Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
556-591)
John Thornhill and Councillor Mehboob Khan
7 June 2011
Chair: Mr Thornhill, Chairman
of the Magistrates' Association, welcome back. We are very glad
to see you again.
John Thornhill:
Good morning, everybody.
Chair: Councillor Khan
from the Local Government Association, we are equally glad to
have your help this morning. The perspectives of the bench and
of local government are very important to the work we are doing
on the Probation Service and so we look forward to any guidance
that you can give us. I am going to ask Karl Turner to begin.
Q556 Karl Turner:
Thank you very much indeed, gentlemen. Very generally then, I
wonder whether the Probation Service has changed over the last
five or 10 years. It was initially established to provide a service
to the magistrates' court. Has that changed in any way?
John Thornhill:
In terms of whether those services have changed, the changes are
that there have been developments and improvements in those services.
You refer in the document here to a reduction in custodial sentences
over a particular period of time. I think that is partly due to
the fact that a wider range of services have been provided for
magistrates to impose community orders with attendant programmes.
Also, the quality of reports and assistance that is now given
in the courts has significantly developed over the years and it
is now possible if we are lucky enough to have a probation officer
in court—we are in Liverpool—to engage in a dialogue
and debate with the probation officer, the defendant and defendant's
representative about what might be appropriate penalties, punishments
or disposals that could be used in the courts. So, yes, we believe
that the Probation Service has considerably improved in the last
10 years. It has changed its focus. It was social services at
one time. It is no longer that. It is a deliverer of sentences
and, overall, a very positive deliverer of sentences.
Q557 Karl Turner:
Thank you very much. Do you want to add anything to that, Councillor
Khan?
Mehboob Khan: Yes.
I am a former board member of West Yorkshire Probation Service
and so was in the thick of it when the changes were being made.
Many of the governance and structural changes around the organisation
did lead to a period of instability. West Yorkshire has five areas
and each area is coterminous with a significant, sizeable local
authority; my own serves 420,000 people. After the changes had
been implemented, what was very important was that the probation
workers at the coal face and the managers were given the freedom
and flexibilities to adapt to local circumstances. What we welcomed
was the ability to form positive working relationships at a local
level to try and tackle local issues and concentrate on how the
partnerships and the relationships between different partners
can be enhanced by more freedom at the district level as opposed
to the larger county level. That was welcomed through the changes.
But they did bring a period of instability. Colleagues who were
on my council were also frontline workers in the Probation
Service and they felt that the instability and changes were not
always adding value to the front line.
Q558 Karl Turner:
Thank you very much indeed. NOMS have produced some recent guidance
on timings for fast delivery reports. What do you have to say
about that situation, if anything?
Mehboob Khan: The
targets that they have issued recently are welcome, provided we
have the capacity locally to respond to them. Local authorities
and the police are significant partners in the local criminal
justice system and our approach has always been to try and tackle
problems upstream in order to prevent expensive interventions
later on. But we are struggling with reductions in budget. For
example, the budget for the community safety partnership has been
reduced by 60%, which does make it difficult to try and meet stretching
targets. However, in general, we do welcome elements within
the Green Paper around outcomebased commissioning, payment
by results and pooling of budgets. So there is light at the end
of the tunnel.
Q559 Karl Turner:
Sir Alan will want the Committee to go into some of the areas
you speak about anyway, but is capacity an issue? Do you think
capacity is going to be a major issue?
Mehboob Khan: Absolutely.
It is a line that the Local Government Group has taken in all
these types of settings in that cuts in budgets to the police
and local government will impact on our ability to work with other
partners. There is always a danger that organisations then retreat
back into their silos, and there is always a danger that some
of the additional work that is done outside of nonstatutory
work is the first to be lost. I have a few examples of that, if
I can talk about those later on.
Q560 Chair: Do
you want to tell us what you have in mind?
Mehboob Khan: Yes,
I will do that very quickly now. As you know, the Probation Service
works with those offenders who are statutory offenders who have
served more than a 12 months' sentence. At Kirklees, we have invested
over £100,000 each year for the last three years to work
with those who have had much shorter sentences in order to prevent
them from becoming statutory offenders and also they are still
prolific offenders, but yet they are probably given six or eight-week
sentences by the courts or other forms of community sentences.
By working with that group and using our own resources, we have
been commissioning the Kirklees division of West Yorkshire Probation
Service to help reduce reoffending. That is work that we have
had to do because we felt it would make an impact. Prior to the
budget cuts we were able to do this kind of discretionary work
and now we really have to focus on our mainstream responsibilities,
our statutory budgets, which are still growing massively, with
increases, say, in adult social care or lookedafter children.
These types of work are areas that are under pressure. As for
this year so far, almost eight weeks into the new financial year,
we have not been able to give West Yorkshire Probation any assurances
of that £100,000 in this financial year yet.
Q561 Chair: But, before
the budget cuts, there was considerable variation in the extent
to which local authorities did the kind of work you have just
described in Kirklees and in the extent to which they worked with
community safety partnerships, for example. So it was not all
about money, was it? Part of it was taking initiatives.
Mehboob Khan: It
is about good working and effective relationships at a local level
and identifying where we want to invest within the system, particularly
upstream on early interventions which reduce the cost later on.
But, when money is tight, then those sorts of areas are affected.
