Rehabilitation Activity Requirements
Yesterday (8 May 2025), the MoJ published a process evaluation of the Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR) which was commissioned specifically to inform any decisions about community sentences taken in the widely anticipated Sentencing Review. The RAR was introduced under the Offender Rehabilitation Act (2014), replacing both the Supervision Requirement and the Activity Requirement from the menu of options that could form part of a Community Order (CO) or Suspended Sentence Order (SSO).
The process evaluation was undertaken to explore perceptions of how the RAR is implemented to identify opportunities for improvement. It involved interviews and focus groups across a number of regions with 25 probation practitioners, 12 magistrates, and 24 people on probation. Interestingly, the views of Commissioned Rehabilitative Service (CRS) providers – who deliver many RARs – are not included in this report but will be captured in a separate process evaluation, due to be published later this year.
The research team were Treena Bhakta, Eleanor Lacy and Lydia Baxter.
Understanding and perceptions of the RAR
The concept of the RAR was broadly supported by probation staff and magistrates. However, due to resource constraints, both probation staff and people on probation felt it was not achieving its full its potential.
People on probation had limited understanding of the RAR, in terms of what it involves, whether they had been sentenced to it as part of their order, and whether they had completed their RAR days during their order.
Sentencing
Magistrates reported typically sentencing the RAR if it was recommended by probation court staff in Pre-sentence Reports (PSRs).
Overall, magistrates were confident in the quality of PSRs and would follow the advice of probation. However, in some cases magistrates would add RAR days to sentences to ’roundup’ the number suggested by probation, particularly where they felt the PSR recommendation had been too lenient. Probation staff interviewed felt that often too many RAR days were sentenced.
Probation staff and magistrates felt that the RAR was, in some cases, sentenced as a ‘catch all’. Instances were reported where an individual in court presented no rehabilitative need, but the RAR was still sentenced, even if it was not recommended in the PSR.
Delivery
Probation staff had mixed views regarding the quality of toolkits and CRS on offer under the RAR. In some regions staff were discouraged from delivering ‘off-menu’ RAR activities.
Key enablers to RAR delivery included positive relationships between staff and people on probation, positive engagement from people on probation, and practitioner interpersonal skills and experience in supporting needs.
Barriers to delivering the RAR included needing to prioritise crisis management over RAR delivery, time constraints for probation staff, region-specific challenges (such as travel to and from rural areas), CRS waiting lists, and whether the person on probation had additional commitments (such as employment).
Recording the RAR was reported to be time-consuming, in some cases requiring duplicate entries. Inconsistent recording practices between staff and top-down pressures to meet regional targets were also highlighted.
Experiences of the RAR for people on probation were varied and dependent on their risk level and the activities available to them.
Individual needs
The RAR was not felt to be suitable for everyone, especially those described as having ‘chaotic lifestyles’. Probation practitioners reported that neurodiverse people on probation experienced several barriers to engaging with the RAR, particularly those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Both staff and people on probation felt that practitioners were not adequately trained to support those experiencing mental health issues using the RAR. Probation staff expressed frustration that some mental health services could not be recorded as RAR activities.
Language barriers were felt to be an obstacle to engaging in RAR activities, and staff outlined difficulties of using interpretation services in some cases.
Recommendations
The research team make a number of recommendations including:
- Better information and training for sentencers about the use of RAR.
- Probation staff need to explain RARs better to people on probation; specifically what the RAR is, how it is different to supervision, what constitutes a ‘RAR day’, and the reason for the number of days issued at the point of sentencing.
- Probation staff should tailor RAR activities to meet the specific needs and unique characteristics of people on probation, including young adults, women, transgender people on probation, GRT populations, individuals with disabilities, neurodiverse people, non-native English speakers, and those with mental health needs.
- Some toolkit activities (like wordsearches) need to be reviewed and amended to ensure that they are relevant in supporting rehabilitation.
- To improve recording consistency, existing guidance should be clearer and easy to locate for probation staff, as most reported being unaware of it. The recording process should be made more efficient to save staff time and streamlined to avoid duplication.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
