Guidance

National Probation Service Sentencer update - North West Division

Published 26 March 2015

Applies to England and Wales

1. National Probation Service – working closely with Sentencers

Probation services have always valued close and effective working relationships with sentencers, and this has continued following the creation of the National Probation Service (NPS) last year.

The NPS and NOMS in Wales now work alongside the newly formed Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to provide a full range of probation services. Throughout the changes that have taken place during the past year we have made every effort to ensure that the services you have required have remained of a high standard, and maintaining our positive relationships with sentencers is an important element of these efforts.

We also appreciate the importance of regular communication between sentencers, courts and probation services. That is why we have started to create news and updates on GOV.UK which we hope you will find both informative and useful.

The introduction of the Offender Rehabilitation Act in February has brought about considerable reform, including the introduction of supervision for the vast majority of offenders sentenced to under 12 months in prison. The numbers of offenders affected by the changes introduced by the ORA will increase during the coming months, including the use of the new Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR).

The NPS is arranged into seven divisions, each led by experienced senior managers. We hope that you are already familiar with the senior NPS managers in your area; however an article from each divisional NPS lead is contained in this section. We’ve also included a selection of news articles from each division to give a flavour of some of the activity happening across the NPS.

We hope the information provided will prove interesting and useful, but we would appreciate your input to tell us what kind of information you’d like to receive from the NPS in future. A short survey has been set up to gather your views and we’ll use these to shape future communications with you.

Thank you

Colin Allars, Director, Probation

Sarah Payne, Director, National Offender Management Service in Wales

2. Working with the new Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR)

The recently introduced Rehabilitation Activity Requirement (RAR) offers the opportunity for a greater range of work to address offending behaviour.

Sentencers will be aware that this new requirement is available for both Community and Suspended Sentence Orders and replaces much of what would have been previously undertaken using supervision and activity requirements. It is for the court to first decide whether a Community Order or Suspended Sentence Order with a RAR is an appropriate sentencing disposal and then to set the length of the sentence and the maximum number of activity days.

The RAR does not allow for a minimum number of days, only a maximum. The allocated Responsible Officer, (previously known as Offender Manager or Probation Officer), will then decide the content of the activity days, how they will be delivered, how frequently the offender attends.

In some instances, the content of the RAR activity may be decided pre sentence where there are bespoke interventions in place. Therefore while the court may be aware of the proposed content, it cannot set what specific rehabilitation activities should be delivered under the RAR.

Roz Hamilton, NOMS Deputy Director and Courts Lead for the National Probation Service, said:

“The National Probation Service continues to work closely with the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) in each division as they begin their rehabilitation services in line with the requirements of the RAR.

“This close working relationship will ensure that the NPS and sentencers are kept informed of what interventions and activities are available and also the impact they are having.

“The NPS will continue to provide the pre-sentence reports in all cases where sentencers feel that a Community Order may be suitable, and this will identify the areas of concern which may be usefully addressed with a RAR.

“The RAR will offer a flexible framework within which the provider will be able to identify the areas of concern in a person’s life and create bespoke interventions to address these.

“At this early stage of implementation we are working with courts and CRCs to arrive at the most appropriate approach to the new requirement that will offer the best outcome for offenders and communities.

“We look forward to working with sentencers to arrive at a shared understanding of these new provisions.”

3. Update from the Deputy Director - North West Division

As the National Probation Service approaches a year since it was established, our focus in the North West Division continues to be on designing a service which brings together the best parts of the former Probation Trusts.

This does involve some major reviews of areas such as court enforcement and offender management and we have other challenges in managing the changes caused by the Offender Rehabilitation Act (2014), Transforming Summary Justice, changes to prison work and digital courts.

The Act brings new categories of offenders under statutory supervision as well introducing new enforcement powers and giving providers greater flexibility to manage the contents of rehabilitative requirements. We prepared to deal with its impact at different levels including courts, probation sentencing reports and offender management. All our staff will be fully trained on the new provisions.

Transforming Summary Justice will result in providing courts with a higher volume of expedited / same day reports than at present. We’re working on a strategy that involves collaboration with our Community Rehabilitation Company partners as well other agencies to have all the information in place for sentencing to take place on the day.

Despite the major changes in the last year, NPS North West is a high performing division:

• 81% of the offenders supervised by us successfully complete their orders/licences, against a target of 73%
• 98.52% of our Pre-Sentence Reports were completed in line with timescales set by the court; 53% of our offenders were in employment at the termination of their order/licence
• 84% in suitable/settled accommodation. Given the high risk profile of offenders supervised by the NPS, these are encouraging results.

Roz Hamilton

Deputy Director, North West Division

4. New enforcement officers

Ten new enforcement officers from Capita have joined the North West regional probation workforce with effect from 1 February 2015. The appointments come after a successful 8-month secondment from the rehabilitation support provider.

The new officers were initially brought in to the National Probation Service (NPS) as part of the Transforming Rehabilitation programme. By bringing them under the employment of the NPS, it allowed them to prosecute breaches in the courts. This has given probation officers extra capacity to focus on other enforcement activities, and therefore allows a greater flexibility for working with the courts.

The secondment was so successful that the transfer was made permanent.

Although the new officers will initially only be working on breaches, the intention is that they will take on responsibility for other enforcements in the future, which will give more probation coverage across all court work.

Mohammed Farooq, Head of Stakeholder Engagement for the North West division of the National Probation Service said: “We’re really pleased to have among our highly skilled workforce a group of officers who will make a tremendous contribution to the NPS as it moves forward.”

5. Give us your feedback

NOMS has always valued a good working relationship with Sentencers and we appreciate any feedback received about any of our communications.

Please could you take a few moments to answer the following questions which will help us to evaluate this publication and shape future versions.

Sentencer survey