Effectiveness Of The Post Sentence Supervision Provisions Criminology Essay

Effectiveness Of The mark Sentence Supervision Provisions Criminology EssayThis essay lead belowstand whether the specialty of the fleck article of faith supervision provisions for perilous wrongdoers ar adequate. The changing attitude towards the interposition of sober wrongdoers volition be explored presentation that in the twenty first of completely century, the term insecure offender involves k instantlyledgeable and cherry-red offenders. Most world attention is foc drilld on those who collapse fetch upual and predatory acts against kidskinren hence paedophiles are often associated with such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) wild bulk.It is a subject which has inte awaited me particularly as the stakes are so last if things do non go to plan. My interest arose collect to the adverse nationality surrounding full(prenominal) profile cases where dangerous offenders reoffend and it spurred me into examining whether the dribble sentence supervision baseball clubs scarpered.The term dangerous offender passel in like manner be extended to include potential terrorists, the socially excluded as strong as new(prenominal) reddened and informal offenders who carry pop offences with a transforming degree of upright-mindedness. More controversially dangerousness is besides applied to the workforcetally ill who commit grave offences. At integrity time the penalty had to fit the crime and although this is still true it has to be reflectioned at in tandem with the danger to society of permitting an offender back into the residential district.The Multi-Agency Public security department positionings (MAPPA) arrangements were introduced to deal with those dangerous offenders who exist in the society, managing them so that they do not pose a threat to society. MAPPA is a multi authority approach consisting of the legal philosophy, local anaesthetic authorities, schools, probation divine service and similar entities.W hat is the main aim of MAPPA is to reform the conduct of antecedent offenders so that through their treatment and rehabilitation they no longer need to re-offend or is their aim to merely be foilative and reactionary halt any re-pique by close supervision?The getting even of releasing dangerous offenders into the confederacy is spicyly controversial because the repercussions of re-offending can be horrendous. It unless takes one case where another heinous crime is committed for a earth outcry to turn out with the press claiming that the MAPPA system is not working. In appendix the effects on the victims is acute with claims that the re-offender should not hasten been released early or at all, as clearly they still pose a cracking risk to society.Carefully balanced against the overts desire to be valueed is the benevolent rights aspect of the offender. In recent eld there has been a angle of dip for home secretaries to get involved in what are perceived as lenient s entences declaren to dangerous offenders. In a couple of instances the extolive(prenominal) home secretary has intervened to increase the recommended minimum sentence before an offender can be considered eligible for pa quality. The House of Lords, following an earlier close, has tardily ruled that such interpolation by the home secretary is mutually exclusive with the offenders humanity rights.I leave use both qualitative sources with a lesser come up of quantitative material, somewhat extracted at primary sources.Pro make up chapters at this juncture areChapter 1The concept of dangerousness will be explored to high spot the character of offenders under discussion. We will look at the controversial nation of mentally incapable dangerous offenders and their treatment. An analysis of the legislation including applicable steering and the consumes of some academician commentators will be undertaken.Chapter 2The functioning of the multi-agency national security system arrangements will be examined in detail including a look at one particular police force. Their methodology and data will be examined to as veritable if they are successful or adequate and what is meant by adequate. regimen and academic commentaries will be consideredChapter 3Some high profile familiarised cases causing concern will be examined which will lead the press and others to condemn the post supervision orders of dangerous offenders. The issue of dangerous alien offenders committing serious offences in the UK will be examined.Chapter 4Analysis of MAPPA data will be examined which will highlight the successes and harms of post sentencing initiatives and suggest possible reforms. Dangerous offenders surrender human rights and the cases of Anderson and to a greater extent recently, Whiting, will be explored looking at the aspect of political intervention in minimum recommended sentences. Conclusion will tie all material unitedly with my rulings on the adequacy of post s upervision of dangerous offenders.Literature polish upA wide range of literature has been examined including secondary sources comprising eminent academic commentators and overly primary sources including court suppositions and published draws of the managing agencies have been examined. Other superior sources under scrutiny include newspaper articles and commentaries of variant public empyrean personnel. there is an inherent bias built into