A Great Idea Screwed Up - Again

Here we go again then with Rishi Sunak announcing more bloody orange - jumpsuits this time not just tabards - in the drive to create the UK version of the chain gang in order to win votes. The original concept of Community Service - a 'constructive penalty' - was thoughtful and intelligent, as we discussed in 2019, but has all but lost any serious and beneficial purpose thanks to politicians of the left and right:-   

Unfortunately politicians just can't stop themselves tinkering with criminal justice policy for political gain and John Harding wrote this for the Guardian in January 2013:-

Forty years of community service

How did a measure that required offenders to carry out socially beneficial work turn into a form of punishment?

The first community service order was made in Nottingham crown court 40 years ago this month for Peter, a cannabis supplier.

On 2 January 1973, Mr Justice James ordered Peter to undertake 120 hours of community service. As the senior probation officer responsible for initiating a Home Office community service order pilot scheme in Nottinghamshire, I was summoned to the judge's retiring room before the sentencing decision was announced. The judge wanted to know what the new measure involved, where the offender would be placed and how accountable the service would be if Peter failed to respond. I told him that Peter would be working for an old people's home run by Nottingham social services, assisting staff and residents. If he failed to turn up for community service, Peter would have been returned to court for being in breach of the order.

This revolution in community-based sanctions was the creation of a subcommittee of the Advisory Council on the Penal System (ACPS), set up in 1966 by the then Labour government to advise the home secretary on "matters relating to the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders". The ACPS non-custodial and semi-custodial penalties subcommittee was chaired by social reformer Lady Barbara Wootton.

Probation pilots

Following its recommendation, community service was piloted in six probation areas: Nottinghamshire, inner London, Kent, Durham, south-west Lancashire and Shropshire. Six senior probation officers/community service organisers were appointed by the pilot areas to negotiate a range of tasks with local public services and non-governmental organisations, set out criteria for the assessment and matching of offenders to work assignments, and prepare magistrates and judges for the new powers that, from January 1973, would be available to crown and magistrates courts.

I asked the only surviving member of ACPS, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, where the idea of community service came from. He said that, by chance, the committee's attention was drawn to a newspaper article about an experiment conducted by a criminal court judge in Darmstadt, Germany, in the 1950s. The judge exercised his discretion by ordering an offender, convicted of dangerous driving, to work for a certain period of time under nursing supervision in a local accident and emergency hospital. The knowledge that the judge, under German criminal law, could impose a legal requirement on a convicted offender to carry out such work provided the spur ACPS needed to develop their thinking of community service as a court sanction in its own right, Blom-Cooper explained. Yet, without Wootton's inspired chairmanship and forcefulness, community service would not have emerged as a distinct penal sanction, he added.

ACPS believed that community service should be a constructive penalty whereby the offender took on the burden of social responsibility towards others. They saw great merit in merging the majority of offenders with non-offender volunteers so that the offenders could be inspired by the volunteers.

When ACPS published its report on non-custodial penalties in 1970, it took the view that community service would appeal to the punitive-minded because it involved deprivation of leisure; to the retributive, because it would compel the offender to make some repayment to the community for the damage that he had done; and to others, mainly because it would be cheaper and probably a more hopeful alternative to a short period of imprisonment, or because it would make the punishment fit the crime.

The pilot areas were left with relative freedom to develop community service in appropriate ways. I was much influenced by the New Careers movement in the US, which was part of President Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty programme. It used some offenders as a community resource in the belief that, instead of becoming recipients of help, they could become dispensers of service and, in doing so, gain status and approval. Within three months in Nottinghamshire, we had hundreds of potential tasks for offenders in the community, from helping at clubs for disabled people or young people and at old people's homes, to canal preservation and supporting A&E units of local hospitals.

When the two-year pilots ended in 1974, the Home Office research unit's final report was a superb illustration of official caution punctured by unfettered enthusiasm. The researchers said the scheme was viable and, despite their doubt about its overall impact on the size of the population, revealed that, at its best, community service was an exciting departure from traditional penal treatment.

By the end of 1977, community service was rolled out across England and Wales. And over the next 20 years, Europe, Australasia, parts of Asia and the US all adopted community service orders.

In the UK alone, millions of hours of community service have been carried out by thousands of offenders at a fraction of the cost of imprisonment. The latest figures from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) show that community sentences outperform prison sentences for 18- to 24-year-olds by 13% in terms of reducing reoffending. Even when offenders of all ages are closely matched in terms of criminal history and offence type, the performance gap remains 8%.

