Nacro's response to Breaking the Cycle Green Paper

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Breaking the Cycle: Nacro’s response | 42Nacro believes that until there is an improvement in the levels of availability of appropriateinterventions and treatments and until the community is truly engaged, community orderswill continue to fail to deliver their full potential in reducing reoffending. Consultation withsentencers shows that it is often a lack of appropriate community provision that inhibitseffective use of the requirements attached to community orders, for example, lack of timelyaccess to mental health treatment or alcohol treatment.This gives much scope for improvement and innovation, which could be brought about byopening up the market to cross-sector collaboration predicated on payment by results. Thishas to provide cost-effective ways of providing the right combination of measures which: holdoffenders in programmes; challenge attitudes and behaviour in both one-to-one and groupsettings; address barriers to housing and employment; tackle substance misuse; and improverelationships. Those organisations best placed to deliver these forms of support should becommissioned to do so and paid for the results they achieve. Services should be designed tospecifically address the needs of marginalised groups, such as offenders from black, Asian andother minority ethnic groups, women and those with particular faith or cultural needs. Voluntaryorganisations have a unique and vital contribution to make, particularly in addressing the needsof hard-to-reach groups and maximising compliance.
Breaking the Cycle: Nacro’s response | 43Section 9Community sentencingQ39 How important is the ability to breach offenders for not attending treatmentin tackling their drug, alcohol or mental health needs?In our view, enforcing orders is an important facet of ensuring a successful outcome withcommunity orders. Unless the right boundaries are established, the platform for the mostchallenging work cannot be set and in the long run neither the victim, nor the community northe offender benefits. Providers must ensure, in conjunction with sentencers and commissioners,that the right systems, working practices and resources are in place to maximise compliancewith the most challenging offenders who present the most complex needs. This will inevitablymean drug/alcohol-related offenders and those suffering mental health problems. But theanswer is not to relax the rules around attendance. It is illogical to put the right interventions/treatments in place and then accept a situation whereby the offender does not have to attend.Q40 What steps can we take to allow professionals greater discretion in managingoffenders in the community, while enforcing compliance more effectively?Professionals must be held to account for the defensible decisions they make in respectof enforcement. These decisions must be made in the context of a reliable and ongoingassessment of risk, need and compliance. This is the simple framework which should beapplied, within which professional discretion should be allowed. It should be underpinned byexplicit escalation and risk management processes, which all providers will need to have inplace, and inter-agency protocols to ensure the public is protected from harm.Q41 How might we target community sentences better so that they can helprehabilitate offenders before they reach custody?There is a weight of evidence which enables a sophisticated and reliable assessment of risk,need and responsivity. This already enables different models and different combinations ofintervention to be applied to different cohorts of offenders. However, programmes are notsufficiently integrated with the local community, and the probation service has found it difficultacross the board to make sustainable improvements to rates of compliance. There is a windowof opportunity, with new commissioning arrangements under payment by results to re-engineercommunity sentences so that they are more accessible and engaging to ordinary membersof the public and to offenders with a renewed focus on attrition prevention and communityengagement. There is huge scope to use new technology, including GPS and online formsof engagement to modernise the way in which we engage with offenders in an age which isdominated by websites and communication via social media.
Page 1: Breaking the Cycle: Effective punis
Page 4 and 5: Breaking the Cycle: Nacro’s respo
Page 50: Breaking the Cycle: Nacro’s respo

Nacro's response to Breaking the Cycle Green Paper

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?