the views of the MAPPA agencies and government ministers who throwk to unloose the in force(p)ness of their respective areas of work.Chapter 1The modern day criminal nicety system in Britain is geared at the rehabilitation of offenders so the prison house system is not notwithstanding a means of incarceration to pull out the offender from posing any danger to the public, provided also a vehicle for preparing the offender for release and re-integration into society.The Criminal referee make out 2003 (which has been amend by the Criminal rightness and Immigration go 2008) sets out the criteria for dealings with dangerous offenders and is important to the court for sentencing purposes. Dangerous offenders are identified by reference to the commission of specified hazardous and sexual offences set out in Schedule 15 of the Criminal Justice Act. That Act says that a court must determine whether there is a significant risk to members of the public of serious harm by the commission by him of that offences (Criminal Justice Act, S 229). In a recent case the court of rightfulness of Appeal held that in determining dangerousness the court was not confined to considering only admissible leaven and could consider, as it did in the case, an alleged history of wildness although the offender did not have convictions (R v Considine and Davis, 2007). Public protection was compound under the Criminal Justice Act by the introduction of a sentence of irons for public protection which ensures that certain offender s are not released until the Parole Board determines that it is safe to do so.Problems arise because although the term dangerous offender is used in a general way it is in fact extremely difficult to predict who is dangerous as individuals vary in their behaviour. Not only do individuals vary as surrounded by each other so that there are differing degrees and shades of dangerousness nevertheless also, on an individual ground, the scope for carrying out dangerous and violent acts may vary on a daily basis. The notion of dangerousness is therefore extremely complex in itself and is capable of shifting on an individual basis whereby assessing and predicting in store(predicate) behaviour can be compared to attempting to mould soft mainstay into a permanent form. clement nature can be essentially and inherently unpredictable even among stable law abiding individuals, so when mentally unstable people are added to the melting pot, the decision as to assessing their dangerousness be comes much complex. In the UK, policies takeing those with dangerous and severe constitution disorders (DSPD) has expanded well in recent years against a background that people with personality disorders should not be precluded from accessing service available to the rest of society. The DSPD programme deals with patients who have the most severe personality disorders. The DSPD programme offers an intensive multi disciplinary treatment programme based on individual need and comprising a cognitive-behavioural group-based intervention approach with opportunities for social interaction, in ward-based partnership meetings for example. Specific treatment includes offence-specific groups, such as sex offender group and violence reduction programmes. There has been a shift of indemnity from placing people with DSPD in prisons into secure hospitals with the field of study Health Service taking a more active role in providing treatment. A smaller number of medium secure and community sets have been programmed, only so far the implementation has fallen john target and the rehabilitation of DSPD patients back into the community remains extremely challenging. paygrade of the DSPD programme is a work in progress and the impact of this constitution on reoffending rates remains to be deduced. Persons assessed as having DSPD must be detained for treatment and firing off from detention is dependent upon a test of public safety as against favourable responsiveness to treatment. The link between dangerous behaviour and mental illness remains embedded in public opinion in spite of the attempts of mental health practitioners to highlight the absence of such a connection. A study of public opinion towards schizophrenia embed that 70% of respondents view this group as dangerous (Crisp et al, 2001). Regarding treatment in the community following release from prison or hospital, Leung cites the European judgment of W v Sweden 1988, in which compulsory medication on disc harge from hospital was not a deprivation of self-direction and would not trespass Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Leung, 2002). prison population has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years from circa 43,000 at the start of the 1990s (Home Office, 2005a) to in excess of 80,000 today. Although there are numerous reasons given to explain this startling increase, the focus of the public on dangerousness is one such explanation. In 2006 a review was conducted which claimed that prison was the take up authority for dangerous offenders as it stopped them from re-offending (Home Office, 2006a, p. 32). In 2007 with the creation of the Ministry of Justice the preceding approach to detaining dangerous offenders for a long time did not change. On the contrary, the newly formed Ministry reiterated that prison places are available to protect the public from dangerous offenders (Ministry of Justice, 