Omnishambles Update 76

Such is the chaos in the case allocation system between NPS and CRC, Napo issued the following yesterday:- 

Guidance Note from National Professional Committee on using the Case Allocation System Screening Tool (CAS)

1. The Case Allocation System (CAS) tool is designed by NOMS to screen for information concerning risk of serious harm and other relevant information so that cases are allocated correctly to NPS or CRC. NAPO continues to argue that the separation of case management following the ‘split’ is bureaucratic and potentially dangerous, but we would be failing in our duty to members not to give advice concerning the completion of these tasks.

2. Staff using CAS are under enormous pressure having completed PSRs to indicate whether there ‘was sufficient information (verifiable) available at the time of completing this form’ to complete all of the sections that refer to significant events, risks to children, known adults, ‘at risk’ adults, self and others.

3. When pressed for time and faced with yet another seemingly bureaucratic task the temptation may be to tick that sufficient information was available or may be inferred from what little was provided to complete all sections in full. Our advice to members is to ONLY tick ‘yes’ if you are confident you have enough relevant information to complete each section accurately. When in doubt, tick ‘no’ in all circumstances.

4. We have been trained and educated in an integrated system that has enabled us to allocate cases safely within the same local organisations. The creation of a two-tier system leaves members exposed to potential danger if they indicate that sufficient information was available to inform their decision when there may have been significant gaps. When in doubt, tick ‘no’.

When in doubt tick 'no'. We had a discussion about this as very few cases seemed to be allocated to CRC, even ones that were obviously CRC cases and ones such as IOM cases that appear in court for new minor offence only to be then allocated to NPS when we were expecting them back in CRC.

Ticking 'no' is being done because staff are busy in NPS. Perversely however this will generate more work for NPS. If one ticks 'no' the system is formatted so it will then err on the side of caution if there is missing data and therefore the case will automatically go to NPS. We have been tracking this in our area and CRC are completing own RSR/CAS and proving this very point especially with IOM cases when it has been puzzling as to how one new offence has resulted in a sudden transfer to NPS? This is concerning, in our area at least, as it is generating unmanageable workloads in NPS and low cases in CRC which will impact on jobs.

In my area over 95% of cases are going to CRC, having discussed this with colleagues in other areas they assure me that this is true for them too.

About the same in my area although some are HIGHLY questionable to the extent that, once some digging is done (which should have been done at PSR stage but wasn't), they were re-allocated from PSO to PO. Makes me wonder just WTF is going on behind the scenes at assessment stage? Or indeed if ANYTHING is going on judging by the cases coming over!

Critical few. Trivial many.

Are we all completing the same documents? By far the larger number of cases are directed to the CRC.

Then we learn this:-

Durham Tees Valley area yesterday informed that all Prison cases to be re-tiered to T1. This to be reviewed 3 months prior to release. Today informed under 12 month supervision for prisoners will commence Feb 15, but if I understand correctly will only be for those sentenced from February 15 so perhaps no instant impact - time will tell. 

Any other areas being asked to retier custody cases to T1? Any other areas been informed under 12 month supervision from Feb 15? CRC bidder contracts not yet signed, let alone ink dried, so staff unable to be told of delivery plans. Apparently due to commence some briefings re RAR and training re new N-Delius (God help us). Will it ever STOP?

How the fuck do we retier 3 months prior to release if they only get one week custody? How the fuck do we decide who gets the intervention needed whilst in custody (as some are unlikely to re-offend on release) given that they are all T1 and prisons will not allocate resources to them due to this? How the fuck do we manage with MORE Delius training?

I saw a memo yesterday clarifying the process for starting the u12m cases and what CRCs will be required to provide in prisons. F**k me! They are going to be busy! How are they going to pay for that lot? I think CG is taking the piss out of them as well.

We now have 59 different Risk Registers in N Delius. How the hell are we supposed to keep that all up to date?

More Delius training is definitely coming up for all staff in December.

All this frustration and head-scratching on our part is down to one thing. As we said from the start, the Target Operating Model is written by people who are ignorant about the nuances of the role of Probation and its relationship with courts and prisons. It will fail because it fails to take into consideration all of the variables at play.