The other part which is affected by cuts in local government budgets
generally is the responsiveness we can make to those who are in
the system who need help with housing or benefits, education,
employment and training, because it is a holistic approach towards
that. Many local authorities are having to make significant reductions
in those areas where we work with vulnerable people, and those
are going to impact. We are seeing that impact upon the voluntary
sector as well and we are commissioning less from the voluntary
sector now, which reduces the capacity of the voluntary sector.
Often, single organisations provide a range of services to vulnerable
people and some of them are those within the criminal justice
system.
Q562 Chair: But
I still pose the question: why was it so variable when money was
not so tight?
Mehboob Khan: It
was down to local, strong, effective partnerships. I can talk
about our own example. On our community safety partnership, the
local manager for the Probation Service had been a permanent member
of the partnership many years before it became a statutory responsibility.
We were able in those meetings to take a more holistic and longerterm
approach towards reducing reoffending. That helped to define new
programmes which impacted upon offending and crime levels in an
area. I think it does mean that, no matter how much centrally
or locally there is prescription or statutory arrangements, if
there is a willingness to co-operate and make things work, then
the statutory framework helps make that happen. But, in the absence
of a statutory framework, local partnerships can innovate and
are able to look at fantastic ways of supporting those vulnerable
people in the community.
Q563 Chair: When
viewed from the magistrates' side, what difference does it make
to you as magistrates to have effective liaison with the Probation
Service and to know that there is effective liaison between them
and the local authority?
John Thornhill:
It is a matter of building confidence in the sentences they are
imposing, that they will be delivered effectively and in a challenging
way, where appropriate. It is also about working together so that
we have a mutual understanding in respect of the issues of probation
in delivering sentences and the issues that we face in sentencing.
It is very clear that we have the responsibility to sentence.
Probation has the responsibility to deliver that sentence. But
it is very important that we both know what works. Feedback from
probation about the sentences that we are imposing and the effectiveness
of them is vital and is very important in ensuring that, as we
progress and develop, we are imposing sentences which meet the
needs of the community, but also, where appropriate, punish the
offender, support victims, but also support the offender to reduce
reoffending.
My colleague referred to programmes at an early stage.
One of the things that we would like to see more of is early intervention.
With a first or second time shoplifter, we end up at the moment
just fining them, but we know that the real issue is, what are
the underlying causes of the offending behaviour? That is something,
I believe, we must tackle on every occasion. If there were available
programmes from maybe the third sector and the private sectors
you referred to, where we could say, "You will get a conditional
discharge"—that will need a change in the law because
we cannot do that at the moment, but it is certainly worth thinking
about—"on the condition that you attend this early
intervention programme with a local third party or voluntary group",
I think magistrates would be attracted by that.
One of the things that we want to do is to reduce
the reoffending at an early stage before the offenders get into
that cycle of reoffending. We are focusing at the moment on those
who are on their second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh
or 42nd offence, as an offender was who was in front of me quite
recently. We need to tackle these things earlier. We need to provide
the services that are there, be it, as I said, through a local
authority or the third sector, and what is important is that we
have a consistency of delivery right across the country.
We talked about fast delivery reports. We welcome
that. In my court, where we have probation in attendance, I can
get a fast delivery report in one or two hours and deal with the
offender. That is in the best interests of justice. But what about
the court where the Probation Service is 30 or 40 miles away?
What we need to do is look at how we can use the Probation Service
effectively to get a fast delivery report, even if it means using
modern technology via video links, so that the court can sentence
expeditiously and in a proportionate way.
It is looking at those underlying causes of offending
behaviour and how we tackle those, and what the support services
are for the offender to manage those issues. That was the whole
raison d'être of the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre.
Would that we could have that in every court, but if we mention
that everybody's eyes go up in horror. But the principles enshrined
in the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre are principles
that we need to be trying to deliver right across the justice
system. Magistrates will work and support that. We have seen that,
as I said. In the last five to 10 years we have seen the development
of more and more of these local programmes, more and more of the
engagement, and more and more of the community partnerships to
deliver effective programmes.
Chair: The Committee in
its previous existence visited the North Liverpool Community Justice
Centre and I think formed exactly the impression you have. This
is the ideal and this is the basis on which you should try to
operate even though you cannot provide the full quality that that
does.
Q564 Elizabeth Truss:
I completely agree with what you said about early intervention.
I think that is very important. You have talked a lot about working
together locally and how the various services interact. How do
you think the national structure could be reformed to make that
local working better? Would it be placebased budgets? Would
it be having an integrated service, Mr Thornhill?
John Thornhill:
I think we have to look at an integrated service. We have to be
very careful that we do not end up with postcode sentencing and
postcode delivery of sentences. I come from an urban area where
it is easy to make people work together or to get people to work
in partnership. But when it is a rural area such as Devon and
Cornwall, or the breadth of Lincolnshire or the north-east or
the north-west, or Wales—I have not forgotten Wales—it
is more difficult to ensure that there is integration. I think
you have to work very hard to do that. We need to look for national
frameworks through which we can operate. We have welcomed the
recent shift in NOMS in terms of probation delivery from, if you
like, what was a "tick- box" approach more to an assessment
of quality outcomes. It was all very well to say an offender had
turned up 30 times, but how effective was that programme? How
effective was the programme for the offender if they had not engaged?
Built into any of this, we need to have that quality assurance
that the programmes are being effective. Now, whether that is
delivered through placebased funding or through a national
strategy or integrated funding, for the sentencer it doesn't matter
in one sense, but it will do for the local deliverers, we appreciate.
