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The last Annual Report from Baroness Newlove covers the period from April 2018 to March 2019.
This Report includes;
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Published Report of the Victims’ Commissioner for England & Wales into Anti-Social Behaviour.
In her final report as Victims’ Commissioner (VC) for England & Wales, Baroness Newlove says that victims of anti-social behaviour are being let down by police, local councils and housing providers, with many victims having to suffer in silence.
Since her husband’s death in 2007, Baroness Newlove has tirelessly championed measures to cut anti-social behaviour. This report takes her back to the crime that placed her into the public eye, following the murder of husband Garry in an escalation of violence.
The Victims’ Commissioner said;
“A gang targeted my ordinary working family living in an ordinary street in an ordinary neighbourhood with a campaign of vandalism and violence. It culminated with Garry being kicked to death on our doorstep. It seems implausible that 12 years later, I am still writing about anti-social behaviour. But the truth is, depressingly little has changed.
“ASB is often downplayed as a petty, ‘low-level’ crime. But put yourself in their shoes – to suffer from ASB is an ordeal that causes misery, disturbs sleep, anxiety, work and relationships – leaving victims feeling unsafe and afraid in their own homes. It can feel like you are living a nightmare.
“I want this report to be a catalyst for change. I strongly believe if we crack down on ASB, empower victims by informing them of their rights and give powers to police, councils and housing providers to investigate and take rigorous action, it can reduce ASB and stop it spiralling into violence and worse.”
The Victims’ Commissioner found examples of police and council staff failing to appreciate the cumulative impact of persistent anti-social behaviour (ASB) on its victims – with each incident being treated in isolation and the underlying causes being ignored. She also found evidence of a culture of playing-down ASB as being ‘low-level’; which in turn was leading to a failure to recognise the impact it was having on its victims’ – including their mental health, their ability to hold down employment or the strain on their family relationships.
Police, local authorities and community agencies, such as social housing landlords, all have responsibility to tackle anti-social behaviour by working together to help victims. Yet the report found victims being passed from one to another, leaving them feeling as if no one is listening.
The report shows that many police forces, councils and Police and Crime Commissioners make no reference to the statutory Community Trigger mechanism used to resolve ASB (see foot note below) on their websites. Some victims found that police and council staff had never even heard of the Trigger.
The report was produced in partnership with ASB Help and Nottingham Trent University.
Jenny Herrera from ASB Help said:
‘The effects for a victim of ongoing, persistent, distressing anti-social behaviour cannot be overstated. The Community Trigger needs leadership from within central government to ensure it is fit for purpose and unlock its potential. Our extensive work has found fundamental problems, covering every aspect of the process.’”
Dr Becky Thompson, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University’s School of Social Sciences, said:
“This report is hugely important in terms of its focus upon victims of anti-social behaviour. The findings from our research give us a better understanding of who the people experiencing anti-social behaviour are as well as the harm caused by such incidents. Ultimately, we hope the findings can be used in developing a more effective, victim-focused response to anti-social behaviour but ideally, we’d like to see our research used more proactively in trying to prevent incidents occurring in the first place.”
The report makes a number of recommendations, including:
Anti-social behaviour (ASB) is typically characterised as unacceptable conduct that causes harassment, alarm or distress to an individual or their community. ASB can often be symptomatic of more serious behaviour involving crime. For example, drug gangs taking over or ‘cuckooing’ a property to sell drugs generates a great deal of anti-social behaviour and is also symptom of serious violence and drug offences.
Latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales show 37% of people have personally experienced or witnessed anti-social behaviour in their community, the highest percentage recorded since this data was first collected.
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This report used a rapid evidence assessment approach to collate and assess the strength of the existing evidence base on advocacy interventions provided to victims of crime in England, Wales and other jurisdictions.
The report found that advocates deliver benefits for crime victims, as well as the criminal justice professionals they work alongside. An example of this is the trust that advocates build with victims which can, over time, be extended to other professionals involved in a victims’ case. The report concludes by highlighting some of the beneficial elements of these advocacy interventions that could be taken forward in future victim advocacy models, as well as issues highlighted in the previous literature that should be considered further.
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This review looked at victims’ whole experience of claiming criminal injuries compensation, including their experience of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), as well as their wider experience of seeking and receiving advice and support in making their applications. The review identifies a number of issues faced by victims when applying for criminal injuries compensation and makes recommendations for improvement to ensure that criminal injuries compensation helps to de-traumatise victims, to simplify the Scheme and provide victims with the support they need to make their application.
The review found that the process of applying for criminal injuries compensation can be extremely traumatic for victims who have to repeat details of the crime numerous times. The Scheme is highly complex, and nearly 40 per cent of victims seek help from a third party to apply. There is a lack of free support for victims in applying for criminal injuries compensation and victims often have to pay out up to 25 per cent of their award to solicitors. There is a lack of awareness about criminal injuries by criminal justice professionals. Fewer than 4 in 10 victims recall being told by the police about the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, raising concerns that many eligible victims do not claim compensation simply because they are unaware of their right to do so. Victims face long waits for decisions and large numbers ask for decisions to be reviewed or take the CICA decisions to appeal at Tribunal. Many victims are told not to apply until after the trial because it could be used against them in court. When they do claim, some find that they are out of time.
