Friends in High Places

As we all try and get to grips with the world of probation post Comprehensive Spending Review and as key decisions are being prepared and battle lines drawn, I find myself reflecting on what was being said by various worthies prior to the May General Election. 

I regret to say that I had not noticed that our very good friend and former HM Inspector of Prisons Lord Ramsbotham had managed to engineer a major debate on the Probation Service in the House of Lords in January this year. I've been reading the transcript and to be honest you can't help but be impressed with the level of debate in the Upper House in comparison to the charade that passes for the democratic process in the House of Commons. 

Lord Ramsbotham basically castigated Jack Straw for first nationalising the Service, then abolishing it and subsequently allowing the Prison Service to effect a takeover through NOMS. He drew attention to a whole range of concerns including the increase in numbers of Probation Services Officers at the expense of fully trained Probation Officers and the result of a survey that confirmed only 24% of an officers time was spent on direct face-to-face client contact. A staggering 41% of the time was taken up with sitting in front of the computer. He said :-

"There can be no more damning indictment of the Government's failure to provide probation with the vital resources of people and time. It explains why probation officers say that some have case loads in excess of 100, which means that they can spend no more than 15 to 30 minutes with medium-risk offenders, often having no time for others. The report concludes:
'NOMS needs to decide whether the reported amount of direct contact time with offenders is sufficient to meet its main objectives of reducing re-offending and protecting the public'."

Even Lord Birt, one of Tony Blair's closest policy advisers was not happy with what had happened to the Probation Service and stated that in his view the original vision for NOMS had evaporated and he had

"never experienced a better example of the law of unintended consequences.".....  "The greatest tragedy has been the emasculation of the probation profession and ethos-the precise reverse of the original intention".

So here we have a person who was at the absolute centre of government when key decisions were made about the Service and they confirm that the end result resembles nothing like the original intention (barmy as that was of course). Of course there were six Home Secretaries in twelve years and a general acceptance that there had been no strategic vision. Baroness Stern highlighted the increasingly prescriptive Offender Management model and said:-
 

"Many noble Lords have said that we need a substantial rethink and a new understanding of how the non-custodial part of our penal system should operate. We need to rebalance the probation service away from the mechanistic model and towards a model that is responsive to people and places. The former Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, told the centenary probation conference:

'The job is not primarily about meeting targets, or satisfying business cases, or enforcing community punishments, or breaching those who do not comply with orders, or risk assessments. These all may be part of the job, but if building relationships is not at the heart of the exercise, the exercise will be likely to fail.'

"The Minister may say that that is fine, but sounds a bit woolly. I assure him that the idea that what makes people change is usually connected to a relationship of some sort is well supported by a large body of evidence. We need a shift from computer programs to the use of professional judgment. We need another look at the role of professional staff, who are a scarce resource. Does the Minister know of any other probation service where most of the offenders are supervised by unqualified people? We need an end to national management and control. Probation should be a local service, but with a powerful central voice, a media presence and a research and development capacity. We must have an end to targets that are about process and distort the work of everyone in the service".

"A most welcome report from the Centre for Social Justice has set out such a model. It calls for probation boards to reopen offices in those deprived areas where most of the people who will be supervised live. From these offices, the service can begin to rebuild its local knowledge of offenders, their families and communities. The probation service must start undertaking home visits again. The service must rethink its role and identity to become, to cite the report,

'a benign authority, rather than an offender manager'.

The importance of the probation service in promoting a safer society cannot be overestimated. The work to rebuild it needs to start as soon as possible."

So all this encouraging stuff was being said barely 10 months ago by our many friends in the Lords. We now have a very different political landscape in the Commons, but any legislation will have to get through both Houses and fortunately there is likely to be some very thorough scrutiny from the Upper House at least. As I've said before, we're going to need all the friends we can muster in the months ahead if the heart and soul of the Service is going to survive the 'reforms' that are just around the corner.