Q565 Elizabeth Truss:
Can I ask specifically what you think about the different cultures
in the Prison Service and the Probation Service, because, if you
look at other countries, quite often they have a single correctional
service which will administer prisons and probation? It strikes
me in Britain that we have NOMS, which theoretically integrates
them, but then we have two separate services. Isn't that quite
costly and defeats the object of having the integration?
John Thornhill:
It can be costly—I can appreciate that—because you
are running two services. If you have a single integrated service,
then you can achieve continuity of delivery right across the whole
spectrum of disposals. However, that depends on ensuring that
there is a fair and just balance of funding, again, right across,
and identifying where the funding is most necessary.
Q566 Elizabeth Truss:
Maybe I can put this question to Councillor Khan. Shouldn't the
funding and the provision be led by the sentencing rather than
the sentencing being led by the funding and provision? Isn't part
of the problem that sentences are being adjusted to fit the capacity
rather than the other way round, saying, "What is the optimum
sentence for this person who has been convicted?"
Mehboob Khan: I
absolutely agree. The desirable sentence is the sentence, and
that is where the public need confidence that the judicial system
is administering the correct sentence. Then it is up to probation,
local authorities and others to work in partnership. Can I answer
partly your first question as well because it is not just an issue
around financial capacity? In my area we are very lucky, or in
other large metropolitan areas we are very fortunate, that the
local probation service is coterminous with a large county—Greater
Manchester, West Yorkshire and Lancashire. Below that, for example,
at West Yorkshire, their local units are coterminous with the
local authorities of Kirklees, Bradford, Leeds, Calderdale and
Wakefield. It means that at that local authority level you have
coterminosity with the borough commander for the police, the primary
care trust, the local authority, probation and a whole host of
other partners. But, at county level, in certain areas, if you
take any large shire county, you have a number of community safety
partnerships that are down at district level and a larger one
that covers the county, but the capacity of officers and frontline
staff managers within the Probation Service then to be able to
engage with a range of community safety partnerships is very limited.
Quite often the cultural issue is overcome when elected members
and council managers have direct contact with probation staff
and they can understand the pressures on the service, what the
national and local drivers are of the service and try and find
local solutions on that.
Q567 Elizabeth Truss:
I notice, though, you did not mention prisons in that list.
Mehboob Khan: That
is right.
Q568 Elizabeth Truss: Is
there a particular issue with the way that the Prison Service
interacts with these other public services to provide a full holistic
solution?
Mehboob Khan: There
are two key things. It is a good question. It is not something
I have thought about in any depth. One is that prisons are not
coterminous. They are all over the place. Wherever someone is
sentenced they will go to serve their prison. Residents in my
borough may well be serving their sentence 70 or 80 miles away.
But, as the leader of the Council, I have a responsibility for
their wellbeing. It is very difficult to deliver on that
responsibility when they may be serving the sentence significantly
away from my area. The second one is that local authorities have
traditionally not got involved in that part of the criminal justice
system. We have used our links through probation as a way to work
through that.
The other point I wanted to make is about the relationships.
I chair the Kirklees Partnership Executive. Probation across West
Yorkshire only has a budget of £40 million compared to the
rest of us, which runs into billions. If you give a place to the
local manager on the partnership executive to be able to play
into not just the criminal justice elements of the discussions
there but around health and housing, education, employment and
training, you would have someone there who has the equal status
as the leader of the Council, the chief executive of the PCT,
playing into those discussions and bringing it from the perspective
of those who are in the criminal justice system. That does help
others, and it is not just the local authority. It helps the primary
care trust, the voluntary sector and others to understand the
role of probation. Then they realise it is a really important
role. If we don't get that right, the rest of the system has risks
in it of falling down.
Q569 Elizabeth Truss:
Can I just put the same question to Mr Thornhill about how
integrated the Prison Service is in this process and whether or
not you feel the capacity is following the sentencing or is it
the other way round?
John Thornhill:
The capacity should follow the sentencing. It is an issue that
there are not going to be similar sentencing patterns across the
country because the nature of offences across the country will
vary. We need to look at that and do some research into the nature
of the different types of offences and the different types of
disposals that are being used across the country. But it needs
to be integrated because, in one sense, it is a continuum, is
it not? We are talking about a whole range of possible disposals
to match the various levels of seriousness and so there has to
be integration between the two. There has to be a working together.
I appreciate the Councillor's concern that, for instance, some
offenders are serving sentences in different prisons in other
authorities where you have no control or no management over them.
That is an issue. You are paying for it, but you have no control.
I think we have to look at these issues to see where the sentence
is imposed, if it is appropriate for it to be served in that area
and who then takes the responsibility for it. But there has to
be an integrated system. The danger is that we have a range of
different agencies delivering sentences in different ways. We
need to have a consistency so that there is an integration right
across because it is about that continuum of seriousness.
Q570 Chair: If
you pass a custodial sentence, you know somebody will take that
person away and put them into custody. If you pass some other
sort of sentence, presumably you first have to ask some questions
about whether it is available, don't you?