Yet, in a retributive age, the image of community service has been ratcheted up by politicians to match penal populism. And a demand for tougher community penalties has been paralleled by the rebranding of community service to community punishment, then community payback, and now to unpaid work. Today's offenders wear fluorescent tabards over their clothes to indicate that they are offenders, easily recognisable by members of the public. In reality, I suspect, despite the hardening rhetoric, nothing much has changed in terms of nature of tasks undertaken, though the rigid enforcement of orders leaves little room for discretion.

Further, probation staff have handed over responsibility for unpaid work schemes to private companies such as Serco, which in October was awarded a four-year contract in London. The justification for this is to ensure a more efficient and cost-effective service. There are no evidential grounds for this degree of optimism. Serco promises to cut costs. The probation union, Napo, warns that this will be achieved by changing the employment conditions of existing supervisory staff and cutting salaries.

The MoJ intends to put out to tender £600m worth of probation services, about 60% of the entire budget. It is a far cry from the Wootton committee's founding principles that a private company should not make profits on the back of offenders while they are repaying their debt to society. Blom-Cooper, for one, is saddened that we have moved to an acceptance that profit, not a sense of public service, is the prime driver for certain parts of our criminal justice process. "Penal reform," he remarked drily, "is not necessarily penal progress."

In addition, the government proposes, in its crime and courts bill currently going through parliament, to introduce a mandatory punitive element to every community order. This could include a fine or a curfew, which penal campaigners are warning may undermine community sentences' success in reducing reoffending.

Whether the foundation stones of community service, laid down over the past 40 years, will survive under fragmentation and privatisation is open to question. Those of us fortunate enough to have been involved in its conception and present at its birth, believed that probation could make a difference in offenders' lives, provided that hard work, and clarity of purpose and vision underpinned all our efforts.

John Harding was pioneer senior probation officer/community service organiser for Nottinghamshire, 1972-74, and chief probation officer for inner London, 1993-2001

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The dreadful Louise Casey had stuck her oar in of course. This from 2008:-

Revolt grows over 'community payback' jackets

Offenders facing abuse, say probation officers Minister insists garments show justice is being done

Evidence is emerging of a growing boycott of the government's compulsory scheme for offenders to wear high-visibility orange jackets when they are carrying out unpaid work in the community.

Napo, the probation officers' union, will claim today that one Midlands probation service has suspended implementation of the scheme after churches and charities involved in 28 out of 32 work placements said no to the jackets.

The introduction of the compulsory "community payback" jackets on 1 December has provoked a row within the criminal justice system with the government's crime adviser, Louise Casey, citing probation service opposition as yet another example of its "institutional reluctance to put the public first".

The justice minister, David Hanson, fuelled the debate last night by saying he rejected the results of the Napo survey and expected all 42 probation areas to implement the introduction of the high-visibility clothing. "The public expects to see justice being done, and this is what the jackets achieve," he said.

The justice ministry has bought more than 10,000 vests or jackets with the "community payback" logo on them for use by offenders in England and Wales.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, said organisations, including churches and charities, that offer unpaid work placements for offenders had become wary of using the vests after incidents of offenders being abused by the public, including missiles being thrown at them. "Many of these organisations are faith-based groups who believe it is not their role to oversee humiliation," he said, adding that in one area a group of youths had chanted "nonces, smackheads, lowlifes" at one work group.

Fletcher said in one south Midlands probation area, organisations involved in 28 out of 32 placements said they did not want the vests, while in another area in the north-east 11 out of 20 rejected them. He added: "Most have said that unpaid work is punishment in itself and that the addition of the vests was humiliating and demeaning. About a third of placements involve working in charity shops and organisers there have said the wearing of vests would deter members of the public and affect their takings."

The Napo survey says there have been a number of incidents involving members of the public intimidating and abusing offenders wearing the orange jackets. It also cites two incidents involving firearms being discharged at offenders before the scheme went national this month.

More than 55,000 people a year are sentenced to carry out unpaid work in the community, with most placements involving environmental, decorating and cleaning works including litter picking and graffiti cleaning. One third involve individual placements working in charity shops, in day centres for the elderly and homeless people, and supporting adults with learning difficulties.

Hanson, however, has challenged the survey's findings. He said: "The violent incidents they refer to had nothing to do with the jackets. They happened before their introduction so the offenders in question weren't even wearing them."

He said hundreds of community-payback projects across the UK were complying with the requirement to ensure offenders wear their vests. "This survey appears to be based on a handful of deliberately selected cases," he said. "Early indications are that communities are pleased to see offenders giving something back."

A Gem Of An Idea

May I recommend “The Outlaws” on BBC 1, all available on iPlayer.

I matured professionally and personally In Community Service (what a positive concept) in Bristol in the 1980’s. I spent a lot of energy inviting a well-known but reluctant playwright to visit “my” projects. He taught me about the structures of sitcoms. For instance, the need to have a Trap, unlikely characters confined to a particular space. It seemed to me then that a Community Service project was a perfect trap, and a thing worth celebrating.

