Pick of the Week 12

I heard some worrying news on the grapevine. Something this newsletter would not be keen to advertise is that the long term facility time agreement in London that allowed elected Napo officers to support staff facing possible dismissal as a result of sickness management proceedings, discrimination, disciplinary proceedings, health and safety issues etc etc has now been terminated without consultation. The ability of London CRC employees to be effectively represented by Napo representatives in the CRC has been ended. 

Apparently MTCnovo think this is a deathblow to the trade unions but have not considered the backlash from staff that will now have nobody at all available locally to represent them. Staff are starting to get very angry indeed as the reality of working for a really really awful employer begins to sink in. This coincides with a steady increase in proceedings against staff that is likely to result in dismissals. 

MTCnovo think they have hobbled the union as much as they can and when they come for their employees there will be considerably less support available (they were so crap that they were ignoring their own policies to dismiss people) and what support there is will now be severely restricted. What hope have this lot got of transforming rehabilitation when they treat their own staff as if they are worthless.

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In the words of one of our offenders who has attended the hub: “It’s brilliant. If I’d been able to access somewhere like this before, I think I’d have had a better chance of staying out of prison.”

I find it quite sickening to read carp like this, and I'm not entirely sure who it's trying to convince. Staff? Offenders? Or just those that provide the funding streams? It's the same type of language that a newsletter from the DWP would use. All's great. If only you'd brought in the private sector long ago we could have had a zero percent offending rate by now! The truth is though, it's all very superficial and interlinked to extract maximum profit. The rhetoric is great but the reality sucks!

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What a bag of shite. In reality London probation Community Rehabilitation Company is struggling to stay afloat. Look past the glossy brochures and 'bionic' badges and you'll find one of the most stripped down probation set ups in the country. It's packed with agency staff as so many people have left, and it's disproportionate and ever-changing set of managers don't know if they're coming or going. Risk assessments without any data, offenders never seen, breaches and risk increases ignored, and every offender is assessed as low risk and Tier 1. Through the Gate, Penrose, Catch 22, these are all stocking fillers that are worse than doing nothing. If the probation inspectorate sprung an unannounced inspection they'd have to close it down.

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This is what happens when the workforce doesn't support a trade union. Before I left Probation, and I did because what is happening was always the only way that this was going to go, we saw minimal support for industrial action. Those who did not stand up for themselves are in the only position they were ever going to be in; the victims of oppressive employment practices.

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If the workforce in London do not rejoin Napo and start supporting their recognised trade unions, then when Helga wields her axe they will have no one to turn to. It's simply a financial operation and nothing to do with delivering services. Information leaking from the accounts department estimates that in order to balance the books MTCnovo will have to lose 50% of current staffing starting with those who cost most, the sick, the disabled, trade unionists etc. If they fail do cut staff then they will have no money to pay the wages of those who remain. If the cuts happen as planned, then an effective probation service in London will cease to exist. The architects of this transformation will simply move on to other lucrative projects leaving the train crash behind for others to deal with.

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I recall the days when I used to bring half a dozen problems to my PO on appointment days with the hope of getting some help with maybe 2 or 3 of them. You'd sit and discuss them quite often with a cup of tea. Now the last thing a client wants to do is own up to having any problems at all for fear it may impact on their risk assessment or get them signed up to a program that may have consequences for them with their expected hours of job search at the job centre.

Recent experience with Probation leaves me feeling that signing on at a police station once a week or even reporting once a week to a kiosk would see me no less disadvantaged or assisted then a visit to my local probation office. I therefore have come to the conclusion that maybe it's time to loose the title "PROBATION" and use a name that's more descriptive of the functioning of, and services provided by the current probation model.

Post custody supervision services or perhaps licence enforcement agency would be more appropriate, and dispatch the expectations of and general assumptions held by many of what the probation service actually does. Just a thought, but I wonder when the last time a client was offered a cuppa in the office by any contributed to this blog?

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Oh yes we still work like this but the perverse culture of risk management and public protection over rehabilitation is phasing it out. Many come in with problems, ideas, plans, plots and scheme to discuss. You won't get a cup of tea, but this is because probation doesn't provide facilities for this any more, and that goes for staff too. You will get a cup of water, bus fares and foodbank voucher, and I'll even share my lunch with you if you're hungry. You won't get a lift though, even if we're going in the same direction, carrying passengers in cars is on the banned list too!