2007, p 4).The 1990s preoccupation with public protection sh aped the policies of protecting the public from the risk of serious harm arising from violent offenders and the aim of responding more effectively to the risk of paedophiles and the increase in child sex abuse (Grubin, 1998)Within the UK the population is generally extremely horrible of the train of violent and sexual crime (Ditton Farrell, 2002 Kemshall, 2003). The focus on this type of crime has been exacerbated by the media and even when crime rates are shown to be falling, the public perception is that they are living in a more violent society. Dangerousness has therefore been widely used to describe an increase amount of offences and has been attach to with an expectation of more punitive sentences to deal with the increase. Barbara Hudson asserts that there has been a significant shift from doing justice to retardling risks as the goal of law and order and penal strategies (Hudson, 2002 p 101). The modern society is characterised by the increasing scope and decide of the mass media. The far reaching scrutiny of the spherical mass media means that the negatives of modern society are report and in terms of criminal justice, its failings can be exposed. Such exposure is accompanied by cynicism towards expert opinions and the positive effects of legislation (Garland, 2000).Garland (2001, p178) has draw the space between the community and prisons as having become more stringently enforced stating that Those offenders who are released into the community are subject to much tighter control than previously and conditions that continue to restrict their freedom.the community into which they are released is in reality a closely monitored terrain, a supervised space, wishing much of the liberty that one associates with normal lifespan.Commenting on a Panorama programme carry in 2006, HM Chief Inspector of Probation give tongue to he thought the programme made a fair point when he tell that general talk of close supervision and supervise of offenders can give a misleading impression to the public of the extent of measures taken to prevent them (Bridges, 2007).It is clear in the early stages of this essay that there are opposite views on the nature and extent of observe to which dangerous offenders are subjected on their release from prison. Academics like Garland above consider the measures stringent, tantamount to imprisonment indoors the community, whereas the enforcers of those measures, probation workers, maintain that it is unhelpful to make it sound as if community service is prison in the community which it plainly is not (Bridges, 2007 p 4).Chapter 2Violent sex offendersOnce prisoners reach the end of their sentence but are still considered dangerous, measures are put in place to manage them in the community. The Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR) is managed by the National Policing overture Agency of the Home Office. It comprises records stored on a database of those obligate to point with the police in ac cordance with the internal Offences Act 2003 those remand for more than 12 months for violent offences and people not convicted of any crimes but who are deemed to be at risk of offending. It was rolled out to all probation area and prison establishment in England and Wales in 2008 with police, probation and prison services using the same IT system for the first time. This co-ordination should ensure that the quality and synchroneity of risk assessments are improved leading to effective interventions to prevent re-offending.In 2009 Greater Manchester Police responded to a freedom of teaching request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In watching with the request the police reported that of 16 people within their jurisdiction who were on the ViSOR since 2007, 4 had not been convicted. So 25% of those on the ViSOR had not that been convicted of a crime in a court of law to that extent they were subjected to the reporting and other hirements placed on individuals who are so registered. internal Offences ActThe relation periods for offenders are also contained within the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Where offenders are subject to imprisonment for life or for more than 30 months jailed for public protection admitted to hospital under a labour order or subject to an order for lifelong restriction the notification period is indefinitely. The question of the legitimacy of lifelong modification has been subjected to challenge in recent years. It was successfully challenged in the High Court and the appeal against the decision was dismissed in the Supreme Court which stated that lifelong registration was incompatible with human rights (European Convention on Human Rights, Article 8). new-fangled Challenge and human rightsThe ViSOR database h experienceds name and address records, photographs, risk assessment, offenders modus operandi, and an analyze trail. The Police National Computer is linked to ViSOR. According to the National Policing Improvement Agency 77,000 records of named individuals are maintained on the database. 