Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
492-532)
Sonia Crozier, John Steele, Leighe and Linda Beanlands
24 May 2011
Q492 Sir Alan Beith:
It is a pleasure to be in the magnificent surroundings of Brighton's
Town Hall. It is a very fine building. We are grateful for Brighton's
hospitality in allowing us to use it today. I remind Members that
when they speak to ask a question they need to press the microphone
button and switch it off again when they are finished.
We have come here today to take evidence from people
and bodies who are involved in probation and dealing with offenders
in the area, and we are very grateful to the witnesses who are
coming before us today who can tell us of their experiences. There
are two panels of witnesses, and we are going to begin the questioning
of the first panel of witnesses, which consists of Sonia Crozier,
Chief Executive of the Sussex and Surrey Probation Trust; John
Steele, the Chair of the Sussex and Surrey Probation Trust; Leighe
Rogers, the Operational Director of the same Trust; and Linda
Beanlands from Brighton and Hove City Council.
We are the Justice Committee of the House of Commons.
We have been engaged for some time in looking at the role of the
Probation Service, and that in turn follows on from the work that
we have done previously about Justice Reinvestment, looking
for ways in which we can use the money that we spend in the criminal
justice system to reduce reoffending and reduce offending in the
first place from those who become involved in crime. I am going
to start by asking members of our first group—please answer
as seems appropriate, whichever of you seems like the right person,
and hopefully you all mean to say the same things.
I wanted to establish first of all whether there
was a shared understanding of what offender management means among
Sussex and Surrey Probation staff and local partners. Is it a
confusing term? Has it become confused with Integrated Offender
Management in broad terms?
Sonia Crozier:
Sir Alan, shall I start by answering that question? Good morning.
I'm Sonia Crozier, Chief Executive. I don't believe the term is
confusing locally. I think there is a clear understanding that
the offender management model requires one individual who holds
responsibility for the administration of the sentence and that
they are then supported by other partners in terms of delivering
interventions to ensure that that individual's likelihood of reoffending
is reduced. With the arrival of Integrated Offender Management,
the model has now been developed in the sense that it is not always
a probation officer who actually acts as the offender manager,
and in fact, in the multi-agency teams that we now have located
in Brighton and Hove, we have on our books individuals who aren't
actually subject to a statutory order of the court but have been
sentenced to prison and then offered a voluntary contact after
release, and are then assigned an offender manager, who can be
a probation officer but may equally be a police officer, for example.
It just depends on who is the most appropriate person to have
oversight and offer contact with that individual. So I do believe
there is clarity in terms of the model and what it is designed
to achieve, but I don't know, Leighe, if you would like to offer
any other advice on that.
Leighe Rogers:
Yes. I would just like to endorse what Sonia said. I agree with
her that there is clarity about the offender manager being responsible
for that whole offender journey. Who that is actually does vary,
so in terms of the Probation Service, who are increasingly working
with higher-risk offenders, that tends to be a probation officer,
but obviously there is a continuum, and some of those lower-risk
offenders are managed elsewhere. A good example of that, I think,
in Brighton, is where we have a partnership with several women's
organisations that come together under the banner of Inspire,
and they work with our women offenders. With that particular group,
there are stand-alone orders made by the court for specified activity
requirements where, in essence, the offender manager is actually
the worker from that group of women, so there was a clarity about
the role, but the role was not necessarily invested in any one
particular person—for example, a probation officer.
Q493 Sir Alan Beith:
There is a balance to be struck between professional standards,
professional judgement, professional autonomy, and the setting
of externally determined standards, the bounds of which have changed.
Are you comfortable with the way that has gone or is going?
Sonia Crozier:
In respect to some of the changes that have been made to Probation
National Standards?
Sir Alan Beith: Yes.
Sonia Crozier:
We're absolutely delighted. Surrey and Sussex Probation Trust
has been the host area for the national pilot, so we were asked
in May of last year to develop a framework whereby we would give
our probation officers and probation staff more freedom in terms
of how they would make decisions around how they would manage
individual offenders. Rather than following a one-size-fits-all
model, they were given the autonomy back to ask, "How do
I want to spend my time? What's going to have the best impact
in terms of the offenders I'm charged to supervise?"
What we have learned over the year of running what
has been called the "Professional Judgement Project"
is that the probation staff feel more in control. They feel they
have been given the right to apply common sense in terms of how
resources are allocated, and they can also be more responsive
to the offenders, so if people's circumstances change, they can
either up the contact because it seems clear that more contact
is required or they can make a sensible decision to reduce contact
if in fact there is clear evidence that progress is being made.
It has been absolutely welcomed and endorsed, and it has now informed
the implementation of the revised National Standards that were
released on 1 April this year.
Q494 Sir Alan Beith:
Where does the tiered approach to determining the level of resources,
frequency of contact and content of interventions fit in with
that?
Sonia Crozier:
The tiering model: there were four tiers. Tier 1 is for your lowest-risk
offenders, where you would be looking at a sentence that requires
punishment or simply the administration of the sentence, like
a stand-alone community payback order, and then it goes up from
there to tier 2, tier 3 and tier 4. What the Professional Standards
Project has allowed for is more creativity, more thought given
about how the change component in tier 3, which is about rehabilitation,
is delivered, so it hasn't undermined it and required a significant
shift to it, but it has required us to think a bit differently
about how the different components of the tiers are delivered.
Q495 Sir Alan Beith:
Local area agreements and the duty for local partners to reduce
reoffending: how is that developing since you made the Trust?
Linda Beanlands:
It might be helpful if I take that one.
Q496 Sir Alan Beith:
Just explain what your role is.
Linda Beanlands:
I am a Commissioner for Community Safety, so in essence I fulfil
the statutory duty on behalf of the local authority but also on
behalf of the whole of the community safety partnership to deliver
all those duties that came with the Crime and Disorder Act. The
local area agreements, which of course for the first year are
not in place now, I think were hugely important to all the partners
within the community safety partnership, police and probation
in particular, in terms of making sure—enabling a process
of being really focused on the big outcomes that make a difference
for the city. It was the vehicle through which we were able to
engage local authority services right across the piece in the
work of probation services to reduce offending, so it was hugely
important. Within the local area agreement, we had the particular
experience, through the local public service—the LPSA process—of
then being able to develop the Priority and Prolific Offender
Project, and that became a very important way of us being able
to share responsibilities across all services for some of those
core activities of probation and police services, so it was very
important and very useful.
