Assessing to keep people safe in case supervision

Content

Case summary
Inspector’s comments
Take-away learning

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Assessment should focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe. Practitioners should:

clearly identify and analyse any risk of harm to others, including identifying who is at risk and the nature of that risk
analyse any specific concerns and risks related to actual and potential victims
draw sufficiently on available sources of information, including past behaviour and convictions, and involve other agencies where appropriate.
When people are released from custody on licence after long sentences or with a lengthy history of previous convictions, assessment should re-visit historical information in the light of any changes of behaviour, attitude or potential victims.

Case summary

David is 25 years old and was sentenced to a 24-month suspended sentence order with supervision, a requirement to attend the Drink Impaired Drivers Programme and 100 hours of unpaid work for a second offence of driving with excess alcohol. In committing the index offence, David crashed the car he was driving into a wall, and on arrest he was found to have three times the legal limit of alcohol in his breath.

David has a previous offence of driving with excess alcohol, and two previous convictions for public order offences, both committed when he was under the influence of alcohol and out with friends. The pre-sentence report author had assessed David as posing a low risk of causing serious harm.

Although on the surface David was relatively lightly convicted, and the index offence and previous convictions had not resulted in direct harm being caused to members of the public, the responsible officer took an investigative approach to the risk assessment following allocation.

Domestic abuse and safeguarding checks had not been conducted by the report writer at the pre-sentence report stage but were requested by admin officers following allocation. In the last two years there had been four call-outs to the address of his ‘on/off’ partner; they were currently not together. The couple had a 10-month-old child and all four incidents were characterised by David being heavily under the influence of alcohol. Two of the incidents were reported to the police by neighbours, who heard loud screaming and shouting. In two of them, David’s partner telephoned the police herself as he was refusing to leave the property. She reported that during these two incidents he had made jealous accusations and demanded that she show him text messages on her phone.

The responsible officer disagreed with the assessment completed at court. They analysed the index offence, previous convictions and the information provided by children’s social care and the police. Children’s social care had conducted an assessment two months prior to the start of this sentence and it was concluded that David’s ex-partner could safeguard their child and no further action was necessary.

Although the assessment recognised that no actual serious harm had been caused in the offences for which David had been convicted, there was potential for him to cause serious harm, both to the wider public by way of further driving and to his ex-partner and child as a result of his abusive behaviour at home. The responsible officer explained in the assessment that the situation was aggravated by David’s denial that drinking was a problem for him and his minimisation of the incidents at home with his partner; all of which required close monitoring and some intervention during supervision appointments. In the view of the inspector, following allocation, David was correctly assessed as presenting a medium risk of serious harm to the public and to his ex-partner and child.

Inspector’s comments

The responsible officer rightly questioned the assessment made by the pre-sentence report author in this case and fully analysed the range of relevant information from both previous convictions and intelligence from the police. This assessment identified and analysed all of the categories of risk and specified the level and nature of risk posed in each category. The responsible officer explained that David had the potential to cause serious harm to the general public, specifically to road users and other pedestrians, and to his ex-partner and young child. He was correctly assessed as posing a medium risk in both categories.

The responsible officer emphasised the risk factors in this case and drew particular attention to the fact that David denied he had a problem with alcohol or that his behaviour in his partner’s home was abusive. The assessment helpfully specified that these factors needed to be addressed during future supervision.

There was also effective management oversight. Although not standard practice, the manager in question had a process in place for discussing every new case allocated to individual responsible officers since their last supervision session to discuss suitability of allocation and review the quality of the initial assessment and any issues relating to risk of serious harm. Following the discussion, the manager praised the responsible officer for the quality of the initial assessment and recorded their endorsement in the case record.

Take-aways – applying the learning

1. The responsible officer rightly readdressed the level of risk assessed in this case and requested a domestic abuse check. In your practice do you satisfy yourself as to the degree of risk on case allocation?
2. If your risk assessment differs from that of the pre-sentence report author concerning the need to carry out domestic abuse checks, what action if any do you take for systemic organisational learning?

This case summary is intended for training/learning purposes and includes a fictional name.