A blog from Cheshire Greater Manchester CRC gives an idea of timescales and some fascinating IT issues:-

Dear Everyone,

As mentioned last week, I attended a Contract Signature Workshop with members of our Board of Directors last Thursday which was helpful in confirming the exact timescale of activity through to contract signature. I will therefore be meeting with Interserve Justice for a preliminary discussion on 19 November, in the company of a colleague from the contracts team. I then expect to receive Schedule 8 of the Service Agreement on (or close to) 24 November and this will contain the Service Delivery proposals put forward by Purple Futures at the bid stage. Schedule 8 will provide important background to our second meeting with Interserve Justice/Purple Futures which will take place on 28 November. This meeting will include Xxxx Xxxxxxx, Non Executive Director as well as members of the Senior Leadership Team. We will receive a presentation of the proposed new operating models ahead of a Board of Directors meeting on 1 December 2014 at which we are expected to approve and sign the end state Services Agreement. At the workshop, we were informed that the successful bidders would then be announced around 5 December followed by the 2 week standstill or ‘alcatel’ period, with final contract signature in the week before Christmas. As I have indicated previously, I expect it to be January before we are able to enter into detailed conversations with Purple Futures about the wide range of matters we are all keen to explore. As ever I will keep you posted.

In the meantime there are a number of important CGM CRC issues which require our attention. Firstly, you will be aware that we have all been asked to participate in a mandatory exercise to move CGM CRC and NPS documents into separate folders on the S: drive. I am happy to report that this work is progressing well but I need to remind you that any electronic files on offenders held in My Documents and as e-mail attachments must also be transferred to the individual offenders folders under this new folder structure on the S: drive. (If you have any documents which are needed by both the NPS and CGM CRC then please create a copy of the document in both the NPS and CGM CRC folders). In addition, if you hold any electronic offender documents which are no longer required then these should be deleted. This work must be completed by 21 November. At some point, post 21 November, documents that have not been moved will no longer be available. Please contact your Business Manager/Business Administrator if you have any difficulty in completing these document transfers.

As it was announced that Interserve look likely to win vast contracts to build new roads:-

Interserve, the international support services and construction group, has been awarded a place on the Highways Agency £5 billion Collaborative Delivery Framework (CDF), the largest ever framework for the improvement of England’s motorway and trunk road infrastructure. The company is one of five contractors that will be selected to undertake schemes with values of up to £25 million, which may be extended to £50 million, within the total £450 million indicated spend allocated to Lot 2 of the CDF. The CDF will last for four years, with the option to extend for a further two years, and will enable the Highways Agency to invest in England’s major roads through four separate Lots encompassing 26 suppliers.

one wonders why they even bothered with the probation contracts that others turned down. This snippet gives a clue to why Capita didn't win a TR contract:-

A failure to win controversial government work accounted for much of the decline, including the loss of a deal to run probation services for the Ministry of Justice. Rivals Interserve, Sodexo and GEO Group picked up the £500m-a-year contracts after Capita refused to accept a clause that prices could change should the Ministry of Justice amend policies. A second contract to run work capability assessments for the disabled went to the US work programme provider Maximus after Capita withdrew as a result of “unattainable” targets and the risk of reputational damage.

I can concur with this information. Capita have been unwilling to play ball on prices and so got the heave ho - this would reflect the general belief that the competition is entirely based upon the cost of the contract and not the quality which will undoubtedly lead to tears before bedtime!

The problem with the 70% inspector rumbles on:-

That report is currently sat at the bottom of NOMs in tray and will not be published until well after the contract signing and perhaps after share sale. I suspect that it is entirely critical of the who sham that is TR, hence its slow progress through the system. The inspector surely must have given the nod to his missus about what he thinks of the system and could that lead to a more advantageous pricing approach???? But that wouldn't happen would it?

Good point. If the report was critical of TR, to the point of being a potential deal breaker, Mrs would have warned Sodexo to pull out, wouldn't she? So why wait to publish? Or is it being re-written? It's like Le Carre!

That is the point - not whether McDowell was involved in selecting the bidders (the suggestion that he had some sort of advisory role - which he did not), but whether anything he knew or learned as HMIP could have found its way into Sodexo's bid through his wife and given them an unfair advantage? That is what the conflict of interest is about.

