Offenders choosing jail time ahead of paying confiscation orders: MPs

Offenders are choosing to spend extra time in jail rather than pay confiscation orders and the sanctions for such non-payment do not work, the Public Accounts Committee has said.

In a report, which can be viewed here, the MPs said: “Confiscation orders are central to helping assure the public that crime does not pay and deterring further criminal activity. Identifying and confiscating criminal assets is difficult, but the failure to put in place an effective system to act promptly, prioritise, co-ordinate and incentivise this work, demonstrates that the various bodies involved have simply not done enough.”

The report said that in 2012-13 some 673,000 offenders were convicted of a crime, but only 6,392 confiscation orders were made and only 26 pence was collected out of every £100 generated by criminal activity.

According to the committee, Government departments spent £100m administering confiscation orders but only £133m was confiscated.

“Appropriate incentives for bodies to encourage better performance do not exist and the sanctions for offenders who fail to pay confiscation orders do not work,” the committee concluded.

It also said that assets were frozen too late, with specialist investigators not brought in sufficiently early. “This allowed criminals to salt away valuable assets, putting them in the hands of spouses, using complex financial instruments, buying houses and expensive cars and hiding them overseas.”

The report also criticised the different rates of enforcement for confiscation orders. Some 90% of orders of less than £1,000 were enforced, but only 18% of orders worth more than £1m were.

According to the committee, different agencies used different criteria to determine when to use confiscation orders. “There is a widespread lack of awareness among staff within these agencies of the relevant legislation, and seeking orders is too often given a low profile,” it claimed.

In a bid to increase the numbers of confiscation orders and provide better guidance, the Crown Prosecution Service is developing common criteria to assess whether pursuing a confiscation order is appropriate and cost-effective.

Recommendations contained in the PAC report included:

  • The Criminal Finances Board should develop and implement its improvement plan urgently. “This plan should include well-defined objectives and success measures so that practitioners can prioritise criminal cases and orders and be able to understand and measure success beyond amounts collected.” The plan should also include project milestones that can be used to assess progress.


  • Law enforcement and prosecution agencies need to agree and apply a common set of criteria “to ensure that they consider consistently and properly all crimes with a financial gain for confiscation orders”.
  • Law enforcement agencies should work together to ensure that financial investigators are brought in early in high value cases and use restraint orders quickly to prevent criminals hiding their illegal assets.
  • The Crown Prosecution Service and National Crime Agency should report to the Criminal Finances Board on the enforcement progress of its priority cases.


  • The current incentive scheme for bodies involved in confiscation orders – which is “opaque and ineffective” – should be revised “to ensure it is aligned with the success measures and objectives set out in the new Criminal Finances improvement plan and to link effort and reward”. The Home Office receives 50% of confiscated assets “despite its having no operation role”.
  • All bodies involved in confiscation need to develop a better range of cost and performance information to enable them to prioritise effort and resources to best effect.
  • The Home Office, in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice, “must set out how, and by when, it will strengthen the confiscation order sanctions regime”. The Government plans to strengthen the prison sentences for non-payment, but it is not yet clear how this will be implemented in practice.

Describing the current situation as “a shambles”, Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the committee said the sums owed by criminals suggested that the sentences provided little deterrence and that the santions needed “toughening up”.

She added: “The idea behind confiscation orders is to hit criminals where it hurts – in their pockets – so that serious and organised criminals do not profit from the misery of others. However, poor implementation has meant not enough confiscation orders are being made and not enough is being done to enforce them once they have been made.”

Hodge also claimed that it was unclear who is responsible and accountable for what. “There is no sense of urgency and little understanding of what works. Information is not shared across agencies, and out-of-date systems make it difficult to communicate across Government.”

The PAC chair added: “The departments need to get a grip urgently and step up their performance so that criminals stop benefitting unchallenged from the proceeds of their crimes."

See also: Confiscation and local authorities Following a recent decision in Norwich Crown Court, Andrew Campbell-Tiech QC and Richard Heller consider the problems faced by local authorities in recovering costs in significant confiscation cases.