Saturday 7 November 2015

'What's a PSR Grandad?'

Heard NPS want most reports to be done as oral reports on the day by PSO's including high risk & DV ???

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90% same day reports with PO's only writing in exceptional cases, presumably assessments of dangerousness? No room for police or social services checks on DV cases. No proper treatment needs assessments for sex offenders. No properly considered assessments for drug or alcohol treatment. No chance of researching and organising mental health treatment requirements. I could go on and on and on and on. NAPO and Unison must campaign on this. Magistrates and Judges must be canvassed and encouraged to speak out. This will make a mockery of the NPS. Use the managements apparent biggest fear, reputational damage.


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PO's being taken out of magistrates court to be replaced again with PSO's.

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As observed many times on this forum, the Courts were Probation's marketplace; they were where we shone brightest, where we earned respect amongst sentencers, legal practitioners & our clients, where our workload was generated. Court Duty Officers were our eyes & ears, our intelligence gatherers & our shop front. When piss-poor myopic management targetted & destroyed our presence in the Courts we lost control of our own destiny.

E3, CRC, NPS, NOMS, TOM, Dick & Harry... its all gone to ratshit on the whims of ideological fantasists with alphabetti-spaghetti and greedy arseholes with power. Not one politician seems to be able to speak without lying, we have the current government cosy with despotic & murderous regimes (Egypt, Saudi, China) & desperate to bomb somewhere and a criminal justice system that, already frail from Labour's interfering hand, has been poisoned by its former guardian ad litem, aka C S Grayling, who's recently been rewarded for his treachery. A bit like naming Harold Shipman as "GP of the Century".


(If I had a 'star letter of the week' feature, I think this would win - Ed)

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As it's being reported that some right-wing Tory MP's are getting worried Gove is 'getting soft on criminals', this article in Thursday's Independent rather neatly sums up the situation he faces:-

Chris Grayling’s legacy is dangerous offenders going unsupervised and more expenditure

The legacy of Mr Grayling's reforms will live on as Michael Gove makes it his mission to reform criminal justice.

Hundreds of probation officers are losing their jobs. The time they spend with offenders is being cut. There are fears that dangerous people are not being properly supervised in the community. The turmoil in the probation system is yet another headache for Michael Gove, who has made it his mission to reform criminal justice and improve the dismal reoffending rates in England and Wales.

But it is hard to see how Mr Gove, who on 5 November said he hoped the prison population would fall over time and confirmed that major reforms to sentencing were in the pipeline, can reconcile that aim with the turbulence in probation. It is another problem he has inherited from Chris Grayling, who also bequeathed him the controversial criminal courts charge, which one Whitehall official describes as the “poll tax in a wig”.

The previous Justice Secretary broke up the 35 public sector probation trusts and replaced them with 21 privately-run “community rehabilitation companies” supervising 150,000 low and medium-risk offenders each year. Responsibility for the most dangerous ex-offenders, including those convicted of violence and sex crimes, remained with the National Probation Service (NPS). The split was rushed into law with limited piloting by Mr Grayling, who had hoped that a mixture of private and non-profit organisations would take charge of the 21 contracts, which include rewards for reducing reoffending.

In fact they have been awarded to eight companies, with voluntary groups complaining they were “bid candy” as they did not have the financial muscle to submit the lowest tenders. Two outsourcing firms, Sodexo and Interserve, clinched more than half the contracts and are now in charge of probation from Hampshire to Northumbria.

The first effects of the part-privatisation are being felt with Sodexo preparing to cut hundreds of officers’ jobs and floating plans for electronic kiosks at which offenders can clock in without seeing a probation officer.

Around 1,800 staff have left the service over the last year and unions have warned that officers are spending less time with offenders because of workload. The NPS has been forced to hire expensive agency staff as it copes with higher-than-expected numbers of potentially dangerous offenders.

The allocation of former prisoners between the private and public sectors depending on perceived risk has led to extra bureaucracy when the Ministry of Justice is meant to be saving money. Some officers say they are dealing with four times more paperwork than before the Grayling reform. Critics also worry public safety could be jeopardised by the split as some offenders will be too high-risk to be supervised by private sector staff and that the financial squeeze means court reports on some sex offenders are not sufficiently detailed.

The National Association of Probation Officers has effectively conceded defeat in its opposition to the overhaul, reluctantly agreeing to try and make the reforms work. Labour describes the plans as “fundamentally flawed”, but recognises the new structure is here to stay.

The Justice Minister, Andrew Selous, argues that the new system means an extra 45,000 low-level offenders – a group prone to recidivism – are being supervised. But he makes few extravagant claims for its success to date, simply saying that current evidence suggests “performance is broadly consistent with pre-transition levels” as the reforms are “still bedding in”.