While I was dragging him fruitlessly around my workplace, admin Elaine Merchant was busy typing away on our state-of-the-art golf ball typewriter in the Fishponds (Bristol suburbs) Probation Office, while her husband Ron supervised clients on placements. Their boy has done not so badly and has a show on the telly which I highly recommend. It’s a slow burn and the blend of really funny (whitewashing an actual Banksy from the wall of a community building) with suspense and grit is unsettling. The Guardian review is here, and I won’t compete, but here are a few comments.

If you are looking for a fly on the wall observation about unpaid work, this isn't it.

It however gets the spirit of Community Service as I first encountered it. A joyful embracing of the weird and disparate people we were and worked with. An understanding that the State is not going to solve individual problems, mainly of its creating, only good connections and care can go anywhere near that.

Having said that, most of our clients were impoverished young men, badly dressed for the weather, rightly cross about the indignity of their situation with us. Aggressive and vulnerable in equal measure in their denim jackets in the freezing wind in a Bristol winter, more vulnerable than threatening. Back then, we would have formed a line with them against any suggestion that they wore hi viz jackets with a label on the back.

The head of Probation Administration (these were powerful people in those days) used to complain that the CS staff were indistinguishable from our clients. I always rather liked that. We identified so much more with them than him. We were alive to the reality that our clients had been failed by the system, had failed the system, and needed us - albeit agents of the system - to try and reconcile this.

Pearly Gates

UPW to go Global

I notice filming is to start shortly for a tv series featuring Community Payback. This from the Bristol Post:-

Stephen Merchant to shoot new BBC One series in Bristol

One of Bristol's most recognised figures is shooting a major new series in his hometown this year. Stephen Merchant, who was born in Hanham, will likely be spotted around the city on numerous occasions as shooting for The Offenders unfolds. The multi-award winning writer and director also co-stars in the series, which will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Amazon Prime in the United States, Canada and Australia.

Here's everything you need to know about the forthcoming series.

About the Offenders

The Offenders follows seven strangers from different walks of life forced together to complete a Community Payback sentence in Bristol. At first, they seem like they can be easily pigeonholed but gradually the viewers see behind their exteriors, understand their hidden depths and what made them the people they are today. As the series unfolds viewers are reminded that no-one is all good or all bad, and that everyone has a story.

As their unlikely new friendships intersect with their complicated private lives, The Offenders must unite to protect one of their own from Bristol’s most dangerous criminal gang. The show is part crime thriller, character study, and a "state-of-the-nation commentary" - with humour running throughout.

Stephen, aged 45, said he loves "finding ways to bring unlikely groups of people together," ever since The Office - the hit sitcom he wrote with Ricky Gervais which ran from 2001 until 2003. He said: "The Offenders is a long-standing passion project for me. My parents used to work in the Community Service world and I was always intrigued that the many and varied people they dealt with only had one thing in common: they’d committed a crime. Ever since The Office, I love finding ways to bring unlikely groups of people together and watch the sparks fly. As a writer I always include humour but with The Offenders, I also get to add drama, pathos, crime genre thrills and say something optimistic about the common humanity that unites us all, whatever our background."

The Offenders was commissioned for the BBC by Charlotte Moore, BBC Director of Content; Shane Allen, BBC Controller, Comedy Commissioning; and Kate Daughton, BBC Head of Comedy.

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Stephen Merchant looking for Bristol actors to star in his new series The Offenders

The final roles are being cast for a new, six-part comedy series which will be filmed and set in Bristol - and those behind the production are looking for people to fill the parts. The Offenders has been written and will be directed by Hanham actor and comedian Stephen Merchant, and will eventually be broadcast on BBC1.

As the series unfolds, viewers are reminded no-one is all good or all bad, and everyone has a story. As their unlikely new friendships intersect with their complicated private lives, The Offenders must unite to protect one of their own from Bristol’s most dangerous criminal gang. The show is part crime thriller, character study, and a "state-of-the-nation commentary" - with humour running throughout, according to Stephen Merchant.

While the main parts have been cast, there are a number of smaller roles, with an age range of 18 to 55, which are being cast. And earlier this week, one of the casting agents, Amy Hubbard, put out a call for a teenage girl to play the part of Esme, a black or mixed race girl aged 14 to 16.

Stephen Merchant said the series has been a longstanding dream of his to do - his parents worked in the community service world.

'Long-standing passion project'

"The Offenders is a long-standing passion project for me," he said. "My parents used to work in the community service world and I was always intrigued that the many and varied people they dealt with only had one thing in common: they’d committed a crime. Ever since The Office, I love finding ways to bring unlikely groups of people together and watch the sparks fly. As a writer I always include humour but with The Offenders, I also get to add drama, pathos, crime genre thrills and say something optimistic about the common humanity that unites us all, whatever our background."