John Thornhill:
If we are looking to impose a community penalty, of course, we
would always seek a presentence report, be it a fast delivery
report on the day or a standard delivery report, where the bench
would discuss with the Probation Service, if they are in court—which
is another problem of course—what might be appropriate sentences
given the seriousness of the offence, the circumstances of the
offender, and there will be considerations for the victim and
society. We would not be imposing a community penalty without
some contribution from the Probation Service. In seeking a report,
we might say that one of the issues that have come out is, for
instance, literacy and numeracy. How would the Probation Service
in its disposal tackle that particular issue? We may pick up issues
about domestic violence or we may find there is an underlying
drink problem which did not come out at the first stage.
Q571 Chair: Do
you ever get to the point where you would like to say to somebody
who is in a position to do something about it that there is more
prison resource than this bench requires and not enough literacy
and numeracy or alcohol—
John Thornhill:
To be fair, we probably would not have the statistics at our disposal
in the courtroom to be able to make those decisions. In one sense,
as I said, it is not really our concern. It is the responsibility
of those delivering the sentence to ensure that there is proper
provision of the sentences that the courts require. That management
should be driven by sentencing, not by capacity.
Q572 Mr Llwyd:
Can I ask both of you what your overall view is of the concept
of payment by results? What do you perceive to be the strengths
and the possible limitations of that model when applied to delivery
of probation services?
Mehboob Khan: When
I was a member of the West Yorkshire Probation Board we received
our quarterly and monthly performance management reports, and
the statistics were about completions of those offenders who were
on particular courses and whether they completed them or not.
We were one of the highest performing in the country on completions.
I always sit there and scratch my head and say, fair enough, they
have completed the course, but so what? Has that reduced reoffending
or has it been that we are really good at encouraging people to
go through this course?
Payment by results is not something new. It has been
around for quite a while. I am a nonexec director on our
local PCT, so payment by results in the health sector has been
there for a number of years. In principle, it is a good system
because it is about rewarding those public service providers who
have been able to work with the client group, and the end result
in this case is that it is a safer society by having less offending.
But there are some concerns that we have about the detail.
If I can use an analogy elsewhere, it is easier to
explain. Payment by results in trying to get people into work
is now the new mantra for the single workbased providers.
If I was one of them, I would think, well, I will get £x
thousand for each person we get into work for six months. I am
going to work with that client group who I know it is easy to
get into work. They may just have become unemployed so they still
have a culture of work or they have good qualifications. You can
match them against jobs and get them into work. Who is then going
to work with the really difficult hard-to-reach clients? The really
difficult hard-to-reach prolific reoffenders in the system may
get overlooked because providers under financial constraints are
going to be looking to see how many people they can work with,
that the client group is going to be less likely to reoffend and
they will do their own risk management on individual clients and
put resources into those. We would like to see that question resolved.
One possible solution is that, for those clients who have the
highest risk of reoffending, their payment by result tariff is
larger than for those who are at a low risk of reoffending. Therefore,
within the system, regardless of which client group you are working
with, the input you put into that particular client and the output
that you receive is commensurate. That kind of system is going
to be more difficult and bureaucratic to manage, but I believe
in the longer term it will deliver the best results.
Q573 Mr Llwyd:
This question was put to the Justice Secretary many months ago
by a member of this Committee and the notion is that some providers
will cherry-pick, which is what you have just described. The answer
we had then was that, if they are going to get a contract, they
will deal with all of them, good, bad and indifferent, and lump
them together, as it were. That is the answer we had then. I don't
know whether you have had any further discussions about it.
Mehboob Khan: I
have not had any further discussions on the detail of that, but
we know that cherry-picking does happen currently. Whatever size
of contract is given, if there is the same tariff for all the
individuals, I just think if I had this limited resource to work
with that client group I am going to try and get the most bang
for my buck on that, which is why differential payment tariffs
are really important on that. I think the other point on payment
by results is who the providers and commissioners are going to
be on that. It is really important that we have strong commissioning
arrangements to make sure that those who are involved as providers
are properly performance-managed, that they don't cherry-pick,
and that the client group that they are given an opportunity to
bid for is a client group that represents a crosssection
of those within the criminal justice system. It is going to be
equally difficult to try and create a client group for them to
work with because people will come in and out of the criminal
justice system during the period of the contract. How do
you ensure then that, if you are managing four different providers,
each one gets a crosssection of clients? The client management
end of it is going to have to be pretty bureaucratic to make that
work. I am just trying to think of ways in which you have a softer
relationship between commissioner and provider, an open and transparent
approach towards looking at who is on their books and what interventions
they are using, sharing good practice between providers as well,
but looking at ways in which the system itself drives providers
to work with those people who society fears are at more risk
of reoffending.
Q574 Mr Llwyd:
I know Mrs Grant wants to put a question, but, before she does,
Mr Thornhill, what is the view from the magistrates' perspective
on the question?
John Thornhill:
We would support many of the concerns that the councillor has
expressed and we have indeed expressed some of those. We
had a meeting early on in, I think, late February with the Ministry
of Justice and senior members of the judiciary and ourselves,
particularly as most of this will impact on the magistrates' courts.
We raised the concerns there about cherry-picking. We raised the
concerns about how far this will be driven by profit rather than
by effective delivery of the sentence. We raised the concerns
about what would be the consistent approach across the country.
For instance, what about the demographic issue? It will be attractive
to bid for a contract in, say, somewhere like a large conurbation
where there may be a wide range of clients to deal with. But in
the country areas, again, what would be the difficulties there?
