News Roundup 13

We'll start this selection of news with a BBC local tv report from the West Country aired last night but only available on iplayer until 7pm tonight. It concerns Working Links and a very embarrassing video posted online by guys supposedly undertaking Community Payback at a church either naked or dressed in clerical attire. It would seem that the supervisor no longer works for Working Links. 

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This article from the Guardian highlights how things are very different north of the border, a part of the United Kingdom that avoided the TR omnishambles of course:- 

Non-custodial sentencing falls sharply in England and Wales

Report reveals 24% decrease in number of community sentences over past 10 years, compared with 18% rise in Scotland

Use of non-custodial sentences in England and Wales has fallen sharply in England and Wales but risen significantly in Scotland, according to a report highlighting their effectiveness in preventing re-offending. The comparative study by the Centre for Justice Innovation reveals that over the past decade there has been a 24% decrease in the number of community sentences imposed in England and Wales compared with an 18% increase in Scotland. The thinktank’s research found that community sentences have consistently reduced incidences of re-offending.

The divergence in courtroom practices between the two jurisdictions emerged only in 2011. In Scotland, the number of inmates has continued falling and plans for a major new jail have been abandoned; England and Wales, meanwhile, have recorded the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe. There are more than 86,000 inmates in England and Wales – an increase of about 6,000 over the past decade. Scottish courts enforce a presumption against prison sentences that are shorter than three months on the grounds that they disrupt rehabilitiation efforts and are ineffective. Judges must also record their reasons if they impose short prison terms.

“We, tentatively, suggest that the introduction of the community payback order and the presumption against short three-month prison sentences, both introduced in 2011, seem likely to explain at least some of the rise in the use of community sentences in Scotland,” the CJI said. “It remains unclear what has caused community sentences in England and Wales to decline so much since 2011.”

Why there should have been such a dramatic decline in England and Wales at a time when there has been no sudden shift in official sentencing policy is a mystery, the report admits. Both jurisdictions have experienced a decline in the overall number of criminal cases. In England and Wales, however, the political emphasis has been on reversing the number of “unduly lenient sentences” passed by courts.

A major programme of local court closures in England and Wales, initiated in 2011, and privatisation of the probation service may also have reduced magistrates’ and judges’ confidence in, or knowledge of, alternatives to custody. A newly appointed magistrate who attended the launch of the report at Westminster on Wednesday admitted: “We have information about community sentences.”

The Centre for Justice Innovation has supported US-style problem-solving courts where magistrates and judges supervise offenders after they have been sentenced to ensure they are reforming their lives. Its report said that community sentences had consistently reduced re-offending in both England and Wales and in Scotland over the past 10 years. “Community sentences can often represent good value for money,” it noted, “especially in comparison to short prison sentences – even the most expensive intensive community sentences cost just over one-tenth of the cost of a prison place per year.”

Phil Bowen, the director of the Centre for Justice Innovation and a former senior civil servant, said: “When you go to Scotland there are more positive and optimistic developments. Community sentences work because they keep people in their relationships, their accommodation and in work.”

Karyn McCluskey, the chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, said: “We have been on a prevention journey for the past 15 years. Short-term prison sentences do not reduce offending. It causes homelessness and breaks up any positive bonds [offenders] may have. Our courts and prisons should not be de facto phsychiatric hospitals. I have met people who would much prefer to go to jail: it’s much easier for then. We want to change society’s view of what works.”

The Lib Dem former justice minister Lord McNally, who served in the coalition government, told the meeting at Westminster that he had had conversations with Conservative ministers who had asked him, ‘How do we get past the Daily Mail problem?’ – a reference to media demands for longer prison sentences.

“Since Michael Howard said ‘prison works’ and Tony Blair said he was ‘tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’, prison has become a benchmark on how tough we are on crime,” McNally added. “Localism works. Whenever you found [magistrates and judges] working with smaller numbers [of offenders], they tended to experiment and innovate.”

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The following heartfelt plea from a prisoner published recently in insidetime magazine reminds us just how bad things are in our jails:- 

Help me

I am 38 and have spent my whole life in and out of prison, struggled with addictions of many forms, am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and the many other unfortunate circumstances that have befallen me. I have now spent over 16-years locked up but have yet to find any rehabilitation.

Recently I have been sent here, a prison that is swimming in alcohol production, drug-use with acts of savage violence meted out on a daily basis. My family and friends are too far away from this prison for visits so I have slowly become isolated and depressed. I began drinking hooch and smoking Spice to help me sleep, which led me into debt.

Debt led to acts of violence and I was assaulted, had threats made about my family, mobile phones are everywhere in here so they can contact gang-members on the out. I was threatened with a blade and lashed out (I used to be a boxer so can handle myself), and things spiralled until I became suicidal. Then, as if all this was not bad enough, we were placed into a restricted regime due to staff shortages. For 10-days we were banged-up for 24-hours a day, no showers, phone calls, exercise, association and meals were served at the doors of our cells, usually cold.

“In a state of mental breakdown, and with the desire to just talk to someone, I asked for the Samaritans phone for 4 days running, but never got it.”

Eventually, in the midst of a full-blown riot (which you may have heard about) I had a breakdown and smashed everything in my cell. Later that night I paid the price for this when I was given the most brutal beating I have ever experienced by the staff.

