11 June 2007
Queen Elizabeth II conference centre, London
Lord Falconer congratulated the Probation Service on reaching its centenary and making a real impact on the shape of our penal policy and the character of our society. He argued that the challenge now was to convince sentencers and the public of the effectiveness of community penalties, and so launching a programme of work called 'PriortyProbation' he asked the Probation Service to come up with ideas of how we can further promote the message that community penalties are tough, safe and effective.
Introduction
Good afternoon. It is a personal pleasure and a genuine honour for me to be here, and to be able to join in the Probation Services' centenary.
Today is a day for celebration of what has been achieved in those hundred years; joy that the service has reached this anniversary; and optimism about the place the probation service has in the justice system and what it will achieve in the years, decades, and centuries to come.
100 years is a significant landmark. All who work or have worked in the probation service have much to be proud of.
Those hundred years have been years of consistent service to the nation.
In preparing for this speech I was drawn to a period at the beginning of your history when I noted you were unpopular both with the Home Office, and the Howard League for penal reform. I'm not sure what lesson we should take from that going forward.
The Probation Service has made a real impact on the shape of our penal policy, and in consequence, on the character of our society.
It is a public service driven by a determination to reduce re-offending. It has an unwavering commitment to serving the public. The challenge for the service, and each individual probation officer is to turn the offender into a citizen. It is not easy.
Throughout its history I believe the service exhibits two particular characteristics.
First realism. You do know what can be achieved. That it takes time. That it often involves setbacks. That sometimes it involves failure. Addictions don't often stop over-night. There will be relapses. Some offenders never change. But some do.
Second sticking it out. The job requires being prepared to stick it out for the long haul.
With the offender.
And often with the wider public as well.
My two months involvement in these hundred years has taught me the pressure is always to join the cynics' team give it up, it will make no difference. Often it won't. And we won't compromise on public safety. But sometimes it does. It usually takes time. And we all benefit.
Over these last hundred years where we have reduced re-offending and increased public protection in the community it is very often because you are realists and you stick it out.
Thank you for what you do. You have my trust, my admiration and my support.
The challenge ahead
The record of the past makes me optimistic for the future. I believe we must make the most of the opportunity the Ministry of Justice presents, and establish offender management as the clear principle. Delivering the most effective community penalties we can in which the community have confidence.
We must build on the foundations we have. The relationship between those who deliver Probation Services and Central Government should be challenging.
But I believe it must have trust as its foundation.
I as you know have visited many probation areas since the 29th March. You will know how impressed I have been by what I have seen. You will also know there is a sense within the service of endless structural change, and policy shifts. A fear as well within the Service, that these are driven too often by newspaper headlines, and a worry that the constant reference to accountability will become a cover for deadening centralisation, increasingly out of touch with the daily reality of the job, and the particular needs of the locality.
If that sense persists then trust will be lost and progress will fail. Because there is no progress unless it engages those who work in the service on the front line.
There will be tensions. Trust will only be there if the service is convinced that the centre is driven by the same good motives that have driven this service over the last hundred years.
It is for me the most urgent, and the only effective way to deliver for the public to establish and maintain that trust with the Probation Service.
This can only be achieved if there is genuine empowerment of the probation service.
My vision is for a service with the autonomy and the flexibility to make its own decisions about the best delivery of the services, which drives change for itself in partnership with others, and does not have change done to it. A probation service which thrives by being given a renewed opportunity to shape its own future direction.
My vision is for a Probation Service which is committed to reducing re-offending and protecting the public. A Probation Service that is in the business of rehabilitating those sentenced to custody and delivering alternatives to custody. A Service that is making the best possible use of community penalties. That is our duty to the public.
So today I want to talk about what we can achieve together, working in partnership. Could I speak first about commissioning, then community penalties, and then a way of taking this new relationship forward?
Commissioning
First, commissioning. Commissioning will give much greater flexibility to the local area to deliver what works. At its heart, commissioning means identifying what is needed, and then getting it. That's how offender managers, based in probation areas working increasingly closely with prisons can best reduce re-offending.
They need to be able to draw on the interventions and services that will best help rehabilitate their offenders. Commissioning will mean these can be delivered in-house, or by the right combination of voluntary, charitable, public and private providers, on the occasions where these can provide better value.
In most cases commissioning is something for Probation to do for yourselves, deciding locally on the best value way to secure what is needed. Sometimes it will be done regionally or nationally, where economies of scale can be achieved at these levels, but I see this as the exception rather than the rule.
Overall I want probation to have more flexibility to determine how best to achieve the objectives of reducing re-offending and protecting the public. That is the key idea behind probation trusts. Regional offender managers will only intervene in the decisions which the local probation trust is making where performance is patently off track and needs to be addressed.