Q497 Sir Alan Beith:
Did the system that you had up until now make it more difficult
to achieve those sorts of developments because of the silo separation
in how you deal with it?
Linda Beanlands:
Yes, I would say that it certainly did. The local area agreement
really enabled us to change that whole process. I would say that
that process of change is now well established and we are continuing
to build on it, so I don't see the fact that local area agreements
have now come to an end as being a problem. It did its job at
a very important time, when we really needed to focus all our
shared activities around particular indicators, and we carry on
building on that within the community safety partnership.
Q498 Sir Alan Beith:
In Breaking the Cycle, it is argued that the "Whitehall
knows best" approach has stifled innovation at both national
and local levels by concentrating on a process. Was that the experience
of this?
Sonia Crozier:
As Linda has said, the local area agreements were important for
their time, but with the passage of time, I think, certainly in
my experience, they were somewhat over-engineered in terms of
the whole raft of national indicators that at local level we are
expected to pick up. Also, Government Office often used to mandate
down to local areas which of those national indicators we were
required to pick up rather than it being perhaps a more bottom-up
approach, with local authorities and police and probation knowing
their communities and make those decisions for themselves. So
yes, it was over-engineered, but it did serve a purpose and, as
Linda has said, it's also given us a very strong foundation now
in terms of that collective responsibility to reduce reoffending,
but now we have greater freedom to determine exactly how we do
that and where we prioritise.
Q499 Sir Alan Beith:
Obviously, Brighton would have its own particular characteristics
and problems because of the kind of economy it has and the activity
it generates. Has this meant that you have wanted to do different
things in Brighton than you might do even elsewhere in the Trust
and certainly in the country? Have you been inhibited from that
by the way the system has traditionally operated?
Sonia Crozier:
The answer to that is yes, because essentially the imposed targets
that were put upon us gave us very little flexibility in terms
of doing something different, and an example of how we have now
changed that is that the centrally imposed targets around programme
delivery have been lifted, to some degree, which has given us
some resource that we've now been able to convert into delivering
a service that is more locally tailored. An example of that is
the introduction of specified activity around hate crime that
is going to be available to our local courts. You mentioned things
that are quite different about Brighton and Hove, and as I'm sure
you're probably aware, Brighton and Hove has one of the largest
gay and lesbian communities in the country, and there are incidences
of homophobic crime in this area—hate crime—so we
are actually able to introduce the sentence of the court that
is very tailored to that particular local crime issue, and that
is a freedom we have that we didn't have previously. Leighe, I
don't know if you wanted to add to that.
Leighe Rogers:
What I would add to that is that what partners are doing, I think,
more than ever and what has helped us in this is the duty for
agencies to co-operate around reducing reoffending—in particular,
I might say health in terms of bringing health into that agenda—is
that we're all sharing the data that we have, perhaps in a way
that we haven't done before, to look up the services we have in
different localities, map those services, talk to people in terms
of what those needs are and then begin to build services that
actually respond to those needs in a very joined-up way. It is
much more looking at outcomes for real people and for the community,
and that is a journey, in a sense, we have been fully on now probably
for about the last two years, in truth, in terms of building that
structure, which is very firmly embedded in the community and
responds to what is going on in different localities.
A good example of that would be Brighton in terms
of mental health. We know from our mental health colleagues in
our forensics team who work in our cells in Sussex that Brighton
has a particular prevalence of people with mental health problems,
so we were there in response to a national pilot around a mental
health court, which came to Brighton probably about 18 months
to two years ago. What we are looking to do with that is take
the next step post-Bradley as a partnership to take that further
and take it pan-Sussex in an even more joined-up way than we have
before by also incorporating drug and alcohol abuse into that
one assessment. You can see that would be a much more efficient
approach, and I think the partnership structures we have here
now actually allow us to do that, even allowing for changes in
commissioning. We have to talk to GP commissioners, and obviously
we need commissioners coming into public health, and sometimes
they are split. For example, in Brighton we are having a mental
health commissioner who sits with the GP Consortium, and substance
misuse, which sits with public health. We have those challenges,
but I think what really helps is the strength of the partnership
that we've built and also that clustering around reducing reoffending,
which everybody has a duty to do, and that has really helped us.
Q500 Ben Gummer:
I just have a quick point on the issue you were raising earlier,
Ms Crozier, about your probation staff. I understand from other
trusts that there was almost a generational difference between
the staff's reception to changes. Those who were older remembered
more freedom and welcomed this, and some of the younger members
of your probation staff who had been brought up in a more target-driven
culture found it quite difficult to adapt. Clearly, this is a
problem for management, and you need good management to make this
independence work. Do you think the probation trusts across the
country have the qualities and skills of management you have clearly
shown here in Brighton?
Sonia Crozier:
Part of the process of hosting the Professional Judgement Project
was that we were able to create the learning and the information
to enable other probation trusts in the country to make the decisions
about the impact of adopting more freedoms for their workforce.
That information is now out in the public domain, and probation
trusts have a year by which to make decisions about how far they
want to introduce the freedoms that we have deployed. I believe
that probation trusts will make that transition safely, informed
by the information that we were able to gather through the pilot.
We are also able to give some very clear indicators of things
that trusts will need to put in place to bridge that generational
gap and give freedoms to a whole generation of probation officers
who were trained in a very rule-based approach.
It might be interesting at this point to ask John
Steele, Board Chair from Surrey and Sussex, to give his view,
because clearly boards will be holding that responsibility in
terms of the safety issues as well.
John Steele: Thank
you. Just to add a slightly different perspective on that, clearly
it is a concern when you go into new territory. I sat on the programme
board, in fact, for the project, and it was interesting to see
the journey, and there were anxieties among some staff about letting
go, but we helped them through that. We helped them through that
with a number of techniques, one of which was to ensure that they
record what they do, and actually, they haven't been used to having
to record what they do. They had to tick the box. Now they have
to write down what their thought process was, and that has been
a learning exercise. Sonia knows it better than I do, but one
of the things that some different probation officers have said
is that the nature of supervision changes. The nature of what
makes a good probation officer has changed. It used to be the
person who ticked all the boxes and got everything in on time.
