TR Holed Below Waterline!

There always was a bit of suspicion concerning the timing of Chris Grayling's announcement last week that the TR timetable had slipped. It's always possible that he would have been tempted to just ignore his civil servants when they voiced their grave concerns regarding the risks involved in pressing ahead regardless, but the views of the Justice Affairs Select Committee are a little different. 

He possibly got wind of what was coming because of course Select Committees are cross-party and the timing would have been a little unfortunate should the report prove to be - well how shall we put it - unhelpful. We now know he was correct because, although the Chairman Sir Alan Beith goes to great pains to explain that the Committee did not concern itself with the rights or wrongs of TR, it nevertheless carefully and meticulously demolishes the plan as the summary indicates:-

The Transforming Rehabilitation reforms involve a substantial recasting of the way probation services are provided, and engender sharply differing views both among our witnesses and members of this Committee: some see them as the only means of extending support to short-sentenced prisoners and facilitating innovation through the involvement of private and voluntary sector providers in rehabilitative provision; others believe that the resulting transfer of functions away from the public sector, which will retain responsibility for high risk offenders, is either undesirable in principle, or too risky. We do not seek to resolve this difference in our report but to clarify how the system might operate and how risks will be managed. 

We encountered broad support for the programme’s aim to use efficiencies in the delivery of existing probation services to provide post-release supervision to short-sentenced prisoners, rectifying a long-standing anomaly in the system whereby those who tend to be the most prolific offenders currently receive no statutory support. We welcome the introduction of services for this group, but consider that care will need to be taken to ensure that any gains made in reducing reoffending by them do not come at the expense of the supervision of offenders on other sentences, and do not diminish the value of community sentences which are proven to be a cost-effective way of dispensing justice for non-violent offenders.

Witnesses in our inquiry, including some supportive of the proposed changes, had significant apprehensions about the scale, architecture, detail and consequences of the reforms—some of which are still to be determined and much of which has not been tested—and the pace at which the Government is seeking to implement them. In particular, our witnesses with professional experience of probation saw potential risks to the effective management of offenders arising from the Government’s decision to split the delivery of probation services between a public National Probation Service dealing with the highest-risk offenders and the new providers who will be dealing with low and medium risk offenders. While there is some evidence base for aspects of the reforms, there is a question about how much they are indicative of the potential of the entire programme. The absence of piloting means that some witnesses lack confidence that the particular commissioning model and the novel payment by results mechanism proposed will work better than the existing system. The Government must recognise that any model introduced at the beginning of the new system is likely to require modification in the light of experience and must continue to be open to public and parliamentary scrutiny.

We recognise that, as well as the risks involved in change, there are also risks involved in not taking action to deal with the gaps and weaknesses in the present system. While the Government has undertaken to test the model with shadow state-run companies before contracting the new arrangements out to new providers, there is a lack of systematic information about the risks they might encounter during implementation and full operational conditions and the steps that they will take to mitigate those risks. They also do not appear to have devised clear contingency plans in the event that the competition fails to yield a viable new provider for a particular area, or that a new provider subsequently fails. In such circumstances, it is not clear whether the Government will be able to implement or retain the supervision of short-sentenced prisoners, or whether this element of the programme is contingent on having a complete system in place.

The Ministry has high expectations of what can be achieved in the way of efficiency savings and extension of services through contracting out the management of low and medium risk offenders within existing resources. We wished to examine the affordability of the reforms, the initial costs of which are likely to be considerable but which might, over the longer-term, lessen as demand on the system falls, but we have been unable to determine whether sufficient funding is in place on the limited information that the Government has provided. Furthermore, a key question for the Government is how the focus on reducing reoffending will be maintained while the restructuring of the market that is necessary to create the desired efficiencies takes place.

Quite clever really to have maintained unanimity, heaped enormous praise upon the universally-held view that providing support for the short-term prisoners is a good idea, but at the same time provide a complete hair-raising catalogue of reasons why TR is ill-thought-out, risky, unlikely to work, devoid of adequate supporting evidence and unlikely to save money. Being so well researched, argued and cross-party, it's not quite so easy for Chris Grayling to ignore with impunity.

Apart from supporting the view that something really must be done to support short-sentence prisoners, seeing that the committee is 50% either Lib Dem or Conservative and heard from witnesses supporting the TR agenda, it really contains no support for TR at all. In fact it sets out in quite stark fashion how the whole thing is an unqualified omnishambles and will provide further ammunition for the many sceptical members of the House of Lords intent on giving the Offender Rehabilitation Bill a rough ride. 

This report also does nothing to allay the concerns and fears of commercial operations currently refining their bids. They have already had alarm bells ringing in terms of the ever-growing loss of skilled staff and increasing antipathy of those remaining, together with worries that the MoJ are losing a grip on the timetable and the all-important fine detail of just how the whole bloody thing will work.

I can't help noticing that at least one reader was up early and has already commented:-

First impressions - very woolly, veiled criticisms, and like being savaged by a much-loved teddy bear.

There is still no clarity about management of shift in risk, with evidence from Grayling and Wright remaining vague or contradictory, and the roles of NPS v. CRC similarly unclear. In one paragraph the responsibility for dealing with changes in risk are CRC; in another its NPS who make the call. The loss of a single, stable consistent supervising officer is highlighted, but not addressed.

Throughout the Report Grayling's view of the current probation service is barely disguised contempt.

TR ain't going away; and if the current incumbents can't totally dismantle us, they are going to ensure they leave their mark, which will scar us for life. They're behaving exactly like the DV bullies we struggle with - they want their own way, they refuse to listen to any other point of view, and if they can't get what they want they're going to make damn sure that no-one else does: Total control: "if I can't have you, no-one can"; or wanton abuse: "if I can't have you, I'll leave you in such a mess that no-one else will want you. Every time you look in the mirror..."

This is a lengthy report full of criticism for every aspect of TR. Yes the tone is measured because it's a cross-party report, but I think that just makes it much more effective and damning. As an example, this is what it has to say about risk and Chris Grayling's refusal to publish that register:-

26. Evidence we have taken in this report demonstrates that there is considerable consensus about the nature of the risks involved in implementation of the Transforming Rehabilitation project and we have used this evidence to arrive at our conclusions on the subject. No project on this scale is without risk, and we do not approach the question from the naïve standpoint that all risk can or should be eliminated. It is not satisfactory, however, that we are unable to inform our scrutiny of the programme with more systematic information from the Ministry about the major risks they have identified and the steps that they have taken and are taking to mitigate those risks. In order to reassure us we ask the Ministry, in its response to this report, to provide a narrative description of those risks which it considers most significant to the success of the programme as a result of the combination of their likelihood of occurring and their seriousness if they were to occur, and in relation to each of them to describe mitigations which have been put in place or are proposed.

TR may not be going away, but it's holed and taking in water.