Time For BoB

Right, the games up. Forget all that MoJ glossy spin the PR people have put on it and Chris Grayling's cosy video fire side chat. We all know TR is a crock of shite. It's not going to work, deadlines cannot be met, potential bidders are getting cold feet and most of the so-called 'best in the business' partnerships have no track record and exist on paper only.  Bit by bit the wheels are falling off and the whole omnishambles looks increasingly to be undeliverable.

Anyone with an ounce of rational thought or political nous realised some time ago that the grand TR plan was a non-starter, a daft and dangerous leap in the dark and that some way of pulling the plug on it has to be found, and pretty damned quick before any more highly qualified and principled staff leave the good ship probation. There simply has got to be a plan B. 

I've had enough. I can't bare to see this honourable, award-winning and high-performing public service trashed by grubby ideological politicians and slowly fall apart because they cannot bring themselves to admit that it's all a very bad mistake. I guess political reality dictates that an escape route is signposted in order to save face, so lets have a stab at just that, a plan B. 

The one killer argument for TR is that it will embrace all the under 12 month custody people who probation do not have a statutory responsibility for. Without doubt, A Good Idea. So the answer is quite easy and straight forward - give them all to the experts to deal with, the existing local Probation Trusts. The time has come, a bit belatedly it has to be said, for whomever is left and able to speak for the public probation service to argue that a way has to be found of undertaking all the extra work more cheaply and effectively than as proposed under TR.

To take a leaf out of the TR omnishambles book, lets call it a straw man and lets give him a name. Not Tom, but BoB - Bloody obvious B. What I'm about to suggest is not rocket science. On the contrary it is quite obvious and even Chris Grayling acknowledges this in his recent video fireside chat. The trouble is he then goes on to advance some pretty unconvincing arguments why it isn't possible:-

Now you know and I know that the rate of reoffending for those people who are not supervised post prison is much higher than for those people who are, and that is something we have got to change. So the obvious question is why not just do it within the current system?

Well there’s a number of answers to that. To start off we have a system that is much too bureaucratic. I mean you all went into the Probation Service to spend time working with offenders, and all of the evidence I see is that the processes that we have in place means that much too little time is spent working with offenders, much too much time is just dealing with the systems. So what I want to do is to create a Probation system where the professionals working in the front line have got much greater freedom, don’t have the interference of central bureaucracy and have got much greater freedom to innovate and do things completely differently.

We looked at whether that could be done across the current system of 35 trusts and actually the last government looked at whether we would provide supervision for the under 12 month group, using the current system. They came to the conclusion it wasn’t affordable and that we would need to do things differently. I don’t think we can afford to carry on with a situation where we’re not supervising those under 12 month people. And the other thing I don’t think we can carry on with is a situation where we don’t have a proper, through the gate service.

The way I see it is this. In order to achieve the apparent miracle of achieving more for less we do what any organisation does when it finds itself up against a brick wall - it gets much more efficient, it makes savings and it focuses on it's core business.

As with any organisation that finds itself having to do more with less resources, it must look at all overheads. This will inevitably mean Trusts looking towards mergers or forming collaborative alliances and drastically cutting back on Head Office functions. It may well be that services such as payroll become national or regional and possibly outsourced. I don't know of a single PO who hasn't been astounded in recent years at the sheer size and headcount of their respective Head Office and number of managers, in stark contrast to frontline staff. It has to change - end of. 

Funnily enough this would be pushing at an open door with Grayling:- 

If you look at crime in Britain today, the number of people entering the Criminal Justice System for the first time is coming down, fewer crimes overall being committed but more and more of our crime problem is about people who are committing crimes again and again, going round and round the system and what we’re doing, rather than having a situation where, as we would be other wise in Probation, closing trusts, merging operations, making people redundant to meet a tough budget settlement, what we’re actually doing is spending more money on supervising those people who go to jail for 12 months and less, who at the moment walk onto the streets with £46 in their pocket, get no supervision and more likely to reoffend than anyone else.

Fortunately there are a number of changes to the probation landscape that could assist with BoB, such as a move towards a generic Community Order with probation staff having complete discretion as to the exact nature of any requirements, along the lines of that pioneered in West Yorkshire and so admired by Jeremy Wright.  

