I had my TR training last week, along with two Court staff. Their view was that the whole 'assessment/allocation' process was impossible, not least of which is the time taken to complete them weighed against the demands of simply being in Court. This will have a massive impact in what normally is a smooth and well oiled Court process. I cannot see either the Courts or 'Legals' being happy with this. The Solicitors normally get a flat fee for service and any adjournments will impact on both their time and wages.Grayling sure knows how to piss everyone off!!!!
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I am a court officer too and the TR training left my whole team demoralised and wondering which of us would fold first. WE HAVE NO INTERVIEW SPACE IN COURTS to do this additional work WHICH IDIOT DID NOT CHECK THIS SIMPLE FACT???? We regularly compete with solicitors to use the court landing rooms and three of those have just been allocated to other agencies (domestic abuse worker, drugs agency etc). We cannot use the Bridewell either as all available interview rooms are needed for solicitor consultation and reports. OMG THIS IS STUPID BEYOND WORDS.
Could I suggest a blog devoted to the Court TR issues? In some area PSO and PO grade staff do completely the same role for differential pay, in other areas the grades undertake different tasks. IT IS A MESS !! Sorry, rant over........
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Newcastle Magistrates Court cells have been condemned. Only half of the cells are allowed to be used and Probation Officers are not allowed to enter. Previously, the only space available to interview someone was in the shower. I kid you not.
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I wonder if the Court Probation process is wilfully being rendered impossible to create a 'failing' NPS , thereby necessitating changes to allow CRC staff to act as officers of the court and provide PSRs - and in that removing the need for an NPS at all.....
Now as it happens, I see that a London court-based PO has very recently done a lot of the donkey work on this subject in an excellent blog post directed specifically at criminal solicitors. Regular readers will know that Effie Perine writes powerful stuff that always has something interesting to say and here she is on how TR will affect court work. The following is a taster:-
"I’m addressing this post directly to the probation service’s friends in the legal profession because I think you need to be kept informed about changes which will start having a big impact on the service we provide to crown and magistrates’ courts from April 1st.
As (I hope) you will know, the splitting of the probation service into the National Probation Service (NPS), a public sector body, and the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC), that will be up for sale, has been delayed til June 1st, and we in the probation union Napo are doing our damnedest to delay it further and stop it altogether. However, probation staff in courts are being instructed to implement new processes to decide whether newly-sentenced cases will be supervised by the NPS or CRC from April 1st.
The new tools are actuarial assessments, producing scores through the inputting of static risk factors like the number of previous convictions, and check-box forms to consider other factors like evidence of domestic abuse, child protection issues and so on. Leaving aside the unanswered questions about how the algorithms work and the data the MoJ have based them on – and believe me, there are a LOT of these questions – the tools represent a big increase in the amount of work officers have to do on cases coming through the courts. There is going to be a big reduction in the service we can provide to the courts and to your clients. I know letters have gone to clerks in London courts in the past week advising them of this.
Provision of ‘fast-delivery’ pre-sentence reports is likely to be hit hardest. An FDR is a shorter-format report done on simpler cases that don’t need the full 3-week adjournment, and these are done either on the same day they’re requested or within 5 working days. In my magistrates’ court team, probation officers do 3 of these a day, most due back in court for sentencing later on the day of interview. There’s been a big organisational push to do as many of these as possible, and verbal reports on even simpler cases – usually the latter are done the same day they’re requested.
The new tools we have to start using from April 1st mean 2.5 hours is now unquestionably not enough time to do everything we’re required to do on an FDR. 2 a day will be the maximum. A PO will need to complete a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6 tools, as well as the small matter of actually writing a decent report document. I know FDRs can vary in quality, but if you’re annoyed with getting a 3-sentence tick-box form from some officers now, be prepared to get a lot more annoyed a lot more often because we might not have the time to do anything else – or we’ll need to ask for a longer adjournment. And the same tools must be used for verbal reports too. Fewer on-the-day reports = more adjournments. I asked at training if the MoJ have looked into the financial implications for HMCS at all – nope.
What will also affect the number of FDRs that can be done is the fact that staff in the CRC, the non-public part of the new probation service, will not be allowed to do PSRs. None at all. They’ll still be the same qualified and experienced staff they are now – for now, anyway – but they cannot do any PSRs from June 1st the current date for the formal staff split. So the court-based report writing teams will have to pick up the full reports they would otherwise have been doing, leaving even less scope for doing FDRs. The demand for reports in my area is already a struggle. We rely on sessional work to get everything done – that’s POs doing reports for extra cash outside normal working hours."
Effie's full blog post can be found here.
Thanks Jim, this is welcome discussion in the week before the systems are due to be rolled out in the Courts and prior to NPS allocated staff, as civil servants, being gagged by the Official Secrets Act ( has anyone thought of the implications of that yet?).
ReplyDeleteI am Court based and in my area (northish, that's all I dare identify) there is much confusion with the only TR training we have attended informing us that the Risk tool is not finished yet but will be completed by court staff to sign-post cases to NPS or CRC. We have also been told that the cut off score ( above which cases will go to NPS) can be centrally adjusted. In my area the target is for 75% of all reports to be diverted from the LDUs and completed immediately or on short term adjournments by court based staff. As identified earlier,we already have insufficient interview space prior to the new system coming in so it is unmanageable from that simple point alone. In my area we have a lot of District Judges sitting in the Magistrates Courts who demand immediate answers from probation staff in court and we will be unable to respond if every minute of our work time is allocated to completion of the risk tool and reports.The Crown Courts run on very limited staff and we respond to calls from the Court only, often literally running between Courts on busy days.I need not stress to you how important accurate recording of sentence outcomes is.
