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What went wrong with community sentences?
Crest Advisory analyses the decline & fall of community sentences with Magistrates' lack of information and confidence in them a key problem, exacerbated by TR.

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The rise and fall of community sentences

Last week (25 April 2017), Crest Advisory published a provocatively titled report:

Where did it all go wrong? A study into the use of community sentences in England and Wales

This is a high quality report, akin to a comprehensive academic research study, complete with a survey of magistrates, detailed data mining and clear analysis. It makes it clear that the drop in the use of community sentences for women which I recently blogged about is simply part of a much bigger trend which applies equally to offenders of all genders.

If you work in probation, I strongly recommend investing time in reading the report.

The report

The report sets the context by saying that with our overcrowded, unsafe and expensive prison system, we would expect increased use of community sentences:

The notion that community sentences can be a more effective, cheaper alternative to prison is supported by a strong body of evidence. At their best, sentences served in the community can offer a powerful tool for addressing the root causes of offending behaviour, reducing the rate at which an offender reoffends and thus lowering demand on the system overall.

Yet despite their obvious potential, community sentences are being used less than at any point over the last 15 years.

The report is a systematic attempt in over a decade to understand what lies behind this phenomenon and reveals some of the reasons for this loss of confidence.

Key trends in community sentences

The report presents a detailed picture of what has been happening to community sentences in the last 10 years:

  • The number of community orders has essentially halved over the past decade, with an increasingly sharp decline from 2011 onwards, whilst custody and fines have remained relatively stable. The rising use of suspended sentence orders has not offset
    this trend.
  • The use of community sentences has declined fastest for theft and drugs offences.
  • There appears to be little difference between the makeup of offenders on COs and SSOs, based on their harm and reoffending risk evaluations.
  • Unpaid work is typically the most common requirement commenced under a community sentence, and since its introduction in 2015, the RAR has become the second most common (for the current problems with RAR, see the probation inspectorate report here)
  • Delays are common between sentencing and commencing a requirement, and vary between regions and type of requirement
  • The majority (70%) of offenders undertaking a community sentence go on to complete their sentence, however:
    • 30% of community sentences fail for the committal of an additional offence, or for breach of sentence stipulations
    • reoffending rates have remained relatively flat over the past decade and vary between disposals: custody stands at 45% (rising to 60% for short custodial sentences); COs at 35%; and SSOs at 31% (which has decreased from 37% a decade ago)
    • reoffending performance varies between CRCs, with interim reoffending rates ranging from 26% to 43% for community sentences
    • prolific offenders (those with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions) make up an increasing proportion of those sentenced; for community the proportion has risen from 15% in 2005 to 25% in 2015.
    • 75% of offenders sentenced to immediate custody for an indictable offence in 2014 had previously served at least 1 community sentence

Key findings

The report argues that community sentences:

  • are implemented in a way that bears little resemblance to the evidence of what works: they are neither intensive, swift, nor punitive (the one point on which I differ from the Crest analysis is their interpretation of the evidence base that community sentences need to be punitive to be effective) enough to act as a proper deterrent. Most importantly, offenders are not held properly to account for complying with their sentence;
  • are failing to transform lives, acting as little more than a stepping stone on the path to prison: 35% of those sentenced to custody have received at least five previous community sentences;
  • have lost the confidence of magistrates: a new survey of magistrates commissioned for this report reveals that over a third of magistrates (37%) are not confident that community sentences are an effective alternative to custody, and two thirds (65%) are not confident that community sentences reduce crime. As one magistrate we interviewed put it: “It may be wonderful what is going on but we want to know what’s going on”.

Conclusions

The report comes to five main conclusions:

  1. The primary driver of declining confidence in community sentences, which relates to long term structural issues to do with the operation of the CJS.
  2. In particular, the lack of information accessed by magistrates (pre- and post-sentence) and the declining quality of advice pre-sentencing from probation seem to have been key factors.
  3. It is possible that the number of community sentences may have fallen due to a change in the cohort of offenders, in particular, with a rise in prolific offenders, but this is unlikely to have been the primary driver of changes in sentencing behaviour.
  4. These trends pre-date recent policy changes, such as TR, though TR is likely to exacerbate the problems. In particular, the split between CRCs and the NPS, and the structure of CRC contracts is in all likelihood going to reduce confidence even further.
  5. Longer term, the biggest barrier to confidence is likely to be the continuing evidence (and perception) of low effectiveness.

