Examination of Witnesses (Questions 166
- 179)
TUESDAY 24 JUNE 2008
JULIET LYON,
IMRAN HUSSAIN
AND EILÍS
LAWLOR
Chairman: Ms Lyon, Mr Hussain, from the
Prison Reform Trust, and Ms Lawlor, from "the new economics
foundation", we are very glad to have you and we are very
glad you were able to listen to the preceding part of the debate.
I think our discussion with you will follow naturally on from
that.
Q166 Mrs Riordan: Is it legitimate
to take resources into account when formulating or evaluating
criminal justice policy?
Eilís Lawlor: It is appropriate
to take financial considerations into account, but only if, as
well as looking at the investment side, we look at the return
on that investment. I think the problem is that we get very focused
on what the criminal justice system costs and we do not think
about what effects it has, what outcomes it has and what the costs
and benefits of those outcomes are. Because of that, we have used
an approach called "social return on investment" in
our research which looks at value to a range of stakeholders,
has a long-term time horizon and also includes the wider social
costs and benefits from criminal justice interventions. Can I
quote some of the findings from that research in applying this
methodology? We applied it to a very small number of women offenders,
just 40% of the female offender population, and we found that
even if 6% more of them stopped re-offending as a result of being
placed in alternatives to prison, the state makes back in one
year what it invests in those alternatives. If we project that
into the future, the long-run discounted benefit that represents
is in excess of £100 million, and, if we put that another
way, it is a return of £14 worth of social value for every
pound invested. So that shows you the level of savings possible
from investing in alternatives an that even very small reductions
in re-offending can have huge cost savings to all of us. In our
research we looked at benefits to women, their children, the state
and victims from those kind of interventions. In summary our research
shows that the true costs of crime are prohibitive and that we
have to find alternatives, because otherwise we pass the legacy
of our short-term decision-making on to future generations, because
those costs will only escalate in the future.
Juliet Lyon: I think it is very
legitimate to think about cost, and I think sometimes we see a
public reaction, which is one of panic: do you mean that by talking
about prison as a place of absolute last resort or a finite resource
that serious and violent offenders will be roaming the community
because we cannot afford to have enough prison places for them?
We are so very far from that possibility for it to be ludicrous.
We have got the Prison Governors' Association telling us that
there are around about 25,000 people, in their estimate, who are
in prison need not be there, we have got the former Lord Chief
Justice, Lord Woolf, on public record saying that his idea of
an unavoidable minimum is somewhere around 40,000 people in prison,
the same number as when he investigated the disturbances at Strangeways,
and we are now double that; so I do not think we should be fearful.
If we did declare that this costly and finite resource was to
be used sparingly and appropriately, in our view at the Prison
Reform Trust, there are more than enough places already without
launching into a building programme. I think the issue about whether
the places themselves are up to standard is a separate issue.
Imran Hussain: More than legitimate,
I think it is essential that we look at how effectively, how efficiently
money is spent in the criminal justice system. From our view a
lot of money is being spent. Your web forum talks about five billion,
and we would argue that a lot of that money is being spent with
little effect. You just have to look at re-offending statistics,
and I think it is right that people look at the spending and look
at the return and look at whether it is working or not. I think
too often policies are pursued against any evidence. More evidence-based
policies are needed in criminal justice.
Q167 Mrs Riordan: With the system
we have got that I think all three of you are saying needs to
alter drastically and can improve, could we ever get to a point
where we say there is X amount of money for prisons and probation
and we have to work out how to accommodate the criminal justice
system within that budget?
Eilís Lawlor: Yes, I think
we have finite resources in relation to this and we should have
a finite budget, but it does not matter potentially if it is five
billion, if it is having positive outcomes. I think that is the
point. We get very hung up on the costs, and I think in isolation
from the outcomes the inputs are much less relevant.
Juliet Lyon: I am hesitating over
the answer, because we have just seen the written ministerial
statement about Corston and the reforms of women's justice, and
I have scarcely seen anything quite so cautiously framed. We just
might do this thing possibly one day, maybe. I thought it was
terribly disappointing, and it occurred to me that maybe there
has been a problem about finding the money and about being able
to identify a budget for it, because the Government have indicated
in principle that they are prepared to accept 40 of Baroness Corston's
43 recommendation and seemed very clear about wanting to go ahead
with a 10-year plan which would, in effect, close women's prisons
and establish a large network in the community of supervision
and support centres for women. So there is clearly cash outlay
for that element alone of the programme, but in turn, with evidence
very firmly on her side, it is quite clear that if Baroness Corston's
plan was implemented, it would save a lot of money. What I am
driving at, I suppose, is if that is what has happened, if the
reason we have got such a very timid ministerial statement is
because the money is not available, then there maybe is an argument
for having some flexibility in funding, so that when people want
to do something better and different they can find that extra
cost in order to save serious money and to demonstrate they can
save serious money in the medium to longer-term.
