Assessment Special

Assessments of one kind or another have been mentioned a lot recently by contributors, so here's a selection to mull over:-

I hear ALL custodial sentences will begin with a CRC assessment. The fact that the CRC won't have ANY information available to them, especially on NPS cases, on which to base that assessment seems to have passed by the geniuses at the MoJ.

Off topic but does anyone know anything about these plans for basic custody screening and new/amended Oasys and ndelius for CRCs and Through the Gate work that has been a mentioned on Twitter today?

It is just a colleague announcing that their CRC has announced that an updated version of OASys & Delius is being launched shortly to accommodate custody screening for those U12mth who will be released and subject to a period of statutory supervision.

Some very different Start Custody Oasys are already showing up.

So we have NPS staff in Prison doing CRC OASys? This just gets stranger and stranger!

No, the screening for the 12 month and under will be done by existing/newly recruited staff of the companies that are taking over in the CRC's. There are already recruitment drives for this, if you look at the web pages of some of the smaller companies involved.

And will the screening be for all less than 12mth regardless of risk? ie cases that might go to NPS? If so this will further complicate communication across the split what with different OASys and Ndelius being mentioned here!

I think there's going to be a terrible shock in store when the RSR tool diverts most of the under 12 month custodials to NPS. In my experience it takes an awful lot of bad behaviour to get yourself sent to prison for a short sentence.

Is that correct? My info is all will need a case allocation and RSR done on the day of sentence so immediate problems will be interview space in courts before they go to the prison and the staff to do it. Once at the prison they have a custody assessment which needs info from the CA and RSR! Much tension between court probation and the prison over this is emerging....

Simple solution. Shove more POs in prison.

Before Christmas there will be the release of new versions of OASys and delius in order to allow for custody screening on all cases with the introduction of supervision for all those sentenced to custody.  A timeline of events will be shared with us shortly.

From my days as a recent Offender Supervisor at a local prison, we were undertaking Basic Custody Screening OASys on every u12m case. That was two years ago and am sure they are still doing it. The questions are few and are brief. It's not well designed but does OK for screening short sentences. The Sentence plan is just a few lines to enable people to refer to different services. Quite neat in that respect. I can imagine there may be some future in expanding its use. Anything is better than a full OASys.

Unless you're a PO on the receiving end of that OASys. You have to do a full assessment when all the previous information has been wiped out by a happy OS. I spend far too much time copying and pasting my old assessments into Word before I can repaste them into the assessment. It is totally mad.

Not a single court report is checked by anyone other than the author themselves. There might be the odd PO who occasionally will ask a colleague to pass an opinion on a difficult sentence, but they are few and far between. I am an experienced Court Duty Officer, PSO grade, who not only produces several 'fast delivery' reports per week, but acts as quality control for every full PSR that is submitted to Magistrates. I would hazard a guess that at least 25% of said reports are sub standard and myself and my colleagues have to intervene before the Magistrates get sight of the 'proposal'.

What you seem not to be able to grasp, but something I have explained several times on this blog, is that Magistrates no longer need 'social enquiry' type reports. PSO's are very skilled at interpreting the Magistrates "Indication Of Seriousness" and proposing a sentence commensurate with those instructions. The future is in generic 'Activity Requirements' with absolutely no need to be specific about the detail of such proposals. Any detail and/or 'Risk' can be further explored at 'Post Sentence Assessment' stage. I am in no way condoning these developments, but I am reaffirming that this will be introduced in all courts when the new legislation is approved.

Don't worry the rush to tag/GPS an additional 75,000 will lead to no reports or assessments as all the service user needs is an address, that doesn't get checked for risks, or even if the building exists!

I've just heard from a former colleague that NPS staff are being forced to do RSR training version 13 which has been cobbled together in 2 days and were told by the trainers (one a PO grade who used to be active in Napo - shame) that this was a direct result of the Judicial Review and the MoJ are insisting everyone has to do it. However, half the staff haven't done it and the MoJ will say that they all have. Apparently, there are quite a few mistakes on it including one on a question on sexual offending where the answer has already been put as: last offence in 1866! The trainers didn't know whether this was affecting the final scores. Has anyone else any experience of this?

There is a real panic about the Case Allocation, RSR and Risk Escalation Tools. NOMS have sent a number of staff out to court teams, where most areas have made this part of a POs duties. My understanding from the 2 colleagues picked to speak to this person (both non union incidentally) was that NOMS have realised this is being done very differently in areas - a big issue for JR me thinks. 

I have posted information previously about this and signalled to NAPO from June about the issues and lack of training. I have simply told the truth not embellished because it does not need to be. FAR too many young people are being sent to NPS - it is tick box assessment and does not differentiate between the behaviour in offences eg arson (setting light to a bin as opposed to setting a fire at a school building, you get the point?). Also staff were previously told to use the 'professional judgement' override to allocate cases appropriate to NPS or CRC and have since been told this can only be exceptionally used.

Oops - before any one comes back to me about the arson offences I have described, it is just meant to illustrate ranges of behaviour, I fully accept both COULD be serious. It is just that usually probation staff are capable of exercising judgements rather than one size fits all assessments. That's what I meant!

I understand from management that after the split, initially NPS was only able to comply with the RSR/CAS process in 20% of cases and even though they've had 4 months to get this right and have doubled the time allowed for case allocation by the end of October, they were still only able to achieve a successful 61%. Given that most PTRS had targets set at 90%, this is abysmal. No wonder they're panicking! 