Anyone interested in the part should email tobristolcasting@gmail.com

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This from BBC website:-

The Offenders (working title) is a 6 x 1 hour series from multi-award-winning writer and director Stephen Merchant, originally created by Merchant and Elgin James (co-creator of US series Mayans M.C.)

The series is a co-production between BBC One and Amazon Studios. The series was commissioned by BBC Comedy and BBC One, produced by Big Talk (Mum, Cold Feet, Defending The Guilty) with Stephen Merchant’s Four Eyes. Big Talk is part of ITV Studios. Filming will take place in Bristol, UK. The series will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Amazon Prime Video in the United States, Canada and Australia.

The Offenders follows seven strangers from different walks of life forced together to complete a Community Payback sentence in Bristol. At first, they seem like archetypes we can easily pigeonhole, but gradually we see behind their façades, understand their hidden depths and what made them the people they are today. We are reminded that no one is all good or all bad. Everyone has a story.

As their unlikely new friendships intersect with their complicated private lives, The Offenders must unite to protect one of their own from Bristol’s most dangerous criminal gang. The show is part crime thriller, character study, and a state-of-the-nation commentary - with humour and heart.

The series was commissioned for the BBC by Charlotte Moore, Director of Content; Shane Allen, Controller Comedy Commissioning and Kate Daughton, Head of Comedy.

Stephen Merchant, who also directs and co-stars in the series, says: "The Offenders is a long-standing passion project for me. My parents used to work in the Community Service world and I was always intrigued that the many and varied people they dealt with only had one thing in common: they’d committed a crime.

"Ever since The Office, I've loved finding ways to bring unlikely groups of people together and watch the sparks fly. As a writer I always include humour, but with The Offenders I also get to add drama, pathos, crime genre thrills and say something optimistic about the common humanity that unites us all, whatever our background.

"The Offenders’ mix of light and shade, dark and comic, middle-class angst with inner-city grit, reflects the unlikely partnership of me and Elgin. I grew up in suburbia, whereas Elgin spent his early life building a national street gang until a police investigation landed him in prison. Despite coming from different sides of the tracks, Elgin and I share a love of convincing characters and authentic, engaging, human stories."

Kenton Allen, Big Talk Chief Executive, says: "Having long admired Stephen’s phenomenal work as a writer, director and actor we’re thrilled to be working with him on his first one-hour TV series, and to continue our long relationships with the BBC, who have been incredibly smart and supportive from the moment we mentioned the idea. We’re also equally thrilled to be working with Amazon for the first time on an original production and can’t wait for UK and US audiences to see what I think will be a very distinctive and eye-catching show."

Kate Daughton, Head of BBC Comedy, says: "The BBC One audience is in for an absolute treat with Stephen Merchant’s gripping world, rich with heart, humour and stand out characters. Among the deftly woven plots, high jinks, unlikely friendships and big belly laughs are very human stories about loyalty, truth and family."

Brad Beale, Vice President, Worldwide Content Licensing for Amazon Prime Video, says: "We’re so excited to work with Stephen on a series with his signature razor-sharp wit and distinctive, delightful characters. Stephen is such a gifted actor and creator, and we know our Prime Video customers will love The Offenders."

The Offenders is a Big Talk and Four Eyes production created by Stephen Merchant and Elgin James. Executive Producers are Stephen Merchant for Four Eyes, Luke Alkin Kenton Allen and Matthew Justice for Big Talk, and Kate Daughton is the Commissioning Editor for the BBC.

The Lead Director for the series is Stephen Merchant and the Producer is Nickie Sault (The Virtues, World On Fire). The U.S, Canada, and Australia deal with Amazon was brokered by Phil Sequeira, BBC Studios. Global distribution will be handled by BBC Studios.

Hijacking of a Good Idea

During the whole painful probation privatisation process of the last few years a number of myths were promulgated in order to try and support the process, one being the suggestion that the private sector would 'innovate'. In reality the only 'innovation' has proved to be in cost-cutting and precious little service delivery improvement, confirmation having been provided by a succession of negative inspection reports.

On the contrary, those of us who have been around for some time are fully aware that the probation service has a long and distinguished history of innovation, much of which having influenced criminal justice policy world-wide, such as the pioneering of 'community service'. My attention has been drawn to this recently produced BBC programme:-   

How Britain pioneered an alternative to prison

In the 1970s the UK tried to reduce its growing prison population. An experimental new punishment was introduced for convicted criminals. It was called Community Service. The scheme was soon copied around the world. Witness History speaks to John Harding, a former Chief Probation Officer, who was in charge of the introduction of Community Service in one of the first pilot schemes. 