Now you're looking for slightly different skills and a slightly
different approach.
It has been a very interesting and exciting journey,
and I'm sure, as Sonia says, other trusts will pick this up in
a way that is appropriate to them and that maintains public safety,
and they won't all adopt exactly the same approach or exactly
the same freedoms. It will depend on where they are in this journey,
but it was a really exciting journey and I think this is definitely
the way forward. I would far rather have fewer really well-qualified
professionals using their judgement than large numbers of staff.
You really do need professionals to exercise that judgement.
Q501 Elizabeth Truss:
I just want to move to the delivery of Probation Services. I would
like to understand how you measure success of your organisation
and what impact the new working arrangements have had on reoffending
rates.
Sonia Crozier:
How we measure success is in a state of change at the moment as
a result of new outcome measures being developed, but the current
situation is that we have headlined a reducing reoffending measure
known as NI 18, and then we have a series of proxy measures that
sit underneath that. How many orders or licences are successfully
completed is a really important measure, because we know there
is a relationship between an offender's compliance with their
sentence and that indicating that they are changing through that
compliance. We also have other proxy measures around some of the
schemes that we run, so, for example, our PPO scheme measures
reduced reoffending over a two-year period. We have measures about
how many offenders we get into employment or stable accommodation.
You have your headline measures and then your proxy measures sitting
underneath that.
Q502 Sir Alan Beith:
Do you actually use those? It is an interesting point, because
it was raised by someone in a session yesterday. Do you actually
use accommodation and employment as a proxy measure for reoffending?
Sonia Crozier:
Absolutely, yes. Those are important measures to show whether
we are doing what we are paid to do, which is rehabilitation and
protecting the public. In terms of how the new freedoms are impacting
upon that landscape of outcome measures, the Professional Judgment
Project only commenced last May, so I think it may be too early
to come up with some very hard indicators, but we have seen some
increase in offenders' compliance with their orders and licences
above the national average, but I would put a note of caution
around that. These are still very early days in terms of the full
impact of professional judgement.
Q503 Elizabeth Truss:
Can I ask what reoffence rates are and have been historically?
Sonia Crozier:
The national indicator set at the moment—I can give you
the statistical figure. It is what they would call "statistically
neutral" at the moment in terms of there neither being a
positive impact or negative impact on reduced reoffending, but
I have to say that measure, as I think you've heard from previous
people who have given evidence, is under review. The methodology
has been criticised. The measures that I look at, which I think
are more interesting, are the reduced reoffending measures particularly
around our PPO schemes. I think they are more robust. I think
they are more easily understood, and they do clearly show that
we have an impact in reducing crime with those offenders who commit
the most crime in our local communities, because that's the important
thing about PPOs.
Q504 Elizabeth Truss:
Would you be able to give me the figures both for the reoffence
rate and for the prolific offenders as well?
Sonia Crozier:
For the PPOs? Yes, I can do that.
Q505 Elizabeth Truss:
The overall reoffence rate would also be interesting, even if
it is flawed.
Sonia Crozier:
Right. For the prolific and priority offenders, for the cohort
in 2009/2010—because remember it is a two-year follow-up—would
you like just Brighton and Hove?
Elizabeth Truss: Yes.
Sonia Crozier:
Would you like the whole Trust? Brighton and Hove: in that cohort,
we targeted 86 offenders for the PPO scheme. They had been responsible,
in the year before they came into the PPO scheme, for 322 crimes
locally. After a year of being on the PPO scheme, they had committed
169 crimes collectively, which demonstrated a 48% reduction in
the amount of crimes they had committed. I can give you the same
detail for the whole Trust, but does that give you sufficient—
Q506 Elizabeth Truss:
How would that compare to the previous probation success rates?
If you look at reoffence rates, it is not the case that everybody
will reoffend, so what I am looking for is a comparison with the
past, so how that has changed with the PPO scheme. What I would
like to know is the headline rate of reoffending for all perpetrators,
just to understand what the baseline is.
Sonia Crozier:
Okay. The 322 was the baseline for that particular group, which
dropped then to 169 in actual terms. In respect of NI 18, the
national indicator—sorry, I have to look in my file.
Q507 Sir Alan Beith:
If you subsequently discover that they would be more helpful to
what you are saying, please pass them on to us.
Sonia Crozier:
Yes. I can give you the NI 18 data, if that would be more helpful
to submit that.
John Steele: If
I can just comment on that, the PPO scheme is a small cohort that
can be tracked, so we know very accurately what their performance
was before they went on to the PPO scheme and we know what there
is afterwards. They are a small cohort. An awful lot of the problems
about measuring reoffending lie in actually knowing whether you
are measuring the right things and the right people. With the
cohort, you know what you are doing with a relatively small cohort,
and you follow them through, so we know those figures are right.
They are a lot more robust than the majority of reoffending statistics.
But it works because it is a small cohort.
Sonia Crozier:
In fact, the IOM schemes that have now been introduced have been
developed on the success of the PPO scheme, so we have broadened
the criteria of the people that we bring into the IOM schemes
but continue to use the same methodology to actually say, "Well,
have we made a difference in terms of the amount of crime that
these individuals commit?"
Q508 Elizabeth Truss:
Thank you for that. I want to ask about your relationships with
other partners. I am interested in prisons, first of all. Do you
think there is more opportunity for collaboration with prisons
to reduce that reoffending?
Sonia Crozier:
The introduction of Integrated Offender Management and the greater
freedoms we have now to make decisions ourselves about how we
deploy resources have in fact built and developed the relationships
with prisons. A very good example locally with HMP Lewes is that
we are now targeting offenders sentenced to Lewes who are sentenced
to less than 12 months, and as we know, they have one of the highest
rates of reoffending post-release. With the governor at HMP Lewes
we have agreed a scheme of work whereby we interview those prisoners
when they come into Lewes. They are supported while they are in
prison in terms of signing up to voluntary contact with us on
release, and for this year, I have also used part of my budget
to fund two prison officers from HMP Lewes, whose job it is to
engage with those prisoners when they come in on reception, and
then to literally follow them through the gate on the day of release
and to work with them as part of the Integrated Offender Management
teams back in the locality. We know from other parts of the country
that the direct involvement of the Prison Service in this form
of management has had some very good results, so yes, the freedoms
are there, and I have a very good relationship with our local
prison.
