Penal Reforms 3

So, having allowed Grayling to smash the probation service to pieces, almost certainly now beyond repair, the Tories feel it would be a good time to reform prison (save some money). Here's Ian Birrel writing in the Independent:- 

Could the Tories' decade in power really be defined by prison reform?

Shortly after the Conservatives won their unexpected victory in the general election, I asked a Downing Street aide what he thought would be the key legacy of the Government. His two-word answer surprised me: “Prison reform.” The source added that both the Prime Minister and his new Justice Secretary were determined to sort out a flawed system that locked up so many people and yet failed to stop them reoffending.

Now David Cameron has placed this cause at the centre of his agenda, with a passionate section of his party conference speech lamenting a prison system that is clearly not working. Cynics might see this as a steak of liberalism designed to capture the centre-ground as Labour lurches far to the left. Yet few can disagree with his assertion that prison is not working when half of criminals reoffend within a year of release. Or when the Prime Minister pointed out core problems that lead people into crime, such as abuse, addiction and mental health concerns, go unchallenged while inmates are in costly state care.

What a welcome contrast this makes to the usual tired and blinkered language of the right on crime and punishment. It was, after all, Mr Cameron’s mentor and predecessor Michael Howard, who insisted that prison works despite so much evidence to the contrary. Then there was Edwina Currie waving handcuffs at an earlier Tory party conference, demanding a crackdown on prisoners. Or Sir John Major, a man who should have known better, saying: “Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.” Not that Labour has been much better, terrified of seeming soft.

Yet prison reform is a conservative cause, as the right in America has discovered in moves that detoxified the criminal justice debate so dramatically. After all, those on the libertarian right are usually sceptical about the state, while fiscal conservatives should be wary about £2bn annual public spending on such a flawed system. Social conservatives talk about the centrality of the family, yet prison disrupts families with devastating consequences. Then there is the religious right, which professes faith in redemption.

I have just filmed a Panorama programme for the BBC that examines how ultra-conservative Republicans in Texas – traditionally home to the toughest penal policies in the democratic world – have shifted away from locking people up towards investing in rehabilitation and evidence-based probation. The state’s huge incarceration rate has dropped significantly, while it has closed nine of its 14 young offender units. It is moving money into curbing problems of addiction, broken families and post-traumatic stress that drive so much crime. One result is that property offences are falling much faster in Texas than the national average.

Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, joined me for a few days. He was impressed by courts that specialise in specific issues such as drugs or domestic violence, offering a holistic approach to curbing criminality. One judge in a Dallas court dealing with people whose lives were wrecked by crack cocaine and crystal meth compared it with parenting: setting boundaries and offering positive support to criminals traditionally seen as menaces to society. It is tough love, backed by long sentences for failure. We even met hardened gangsters among the reformed crooks rehabilitated into society.

In his own party conference speech, Gove talked about prisoners not for ever being defined by their mistakes – brave words before a Tory audience. Now he plans to roll out specialist courts in Britain, offering a third way between prison and the community sentences so distrusted by voters. I sense that after his combative approach to education, he wants to work with the cautious judiciary and bruised probation services to achieve reform. And like the politicians in Texas, Gove will start with low-level offences so as not to alarm the public that serious criminals are avoiding jail.

It would be good to hope that such sensible moves are accompanied by an end to the mania for making new laws that helps to choke the prison system (along with the sex offenders who now make up one in eight inmates). England and Wales lock up more people than any other nation in Western Europe. Yet, with luck, this is the moment when austerity and falling crime provide political cover for a long-overdue jolt to the criminal justice debate, tilting the balance away from the self-harming stance of “prison works” towards innovative efforts to reform the destructive behaviour behind so much crime.

This is what happened in Texas eight years ago, then spread across America – including ultra-Republican states such as Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. It also happened in the Netherlands, which used to match our imprisonment rates but then realised that putting fewer people in jail meant more money freed up for effective community-based punishments.

As the Republican behind the Texan reforms told me, society should differentiate between criminals who are inherently bad and those that we are mad at for their disruptive activities – then work out how to reform the latter.

This is not being soft on crime. The easy option is to chuck crooks in jail so that they can lie around watching television and exchanging tactics rather than forcing them to confront their alcoholism, drug addiction, abusive behaviour or poor eduction. It is about being smart on crime. And for the Conservatives, it is about getting it right on crime at last.

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The extraordinary thing is that Gove praised Grayling at the Conservative Party conference and yet it's his predecessor's actions that will see prison numbers continue to rise as a result of recalls under the barmy plan to supervise every under 12 month prisoner, irrespective of need, together with non-payment of the appalling new Court Tax. Anyway, we've seen the film and here are some comments from Facebook:- 

Has anyone just seen Panorama on BB1? Michael Gove spent time in a Texan Court house with a Judge who believes rehabilitation rather than custody is the answer to the revolving door problem. Rehabilitation is what the Probation Service has been doing for the last 100 years, but Mr. Grayling thought it better to put this rehabilitation in the hands of the private sector where profit is more important than the lives of probation staff and offenders alike. WHAT A JOKE!!!

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So irritated as the strong UK evidence that lower rates of imprisonment and more focus on rehabilitation works best has been staring politicians in the face for decades. It's all been about courting votes through being tough on crime. Pray that the enormous further cuts MOJ faces encourages them to cut prison number rather than continuing to decimate other parts of the CJ system.

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This government wants rehabilitation on the cheap. Biggest problem facing most of our revolving door / PSS lot is lack of accommodation. What has this government ever done to support social housing? Plus the benefit system is purely designed to grind people down. Sanctioned unrelentingly at every turn. Investing in offenders so they can change their lives around costs money and a motivated professional personnel. If your staff are worried about job cuts - the results are going to be really poor. What a mess. Is Gove better than Grayling?

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I watched too. He wants to stop wasting tax payers money wandering around the world and look at what probation has done and continues to do - at home!!

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Meanwhile, whilst the privatised CRCs continue to use ill-prepared and often poorly supervised volunteers to fill gaps in service provision created by experienced staff exiting in droves, the NPS decides to unilaterally ditch the lot of them:-

"I regret to inform you that we are no longer able to work with NPS Service users anymore and with immediate effect cases should be handed back over to their Offender Managers for next appointments, I realise that this was a planned eventual outcome so this comes earlier than planned but this is the way forward we must adopt, If you are unsure if the cases you are working with are NPS or CRC give me a call and I can establish this for you.

Volunteer Coordinator"

How professional is this? As with the outrageous shafting and splitting when the TR omnishambles was first introduced, clients are yet again passed around like parcels from one supervisor to another, irrespective of the relationship that's taken in some cases years to develop between them. Not only unprofessional, completely uncaring and counter to all the evidence that tells us it's the relationship between supervisor and client that is the most significant factor in being able to assist rehabilitation. 

Make no mistake, what we are witnessing is the effect of the takeover of probation at NOMS by our often crass, narrow-minded and blinkered prison service colleagues. It's precisely this group who will be the greatest problem Gove will face in trying to reform the prison service, and many of them are now running probation in the field, both private and public.