Community Orders
(asked on 27th June 2022) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of community payback projects nominated by members of the public have been completed in each of the last five years.
Community Payback sees offenders make reparation for their crimes in a constructive and demanding way. Community Payback should be a visible punishment, with offenders undertaking work that benefits the communities they have harmed.
Local engagement is an integral part of Community Payback, and we encourage members of the public to nominate projects via the Gov.uk website. The public can provide a unique insight into the needs of their local area and therefore the merit of public nominations is that projects are responsive to those priorities. The nominations we receive are then assessed by local Community Payback teams for suitability to ensure that the proposal benefits the local community, does not directly replace paid employment, and does not contravene state aid or competitive advantage regulations.
Suitable projects may include removing graffiti from a public building, clearing wasteland, or decorating a community centre.
Prior to unification of the Probation Service in June 2021, Community Payback was delivered by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) who had their own processes for capturing public nominations. CRC contracts did not require them to report on these processes. However, under CRCs the public could also nominate projects via the Gov.uk website and we do retain this data, dating back to September 2019. There is no data prior to 2019.
Table 1 presents nominations received via the Gov.uk website for each CRC between September 2019 and June 2021.
Table 1 | 03/09/2019-> 30/06/21 |
Northumbria | 4 |
Cumbria and Lancashire | 25 |
Durham Tees valley | 5 |
Humber Lincoln and North Yorkshire | 11 |
West Yorkshire | 9 |
Cheshire Greater Manchester | 22 |
Merseyside | 4 |
South Yorkshire | 8 |
Staffordshire and West Midlands & Derby, Leicester, Nottingham and Rutland | 34 |
| |
Wales | 10 |
Warwickshire West Mercia | 7 |
Bristol, Gloucester, Somerset and Wiltshire | 13 |
Devon Dorset and Cornwall | 12 |
Hampshire and Isle of Wight | 7 |
Thames Valley | 12 |
London | 31 |
Bedfordshire, Northampton, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire | 10 |
Essex | 10 |
Norfolk and Suffolk | 12 |
Kent Surrey and Sussex | 53 |
Following unification in June 2021, the Probation Service assumed responsibility for all public nominations. Table 2 presents nominations received by each Probation region via Gov.uk from unification until 21 June 2022.
|
| ||
Table 2 | 01/07/21 - 21/06/22 | ||
East Midlands | 23 | ||
East of England | 42 | ||
Greater Manchester | 17 | ||
Kent, Surrey and Sussex | 29 | ||
London | 24 | ||
North East | 12 | ||
North West | 61 | ||
South Central | 26 | ||
South West | 35 | ||
Wales | 28 | ||
West Midlands | 39 | ||
Yorkshire & Humberside | 72 | ||
|
| ||
We are unable to provide data on how many projects nominated by members of the public have been completed in each of the last five years as CRCs were not required to collect this data. However, we are working to improve our data collection post-unification as part of wider reforms to Community Payback.