Recommendations

The report recommends eleven policy changes, to do with sentencing reform, the role of magistrates, the role of probation and justice devolution:

  1. A ‘Project Hope’ for England and Wales
  2. Greater flexibility for magistrates to administer innovative punishments tailored to the offender/offence
  3. Amend sentencing guidelines to introduce a presumption of intensive community orders for young adult offenders facing custodial sentences of 12 months or less in magistrates’ courts
  4. Amend sentencing guidelines to remove the assumption that suspended sentence orders are less onerous than community orders
  5. Extend the power to undertake regular court reviews for prolific offenders serving short custodial sentences and/or community orders to all magistrates’ courts
  6. Enhance magistrates’ training to improve their understanding of community sentences
  7. Improve the quality of pre-sentencing advice
  8. Provide feedback about the outcome of sentences to magistrates
  9. Support greater transparency of community sentences, particularly the nature of unpaid work
  10. Require a new target to ensure that the NPS allocates cases to the CRC on the same day as the sentencing, and that requirements are commenced the week afterwards (or at least no later than a month after sentencing for specialist requirements)
  11. Enable PCCs and mayors to co-commission offender management services locally

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6 Responses

  1. Surely CO’s and SSO’s can be served in tandem on any successful conviction. I could be mistaken, but if so wouldn’t this skew the data?

  2. I think you are trying to fix something that is beyond fixing and like the proverbial Irishman if I were you I wouldn’t start from here.Since the UK has been employing a ‘custody works’ policy since the early 1990s (‘Prison Works’ Michael Howard 1993, Theresa May 2010)that has more than doubled the prison population other factors such as parole violations and recall have also made their contribution to this (Maruna 2004). Stricter supervision, increased conditions, non discretional enforcement, hardening agency policy have all contributed to what is now the fastest growing part of the prison population (Spurr 2016). Parole which exists to provide custodial incentives during sentence and supervised re-integration at the end of sentence has been dominated by an ‘overabundance of caution’ amidst an ever populist and vigilant media and the potential visitation of a SFO inquiry. The complexity of parole conditions together with the primacy of risk and dangerousness within a managerialist target based culture have all contributed to this increase of recalls and the concomitant expansion of the prison estate.
    Compared to the early 1980s when Lord Lane said that a 240 hour community service order was the equivalent of a 12 month sentence we have had massive judicial inflation where you can potentially get every disposal on the book on your first appearance.
    The NHS has a finite budget and the courts should also. At the moment there are no consequences for this vengeful sentencing that has produced the highest prison population in Europe and in living UK memory

    1. I assume you do t live in a crime ridden estate where you get robbed, burgled and have your property damaged?
      You see the same names over and over and over again in the court reports until after several “this is your last chance” chats they get a custodial.
      And then only after blaming everyone else and some sob story about why they are such a disgusting disgrace and burden.

      Liberals who think they are poor unfortunates should be made to have them live with them as part of these completely pointless community orders which do not bring justice to the victims.

  3. We live in a ‘post-liberal’ society where the Daily Mail rules supreme, liberal Toryism has been eliminated, and I see no reason why use of custody should decline other than its being so expensive (which seems to have lead to the upward trend in prison numbers being halted in the USA). But look at Truss’s speech earlier this year, she said that doubling prison numbers was a great moral achievement, that she would never work to bring use of custody down and is embarking on yet another massive prison building programme, money no object.

    As in so many ways, the UK is the new Texas.

    1. If only the uk was the new Texas!

      We might execute child murders and not think we can cure their sickness.

  4. Community orders are under-resourced and privatisation in England has removed more resources from interventions. There is no quick fix today for mending the chaos we created in children’s lives yesterday. However, where community orders are linked with a proper pathway to realistic employment, then they provide some hope. Comparing prison outcomes to community outcomes is bad science. It’s like comparing a Morris Minor to a Rolls Royce.

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