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Unfortunately politicians just can't stop themselves tinkering with criminal justice policy for political gain and John Harding wrote this for the Guardian in January 2013:-

Forty years of community service

How did a measure that required offenders to carry out socially beneficial work turn into a form of punishment?

The first community service order was made in Nottingham crown court 40 years ago this month for Peter, a cannabis supplier.

On 2 January 1973, Mr Justice James ordered Peter to undertake 120 hours of community service. As the senior probation officer responsible for initiating a Home Office community service order pilot scheme in Nottinghamshire, I was summoned to the judge's retiring room before the sentencing decision was announced. The judge wanted to know what the new measure involved, where the offender would be placed and how accountable the service would be if Peter failed to respond. I told him that Peter would be working for an old people's home run by Nottingham social services, assisting staff and residents. If he failed to turn up for community service, Peter would have been returned to court for being in breach of the order.

This revolution in community-based sanctions was the creation of a subcommittee of the Advisory Council on the Penal System (ACPS), set up in 1966 by the then Labour government to advise the home secretary on "matters relating to the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders". The ACPS non-custodial and semi-custodial penalties subcommittee was chaired by social reformer Lady Barbara Wootton.

Probation pilots

Following its recommendation, community service was piloted in six probation areas: Nottinghamshire, inner London, Kent, Durham, south-west Lancashire and Shropshire. Six senior probation officers/community service organisers were appointed by the pilot areas to negotiate a range of tasks with local public services and non-governmental organisations, set out criteria for the assessment and matching of offenders to work assignments, and prepare magistrates and judges for the new powers that, from January 1973, would be available to crown and magistrates courts.

I asked the only surviving member of ACPS, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, where the idea of community service came from. He said that, by chance, the committee's attention was drawn to a newspaper article about an experiment conducted by a criminal court judge in Darmstadt, Germany, in the 1950s. The judge exercised his discretion by ordering an offender, convicted of dangerous driving, to work for a certain period of time under nursing supervision in a local accident and emergency hospital. The knowledge that the judge, under German criminal law, could impose a legal requirement on a convicted offender to carry out such work provided the spur ACPS needed to develop their thinking of community service as a court sanction in its own right, Blom-Cooper explained. Yet, without Wootton's inspired chairmanship and forcefulness, community service would not have emerged as a distinct penal sanction, he added.

ACPS believed that community service should be a constructive penalty whereby the offender took on the burden of social responsibility towards others. They saw great merit in merging the majority of offenders with non-offender volunteers so that the offenders could be inspired by the volunteers.

When ACPS published its report on non-custodial penalties in 1970, it took the view that community service would appeal to the punitive-minded because it involved deprivation of leisure; to the retributive, because it would compel the offender to make some repayment to the community for the damage that he had done; and to others, mainly because it would be cheaper and probably a more hopeful alternative to a short period of imprisonment, or because it would make the punishment fit the crime.

The pilot areas were left with relative freedom to develop community service in appropriate ways. I was much influenced by the New Careers movement in the US, which was part of President Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty programme. It used some offenders as a community resource in the belief that, instead of becoming recipients of help, they could become dispensers of service and, in doing so, gain status and approval. Within three months in Nottinghamshire, we had hundreds of potential tasks for offenders in the community, from helping at clubs for disabled people or young people and at old people's homes, to canal preservation and supporting A&E units of local hospitals.

When the two-year pilots ended in 1974, the Home Office research unit's final report was a superb illustration of official caution punctured by unfettered enthusiasm. The researchers said the scheme was viable and, despite their doubt about its overall impact on the size of the population, revealed that, at its best, community service was an exciting departure from traditional penal treatment.

By the end of 1977, community service was rolled out across England and Wales. And over the next 20 years, Europe, Australasia, parts of Asia and the US all adopted community service orders.

In the UK alone, millions of hours of community service have been carried out by thousands of offenders at a fraction of the cost of imprisonment. The latest figures from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) show that community sentences outperform prison sentences for 18- to 24-year-olds by 13% in terms of reducing reoffending. Even when offenders of all ages are closely matched in terms of criminal history and offence type, the performance gap remains 8%.

Yet, in a retributive age, the image of community service has been ratcheted up by politicians to match penal populism. And a demand for tougher community penalties has been paralleled by the rebranding of community service to community punishment, then community payback, and now to unpaid work. Today's offenders wear fluorescent tabards over their clothes to indicate that they are offenders, easily recognisable by members of the public. In reality, I suspect, despite the hardening rhetoric, nothing much has changed in terms of nature of tasks undertaken, though the rigid enforcement of orders leaves little room for discretion.