As for not inspecting his wife's company, well that doesn't wash, because whoever does do the inspection has to report back to McDowell as he's the head honcho, and as such his signature is needed on everything. Ultimately the buck will always stop with him!

Can you imagine a deputy director for Sodexo who is involved in the preparation of a bid NOT discussing the contents of that bid with her ex-NACRO/Probation Inspector husband? Sodexo have been compromised. McDowell has been compromised. Grayling has been compromised. The MoJ has been compromised. Mrs McDowell has been compromised. Nothing but rot at the core of this. Conscious corruption? Bad. Unconscious corruption borne of incompetence? Worse.

Can you imagine a deputy director of Sodexo not sharing her performance related financial incentive (MONEY) with her husband?

Paul McDowell has brought the Probation Inspectorate into disrepute. Should he ever have the privilege of inspecting my work, I will tell him were he can shove it. Chris Grayling has said "overzealous enforcement of conflict of interest rules could risk driving 'extremely able' couples from public life." The man clearly has no idea what he is talking about.

What he really means is, "over-zealous enforcement of any rules could risk us not being able to do exactly whatever the hell we want."

Mark Leftly in the Independent highlights how much the consultants for TR have cost, together with the private worries of the CRC chiefs:-

Fury over £15m bill for consultants on probation deal 

The Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has been accused of wasting more than £15m on consultants advising on the “crackpot privatisation” of the probation service. The accountant EY, management consultants PA Consulting and Collinson Grant, and outsourcer BancTec were among those to have bagged roles on the Ministry of Justice’s Transforming Rehabilitation programme over 13 months to the end of April. Nearly £4m was spent on legal services.

The shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan wants to overturn the privatisation if Labour is elected last year and his Freedom of Information request revealed the cost of the outsourcing. He said: “Everybody warned that this crackpot privatisation would create chaos but did Chris Grayling listen? No he didn't. Instead he arrogantly brushed aside concerns and pushed ahead with this botched privatisation. This is a grotesque and unnecessary waste of money."

Separately, The Independent has been shown minutes from a meeting of 15 CRC heads of operations, representing areas such as West Yorkshire, Northumbria and Hampshire & the Isle of Wight, in September. These seem to confirm many of the problems that have been reported since the service was split in June, such as staff “muddling through” because of IT problems and an over-reliance on agency staff as management struggles to fill vacancies. The minutes also reveal that 65 per cent of CRC staff are “not vetted properly”. This means that nearly two-thirds of officers are not vetted to work in prisons, where they prepare offenders coming to the end of their sentences to resettle back into the community. 

If 15 CRC heads have raised concerns, then why hasn't HMPI reported on it?

Imagine what could have been done with just a fraction of the money wasted on the probation privatisation ominshambles?

This is exactly why staff have no faith in senior managers. Why can't they simply be honest with staff instead of us reading about their concerns in the Indie? They really do add insult to injury by their duplicity. They DISGUST me.

Meanwhile Ian Dunt on the politics.co.uk website makes the point that, despite efforts by the MoJ to hide what's going on in prison, information is coming out:- 

Despite the censorship, reports emerge of security collapse in prisons

The most effective tool the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has for covering up the prison crisis is censorship. Prisoners can't talk, former prisoners can't talk, guards can't talk. The only reliable information published is from the chief inspector of prisons and the independent monitoring boards, who Chris Grayling can't shut up. That information is a snap shot of a system in chaos, falling apart under the combined weight of funding cuts, staff shortages and Grayling's "right-wing solutions" to reoffending.

Today the report came in from an unannounced inspection of Elmley prison on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. It is dangerously overcrowded and understaffed. There has been one major disturbance a month for each of the last 11 consecutive months, with prisoners refusing to go back to their cells. This compares to zero disturbances the year before. The offender management unit is "overwhelmed".

Almost 200 of the men there spend 23 hours a day in their cells. Fights and assault are up 60% in the last year. Vulnerable prisoners are being abused without staff intervention. Five people have committed suicide in the last two years. Rehabilitation has completely ground to a halt. Of the cases looked at by probation inspectors, not one showed meaningful work being done to address the offending behaviour of the prisoner.