How will they deliver across the whole of a large area? We raised
many of these concerns and we put a paper to the Ministry of Justice
where we expressed the view that there needed to be very clear
quality assurance and quality control built into the contracts,
with regular appraisals, inspections, and the ability to withdraw
from a contract—a whole range of commercial statements that
you would have in a contract. There is now a Ministry of Justice
judiciary committee or judiciary working party and we have had
our first meeting where, again, we explored all these issues.
From our perspective, we are saying that we, as sentencers,
must have confidence that the sentence will be properly and effectively
delivered, and successfully delivered over a period of time. What
is the measuring rate? For instance, if it is a more difficult
offender, do you measure it in a shorter period or a longer period
of time? How can you identify success? Those criteria have to
be set out up front as far as we are concerned in any contract
that goes out for tender. We have the opportunity to raise all
our real concerns about this. As I say, we do not believe it should
be driven by profit. We believe it should be driven by the appropriateness
and effectiveness of the delivery of the sentence. We have raised
those concerns and we have that opportunity through that judiciary
committee because it is about confidence. If we see that success
is not as successful as we would like it to be, then confidence
is going to wane in the community penalties. We need to look at
and take on board many of the recommendations in the recent report
on the Peterborough Social Impact Bond where there were concerns
there about paying twice, for instance. Who was the actual contractor
who achieved the success? We need to be very clear about the lines
there. I think these are things that we need to pick up. We have
picked these up and we will certainly feed them into this judiciary
committee which is a working party in the Ministry of Justice.
Q575 Ben Gummer:
Can I just home in on that point you are making, Mr Thornhill?
In the Welfare to Work Payment by Results, we are moving away
from a situation where someone turns up at the Jobcentre and is
told by someone who has had a three-minute interview with them
that they need to go on this course and that course, and as long
as they go through those courses that will enable them to collect
their benefits when they are longterm unemployed. Rightly,
the previous Government and this one have recognised that that
is not a suitable way of dealing with people on Welfare to Work.
Actually you have to work and understand their case history through
a long period. Often it will come after several months that you
begin to understand where the problems are in that individual's
situation. But why are the courts not the same? You are talking
about sentencing reports made very briefly by someone for you
to make a snap commissioning decision, which is effectively what
you are doing. Why can we not get to a situation where magistrates
protect the public? They say, "This is what we need
to do for public protection and for punishment", but
then it is left to the provider to understand and to work with
that person about rehabilitation through the course of the contract
which is let without the magistrates' court.
John Thornhill:
One of the things that we have seen is successful is judicial
continuity in dealing with offenders. If you look at something
like the drug courts pilots that took place in Leeds, I cannot
remember which court it was in London but there certainly was
a court in London, and in other courts around the country, if
you look at the development of things like the problemsolving
courts, there is judicial continuity there. If we can build that
in, and if we can build in what I would call incentivised sentencing,
where we say, "You will be on a community order for 12 months,
but if there is a degree of compliance that can be automatically
reduced or, if there is not compliance, automatically increased",
again within a set of guidelines—we must have those of course—then
we believe it is not inappropriate for magistrates to impose the
appropriate sentence and a sentence which at the time appears
appropriate.
Certainly for standard delivery reports, there are
usually two to three weeks to produce and prepare these. It may
be, of course, that the offender is already known to probation,
because very often these are repeat offenders and there will be
a history there. One would hope that we are not saying in most
cases, "This is the first time we have seen this offender.
We have a short period of time to make the report." There
is an opportunity to produce a report which looks at what the
underlying causes of the offending behaviour are and puts forward
proposals for appropriate programmes that will tackle that. If
there is then judicial continuity either by bringing it back to
being in court or the magistrates working with probation in a
different way than necessarily in the courtroom, then we can adjust
and amend the delivery of the sentence and the content of the
sentence over a period of time to meet the needs of the offender.
No one has mentioned the word, but we know the principles of resistance
theory. It is something that we as magistrates have to look at.
One of the things we are thinking very often is that we have an
offender who commits an offence for which they should be sent
to custody but they get a community order, fail to comply and
come back to court. What does the court then do? Maybe, instead
of just assuming that it is an immediate custodial sentence then,
we are looking at a staged process. For instance, over a period
of time we work with the offender and support them to rehabilitate
themselves, because until they wish to do so, whatever we do in
the courts, we are not going to achieve immediate success.
Q576 Ben Gummer:
I am aware we are in the anniversary year of the justice of the
peace being introduced and we are all great fans of JPs here,
but are you really saying that all magistrates are capable of
this kind of complexity of continuous commissioning? You are talking
about ongoing quality assurance through a period of a probation
order. You are talking about very difficult decisions.
John Thornhill:
I am certainly not talking about magistrates being involved in
commissioning at all.
Ben Gummer: Well, it is
that.
John Thornhill:
That is for the probation trust. What I am talking about is magistrates
being involved in the delivery of the sentence.
Q577 Ben Gummer:
But the two are the same. They are, effectively.
John Thornhill:
We may be using words in a different way, to be fair, but I am
talking about being involved in the delivery of the sentence.
If you look at the problemsolving courts, for instance,
to give you an example, offenders come back every five or six
weeks. In Liverpool recently I was told the story of an offender
who said, "I have reduced my cider drinking from three bottles
a day to two." For that offender, that was success. It may
not be that it turned them round within that short period of time,
but maybe there is a need then to recognise that success and to
say to that offender, "Look, we gave you an incentive to
change. You have changed. Now it might be appropriate to readjust
the programme." That does not necessarily have to take place
in a full court scenario. That could be done in a totally different
way.