We know that the MoJ have been working on a much simplified risk assessment tool for use at first point of contact such as court and we know that significant numbers of the under 12 month custody people will not require any probation involvement at all. Using the skill and professional judgement of existing probation staff there is plenty of scope for making sure resources are deployed where they are most required, but conversely making sure that those not needing attention are moved out of the system as quickly as possible. 

I would envisage a return of the good old day centre concept, staffed by a combination of PO's PSO's and volunteers that could ensure cost-effective supervision and oversight of significant numbers of people, whilst ensuring those in most need are identified and assisted. But hang on a minute, we know such schemes are already running in various parts of the country, like this one described by a reader back in early December:-

I agree with Jim Brown's previous assessment that we need to look at Plan B. Jeremy Wright has been persuading the Lib Dems that they may as well vote for the bill so that the under 12 months problem can be addressed and he can privatise Probation anyway under the 2008 legislation. 

We need a costed alternative to present to the Lib Dems and call for a pilot and for Probation to be given the opportunity to supervise them. In Gloucestershire we have a costed resettlement project already under way with voluntary offenders for the under 12 months and it's costed at £75,000 a year and funded by the Police and Crime Commissioner. The project will engage with the offenders prior to release, through engagement within the prison, with the purpose of connecting the offender to the relevant support services in order to enable them to engage with those services at the point of release in an effort to work towards reducing the chances of re-offending.

The project will provide a service specific to those offenders who fall within this cohort and the Staff will work with those offenders to address their offending behaviour, they will link into a number of other provisions for the purpose of addressing areas such as Drug and Alcohol, Education/Training/Employment and Accommodation. The services to be linked into will include Turning Point, Independence Trust, Community Based Housing Support, Homeless Provision (P3), Nelson Trust etc.

Each offender will be assessed as to their needs by the project staff and then linked into the appropriate services. Once the assessment is complete the project staff will identify a volunteer/mentor who will work with the offender on release to support them to engage with the identified services. It involves one band 4 for 30 hours, one band 3 full time and an admin officer one day a week and it is envisaged that there will be around 240 offenders a year. 

I know Napo are commissioning a costed study so I have sent this in to them. We need to work out an alternative to keep the under 12 months in Probation - I know Wiltshire have also a project working out of HMP Bristol, has any other area a similar one? 
It all sounds very similar to the TR omnishambles proposals doesn't it? The only difference is that it's happening now and as a natural extension to the work of a Probation Trust and with the full involvement of the local PCC. There are similar schemes working in other places such as Leeds, West Yorkshire.  

But lets not kid ourselves this is quite a challenge, as outlined by another commentator:-

The 12mth and under group Grayling keeps shouting are the problem group that makes TR necessary. But its not the reason really is it? Its just ideology and farming out responsibility to the cheapest shyster in town. A smaller state and someone to blame when it goes wrong.

But my personal belief is that Grayling doesn't really understand how much of a problem the 12mth and under group are going to become for him. They are in my experience the most prolific offenders with deep rooted causes to their offending patterns. Most, regardless of state or private intervention, will continue to offend. Drug or alcohol dependency, mental health problems, entrenched social behaviours, poor employment prospects, or even the loss of fear of custody are all just some of the factors that will keep this group highly criminally active and as a consequence will retain pretty constant reconviction rates.

I'm not trying to say that this group are beyond help, I'm just trying to be realistic.
So the private sector take responsibility for this very difficult group on a payment by result method, and if they don't reduce the reoffending rates, they don't get paid.
I for one don't fancy their chances of success much at all. And over a period of a ten year contract reducing those reoffending rates year upon year is going to become ever more difficult and problematic. But not enough reduction, not enough pay.
 
Graylings concern for the 12mth and under group and his idea of handing them over to private industry as a solution is only going to bite him where it hurts. Not only with a statistical measurement of (non) crime reduction, but constant conflict and dissent from private organisations who wont get paid because they are unable to fix the problem.

Grayling may by this time next year wish he'd left this group alone.

This group does need help, and as much as can be extended to them. But...... would you take a job if your annual salary was calculated on the number of 12mth and under offenders you managed to stop reoffending over a 12mth period of supervision? I wouldn't.

So it's definitely a challenge, but we all know this should be work for probation. We know what needs doing and have a proven track-record in working effectively with offenders and helping them to turn their lives around. Everybody, get thinking about how BoB can work and how it can be paid for. It's now the only way we can all get out of this bloody mess that Chris Grayling has got us into and the only way of keeping a highly-skilled and effective locally-based public probation service.