Q168 Chairman: When we talk about
cost-benefit analysis, several people have said through out the
two sessions together now that there are things you can measure
and things you cannot. You can measure issues around rehabilitation,
both cost and effectiveness, maybe deterrents as well, but there
is very limited effectiveness, containment. You can probably measure
those, but other things, like retribution, you cannot evaluate
in the same way. I think the same might apply to what I would
regard as the declaratory purpose of sentencing. This crime is
very, very bad and therefore we impose something that looks much
bigger than we would impose on something else. But is not that
a bit of a cop-out and ought we not to try to both evaluate effectiveness
and at least say, "This is what it will cost you if you decide
to continue to make that a major purpose. We cannot tell you much
about its effectiveness, but we can tell you that it costs X million
pounds to use the system to carry out that purpose"? I think
that is really directed at Ms Lawlor in particular.
Eilís Lawlor: I think it
often happens, when people want to discourage something, their
answer is, "We cannot measure it." We hear this all
the time. People have always said it in relation to things like
well-being, but we have developed a structured methodology for
how you go about measuring people's well-being so you can do that,
you can measure some of these difficult to measure things. My
view on that would always be that it is not good enough to say
we cannot measure it, because then it does not matter. The things
we measure are the things that we prioritise and the things we
pursue and the things we fund. So we need to find ways, if they
are important, of measuring those things. I would agree with you
that it is a cop-out. I think we can measure a lot of things in
relation to criminal justice. I think re-offending is too narrow
a measure, absolutely. I think we need to have a much broader
range of measures, and I think the way we go about doing that
is asking people what kinds of things they need in order to be
able to rebuild their lives and focus on measuring those. I think
the issue of retribution is interesting. It is a challenging one
to measure, but I am confident we could find a way of doing it
if it is something that matters to people. If you think about
what we often call a theory of change approach, so looking at
the relationship between an investment and what you are trying
to achieve, and if you apply that to prisons, for example, and
if you think, we know that prisons are not doing so well on rehabilitation
and probably the implications of that for public protection in
the long-term are not very positive, so they probably are achieving
something on retribution, the question for all of us then is:
do we want to spend this money to punish people? I think that
is a debate that we need to have, because essentially that seems
to be the only purpose of prison at the moment, because it is
not doing too well on the other measures.
Juliet Lyon: Your question, Chairman,
made me think of the indeterminate sentence for public protection.
When it was being considered, had somebody said, "Let us
take a costing of what that new measure might be and how many
people might get caught up in that sentence and the long-term
cost", both the financial cost, economic cost and the human
cost, maybe there might have been some hesitation and we would
not have been in a situation where it has had to have been redrawn
following the Carter Review. I was looking at the figures and
there are almost 5,000 people serving a sentence which was intended
for a handful of seriously risky individuals. That was a very
big public declamation to do with protection, safety and risk,
and one of the things that we are bad at is measuring risk and
identifying what we mean by risk, and yet risk is very much part
of the parlance of all those who are administering the justice
system. If you look then at the numbers who have got very short
tariffs, as at March of this year there were 635 people already
over tariff on those sentences, and we are not at all clear at
the Prison Reform Trust what is going to happen to those individuals.
I know now, nobody can get an IPP unless they are serving a minimum
four years, and that was the measure that was introduced, but
what about the hundreds of people who are going to reach their
tariff? The Parole Board will not have had time to respond to
them, they will not have been able to do offending behaviour courses
because they are not able to access them, and they are in a catch-22.
I think if there is to be a major sentencing change of that ilk
with huge costs, then surely there should be proper consideration
given before Ministers launch into a public statement with really
catastrophic results.
Q169 Alun Michael: Can I suggest
to you that one of the problems is that the system does not always
do what it is expected to do, and people think it is blindingly
obvious that there ought to be a distinction made between those
people who are dangerous and those who are not and that actually
the assessment of risk does not seem to be something that the
system can quite cope with doing, which is a frustration for everybody.