The rumour we have in our area ( since no information is forthcoming from the employer) is that PSOs will attend to the demands of sitting courts ( taking results, providing information and processing those who have been sentenced) and POs will do the risk tools and FDRs. Significant concern is emerging about how the risk tool will be completed for custodial cases as this, we are told, must be done prior to the client leaving the court and as we know, Serco G4S etc will not wait to transport them for us to complete the paperwork. We have been told the risk tool can not be completed by prison based staff.
Can you imagine with multiple courts running how court staff can meet the demands of this new system? Someone should be held accountable for the lack of diligence, planning, accuracy and feasibility of this Omnishambles. This time the usual reliance on good staff making this work at all costs will fail, THIS SYSTEM IS UNWORKABLE.
AND not just recording Sentencing Outcomes is important but for recording precise sentencers comments that can be an important part of the interpersonal one to one work with clients - I could go on - about value of PSR writers being in court and carrying out immediate post sentence interviews whenever possible and by being in court remonstrating to client and family a commitment to their rehabilitation.
ReplyDeleteThis is VERY basic stuff, but was not taught to me in probation training but learned from older colleagues by doing weekly Magistrate's Courts Duties in 1970s and also less frequent Crown Court duties and applying the maxim - go to court with current clients being sentenced and when you write reports that are likely to be questioned or have controversial info. In NG plea cases of current cases, I would ask Crown Court colleagues to phone when the Jury retired - and I usually got across the county in time, if had managed my diary to make that possible.
I found when I moved from Merseyside to Essex in 1982 that the practice was not the same & saw colleagues literally frightened of criticism from sentencers who avoided courts and similar when I went to London in 1989, but I found throughout my career that attendance at court was usually well received by sentencers and the most useful part was often the post sentence interview, which could build for the future work, especially when a prison sentence was handed down and it was difficult to visit regularly for cost or time reasons
After almost 30 years of probation work I'm staggered by the utter stupidity of this new system. When I trained the PSR was seen as the fundamental piece of work which, allied to the interventions of skilled and experienced court officers, was our means of managing our workloads, i.e. We took control of what came to us from court. Courts liked it, lawyers liked it - it was only the transient politicians of all hues who persisted in interfering with a healthy system in a bid to secure votes or piss up the lamppost of history.
ReplyDeleteWe had healthy teams of enthusiastic and skilled report writers who knew how to speak to the mags or the judiciary. We had skilled court officers whose views were respected by the courts.
When the staff splits took place I was by that time prepared for anything, but not for the exclusion of many skilled court practitioners and report writers from the NPS. Nor had I realised until recently that being allocated to the CRC stripped those staff of their status as an officer of the court. NAPO, please take note. Perhaps sone compensation is in order for this disenfranchising act of professional vandalism?
Many's the time I've covered our Crown Court and heard barristers (both defence and cps) quoting verbatim from probation reports. I've often joked we should be invoicing them or suing for plagiarism.
Ha, yes, I've lost count of the number of times I've been in court to do a verbal report or in case of any questions about a written report and a solicitor's said, "Perhaps you'd like to hear from probation first?" Then it's "There is little I can add..." Sometimes I get compensated in coffee - and more importantly in goodwill, a collaborative working experience where we're all a bit more understanding and appreciative of the other's role. And in copies of CPS papers when the CPS themselves can't help (god bless paperless working, so much more efficient eh....).
DeleteI've always sought out PSR-writing roles because I'm passionate about quality, and working in court you see the importance of well-chosen words and a good, well-structured and evidenced argument. It's an important skill, and one OASys started sidelining - "this report is underpinned and informed by an OASys assessment..." Bollocks it is. OASys knows what I tell it, what I've obtained through my interviewing skills and analysis. This is MY assessment, I own it. This distancing and sidelining is only going to get worse when we have as many as 6 actuarial assessment tools to do pre-sentence - for full reports, for FDRs, even for verbal reports.
I'm disgusted by the CRCs' exclusion from PSR writing. That and the 'risk review' process surely serves no other purpose than paving the way for less qualified staff to be used in the CRCs.
PS, good post on the working relationship between solicitors and court POs here, by the vice president of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association (LCCSA): http://www.lccsa.org.uk/why-solicitors-and-barrister-share-probations-fight/
DeleteSadly, Effie, you're right on the button there. The skills of crafting reports are being lost through the imposition of 'tools' which you address beautifully. Experienced staff are being sidelined (too troublesome? Too expensive?) and that, as mentioned earlier, is how much of our profession has grown - doing your apprenticeship, learning the ropes, developing a style and a thirst for improvement, NOT learning by rote, pleasing the machine or ticking all the boxes.
DeleteThe unhealthy and obsessive focus on "risk" is, in my view, escalating any real risks beyond manageable proportions, a bit like the explosion of H&S. It removes common sense from the equation, it generates fear and anxiety and panic, it makes services reactive rather than proactive, and it crushes creativity in problem-solving. How many responses from management include the word "defensible"? Always on the back foot, always risk averse.
