Context

Community Sentence Treatment Requirements (CSTRs), comprising of Alcohol Treatment requirements (ATRs), Drug Rehabilitation Requirements (DRRs), and Mental Health Treatment Requirements (MHTRs), aim to address health needs of individuals on a community sentence and ultimately reduce reoffending.
While there is existing evidence indicating that in some circumstances alcohol, drug, and mental health treatment can have some positive effects on reoffending outcomes, research related to CSTRs is limited.

To expand the evidence, MoJ have been working in partnership with HMPPS, DHSC and NHS England to deliver a programme of analytical work to robustly assess the effectiveness of CSTRs, including the Better Outcomes Through Linked Data (BOLD) programme. The BOLD substance misuse team carried out a project exploring pathways between probation and drug and alcohol treatment services and are undertaking further analysis to continue the investigation of the potential attrition between sentencing and accessing treatment services.

The study used propensity score matching to create matched control groups of individuals who did not receive a CSTR but were as similar as possible to the groups of individuals who were sentenced to each type of CSTR, so any differences
detected between the groups were likely due to whether they received a CSTR sentence or not.

Community sentence completion

The data indicated 67% of ATR recipients, 41% of DRR recipients and 78% of MHTR recipients successfully completed their community sentence; that is they served their sentence term without early termination, for example due to a breach or further offence. Comparison cohorts were not available for this measure.

Reoffending – Alcohol Treatment Requirements

Reoffending rates were very similar between ATR recipients and recipients of a community sentence without a CSTR (42% and 40% respectively) and ATR recipients and short custodial sentence recipients (45% for both). There were no statistically significant differences, therefore this analysis did not provide evidence to indicate that receiving an ATR impacted the reoffending rate compared with recipients of community sentences without a CSTR or short custodial sentences.

People sentenced to ATRs did take more days on average to reoffend and reoffended less frequently.

Reoffending – Drug rehabilitation Requirements

For DRR recipients, there was no statistically significant difference between reoffending rates (63% for both DRR recipients and recipients of a community sentence without a CSTR, 64% for both DRR and short custodial sentence recipients), therefore this analysis did not indicate that receiving a DRR sentence impacted the reoffending rate compared with recipients on a community sentence without a CSTR or short custodial sentences.

Interestingly, those sentenced to DRRs offended more frequently than those on community sentences without a treatment requirement and took on average fewer days to reoffend. Those on DRRs reoffended less frequently than those given short custodial sentences but reoffended after fewer days.

Reoffending – Mental Health Treatment Requirements

This analysis indicates MHTR recipients had a lower reoffending rate than those on a community sentence without a CSTR by 8 percentage points (27% for MHTR recipients and 34% for recipients of a community sentence without a CSTR) and short custodial sentence recipients by 9 percentage points (27% MHTR recipients and 36% short custodial sentence recipients). These were statistically significant differences.

Conclusions

While the study found that being sentenced with an ATR, DRR, or MHTR had a positive effect on reoffending outcomes compared with short custodial sentences, the comparison between those getting community sentences with and without treatment requirements is more complex.

There are a number of possible reasons behind this:

• As CSTRs may involve closer and more intensive supervision from probation and clinical staff than those on a community sentence without a CSTR, some of which receive little formal oversight, it may be that reoffences are more likely to be detected for those sentenced with a CSTR. This may diminish the ability to detect reoffending benefits of CSTRs, if present.
• Delay in accessing or commencing treatment may also influence reoffending outcomes, as previous research has demonstrated engagement in drug and alcohol misuse treatment can reduce reoffending and an analysis of pathways into treatment for ATR and DRR recipients found there can be long delays before attending treatment.
• Only reoffending within one year of sentence (or release for short custodial sentence recipients) was included and the effects on offending behaviour of CSTR sentencing may take longer to become apparent. CSTR sentencing and treatment may also have impacts that were not measured in this analysis, for example on health, employability, and social support.

Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here