Q578 Mr Llwyd:
The probation trust will be the commission, obviously. You would
be a consumer in a way, wouldn't you?
John Thornhill:
In one sense, yes, but, because we are judiciary, it is right
for us not to be involved in the commissioning process.
Q579 Mr Llwyd:
Indeed; precisely, yes. Both in terms of the local authorities
and also the magistracy, I presume you have had quite a detailed
discussion in terms of modelling some of these services or the
way you would like to see them coming forward—you have already
answered part of this question—and, hopefully, the way in
which you see payment by results evolving, in other words with
a difficult case, an easier case, how long it should be before
payment is made or whatever. You have had a fairly robust input
into it, have you?
Mehboob Khan: The
Local Government Group has sent a submission in to the Justice
Department. At a local level it is part of the day job, and as
chair of the Local Government Group's Safer Communities Board
I have had significant thinking through the process with council
officers and colleagues at the Local Government Group. I will
try and outline where we think some of the dilemmas, issues and
questions are. I think the startingoff point is the question
raised by Elizabeth Truss earlier on about what we want to see
about pooling of resources. We would like to see at a local level
significant pooling of the resources with all those involved in
providing services to offenders.
Q580 Chair: Including
prison.
Mehboob Khan: Including
prison; absolutely, including prison, because it costs, on average,
£54,000 a year to put somebody through prison. That is where
money in the system is—in that top end and expensive end
of the system—and we want to shift that back down. I will
call it going upstream. In my neighbouring council in Bradford,
they did some analysis on the types of services provided to those
who are leaving prison and they found that, on average, each person
receives 10 assessments. That is 10 different agencies carrying
out individual assessments on them. Those offenders thought that
the assessments were part of their punishment. They didn't realise
that these assessments are there for their benefit. We are carrying
out 10 assessments in the worst-case scenario, but five is the
average assessment on those.
So you have a group of partners at local level who,
individually, can share those assessments and that knowledge about
that individual. They can do it once and share that data. If they
are required to pool their budgets, they will then be required
to commission jointly as well. Hopefully, also, when the payment
by results comes through, it is shared between those partners
who are pooling the resources at a local level and with the provider
as well, because good commissioning is a really strong part of
good payment by results and good outcomes on that. If you are
not a good commissioner, you are not using the right providers
and the client group doesn't have the correct interventions with
them, you are not having the best outcomes.
On payment by results, what is an effective result?
In some cases it will be someone never reoffending in their lifetime,
whereas in some cases it could be, as my colleague has said, someone
reducing their alcohol consumption which reduces their offending
down to maybe only once every six months. A differential approach
is going to have to be taken with each individual, where, instead
of spending loads of public money on separate assessments, if
we have a single assessment and really get underneath what the
causes are for that individual to commit crime, we are able to
tackle those issues for the longer term.
The Local Government Group does not normally ask
for extra national direction. But in this case what we are asking
for is direction upon all partners to come together to jointly
commission those services. The Government's approach in this Green
Paper goes in the same direction as the previous Government, and
where we see public services generally going down, the reward
is by the impact. I have no qualm with private sector organisations
making profit from this because profit is a strong incentive and
motivator. But we have to make sure that there is quality built
into those contracts as well because cherry-picking is the biggest
problem that we think will happen. That will make the system fall
apart. If local authorities, police or other budgets are stretched,
if there is a pooling of budgets and a requirement to pool budgets,
we won't retreat into our silos to do what our statutory work
is. We will actually be working together in that kind of partnership
because then that becomes part of the day job of making communities
safer.
But you will have complexities around the geographical
areas in the country. If you take a large county like Kent with
umpteen district councils, who is responsible for pooling those
budgets? Who is the lead authority? I would say it would be the
county council in our area where we are coterminous. For
example, Leeds serves 800,000 and Birmingham serves 1 million
people. The local authority becomes a lead partner because they
have that democratic legitimacy to bring some of the other partners
around the table together. Those partners have been used to the
leadership by the local authority for a number of years on trying
to tackle all sorts of other local problems.
Part of my day job as leader of the Council is also
working with our officers and those organisations that have won
the contracts for the employmentrelated work in our patch.
My officers and I will be looking at how we make linkages from
joint commissioning and pooling interventions to reduce reoffending
to how those individuals then go through education, employment
and training, working with colleges, universities and others.
When things go wrong, the problem comes to our doorstep because
it is those individuals in the community who are causing antisocial
behaviour, there are drink problems in the town centre or it is
having an impact upon other services that we provide. That is
why I think it is not for me to say that we, the local authorities,
have the solution to everything, but you need one strong accountable
body and it is the local authority that currently has that.
Chair: That was a very
good statement of case. I think we are going to need to move on.
Helen Grant had a quick point.
Q581 Mrs Grant:
Just a quick one, coming back to cherry-picking. Would a possible
solution not be to effectively pay the provider that is left with
the most difficult, challenging group of offenders and enhance
them out?
Mehboob Khan: Absolutely.
Part of commissioning could well be that, for those in the criminal
justice system with the various tariffs against them about what
sentences they have had, that tariff carries a price value. We
commission a range of providers, some who deal with the really
difficult high risk prolific offenders and some who deal with
those who, hopefully, are going to be in the criminal system for
just a small period of time. Therefore, you have the ability to
do it with a different set of providers who have a different set
of skills.