Still, when the CRCs have shed their expensive PO grade staff and filled their ranks with cheaper alternatives, all will be okay. And when the NPS shed their 30% in the cuts to come, we'll be well and truly fucked all round.
Keep smiling and keep writing Effie.
Agree with everything said about being in court, intervening appropriately in court and being in court woth reports.....it all feels like another age when the quality of what we did was the defining factor!
DeleteThe interesting thing about RSR training (well, one of many) was that there was an emphasis on not being 'over-cautious', an emphasis on what risk of SERIOUS harm "really means", the notion that many high risk cases are inappropriately assessed. Interesting for 2 main reasons. Firstly, the motivation for 'down-tariffing' high risk cases is pretty transparent, if one is being cynical (which clearly one is); and secondly, we still live in this risk-averse blame culture where we're going to get shafted if there's an SFO. Yet they want us to be making this shift in attitudes to risk - welcome in some respects perhaps, but taking place in a much wider context and happening for the wrong reasons and with little actual evidence behind it.
DeleteThe idea is that RSR and the rest of the tools will give practitioners the 'confidence' to be secure in assessing people as medium risk rather than high. Personally I trust all this about as far as I could throw the entire MoJ building.
Thanks for the feedback - good to see the post struck a chord :o) Plenty of staff ARE still taking the approach to PSRs you describe, it's up to us to fight for that and try to spread it around. All the best.
Just over 20 years ago, I walked into an office of a senior partner of a well known North West London high street practice for a job interview. My interviewer, a bearded man, surrounded by orange files was finishing a telephone call, it was clear from the conversation that he was discussing with a member of the local probation service the content of a pre sentence report (known as a social enquiry report back then); they discussed at length the merits of various disposals on offer. The client was receiving a bespoke service. My interviewer paused after he put the phone down to write an attendance note of the call, for which he would be paid. He looked up and I said, as someone who had only received instructions as a pupil barrister that was not aware that this sort of liaison went on behind the scenes. Greg Powell turned to me and said, we do it because we are good at what we do.
DeleteIn the 1990s I attended training sessions where I was taught that the best advocacy you could do for your client is through liaison with the probation officers. Defence lawyers and probation officers have always worked well together realistically mindful of the limits of our clients, this is despite successive governments’ mad cap proposals to revamp the service. Does anyone recall the Home Secretary who wanted to bring in ex army officers to train as probation officers because they thought the current batch were too soft on offenders?
This theme has continued through the establishment of NOMS; the low threshold for prosecuting breaches and now we have the current proposals for these services to be run not by publicly accountable bodies but private business interests. It is of no coincidence that there has been a series of pieces published in The Evening Standard attacking the probation service. In one such article a mother of a young rioter explained how she supported her son upon release from prison, having not received any communication from the probation service; he was recalled because he did not keep his first post release appointment with his probation officer. Apparently the letter was sent to the wrong address. This, and an apparent inability to rehabilitate “revolving door offenders”, according to the Standard makes the current system not fit for purpose.
Lord Woolf speaking in 2010 in HoL:
Delete"When I started as a young advocate, the probation service was just that which has been described today. Probation officers had great experience, which was based locally. A young advocate, such as myself, was taught by his pupil master that the best thing he could do if retained for a defendant was, when he got to court, speak to the probation officer. The probation officer would know the facts about the offender and what could be achieved in that community for that individual...It is on a local basis that you can get the necessary results if you are to prevent a person from reoffending."
Working in court you have to have your wits about you, be able to think on your feet and always have a smile on your face which is incredibly hard bearing in mind the highly charged emotional state of the situation people find themselves in. Working in court has often been seen as an easier PSO role to the alternative of carrying a caseload of 50+ cases because you work more as a team and at the end of the day you don't have work hanging over your head.
ReplyDeleteMy local city centre magistrates court has 11 PSO staff. 4 are over 60 - know their stuff and very dedicated, but I can envisage them struggling with the new system, they are winding down and cruising towards retirement - and who can blame them!. We have, unbelievably 3 part timers who only each work 3 days so it will take them even longer to pick up the new system one of these is a lady who transferred there because she found it difficult carrying a caseload, BTW we advertised internally for 2 full time PSOs but only part-timers applied, they subsequently got the jobs (court SPO had little alternative) and so we now have 3 part timers which is not ideal particularly as they all don't work Fridays thereby causing a 'staff rift' making it tricky for fulltime staff to ever get a Friday off! (only a fulltime court based PSO would appreciate the difficulty a part-time PSO causes with regards to the court rota).
All I can say is that in the very near future I can see the potential for my local magistrates probation team imploding.
So much for the costs and the gongs all round of introducing speedy justice. There'll be nothing 'speedy' any more and, as Effie says, the costs and backlog for HMCS will spiral out of control. Its possible that, despite the valiant efforts of all concerned in trying to make it work, there'll be less 'justice' as well, i.e. Cuts to legal aid, overwhelmed probation staff, increasingly punitive (vindictive, even) sentencing imposed by Govt.
ReplyDeleteI've heard several times, district judges pass a sentence because they couldn't be bothered waiting for a stand down. They are not allowed (they think they are) to sentence anyone for Unpaid Work without a prior assessment by a probation service officer and we all know why that is - because people agree to any sentence just to get out of court but when they report to probation they all of a sudden are on ESA or have other ailments/responsibilities that render them unable to carry out Unpaid work and thereby wastes time in the Order having to be returned to court for resentence.
