End of the Road for SDR

Following on from my recent post about the dreadful OASys-generated Standard Delivery Reports, I now feel I need to say something about their impending demise, almost certainly to be replaced at Magistrates Courts by Fast Delivery Reports. 

It's all to do with resources of course and the need to save money. Due to the imposition of OASys, the allocation of time for preparing a full SDR is 7.5 hours. But instead of admitting that OASys is completely unwieldy and far too time-consuming, the alternative option being rolled out is a reduction in the numbers being written instead. With no need for OASys, the time allocation for an FDR is only 1.5 hours.

Coming hard on the heels of a NOMS instruction to increase the number of FDR's to 70%, some Probation Trusts are already moving towards eliminating SDR's from the Magistrates Courts completely. The only exceptions might be for serious domestic violence or mental health cases, but management would like to see these done on FDR's as well. Incredibly FDR's are increasingly being used for serious offences at Crown Court and a recent instruction from NOMS - PI/05/11 - states that the FDR will become the 'standard' document. 

This is nothing short of scandalous and will have the effect of 'dumbing down' the service that Probation provides to courts. It will be appreciated that comparing the two is like comparing a Rolls Royce with a Fiat Punto. It's almost as if there is some sort of collective amnesia as to what a probation report is for and what a good one should look like. 

Throughout the history of the Probation Service one of the key aspects of the job has been to provide sentencers with an alternative and balanced view of the defendant. The nature of our adversarial Criminal Justice System necessarily results in the Court being presented with somewhat biased and slanted information from the prosecution and defence respectively. The role of the Probation Officer has, in the words of the recently retired Chief Inspector of Probation, to supply a three-dimensional view of a person in what is essentially a two-dimensional process. 

In my view this cannot ever be achieved satisfactorily and for the benefit of all concerned if the resulting probation report merely rehearses the information the Court has already heard and runs through the various sentencing options available with some comment as to the likely outcome. This is typically all that is on offer with an FDR and becoming increasingly so with OASys-generated SDR's.

For a probation report to be of any real use to sentencers it must paint a three-dimensional picture of the individual. It will be balanced, rounded, nuanced and help sentencers to really understand the person being discussed, their background, why their life has taken the direction that it has, try and explain their actions, hopes, aspirations, strengths and weaknesses. Above all, anyone reading such a report should have no doubt what the issues are and what the author feels would be the best course of action that both satisfies punishment and encourages rehabilitation.

Essentially, by the time the reader reaches the penultimate paragraph, they should have in mind where the argument is heading and as a consequence the final paragraph should hold no great surprises and only rarely a pick-and-mix menu of options. In my view it should be a cogent, well-argued and sometimes passionate explanation for a particular outcome that forms the basis for a sentencer to decide if it makes sense or not. Conversely it should help a sentencer to crystallise the reasons why they disagree. 

My real worry is that OASys-generated SDR's and 'tick-box' FDR's have in effect destroyed the real usefulness of probation reports, de-skilled officers in the process and damaged the cause of effective sentencing in the process.