Q509 Elizabeth Truss:
In some of our other inquiries we've heard about the different
cultures in the Probation Service and the Prison Service. Do you
think there is more that prisons could be doing in this local
area to help rehabilitate offenders? You talked about walking
out of the gate, but from what you are saying, it doesn't sound
like there is a lot of integrated activity within the prison.
Could we do more to merge the cultures of the Probation Service
and the Prison Service so that the entire focus is on an integrated
package to reduce reoffending?
Sonia Crozier:
All I can say is that I have an exceptional relationship with
the governors who run our local jails, so with HMP Lewes, HMP
Highdown and the women's prison in Bronzefield, and it's through
those relationships that we have agreed schemes of work and collaboration
to support the process of rehabilitation. Another really good
example—Leighe, I don't know if you want to come in here
to talk about the Preventing Offender Accommodation Loss project,
which is a collaborative project between HMP Lewes and Brighton
and Hove Council and us.
Leighe Rogers:
Yes. I agree with Sonia here. We have an excellent relationship
with our local prison, just to start. We have keys to go in and
interview people on landings and in cells if we need to. We have
a relationship where there are children and families going into
Lewes Prison, where our staff and social services staff get involved
with those parents and children. Those are good examples, but
in terms of Integrated Offender Management, they also have a shadow
or a matching IOM team in Lewes Prison, and that team includes,
as you would expect, drug and alcohol workers, but also people
coming from Brighton in terms of the Benefits Agency, and, as
Sonia has just described, POAL.
POAL, as we've said, is a partnership between the
housing here in Brighton and East Sussex, ourselves, and the prison.
The Health Service is also involved in that, as you may hear later
from our colleagues in health, who also recognise the link to
accommodation with people with drug and alcohol problems. What
we all do is work together to ensure that tenancies, where possible,
can be sustained, or if they need to be closed down then they
need to be closed down. We have rent deposit monies there to get
people into accommodation when they come out, and this is all
very firmly supported by the governor of that prison.
Looking slightly further afield, we also have a very
good relationship with our women's prison, which is Bronzefield
Prison. Obviously it's some distance from here, on the other side
of the M25, and the governor of that prison comes down and sits
on our reoffending board down here and also on our Inspire women's
project in Brighton. Yes, it is a journey we are all on in terms
of seeing where that goes and how we can all make things better,
but we are definitely on that journey and absolutely understand
what we are all here to do in terms of reoffending.
Q510 Elizabeth Truss:
Do you think it would be better if we moved to more of a system
of place-based budgets, so you have more single-point accountability?
What I am hearing about is a lot of different organisations, and
sometimes it can be—although partnership can help—not
necessarily the most efficient way of working and it can mean
that you have different objectives from different organisations.
What is your view of place-based budgeting and how that could
help make offender management even more seamless?
John Steele: I
think place-based budgets might have a role to play, and I think
we have been involved—Sonia may have more on that—in
Sussex's experiment on that. I think we could get too tied up
with trying to get process. I think what actually matters is that
the people locally who have the funds and are accountable for
deliveries get together and decide how to spend that money. Personally,
I think the process by which you do it is less important. I think
it is working very well in Brighton. Maybe there are things we
could change, and maybe we will move to pooled budgets. Maybe
we will decide them ourselves, but I think it's much better to
devolve locally to meet local needs than to have a one-size-fits-all
approach.
Sonia Crozier:
We have, in fact, through the Sussex Criminal Justice Board commissioned
a one-year piece of research to understand our cost collectively
around Integrated Offender Management, so all the services that
are engaged in delivering services within the IOM framework will
be assessed in terms of the cost of that and the outcome, and
I think that will really inform us in terms of whether we are
collectively spending our money in the best way and what is having
the greatest impact in terms of the connectivity between the agencies
working together.
Q511 Elizabeth Truss:
May I ask one final question, which is about the provider/commissioner
split? Is there an issue, when the Probation Trust is commissioning
services and also providing services, that there is a conflict
of interest there, and that essentially one will not necessarily
want to appoint other people if that means a reduction of work
for the Probation Trust itself?
John Steele: I
don't think there is a conflict of interest. Potentially, there
is, but I don't think there is in practice. We are commissioners
and providers. We provide a service to NOMS against a contract
and we commission service from others. We co-commission; we work
across. It's a complex environment. There is one example where,
in Surrey, we deliver the drug rehabilitation requirement on a
contract from the DAAT, whereas, in the Sussex side, that is contracted
out; it's not part of our work. If we were to compete for that
work in Surrey again, we wouldn't take part in that commissioning.
We would be competing to be a provider. We won't sit both sides
of the table at any one stage, and in relation as we move forward
to the—It might help if I say that as a board we have agreed
what we believe to be the core business, which is the assessment,
the administration of the sentence, and delivering the interventions
to high-risk offenders, but the rest of the services that we do
to lower-risk offenders we have said is not our core business,
and we will continue to look ourselves and with partners at better
ways of delivering those services, so we may well go out of and
commission some of the services that we currently provide ourselves,
but we won't sit on both sides of the fence. We will ensure that.
Q512 Jeremy Corbyn:
Thank you for helping us with our inquiry. My questions concern
Payment by Results and localism. My first point is: what is the
quality of the evidence base on which you determine which services
to commission to reduce reoffending by existing offenders in the
community, and have you encountered any difficulties in collecting
evidence on the effectiveness of these complex partnerships and
arrangements?
Sonia Crozier:
I think the short answer to that is "yes". It is a very
complex picture in respect to when you bring the agencies together
and who is having the most impact in terms of reducing reoffending.
As I said earlier, one of the pieces of work that I've commissioned
with the Sussex Criminal Justice Board is to better understand
how all the different agencies together have an impact on reducing
reoffending. The research, as I say, that we have commissioned
will start to help us to unpick that, and when that information
becomes available, I will certainly want to engage with NOMS about
the kind of learning we have gained from that, because I think
we are all on a journey around Payment by Results. Certainly,
if you interview the key policy leads from NOMS, this is fairly
groundbreaking stuff, so I think it is up to the Trust with their
partner agencies, really, to take the initiative and to understand
how we can build a Payment by Results framework to fulfil that
Government agenda.