Also, if I may add, I chair the Association of West
Yorkshire Authorities. The five of us meet very frequently to
look at where we are able to bring together some of our frontline
services to try and reduce cost. We know the budget for West Yorkshire
Probation, which is one of the largest probation organisations,
is just £40 million, and that is not a lot of money when
it serves over 3 million people. It makes sense to give us the
freedom and flexibility to be able to have four or five providers
commissioned through a competitive process. We are not bothered
if it is voluntary, public or private sector, as long as they
meet the quality threshold and they are competitive, but providing
that across West Yorkshire. That would be a significant step in
the right direction of trying to build even more efficiencies
and value and quality within the system.
Q582 Mrs Grant:
But the point is that, if we use mechanisms like that, cherry-picking
actually may not be such a big problem, because you have both
mentioned several times this morning your concern about cherry-picking
and how it might skew and distort the ultimate goal.
Mehboob Khan: That
is right.
John Thornhill:
Our concern would be to ensure that, if we have different levels
of programme to meet the different levels of risk for different
types of offenders, those programmes are all available in any
court area. We don't want to be constrained as sentencers because
in a particular area there has been a low number of high risk
offenders, in particular, and therefore that programme is not
provided. There must be the provision of those programmes right
across the board, because otherwise it will undermine the principles
of justice.
Q583 Mrs Grant:
Of course you want providers to be incentivised to deal with all
that and solve the problem.
John Thornhill:
Absolutely, and in one sense, as I said, who provides the service
is irrelevant to the court. What is important is that the service
and the programme is there; it is available to the sentencers
to impose with a community order and that must be consistent across
the country; and there is, therefore, also good quality assurance
that those sentences will be properly and effectively delivered.
Karl Turner: Sir Alan,
do you want me to start on the capacity issue?
Chair: Yes, on the intensive
supervision schemes.
Q584 Karl Turner:
Could you comment on the efficacy of the Probation Service in
managing dangerous offenders?
Mehboob Khan: Do
you want me to have a try?
Chair: Go on; have a try.
Mehboob Khan: From
my previous experience on the board, the Probation Service have
a range of frontline staff trained to different levels and
lots of experience. I have every confidence that they are able
to deal with offenders or client groups from a different range
of risks, and it is about managers and frontline staff being
able to understand those risks and the best way of having interventions
that work in those. The service is very proud of what they do
and they have a very high record of completions in West Yorkshire.
They have a very low record of any physical attacks or abuse on
staff. It means the relationship between the probation officer
and the client is always seen in more of a positive light because
they have gone through the prison system and they might have seen
the baddies in the prison system, but they are seen as the people
who are trying to keep them out of the prison system.
Q585 Karl Turner: Mr
Thornhill, can existing systems for the risk management of offenders
be strengthened in any way?
John Thornhill:
We need to strengthen some of the systems that are in place at
the moment. Again, this is one of the points that came out of
the MoJ review into the Peterborough experiment. A concern that
sentencers would have is that if we have a single contact in the
courtroom—and that is something we would prefer, i.e. the
Probation Service as a single point of contact, providing the
reports, and taking the delivery of the sentence to whoever the
providers are—there is then not a disconnect between the
commissioner and the deliverer. There have to be very strong links
because, if we have high risk offenders, if we have dangerous
offenders, and the courts are imposing a community penalty, then
the courts need to be confident that the Probation Service as
the point of contact in court has appropriate quality assurances
and procedures in place to ensure that the sentence is properly
delivered, that there is no risk and there is risk management.
That was one of the comments that was in the report on Peterborough.
Q586 Karl Turner:
In relation to the intensive alternative to custody programmes,
is it feasible with the current levels of resourcing for other
agencies to continue in providing those alternatives?
John Thornhill:
That is a very difficult one for me to answer. Simply from the
sentencers' point of view, can we say we want them to continue?
We have seen, certainly, in Merseyside—I visited the IAC
programme in Manchester and the Together Women's Project, which
is an accredited IAC programme in Bradford—the effectiveness
of those programmes in turning the offenders around, but making
the offenders think for themselves why they need to turn around,
because that is what we have to do. We would like to see those
programmes continued. We accept that they were pilots, but we
feel that there ought to have been more plans to ensure that if
those pilots were successful—which they were and which we
knew they would be, and certainly the halfway report suggested
they were going to be successful— we could have a rollout
of those programmes right across the country. We have to look
at how we harness the resources. We accept, again, there are limited
resources, but we need to look at how we harness those resources
in the most productive way. We are dealing there, again, with
the repeat offender. We want to show four or five years down the
road that we are reducing the number of repeat offenders by taking
action at an early stage. We need to look at the balance right
across the board so that we deal with the repeat offenders but
also deal with the first and second time offender, with early
intervention to prevent them becoming the repeat offenders down
the road. Balancing that out is a very difficult one.
Q587 Karl Turner:
In your experience as a sentencer, do you think that IACs are
effective? In my experience, for example, representing defendants
in the magistrates' court, very often an intensive alternative
to custody is the last thing they want. They prefer, quite frankly,
a very short prison sentence.
John Thornhill:
Are you referring to the offender here?
Karl Turner: Yes.
