In its Party Manifesto, the new Labour government pledged to “reform the justice system to put the needs of victims first, tackle the prisons crisis and cut reoffending.” [1] One strategy to support this goal is to make better use of Out of Court Resolutions (OoCR) - an alternative form of sanction which enables policing to deal with low-level offending without taking the case to court. With Out of Court Resolutions having been in use for some time, there is a body of evidence that non-custodial and community sentences can be more effective in many cases at reducing rates of reoffending than custodial sentences. Despite evidence around the effectiveness of OoCR, usage has dropped by 75% since 2008. [2]
As the government begins to tackle increasing pressure across the criminal justice system, with factors such as prison overcrowding, violent disorder across many cities this August and a need for tougher measures to tackle violence against women and girls, we consider what’s needed to help policing use OoCR more effectively.
NPCC’s strategic vision for OoCR is:
“To drive down reoffending rates across England and Wales through the use of OoC[R] with conditions and diversionary interventions, which change the offending behaviour. We will have a system that is fair to all, keeping both the victim and the offender at the heart of what we do.” [3]
OoCR provide an opportunity for early intervention, working with offenders earlier and diverting them into rehabilitative services to reduce the chance of repeat (and more serious) offending. Examples of resolutions reached out of court could include an offender agreeing to make an apology, pay compensation, repair damage, or attend a rehabilitative course – it will depend on the nature of the offence, and the resolution should be designed to address the root cause of the offending. Police forces commission their own intervention services and often build relationships with third party and non-profit service providers who offer support services, such as rehabilitative courses for offenders. As a minimum, NPCC expects forces to be able to provide support for drug and alcohol issues, mental health, financial and housing challenges, and to build and maintain relationships with third party intervention providers.
The processes for referring a case to an externally provided service are often more onerous than simply charging an offender: officers will need to monitor offender compliance and act if conditions are breached, increasing the workload of an officer already managing a heavy caseload without systems and information in place to support them in doing so.
Principle One has a longstanding partnership with Police Now, and every year we welcome Police Now secondees to work alongside our consultants for four weeks. This collaboration allows the secondees to develop their problem-solving skills by participating in and applying core consulting training to policing problems and enables our team to gain further insight into current ‘hot topics’ and key concerns in neighbourhood policing.
During this year’s secondment, we wanted to explore the barriers to making greater use of OoCRs with input from two secondees from a police force. They were able to share their own experience of just how time-consuming putting in place an OoCR is for them and how little understanding there is around the options that they have as an alternative to charge. After breaking down the problem, we chose to focus on the challenges of managing offender referrals to externally provided services, tackling just one aspect of an OoCR and what it means for the officers involved. Together we rapidly prototyped a solution to tackle this problem over the course of their secondment.
Building on their insight into the process they follow in making a referral, we developed a simple Microsoft Power App to support the referral and capture data and make it easy for the officer and the third-party provider to capture data to enable the assessment of the effectiveness of the intervention.
The App has two main areas of functionality:
Firstly, it supports the sending and tracking referrals to third party providers, who can then provide feedback on the offender’s journey. This reduces the admin burden of users on both sides by automatically emailing the completed referral form to the third-party provider, along with a feedback and compliance form. When the provider returns their feedback and compliance form with information about the offender’s progress, updates are automatically published for the officer without needing to follow up in person;
Secondly, it enables review of offender engagement and compliance through a simple set of data visualisation dashboards which can provide a management information snapshot over how successful the process has been.
By providing a standard process, officers can create referrals more consistently, improving data quality and reducing the risk of human error.
Third party provider organisations play an essential role in the OoCR lifecycle by offering prescribed diversionary courses for offenders referred by the police and understanding the challenge from their side was an important part of our discovery work.
Druglink is a third-party provider working with various police forces across England & Wales. They facilitate educational programmes focused on drugs and their effects, aiming to promote prevention and address substance abuse issues. Throughout the development of our application, Druglink has offered insights that have assisted us in ensuring our solution effectively addresses challenges faced by third party providers. With their continued support, the App can enable more consistent and comprehensive OoCR process for both police and third party providers alike.
By capturing feedback in a structured way from third party providers we can enable consistent management information (MI) to be captured and viewed by both front-line officers and supervisors, providing insights which are not easily accessed from the information currently shared.
The OoCR Power App has been developed using Microsoft 365 and tools which are already available to policing as part of the National Enabling Programme, making it simple and low cost to deploy. This is also an important consideration for third-party providers, who have limited IT resources and budget for systems implementation but can make use of the templates provided via the App to receive referrals, data and key MI from the force without any investment in systems at their side.
Although OoCR will not be the solution to all offences, as has been shown in the effective progression from arrest to charge and to custodial sentence in the aftermath of this summer’s violent disorder, it has to continue to be used as a key part of the government’s strategy to reduce the burden across the criminal justice system. With the courts continuing to tackle a backlog in cases and with prisons operating at critical levels of less than 1% spare capacity [4], there is an imperative to ensure that OoCR are used where they can have the greatest impact – for victims, offenders and across the wider criminal justice system. Getting the foundations right to both manage and understand their effectiveness can both deliver on key government commitments and make best use of increasingly stretched resources.
If you’d like to know more about our OoCR App, please contact us at policingapps@principleone.co.uk.
1 The Labour Party, Labour Party Manifesto 2024, (June 2024), Take back our streets
2 Transform Justice, How can police forces make better use of diversion and out of court disposals? (15th July 2022)
3 National Police Chiefs Council, Out of Court Disposal National Strategy V.2, (October 2022), p12
4 Ministry of Justice, Lord Timpson OBE and HM Prison and Probation Service (2024) Process activated to manage prisoner movements, GOV.UK.
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