Q513 Jeremy Corbyn:
Really for both yourself and the local authority, how do you measure
the costs of reoffending in terms of your staff costs, local authority
staff costs, possible social services, education and so on, and
also the general effect on policing costs and the cost to the
community as a whole? It is quite a complex area.
Sonia Crozier:
It is very complex, and it's for that reason that I, with the
Sussex Criminal Justice Board, have commissioned a one-year piece
of research from Sheffield Hallam University to create a costing
framework around our local delivery models, because one doesn't
currently exist. There have been some place-based pilots around
the country. We weren't part of that, so we've taken the initiative.
I've taken the initiative, with my senior colleagues, to understand
that costing and what we're actually achieving.
Q514 Jeremy Corbyn:
When do you expect the report from Sheffield Hallam to be ready?
Sonia Crozier:
It's going to be published in January 2012.
Q515 Jeremy Corbyn:
Could I ask the local authority what their views on this are?
Linda Beanlands:
Sonia mentioned that we are on a journey with this, and clearly
we are. Part of that journey is that we have carried out three
intelligent commissioning pilots in the city, which are particularly
relevant to Integrated Offender Management. One of those was on
domestic violence, one on the harm that comes from alcohol misuse,
and one on drug-related deaths. It's a process that is very akin
to establishing place-based budgets. Within that process, we made
the first attempt for the first time to assess the cost impact
of each of those activities or crime types. For domestic violence,
for example, we estimate that the cost of domestic violence in
this city is £132 million. It was incredibly difficult to
estimate, but it was done as robustly as we could. We used something
called a negative costing tool and another cost/benefit model,
models that—
Q516 Jeremy Corbyn:
Could you give us a general idea how you arrived at that figure?
Linda Beanlands:
Forgive me if I can't quite remember the breakdowns of the exact
figures, but it was estimating the cost, for example, to probation
services, to police, to the NHS, to children and family services,
to adult social care, and also we added in a quality of life factor
or indicator, and we do have individual costs for each of those
components. That was on the basis of us estimating that something
in the region of 25,000 women were estimated to potentially experience
domestic violence in the city in any one year. They are estimates,
but at this point where we are doing the business of working out
how to apply those costing mechanisms, which is obviously a very
important task, those are the estimates that we came up with.
That was just a stage in a process, but a very important stage,
because what it means is that we can then get around the table
and talk about it: "If that is how much that is costing us,
for example, what do we think about the potential for reinvesting
so that we are actually preventing?" It makes the case very
strongly, obviously, for being able to invest in early intervention
and prevention services. That sort of modelling exercise and practicing
doing that sort of exercise across the partnership as a whole
is hugely important to moving to doing that sort of thing for
Integrated Offender Management.
Q517 Jeremy Corbyn:
What are the outcomes that you think would be appropriate for
probation services to be paid by? Which outcomes would you measure
before paying them?
Sonia Crozier:
Obviously to reduce reoffending. The issue with a payment system
around reduced reoffending is that you often need a time lag of
up to two or three years to be able to say robustly that the reduced
reoffending was a direct consequence of this level of intervention,
which could pose difficulties in terms of cash flows if you have
to have that level of time lag around any Payment by Results system.
While reduced reoffending, absolutely, I think sitting below that
are your proxy measures, which could also feed into Payment by
Results and wouldn't require that length of time—so measures
around compliance. When an order is imposed, do we ensure that
it is rigorously enforced and the individual completes it? And
to measure that against, potentially, a baseline, so are some
probation trusts more successful, for example, in getting their
offenders to comply with their sentences and receive the interventions
that that sentence offers?
Standing aside from that, I think there were some
other measures that I mentioned earlier around employment and
accommodation. This does then start to pose an interesting question
about who is actually responsible or accountable, because I think
we have to accept that with some of the measures that I've mentioned,
there has to be joint accountability because the Probation Service
doesn't do it all on its own. Accommodation would be a very obvious
one. I don't own houses and I'm not an accommodation provider,
so if a Payment by Results system is introduced then the Probation
Service, in a sense, would become part of a collective that either
benefits or is punished if they don't achieve those results, and
that's going to be quite an important mindset shift. I don't know,
John, if you want to add anything to that.
John Steele: I'd
like to add one comment specifically about probation trusts and
payment by results. Payment by Results is the holy grail. If we
could achieve that, that would be wonderful. There are huge obstacles
in the way, and specifically for probation trusts, to have payment
by results means there must be a risk of not being paid, clearly.
Probation trusts are not allowed to hold reserves. We're not allowed
to put on hold any reserves at all, so there's no indication,
as far as I can see, how we could possibly sustain the loss that
would come with failing, because we're not allowed to build reserves.
The private sector has shareholders and equity and they can eat
into their profits. Even the voluntary sector is allowed to hold
reserves. We can't, therefore I don't honestly understand how
it would work.
What you can have, which in my view is the worst
of all worlds, is bonus by results, and the Probation Service
for many years did have that. If you met your targets, you received
some more money next year. I have never understood why the taxpayer
should pay more a second year when the public sector has delivered
what it was paid to deliver the first. I think you need to be
very careful about how you introduce it. I think we're clear that
we want to be part of that, but we need to be allowed to hold
reserves. It can't work otherwise.
Q518 Jeremy Corbyn:
The local incentives scheme pilot has not received any additional
funding. Is this a problem? From what you're saying, it sounds
like it is. Can you still deliver outcomes without any additional
funding, or is this proving to be a problem for you?
Linda Beanlands:
Do forgive me. Can you just define the local incentives scheme?
I'm familiar with the LPSA framework where we received the reward
for exceeding the targets on the Prolific and Priority Offender
Project, but I'm not sure that is what you're referring to.
Q519 Jeremy Corbyn:
Local incentive pilots have not received any extra money, have
they?
Linda Beanlands:
No.
Q520 Jeremy Corbyn:
Is this a problem?
Linda Beanlands:
No.
Q521 Jeremy Corbyn:
Do you think they should?
Linda Beanlands:
Do forgive me; I'm struggling to answer the question because I'm
not sure what the definition of the local incentives scheme is.