Further, probation staff have handed over responsibility for unpaid work schemes to private companies such as Serco, which in October was awarded a four-year contract in London. The justification for this is to ensure a more efficient and cost-effective service. There are no evidential grounds for this degree of optimism. Serco promises to cut costs. The probation union, Napo, warns that this will be achieved by changing the employment conditions of existing supervisory staff and cutting salaries.

The MoJ intends to put out to tender £600m worth of probation services, about 60% of the entire budget. It is a far cry from the Wootton committee's founding principles that a private company should not make profits on the back of offenders while they are repaying their debt to society. Blom-Cooper, for one, is saddened that we have moved to an acceptance that profit, not a sense of public service, is the prime driver for certain parts of our criminal justice process. "Penal reform," he remarked drily, "is not necessarily penal progress."

In addition, the government proposes, in its crime and courts bill currently going through parliament, to introduce a mandatory punitive element to every community order. This could include a fine or a curfew, which penal campaigners are warning may undermine community sentences' success in reducing reoffending.

Whether the foundation stones of community service, laid down over the past 40 years, will survive under fragmentation and privatisation is open to question. Those of us fortunate enough to have been involved in its conception and present at its birth, believed that probation could make a difference in offenders' lives, provided that hard work, and clarity of purpose and vision underpinned all our efforts.

John Harding was pioneer senior probation officer/community service organiser for Nottinghamshire, 1972-74, and chief probation officer for inner London, 1993-2001

Learning From Scotland

This from the Holyrood website:-

Management of Offenders Bill proposes more electronic monitoring and less disclosure of past convictions

The Management of Offenders (Scotland) Bill, which was introduced to Scottish Parliament last month, has three objectives: more electronic monitoring of offenders (and more strategic uses of it), reduced disclosure times for past criminal convictions and more modern fit-for-purpose parole board processes.

The bill paves the way for GPS tagging and tracking to be introduced in Scotland, allowing authorities to monitor a person’s whereabouts and set ‘exclusion zones’ restricting them away from certain places for set times. An exclusion zone might be set around a victim’s home and workplace, for example, or tailored around a place linked with an individual’s risk of reoffending.

Research by myself and my fellow Stirling University criminologist Gill McIvor shows there is moderate consensus among Scottish criminal justice practitioners supporting the introduction of GPS location monitoring, alongside the existing tagging and home curfew-based option. The bill also allows for the introduction of alcohol and drug monitoring technology, such as tags which can detect alcohol consumption through sweat on a person’s skin. A person will have to give their consent to being tagged and monitored. 

Electronic monitoring (EM) numbers are expected to rise in Scotland under these proposals as they introduce the option of EM as a requirement within more types of orders and licences. The bill also seeks to let Scottish prisons use EM as a condition of temporary release from prison. Notably, the bill will enable the judiciary to impose a restricted movement requirement within a community payback order (CPO). This is significant because CPOs are one of the most common community sentences in Scotland, with 19,000 CPOs imposed last year, opening up potential use of EM to more people than it’s currently used with.

In 2017, just over three thousand electronically monitored community sentences, called restriction of liberty orders, were imposed, with an average length of three to four months. These new proposals may lead to criminal justice social workers doing more suitability assessments to inform authorities decisions about whether to use it with an individual or not, as well as supervising more people who are tagged.

International research evidence demonstrates that integration of EM with supervision and support is positive, where used proportionately and to promote rehabilitation. However, people with a tagging requirement on a CPO might potentially be electronically monitored for longer than if given a standalone EM sentence.

It’s fair to say these electronic monitoring proposals have been a while in the making. Recommendations for more strategic uses of EM featured in the Angiolini report on women offenders in 2012, Scottish Government consultations in 2013 and 2017, a Scottish Government-funded GPS tagging technology trial in 2016, and our two major research reports in 2015 and 2016. The Management of Offenders Bill reflects several of the recommendations made by the electronic monitoring expert working group, a diverse experienced group which was anything but a rubber stamp brigade. Cabinet Secretary for Justice Michael Matheson accepted their recommendations in full, and this bill seems to illustrate his commitment to seek more ambitious and strategic uses of EM.

EM is not just a priority for the SNP and Matheson. In recent years, there’s been moderate consensus across Scottish political parties about more and better uses of electronic monitoring. Justice spokespeople for Scottish Labour, the Scottish Lib Dems and the Scottish Greens have called for or broadly supported this, alongside queries about details, costs and timing. The Scottish Conservatives have voiced cautious support for more use of EM, underlining public protection as a rationale for GPS tracking and wanting strict uses of home detention, but they tend to decry its use where the person would otherwise be in prison, as they have done with other measures in community justice.

The bill also proposes changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (1974) to reduce disclosure time periods for many (but not all) types of past convictions, meaning swifter recognition of rehabilitation. An estimated one in three men and one in 10 women in Scotland has at least one criminal conviction and disclosure can substantially affect prospects of getting a job, education or volunteering.