ReplyDeleteMags and DJs can, of course, sentence to curfews without receiving advice from Probation but is that really a punitive, effective way of somebody repaying their debt to society- I think not but I do think that G4S are going to become incredibly busy as curfews will be the sentencing starting point as it will be easier for magistrates and district judges to swiftly sentence and move onto the next case.
BTW as a court officer and others may be able to back me up on this but I have regularly initially interviewed someone with a view to proposing UPW but as the interview has gone on, other things have come to light that make imposing supervision to sit alongside it appropriate in order to prevent further re-offending.
Yes I can certainly back that view up from my time as a CDO. But then I am 'old skool' and would have the temerity to suggest supervision for welfare reasons......very naughty I know...
DeleteImposing curfews without address being checked by probation and police is dangerous, I've lost count if the amount of times I reminded the court that all curfew addresses need to be checked for indtance to check that no domestic violence issues etc ive prevented a number of EM curfews being imposed at addresses where background checks have highlighted DV/DA episodes which have resulted in police call outs and child protection referrals
DeleteThat definitely happens a lot at my court - "suitability for unpaid work to be addressed" is on the FDR request, but 10 seconds with the paperwork says NO. It's why we need to be in courts on duty, to head these unrealistic requests off early and make sure the right kind of report is requested, and why we need to be available to do the more detailed assessments where they're needed. With all this extra work it'll be so much harder.
DeleteThis is going to destroy all of the good relationships in court when frustrations grow everyone will blame the court staff, not the managers/ NOMS/MOJ. We can not cover every court as it is and rely on the good will of the clerks and solicitors for results. They have messed with a system that was working on goodwill and now will lose us even that. Idiots.
ReplyDeleteThe relationships are going to be hit especially hard if court staff don't know what's happening to us, how our work is changing and the knock-on effects on them. As far as they know on April 1st we've all just left our brains at home or skived off for the day! I'm concerned at how little briefing seems to be going on, in my area at least - our court team and our brilliant SPO do what we can but it needs to be more formal. Of course, then we run into the big problem with both working under TR *and* fighting it - there's so little detail to actually grab onto to make your points, and it might change next week.
DeleteI'm not of the probation service, but I am against the wholesale sell off if our public services by a government that can only think of market forces, and driven by a very disturbing neoliberal ideology.
ReplyDeleteI am a news hound however, and I've noticed that over the past 18months many magistrates courts have been closed down accross the country by local councils trying meet the need to deliver services while dealing with massive funding cuts.
Some have been relocated to cohabit with the crown courts, but others have just been moved to the next largest city. There are empty magistrate buildings up for sale everywhere, and many I fear will just stay sittin and rot.
It strikes me then, that regardless of the problems outlined above there may also be regional issues arising from this mess not least deciding where the staff placed in the courts are deployed from.
Annon 11:44
DeleteIts from last june but may have relevence to the point you make.
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/71119.article
Thanks for that Anon at 11:44 - but it should be borne in mind that Local Authorities have absolutely no say in closure of Magistrates Courts - such decisions are made by the MoJ alone because they fund all criminal courts 100%. In fact most LA's argued strongly to keep them open, but to little avail. More closures are likely too.
DeleteKnowsley Magistrates closed and merged with Liverpool Magistrates and there were plans to close Liverpool Mags and for them to rent a floor in the Crown but apparently the foundations couldn't cope with the extra weight and there would also need to be additional cell space built. As far as I know it's all ground to a halt. LMC not fit for purposes imho lovely historical court rooms but poor facilities for solicitors & probation.
DeleteOfficial Secrets Act ? Yes, that will gag us all when this starts crashing down we won't be able to tell anyone.
ReplyDeleteGood to have a court 'special' can we have a 'strike special' listing all of the reasons given as to why 'they' couldnt possibly support NAPO at the time of our greatest need?
ReplyDeleteCurrent classics..'I cant afford it' in the same breath as explaining how much spent on a night out or ' Its a done deal' or ' there hasn't been a ballot' or 'NAPO didnt support me 10 years ago' or ' What's the point'....its incredible that intelligent people are not aware that our current ts &Cs are a result of collective bargaining by NAPO and not the largesse of the trusts.....time to fight or get out of the union.....clue's in the title....
A 'strike special'? What a good idea - watch this space.
DeleteIn our team we complete on average 3 reports a month each, either complex SDR's on a 15 day adjournment or FDR's that the Court Team don't have capacity to do. 7 of the team are assigned to CRC, 3 (including one part time) are NPS. That's 21 reports a month - which the new systems will make longer to do - having to be absorbed by 3 people on top of taking all our high risk and MAPPA cases. It's impossible.
ReplyDeletewe need NAPO to send instructions out to inform members that from 1st June any CRC staff are NOT to write these reports and not to listen to the codswallop of - you can write them up until 'point of sale'. MOJ have made their bed they must lie in it.
DeleteExactly Anonymous 14:20 but I can't see it happening. SPOs involved with Courts will make CRC staff write reports and not let the courts know about what will happen at share sale. I.e. that there will be less of a service, but hey keep using CRC staff in the meantime.
DeleteWhen this new system starts and the Magistrates Courts can not get the Oral Reports or FDRs delivered on time because probation are completing the risk tool on everyone (40 minutes each), they will move to sentence without reports. Many of the District Judges do so already but Benches tend not to at present but they have to transact the business of the court so will not hesitate. So most of the reports will disappear thus further removing our core skills. Think it won't happen? Just remember when the only report was a PSR and FDRs and Orals were unthinkable.