Leighe Rogers:
I don't think it is about more money, I think, is the first thing
to say, because we all know the money isn't there, so what we're
looking to do is build structures that are sustainable, that everybody
takes responsibility for in terms of their different agency coming
in, which is why I go back to the fact that everybody being responsible
for reducing reoffending really helps us. Because other agencies
have that as an outcome, for us that is a way into services. If
they didn't have it as an outcome, it would be much harder to
persuade a commissioner from health or accommodation services
to actually invest in offenders. They're not always top of the
tree in terms of people's priorities. If we talk about what Linda
was talking about in terms of domestic abuse, the view is that
perhaps the victim, quite rightly, needs all that support and
attention, but the perpetrator is a little bit further away than
that.
If you're asking us if we need more money, if that
would help, it can help us in a seed way to start and grow things.
That definitely can help. We've just been selected Sussex-wide
as one of the pathfinders for the post-Bradley developments in
terms of mental health and how we progress that in partnership
with the police and health and others. That money coming in will
help us, but we're putting together a model that will be sustainable,
that all those partners sign up to contribute to and is effective
and efficient and delivers what we want it to deliver, so we're
not actually looking, other than as seed money, for pots of money
to be sent towards any of us, because we recognise it's not always
the answer. In fact, it's very rarely the answer. What is much
more important is how people work together so that they understand
what the outcomes are, whether they involve the end user, whether
they inform the community and whether we are really working in
a very effective and joined-up way. Going back to the earlier
point about partnerships, I think the strength of partnership
is the expertise and the knowledge that is brought from those
different sectors, and I think that is the strength when it works
to achieve those real outcomes. I actually think it is stronger,
in a sense, than one agency out there trying to do it alone and
perhaps getting lost in the local picture.
Q522 Jeremy Corbyn:
Do you feel you get enough support or co-operation from, for example,
local housing authorities and organisations like that? Obviously
there is an impact on the likelihood of reoffending in that sort
of area.
Leighe Rogers:
The strength of probation, I would say, is that we are the voice
of the offender and that we can go in—this is my job. I
go in and talk to heads of supporting people, adult social care,
about offenders and housing. You can have those conversations.
We are having them as we speak in Brighton, and you've heard that
with them we have the POAL project. We have temporary accommodation
in Brighton's city centre for people coming out of prison. We
have accommodation for more serious offenders to move into. I
suppose what I'm describing is that yes, it can work. In East
Sussex, we're about to co-commission with small amounts of money—not
huge amounts of money—services for high-risk offenders and
more troublesome offenders, if you like, who would not be dealt
with by way of floating support or housing support. We both have
small amounts of money. We've done our surveys and we are trying
to look at how we do things differently, not just necessarily
by buying property and putting people in it with a 24-hour cover.
That is not always the best way of doing things.
I suppose what I am saying to you is that the conversations
are going on. We're looking to do things in different ways by
involving service users and other partners and trying to achieve
the ends we need in quite different ways. My experience—and
I think my fellow directors would say it—is very positive
in terms of other agencies, both voluntary and public sector,
in being engaged in that task, and I do think, centrally, it has
helped us that Government departments are doing that as well.
The Government department initiatives in doing that have been
really helpful.
Q523 Ben Gummer:
Just to flesh out the answer a little in how it relates to PbR,
one of the things that are troubling us on this Committee is the
relationship between PbR when you have many PbR contracts going
on at the same time. For an offender, there might be a draft rehabilitation
PbR contract. There may well be in the future mental health PbR
contracts attached to them, certainly a welfare to work contract.
Who gains at the end of this? Who makes the profit or sustains
the loss, and do you think it is possible for a probation trust
to bring these contracts together so you have an holistic approach
to an offender?
Sonia Crozier:
I agree we would be locally in a very good position to take that
role on, partly because obviously we supervise the offender from
end to end in terms of the different types of sentences and orders.
Absolutely, we would be very key to that. I think your concern
is right in terms of who should benefit, because, as I mentioned
earlier, if you had a PbR scheme that focused on accommodation,
for example, or getting someone into employment, there are probably
going to be a range of different agencies that would have contributed
to that, so the way that I would see PbR developing is to probably
have a coalition of providers who would all benefit because of
the complexity of the problems you're trying to solve rather than,
say, a single agency. If you reflect back on the way that the
PPO schemes were introduced under the local area agreements, they
were very much modelled on that kind of approach. You had the
different agencies coming together, and if we were able to demonstrate
reduced reoffending around PPOs, there was, at that time, a reward
scheme, and everyone benefited from the reward that was gained.
Q524 Ben Gummer:
Leading on from that, this is being introduced at a time of considerable
savings in public expenditure. Can we deal with that first of
all? There are well-publicised concerns about probation trusts
and about their capacity to deal with an increase in non-custodial
sentences, let alone their current workload, while budgets are
being trimmed. Could you comment on that specifically?
Sonia Crozier:
In terms of our workload and capacity?
Ben Gummer: Yes.
Sonia Crozier:
We have been very successful actually locally in reducing our
workload. Last year, we reduced the occurrence of community orders
imposed by our local courts by 8%, and we continue to bear down
on demand, in an appropriate way though, because the approach
that we've taken with our local sentencers is to say to them that
there may be occasions where other disposals are more appropriate
for the lower-end offender than a community order. For example,
we've introduced two senior adult attendance centres into Surrey
and Sussex to scoop up those younger adult offenders where a brief
intervention may be more appropriate. We've also been encouraging
our staff to think more creatively about the use of curfews as
a disposal that the magistrates again may want to impose for that
lower-end group, so we're not just sitting here as a victim of
demand. We're being very active in terms of thinking about how
we can work with our magistrates to manage that at a time of shrinking
resource, which has then enabled us, with the precious resources
we have, to target those in the upper-end offender population
to get the best outcomes.
Q525 Ben Gummer:
Do you feel that the cuts are impacting upon private, not-for-profit
and voluntary organisations? I suppose this is a question also
for local authorities. Or have you been able to sustain those
partnerships and relationships while managing demand as you've
just been describing?
Sonia Crozier:
We have seen a decrease in the funding that we have received from
other agencies, but as I say, because of our own internal demand
management programme, that hasn't at this stage had a dramatic
impact on the services that we are providing, but perhaps I might,
as you suggest, hand this over to Linda.
Linda Beanlands:
I think the important issue here is that a true test of the partnership
is at times when savings or cuts have to be made, and I think
what we have seen in recent months when the local authority and
all its partners have had to sustain cuts is a real commitment
to taking on each others' issues, to taking on shared priorities.