Now I am sat in the segregation unit with a suspected fractured wrist and torn pectoral muscles and my complaint forms all seem to be going ‘missing’. How can we be happy to have a prison system, paid for by taxpayers, where people are driven mad, self-harming and killing themselves in greater and greater numbers? We cannot just do nothing.

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Finally, there are signs that the MoJ are preparing the ground for reigning-back on the disastrous Legal Aid cuts. This from buzzfeednews:-

Cutting Legal Aid To Families Has Had The Entirely Opposite Effect To The One The Government Intended

A Ministry of Justice report published quietly on Monday evening has admitted the department’s cuts to family legal aid had the opposite effect to the one intended. One of the government’s stated aims in no longer funding lawyers for low-income couples arguing over divorce or child arrangements was that it would encourage them to seek mediation instead. But the government has acknowledged the opposite has happened, with mediation numbers falling off a cliff and a huge rise in people attempting to navigate the family courts with no lawyer.

BuzzFeed News has been exposing the devastating impact these cuts have made since they were passed into law by the coalition government in 2012 through the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (Laspo). The Ministry of Justice uploaded the 120-page assessment of its legal aid legislation to its website in the middle of Monday evening, as more scandals about MPs were breaking.

The post-legislative memorandum details the consequences of the legislation - both intended and unintended - including the dramatic rise in litigants in person and the steep fall in those eligible for legal aid. In 2012–13, the year before LASPO, there were 31,000 mediation assessments and 14,000 mediation starts. By 2016-17, the numbers had fallen to 13,000 mediation assessments and 7,700 mediation starts, reductions of 61% and 44% respectively.

Family lawyers had warned this was likely to happen, since legal aid-funded lawyers frequently pointed divorcing couples towards mediation. Without the initial free legal advice to recommend a more amicable settlement, people are instead turning to court with no legal help at all.

Acknowledging the unintended impact of the cuts, the report says: “The main area where the Coalition Government sought to discourage litigation was in private family law proceedings, such as those concerning child custody and financial arrangements following a divorce or separation...The implementation of LASPO did not lead to increased take-up of either [mediation assessments] or family mediation sessions, as anticipated. Instead, the opposite occurred, with the number of people attending publicly funded [mediation assessments] and mediation falling.”

Before Laspo, 45,000 people in private family law cases had no lawyer, representing 42% of all parties. By 2016-17, the number was 64,000 – almost two thirds of all those coming to court.

Nigel Shepherd, chair of the family lawyers association Resolution, told BuzzFeed News: “At the time LASPO was going through Parliament, Resolution and others warned that by withdrawing access to legal advice, separating couples would be less likely to choose mediation as a way to resolve their disputes. Solicitors are the main source of referrals into family mediation, so it stands to reason that numbers fell once they were taken out of the equation by LASPO. Since LASPO, there has also been a significant rise in the number of litigants in person – people forced to battle their way through court with no help at all – and the government needs to urgently address this."

Shepherd added: “You can’t take a one-size fits-all approach to family breakdown – what works for one couple might not work for another. This admission from government proves this, and if they’re serious about targeting public funding at where it can be most effective, providing resources for early legal advice would be a good place to start. This would help separating couples identify what their options are and provide them with at the very least some basic information, guidance, support and advice about how to navigate their way through the issues they face."

The government set up a Family Mediation Task Force in April 2014 to try and bring the numbers back up, following an initial fall in mediation. It introduced a statutory requirement that individuals applying to court first attend a mediation session. It also made sure that the cost of a mediation assessment was covered even if one side was not eligible for legal aid.

However, these changes had little effect, the report acknowledges. “Both of the post-LASPO amendments to financial eligibility for family mediation were intended to increase take-up of the service,” it says. “However, the trends in [mediation]... show that the effect has been minimal. [mediation assessments] and mediation volumes remain below pre-LASPO levels. The withdrawal of legal aid for representation at court in private family law proceedings has therefore coincided with a drop-in take-up of publicly funded mediation.”

The memorandum was sent to the Justice Select Committee on Monday to examine. Its chair, the Conservative MP Bob Neill, spoke to BuzzFeed News last week. Neill told BuzzFeed News the “collapse in mediation was one of several “unintended consequence” of the government’s legislation.

“This collapse in mediation was exactly the reverse of what they reckoned was going to happen," Neill said. "You talk to lawyers and people in social work and so on, a lot of Citizens Advice bureaux, folk like that, a lot of them will say that's very often because the legal aid lawyer upfronted the process giving some early advice was the person that then put them on to mediation. You can't expect necessarily that people automatically will go and google up and find mediation as a route. They need a bit of signposting, they need a bit of steer. And that will probably be money well spent.”

The report boasts of the reduction in the cost of funding legal help to those without the means of paying for a lawyer. It says: “A core objective of recent changes to legal aid was to reduce the amount of expenditure on the scheme. This objective has clearly been achieved – the Government is now providing legal aid funding for fewer cases and paying less for cases that are funded. Between 2010–11 and 2016–17 annual legal aid fund expenditure fell by £950m, or 38%, in real terms at 2016–17 prices.”

The memorandum does not comment on the impact on justice of its reforms - though “a more thorough and substantive analysis” is expected in the review announced yesterday. It is due for publication next summer. The Ministry of Justice has not yet responded to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.