Cutting crime: better community sentences Contents

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Chapter 1: Introduction

About community sentences

1.Over one million people are sentenced in the criminal courts in England and Wales every year.4 For every individual sentenced there are many people touched in some way—especially victims and witnesses of crime, their families, and the families of offenders. Confidence in the criminal justice system matters for society as a whole.

2.It is for the independent Judiciary to make decisions on individual cases and for the independent Sentencing Council to set sentencing guidelines. The wider framework, however, is a matter for the Government and, ultimately, for Parliament, which sets maximum sentences for individual offences and established five statutory factors that the Judiciary must consider when making decisions (see Box 1). Resources are set by the Government.
Rt. Hon. Damian Hinds MP, then Minister of State for Prisons and Probation, told us that he understood his constitutional role as making “very good, high-quality” sentencing options available to the Judiciary.5

Box 1: The five aims of sentencing

When sentencing an offender (aged 18 or over), courts are required to consider the following factors set out in section 57(2) of the Sentencing Act 2020: the punishment of offenders; the reduction of crime (including its reduction by deterrence); the reform and rehabilitation of offenders; the protection of the public; and the reparation by offenders to persons affected by their offences.6

3.Community orders are one of the sentencing options available to Magistrates’ Courts and Crown Courts. A community order sets out one or more requirements, selected from a statutory list, that a convicted offender must fulfil in the community (see Box 2).7

4.Community sentences are distinct from custodial sentences, which can be immediate or suspended. For the purpose of this report, and unless otherwise stated, the term ‘community sentences’ is used to refer to community orders only. It does not refer to suspended custodial sentences, even if they are served in the community through the fulfilment of requirements akin to those of a community order. The other two non-custodial sentencing options are fines and (absolute or conditional) discharges, where the sentence is added to the offender’s criminal record, but the offender is released from court without any further action.8

5.Once a community order has been served by a Court, the Probation Service leads on its delivery. The Probation Service is an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice, in charge of supervising all offenders in the community, including those serving community sentences. The Probation Service forms part of HM Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) and is organised around 12 regions, themselves divided into ‘Probation Delivery Units’. In 2021/22, the Probation Service spent a total of £1,054 million.9

Box 2: List of requirements that can be attached to a community order

Section 201 of the Sentencing Act 2020 lists the requirements that can be attached to a community order served to an adult offender: Unpaid work requirement Rehabilitation activity requirement Programme requirement Prohibited activity requirement Curfew requirement Exclusion requirement Residence requirement Foreign travel prohibition requirement Mental health treatment requirement Drug rehabilitation requirement Drug testing requirement Alcohol treatment requirement Alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement Attendance centre requirement Electronic compliance monitoring requirement Electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement Restrictions apply to the use of some of these requirements. Some relate to the consent of the offender (see paragraph 240), while section 207 of the Sentencing Act 2020 provides for restrictions related to the date certain pieces of legislation came into force, the age of the offender, or the combination of requirements.10

About our inquiry

6.We decided to undertake an inquiry because we were struck by the considerable decline in the use of community orders in recent years. We believe that community sentences merit attention in their own right for the reasons set out in this report, as well as being an essential tool in managing the prison population.

7.In May 2023, we launched our call for evidence, which was disseminated widely to interested stakeholders.11 We wanted to consider practical aspects related to the use and delivery of community sentences. We were interested to assess trends in their use and to identify both barriers to their use and best practice in their delivery. While we decided to focus on community orders specifically, we acknowledged that considerations related to restorative justice and other sentences served in the community may occasionally be of relevance to our assessment of community orders. Our inquiry related to adult offenders only, although we welcomed insights gleaned from the experience of the youth justice system.

8.Over the course of our inquiry, we held nine evidence sessions and spoke to a total of 20 witnesses; we also received over 40 written submissions. We thank everyone who contributed, particularly the former offenders who shared their experience of the system and of serving community sentences. While formal evidence from sentencers with current ‘on the ground’ experience was unfortunately not available, members of the Committee made an informal visit to Westminster Magistrates’ Court in September. The Committee had the opportunity to speak to the then Minister of State for Prisons and Probation, Rt. Hon. Damian Hinds MP, on 19 September 2023, and also to discuss issues relevant to our inquiry with the Lord Chancellor,
Rt. Hon. Alex Chalk KC MP, when we met him on 25 October 2023. We are grateful to them and to the officials who supported them.

9.This inquiry relates to community sentences in England and Wales. We nevertheless found it valuable to learn about related developments in Northern Ireland and Scotland. We also took evidence about experience in other countries, including Ireland and the USA (New York). We refer to insights from all these jurisdictions throughout this report.

10.Our Specialist Adviser for this inquiry was Dr Gemma Birkett, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Department of Sociology and Criminology, at City, University of London. We would like to thank her for her invaluable support and advice throughout the inquiry. We are also grateful to academics who spoke to the Committee before we launched the inquiry, and to organisations and stakeholders who helped us disseminate the call for evidence.

11.Our inquiry is timely. Prisons have reached their operational capacity (see section starting on paragraph 22 on “prison capacity”), and community sentences are considered part of the answer. Community sentences are also at the heart of three ‘intensive supervision courts’, a version of problem-solving courts but focused on a particular challenge (substance misuse or female offenders), launched in June 2023 (see section on “intensive supervision courts”, paragraphs 39–47). The Sentencing Council is reviewing its “imposition guidelines” that guide the imposition of community sentences—we will be submitting this report in response to its consultation which is part of the review.12 The Ministry of Justice is “undertaking extensive evaluation of the existing Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS)” because the majority of contracts by which the Ministry of Justice commissioned rehabilitative services from private and third-sector organisations are due to be renewed in spring 2024 or spring 2025.13 NAPO, the trade union and professional association for probation and family court staff, has called for “a fully independent review of the probation service”14—a call that was echoed by Justin Russell, as he was coming to the end of his appointment as Chief Inspector of Probation.15 The King’s Speech also contains relevant announcements, particularly the introduction in a new Sentencing Bill of a presumption that custodial sentences of 12 months or fewer should be suspended.16

12.If community sentences are to be used more extensively to fill a gap in the system, it is all the more important to step back and look at them in the round, to make sure they are as effective as they can be. It is equally important to consider whether the Probation Service and its delivery partners are sufficiently resourced to cope with increased demand.

13.We elaborate on some of these elements of context in Chapter 2, demonstrating that community orders are a key sentencing option. In Chapter 3, we explore why community orders are effective at reducing reoffending by looking at the various ways in which they can be tailored to individual circumstances. Chapter 4 looks at best practices that could be scaled up to maximise the efficiency of community sentences, while Chapter 5 explores some of the challenges that the Probation Service is facing.

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