In fact, if we just look at the community safety partnership pooled
budget, which is perhaps a small example but a very important
one, we had to find a cut in the overall services that we commission
from that, and the PPO project was one of those. We made very
good, very easily joint decisions between the local authority,
the police and probation about how we would do that together jointly
so that in fact the integrity of service delivery was sustained.
I would say that I think the local authority were absolutely committed,
recognising the importance of not making cuts that would then
cause difficulties for its key partner, the Probation Service.
Q526 Ben Gummer:
I have three questions for Mr Steele, very quickly. First of all,
you made an interesting allusion earlier to the fact that you
would rather have fewer well-qualified professionals than many.
Could you flesh that out a bit? We didn't quite pick up what you
were trying to say.
John Steele: I'm
sorry if I wasn't clear. It goes back to this question of cuts.
I think it's important to realise that the Probation Service was
told, I think, in 2008 that it faced a series of years of cuts,
and when we had to apply for trust status, we had to put in our
application to show how we would deal with significantly reduced
budgets, and it's fair to say that this year, 201-12's budget
for Surrey and Sussex is about the same as the worst-case scenario
we were planning for. We had three years to do that planning,
so in that time we have had a strategy for ensuring, as Sonia
says, that resource follows risk, so we invest in the high-risk
offenders and we disinvest in the lower-risk offenders.
We have also increased in that time the number of
probation officers and reduced the number of probation service
officers, because what we are saying to ourselves is that if we
want to concentrate on the higher risk, we need the fully professional
probation officers.
These things all link together with things like caseloads.
Again, caseloads are an emotive issue. I know others have mentioned
caseloads to you in their evidence. I think caseloads are a bit
higher than we would like them to be, but at the same time, with
the Professional Judgement Project and the new standards, what
we are saying is that professional probation officers, using their
discretion, using their resource of themselves and their fellow
resources, to make the most impact, is the sort of service that
I think we will deliver well. That is what I meant about having
fewer, if necessary, highly qualified people, because it is the
highly qualified people that we need in order to deal with the
higher-risk. We also need these sorts of people to have the discussions
with the local authorities and the other partners, because they
are professionals too. It is a joint meeting of professionals.
Does that help?
Q527 Ben Gummer:
Very much so. Thank you very much. Finally, you in your trust
have similar characteristics to my own in Suffolk and Norfolk.
We have a large rural population with some significant urban centres.
Could you please describe to the Committee how you manage those
contrasting populations, and also, within the context of the cuts,
how you deal with specific issues around minority groups and the
impact of savings on that?
John Steele: Can
I ask Sonia to answer that first? That last bit isn't an operational
issue.
Sonia Crozier:
In terms of how we manage the metropolitan and the rural, I think
again this is where your partnerships come in, because in your
rural areas where you have your community safety partnerships,
you'll be looking to those partners to see how they can work together
to meet that need, in contrast to the kind of negotiations that
Leighe will be having in a metropolitan area like Brighton and
Hove. Remember, other services in rural areas have also had to
adapt, so you share that learning about how, for example, people
can be given access into services where they may have difficult
in travelling, or how you perhaps share your buildings in more
rural areas so that you're not requiring people to travel long
distances into the towns. It's about using that local knowledge
and information through the CSP framework.
In terms of meeting the requirements and diverse
needs of the population, that's where our regular reviews of our
caseloads and the indicators about how many women we have in our
caseload, how many Black or ethnic minority offenders we have
on our caseloads, and then with our partners understanding whether
we have services that would best meet those particular needs.
It was in fact through that process of needs assessment around
our women offenders that we were able to successfully bid for
the Inspire project that operates in Brighton and Hove, because
we were able to show that we had a group of women there, some
of whom were coming out from prison and some on community orders,
where there needed to be a better kind of collaboration in terms
of the way we worked with them across a range of services, and
particularly with the women's voluntary sector in this locality.
It comes back again to that process of understanding the need,
commissioning to meet the need with our local partners and understanding
how geography affects local service delivery.
John Steele: Can
I just add one point to that? As we said earlier, we are on a
journey. One of the things the Professional Judgement Project
has done is to increase the number of home visits, something that
had almost died out because of the pressure of following process
all the time, and I think, increasingly, we'll look at new ways
of working, as Sonia says, perhaps much more located in local
communities. I think the days of having large offices where everybody
comes in for an interview may well be beginning to disappear now,
and I think the evolution of the Professional Judgement Project
and the probation officers thinking to themselves, "How best
can I deliver this service?" will move us into these local
areas rather faster than we might have thought it would, and I
think if you look at the service in five to ten years' time, the
way we deliver it will look very different.
Q528 Chris Evans:
In our evidence sessions, there seems to be a real problem with
public trust in information services. What has your probation
trust done to improve public confidence, and can you give us some
specific examples of what has worked and also what has not worked,
in your view?
Sonia Crozier:
One of the key initiatives for building public knowledge and confidence
in what we do is that we have for some time now been delivering
the Local Crime and Community Safety Scheme, which is known as
LCCS—
Sir Alan Beith: And then
you have problems with the acronyms as well.
Sonia Crozier:
Yes. Even I forget them sometimes. The LCCS, put very simply,
is a Ministry of Justice scheme whereby there is a training package
that probation officers and magistrates are given access to. Magistrates
and probation officers then go out to community groups and together
they deliver this programme to educate people about sentencing
and what sentencing actually means. We know from our experience
of delivering this for some time in West Sussex that it's been
really well received, so that with the agreement of Her Majesty's
Courts Service locally, we're now extending it across the Trust.
What works is that kind of reaching out and giving people direct
access to us.
In terms of what doesn't work, I'm not sure. I think
what doesn't work is simply being passive about the whole process.
I think it is a case of saying, "Well, actually, you have
to get out there and engage with your communities and your public".
I do think, with the introduction of the community safety partnerships
now, there may be more of an opportunity to do that, because talking
about probation on its own often doesn't make sense when you disconnect
it from the other partnerships that we work with. So I think that
engagement strategies with our local CSPs will be a very positive
platform going forward.
Leighe Rogers:
And we've done that in Brighton. If you'd have come probably about
12 months ago, we had a big billboard campaign going on that showed
just how many people in the city were involved in community safety
in a very real way for residents here to see, and obviously that
involved probation. Linda may want to say a bit more about that.
