England’s Probation Service Boss Wants Fewer Community Sentences
Community sentences should be replaced by fines for thousands of offenders, the head of the Probation Service in England & Wales says, as reported by The Times.
Phil Wheatley told The Times that his service was at risk of being overwhelmed because the courts were sentencing too many offenders to community service. It is understood that officials in the National Offender Management Service, headed by Mr Wheatley, may reduce supervision levels for offenders considered to be at low risk of harming the public or reoffending. This includes cutting the amount of time that offenders spend with probation officers. A record 147,000 people were given community sentences last year, while the number of fines fell sharply.
Mr Wheatley’s comments provoked an angry response from magistrates. John Thornhill, chairman of the Magistrates’ Association, said yesterday that it was not for the National Offender Management Service to say how people should be sentenced. “Mr Wheatley has to put everything in the context of a budget and financial constraints,” Mr Thornhill said. “We come from the angle of justice.”
Mr Wheatley was speaking to The Times as the latest official figures showed a record number of offenders starting Probation Service supervision last year. He called on the courts to be much more willing to fine offenders rather than place them on community services, which he said was costly in both manpower and financial terms. Mr Wheatley said: “It is true from the sentencing data that the courts are fining less and using community sentences more. It is obviously for the courts to decide how they deal with people, but I make the fairly obvious point: fines make money, criminals pay, and community sentences, which involve the Probation Service doing things with people, cost money.”
Mr Wheatley was careful not to be seen to be telling the courts directly to fine more offenders, but he made clear that he would like them to be used more frequently enabling him to focus probation resources on supervising prolific criminals and those likely to cause serious harm to the public. “It is important that the courts think carefully whether a community sentence is really the best option. Is it needed rather than a fine?” he said.
The Probation Service’s budget has been cut by more than 2 per cent to £886 million this year, but the latest figures show no sign that the numbers being put on supervision are falling. In the first three months of this year the number of offenders starting community sentences jumped 9 per cent to 35,900 compared with the same period last year. There was a 27 per cent rise in those considered low risk who were put on community orders. Mr Wheatley said: “It is important we do not spread our resources too thinly. It is a bit like taking antibiotics. It is better to do a good job with somebody, give them the full course in antibiotic terms rather than give everybody two pills each and hope it is sufficient to do the job” … [H]e said that putting an offender under supervision did not remove the risk to the public or mean that he or she would not commit further offences. “I do not overpromise what is possible,” he said. “We must be very careful in alleging that as a result of probation supervision, even intensive arrangements, we have removed risk. We have reduced risk.”
Mr Thornhill said that one reason for the fall in the number of fines handed out was because of the rise in out-of-court, on-the-spot fines for minor offences. He said that unpublished figures from the last quarter of last year showed an increase in the use of fines at magistrates’ courts. “It is wrong to say magistrates have stopped using fines to sentence,” he said. “There was an increase in the last quarter of last year.” But he said that in cases involving shoplifting or fraud, a community penalty rather than a fine was a better option. “What is the point of fining them when financial problems have probably been part of the problem? You are setting people up to fail.”
Uncategorized