Policy paper

Rehabilitation: Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 factsheet

Updated 20 August 2022

We want to make sure that we have effective community supervision. Not only will that keep the public safer by providing early intervention, it will deflect offenders away from future offending as well. We set out in our Sentencing White Paper an agenda of reform for not only punishing but, importantly, rehabilitating low-level offenders.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar QC

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State

What are we going to do?

We plan to pilot Problem-Solving Courts for certain cohorts of offenders with particular criminogenic needs.

We will simplify and standardise the national adult out of court disposals framework.

We will improve employment opportunities and reducing rehabilitation periods for offenders, helping them to move on with their lives.

How are we going to do it?

The Act creates provisions that allow the following:

Problem-Solving Courts (PSCs), with a judge leading a multidisciplinary rehab team.

Additional powers are required to:

• Enable judges to initiate breach proceedings at regular review hearings—allowing judges to manage the order directly and shorten the timescales for offenders to return to court etc.
• Expand drug testing beyond Drug Rehabilitation Requirements (DRRs) enabling the PSC to incorporate offenders whose drug misuse drives their offending behaviour but who do not meet the eligibility for a DRR i.e. may not require treatment or show willingness to comply with the DRR framework.
• Create a short custodial sanction as a sanction for non-compliance without requiring the judge to terminate the order so offenders will have the opportunity to continue with their rehabilitation.

Out of Court Disposals

• Introduces a statutory two-tier framework for out of court disposals (OOCDs) and replaces the six adult OOCDs, including simple cautions, cannabis / khat warnings and penalty notices for disorder. Under this reform police will also retain the use of the informal community resolution (CR).
• There will be a lower-tier disposal (community caution) and an upper-tier disposal (diversionary caution). There must be conditions attached to both aimed at one of three objectives, namely rehabilitation, reparation or punishment. Restrictive conditions can be set where they contribute to reparation or rehabilitation. Victims should be consulted and their views taken into account.

Criminal Record Reform

• Introducing a rehabilitation period for some sentences of over 4 years, meaning that for non-sensitive jobs or activities they do not have to be disclosed to employers.
• Reducing the time that community orders and sentences under 4 years have to be revealed to most employers.
• These reductions in disclosure periods will also improve access to employment.

Background

Problem-Solving Courts (PSCs)

PSCs are an active and dynamic path to justice providing robust rehabilitation and support to offenders who can be both prolific and vulnerable. It places judges and magistrates at the centre of sentencing, rehabilitation and compliance, alongside a multi-disciplinary team ranging from probation and health professionals, to police and broader service providers.

The overarching principle is that there will be consistent judicial oversight, reviews, and incentives and sanctions which focus on supporting offenders to address the problems that drive their offending behaviour.

PSCs provide a regime that offers more intensive or structured support for offenders sentenced to a community order or suspended sentence order with community requirements, in most cases as an alternative to short-term custody. The onus will be on the individual to actively engage in the positive elements of their sentence, combined with more reliable access to the other services they may need such as substance misuse and mental health service providers.

The model differs from existing community orders, as they will be responsive more to an offender’s “criminogenic needs”, that is the things that drive their offending, like drug misuse, and allows relatively rapid changes to the balance of incentives and sanctions to be made directly by the reviewing judge through regular court reviews to monitor offenders’ progress and hold them accountable.

Out of Court Disposals

The intention of out of court disposals is to minimise the risk of people being drawn into the formal criminal justice system when there is no public interest to prosecute and their behaviour is better addressed in the long term by a less formal sanction, as necessary, with the involvement of the victim.

The proposed measures allow greater powers to divert offenders to support pathways, such as engagement with mental health or substance abuse services. They provide an opportunity for early intervention to address the underlying issues that contribute to offending behaviour.

Criminal Record Reform—Reducing Rehabilitation Periods

The system of criminal records disclosure provides protections to people with convictions who desist from crime and means that, after a certain period of time, most convictions will become “spent”. When asked, those persons do not need to disclose their convictions to potential employers for most roles unless an exception applies. The exceptions balance public protection by requiring more serious and some spent convictions be disclosed when working in a sensitive position or with sensitive groups.

Employment is a significant factor in encouraging rehabilitation, and it is in everyone’s interest that we successfully rehabilitate offenders. We recognise that having a criminal record can have a significant impact on children or adults who offended as a child.

Frequently asked questions

What are the main advantages of Problem-Solving Courts?

Tailored, effective rehabilitative sentences

The court will identify potential candidates for the problem-solving approach and through robust pre-sentence reports, the options best suited to manage the offender’s criminogenic needs will be identified.

Consistent judicial monitoring

Ensuring offenders have the consistency of the same sentencer from start to finish enables their progress to be managed in a closer and more robust way.

Rewards and sanctions

As well as rewarding good compliance, the judge will punish non-compliance by swiftly ‘stepping up and down’ requirements or removing them altogether.

Why do we need a criminal record reform?

The criminal records disclosure system aims to strike a balance between protecting individuals and businesses and recognising that offenders who have desisted from crime should be able to move on and fully participate in society.

Employment is a significant factor in encouraging rehabilitation, and it is in everyone’s interest that we successfully rehabilitate offenders.

We therefore seek to remove barriers to employment, and this means that after a certain period of time most convictions will become spent and no longer need to be disclosed.

Reforming the regime to ensure that criminal records are disclosed only where potentially relevant to the role should improve ex-offender employment, supporting public protection by reducing reoffending.

In finding the right balance, the system will always seek to prevent harm and protect vulnerable individuals.

Why change the OOCD framework?

The two-tier framework improves national consistency among police forces to address low-level offending with a greater opportunity to access support pathways.

A review of OOCDs ran from 2013 to 2014. This sought views from the public, as well as practitioners within the criminal justice system and confirmed that OOCDs needed reform.

In 2014/2015 there was a pilot of the new framework in three police forces. The evaluation of the pilot highlighted generally positive responses from police, and victims welcomed the opportunity for engagement.

The Act aims to decrease the escalation in offending. The changes will provide practitioners, the public and offenders to whom they are given with more clarity in OOCDs and put a greater emphasis on victims’ views.

Key facts

Greater Manchester, which runs a PSC approach for women has a lower annual average reoffending rate for female offenders compared to similar urban areas, and England and Wales overall. (13.5% compared to 20.8% for Jan-December 2019): (proven reoffending statistics: October-December 2019.)

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) supported the move to a two-tier structure and published a strategy at the end of 2017 encouraging the move.

50% of employers would not consider hiring an ex-offender, but obtaining employment within 12 months release from prison could reduce reoffending by 5-10 percent.

80% of those who were convicted or cautioned had already received at least one previous conviction or caution.

The estimated economic and social cost of reoffending by adults was £16.7 billion.