John Thornhill:
Yes, you are absolutely right. I had an offender in front of me,
with 110 offences, and we were looking for something that was
not a custodial sentence. He said, "Just send me back because,
whatever you do, I'll not comply." What we have to remember
is that, with those sorts of offenders who have a long lifetime
of offending, when they first started on their criminality there
weren't the community penalties. We have to say, okay, here is
a group of offenders we have to work really hard with and tackle.
We did actually talk with probation and seek an appropriate community
penalty. How far the offender complied I have no idea, but we
have to accept that there will be some.
Q588 Chair: It
is a pity that you didn't ever know how far—
John Thornhill:
I actually asked him, "Why do you want to go back to prison?"
You all know the answer. "I've got security there. I've got
three meals a day. I don't have to think. I am told when to get
up, etcetera. All my problems are looked after." We have
failed that offender, in my view. Society has failed that offender
but it has not failed them in recent years. It failed that offender
many years ago. We need to be picking up that issue now and saying,
"Right, what can we do with Mr Smith of 20 years ago and
how can we make sure that he doesn't get into this cycle of reoffending?"
We are not going to be successful with everybody. So it is achieving
that right balance right across the board.
Q589 Chris Evans:
I can see time is running away with us, so I will try and be quite
short. I am quite interested in your submission on restorative
justice which I was looking at. Mr Thornhill, the Magistrates'
Association said: "We do have concerns in the way that restorative
justice is currently administered by the police. We believe that
this would be better delivered through the courts and the probation
service." You then go on to say: "Public opinion would
also need to be prepared for more restorative justice so there
was no backlash from those who would argue that it was 'too soft',
as some already do in respect of community sentences."
Councillor Khan, your Local Government Association
is very positive about restorative justice. You said: "A
restorative justice approach not only helps reduce crime by making
offenders aware of the consequence of their crimes, it also provides
reparation to the community, increases local understanding of
offenders thereby reducing the fear of crime, and builds confidence
in the criminal justice system." I am interested in how
you both arrived at those conclusions.
John Thornhill:
I certainly think some investigation discussions took place and
we have had further discussions in fact. Two of our Youth Committee
have been across to see restorative justice working in Northern
Ireland. We have also visited a number of police authorities where
restorative justice is taking place. We have discussed and engaged
with organisations that are involved in restorative justice and
it is quite interesting to note that some of those see restorative
justice in a different light from how the police deliver it. We
are, in principle, supportive of the idea of restorative justice
because we can see that for certain minor offences it has an important
role to play. In Northern Ireland and in some other countries
of course, it is part of the sentence of the court, whereas in
England and Wales at the moment it is not part of the sentence
of the court. So we would like to see some developments there.
We would certainly welcome the advent of more opportunities to
use restorative justice within the criminal justice system.
Q590 Chris Evans:
How do the police deal with restorative justice and why do you
particularly have concerns? Can you give us some examples of what
is concerning you particularly? That is what I want to tease out
a little bit.
John Thornhill:
It is about the whole issue of who is effectively sentencing,
if I can use that phrase in its broadest context, and it is ensuring
the separation of powers. We used to talk about out-of-court disposals
and in-court disposals, and we are now saying that perhaps we
should be talking about nonjudicial disposals and judicial
disposals. It may be a very fine distinction, but I think it is
important to have the judiciary involved in more issues, recognising
there is a place for out-of-court disposals and a place for the
police to deal with minor matters in the way in which they used
to over the years. But we do have concerns that, if we are starting
to use more and more out-of-court disposals, for instance, we
are widening the criminal net.
In terms of restorative justice, we see the concerns
that there may be pressures put on some of the victims or offenders
to deal with it expeditiously and quickly without thinking the
whole thing through. So, maybe, just that slight break with an
involvement of the judiciary might help for that to happen. I
am thinking of an example of a young lady in a shop trying on
a dress, who gets a telephone call to say her father has been
involved in a serious accident. She runs out of the shop, is picked
up and is told, "Take the £60 fixed penalty. Deal with
it by restorative justice very quickly. You will not hear any
more about it." But when she comes to apply for a teaching
job it comes back. I would suspect, and I am sure the defence
advocates in the room would argue, that the fourth limb of the
Feely and Ghosh test may not have been made out—permanently
intending to deprive. Therefore, if that matter had come to court,
it might well have been a not guilty verdict. It is those sorts
of issues. The danger is to deal with it quickly. We might deal
with it too quickly without picking up some of the broader issues
of what justice is being delivered here. But we are not against
restorative justice. We would like to see that as part of the
sentence within the courts.
Q591 Chris Evans:
I have to be very quick because time is running on now and we
have to be finished by 11.30 for the next group. If you would
just give your overview of restorative justice and how you have
arrived at that point, I would be grateful.
Mehboob Khan: We
can provide you with some evidence. We can send that on about
how this works. But, in essence, to have public confidence, the
public have to see that this isn't paid work being done for free.
This is people carrying out sentences for offences of which they
have been found guilty. In areas where we have neighbourhood justice
panels local people are involved as part of that so they can see
that justice is actually being done. One ask would be for local
authorities to have some representation on the local criminal
justice board, which would bring a lot of experience and knowledge
about how interventions are working currently. We are not members
of that board. There were discussions earlier on about how prisons
are not part of the system. If local authority officers or elected
members representing the community and all the knowledge and experience
we have with dealing with offenders were on those boards, then
we would have some influence on how appropriate sentences are
given.
Chair: Thank you, both
of you, for your very different and helpful evidence this morning.
We are really very grateful. We have some more witnesses. Thank
you.
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