Report of the Committee on Serious Violent and Sexual Offenders

CHAPTER 3: A RISK MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY

The need for a Risk Management Authority

3.1 As the work of our Committee progressed, it became clear that apart from the developments in sentencing options and offender management practice to which we were working, there was a need for structural improvements in the existing arrangements for the management of seriously violent and sexual offenders.

3.2 Both in our work looking at developments in the United Kingdom and in our fact- finding visits abroad, we were presented with evidence of a rapidly developing expertise in assessing the risks presented by violent offenders and in developing interventions designed to lessen the risks. We saw evidence of a lively but small international community working in this field, and in Canada, in particular, there was evidence of effective communication between that community and policy makers. The developments we saw offer a real opportunity in Scotland to achieve better protection for the public from this group of offenders. What we did not find, however, were effective mechanisms in Scotland for benefiting from the developments we saw. We see a need, if that opportunity is to be realised, to introduce means for keeping abreast of the methodologies and technologies of risk management as they are developed, and for making them available to practitioners.

3.3 We saw examples in the prison services of Scotland and England and in the Correctional Service of Canada of the introduction of systems of independent accreditation of programmes and programme delivery systems for work being done with offenders in addressing their offending behaviour. We also saw a great deal of well-intentioned work being done in both assessing offenders' needs and designing programmes intended to address those needs for which the practitioners were unable to offer us research validation. In Chapter 2 we discussed the relative merits of three approaches to the assessment of the risk presented by offenders, namely clinical judgement, actuarial methods, and structured clinical methods. The first of these approaches - a reliance on the judgement of those with expert knowledge and experience - is the predominant methodology in criminal proceedings in Scotland and in our systems for conditional release from prison. It is the least reliable of the three approaches. We are optimistic that better protection of the public can be achieved if we better inform our approach to risk management by research evidence, the accreditation of methods used and the assessment of the competence of all those working in the field to work with the methods that are demonstrably the most effective.

3.4 Finally, we saw some evidence of the development of good inter-agency co-operation in the management of some groups of offenders. We learned of planning for the release into the community of particularly high risk prisoners from Edinburgh Prison, of the quadrapartite agreement in Glasgow between Strathclyde police, the Social Work and Housing Departments of Glasgow City Council and Barlinnie Prison on co-operation in managing the release of sex offenders, and of the initiative taken by Greater Glasgow Health Board to promote an inter-agency co-operation in the care of mentally disordered offenders. Despite these encouraging initiatives, the overwhelming impression we received was of the frustration experienced by practitioners in each of the organisations in achieving effective inter-agency working with the group we were considering. The general experience we encountered was of a feeling that the contribution each agency could make both in enabling the successful rehabilitation of the offender and in offering better protection to the public was compromised by problems of inter-agency communication and information exchange, by incompatibility of systems or by differences in therapeutic or management approach. We consider that a significant weakness exists in our present arrangements in that there is no authority responsible for the overall risk management of particularly problematic offenders and for bridging the incompatibilities that clearly exist between the many agencies that have to play a part if improved protection is to be offered to the public.

3.5 We do not feel that any of these shortcomings in our present arrangements can be resolved by specific recommendations for improvements that we could make now. The issues are essentially dynamic and developmental. For them to be effectively addressed there must be continuing review of expertise and methods, effective and on-going quality assurance, and an identified authority responsible for ensuring that offenders made subject to the order we propose in Section Two remain under as close supervision as the courts intend for the remainder of their lives.

The Authority should have three main roles: a policy role, a standard setting role and an operational role.

3.6 Our recommendation is made in respect of the offender group that we were asked to consider. In making it, however, we are aware that we are proposing a standard of rigour for the management of that group that might well be appropriate to others. We have in mind those serving mandatory life sentences, those serving extended sentences and those subject, under mental health legislation, to restriction orders and restriction directions. We also anticipate that only small numbers of offenders, of the types we were asked to consider, are likely to become subject to the new sentence for high risk offenders which we propose in Section Two. If this recommendation is accepted, therefore, the Executive may wish to consider giving the Risk Management Authority terms of reference broader than simply to include the group on whom we are reporting.