I emphasise it is a system which, like today, has at its heart a locally based service making the main decisions about how to deliver its services.
Work of the Probation Service
Maybe we have spent too much time on structures over the last few years. We should reap the benefit of those changes but our focus needs to be on our mainstream business. That is where the greatest challenges are.
And that is where I am as keen as I can be to demonstrate my commitment to local empowerment.
Could I say something about the service and sentencing policy first?
The work of the service is to manage offenders in a way which reduces re-offending, and provides public protection. The delivery of these goals does not involve, in any sense, asserting that one generic type of sentence is better than another.
Successful sentencing depends on ensuring the right sentence is used for the right case. And just as important that there is public confidence and understanding in the sentences the courts are passing.
Prisons and fines are well-understood. There is no controversy about what these sentences do. They punish, though in the case of prison they may also have a strong rehabilitative element as well.
Community penalties take different forms, and have different purposes.
Unpaid work is easily understood though it is not always understood that a particular community penalty involves unpaid work.
Surveillance and supervision orders have different purposes in mind and operate in a different way from, say a drug testing and treatment order.
In determining how we use our resources and it is for probation boards, subsequently trusts, who do and will make the main resource decisions we have to focus on what the right mix should be. And in relation to each part of the mix how best to ensure that we have the confidence of the sentencers and the public.
For sentencers, they must make the choices. They will inevitably be influenced by their views of the effectiveness of individual community penalties.
Prison is the right place for violent dangerous offenders, or for those who have committed an offence which is so serious that prison is the only alternative. And often for the offender where everything short of prison has been tried, and there is no alternative if respect in the system is to be maintained.
Where the court are thinking of passing a prison sentence if it is for less than 12 months they should consider whether a community penalty would better reduce re-offending and as a result be a more appropriate penalty. The offender in the community subject to intensive surveillance and supervision for 12 months, may well re-offend a lot less than the offender who is sentenced to six months in prison, and who is out without any supervision in not more than three months. And the cost to the taxpayer is dramatically less for the community penalty.
Those who are not dangerous who are sent to prison are being sent to prison for considerably longer than previously. We need to address whether that is effective sentencing. The sentencing guidelines council have been asked to look at that issue as well as the 12 months and under custodial sentences.
As I hope I have indicated community penalties can cover a range of purposes. They can punish, rehabilitate, and address offending behaviour patterns or causes. Offenders who are given community penalties re-offend 20% less than those given short custodial sentences.
It is worth giving three examples of the range.
First, Paul, whose sentence of unpaid work was building an amphitheatre in a school field in Devon. A project that required moving 100 tonnes of sub and top soil before shifting heavy stones to form 3 walls, all 88 metres long. And all done in harsh, outdoor wintry conditions. Describing the punishment Paul said 'despite being hard going, my punishment has been very positive I really believe it saved my life'.
Second, Lisa in Teeside who was given a supervision requirement. A punishment which in her words ' was really hard. Not being able to do what I wanted, when I wanted made me realise what freedom I used to have. And I felt so ashamed telling my friends that I couldn't be somewhere at a certain time because I had to check in with probation. I definitively won't want to be put on one of those again. It took my life away from me.'
And finally Emma, from London. Emma was a drug addict who had already served a number of custodial and community sentences. Being sentenced for her latest offence Emma was given a two-year community sentence which involved compulsory drug treatment and testing. She responded well to her treatment and after a short period her drug use stopped altogether. The Probation Service helped her achieve a basic skills certificate in adult literacy and encouraged her to become involved in voluntary work. She has now enrolled on a course at a further education college and, crucially, she has been drug and offence free ever since.
Community penalties work. We can see that they do and we must show others that they do. This is the message we must get out and promote, to sentencers and to the public. They are tough, they are safe and they are effective. They won't work in every case but they are a viable and effective alternative to short term custody.
Each of these penalties used different methods. Each of them has a different purpose. But they all work at the same level as prison always works. Paul worked hard for no pay. Lisa had her freedoms curtailed. Emma had to be tested regularly and attend a drug treatment course. The prisoner has his freedom removed. Being able to explain what the punishment involves is important. And it is cheaper than prison. It has to be used in the right case.
We must be prepared to innovate and commission to get the most effective interventions.
Convincing sentencers
The importance of properly used community sentences is clear. We must ensure their development and delivery focuses on what they can do to reduce re-offending, that they can always be explained, and that the courts and the public have confidence in them.
How do we persuade sentencers to use them in the right case?