7Sex offenders subject to the register must inform the Police within 3 days 8 of change state subject to the notification requirements, or within 3 days of different changes occurring 9, including moving home, changing their name, changes of passport details. Offenders must confirm their registration yearly 10. Failure to comply is an offence, subject to a penalty of up to quin years imprisonment.The importance of the ViSOR is that providing registered offenders comply with its provisions, indeed they can be monitored by the countenance agencies. Although misadventure to comply has a penalty of up to 5 years imprisonment, this is of little comfort or assistance to people who are subjected to attacks by offenders who have failed to comply with the notification requirements. In this respect the adequacy of the registration provisions are an end in themselves and do not prevent further offending. Genera lly speaking the public will derive some comfort from the fact that registered offenders are on the radar of the police and are or should be at certain addresses. Problems ensue when the registered offender is not where he should be so that the supervision and monitor avocation on the agencies breaks down. Of course it may be that the offender has forgotten to register a change of address or he cannot be bothered or he has a genuine reason for not complying and that he has no intention of re-offending. The problem is that with the genuine fear of violent crime within the community, the public are alarmed if they should become conscious(predicate) of such failures. Even worse, if a registered offender does re-offend, the public will see this as evidence of the inadequacy of the supervisory arrangements of the ViSOR. If the non compliant registered offender does not reoffend it may be that the public is kept in oblivious ignorance and it does not come to their attention.Multi Agenc y Partnership Protection AgenciesThe MAPPA measures were put in place nine years ago in an attempt to improve the effectiveness of the steering of offenders who are in the community. MAPPA has statutory force as the arrangements were first set out in the Criminal Justice and Court work Act 2000 and re-enacted and further strengthened in part 13 theatrical role 325 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 imposing a legal duty on agencies. The measures mainly comprise information share and the views of professionals who come unitedly pooling their expertise in order to ensure the public is protected from future offending of dangerous offenders. There are 3 trains of cases under MAPPA. take aim 1 can be managed by one agency (usually probation service) train 2 requires more than 1 agency and level 3 requires co-ordination among various agencies.The legal duties placed on the police, prison and probation services acting collectively as the responsible authority to establish arrangemen ts for assessing and managing the risks posed by applicable sexual and violent offenders or other offenders who may cause serious harm to the public to review and monitor those arrangements and as part of the reviewing and monitoring arrangements, to prepare and publish an annual report on their operation.Other agencies also under a legal duty to co-operate with the responsible authority include local authority social services, primary care trusts, jobcentre plus, youth offending teams. Local housing providers, local education authorities and electronic monitoring providers.Thus MAPPA involves a wide range of bodies which in itself is good but the effectiveness of its measures lie in the ability to co-ordinate responses crosswise all spectrums of the agencies by the responsible authority. In most cases the offender will be managed by the agency with supervisory tariff but several offenders require multi-agency fretting and their risk worry plans will be compiled and monitored a t MAPPA meetings in which various agencies are present.MAPPA is primarily concerned with managing risk. David Hanson, Minister for Justice said Putting in place thorough systems to ensure high level vigilance of serious sexual and violent offenders on their release from prison is vital in our work protecting communities from crime and he also acknowledges that the introduction of the MAPPA have been successful in reducing risk (Ministry of Justice, 2008).Offenders released into the community following a period of imprisonment of 12 months or more will be subject to a licence with conditions (under the supervision of the probation service. If the offender does not comply with the set conditions, severing action will be taken whereby the offender may be sent back to prison. Sexual offences prevention orders can be made with a full order lasting for a minimum of 5 years and a requirement that the offender registers as a sexual offender. Conditions can be enforce restricting the offend er from frequenting school playgrounds for example. Again if the offender riftes the order he can be taken back to court and may be imprisoned for up to 5 years. Foreign travel orders prevents offenders with convictions for sexual offences against children from traveling abroad so as to prevent children from the risk of sexual harm.In 2008, the Home Office began pilots which increased the amount of information about certain child sex offenders which was available to the public. People were able to ask for information about a person who has contact with their children. The pilots took place throughout 4 police areas and were completed in September 2009. Although the pilots were to be evaluated with a view to be implemented nationwide, regardless of the outcome of that evaluation, there is already