Risk Is a Smokescreen

From Devon to Carlisle and Newcastle to Southampton the same story is rolling in, this was an untested ill conceived and poorly managed idea that can never generate the profit that was promised...even when the culling stops......the many Chiefs briefings we attended when we were assured that POs will have a role......all lies......the creativity and shackle removing innovation.....lies......the end of red tape......lies and it's now worse than ever....so yes it is bad all over the country so it's time for the MoJ to accept some responsibility for this situation...oh but they did that didn't they.....they won an award......you couldn't make it up........

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TR is even worse than many of us imagined. Many of us did not have a choice about where we went. The numbers were wrong leaving one side or another short of staff. So then rather than giving jobs in NPS to staff that were forced into CRC's they took on new staff. Recently told I have to write a parole report but must have someone from NPS at parole hearing, after years of managing high risk cases.

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All this bleating about "High Risk Cases". Probation Officer work included high risk but was not central to what we did. Risk assessment and understanding may have been (that is another debate) but not HIGH risk. As a PO in NPS my caseload divides into two categories, people who have done something horrid and have done or are doing long sentences. They are largely safe as they know their freedom hangs by a thread. And people who are truly dangerous and we all know about it.

As a PO in my Trust I had a caseload of people some of whom were like those mentioned above but the mass were assessed as Medium risk. they included all those DV cases and chaotic drug using robbers/burglars. Any one of which could go off the deep end at any point. I would argue that the bulk of my caseload were more worrying 2 years ago because they were less predictable.

CRC caseloads are potentially MORE dangerous than the stuff I now deal with day to day. My problem with my current caseload is that I am stressed not by what they might do but by what they have done. Constantly being given rapists and wife killers has/is undermining my faith in humanity and (as a man) in men.

Point is that by banging on about how you could do High risk work you are undermining the point you are trying to make, CRC demands EQUALLY high standards of staff because you have to be alert to what your caseloads might do. A CRC caseload, person for person is statistically more likely to produce an SFO than an NPS caseload. There are no supports for the staff in spotting this and when (and it is a when) it happens, you will be on your own.

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A very clear and concise analysis of reality in probation, past and present. Several years ago I used to work solely with sex offenders. This group, however, were not the ones killing or being killed by others. I've known a fair few probation clients who have sadly met their demise at the hands of other people; the perpetrators on the whole being those that would most likely be assessed as "medium risk."

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As I and others have said here on a number of occasions, the focus on risk is a smokescreen that was fabricated & introduced to divide & rule (e.g. the shafting process of 11 Nov 2013), a Trojan Horse for managerialism, a pseudo-science with which to command & control staff. The manufactured misdirections of Low, Medium & High or Green, Amber & Red, etc., are evident, as shown above, and therein lies the real concern. It is incontrovertible that CRC caseloads are more volatile & more likely to generate a SFO, but the MoJ model states that the CRCs "only" have "low & medium risk cases", and that the "highest risk cases" are managed by the NPS. The implications are clear (NPS good, CRC bad); the deception (of bidders, of staff, of the public) is hidden by the emotive smokescreens of low, medium & high.

They've used labelling theory to bamboozle & corral practitioners, and in the process have encouraged those practitioners to take their eyes off the prize, i.e. the uniqueness of the individual. Long gone are the days of discussing cases; it's now commercially sensitive, this group, that, processing, programmes, sequencing, metrics, blah blah blah.