Having read the Torygraph article, the biggest scandal is what is happening with Sex Offender Treatment. I have lost count of the number of cases I worked with where SOTP was the main sentence planning target and men were relocated to other prison establishments just so they could access this. Then, even though OASys assessed them as High Risk of Serious Harm, the prison decided to assess them by Risk Matrix 2000 only, so for many men without multiple offences they would score 'low'. This was then used to "prioritise" other men over them, leaving Probation Officers to manage them upon release as untreated sex offenders, so much more risky. 

That is one example of why Prisons should never ever interfere in probation - because they do not understand what probation does and in effect, fiddled the figures as a means of not delivering expensive courses. Of course they would argue they did not have the resources to meet the needs of so many sex offenders, which leads us back to the Secretary of State then!!!

The Programmes team at NOMS HQ set the criteria for SOTP in custody, not HMPS. RM2000 is the sole criteria regardless of OASys risk levels/dynamic risks. They also decommissioned the Rolling SOTP programme for prisoners who score Low on RM2000 as they claimed to have evidence that it wasn't effective. Apparently doing bugger all/warehousing 1000s of them as we do now/releasing them completely untreated is equally as effective as R-SOTP....

This just published:-

"An Examination of the Predictive Validity of the Structured Assessment of Risk and Need–Treatment Needs Analysis (SARN-TNA) in England and Wales."

A psychological risk assessment tool used by prisons and the probation service (NOMS) is not effective when evaluating the future risk of convicted male sex offenders.

In a new paper published online in Criminal Justice and Behaviour, Dr Ruth Tully and Professor Kevin Browne from the Centre for Forensic and Family Psychology at The University of Nottingham, together with Professor Leam Craig from the University of Birmingham, examine the effectiveness the SARN-TNA (Structured Assessment of Risk and Need – Treatment Needs Analysis) in predicting the reconviction of sex offenders.

The SARN-TNA has been used routinely by NOMS, and has been heavily relied upon to assess sex offenders' need for treatment and whether they should be released early from prison. When a sex offender is released from prison, probation services often use this tool to decide on the type and intensity of restrictions, treatment, supervision and surveillance that the sex offender receives.

Ineffective in decision-making

External bodies such as the parole board heavily weight the SARN TNA assessment in its decision-making, for instance when deciding to release prisoners serving a life sentence. These assessments are so heavily relied upon that parole board hearings are often deferred at costs of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer if a SARN-TNA has not been conducted - but until now the SARN-TNA has not been properly or independently tested. The SARN-TNA has now been shown to be ineffective.

These were the alarming findings of a four-year study of reconviction within a population of 496 adult male sex offenders, who were assessed using the SARN-TNA. The SARN-TNA assigns a risk level of low, medium or high to each prisoner. The study found that the SARN-TNA risk levels demonstrated no predictive accuracy at a two and four year follow-up.

When the tool was examined to see if it significantly predicted reconviction in any way, only one of its four domains (sexual interests) was found to be predictive of sexual reconviction. Additionally, reconviction rates were not significantly different between risk groups; meaning that 'high' risk men did not differ in rate of reconviction compared to 'low' risk men.

First study of its kind

Dr Tully says: "This field based study is the only study of its kind in the UK. It found that the SARN-TNA is not effective in predicting risk of sexual reconviction. This is particularly concerning when offenders are released on the basis of opinions of risk reduction using an ineffective framework. Probation Services aren't able to effectively manage sex offenders if they haven't been appropriately risk assessed. As a worst case scenario, if this tool is relied upon, a 'low risk' sex offender whose risk was really 'medium to high' could be released from prison early and reoffend.

"Forensic risk assessment by psychologists is complex and difficult, and defensible decision making is crucial. A 'one-size-fits-all' approach of applying the SARN-TNA to assess risk after treatment, regardless of the specifics of the case or effectiveness of the tool is not acceptable. Sex offenders should not be released on the basis of a tool that is statistically no better at predicting reconviction than chance.

"Clinicians and policy makers should consider very carefully the future of SARN-TNA as a risk and treatment need assessment given the findings of this study. Agencies should take a critical approach to the use of this tool, and also carefully consider the use of alternative sex offender risk assessment tools. National Offender Management Services (NOMS) should routinely allow independent bodies such as Universities ease of access to their data to conduct research. This would aid advancements in knowledge in the field of sex offender risk assessment."

The study is available to download for napo members from Sage (follow instructions on the Napo site). It's a single study raising valid questions, but with clearly described limitations. It recommends that if SARN TNA continues to be used, there are some adjustments that make some sense in principle.

As concerning as the Parole Board dependence is on SARN, this study also doesn't support the validity of RM2000 tool, which police seem to be tied to when it comes to managing RSOs in the community and which is key in determining whether those supervised by probation will receive intervention at all i.e Anyone screened as low on RM2000 unlikely to be treated. But then I got sifted to the CRC, so I should probably leave this stuff to the experts.

This, like several other assessment tools - being used as an absolute. Terrifying.....

So many tools so little time, so many boxes to tick so little time to interview in depth. Once upon a time, it was de rigueur to interview twice for domestic violence and write a full report. All that sensible practice was ditched to satisfy centrally imposed benchmarks and costings. Detailed risk assessment is a luxury and all the bosses want is categorisation on the cheap.

When everything gets bureaucratised, and the conveyor belt speeds up, is it any wonder there is a speed/quality trade-off? In my experience SARN TA is utterly relied upon by the Parole Board. They appear to believe it to be a rigorous assessment just because a psychologist has completed it. It is POs who manage risk in the community and they should be listened to more. I really welcome this research and hope it shakes the Parole Boards belief in the infallibility of the SARN!