Community Sentences (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hamwee]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Justice and Home Affairs Committee Cutting crime: better community sentences (1st Report, Session 2023–24, HL Paper 27).

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I need to declare an interest. I am a trustee of the charity Safer London, whose focus is on keeping young people out of offending. We are in a rather different context from late June, when a debate was scheduled on a report by the House’s Select Committee that I chaired until earlier this year. I am particularly pleased that the new Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation—I hope I have that in the right order—is able to respond. On my behalf and, if I may, on behalf of the committee from which I have become time expired, I welcome him very warmly and with high expectations. So, no pressure, but he is now an old hand in this Chamber—after three days.

It is fair to say that the committee felt that it and the previous Justice Secretary were on the same wavelength. The then Government’s response to our report was published in February. It was careful and encouraging, but I hope the Minister will not feel constrained by it. We are, of course, interested in updates, new directions and the “how” as well as the “what”.

The committee’s starting point was, as the title indicates, cutting crime, particularly reoffending, and making better use of sentences served in the community. We looked at the benefits of community sentences to society—for instance, value for money, the intergenerational impact of imprisonment, and as a humane and practical response for the individual offender. The use of community sentences had dropped considerably, though there were and, no doubt, still are varying interpretations of the data.

During our work, prisons reached operational capacity. Then the Government announced proposals for revised early release, and we are all aware of the new Government’s plans. The issue is not just a matter of theoretical capacity and physical conditions, but scope for rehabilitative work. The committee well understood that the aims of sentencing include punishment. Under the 2020 Act, there are also the reduction of crime, the reform and rehabilitation of offenders, public protection and reparation.

There are positive reasons for the use of community sentences. One is that the offender can retain contact with his—most often it is a male, and I will refer to offenders as such—support networks, and his home and job, in both cases, if he has one. Imprisonment often means these are lost. The Minister may say something about employment and the importance of the stability of a home and a job, and, conversely, the much increased risks of reoffending without those stable bases. A previous Chief Inspector of Probation commented on HMPPS paying for accommodation for people coming out of prison. He said:

“What you need is to pay for the accommodation before they have had to go to prison in the first place”.


The issue of accommodation will only escalate. This is one of a number of areas that cry out for cross-departmental working.

Community sentences can and should be tailored to the individual, but that does not mean that they should not be robust and demanding. My noble friend Lord Beith, who was on the committee, commented that it is much easier to sit on your bunk all day—but actually, I think many of us would find that pretty demanding. One of the routes to a personalised sentence is through problem-solving courts and intensive-supervision courts, which work holistically. The Government’s response was a little cautious. The committee of course recognised that you cannot just randomly introduce new schemes, and we understand the value of pilots. Our recommendation was that there should be proper monitoring and evaluation of the pilots—because there are quite a lot—and that pilots should not be launched without a plan for evaluation. But we wanted to see best practice shared and scaled up: single pilots will not get us far nationally. Can the Minister update us on progress?

We were interested in incentivising offenders by deferring sentencing—positive behaviour before passing sentence means a less severe sentence—and a single judge following the progress of an offender, with regular reporting back to the judge during the sentence. I suppose that the courts backlog, alongside bulging prisons, means that this is a rather long-term aspiration. Integrated community sentence orders are being tried in Ireland, with incentives for engagement in rehabilitation and meaningful activities.

I certainly did not have the impression that every offender is resistant to orders incorporating treatment requirements, but I did get the impression that they are often not supported to be more than passive recipients of what is done to them. Treatment requirements to address drug and alcohol abuse and mental ill health need the offender’s consent. There seems to be a lack of understanding of this, and the processes do not help.

I was surprised that pre-sentence reports are not more widely used. This is partly a matter of capacity and of saving court time, and because the short-format reports are insufficiently detailed and there are varied views of their purpose, and some misconceptions—of course, these are all connected. One ex-offender saw PSRs as probation’s advice to the court on the sentence and was emphatic that the court did what probation told it. PSRs can give offenders the opportunity to consent to treatment and give sentencers confidence to impose treatment requirements. The MoJ was encouraging about increasing the number of PSRs. Again, can the Minister update us on the feasibility of adopting the new model?

The Probation Service is central, but it is an unattractive profession with unmanageable caseloads—I hesitated before writing that, but it was the evidence we received. We were well aware of the impact, still felt, of the reorganisation of a decade or so ago, and, if we were not, many witnesses would have made sure that we were. But we were clear that there should be no large-scale restructuring in the next few years. The reunification of 2021 must be allowed to settle down.