ReplyDeleteAnd then how many more sentence are going to be entirely unsuitable, unjust or unworkable - how many more returns to court for revocation, how many more appeals? And how much more public money spent because of an utter lack of understanding of the system by the MoJ? They haven't considered this at all.
Deleterobin hood i concur , 90% of staff are apathetic and dont have any solidarity they would jump out of a window if told to. all those who have any gumption should quit now and go to yots/social care and leave them to put up with the nightmare they have shown no resistance against, napo is weak because its members are not militant do you think they could do this on the railways ?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear that's your experience. We had a good turnout in my area last time - a lot of people made the noises, said it was a done deal, complained about Napo, said they were too stressed/poor/tired etc to strike - but plenty of them looked at their consciences and came out or refused to cross picket lines anyway. People may respond negatively at first but often they take the message away and think about it - just like our clients!
DeleteLocal efforts can make such a difference - I don't mean just the branches, I mean individual offices. We've held local office-based strike meetings (in my current and past boroughs) for every strike so far, for all staff not just Napo members - to talk tactics but also to keep Unison and non-union staff informed about their legal rights, to counteract messages from elsewhere. Next week we're having another, open to all, and placard-making workshop too - homemade signs get more interest on rallies, just look at the guardian galleries of signs at other protests!
Sometimes it does seem like everyone's giving up - we all feel like that sometimes but not all at the SAME time and that's why trade unionism is important. We can still do this, we can keep each other going. Best of luck on 31st-1st and beyond x
It's amazing what comes up on the sidelines at Junior Football...I hear the MoJ may not have calculated or predicted their prison numbers with any accurately, when they closed a load of jails down...cos, it seems, Lancaster Farms is being re-opened as a Cat C adult male establishment.
ReplyDeleteAlso, looking likely that NPS will be drafted back into HMP's to make the nonsense supervision for all work, and of course to do all the re-assessing when those subject to unwelcome periods of 12month supervision, are breached and recalled for 14 days....oh, the chaos?????
About local Court closures, our local Court closed 18 months ago, and the building is reportedly costing £22,000 a month, as it sits, empty. Our local cases were moved 8 miles north to a city courthouse......I would like to know just how much has been spent, by the Police, executing fail to attend warrants and on picking up people, taking them to court? I frequently hear, a good number of our service users saying they do not have the money to take the bus or train to get to court and hat they actively instruct their legal representatives not to adjourn for reports or further investigation, cos it's just another expense they can ill afford.
Try this story, which expands your point:
Deletehttp://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-northerner/2012/jun/14/empty-government-buildings-business-start-ups-simon-danczuk-rochdale
I can feel a FOI request bubbling up
Deletetalking of travel expenses, most sentenced people have to report for Induction within the week (next day if you're tier 4) how people on JSA are meant to find the flat £4..80 return fare baffles me - at the moment we give £2 in bus tokens and even finding £2.80 is a struggle for some.
ReplyDeleteHere in Lancashire we rarely take lessons from over the Pennines. But in a small West Yorkshire market town there's a great example of a community resource that I'd love to see in my constituency.
ReplyDeleteOtley Magistrates' Court was closed in 1997. But by 2004, with the help of local people, it was transformed into a fantastic community arts and resource centre. Set up as a charity, they secured a 25-year lease on a peppercorn rent.
Today, it's home to salsa dancing, touring theatre and a huge variety of music from brass bands to Celtic fusion. It has a free computer suite, holds tai chi classes, stand-up comedy, literature and science festivals. There really is something for everyone.
In Rochdale, like hundreds of other towns across the country, our magistrates' court stands empty, following a large-scale closure programme carried out by the Government last year.
Some £2.5million a year is currently being spent out of the public purse just on maintaining these empty courts. The Government is expected to spend another £70million this year in business rates on its empty properties, which, at the last count, number around 550. That's 456,000 square metres of empty space that's doing nothing except cost the taxpayer. Some of these properties have been gathering dust for years and are leased until 2037.
In my view, this is a case of wasted space, wasted money and wasted opportunities.
Rochdale's not been in Lancashire since 1974...
DeleteOh err yes......
DeleteDid I see the word 'Supervision' mentioned above? have you CDO's not been listening in your TR training ?.Once again on this blog I am going to have to re- educate you on the term "Rehabilitation Activity Requirements" . . .you see it's really simple, how do i know?, because I work for West Yorks and I warned you previously that we've been using it for over 2 yrs. In its simplest form, providing you can establish a rehabilitative need, you just tell the magistrates that Joe Blogs meets the criteria for a R.A.R.and they proceed to sentence at low; med, or high level ! That's it . . .it doesn't matter what the content might be, it doesn't matter whether it goes to CRC or NPS and it doesn't matter if it's delivered by PO, PSO or trained monkey. So all the extra time required to input the RSR Predictor into Excel will be offset by the simplicity of the sentencing process ! Just for the record I too work in Mags Crt and have already received my TR training. Our trainers seemed only too aware of the extra investement both in terms of staffing, I.T. and office space that might be needed but they were unable to suggest how this might be achieved in such a short space of time. My fear is that although Court teams are at the frontline, so to speak, we will be forced to 'make it happen' without any extra resources. In my work place there is ample space to make our daily lives more tolerable but there is historically no joined up thinking between HMCS, MOJ and Probation hierarchy. Remember this, managers in NPS will be working to strict budgets from June 1st onwards and there is already news that these budgets will need to be slashed year on year. There will be no money in the pot for court team improvements ! One example that still grates is that we knew CPS were going electronic two years in advance of it happening . . .lots of talk of us all getting 'tablets' . . never happened. We still don't get the majority of CPS paperwork upfront and much of my day is spent chasing and photocopying papers. the need to have this information to hand will become even more of a priority when we have to complete RSR in ridiculously short timeframe.
