Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that non-custodial sentences command public and judicial confidence by ensuring that, when offenders undertake such interventions, they are demanding, well organised, purposeful, and with the clear intention of reducing recidivism.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government is committed to the effective delivery of non-custodial sentences, and it is important that both judges and the public have confidence in the delivery of these sentences.
Courts have the power to impose a range of requirements to sentences served in the community. All community orders must have a compulsory punitive element to ensure that offenders are punished for their crime, and to deter further reoffending. For example, Unpaid Work (UPW) ensures offenders are making visible reparations for their crimes, such as cleaning graffiti. We have invested up to £93m in Community Payback over a three-year period to boost delivery of UPW hours. We have also relaunched the UPW nominations website on GOV.UK to make it easier and more accessible for the public to have a say in how and where UPW hours should be used.
Electronic monitoring is a well-established tool available to courts and probation staff to strengthen offender management in the community. We are increasing the number of defendants and offenders that can be tagged at any one time to 25,000 by March 2025.
Community Sentence Treatment Requirements (CSTRs) can also be imposed as part of a community sentence for offenders with mental health, drug or alcohol issues, offering a robust alternative to custody which addresses the root causes of offending. We have recruited Health and Justice Partnership Coordinators across all probation regions to ensure strong links between probation and healthcare to support these requirements.
Public confidence is maintained by ensuring our staff are equipped with the right tools so that they can make the most of their expertise and judgement. We have increased funding for the Probation Service by an additional £155m a year to recruit record levels of staff, so that we can bring down caseloads, and deliver better and more consistent supervision of offenders in the community.
We recognise the importance of ensuring the public is properly informed about sentencing as a whole and that the public has access to a range of information to enable this. We are also building and maintaining the confidence of the judiciary by improving arrangements to increase understanding and transparency in probation delivery at national, regional and local levels.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they intend to take in response to the findings of the His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation's Annual Report 2022/2023.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice fully recognises the challenges raised by the Chief Inspector in his annual report and my Right Honourable Friend, the Prisons and Probation Minister will respond to him in full. We are committed to addressing the issues he outlines, most vitally around staffing levels and the need to improve the management of risk. We have injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year to deliver more robust supervision, reduce caseloads and recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safe. The unified Probation Service is delivering greater consistency in supervision and we are already giving local leaders greater decision-making powers so they can better address the issues that are unique to their local area.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the report by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation Annual Report 2022: Serious Further Offences, published on 29 September, what steps they will take to prevent people under probation supervision from committing serious sexual or violent offences.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Serious further offences are rare. Fewer than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are charged with a serious further offence, but we know that each offence will have a devastating impact on the victims and their families. We carry out a thorough review into each one to identify whether our practice needs to change for the better management of future cases.
Risk cannot be eliminated entirely. However, all offenders managed in the community on licence are subject to strict conditions, to enable the Probation Service to manage their risk effectively. Offenders who breach their licence conditions so as to exhibit increased risk are liable to be recalled to custody. Known sexual and violent offenders are managed under the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). MAPPA are a statutory framework, in which the Police, Prison and Probation Services are required to work together to assess and manage offenders’ risks.
Efficient sharing of information between Police and Probation is key to keeping people safe. We have assigned £1.5 million per year to fund staff directly to access police domestic abuse information and a further £4 million to work with Children’s Services to access safeguarding information. In the 2021 Spending Review, we made permanent the additional £155 million per year for the new unified Probation Service that has been invested since 2020/21. This has helped us recruit a record-breaking 1007 trainee probation officers in 2020/21 and 1518 in 2021/22, with a further 1500 planned for 2022/23.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by the Prison Reform Trust Prison: the facts, published on 15 July; and what steps they will take in response.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Prison Reform Trust’s report raises a number of issues on which encouraging progress is being made, including work on the Prisons White Paper commitments.
This includes addressing retention of prison officers, and from October 2016 to March 2022, the number of band 3-5 prison officers increased by over 4,000. The most recent pay award provides at least a 4% base pay increase for all prison staff between Operational Support Grade and Governors (Bands 2-11).
We are creating a more resilient estate by both building additional prison places and undertaking refurbishments. This means investing £3.8 billion to deliver 20,000 additional, modern prison places including 2,000 temporary prison places across England and Wales. We are also investing £37 million to deliver improvements to prison safety, as well as investing a further £120 million in tackling substance misuse over the next three years to get more offenders engaged in treatment.
In March, we completed our £100 million Security Investment Programme which will enable us to tackle efforts to undermine prison stability.
There is also a range of projects addressing the diversity of needs among the prison population. This includes developing further support for neurodivergent prisoners by introducing additional staff roles or screening tools as well as developing a strategy supporting older prisoners.
We are continuing to work with Governors across the estate to ensure we are restoring services effectively whilst addressing any backlogs created during the pandemic.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to help the almost 500 children under the age of 18 held in youth detention to recover from the effects of being locked up for 23 hours per day over the past year.