an debt instrument to consider during a case review, whether there is a need to smash information about the offender as part of the risk anxiety plan. This would appear to be duplicati on and there does seem to be a necessity for MAPPAS to be seen to be continuously evolving as the offender is ceaselessly one step ahead.Polygraph testsIn October 2009 the Ministry of Justice announced that it was piloting needful polygraph tests for sex offenders in the community. The polygraph test is being scrutinised to ascertain whether it might be another useful tool for the effective management of sex offenders. The p conformation legislation is the Offender Management Act 2007 which authorised the mandatory use of polygraphs on sex offenders who are subject to licence upon their entry into the community following their imprisonment. The polygraph test would be used together with, and not kind of of, other management offender tools.CastrationChapter 3As can be seen there are a wide variety of management tools available under the MAPPA arrangements but their effectiveness and adequacy will now be examined.In October 2009 the Daily Telegraph reported that dangerous contrad ictory criminals are remaining in Britain despite strenuous efforts by the Government to remove them. The paper reports that immigration judges have overturned attempts by the Home Office to remove at least 50 foreign criminals from the country in the past year with their defence lawyers arguing that deporting them would breach their human rights. Examples of such cases are Mark Cadle from Berlize, jailed for having sex with a 14 year old girl who judges said would have his human right to family life infringed if deported because his family lived in Britain. A Somali who had been convicted for manslaughter and robbery was allowed to remain in the country after the court said he would be at serious risk of persecution if deported as he was from a minority clan. Of the 50 cases involved 15 include criminals with convictions for serious violent crimes, 4 sex offenders and 13 with do drugs convictions. In most of the cases lawyers argued that deporting them would breach their human rig hts to a family life because numerous had families in Britain. In some instances like the Somali case, the issues were that the person would be subjected to torture if returned to his homeland in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.On the 2 November 2009 the bleak headlines of the Guardian newspaper read probation service failing to learn lessons over murder of French students, inquiry finds (Travis, 2009). In 2008 dickens French students were tortured and murdered in capital of the United Kingdom by Dano Sonnex. He was found guilty of their murder and was a violent drug addict who was meant to be under supervision and should have been in jail as he had earlier breached his conditions for release. The case raised fresh anxiety and concerns over the manner in which dangerous offenders are monitored in the community. The parents of the two students were so infuriate that they were preparing to issue proceedings against the probation service and the police. The massive public outcry prompted the chief inspector of probation, Andrew Bridges to look at 276 cases across 10 London boroughs. The findings did not make palpable reading for the relevant MAPPA responsible bodies. Bridges said that the results were disappointing particularly when compared to 2008 and he deduced that only 54% of the public protection work examined was of sufficiently high level of quality we were looking for. ( ). In 2008 the figure was 63% for the whole London sample so this heralded a poignant deterioration.Another high profile case was the murder of Naomi Bryant in Winchester by Anthony Rice. Rice had served 16 years in prison and had committed several sexual attacks including mollycoddle and seek rape. At the time of the murder he was on life licence and was under the supervision of Hampshire Probation Area alongside numerous other agencies via MAPPA. Following the murder of Bryant an independent report was undertaken which reason that there were serious s hortcomings in the way Rice had been managed prior and since his release from prison. The report revealed that the failure to properly manage Rices risk of being a danger to the community was not the fault of one particular person or agency but was a collective failure of measures both within the prison and the community.Upon his release there was no clear indication of who took the lead responsibility for Rice and there followed transfers of key responsibilities which made for inconsistencies and lack of co-ordination. The conditions on the manifest were vague for example one condition stated that Rice should not misuse substances and the indian lodge staff where he was staying interpreted this as substance that he could consume alcohol. The report criticised the MAPPA panel for allowing them to be distracted by human rights consideration at the expense of public protection. The report highlighted lack of communication and errors of judgment and reinforced the importance of the three responsible agencies having clearness and consistency in their practices and procedures.The next notorious case concerns the murder of hindquarters Monckton and the attempted murder of his wife by 2 young men both under the supervision of London probation. When Hanson