ReplyDeleteThe 'electronic working' is a joke. Especially as it's nigh on impossible to get a mobile phone or wi-fi signal in most of our court building. As for the Rehabilitation Activity Requirements - there are a lot of judges and magistrates who will not like those one bit, I imagine. They like to know and have some say in what is actually going to happen to people. Me too as a report writer! I won't be happy to propose "oh, just someone do something rehabilitatey with them!" and I'm sure many sentencers won't be happy with that either. I mentioned in my grievance that I already feel I can't fulfil my duty to inform courts and defendants about how the sentence will be delivered and what will be expected of them.
Deletefourteen years qualified and I do not know what a CDO is - I get the court and officer bit....
ReplyDeleteCourt Duty Officer
ReplyDeleteI have shown this blog and posts today to two magistrates who happen to be at my house for Sunday Lunch, they sit in different courts due to close boundary location and both said this is not what they have been told. Both expressed profound support for probation and said without exception how impressed they have been over the years. Both were appalled by what they have read.
ReplyDeletePS after such sentiments they were fed well !!
It's Court Duty Officer....I take exception to the misrepresentation of what is happening in West Yorkshire..ie "In its simplest form, providing you can establish a rehabilitative need, you just tell the magistrates that Joe Blogs meets the criteria for a R.A.R.and they proceed to sentence at low; med, or high level ! That's it . . .it doesn't matter what the content might be, it doesn't matter whether it goes to CRC or NPS and it doesn't matter if it's delivered by PO, PSO or trained monkey."
ReplyDeleteThis may say more about the author at anon 16.37. It does matter and high level activities, would require a full SDR...not an Oral or Fast Delivery Report; they are only available for certain clients, ie Sex Offenders; Domestic Abuse, Intensive Community Orders or those who need the Extremist (Healthy Identity) Interventions. I work for West Yorkshire too and they don't always get it right and there is less likelihood of the WY way being adopted by other areas, as has been said before, they are struggling to secure evidence of successful outcomes and are losing credibility. Nevertheless, we can do without our own colleagues suggesting our tasks, and assessment skills are on a par with a monkey.
Surely those RAR's are currently illegal - they are how the Privateers will make profit by not supervising till the end of the period, therefore completely changing the premise of probation.
DeleteI am surprised Magistrates and Judges have gone along with it.
Of course it will soon be law once the ORA 2014 is implemented - I predict those sections will be the first implemented - it is despicable that lawyer MPs did not kick up a stink - it changes the whole philosophy of community sentencing.
Courts will be able to retain supervisory control of sentences - and require post sentence reports(Hopefully) with SSSO's and also deferred sentences - I presume they are still allowed - but the maximum period is only six months and there is no supervise cannot be voluntary contact with the response reported in the deferred sentence report at the end.
At my TR training last week our court ACO spoke gushingly about the West Yorks "pilot" which has been so successful and was the model to be implemented at all courts under TR, surely we haven't been misled about that too?
ReplyDelete'which has been so successful' ROFL! It was this 'brilliant' idea that Jeremy Wright pounced on with glee as being perfect for TR! So yes very well done Mark Siddall - you've certainly left your mark on the future direction of probation. I wonder what opportunity will present itself upon his retirement....?
DeleteHaving had first hand experience of the West Yorks model for the last two years, until my recent retirement, I would be very surprised if other areas followed their lead. Yes, new contractors will have to assess after the sentence is passed, but WY are all at sea with their "operating model". I hear that offender managers in the CRC will most likely be called 'advisors' in the future, a la 'work programme' and if WP operators get the contracts they will stick with one to one work with people because we and they know it gives the best chance of positive results. West Yorks have, I'm afraid, thrown the baby out with the bath water in trying to put everyone into group supervision.....it's as is they have accepted they are just processing people rather than working with them.
DeleteAs the architect of this great probation panacea , his award winning PSA will lead us all into an oblivion and him into a lucrative "consultancy", one of many breaking theirs necks to get out of the constraints of the Trust with a pay off provided "at pace" ready to climb into the welcoming arms of the local multi national!
DeleteAs with so much of this rubbish Where is the evidence Mark? subdued in that most welcome of allies "West Yorkshire Reasearch Dept".
Advisors - as in advise, assist and befriend.
DeleteWill there be 'assistors' and 'befrienders' to complete the set, I wonder?
DeleteAnon at 17:18 completely missed the point, I suspect s/he has not yet had their TR training. The Offender Rehabilitation Bill says "The current Supervision and Activity Requirements would be replaced with a new Rehabilitation Activity Requirement. Yes I agree that when there is a need for a high end alternative to custody the sentencing is adjourned and a full PSR is requested. However most reports coming back to magistrates, be they Oral, FDR or full PSR, will in the future be non - specific i.e Joe Bloggs will be suitable for RAR, NOT JB will be suitable for Supervision and e.g. an anger management programme.
