Why Less is More- The Case for Dealing with Offences Out of Court

With mounting pressure on police and justice budgets across the country, it’s surprising that recent years have seen a large decline in the use of out of court disposals to deal with low level offending. Simple or Conditional Cautions, Penalty Notices, Community Resolutions and Drug Warnings can offer a quicker, simpler and more effective  response than a prosecution.  But more than half of first time offenders now go to court rather than receive a caution, compared to 1 in 5 ten years ago. A new report published by Transform Justice –   Less is more- the case for dealing with offences out of court- says it’s high time to reverse that trend.    

It’s true that not everyone’s a fan of diversion. Some judges, magistrates and lawyers think offenders may accept a caution when they are not guilty or do not understand they will get a criminal record. Others complain diversion’s got out of hand with too many serious offences or persistent offenders getting little more than a slap on the wrist instead of being taken to court. Today’s report, however, shows that almost half a million convictions last year resulted in low level penalties such as fines or discharges. Unlike some diversion measures, such sentences do nothing to rehabilitate offenders or compensate victims.

Politicians may think it plays well with the public to promise an end to the “cautions culture”- former Justice Secretary Chris Grayling did so back in 2014. But on grounds of efficiency, effectiveness and economy, as long as there are proper safeguards there’s a strong case for extending not shrinking the availability of options for dealing with crime outside court.

As well as legislating to limit the use of diversion for serious and repeat offenders, Governments since 2010 have developed a policy intention to replace the existing range of out of court disposals with just two - a community resolution or a conditional caution. Three police forces have been piloting this two tier system and, while an evaluation is yet to be published, change will be needed if diversion is to fulfil its potential. 

The most important is the need to fund a suitable range of treatment options so that where necessary petty criminals can be helped to solve the underlying problems which so often drive their offending. Pilot programmes such as Operation Turning Point (OTP) in the West Midlands and Checkpoint in Durham have shown that rehabilitation can work at this stage in the criminal justice process.  And it’s affordable. OTP achieved a saving of around £1,000 per case, including all of the costs of the intervention programmes. This suggests the potential for diversion arrangements can kick start a justice reinvestment approach which uses the savings diversion brings to police, prosecutors and courts to fund local programmes designed to further reduce crime and prevent offending.

There’s a case too for extending the approach to diverting children away from the courts to young adults, so that they are given a greater opportunity to grow out of crime. South Wales Police have adopted this approach with promising results.

If there’s to be more in the way of diversion, local arrangements will need to enjoy public confidence. Most police forces have established scrutiny panels to keep an eye on the kinds of offenders getting out of court disposals and what they are being required to do in terms of rehabilitation and reparation.  Work needs doing to identify the best models for holding police forces to account for their decision-making. The Transform Justice report proposes that panels should ask not only if cases dealt with out of court should have been prosecuted – but also whether court cases leading to nominal penalties would have been better diverted. 

Six years ago the Police Inspectorate argued that  the expression ‘out-of-court disposals’ perpetuates a sense that they are much less important than a disposal in court – in effect a soft option.  Today’s Transform Justice Report concludes by calling on Government ministers and criminal justice stakeholders to communicate the positive advantages of measures out of court  and make efforts to show their benefits.  Rather than railing against an imaginary cautions culture, ministers should be promoting a culture of cost effectiveness – and that includes a greater not a lesser role for diversion.