The constitution of the new Risk Management Authority

3.7 The committee has not given detailed consideration to the constitutional and management arrangements of the new body. We set out below the broad framework which we recommend.

3.8 We believe that the Authority should be operationally autonomous with a policy framework set by Ministers, and with an independent board. It is essential that it be independent of any professional, organisational or political identity.

3.9 The Authority will have to be demonstrably expert in the field of risk management. To achieve that, it will have to derive its expertise from a wide range of disciplines. As much of its work will be in influencing and co-ordinating the work of existing agencies, its authority will derive not only from its relationship to the Scottish Executive but from its credibility with those agencies.

3.10 Its role should not be restricted only to influencing, however. It must have executive authority in a number of areas. These should include:

• commissioning research;
• accrediting risk assessment and management methods and processes;
• setting the standards by which the competence of practitioners to work in the
  area will be assessed;
• commissioning services from agencies working with offenders subject to the new order and deploying a budget for that purpose;
• reviewing and developing the risk management plan for an offender within any specific licence requirements that have been set by the Parole Board.

3.11 In order to exercise such executive authority effectively, it should manage an operating budget. This budget, for which it would bid, would be sufficient not only for its own running costs but also to allow it to commission such work as will ensure that the most effective risk assessment and management processes are being introduced into Scotland. We recognise that giving effect to this advice will be problematic. We do not foresee the Authority we are proposing assuming responsibility for budgets currently managed by, for example, the SPS or social work departments. We would expect them to continue to provide the core services to this group of offenders as they do at present. We do consider, however, that if the Authority we are recommending is to be effective, it will have to have budgetary capability in three areas.

3.11.1 It will need the capability, as it becomes aware of new risk assessment or management processes or technologies, to commission their development, assessment and introduction into Scotland. Two examples, from our examination of developments elsewhere will illustrate this need. First, as work is being undertaken in a number of jurisdictions with sex offenders, the extent to which they are a heterogeneous offending group, with widely varying risk management needs, is becoming clear. Work being undertaken at present suggests that certain classes of sex offenders, for example, have a low probability of reoffending, while others present a high risk. Work is now being undertaken to improve understanding of the dynamics of that and to develop better targeted responses. That work can be expected to lead to concrete and usable results in the near future. The results are likely to include assessment tools, programmes and guidance on management in the community - any or all of which the Authority could be expected to wish to see developed for use in Scotland. Managing a budget would give it the capability to commission the work it needs from the agencies that are responsible at present for protecting the public from sex offending. Second, we saw a system of satellite tracking of 'tagged' offenders in operation in Phoenix, Arizona. While such use of electronic technology seems far removed from our present expectations, the capability to restrict and monitor offenders' movements automatically may well have potential that an Authority might wish to explore. It would need to command a budget to be able to do that. There is a need for a budget to stimulate new processes and technologies.

3.11.2 Second, particular offenders may require specific risk management processes that are beyond the resources of the agencies working with them. The Authority may wish to see specific work that is not normally available being undertaken with someone in prison, or it may wish to have supervisory processes in place for an offender living in a small or remote local authority area that the authority could not reasonably be required to provide without financial support. There is a need for a budget to be able to ensure that the best programmes of risk management that can be developed for individual offenders can be successfully implemented.

3.11.3 Finally, and in the long term most importantly, we see the Authority using its budget over time to develop strategically the response we are able to make to these serious forms of offending. We anticipate that by commissioning work with this offender group that can be shown to be effective, and by withdrawing support and recognition for work that cannot demonstrate efficacy, it will increase the impact of the investment made and secure improved value for money as well as public safety.