If we are to evaluate criminal justice policy on the basis of
cost-effectiveness, and that is the implication of both the questions
and the answers that you have given up to now, what should we
be measuring that effectiveness against? All three of you have
answered in terms that suggest we should be better at doing that,
but you have not as yet suggested what would be the measures.
I accept entirely what you said, which is that saying it is not
measurable is nonsense. Let us put that on one side. If it is
difficult to measure, you have found ways of measuring the difficult,
but what should we be measuring?
Eilís Lawlor: At the moment
the main thing that we measure is risk of re-offending. That is
the headline indicator across the criminal justice system. I think
the problem with just focusing on that is that it assumes that
people offend in isolation from the rest of the circumstances
of their lives, and that would not seem to be the case. People
offend because there are other things going on that lead to that
offending behaviour. So we, obviously, need to measure progress
against all of those things, whether or not it is mental health,
physical health, drug use, relationships, well-being—all
of those things. It is not for me to say what the important things
to measure are; the point is that measures need to be relevant
to stakeholders of that intervention.
Q170 Alun Michael: Why not?
Eilís Lawlor: Because the
only way I am a stakeholder in the criminal justice system is
as a member of the public, but I am not an important stakeholder,
and I think measures need to be relevant to the people who are—
Q171 Alun Michael: Let me take you
to a piece of evidence that we had from Victim Support a few weeks
ago. What they said was that what most victims want, apart from
the obvious thing of the offence which turned them into a victim
not having happened in the first place, is for it not to happen
again. So the measure would be on the level of re-offending and
the relative seriousness of offences?
Eilís Lawlor: That is not
something we measure at the moment. Re-offending is limited.
Q172 Alun Michael: No, but help us.
This is about justice reinvestment. This is about changing things.
That is what you are here to give us evidence on. How do we change
in that direction?
Eilís Lawlor: The other
reason that re-offending is limited it that it is only reconviction,
actually, that we really measure and it does not look at severity
and frequency.
Q173 Alun Michael: So help us on
that. You said we should measure the difficult and not cop-out.
I am taking you seriously at your word.
Eilís Lawlor: There could
be a way of weighting crimes and then looking at a change in the
seriousness of levels of crime as they happen, but I do think
that we should not just get hung up on measuring re-offending
as the only measure. The offenders that we have been concerned
with in our research are non-violent offenders, and we are looking
specifically at women, and they tend to be drug users, have mental
health problems, have debts, live in poverty, and all of those
things contribute to their offending behaviour. If we do not measure
and value those things as they change, then we will not understand
why people are succeeding and why they are improving their lives.
Q174 Alun Michael: Taking you seriously
in terms of the name on the tin, have you as a foundation started
to design measures which would help us to do that?
Eilís Lawlor: Yes, absolutely.
The report that we are going to publish will have an alternative
indicator set that we believe should at least complement if not
replace some of the measures that are currently being used. If
I can make one last point in relation to measurement, we also
promote this idea that we should measure assets rather than deficits
and measure successes as well as failures and not just do risk
assessment of people. There are three reasons that that is important.
First of all, if you only measure failure, then it is very difficult
to understand why people succeed because you are not actually
looking at it. You tend to get more of what you measure. So if
you only measure failures, then you crowd out the possibility
of successes taking place, and then people often assume that success
is just the absence of failure, but actually it might involve
measuring a whole range of different things. Can I give you an
example from the research that we came across? The ASHA Centre
and the 218 Centre were two of the support focused alternatives
that we looked at during our research and they were mentioned
in Baroness Corston's review as good alternatives. The women we
spoke to told us that upon being sentenced to these organisations
they had increased self confidence and they felt more in control
of their lives and more autonomous and these things were important
to them and they believed would help lay the foundation for rebuilding
their lives in the future. They were a first step on a road to
dealing with all of the issues they had going on, their debts,
their relationships, their drug use, et cetera, but we do not
measure or value these things. In the jargon they are often called
"distance travelled measures" and I think we need to
start developing new indicators to reflect that. In the absence
of good data on re-offending, which takes into account frequency
and severity, we can look at these more short-term things, which
are good in and of themselves but hopefully will lead to cost
reductions for all of us in the future as well. We can take those
into account, we can value them and hopefully we will get a better
picture of what is going on
Imran Hussain: We totally agree
with the point you quoted about victim support about preventing
re-offending. One of the good things which has happened recently
is the Government is starting to get a bit more sophisticated
about how it measures success in terms of re-offending. They have
just started to publish measures on re-offending in terms of frequency
and severity and we welcome that. Until now it has been a percentage
of prisoners who re-offend within two years of leaving prison
and now they are starting to publish frequency and severity statistics
as well, which we think is a good move and shows greater sophistication.