'Probation' is our brand but for starters the Community Rehabilitation Companies and Victim Liaison Units should lose the name. This is not to say the National Probation Service is much better, but we're still able to work as we always did and supervision sessions are not on a time clock YET!

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I made a cup of tea for a homeless client last week and gave him some biscuits supplied by our admin staff after he had been out all night after being released from prison at teatime with no discharge grant! I also bought another client some bread and milk who had not eaten for 2 days and had no food in the house when I went to visit. I will probably be an ex PO soon if I'm discovered to be too "soft".

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I am a CRC manager's nightmare, because I do make tea, I spend time with the service users discussing the issues and looking for a way forward with them. I allow them to use the phone to make calls to other agencies in order to improve their chances of settling in the community, and if needed I will advocate. All time consuming stuff, leaving little or no time for the endless round of tick boxing accountability exercises and yes, the risk assessments and sentence plans. Pre split, I viewed the bureaucracy as a price I had to pay to be able to practice. Now I have to choose. I can't do both. How am I still working? I will be caught up with I know. Managers appear to have a big drive on one thing for a few weeks, then abandon one issue in favour of another. If I can keep up with the "concern of the moment " I can just about get by without crashing too obviously. But I am sure I am on borrowed time.

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Glad to hear it and yes your card is marked! We are pitted in a battle against the tick boxing, streamlined, process driven culture they've long been trying to create. The direction of travel seems to be that they don't want probation practitioners doing proper probation work any more.

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I’m one of the ‘old lags’ who began posted here a couple of days ago, and the phrase “can’t do the time, don’t do the time” is something I also subscribe to. My least favourite inmate type was the ‘moaner’ – the guy who never seemed to understand that every other prisoner endures lukewarm showers, lumpy custard, underwear which has been masturbated into by several thousand previous owners etc, without complaint, mainly because we are (mostly) guilty and all in the same boat. Jeffrey Archer wrote three volumes of similar banal HMP self-pity and made millions though, so perhaps I missed a trick.

I agree with pretty much everything written in the post regarding resettlement. A phrase I’ve commonly heard in HMP was something along the lines of “I can do the jail, it’s the licence which is the hard bit”. I don’t doubt that on many occasions the individual concerned was greatly responsible for making his own licence period more difficult than it needed to be, but I can also attest from experience that rebuilding a life outside is very difficult and utterly dispiriting in a way which is completely different from the structured, systematic debilitation involved with the custodial element of a sentence. 

HMP still carries a bizarre form of hope – we look forward to getting out, we toughen ourselves up to survive the ‘regime’ and most of us try and make the best of it and find ways to fill our time constructively. There is always that prospect of release to keep us going, and we generally know where we stand. Then we get out, we hit the pavement with ill-conceived optimism but little in the way of a concrete plan, and after that it generally goes downhill. 

Every single person I’ve had to disclose my history to has treated me very differently because of it, and I’m regularly asked for an explanation of how I ended up in prison in the first place, and I suspect this is expected to be delivered in a remorseful and apologetic way to appease professional people who are essentially just a bit nosey and want gory detail. I don’t expect to be given a high-powered job and live in a swanky apartment, or even that there should be a greater deal of ‘help’ provided exclusively to the offender base, but there is a general air of “this is all you’re getting, and be fucking grateful for that. Now sod off”, whenever I put myself forward for anything. 

I look forward to my licence ending, for the simple reason that I’ll no longer have to disclose anything about my history unless directly requested. I still have a date to look forward to, just as I did when inside, but this does not apply to the ISP population, and I dread to think of how difficult it will be for those people upon release.

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Yes the Jeffery Archer factor! Every now and then I think about writing a book too as I could probably do a much better job. It'd be a better chance of making millions then writing anonymous blogs. I hold out on the basis that I'm doing good work in the day job, so maybe I'll save it until it's time for my memoirs.

I'm glad we seem to agree on our postings. I've always thought that with a good probation officer /social worker the licence is much less of a chore.

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I agree with what you are saying. It is why with sadness I am leaving the profession. The whole point of Probation Officers was to ensure that people did not enter 'the system' and were diverted to probation. However, due to the meddling of politicians, Probation has become part of the system and is used increasingly to be punitive. The public protection guise is just a smoke screen for social control. Probation officers are now joining straight from university with no life skills. There is a severe lack of male probation officers to become role models. Probation is dead, it is just now another department of law enforcement. People who are outside the system are not going to engage and trust someone who is part of the system.