3.12 Clearly, if the Authority is to be voted money to secure its ends, it should be expected to agree a long-term strategic and an annual management plan with government and to report annually to Parliament on its performance

The policy role of the new Authority

3.13 We are aware that the approach we are proposing is premised on an emergent knowledge base. What is convincing about the knowledge that we have is the rigour with which it has been developed. That is sufficient for us to propose new procedures based on it. In doing so, however, we are conscious that those working in the field are going to be working in an area where knowledge can be expected to develop rapidly. This part of our recommendations therefore focuses on the role of the new Authority in keeping abreast of, and promoting, the best practice that is available internationally.

3.14 The development of the understanding of the risks presented by the offenders we have been considering, and of methods for managing those risks, is taking place internationally. The research is specific to a variety of offender groups and to the cultures from which they come. It is not possible simply to assume the effectiveness of tools developed elsewhere. As understanding moves forward, its consequences for the Scottish population have to be researched here. Progress is being sustained through a lively international exchange of conclusions and cross-cultural testing of emergent conclusions and procedures. If the people of Scotland are to be afforded the most effective protection from those offenders judged to present the greatest risks, cost effectively and by means compatible with the legal rights of the offenders, it is essential that we take full advantage of new approaches and technologies as they emerge and participate effectively in their development. There is some evidence of that already happening, examples of which arise out of the interest and expertise of particular researchers and practitioners working in Scotland.

3.15 At a policy level, two essential functions are not being performed. First, we reached the conclusion that funding of research and the introduction of new risk management techniques is not being shaped by a clear policy priority to lessen the risk presented by the group of high risk offenders. Second, where benefit is being derived from developments that have taken place, it is unco-ordinated. Though, within their own frames of reference, the approach to risk assessment used within the health service, social work departments, and SPS has been informed by research, their approaches are different. Reports from psychiatrists, forensic psychologists or social workers to the courts or to the Parole Board are sometimes written from confusingly incompatible intellectual positions. They may use the same words with meanings different both from each other and from the meanings that those reading them would normally use. They are based on distinctive and not always compatible explanatory models.

3.16 There is a clear need, if adequate protection is to be afforded to the public, for the assessment and management of the risks presented by very violent offenders to be conducted within a shared framework of language and techniques. The Authority would play a key role in the production of guidelines and protocols that would provide a common framework within which all the agencies that participate in managing these risks would operate.

3.17 The Authority would be able to keep abreast of developments in risk management as they emerge and to communicate these in the form of guidelines and protocols to agencies working in the field. As understanding, techniques and technologies develop, the Authority may have to make recommendations for changes in the law and redirection of funding.

The standard setting role of the new Authority

3.18 We have been able in this report to describe the approach to risk assessment and management that we see underpinning the new sentence which we propose in Section Two for high risk offenders. We have emphasised that the best of the work is based on rigorous research and subject to critical evaluation. While there is evidence that such work is effective in improving public protection, there is also considerable evidence that much well-intentioned and established work cannot be shown to be effective and may, indeed, increase risk.

3.19 An essential part of our recommendations is therefore that the introduction of the approach we are proposing be supported by a stringent standard setting role to be exercised by the new Authority. We see that quality control operating in three main ways, as set out below.

3.20 First, the Authority would accredit the methods for advising decision takers of the size and nature of the risk posed by offenders who present particular concerns. We envisage a role for the Authority in approving risk assessment techniques for use. The accreditation process would extend both to the procedures or tools that could be used and to the circumstances in which they could be employed. We would anticipate that the Authority would wish to accredit the procedures or tools themselves, the situations in which they could be administered, and the agencies and practitioners who could use them. We would also anticipate that the Authority would require, as part of the accreditation process, that guidance be given on the interpretation of the evidence generated by any tool to all who may subsequently use it in reaching decisions on the management of offenders. Implicit in the approach we are advocating is that the risk assessment methods recognised by the Authority would be accredited and that official reports submitted to the courts and to the Designated Life Tribunal of the Parole Board (DLT) would have been prepared by assessors of established competence using accredited methods. In Section Two we propose a formal process of assessment before our suggested new sentence is imposed; that assessment would require to be conducted using accredited methods, as would any subsequent assessment co-ordinated by the Risk Management Authority for consideration by a DLT.