Juliet Lyon: Can I add to that
in terms of the measurements. One of the issues I have been interested
in is OASys; the form that is used to write fairly detailed reports
about prisoners is only used on those serving a year or more.
I am sure it gives Government very useful information about people
serving longer sentences but, as you know, 66% of people serve
less than a year. I think we do need more information on petty
offenders, people who are serving short sentences, maybe a series
of short sentences but for whom we do not keep anything like comparable
records and we do not know what happens to them afterwards, except
when they reappear in jail because they are not getting Probation
supervision if they are serving less than a year.
Q175 Alun Michael: The new economics
foundation has amongst its proposals that sentencers should be
given more information about the cost-effectiveness of the potential
different sentences available to them. Obviously if you want to
reform the measures of effectiveness, then perhaps that is a slightly
bigger question. How would you see this working in practice? It
has always seemed to me blindingly obvious that sentencers should
know the impact and the likely outcome of sentences which are
made. Does knowing the cost make a big difference? How would you
see it working?
Eilís Lawlor: I appreciate
they cannot do a cost benefit for each individual person who comes
before them, but there could be some figures in the aggregate.
With the kinds of data we have generated as part of our research,
there is no reason why those kinds of figures could not be given
to sentencers as part of sentencing guidelines and that data exists.
The Home Office is quite good at generating cost data. It is not
so good on outcomes and longitudinal studies and things like that.
I agree with the previous witnesses that there are data gaps,
but there is good quality data on costs across a range of things,
like drugs and mental health. It would be possible to tailor something
which would be useful and balanced as well.
Q176 Alun Michael: Are you suggesting
a budget for sentencers?
Eilís Lawlor: No, but they
could be given that information. No, I do not think so but they
could be given an indication. I am not sure they realise the cost
implications. I am not sure very many people realise the true
cost of crime when you think about that return-on-investment approach.
It might help them inform their decisions better.
Q177 Mr Sharma: What is your view
of the proposals to develop a structured sentencing framework
and a Sentencing Commission?
Juliet Lyon: We have been lucky
to have support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, to
work with Professor Mike Hough and his colleagues at King's College
who are writing a quick report alongside Lord Justice Gage's report
to try and look at the pros and cons of Sentencing Commissions.
The Prison Reform Trust has been engaged with colleagues but not
actively doing the research. We are due to publish it very soon,
but I think I have been persuaded by the preliminary findings
that a Sentencing Commission has merit if it is one which was
not restrictive in terms of a very tight grid system, one which
somehow struck a balance between enabling people to have the appropriate
judicial independence but, at the same time, led to more consistency
in sentencing, was able to inform people who were taking decisions
of the implications of those decisions before they were finalised
and a Commission that could communicate with the public to give
some really clear useful information about sentencing. If a Sentencing
Commission of that kind could be developed, possibly similar to
the one proposed in New Zealand, then there clearly could be some
merit in that. I think our report is going to be positive but
with a lot of evidence from Professor Hough and his colleagues
to show the ways in which if it were to happen, how it could best
happen.
Q178 Mr Heath: Why should a judge
not be responsible or accountable for the efficacy of their sentencing?
Juliet Lyon: Insofar as?
Q179 Mr Heath: Insofar as why should
we accumulate evidence of the effectiveness in reducing recidivism
of sentences passed and ask that that informs the decision-making
of a particular judge in the future, particularly if they are
on a circuit, so a circuit judge would be dealing with particular
clientele in a particular geographical area?
Juliet Lyon: Certainly one thing
we found when we collaborated with Mike Hough and colleagues before
in an earlier study, they did a study of cusp cases, so they were
looking at real-life cases where a decision could have gone either
way, a community sentence or a custodial one. They interviewed
a number of judges and magistrates about their decision-making
and one of the areas in which there was a high degree of concurrence
was in terms of provision for a review, that provision for review
was something sentencers really appreciated. They found that in
the Drug Treatment and Testing Order, DTTO, which is currently
operating. That enabled them to have someone back in court, to
say, "Is this working, is it not?" "If it's not
working we're going to increase your supervision, we're going
to have you back in court at an earlier stage", and to really
keep an eye on the progress of that sentence and then the outcomes.
It was interesting for us to see how much sentencers valued that
opportunity. I think the idea of at least being able to be in
touch with outcomes of a sentence might well be welcomed just
on the basis of that study anyway and I think it is a good idea.
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