My Lords, I am moving the amendment in the name of my friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, with her permission, as she is, sadly, unable to be here. I declare her interest as Anglican Bishop for Prisons in England and Wales, and we are very grateful for the support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Lord, Lord Beith.
I should say first that, while there are many parts of the Bill with which I take some issue, I do by and large consider it a welcome feature of the Bill that it places a new emphasis and focus on diversionary and community cautions, and on simplifying the previous regime. Done well, these out-of-court disposals, with helpful conditions attached, can be an effective solution that strikes a balance between punishment, the protection of communities and supporting the offender to successfully seek restoration in their community.
However, it is an issue that the conditions attached to these cautions can be poorly conceived and become either unnecessarily restrictive or, indeed, not sufficiently rehabilitative in order to help people to avoid reoffending. This amendment is intended to improve and clarify what is already presented in the Bill by providing assurance that conditions attached to community cautions will
“make reasonable efforts, or ensure that reasonable efforts are or have been made, to ensure conditions include interventions to support the offender to desist from offending.”
That closely matches the wording in Clause 79(3), which insists on efforts to obtain the views of any victim or victims of the offence. Seeking the views of victims is a sensible objective, but it leaves this clause, “Deciding on the conditions”, rather lopsided. Attention is paid to who can set conditions and to the views of victims, but not to the most fundamental point, which is surely what impact these conditions have on the offender.
The critical point here is that community cautions are likely to be useful only if the conditions are effectively tailored to help offenders desist from offending. Key drivers of crime are poverty, mental ill-health, trauma and substance misuse. If conditions of cautions do not take steps to address those drivers, how can we reasonably expect to reduce reoffending? The alternative is simply to see the revolving door continue to spin, with the same offenders being trapped in cycles of offending, without the help they need to escape and rebuild their lives. Apart from being bad for the offender, this is obviously bad for victims and communities, who will continue to be impacted by reoffending. Only by restoring relationships and communities and providing the right support to prevent reoffending can we begin to really break this cycle.
I am very grateful to the Revolving Doors Agency for its briefings and support, and for its work with its new-generation campaigners. These are young adults with experience of the revolving door of crisis and crime, and discussions with them were around how they viewed conditions attached to cautions, what they found useful and what they did not find useful. Revolving Doors established that among the useful conditions were: attendance at drug and alcohol treatment to help break addiction cycles; meaningful, ideally accredited, unpaid work to build up skills and provide career options; family counselling sessions; and signposting to services to help with financial issues and poverty. All these conditions, critically, are designed to work with offenders to address underlying causes of their offending and provide them with meaningful alternatives that do not simply keep people trapped in the same cycles of criminal activity and the criminal justice system.
I hope that we might hear from the Minister of plans to extend and increase funding and support for such interventions, as I was rather disappointed not to see Dame Carol Black’s full recommendations for funding for drug treatment in the Chancellor’s Budget. You might also expect me to say that in the case of women’s offending we know that when a number of these things are provided through a holistic approach through a women’s centre, there are encouraging outcomes regarding reoffending.
I turn to the other aspect of conditions, which is about them sometimes being unnecessarily punitive without having any benefit. That is also highlighted by research from the Revolving Doors Agency and its work with its young new-generation campaigners in highlighting that not all conditions are useful or helpful. One campaigner told Revolving Doors of a condition where they were banned from public transport despite relying on it to get to school:
“I used to have get two buses to school, and then I was banned from public transport. How else was I meant to get to school? I was taken to court for still being on public transport.”
Other highlighted examples were conditions that were not tailored to the needs of the offender but seemed arbitrary or overly restrictive—almost as though they were being set up to fail.
One danger of the Bill as drafted is that since it is mandatory to impose conditions on these cautions, there is a risk of up-tariffing, with conditions attached that are more restrictive than necessary and actually undermine the ability of an offender to desist from crime. Indeed, the Centre for Justice Innovation noted that the Ministry of Justice’s two-tier out-of-court disposal pilot evaluation highlighted the dangers of up-tariffing within out-of-court disposals. It showed that, contrary to the principle of de-escalation, people who would have received simple cautions were given conditional cautions instead. Conditional cautions involved people having to complete more interventions than they otherwise would have done and came with the threat of enforcement in the case of non-compliance. That threat of enforcement is critical. There is little point to community cautions if the conditions are so onerous that many people end up breaching them and find themselves receiving a custodial sentence.
I stress again that the amendment looks to improve on the Bill. This clause already provides for several criteria for deciding on conditions—notably, the views of victims. It is a small and easy fix to ensure that a further criterion is to ensure that conditions make reasonable efforts to support the offender to desist from offending. I beg to move.
1.30 pm