3.21 Second, the Authority would accredit the methods and processes of risk management that may subsequently be deployed. These will take many different forms:

Interventions and programmes designed to modify behaviour

Methods of monitoring the offenders behaviour and habits

Controls on the offenders movements or contacts

Supports for the offender in gaining accommodation, work or training

Progress review and assessment interviews

3.22 We would anticipate that the new Authority would monitor international developments in each of these areas, would evaluate their effectiveness and application to the Scottish context and, where appropriate, would accredit programmes, technologies and best practice for use by the service-providing agencies in managing the offenders. We use the term 'where appropriate' in recognition that in some areas of practice the rigorous procedures of accreditation may not be the best way of achieving effective performance. In these areas we would see the role of the Authority being to promulgate best practice.

3.23 In anticipating this role for the Authority, we are aware that SPS, in particular, has already established a rigorous process of independent accreditation of programmes within prisons. It may well be that the Authority would wish to capitalise on the work that is already performed by that process. The focus of the accreditation that will be operated by the Authority, however, will be sharply on lessening the risk of future serious violence. We would expect, therefore, that the two authorities would work closely to satisfy themselves that the work that each does complements the work of the other.

3.24 Third, we see a need for the Authority to establish a firm basis of competence by all involved in the processes of managing the risks presented by the very difficult client group with which we have been concerned. In the course of our work as a Committee, it became clear that major differences of approach exist between practitioners in the fields of managing the offenders we were considering, but also that the approach used by practitioners was very often widely different from the conceptual approach that decision makers in the courts and the Parole Board bring to the issues they consider.

3.25 A key role for the Authority will be to build a common basis of intellectual understanding of the nature of the problem, the methods of assessing risk and the range of effective processes for managing risk that are available to service providers. In British Columbia we saw initiatives that had been taken to improve the training of practitioners and decision takers involved in implementing the relative Canadian dangerous offender legislation. Such training is essential if the risks presented by this group are to be addressed. But the provision of training is not sufficient. For there to be confidence that decisions and practice will be effective, the public need to know that all who work in the field are competent. The role of the Authority in this area would be similar, say, to that of, for example, the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners or more generally to the role of National Training Organisations in that it would determine the standards of competence that all who work in the area need to demonstrate and the means by which that competence will be assessed. In carrying out this role, it will require to consult with the appropriate professional bodies, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Psychological Society.

The operational role of the new Authority

3.26 In considering the operation of our proposals, we wished to address shortcomings that we have been told exist in the current arrangements for the management of high risk offenders. Two characteristics of the existing arrangements gave us particular concern.

3.27 First, we felt that the existing arrangements inadequately give effect to the intention of a sentence imposed to manage systematically the risk presented by particularly violent offenders for life. The distinction between the period in prison and that in the community is too marked and the step change in circumstances at the end of the custodial period is too great. There is an expectation that if offenders conform to the requirements made of them - both in prison and when under supervision in the community - then controls over them are progressively relaxed and intervention decreased, not exclusively as an outcome of an assessment of risk (though we recognise that such assessments continuously, if informally, influence decision making), but in recognition of acceptable behaviour. The arrangements we are proposing are designed to ensure that following the sentence that we anticipate, there will be regular and systematic review of the risk presented by the offender, that this will be supported by a risk management plan and that those arrangements will continue for the rest of the offender's life. They are also designed to manage the transition from custody and back into the community in such a way as to minimise the scale of change in circumstance that the offender faces at any point.