Linda Beanlands:
I do think this is one of those areas where there is a shared
responsibility, and it is the job of the community safety partnership
to profile and to take out the work of all its partners right
into the community, and we have many ways in which the local authority
is well placed to do that. For example, we have a network of about
40 local action teams that represent all the neighbourhoods in
the city. They are led by community members, and we make sure
in solving particular community safety or crime problems, that
we bring in our partners and that those community members are
able to work with us in terms of developing solutions, and that
the role of individual partners, whether it is the police, probation
or the Courts Service, is clearly articulated and understood.
Obviously we are moving to things like community resolution. Restorative
justice is part of that, also all help. We can talk about that
more, if you would like to.
Q529 Chris Evans:
Perhaps I am being a bit naive here, but what actually do you
do to reach out to the community? How would you engage a community?
How does that process begin, if you see what I mean? Obviously
you speak to the community, but how do you start the process?
I think you're allowed collaborate.
Sonia Crozier:
One of the methods that is very well established is the delivery
of community payback, unpaid work, in the sense that my staff
who currently work around that sentence of the court have very
good community networks in terms of getting local groups to nominate
work, and we do now have to keep a record of how many projects
our local communities have said, "We'd like you to clean
that park up" or "We'd like those alleyways cleared".
That is a very obvious way in which we connect with the community,
and as I say, there are some very well-worn routes by which we
do that. That is not to say we couldn't get better in terms of
publicising that, but a really nice example here locally is that
every year in the summer, we are responsible for painting all
the railings along the seafront, so you have the gangs of offenders
out there with their orange bibs on doing that work, and it is
very public, and people come up and they know what they're doing,
and that is great.
Q530 Chris Evans:
That leads us on to the breach. What is the breach in the community
orders that occur? The Government has been hugely critical of
the breach in our community orders. Is that a specific problem
in Sussex?
Sonia Crozier:
We have a target for the successful completion of orders and licences,
which is 75%, and we have consistently achieved our target over
many years. You might then come back at me and say, "25%
don't complete". That, for me, is the challenge going forward.
It is about pushing that boundary. The highest at the moment in
the country, the best-performing probation trust, I think, is
sitting at 80% in terms of compliance with orders and licences,
which again means 20% don't complete as they should.
Q531 Chris Evans:
That is a concern, 25%. You have a target of only 75%. That is
very concerning. What do you think the reasons are for the breach?
Is it, as we have heard in the past, sentencers put in community
orders too high and too hard to the point that you have offenders
saying, "I'm not bothered. It's too hard; I can't complete
it"? Is there any evidence you can give of that, or examples?
Sonia Crozier:
I think it is a combination of things. At the heart of all of
this, the reason that people are offenders is because they don't
follow rules and they don't always comply, so there's that challenge
of working with this really difficult group. Let's not forget
that by the time they've got to the Probation Service, they have
often been failures in every other Government organisation. They
have failed at school; they haven't engaged in health; whatever.
Let's not ever forget the difficulties of the group that we are
working with. That being said, the reason for that 25% could in
part be due to the effectiveness of sentence targeting, so there
is always a very important job for a probation trust to work with
their sentencers so that the magistrates or judges at the point
of sentence are putting the right person into the right set of
interventions.
The other rationale for why people perhaps have failed
in that group comes back in part to some of the nationally imposed
targets, so when probation trusts and the Prison Service were
being shoe-horned into delivering X of Y, then your attention
is achieving Y rather than perhaps "Is that the best programme
or provision for that individual?" So that may well have
contributed to the 25%. Actually, the freedoms that we have now
been given in allowing us to have more say in terms of the interventions,
I would hope, over time will also improve that compliance rate.
Again, also thinking about the Professional Judgement Project,
in the past we were very tied in to this very rule-based approach:
"This offender has to be seen: ABC". Now we can say,
"Actually, what is the best bit in terms of the supervision?"
The Professional Judgement Project and the freedoms of new national
standards have also given us an operating model in which to perhaps
incentivise offenders more. We could say to people, "If you
do this, if you really show me proper change, I can reduce some
of the contact that sits around you or some of the prohibitions",
so that is important as well in terms of strengthening that carrot
and stick.
Q532 Chris Evans:
My sister works in Probation Services. She says that really the
problem comes down to what I think you're touching on: the lack
of a personalised service. Two weeks ago I was talking to someone
who was a methadone dispenser, and his observation was that drug
and alcohol addicts went around and around the criminal justice
system, and they would go in to him for detox and then they would
disappear, and he wouldn't see them again until they came back
into the criminal justice system. Do you think that there is not
enough recognition within the criminal justice system that many
of these offenders are living very chaotic lives and that they
do not have any fixed point in their life, and that is why there
seems to be a lot of breach and a lot of reoffending?
Sonia Crozier:
I think the very rigid and rule-based approach to some degree
did create the environment you have described. That is not to
say there were not probation officers who despite that rigidity
were operating to a very high degree of professionalism and giving
it everything they could, but I do think there is now, as you
say, the opportunity to have a more personalised and more intelligent
decision-making process about what is going to best fit that offender.
Actually, one of the findings from the project that we have been
running is that probation officers will say, through the surveys
that we have been running in Surrey and Sussex, they feel that
they are more in control and that they are now doing the job they
feel they came in to do; not just inputting data into computers
but actually spending that face-to-face time with offenders, which
is what we are here to do.
I think we do also recognise that business about
chaos around offenders, and one of the big initiatives we are
certainly driving forward is to increase the number of volunteers
and peer mentors that work with our offender population, because
a probation officer cannot be and should not be with someone every
day of the week unless it is in very exceptional circumstances.
It is about getting the community to take more responsibility
for these individuals who live in their midst, and bringing in
more volunteers is a very useful way of doing that. We have a
project locally that we run with the Prince's Trust where we have
current offenders acting as peer mentors to offenders on supervision,
and that has gone down exceptionally well in terms of providing
that additional level of support and, as I say, involving people
in the community in the process of rehabilitation.
Sir Alan Beith: Thank
you. We are going to need to move on. Can I thank the witnesses
very much indeed for the very great help they have given us this
morning and invite the other team of witnesses to come and join
us?
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