(2) what factors are taken into account in calculating the estimated cost of probation supervision of an individual (a) with a condition and (b) without a condition.
The supervision requirement is one of 12 requirements of a community order. The factors taken into account when costing the supervision requirement are:
offender tier (there are four tiers in the National Offender Management Model describing different case management approaches and map against different resource levels and offender manager competences);
the length of the offender's sentence;
the offender's gender;
the grade of staff working with the offender; and
the time taken by staff to deliver the supervision requirement, which includes meetings with the offender, liaison with providers of specialist advice and feeding back to the offender manager. The level of engagement is primarily dependent on the tier of the offender.
Costs estimated using this bottom up process are not the full costs since they do not include overheads. Full costs of the supervision requirement will be collected and published in order to benchmark the whole of the probation system by the end of 2011.