There is no prospect of Mr Gove pulling the plug on the probation restructuring. Not that he could if he wanted to – his predecessor agreed to lengthy contracts with the private firms which would cost huge sums to tear up. One legacy of Mr Grayling’s reign will remain.

17 comments:

  1. Have colleagues in NPS like me been informed that prison visits for sentence planning, oral hearings etc should only be made where videolink technology or tele conference options are not available because the costs are too high?

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    1. Snap as above and we in NPS have been told we have to travel at cheapest cost with public transport having to be considered.

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    2. Yes we have been told the same .
      Another thing we've been told is that unless an offender is a ppo or has drug testing in their licence condition ( which is generally a ppo or if they are at an ap) then we can't drug test due to cost . How can that be effective risk management if we can't drug test when we suspect someone's been using and we know it's linked to an increase in ROSH

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    3. Why would anyone need to go to see their clients in prison any more? Those lovely CRCs have got their Through The Gate plans all up and running and can do all the work for you. All you have to do is see your chap or chapess on release according to National Standards, and send a nice thank you letter to the CRC for having addressed all their problems before release.

      *wakes up and shudders at reality*

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    4. Everyone across the country is being told the same thing. Consistency of approach is the new mantra even if it means we are months late in getting things done. For example, new law on unlawfully at large offence comes in in April. PI explaining what OM's have to do issued in October. Briefings for MOm's and quality assurance they're doing it properly, not yet. LADy's and Divisions are hog tied on nearly all issues waiting for the centre to get its act together and tell us what to do. Local responsivity so correctly prized by the Trusts has all gone. Now we are subject to the oversight and guidance of a bunch of civil servants at NOMS who probably could organise a piss up in a brewery. It would take them two years though and it wouldnt be very good. For example, who's looked at Equip? If you haven't then my advice is don't. The process maps that have been done are, as far as I can see, not fit for purpose with glaring omissions in practice details and a slavish adherence to admin process to ensure targets are met at its core. They were supposed yo have used "experts" to design the maps but clearly they have either been ignored or they are not experts in probation. It's frustrating that there are so many clever and innovative people in NPS but most are drowning in shit handed down by NOMS instead of formulating and implementing effective practice that works for their communities like we used to do in the Trusts. Oh and we still met their formulaic targets then too.

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    5. You won't be visiting prisons because you won't hold those cases anymore, prison OMs will.

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    6. Doesn't say that in the E3 Blueprint.

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    7. It's coming in the Offender Management in custody review

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  2. And if there was a blog of the week category, this reflective blog would be the one for me. I note little has been said on response the the Independent's observation that "The National Association of Probation Officers has effectively conceded defeat in its opposition to the overhaul..." Sadly that had already "effectively" happened when they signed off on national agreements in 2014.

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    1. Well napo voted its leadership in well done. You got what you asked for there were plenty of others giving the warnings . There was choice but napo voters ducks and sheep.

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    2. Yes that's right, I well remember Ian Lawrence's pitch during the GS election in which he said he was going to sign up to the framework agreement without securing any meaningful concessions from the Government, and that he was going to talk big about judicial review with no intention of following it through.

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    3. 'I agree with all those who have spoken today that we need to focus on the fact that we are where we are, to look carefully at what is out there in the landscape and (where it is possible) to jointly address those areas where we can contribute to improvements in the CJS of the future'

      This is the position stated by IL on 20th October in a speech he gave at a No Offence conference.

      TR is reality and it would be futile to pretend otherwise. The unions were defeated. And that's politics, folks. But who knows what the future may bring. It may be true to say that the CRC companies are guaranteed ten years of profits and therefore the contracts would be too costly to break even if there was a change of government. Yet we know that some outsourced contracts have been investigated for serious fraud. Perhaps we may see more fraudulent behaviour, in the months and years ahead which could lead to some contractors becoming unfit for purpose. All it takes is a conscientious person to blow a whistle.

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    4. Dreamland nipper and sold out then have you. Quote that speech welcomes the losers bench. If tr is not working and sfo are the consequence that's all you need to get rid. Or what join the pi and scrounge around for a new professional excuse for offending. Grow up we are ideologically opposed so most of us have to get out. I like your stuff most of the time but today your barrelling it.

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  3. What happened to end to end offender management. In our crc if someone commits an offence whilst subject to a community order and gets custody he is then transferred to another officer. No continuity

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  4. In our CRC they bend over backwards to avoid anyone going back to jail.

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    1. Isn't that "end over end" offender management? Or "bend to end" offender management?

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  5. Sorry to go off topic but was wondering if anyone knows the answer to this... the internal civil service jobs say 'If you are a current Civil Servant or employee of a CRC, this vacancy... ' does this mean that CRC staff can still apply for internal Civil Servant jobs?

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