Completing a Report Without Interviewing the Offender

Introduction

This topic provides information about how and when to provide information to the court without the offender’s involvement and what information should be provided. This is when the:

• offender refuses to be interviewed or is uncooperative
• interview is terminated either by the offender or the probation officer
• offender cannot be contacted or does not attend the scheduled interview.

If the offender cannot or does not wish to take part, there are two options to provide information to the court.  You can:

• provide a memo to the court detailing the attempts to locate the offender
•  if there is a local agreement with the Judiciary, PSRs can be completed using CPS and court file information and information from other sources, such as Police or Child Youth and Family.

It is important that reasonable efforts are made to contact the offender by telephone, letter and visits to their address before supplying information to the court without their involvement. 

Completing a memo

The memo to court should be brief and:

• indicate that the offender did not participate in the pre-sentence process
• outline all steps taken to contact the offender (dates, times, methods etc). 

Competing a pre-sentence report

Situations

If there is a local agreement in place with the judiciary that they will sentence based on a pre-sentence report prepared without the offenders involvement then a pre-sentence report from the file information can be prepared.

Legislation

Section 26 & 26A of the Sentencing Act 2002 sets out the legislative requirements of a PSR.

There is no legal requirement for an offender to be involved in the pre-sentence process as detailed in section 26 of the Sentencing Act 2002.  However, some information can not be detailed if the offender is not involved.

An appendix as detailed in section 26A of the Sentencing Act 2002 cannot be undertaken without the offender’s involvement and home detention (HD) or community detention (CD) can not be recommended without the offender’s consent.

What information can be provided

Information that may be provided without the offenders involvement is:

• cultural background, social circumstances including family, whanau, community and personal information
• factors that contributed to the offending and the offender’s rehabilitative needs as identified automatically and by information from the summary of facts
• response to and compliance with previous sentences/orders
• material from previous PSRs and pre-termination reports that is still relevant
• compliance with conditions of bail
• recommendations about an appropriate sentence
• proposed special conditions.

Where the report is for a first time offender it may be appropriate to only provide information based on the:

• type and nature of the offending
• appropriate sentencing options taking account of the seriousness of the offence and the sentencing hierarchy.

All attempts to contact the offender must be detailed in the opening paragraph of the PSR.

Which report to write

The type of report that should be prepared may depend on the following factors:

• amount of time and effort made to contact the offender
• amount of detail that is available to write the report
• type of offending and hierarchy of sentences.

Making a recommendation

It is difficult to make a recommendation based on the offender’s circumstances without the offender’s involvement.  The recommendation must be based on the sentencing hierarchy, seriousness of the offending and, where available, previous compliance with sentences.

If there is not enough information to recommend one sentencing option, it may be appropriate to recommend multiple sentencing options or ask for a further adjournment for a specific sentence to be canvassed.

Recommendations for HD and CD cannot be made without the offender’s consent.  If the file information suggests the offender may be an appropriate candidate for HD, consider a recommendation for imprisonment with leave to apply for HD.

Sources of information

Information provided in the PSR can come from many sources.  Most information should come from CPS file information including previous reports, case notes, compliance reports, sentence completion reports etc.

The table below summarises the type of information other sources may provide.

Detailing the information source

When writing a report without the involvement of the offender, all sources of information must be detailed.  This includes where the information came from and what date the information was obtained. e.g. a pre-sentence report dated 12 February 2007 detailed…..

The report should clearly state that the offender was not involved in the preparation of the report.

If another report has been completed recently, this report could be attached to the new report that is being prepared.