In leaving crime and the criminal justice system behind, it is fundamentally important for people with past convictions to have real prospects of making a living legally and being recognised as someone other than an ‘offender’ – to have a bank account, get insurance and pay taxes, just like other citizens.

Research clearly shows that employment is one of the most strongly correlated predictors of reduced reoffending. But some of these things are made harder by having past convictions, and the lingering stigma and stereotypes that ‘sticky labels’ and ‘stale records’ can bring. Reducing disclosure times is a principled and pragmatic way to try to reduce barriers to reintegration. The bill will introduce a limited time period for disclosure of convictions given a prison sentence of between 30 and 48 months, meaning that they could become ‘spent convictions’ after a set time. Currently, they always have to be disclosed.

These proposals will continue to allow employers to be told about convictions that are recent and relevant, and rules about higher level system of disclosures needed for specific categories of work, such as working with vulnerable people, are not affected by this bill. In 2016-2017, Disclosure Scotland received the highest number of applications ever – totalling 1.92 million applications in one year. Reduced time periods will likely result in less disclosures.

In Scotland, crime is at a 43 year low, and the number of people convicted is falling, meaning fewer people are entering our criminal justice system. Yet new figures show the average length of custodial sentence handed down by the Scottish judiciary has increased by 26 per cent over the last decade.

This trend of longer prison sentences has serious knock-on effects: it feeds a stubbornly high Scottish prison population, and the length of prison sentence determines how long afterwards individuals have to disclose their convictions and whether they can become spent convictions or not. The bill’s plan to extend the prospect of becoming a spent conviction to people serving prison sentences up to 48 months is pragmatic in light of this trend.

What to keep an eye on if the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Bill passes

If the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Bill is passed by the Scottish Parliament, a few things will warrant being watched closely, including potential issues in practice that policymakers cannot easily influence. Chief among them will be how and where the judiciary and other authorities use or do not use expanded electronic monitoring options.

In 2017, sheriffs in Glasgow imposed electronic monitoring community sentences at a rate 339 per cent higher than Edinburgh sheriffs. Potential issues of postcode lottery justice linger.

Privatisation is likely to continue to be a contentious issue as any marked increase in electronic monitoring may mean more public funds being awarded to private companies subcontracted to provide those services. In countries with exemplary leading uses of electronic monitoring, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, electronic monitoring is not privatised but done by public services.

Something we don’t yet have enough information and evidence about in Scotland is the extent to which more electronic monitoring might be clearly associated with less use of imprisonment, as the Scottish Government hopes, or whether electronic monitoring will increasingly be added to orders and licences, while rates of imprisonment stay high.

Proportionality in sentencing remains paramount and more available information and research on this is needed. It will be interesting to see how the framing of electronic monitoring as an alternative to imprisonment in these proposals relates to the Scottish Government’s plan to increase the presumption against short prison sentences, as well as their plans to keep improving community justice.

The extent to which electronic monitoring will feature in future development of the Scottish Government’s digital justice strategy will also be of note. The Management of Offenders (Scotland) Bill grants Scottish ministers expanded decision-making powers to make changes to electronic monitoring in the future. If and how this is used will be of keen interest.

Proposed changes to past conviction disclosure times cannot easily mitigate the ‘Google effect’ and lingering stigma, where colleagues may still find out about a person’s past convictions.

While recent efforts to boost offender employability by charities like Recruit with Conviction raising employer awareness are commendable, there’s still more that needs to be done – collaboratively and creatively.

In future, alongside disclosure reforms, it may be opportune to engage with employers beleaguered by looming collateral consequences of Brexit, especially if patterns of migration change and employers encounter major difficulties in finding workers. Offender employability and employment may also be better championed in Scotland as a legitimate matter of corporate social responsibility – working with returning citizens to change their lives and life chances.

Dr Hannah Graham is a lecturer in criminology in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Stirling. 

No Great Surprise

Although I'm still enjoying my break with the blog on 'autopilot' for most of the time, I feel I ought to say something about Ken Clarke's plan to privatise Community Service. This seems to have been rumoured and expected for so long that it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. I can remember it being talked about more than 10 years ago as an obviously discrete aspect of the job that could be farmed out. It now seems inevitable that for all sorts of reasons it will finally come to pass, not least in order to put the 'frighteners' on the unions involved. It's always sad in my view when politics gets involved in any aspect of criminal justice policy as it almost invariably ends up being a dogs breakfast with loads of unintended consequences. 

From what I gather the idea is not just to get a cheaper service, but also one that satisfies what I would call the 'Casey test' - can the whole thing be made more punitive in order to keep her happy and by extension of course the wider public. I think I've heard ideas being mooted such as offenders working five days a week, presumably if unemployed, and having benefit reduced or stopped for any non-compliance. Like many such ideas, it might sound good in theory but with it will come a whole host of other potential problems. 