ReplyDeleteThe reason for this is that the CRC's will then have complete freedom to deliver the sentence of the courts as they see fit i.e. anything deemed remotely rehabilitative and delivered by anyone deemed remotely capable of rehabilitating . . .that was my point about trained monkeys!.
Who thought of this utter garbage? Get the courts wrong and nothing will work don't the ex-prison boys who run NOMS understand the very basics of probation? Honestly it would be funny of it wasn't ruining our lives, those of the clients and putting public safety at risk........
ReplyDeleteExcellent points - and exactly those points (NOMS and court work) were made by Lord Ramsbotham, January 2010 in the House of Lords:
Delete"Then, before you could blink, came NOMS in 2004, initially allegedly a commissioning service. In 2005, the Home Office disregarded 99 per cent of the 756 responders to a so-called consultation on the future of probation who opposed the government line and pressed ahead with its plans, which culminated with Jack Straw's 2008 redirection of NOMS.
Those who doubt that the effect of this has been to exclude the voice of probation from policy-making in a NOMS that is virtually run by the Prison Service should reflect on the figures disclosed on 21 January 2009 by Mr Malik in the other place, in Hansard col. 1566W: of the 4,270 persons employed within NOMS, 742 were old NOMS, 3,415 ex-Prison Service and only 113 ex-probation service, none of whom is in a senior position or in any of the main units such as strategy and effectiveness, offender assessment and management or the briefing and casework groups. In addition, the post of director of the National Probation Service was abolished in April 2009.
... in 2008-09 the service was required to complete 216,000 pre-sentence court reports, of which 134,000-60 per cent-were standard reports, which take two to three weeks to compile and eight hours to write up, and 82,000-40 per cent-were fast delivery reports, which take two hours to write up on the day of sentence. Apparently the Government now wish to reverse the 60 standard and 40 fast ratio to 70 fast and 30 standard, which is bound to result in a decreased service to the courts."
Sadly no-one listened to the noble Lord. We have to make them listen now.
On the one hand its hard to believe that only 2% of NOMS were from a probation background in 2009.On the other, look at the shitstorm we're in the middle of now because none of the prison bullies or the NOMS lickspittles wanted to listen to anyone from probation - rather than learn how to do it right they bullied the smart kid and are now about to deliver the final kick to the head.
DeleteFor NOMS, read NUMPTIES.
We've been told that CRCs and NPS will have separate IT systems with neither having access to the other. Has anyone else heard this? The impact on preparing court lists and custody lists, and obtaining information for courts will be significantly impaired leading to more delays. A fragmented system will not serve to protect the public. The twits who thought this would be a good idea have no understanding of how Probation works in court.
ReplyDeleteNot correct !.CRC will have access to 'some' of NPS IT systems, but . . .get this . . .NPS will have access to all systems. If that doesn't drive the wedge in even harder then nothing will. If you are still of the opinion that this is not designed to be a two tier system, then think again.
DeleteCarrying on the Court theme, in our area some of the higher level 'drug requirements' are subject to regular reviews by magistrates. Very experienced PSO / PO colleagues write detailed reports and present them to magistrates with the service user present. Well, now that the majority of drug rehab work has gone with the CRC, that presents another problem. No - one in CRC has a 'right of audience' in the courts . . .those self same experienced PSO / PSO's will prepare a report . . .they will forward the report to the CDO (NPS), who will complete a front sheet with suitable NPS header, and then the CDO will verbally present the report to the eager magistrates. The CRC case worker might be invited to sit quietly at the back of court if s/he's lucky. . .I kid you not ! This is pretty much the same way the Breach Reports done by CRC's will be handled.
How will our Reception staff cope in co-located offices?Answer
ReplyDeletethat our friends in NOMS.
There's probably a 5,000 page guide being written somewhere in that fancy new NOMS building they built themselves.
DeleteThey won't cope. This has similar implications in CRC and NPS dedicated offices. The clients will simply turn up where they always have. CRC officers will be walking into rooms on their own to interview NPS clients who pitch up without being able to find any information about them. The only thing we will know is that they are either High Risk, a sex offender or subject to MAPPA. Marvellous and dangerous.
Deletea now retired well respected SPO once told me that we are not obliged to fulfil court requests for reports ie, if they court ask for a PSR and we have prior knowledge of the defendant we can orally feed back information and in my local court this has happened on a number of occasions.
ReplyDeleteFastforwarding this analogy to the current climate, FDRs basically is the court being given information about the offence and it gives other information about the defendant, accommodation, ete, thinking & behaviour etc. Why should the Probation Service do all this donkey work just so courts know more about the defendant prior to sentence? Realistically all Probation should have to do is interview the offender and forward a proposal to court. I guess we could do a very brief synopsis of Sentence Plan objectives to justify our proposal but like I said, why should we get involved in writing reports that take up loads of time and basically are just for the magistrates benefit of knowing more about the individual?
The defence solicitor (whilst we still have them) always update magistrates on their clients personal circumstances and also the magistrates also have access to pre-convictions and have the benefit of hearing prosecution evidence.
I can see FDRs dying a death soon, whilst there are some good court officers who are thorough, there are others who put the bare minimum in them - I've been allocated cases where there's literally no information and yet the 'author' will have got credit for it because they would have given the court a proposal that resulted in a sentence.