Answered by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar
During the pandemic our priority has been to protect children in custody and the staff who support them. While the measures we have put in place have been successful in doing this, they have also necessarily, but regrettably, resulted in more limited regimes for young people, who now spend on average around five hours out of room each day in our under 18 Young Offender Institutions (YOIs).
Following the national restrictions announced in January, we have been able to maintain ‘face to face’ education and social visits in the youth estate (to take place virtually where possible). Average daily time out of room for children in YOIs has been largely increasing month on month since July and as of April, the daily average figure was the highest since March 2020, the start of the pandemic.
We have continued to support regular phone calls with additional free phone credit and access to video calls to help children keep in touch with their families. We have also continued ‘SECURE STAIRS’ - a trauma-informed framework of integrated care jointly led by the NHS and the Youth Custody Service (YCS). This provides the foundations as to how the YCS works with children and has adapted its approach to meet the needs of children at this time. We have regularly communicated with staff and children to ensure they are aware and understand the reasoning as to why such measures have had to occur, with HM Inspectorate of Prisons acknowledging positive communication from managers in their published scrutiny visit reports.
Given the uncertainty this period has presented, it has also been encouraging to see that levels of self-harm have fallen during the COVID-19 period, as reflected in latest published statistics (with the annualised rate of self-harming per 100 children and young people in the three months to December 2020 falling by 56% compared to the same period last year).
We are also carrying out work to ensure that lessons learned from the COVID-19 period are taken into account going forwards, and the YCS has commissioned a programme of research, in collaboration with academics, to evaluate and learn lessons from the impact and response to COVID-19 with the results used to further inform recovery planning.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of HM Probation Service.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
This Government is clear that probation services must improve. Our reforms will build on the changes introduced by Transforming Rehabilitation, while addressing the challenges in the system. We are simplifying responsibilities for public, private and voluntary sector probation partners. This means the National Probation Service (NPS) delivering robust supervision of all offenders, the private sector continuing to drive innovation in sentence delivery, and greater voluntary sector involvement in rehabilitation. Our changes will allow each sector to play to its strengths, deliver more investment in skilled probation staff, and ensure stronger supervision and support for offenders.
We will set out further detail on the operating model for the future system shortly.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they intend to take following critical reports by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Probation; and in particular, whether they intend to review the management of the prison service.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
The Government is committed to driving improvement throughout our prison and probation services and the role of HM Inspectorates of Prisons and Probation is critical in ensuring that there is an objective and challenging assessment of our criminal justice systems.
The Government therefore takes HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Probation reports seriously and created a new unit within Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) in August 2017 that is responsible for responding to their recommendations. We have also committed to publishing the action plan responses to HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) reports as a step towards greater transparency.
In addition, in October 2017, we introduced quarterly meetings between senior officials in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HMPPS and the Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMCIP) to explore how to make better use of HMIP recommendations.
We have further bolstered this commitment by the introduction of an ‘Urgent Notification’ (UN) process which allows HMCIP to directly notify the Secretary of State on matters of serious concern observed during inspections. The Secretary of State then has 28 days to issue a response.
New structures are being put in place from April 2018 to manage prisons which increases the number of Prison Groups meaning the Prison Group Directors have smaller commands in order to increase their oversight and create more operational grip.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they intend to take following critical reports by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Probation; and in particular, whether they intend to review the management of the probation service.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
We take the views of our independent inspectorates very seriously. We have established a team in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) to ensure that agreed recommendations are implemented swiftly and lessons are learned. Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and the National Probation Service (NPS) develop action plans in response to the inspection reports and HMPPS closely monitors their implementation.
We recognise that CRC performance needs to improve. We have already changed contracts so that payments to CRCs more accurately reflect the costs of delivering services to offenders, and we are discussing with providers further improvements we might make to services.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many community sentences were handed down in each year from 2008 to 2016; and what action they are taking in response to reported reductions in the number of such sentences handed down.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
The number of community sentences handed down in each year from 2008 to 2016 can be viewed in the attached table and also on the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/614418/cjs-outcomes-by-offence-tool-2016.xlsx Our data shows that between 2008 and 2016, the number of community orders issued fell by 46%. The fall in number of defendants appearing before court and changes in the mix of offences coming to court are key factors in overall decreased numbers of community sentences. The sentencing framework already gives courts the flexibility to select community order requirements which are a robust alternative to custody, and are tailored to address the specific issues that contribute to reoffending. We are committed to ensuring that community penalties are tough, effective and command the confidence of sentencers.
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Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their response to the proposal by the President of the Family Division that children should be dealt with in new "problem-solving" courts.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
The Ministry of Justice works with other departments to achieve the best outcomes for children both outside and within the court process. We are committed to ensuring that young people in the youth justice system receive the support they need to prevent them from committing further offences, with youth offending teams leading a multi-agency approach involving the courts, children’s services and other local services as appropriate. We recognise that problem-solving approaches can provide alternatives to a traditional court process, and may lead to improved outcomes for children and their families. We are supportive of such approaches in family proceedings, for example Family Drug and Alcohol Courts and the current piloting of settlement conferences.