The final two pieces in this series look at how criminals can be managed in Wales after independence. While the best way to deal with crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place, that’s not going to stop everyone. This piece will look at criminal rehabilitation and non-custodial sentencing options like fines, community sentencing and probation.
The Current Picture: Probation Services
The Probation Service is generally responsible for:
- Management of prisoners before sentencing (pre-sentence reports) and while on probation (released early from prison with conditions).
- Commissioning programmes for, and supervising, offenders who’ve been handed a community sentence.
- Overseeing community-based rehabilitation programmes.
- Overseeing re-housing of recently-released prisoners (where applicable), including in approved premises (aka. bail hostels, halfway houses). There are four approved premises in Wales at Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham and Bangor.
The UK Government privatised probation services in 2014, where it was separated into the state-managed National Probation Service to deal with high-risk criminals and a series of private providers to deal with lower-level offenders. The policy was deemed to be “a complete disaster” as officers were handed unmanageable caseloads and had to compromise usual standards to meet government targets.
The most high-profile failure in Wales came in 2015 when 18-year-old Conor Marshall was murdered in Porthcawl by David Braddon. It was later revealed that probation officers struggled to monitor Braddon effectively due to their workload. This meant that risk assessments were missed despite warning signs including missed rehabilitation appointments (6, when missing 1 requires a serious reason).
In 2019, the Probation Service was renationalised, with all work since then undertaken by the public sector. Wales has its own regional office and at the end of 2021, there were 1,296 staff-in-posts for the Probation Service in Wales7. In 2019, there were just over 15,500 offenders under the supervision of the Probation Service in Wales8. Funding for the probation service is normally counted as part of the funding for the prison service.
The Current Picture: Community Sentencing
Community sentences are punishments handed down by the court where it’s deemed the offence wasn’t serious enough to result in prison. Community sentences usually consist of things like:
- Community payback (formerly known as community service) – Unpaid work in the community for between 40-300 hours, usually supervised by someone from the Probation Service. The work is normally undertaken within a 90-minute drive of the offender. It usually consists of outdoors working like litter picking, scrub clearance and environmental enhancement projects.
- Rehabilitation programmes – Similar to the ones mentioned earlier concerning prisoners. It could include anger management, decision-making and/or a requirement to attend substance abuse treatment.
- Curfews – This could mean being banned from being in a particular area, house arrest (i.e. electronic tag) or being banned from travelling abroad.
- Restorative justice – There are programmes where offenders meet victims face-to-face, so both can understand why what happened happened and the impact it’s had.
Community sentences could be one of the above or a mix-and-match. So, for example, someone could be required to take part in community payback and attend drug treatment. They can also be combined with a suspended prison sentence.
Breaching a community sentence is dealt with seriously and if there’s willful non-compliance the offender may be re-sentenced to prison or, for lesser breaches, given an extension or fined.
Here’s the make-up of community sentences passed in Wales in 2019:
The use of community sentences has generally declined.
Cardiff University research linked the decline to the fall in the use of pre-sentence reports, with the number of pre-sentence reports falling by 25% since 20149 – which is around about the same time the UK Government privatised probation services. There’s no firm evidence that the two are linked, though there are suggestions that the focus was more on providing pre-sentence reports faster rather than more thoroughly.
Pre-sentence reports are useful in determining what drives offender behaviour and their general state of mind. So it would also give clues as to what interventions need to be made to correct criminal behaviour.
The Options & Independence
Regarding the probation service, I doubt there’s any need for major reforms to their role.
One element that can be dismissed immediately is privatisation or “competition” in the service. It’s unlikely to work based on recent experiences and unlikely to provide much value for taxpayers given the private partners ran up huge losses. So the probation system should remain in the public sector.
Most of the possible changes here are administrative, such as:
- Ensure probation officers have a manageable caseload, whether it’s through different ways of working or recruiting enough probation offers to maintain a certain caseload. 40-45 cases-per-officer has been cited as the ideal number by probation officers themselves, but many are dealing with upwards of 50 or 6010.
- Decide whether probation services should be provided by local government (as in Scotland) or remain a national-level service.
- Full professionalisation of the probation service, including possibly a dedicated degree programme or postgraduate qualification, licence to practice, Code of Practice, professional register and a professional standards board (similar to other legal professionals).
- Give probation officers more flexibility and trust their professional judgement in how they deal with individual offenders based on how the offenders’ lives and circumstances change. Offenders who are making good progress could be contacted less often, while those who are at higher risk or showing signs of relapse should be kept in close contact or have their conditions altered (i.e extended curfews).
- Drop targets and focus on outcomes – particularly reoffending rates, successful completion of drug treatment programmes and maintaining drug-free status. People under probation supervision have a marked increase in suicide rates according to Cardiff University research11.
As for community sentencing, it tends to be similar around the world – usually some form of unpaid work and/or rehabilitation programmes. There could be greater variety in the kind of work those on community sentences perform depending on the offender’s suitability. “Working with people” – such as helping care assistants or adult education (i.e. working with the elderly to improve their internet skills) – shouldn’t be flatly ruled out unless there’s a proven risk and there’s proper supervision.
Offenders who are in full-time education or training, for example, could be required to complete their course to a minimum standard as part of their sentence.
Some of the community sentence requirements could be conditional to avoid having to go through the courts multiple times – i.e. if an offender doesn’t perform X to the required standard within a certain period then they’ll receive an electronic tag/be put on curfew automatically based on their probation officer’s judgement (as mentioned earlier).
7: UK Department of Justice (December 2021), Staff in post, National Probation Service. Available at: https://data.justice.gov.uk/probation/additional/probation-staff-in-post
8: Dr Robert Jones, Cardiff University (September 2020). Prison, Probation & Sentencing in Wales: A Factfile, p55.
9: Dr Robert Jones, Cardiff University (September 2020). Prison, Probation & Sentencing in Wales: A Factfile, p53.
10: HM Inspectorate of Probations (March 2021). Caseloads, workloads and staffing levels in probation services (p15-16). Available at: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2021/03/Caseloads-and-Workloads-RAB-LL-designed-RM-amends-Mar-21.pdf
11: Dr Robert Jones, Cardiff University (September 2020). Prison, Probation & Sentencing in Wales: A Factfile, p59-63.
