it.
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