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A great read that serves well to give insight into the criminal justice system to those that have no direct involvement with it. Having recently been released from a period of custody (my umpteenth since the mid 70's), I can't agree that the CJS can become a better entity or more functional by a process of reform. It's broken far too much for reform. It's a very sick animal that's reached its end and needs to be put to rest.

There needs to be inquiries, think tanks and investigations as comprehensive as that done on Iraq, and a whole new world of delivering criminal justice developed and implemented. Trying just to reform the existing system will only make things worse. It's a train crash where ever you look. It needs cleaning up and a whole new type of train put back on the tracks.

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Unfortunately Grayling wasn’t as unpopular with the general public as he was with those of us who lived/worked in the CJS. When the Tories came to power in 2010 and Ken Clarke was in charge of the MoJ, his initial observations were that the UK was imprisoning far too many people at great expense, and set about dismantling the IPP and making loud noises about how too many people were needlessly remanded, or serving prison sentences as a result of a dearth of MH facilities in the community. 

This wasn’t very popular with the right-wing press, and Clarke was often fielding ignorant questions about how he planned to deal with dangerous offenders without the IPP. The necessary removal of the atrocious IPP system was seen in many circles as being a ‘soft’ move. Grayling’s attack-dog rhetoric about austere prisons has a tabloid appeal, and if a government ever needs to make swingeing cuts, the CJS is the place to do it – it’s an invisible cut, a system which isn’t noticed by wider society unless you are in the tiny minority who are caught up in it.

I remember watching an episode of Question Time when I was in prison, and an exceptionally moronic audience member frothed about how prisoners were given a PlayStation, and if they smashed it up it would be replaced at taxpayer expense because of the emphasis on ‘human rights’ in prisons. Rather than shout this ignorant baloney down, the panel took turns to address this as a serious question, and each pontificated on how their law and order stance would be a strict one, and that such non-existent luxuries would be removed from serving prisoners under their watch. 

So long as the public remain happily ignorant about the realities of living and working within the prison system, and these myths are happily promoted by mainstream media, there will always be a place for dull-witted blusterers like Grayling in British politics.

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Hurrah for the new CSA Inquiry Chair... "Alexis Jay spent over 30 years in local government in deprived parts of Scotland, including as Director of Social Services and Housing. In 2005, she was invited by the Scottish Government to set up the first independent inspection body for social services in Scotland, and in 2011 she became the Scottish Government 's first Chief Social Work Adviser. She retired from that post in 2013. She is Chair of the Life Changes Trust and also of the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland, based in Strathclyde University, where she is a Visiting Professor. She is the author of the Independent Inquiry report into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham, and is now a member of the statutory inquiry panel into child sexual abuse in England and Wales, chaired by Justice Goddard. Alexis was awarded an OBE by the Queen in the 2012 Birthday Honours List, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Strathclyde in 2015."

Thank God they never asked Casey. By way of proof I'd encourage anyone to read the scathing critique by Community Care of Casey's Rotherham report - prepared at the request of her boss, Pickles - which highlights Casey's lack of rigour or recognised methodology, i.e. well-meaning but not fit-for-purpose.

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Oh Yes Our Louise!!, the 'Justice seen Justice Done Tsar', employed by Blair to look at CP. Remember in 2009 she wanted Orange Jump suits USA Style for CP. We settled for orange H&S Vests with Community Payback and the "Frog" Payback logo. She slagged us off as too liberal and no community involvement in projects. Now CRCs cannot involve communities as it's too costly to deliver a service which is localised. In Purple Futures areas they will have PRCs running CP across 5 very large areas of England, not very local, but safe in the knowledge that they will still be wearing orange Hi vis Tabbards. Justice seen Justice Done.... Then our Louise moves to Victims Tsar (To be continued)....

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Deliberately misleading the public (usually for personal advancement) is all that most politicians & civil serpents concern themselves with these days but as the blogger points out, "Much of the press [are] too supine and lazy to bother to question this, so many stories simply copied the press release. Sadly, that’s pretty typical..." There are exceptions & some exceptional journalists but presumably their editors/owners veto the truth to keep their political bedfellows sweet. Meanwhile La Casey joins the ranks of pantomime dames, alongside the dreadful Permanent Secretary (Brennan?) who fucked up at the MoD, got shifted to MoJ, talked shite about TR & retired into well-heeled obscurity. Oh to be in England...