In Brixton prison, the independent monitoring board report also noted "unacceptably high" levels of drug use, citing positive test results and anecdotal evidence from prisoners. Staffing levels are so low they "wholly ignore the requirements of running a prison effectively, safely and humanely".

Over at Bristol prison, where another independent monitoring board report has just been published, it was the same. They found staffing levels were "insufficient" to ensure a safe environment. "The financial constraint has had a clear detrimental effect on many aspects of prisoners' lives", they found. The prison is at "bursting point".

Chillingly, they found some officers and staff "feel unsafe when prisoners are out of their cells". That's the point of total collapse. Once staff feel unsafe, none of the things prisons should be doing – such as training, educating, maintaining family contact or offering therapy - are possible. Security in a jail is like oil in an economy: once you remove it, everything else grinds to a halt. Classes, family visits, medical tests – they're all affected. Nurses, for instance, were advised not to unlock cells in C wing because the number of prison officers is too low and they felt unsafe. The health implications are potentially grave.

No omnishambles update would be complete without reference to Chris Grayling. According to the Huffington Post, he's had to endure the humiliation of correcting a recent Daily Mail article:-

Chris Grayling Forced To Correct His Daily Mail Human Rights Article

The Daily Mail has been forced to make a humiliating correction to a piece written for the newspaper by Chris Grayling about the European Court of Human Rights. The tabloid published the piece from the Justice Secretary last month where he claimed that judges in the European Court were not all "legally qualified" and suggested that rights to freedom from torture were subject to a caveat.

Human rights lawyer Shoaib Mahmood Khan, who is also currently in the process of taking Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), complained that the piece was deeply misleading, but told HuffPost UK that the piece took over a month to correct.

The Mail correction read: "Justice Secretary Chris Grayling wrote in a recent article about the European Court of Human Rights that not all of its judges are ‘legally qualified’. "We are happy to clarify that he meant that although they all hold legal qualifications, they are not all qualified to be senior judges in the UK.

"The article also said that, under the Convention, ‘states should not torture, nor imprison people without trial. It set out the right to free speech and to marry, and to hold religious views – but always with the caveat that the interests of society as a whole had to be respected too.’ "We are happy to make clear that the right not to be tortured is an absolute right, not subject to any caveat."

Finally, Eric Allison of the Guardian poses a question:-

How can Chris Grayling apologise to MPs while ignoring the prisons Crisis?

On Tuesday the justice minister made a solemn apology to the House of Commons. Chris Grayling’s mea culpa moment followed the disclosure that some telephone calls made by prisoners to their MPs had been monitored and, in 15 cases, listened to by prison staff. Clearly contrite at having to report this breach of parliamentary protocol – correspondence between MPs and their constituents is supposed to be confidential – the minister said he had “acted at a pace” to bring this to the attention of the house and was taking “immediate steps to ensure our confidentiality is respected”. I wonder if Grayling will apologise to the prisoners concerned in this breach of confidentiality rules? I doubt it.

Indeed, the news that Grayling knows how to say sorry will surprise many. He presides over a prison service in meltdown. One damning inspection report follows another. Only today, another report by the chief inspector of prisons reveals the scale of the problems besetting many jails. It shows a 60% rise in violence in Elmley prison, Kent, including 11 mini riots in as many months. Elmley holds 1,252 men crammed into cells designed to hold 985. There have been five suicides in the past two years. About 15% of the population, or almost 200 men, were unemployed and routinely spent 23 hours a day locked in their cells. This from a government that promised to make prisoners work for their keep.

This latest report follows a series of equally damning inspections of prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales. Violence, bullying, self-harm and suicides are soaring; many young prisoners in particular lie idle behind their locked doors during the working day; there are reports of many elderly prisoners being unable to take a bath or shower for weeks or months on end – the litany of failures goes on and on. And yet Grayling repeatedly takes to the air waves to tell the world that all is well. Until something happens that affects the privilege bestowed on his parliamentary colleagues.

While he is in the mood to apologise, will the minister say sorry to the prisoners who repeatedly have confidential mail from their lawyers opened and read before staff hand it over to them? Staff at the estimable Prisoners’ Advice Service tell me this is one of the most common complaints received from prisoners, despite lawyers clearly writing “rule 39” on the envelope.