In my area CDOs get 30 mins to interview a client for a report, go on try it with someone you don't know after waiting 10 of those minutes to try to get a free room for the interview first."Some good court officers", go on try it yourself because thoroughness requires time and court staff are not allowed this.
DeleteI have tried it myself - I've actually done the job. When court session is finished you go back to your desk and write it out more thoroughly (not War and Peace) before sending it out to your colleagues at the LDU.
DeleteI did court work for 22 of the 28 years I was a PO.
DeleteSir/Your Honour, I am sorry I only had x mins with the defendant, he seems willing to cooperate with me, I was told x,y & z, but was not able to form a professional opinion about the adjudication available that is most appropriate.
I like this "Court Special" and a "Strike Special" will be welcome, but one thing we should doing to help NAPO is to think about the questions that preferred bidders might want to ask the MoJ when it comes to negotiating the final contracts. In my view it will be at this point that it will be impossible for MoJ to get away with being unable to give the detail of how things will work in the contracts. So we need a list of questions to pass to NAPO to send to bidders as a sample of the questions they might want to ask the MoJ in order to understand the complexities of our work and how it will work in their contracts. Questions on subjects such as projected numbers of U12 month custody cases; expected breach rates in these cases; success or otherwise of new court allocation processes; what happens to payments if people have multiple Orders; what happens if someone on a CO is sent to prison for a few years for an offence committed before the start of the CO; how will payment be calculated for the following (sample) of Court orders (or combinations of these):
ReplyDelete-12 month CO with 30 day RAR, and mental health treatment requirement
-12 month SSO with 25 day RAR and 9 month DRR
-18 month CO with 40 day RAR and 6 month ATR
And any of the thousands of variations that are possible.
And what if someone on 18 month Community Order completes their 30 day RAR within 12 months but in their last appointment explains they are ready to relapse into heroin use or become homeless - is there any contractual obligation to support them for the remaining 6 months of their Order given that they have used up all of their RAR days? What happens if a service user misses his appointment in Bolton and re-appears in Weston-Super-Mare? What happens if an U12month YO belonging to Gt Manchester is in HMP/ YOI Doncaster (a different CRC area), or a female prisoner belonging to Cumbria is in HMP Styall (again a different CRC area); will CRC service user shave access to APs; If a risky service user from north Wales is working in London for a period, will they be allowed to report to the local CRC office in Lambeth? Will video-conference facilities be shared? Where someone is recalled due to very risky behaviour would CRC staff have to attend oral hearings if called as a witness? Will CRC staff have to provide progress reports to Court where this is asked for? What happens if a Court breach fails because CRC has not provided adequate information? What happens if we believe UPW hours are unworkable but NPS disagrees? Under what circumstances would CRC staff be expected to undertake home visits? What happens if an Order is amended (eg UPW hours are removed and Activity days imposed); is there any obligation to pay travel costs for service users? At what point will an U12 month custodial sentence be over if the person is continually recalled? Is breach of a Community Order deemed to be are-conviction? Is breach of a non-molestation order deemed to be a reconviction? If a CRC member of staff sees someone on their caseload committing an offence (eg, smoking cannabis, DWD) do they have a duty to report that to the police given that a PbR would depend upon no convictions?
Indeed that last question is can of worms in itself - if a CRC get an extra payment for there being no convictions, should they be obliged to compromise this by reporting any witnessed illegal activity?
There must a few dozen such questions we can helpfully provide preferred bidders to ask the MoJ. Of course if the bidder became unhappy with the responses (or more likely lack of responses), they might decide to pull out, and where would that leave the MoJ in terms of contracting that CPA before the election?
Many thanks for this excellent contribution - it's going to be part of a forthcoming 'Bidders Special'.
DeleteSomeone who works for serco cp described everything that came from noms as nomsense. A brand new word like your omnishambles and from someone who has already been through it.
ReplyDelete'Nomsence' - yes I like that! Thanks for highlighting and will try and give it some traction.
DeleteSercos tactic will be to rehabilitate themselves and then step in when the contractors start handing their contracts back in. That way they don't have to take the risk from getting contracts the 'first time round' - let other companies take the hit while they themselves are recovering from their first experience of Probation contracts in London and the tagging fiasco.
ReplyDeleteIn the 90's it was proposed that the Courts would decide on sentence without having pre sentence reports. All that would be required was a query as to any reason why the desired sentence could not be completed ie suitability for UPW. The sentence would simply be passed to Probation to implement . If a post sentence assessment showed that the sentence was not viable the case could be returned to the Court to request amendment. Having more District Judges was part of that plan. There was outcry against this being implemented. But then one area agreed to complete Specific Inquiry Reports. Then Fast Delivery Reports replaced the SIR . As FDR's replace the PSR/SDR and become, as is noted increasingly limited, it will not be long before what was suggested back then will be achieved.
ReplyDeleteAll part of the ideological move against Probation
Dear MoJ. I hope the thing that resonates with you about today's blog post and the serious concerns and fears raised by practitioners is that none of us are complaining about our terms and conditions or employment prospects. We are fearful about being able to provide criminal justice and to be able help people to make positive change.
ReplyDeleteAnon at 23:49 Yes it's been a fantastic response to the 'Courts Special' and as you say pretty much about practice not our terms and conditions. So, thanks everyone, especially Effie for kicking it off with her blog post. I'm sure it will be read down at the MoJ and will certainly give them something to think about.
ReplyDelete