I guess it will not be a great surprise that I'm against the wholesale privatisation of this area of our work, not least because I gather Probation Trusts will be barred from bidding - and that can only be for political not operational reasons - and because it moves CS even further away from the rehabilitation ethos, as originally intended, to one of punishment only. This is a grave mistake in my opinion and will set the cause of rehabilitating offenders back years - and thus will be in direct conflict with the new governments explicit aim of reducing the prison population. I will expand on this further when I've had the chance to read exactly what is being proposed.  

Send for the Army

Well it didn't take long for the new government to consider how the soft old probation service might benefit from a bit of military discipline did it? The funny thing is we've been here before. Remember 'boot camps'? (the 'short, sharp shock') - I think that was Willie Whitelaw - the whole thing was a huge success with the young inmates in Young Offender Institutions where it was trialled and I can confirm that they absolutely lapped up the military-style discipline. Boy did they turn out a hell of a lot fitter on release, the trouble being not much work had been undertaken on the attitude side of things. The whole idea withered away quite quickly on two grounds, firstly they were not supposed to enjoy it and secondly, turning out super fit, testosterone-fuelled thugs wasn't felt to be such a good idea after all.

You see it was yet another example of the politicians and Home Office people thinking they knew better than the professionals involved. They probably didn't realise that many of our young clients would love to join the army, if only their offending career hadn't already precluded it in most cases. I'm probably that much of an old-fashioned probation officer to admit that, in the absence of a fully effective Youth Service, National Service would indeed be hugely beneficial for some of our clientele today. I know I was absolutely fascinated by the tv series 'Bad Lads Army' some years ago and the life-changing effect it had on many of the participants, some of whom did indeed join up as a direct result. I am aware that in fairly recent times the military have been so desperate for recruits that they used to do a 'sweep' of YOI's now and then to see if there were any suitable candidates. I suspect they don't anymore. Nothing has given me greater pleasure on occasion than to speak directly with recruiting officers and to be able to give support to young offenders applications for the armed services.

Do we remember how, with the ending of the Cold War, Michael Howard I think it was suggested that as part of the 'peace dividend' demobbed soldiers might make good probation officers? Like a lot of politicians, he probably came up with the idea to win a good headline in the Daily Mail. The plan went nowhere, apart that is in his decision to remove the CQSW requirement that had been mandatory for all new probation officers. Again, the funny thing about this episode was that up to that point virtually all probation officers, including myself, turned to the vocation later in life and from a huge variety of backgrounds, including the military. That wealth of life experience, together with excellent social work training, ensured that for many years the service was a confident, innovating, flexible and immensely rewarding place to be.

So that brings us to the here and now and once more there is a call for military action - but this time not just to 'beef up' community service, but as a cost-saving measure as the government feel ex-squaddies will be happy to work for less pay than current CS supervisors. As widely expected, the government intend to privatise this aspect of the probation service and have already lined up three companies to bid for the work. Louise Casey must be very pleased with herself indeed.     

Community Service Losing its Way

Last weeks ITV 'Tonight' programme on Community Service - sorry Community Payback - was a huge embarrassment for the unfortunate services involved, showing as it did examples of offenders basically 'tossing it off'. Sadly though this would not come as a great surprise to most probation officers. I think CS lost its way ages ago due to cutbacks and sheer numbers. My own Service used to have workshops including printing and enough supervisors for decorating and gardening for the elderly. Part of the ethos of CS, as originally conceived, was that of 'meaningful work', and much effort used to go into developing worthwhile projects with clear community benefit. Unfortunately this aspect, along with tailored placements for individuals to use and develop skills, was another cost saving measure. I thought it a bit rich of Louise Casey to be complaining when it was because of her that CS was forced to become more about punishment than rehabilitation in the first place. Of course this has made supervision much more difficult with attenders understandably being disgruntled with what they see as pointless tasks. Indeed in order to keep costs down, placements have to be sourced where a lot of the supervision can be provided by third parties - the massive numbers on CS dictate that teams have to be large and there is not enough work that does not break the rule that it must not replace paid workers, such as litter picking. In many ways it would possibly be fairer and more acceptable if we reverted to offenders breaking rocks and have done with any notion of rehabilitation.

In reality though I saw this programme as a 'put up job' by the dreadful Louise Casey helping to discredit the probation service and assist the case for privatisation. Of course she was a political appointment of the Labour government that forced all probation service's to become Trusts as a prelude to removing whole chunks of work and giving it to private companies and charitable bodies. My guess is that CS will be in the front line for this treatment as part of the new coalition governments wide ranging spending review due out next month.