We got the logic of recruitment in waves so that experienced staff were in post to support the next intake. But the best may be the enemy of the good. Is the MoJ confident that there are so many potential recruits out there? The Secretary of State mentioned the recruitment drive. The current chief inspector applies the term “not sustainable” to the current position and suggested that capacity should be freed up by probation officers no longer being required to monitor people released after short sentences. If that is not directly relevant to community sentences, it is on the same page, and the Minister may wish to comment.

The previous chief inspector talked of the role having evolved to focus more on supervision and administration: more “assess, protect and change”—its current tag line—than “advise, assist and befriend” offenders, which is the statutory duty under the 1907 Act. The relationship between an offender and his probation officer is crucial. The ex-offenders—I stress “ex”—we met were impressive not only in demonstrating their successes but in explaining obstacles along the way. So were the treatment providers—the relationship with them is also central.

Smaller providers feel squeezed out by big national organisations and excluded by the complex commissioning process. This must be very recognisable to anyone who has dealt with contract bids by voluntary organisations and procurement by local authorities, so I hope that the Government’s promise to simplify the process at local government level will not stop there. There is a lot of enthusiasm, energy and expertise in the third sector, but providers feel unappreciated, given the obstacles in the way of applying it. The Government recognise this, but I did not take from our work that the benefits of changes had filtered down to service level. The Government referred to the dedicated grants probation portal to support the smaller bodies. How is that going?

Both the Probation Service and the courts need to be aware of what services, including treatments, are available—crucially, available in the local area—and make the most of them. Referrals must contain sufficient information and risk assessments, and commissioned partners must be able to feed back information. Data sharing is less than optimal, and there are still misapprehensions about restrictions: “We can’t—GDPR”. Smooth commissioning, allowing flexibility so that partners can innovate, would be of wide benefit, including to the taxpayer.

The stereotype of unpaid work by offenders is unfortunate. Both the public and offenders should see the work as having an intrinsic value. There are good models of support for offenders. I will not let this moment go by without plaudits for so much of what goes on in women’s services, and a plea for funding—I describe it as investment—for its expansion.

Youth services have much more bandwidth than adult services, though I am of course aware of the recent report about Feltham. Staff remain in post for long periods, caseloads are manageable and there is scope for thoughtful actions such as addressing communication needs—reading and writing. We heard persuasive views about the cliff edge at 18 and suggestions of extending “youth” to 21 or higher. This is not a new point, as understanding of a young person’s development is increasing. I would be anxious, though, that standards in youth justice services might drop if there was a handover of young adults without more.

I end with a particular, and perhaps more recent, concern. In the light of the size of the prison population, the demands of post-release supervision must not mean that we lose sight of the lowest level offenders.

I hope that the committee’s report and its work will be useful to the Government. When we spoke earlier this week, the Minister said he thought that, at so many points, trust was the issue. I absolutely agree. I welcome his commitment and what I would describe as hard-headed practicality. It is a very positive mix. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain the House unduly so I will not go through every point that has been made and every speaker by name.

Public perception is hugely important, as is supporting public servants. We have heard some interesting perspectives, including from the two speakers in the gap; I am glad that they made it at the last minute. The word “intensive” has been used quite a lot; it is very appropriate to so much of what we have been talking about.

This has been an afternoon well spent. Today’s debate was arranged at the last minute. I mention this because those who follow our proceedings should not think that a shortish speakers’ list indicates anything other than that Parliament was to have been in recess by now. So many colleagues were committed elsewhere. The current chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath, is particularly sorry not to have been here. So, my thanks go to the speakers—including, of course, the Minister. I wonder: does he know whether there is a chocolate tag—I could do with one of those—not just for what noble Lords have said so very thoughtfully but for actually being here and making points that I was not able to cover because I had to cover the report? It is rather frustrating not to be able to go off on a riff of your own in this sort of debate.

I really appreciate the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, being here because I am sure that he has plenty to do. His listening to this is well taken.

My thanks go to the committee and our hard-working staff: the clerks, David Shiels and Sabrina Asghar; the policy analyst, Achille Versaevel; the press and media officer, Aneela Mahmood; Amanda McGrath, our amazingly efficient committee operations officer; and Gemma Birkett, the specialist adviser. I thank our hosts at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for our visit, as well as the MoJ officials throughout my chairmanship of the committee; we really appreciated their engagement.

My particular thanks go to our many witnesses—those who put in written material and those who came and gave compelling and vivid evidence. I am happy to badge that as evidence in the context of the evaluation of measures.

Motion agreed.