3.28 Second, we were concerned that there is no clear identification as to where responsibility lies for protecting the public from the risk presented by the group we were considering. At differing times, the prison service and local authority social work departments, whose responsibilities extend beyond the group we were considering, take a lead responsibility. It is our view that their objectives are less focused on the issues that concerned us than we think they should be. The police, housing departments, health services, the employment service and, very often, voluntary agencies also impact on the circumstances of the group and can offer services relevant to the risk they present. With the introduction of electric monitoring, in particular, private sector organisations may also contribute.

3.29 The Parole Board exercises a co-ordinating influence over these agencies. Its impact, however, is properly focused on release and recall decisions. It does not have authority to require action by any of the other agencies.

3.30 Our proposals are designed to establish a clear responsibility, to be vested in a new Authority, for the maintenance and delivery of a systematic risk management plan throughout the lives of offenders assessed as presenting high risk of violence to the community. We considered a number of means by which this might be achieved.

3.31 We were particularly interested to see the operation in Canada of the Correctional Service which combines responsibility for both prisons and supervision in the community. We were not convinced, however, that the benefits of retaining responsibility in one organisation for the management of offenders throughout the period of intervention outweighed the costs of isolation of the correctional service from other social agencies. A unified correctional service simply shifts the boundaries between organisations. It would be beyond the scope of our report to recommend such an approach in general, and what we saw did not persuade us that we would wish to do so.

3.32 We considered making specific recommendations about multi-disciplinary working. We also took account of improvements that have been achieved in inter-agency co-ordination in managing the release of sex offenders and considered the possibility of recommending a more formal framework for regionally based structures.

3.33 We concluded that the ends that we wished to achieve would best be met by responsibility for the management of the risk presented by particularly violent offenders being vested in one Authority that would commission services as most appropriate from existing agencies. In order to achieve that, it should control a budget allocated for the express purpose of achieving effective risk management of high risk offenders.

3.34 We considered vesting that responsibility in the Parole Board, within the Scottish Executive or in a new authority. The Parole Board is ruled out by the need to separate decisions on release from executive authority for managing restrictions on freedom. We had already decided to recommend a new Authority to monitor advances in risk assessment, to develop policy and to supervise standards of risk assessment and risk management techniques. We see this Authority developing as a centre of excellence in the field. It is a short step to recommend that the Authority should assume the responsibility for commissioning and supervising the delivery of programmes of risk management to individual offenders. (We discuss this further in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9)

Further implications of the creation of the new Authority

3.35 We set out below additional benefits flowing from the creation of an Authority.

3.36 In conducting our research we have been made aware of the risk and need assessment techniques that have been developed by the SPS psychology service. We have also seen the risk assessment techniques introduced by the Social Work Services Inspectorate. We have learned about the system for independent research-based accreditation of programmes operated by the SPS and have examined programmes designed to address a range of criminal behaviours in Scotland and the other administrations we have visited. The technologies of risk assessment and risk management are rapidly developing. If the Scottish community is to derive the greatest benefit available from those developments, it is important that decisions to use new technologies can be made, and new approaches introduced, quickly. A commissioning authority controlling an operating budget would be able to focus resources where they are most effective. The result would be strategic development of a more cost effective response to the risks presented.

3.37 We recognise that our proposal will have consequences for the existing agencies that operate in this area. It would compete with them for resources. It would have authority to require approaches it considers the most effective to be developed. By advancing or withholding financial support, by recognising or not the validity of treatment interventions, its authority would supersede, in this area, that of the service providers.

3.38 But these costs can be compensated for by the impetus the approach we are suggesting would give to the sort of research-based work SPS has initiated, the benefits it would bring in aligning the work of each agency with that of others, and the progressive benefit of focusing resources where their impact is greatest.

3.39 We see further potential benefit in the approach we are recommending in that the model of an authority supervising the contributions of each of the service delivery agencies may well come to be seen as appropriate not just for the small but particularly threatening group of offenders with which we are concerned, but for serious offenders in general. In particular the approach may be expected to be appropriate for the management of all life-sentence prisoners and for prisoners in general who are serving extended sentences. It is also relevant to the management of persons under restriction orders imposed under mental health legislation.