The challenge to the probation service
And more than that, how do we ensure that the right community penalties are being used and that our resources are concentrated on the right groups? Do we need to do more with drug offenders? With prolific priority offenders? Are we missing a trick on unpaid work?
Challenging questions. Only a few of many. But questions I am sure some of you here already have answers to, or thoughts on. And it is right that you do. You and your colleagues are the best people to know. You do this day in day out. You are on the frontline, not me. You see what works. And you also see what doesn't work. You probably have a thousand and one ideas of what we can do to improve community penalties both in their application and their promotion. We, me and you, have a collective desire to see community penalties used more. We know they are effective and we want to show people they are. How do we do that?
My challenge to you this afternoon is, you tell me? If you have ideas and solutions then I am keen to hear them. You tell me what we should do?
I have been told that traditionally, the Probation Service has always had change done to it. Roger Hill, has told me he doesn't think the Probation Service has ever been asked 'how would you solve this', 'what would you do?' Change has invariably been dictated top down. Well now is your chance to instigate it.
This is a challenge which gives you a great deal of freedom, but one that comes with responsibility. I want to see change, I want to give the public confidence, I want to see sentencers using community penalties as we believe they should be.
I want you to tell me how we do it because you deliver the service, and because you are on the front line.
I want the Probation Service to be the best it can possibly be. My job is to challenge it to be so. I want our justice system to be the best it can be and so I will be relentless in trying to achieve that.
We can only achieve it together. In partnership, working alongside each other.
And so I have asked Roger to put together and chair a group who will meet and will come up with suggestions as to how we can get the best out of community penalties, and how we can get sentencers to use them as they are intended to be used. It is a group from which I expect great things from.
'PriorityProbation' as I have termed it, is about you the Probation Service, and me the Secretary of State for Justice, sitting around a table and you telling me what the priorities are if we are to really deliver effective alternative punishments. It is about me listening to you and giving the political push to the ideas you tell me will work. It about making probation a priority.
It is intentionally proposed to be a small group in order that it gets things done. But it is a representative group for all of you, critically including operational staff. It is your group, your input is the essence of it. Roger will be putting the group together a mixture of probation chiefs, chairs and offender managers, all with varied experience, working at different levels in the service.
They will meet regularly with David Hanson, the Minister of State and myself, and I have asked Roger to arrange the first meeting before the end of the month. I am expecting the group to have produced a report by September. A report which is practical and pragmatic and which tells me what you, the Probation Service, believe you can do. What you think is achievable and what you think will bring even greater benefits for the public we serve. This is, and I make this clear, an invitation for you to tell me what the Probation Service can do to ensure it is delivering the best service possible for the public. What the Probation Service itself - from the bottom to the top thinks should be done.
I am also going to ask this group to consider two other things which I know are of concern to you currently close working with other agencies and bureaucracy. Let me just very briefly expand on those two points.
Firstly - close working with other agencies the probation service cannot increase confidence in community penalties on its own. It needs to continue to work with other agencies to deliver its quality service. And perhaps most particularly with the police. Delivering a seamless service alongside the police and other agencies, a service which gives confidence to sentencers and the public is vital if we are to make progress with community penalties.
There is positive evidence of progress with PPO and MAPPA cases so the obvious question is how can we build upon and extend that experience? How we do this effectively is something I am keen to get your thoughts on. You are the people interacting with other agencies on a daily basis and you are in an ideal position to suggest new and innovative ways to work with the courts, the prisons and with local authorities. To move forward, we need your ideas.
Bureaucracy
And secondly - bureaucracy. As I have met many of you I have been told that you find the amount of paper work required can often mean you spend less time on the front line than you like. It is a view which seems common right across the Criminal Justice System. As I have spoken with you, I have been struck by the wide range of ideas that people have to cut the level of bureaucracy, all varied and all different, but all with the same purpose of giving more freedom in order to increase the time available to spend with offenders. I have heard ideas ranging from; increased use of digital technology to record information; to new systems to reduce duplication of data entry; to increased use of proportionate reporting methods. Many of these ideas seem to me to be focused on allowing probation staff to use their common sense, their judgement and their experience in deciding what assessment and level of detail is necessary. All without compromising public safety.
But I do not know what is possible and I do not want to suggest what I think are the solutions. You know better than I what can be achieved, what will work, and what will not. So my challenge to the Probation Service is use this group too suggest what you think should be done?
Conclusion
Outmoded ideas of punishment do not help reduce re-offending. Community penalties have proved their efficacy, now we need to improve their use. And I want your help to do that.
You do a vital work, congratulations on reaching your first hundred years. We have much success to build on and move forward with. Now is your chance to shape that future.
Thank you