Trouble With Prisons 2

It's quite ironic that since the Prison Service was allowed to effectively take over the Probation Service under the guise of NOMS, it's the former that have all the problems, rather than the award-winning latter. How is it then that it's the Probation Service that's getting punished and shafted under the TR omnishambles, when many would say the major problem lies behind the prison gates?

This issue has been getting quite an airing on here since we learnt more about the plans NOMS has for killing off 'end-to-end offender management' and effectively taking over control of seconded probation staff in prisons. The truth is that the Prison Service is in crisis, largely of Chris Grayling's making, and the results of which are going to rebound on him quite soon.

We know criticism is coming from a number of sources, such as the National Audit Office as discussed yesterday, and today I notice Russell Webster highlights the findings of the joint inspection by probation and prison inspectors published last month. I'm pretty sure it got a passing mention on here, but it's definitely worth reminding ourselves of the damning conclusions that were drawn, especially in relation to offender management:-

"This is our third report about the quality of offender management of prisoners based on the findings from our joint Prison Offender Management Inspection programme in 21 establishments during 2012 and 2013. 

Offender management is the term used to denote the assessment, planning and 
implementation of work with offenders in the community or in custody to address the 
likelihood of them reoffending and the risk of harm they pose to the public. Community based offender managers and staff in prison Offender Management Units have responsibility for undertaking or coordinating work with prisoners to address the attitudes, behaviour and lifestyle that contributed to their offending.

In our report in 2012 we found a wide variation in the role, importance and effectiveness of 
Offender Management Units in different establishments; we also found that although many prisons paid good attention to the ‘resettlement’ needs of prisoners (i.e. their personal and social circumstances) they did not pay sufficient attention to the ‘offender management’ functions, namely the rehabilitation of the prisoner and protection of the public. Our report, therefore, contained a number of recommendations designed to support the work then happening in prison establishments to make the Offender Management Unit the centre of activities to manage the sentence. 

We were, therefore, disappointed to find on compiling this report that in practice little progress has been made to implement the recommendations from our last aggregate report and that outcomes for prisoners, both in terms of resettlement and rehabilitation, are no better than one year ago. This lack of progress is of particular concern as it casts doubt about the Prison Service’s capacity to implement the changes required under the Transforming Rehabilitation Strategy designed to reduce reoffending rates, especially for short-term prisoners.

This report shows that organisational changes to offender management arrangements have failed to address the culture of poor communication or mistrust between prison departments that undermines the potential of offender management. Successful offender management requires good communication and cooperation and a holistic approach to work with prisoners. The inability of custodial establishments to adopt this approach is nowhere more apparent than in their failure to use one central electronic case record. 

While there have been some modest improvements in practice these are inconsistent. Prisoner officer offender supervisors continue to lack guidance and supervision about what their role should entail, which has an impact on their capacity to improve. Community based offender managers still have insufficient involvement overall to be able to drive sentence planning and implementation.

In addition, there are too few structured programmes available within prisons designed to challenge offending behaviour and promote rehabilitation. Some prisons offered a reasonable range of accredited and non-accredited programmes for their population; others offered no programmes at or were in the process of running down their provision. The lack of programmes was not sufficiently compensated for by prisoners being transferred to prisons where such programmes could be accessed. Provision for offender management was particularly poor at two of the prisons accommodating foreign national prisoners. 

We have come to the reluctant conclusion that the Offender Management Model, however laudable its aspirations, is not working in prisons. The majority of prison staff do not understand it and the community based offender managers, who largely do, have neither the involvement in the process nor the internal knowledge of the institutions, to make it work. It is more complex than many prisoners need and more costly to run than most prisons can afford. Given the Prison Service’s present capacity and the pressures now facing it with the implementation of Transforming Rehabilitation and an extension of ‘Through the Gate’ services, we doubt whether it can deliver future National Offender Management Service expectations. We therefore believe that the current position is no longer sustainable and should be subject to fundamental review and that this work should be taken forward as part of the strategy of implementing Transforming Rehabilitation.

In the meantime, our report contains some recommendations which, if implemented, would serve to ameliorate the situation until more far-reaching changes can be made."

LIZ CALDERBANK NICK HARDWICK

HM Chief Inspector of Probation HM Chief Inspector of Prisons 

December 2013 

This report is utterly damning, and in particular casts serious doubts on whether the TR aspirations for the 71 'resettlement' prisons can work:-

"We have come to the reluctant conclusion that the Offender Management Model, however laudable its aspirations, is not working in prisons. The majority of prison staff do not understand it and the community based offender managers, who largely do, have neither the involvement in the process nor the internal knowledge of the institutions, to make it work. It is more complex than many prisoners need and more costly to run than most prisons can afford. Given the Prison Service’s present capacity and the pressures now facing it with the implementation of Transforming Rehabilitation and an extension of ‘Through the Gate’ services, we doubt whether it can deliver future National Offender Management Service expectations." 

I really do hope that potential bidders for probation work read all this stuff so that they can get a flavour of the chaos that lies behind the polished and reassuring words that regularly emanate from MoJ HQ. We now know that NOMS have decided to ditch the whole OM idea as unworkable and instead make the seconded probation staff responsible for 'driving a case', thus ensuring a change of officer every time a prisoner moves prison and therefore no continuity of involvement.

I thought I'd sign this post off with this comment from yesterday:-

Much of the problems in our prison system lays not with ideology but with idiotology.
There are big budget cuts that have an impact on the daily running of prisons. Private prisons operate on a much reduced staff to inmate ratio to produce profit. The funding for tornado squads and tactical response has almost been halved this year. Its all in the drive to save money.

Yet at the same time Grayling has decided to impose austerity for austerity sake on prisoners. Harder to earn privileges. Not allowed to watch tv in your cell during the working day even if you happen to be locked up for 23 hours and no work can be found for you to do. No parcels from family. Not allowed to wear your own clothing, and maybe even a total ban on smoking.

All these things add up to creating a far more disgruntled and discontent population to manage. With staffing cuts and reduced facilities management of prisoners must become more difficult and problematic, with a far greater risk of disturbances. And whats really achieved?

Take not being allowed to wear your own clothes for example. It might make a good headline in the press, but it goes against the main objective of saving money. All prisoners wearing prison uniforms creates a greater demand for uniforms (isn't that adding a cost?). More uniforms needed more washing needed, more cleaning agents to wash them required. More transport if facilities for washing are not available on site, and more cost to replace worn out and damaged uniforms.

I would argue that the private sector is effected more by this than the public as their wages are paid from the amount of pennies they can squeeze out from any area of running costs.

So the problems we see within the prison system aren't just because of cutbacks. They're also being caused by ill thought through ideas, excessive haste, and lack of understanding and headline grabbing. Idiotology.


Stop Press - Outgoing HMI Liz Calderbank writing in today's Guardian here:-

"The new arrangements for the management of those serving sentences of under 12 months' duration, with any non-compliance during the year-long period of supervision ultimately punishable by further short period of imprisonment, are likely to be attractive to magistrates who generally deal with this difficult group of offenders. But these individuals, many of whom have long-standing problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, poor educational achievement and family disintegration, can be notoriously difficult to engage and often do not comply with any form of intervention. For these individuals, the revolving door back into prison may just have begun spinning a bit faster.

A parallel can be drawn between the offender management model, with its confused lines of accountability, and the arrangements now being set up in the community under Transforming Rehabilitation. That these same problems continue, after nearly ten years, to plague the delivery of rehabilitation work does not bode well."