The Victims’ Commissioner wants to see a simplified Criminal Injuries Compensation scheme that helps to de-traumatise victims and offers them support to make their application. The VC is calling for victims to have free legal support if the complexity of their case or the severity of their injuries warrants it. She wants victims to have a single point of contact or named case worker in the CICA to deal with their application. The Scheme should be more transparent so that victims have a clear idea about the process and timescales to expect. Victims should automatically be kept up to date about their cases and receive acknowledgements when their documents are received by the CICA. Victims should be able to apply up to 2 years after reporting the crime, or one year after the trial so they don’t have to apply when the trial is still under way. Other aspects of the rules of the Scheme should be reviewed by the Ministry of Justice, such as the handling of cases where the compensation is held in trust, and exclusion of victims or reduction of awards on grounds of conduct or unspent convictions.
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This is the fourth review looking at Victim Personal Statements (VPS) data available from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. It looks at the 12 months ending March 2018, and compares this data to previous years starting from 2013-14.
VPS are an entitlement that enables victims to make a statement expressing how they have been affected by a crime.
It finds that few victims report that they are offered the opportunity to make a VPS by police, and this has remained consistent since the question was first introduced to the Crime Survey for England and Wales. For the year ending March 2018, in over half of incidents where victims were given the opportunity to make a VPS, victims decided to do so. Of those who did make a VPS, the majority felt it had been taken into account by the Criminal Justice System. The review also identifies variation in terms of the offer of a VPS across demographic groups and by offence characteristics.
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This annual report covers the period April 2017 to March 2018.
The report includes:
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This report calls for victims of mentally disordered offenders (MDOs) to be given the same rights as all other crime victims.
The trauma and distress experienced by victims of serious sexual and violent crime, including homicide, are the same irrespective of the status of their offender. As such, it would seem only right that victims of all such crimes should receive the same level of support and the same entitlements. Entitlements under the Victims Code are intended to provide support for victims throughout their criminal justice journey and in turn, help them to cope and recover.
The report is based on a review of relevant policy and the experiences of nine bereaved victims of homicide, where the crimes were perpetrated by mentally disordered offenders. The report concludes that the current position does not offer equal treatment to these victims. Instead, the current position makes a distinction between victims whose offenders are serving prison sentences and those who are patients detained in mental health hospitals. There is yet further distinction made between the victims of “restricted” and “unrestricted” patients. Whilst these distinctions are based upon the status of the offender, the result is a disparity of treatment for the victim.
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This scoping review explores how Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) measure, monitor and use victim satisfaction feedback to inform and improve service design and delivery.
Based on the thematic analysis of 21 PCC survey responses, the review found that most participating PCCs were collecting and using victim feedback to help improve support services for victims in their local areas.
As the Ministry of Justice introduces its new reporting requirement for PCCs, a framework which focuses on outcomes (e.g. to what extent a service has helped victims to cope and recover from the effects of the crime they experienced) and outputs (e.g. number of referrals); this review concludes that victim satisfaction feedback remains an important temperature check of how victim support services are working. The Victims’ Commissioner therefore makes four recommendations to encourage the continuation and improvement of satisfaction monitoring among PCCs.
This is the second report in a two-part series. It follows the scoping review published last year which looked at victim satisfaction measurement and monitoring among police forces in England and Wales.
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Registered Intermediaries (RIs) are specialists in communication provided to children and vulnerable victims to enable them to have a voice in the criminal justice system.
This review considers the whole operation of the Witness Intermediary Scheme which is responsible for the provision of RIs as set out in the entitlements under the Victims’ Code.
Findings indicate that not all eligible vulnerable victims and witnesses are being offered a RI, there is inconsistent take-up of RIs across England and Wales, limited understanding of the role in the criminal justice system and variation in how vulnerability and eligibility for RIs is assessed.
Many RIs who took part in the review identified wide ranging deficiencies in the operation of the Witness Intermediary Scheme. Their concerns covered managerial support, training, mentoring, continuing professional development, quality assurance, supervision and late payments.
In the review the Victims’ Commissioner puts forward a number of recommendations to improve the provision of RIs. Recommendations include the development of a centralised national RI service with a national lead RI to feed into the policy and practice in the provision of RIs, and to represent RIs’ interests across the criminal justice system, as well as a fast track service for the youngest and most vulnerable of victims.
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Victim Personal Statements (VPS) are an entitlement that enables victims to make a statement expressing how they have been affected by a crime.
This is the third review looking at VPS data available from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. It looks at the 12 months ending March 2017, and compares this data to previous years starting from 2013-14.
It finds that few victims are offered the opportunity to make a VPS, and there has been little change over the last four years. Most victims who make a VPS, however, feel that it has been taken into account by the Criminal Justice System. There also remains variation in terms of the offer of VPSs across demographic groups and by offence characteristics.