Fireworks

I was wondering the other day how that Serco privatisation of Community Payback in London was going, but judging by this internal e-mail from one London Borough, not very well it would seem:-

Dear all

Please see the latest situation regarding this backlog which has persisted since the DELIUS read-only period in August.

I am doing all I can to get this up to date but as today there are still 362 work appts, the outcome of which is still to be advised to the Case Manager/Offender Manager.
Please ensure staff flag ALL issues relating to this using the email address: This would include anything relating to:

• disputed hours
• breaches having to be withdrawn
• incidents with offenders who are unsure of their hours
• service users unable to be terminated because final hours have not yet been updated
• service users who may have worked more than the hours order.

Please raise any specific issues with me direct

Do you like that bit - service users who may have worked more than the hours order!

It will be appreciated that when enforcing court orders of any kind, it's absolutely vital that information and recording is bang up-to-date and reliable, especially if it has to be relied upon at some stage in relation to breach proceedings at court. A dickie bird tells me it's not looking good and hence very bad news for the MoJ's flagship privatisation and the ongoing TR omnishambles.

Talking of things not working too well, I see G4S are in a bit of a pickle with their new state-of-the-art GPS tags according to this in the Guardian:-

Prosecutions have been halted in three separate cases over the past week involving terror suspects accused of breaching new-style "control orders" by tampering with their G4S-supplied GPS electronic tags.

Defence lawyers say that the cases have had to be dropped not because of attempts to remove the tracking devices, but because the design of the new tags is flawed. Security experts say that the tags do not appear to have been stress-tested to cope with a devout Muslim who prostrates himself in prayer five times a day.

Birnberg Peirce and Partners, who represent all three men, say there are serious questions about the reliability of the bulkier GPS "tracking tags" which are due to be widely used. The law firm has written to the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, about this "extraordinary situation" and ask for reassurance for the men required to wear the "deeply suspect devices".

Grayling is to roll out a six-year, £400m contract based on the tags for released prisoners and offenders next year.

The Ministry of Justice said it was working with its suppliers to confirm whether the tags were "overly sensitive to tamper alerts".

It will be interesting to see what transpires at G4S in the face of shareholders getting restless and following a key meeting this week:-

As Ashley Almanza, boss of security group G4S, rehearses his lines this weekend for his crucial 5 November strategy presentation on 5 November, several investors are whispering of gunpowder, treason and plot. Almanza is facing the biggest presentation of his life: he will have to spell out why the embattled £6bn group should not bow to activist shareholders and split itself up.

He knows it could be a make-or-break performance. Shareholders remain divided on the question of whether the group is too big for its own good. G4S manages 650,000 staff around the world – and only two years ago came close to a £5.2bn merger (with Danish rival ISS) that would have seen it become the world's second largest commercial employer, behind Walmart.

And if shareholder ferment were not trouble enough, the G4S boss is also facing a series of contract meltdowns and rogue employee scandals, and investigation by the Serious Fraud Office over electronic tagging.

The past week alone has seen two damaging incidents as far apart as South Africa and Scotland. First came what G4S said were "unsubstantiated allegations" of prisoners at its Mangaung prison in Bloemfontein being subjected to electric shocks or forcibly injected with antipsychotic drugs to sedate them.

The South African government last month took charge of the prison as strike threats and allegations of mistreatment mounted. "The contractor has effectively lost control of the facility," the department of correctional services concluded – a damning verdict in a market Almanza had months earlier flagged as a bright spot.

Then, last Tuesday, a G4S security guard was given a life sentence at Glasgow high court for bludgeoning a 42-year-old Thai conference delegate to death with a fire extinguisher. During the trial, the jury was told that the guard, Clive Carter, had complained of fatigue due to long working hours. On one occasion, months earlier, he had worked 26 consecutive days, the court heard. G4S says Carter worked a standard shift pattern in the period before the murder, adding that previous periods of more intensive employment related to specific events "in keeping with the standard work patterns of fellow employees".

Just imagine that - working 26 consecutive days without a break. 

The Guardian article is a rather good canter through most of G4S's current woes, ending with HMP Oakwood and a fascinating statistic about the workforce:-

The group runs one of Britain's largest privately run prisons, HMP Oakwood in the West Midlands, which holds more than 1,600 category C inmates – those thought not to be a particular escape risk. The prison has been the subject of repeated critical reports, the latest of which this month detailed how inspectors were told "you can get drugs here, but not soap".

The report also found: "There were no appropriate interventions for the 300 sex offenders, many of whom were in denial of their offending. A large number of these offenders were due for release without their offending being addressed."

The global workforce that makes up G4S is one of the largest of any FTSE 100 group, reaching 648,254 last year. More than 90% of staff work in the security division, many as poorly paid guards. Two-thirds of G4S staff are employed in developing nations, with the rest largely in Europe. Globally, the business employs 20% more people than Tesco but has a wage bill more than 10% lower than the supermarket group's.