Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission: Call for Evidence

When answering this question, you may find it useful to reflect on one or more of the following:

Community justice

• Key issues and influences affecting uses of community sentences and community justice
• Whether community sentences are responsive to different needs or vulnerabilities (e.g., mental health, neurodivergence and learning disability, substance use and addiction, homelessness, prior victimisation, or conditions and care needs associated with older age)

Victim support

• Victim support and advocacy perspectives on community sentences, including promoting victim safety and trauma-informed communication

Sentencing

• Trends in sentencing, public and professional perceptions of sentencing and key factors which influence this
• Whether or not more sentencing options should be introduced
• Whether or not specific crime types should only receive community sentences, meaning not be eligible for a custodial sentence

Community Payback Orders

• Strengths and good practices or challenges and limitations of Community Payback Orders (CPOs)
• Experiences of being on a CPO
• Availability and range of local options, uses (or lack thereof) of review hearings in court
• The proportionality and intensity of requirements and restrictions imposed within CPOs

Reducing the prison population

• Evidence and ideas for effectively reducing the prison population (‘decarceration’) while promoting public safety and public trust
• Whether or not restriction of liberty might be achieved in ways which differ from being held in traditional prisons

Rehabilitation

• How rehabilitation and desistance (how people change and leave crime behind) could be better supported
• How violence reduction and prevention could be improved within community sentences and community justice contexts

Reoffending

• How non-compliance and/or breach are handled and whether issues in this area contribute to pressures on the courts and the prison population
• Evidence and ideas for how to better address prolific offending

Ways of working

• How technology could be used wisely and well, where appropriate, within community sentences (including different technologies or different uses for different purposes)
• Workforce, workload, and multi-agency working considerations affecting community sentences and community justice contexts
• Approaches which are before the sentencing stage and may, in some cases, prevent the need for further action: specialist problem-solving approaches and deferred sentencing in courts and communities, as well as early intervention, direct measures and diversion approaches

Existing recommendations

• Previous recommendations in this area made by other bodies or groups which, in your view, should be prioritised for implementation