was 17 years old he received a sentence of 12 years for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit robbery, and it was during his licence period for this offence that he committed the murder of Monckton. Hanson ought to have been referred to MAPPA but he was not, despite being assessed as a high risk of causing harm. So despite being branded as a high risk he was not treated as such. The parole board failed to appreciate the relevance of Hansons predeliction for using instrumental violence and his recorded included utilising violence for monetary advantage. Hanson was placed on a CALM programme which does not address this type of violence. After his release he was to report to an office which was within the ex clusion zone from which he was banned clearly a mistake. His residency was also an issue resulting in him living in a guild which had not been approved by the parole board because the approved hostel in Essex had refused his application. The interpretation of licence conditions caused problems and the risk of harm posed was not assessed or managed adequately and there was a lack of co-ordination with the partnership arrangements. The inspectorate report concluded there was a collective failure to describe the failure in practices of all those managing Hanson and White and acknowledged the considerable organisational constraints in their management (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2006)Positive AspectsThere are however some positive aspects to the work of MAPPA (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2006). The report decided that in the vast majority of cases MAPPA had been very effective and produced good work although there was still room for improvement. The report concluded that the risk o f harm assessments had been accurate in a high property of cases. The probation and prison services worked closely in order to identify assign offender programmes and appropriate tools were activated to manage the risk of harm posed by particular offenders.The public protection arrangements which existed in 2001 and found abstracted (Maguire et al 2001) had greatly improved by 2005. In 2001 apart from the probation and police few of the other agencies bothered to attend meetings. The introduction of the Criminal Justice Court Services Act 2000 had made real and major improvements to the management of high risk cases. In 2005 most agencies were attending meetings and recording decisions and the evidence used to reach their conclusions with all areas having regular case reviews and information sharing protocols in place. Procedures were in place to manage offenders at all the levels including appropriate risk classification tools and gate keeping through the system. However resource s were a problem as were the IT case management systems. But in the 4 years since 2001 a more structured and clear approach to managing high risk offenders was in place throughout England and Wales (Madoc-Jones, 2006)The lifelong restrictions on sex offenders living and travel arrangements were recently judged to be a breach of human rights (R (JF(by his litigation friend OF) ) Anor v SSHD). Section 82 Sexual Offences Act requires all persons sentenced to thirty months imprisonment or more for a sexual offence to tell the police where they reside and if they travel abroad for the rest of their lives. Importantly there is no right to review the operation of the requirement. two respondents were sex offenders and they challenged the lifelong notification requirement on the basis that it was a disproportionate requirement and breached their human rights under Article 8 finisThe important precis from which to start is that unless all dangerous offenders are imprisoned with maximum sec urity so that escape is virtually impossible, it is impossible to guaranty that there is no risk to the public of harm from these offenders. As such measures are impractical, too costly and in breach of human rights legislation, then the present system is the one which exists and in which improvements can be made. In fact the present MAPPA system is a way of protecting the public with measures which do not affront human rights legislation.Unfortunately government policy has in the past been influenced by public outcry with the press wielding influence with its sometimes sensational headlines. The fact remains that the MAPPA and other arrangements involve many people who are capable of making errors of judgments which can have sad consequences for victims should offenders reoffend. Every time one person is subjected to a sexual or violent attack, there is a public outcry and a reprimand of the release into the community of dangerous offenders and that the measures are inadequate. However MAPPA in itself does comply with the requirements of the human rights legislationBibGarland, D. (2001) The Culture of ControlCrime and well-disposed Order in Contemporary Society, Oxford Oxford University PressHMPS (2005 b) Public Protection Arrangement Working Together to Defend Communities, 17 October 2005, available at http//www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/resourcecentre/pressreleases/index.asp?id=4193,230,608,242,0,0, (accessed on 21 June 2010)HM Inspectorate of Probation 2006. An Independent Review of a Serious encourage Offence Case Damien Hanson and Elliot White. Retrieved on 2010 from http//inspectorates.homeoffi