Pick of the Week 14

A bit late, but a roundup from before I went offline on holiday:-

UPW is an utter joke in London. It was privatised with the assistance of London Probation Trust and at first staff were told all would be well as Serco wanted it to be a success and would update UPW. What followed should have been a warning to us all. Serco devastated the entire operation with wave after wave of redundancies. Beneficiaries (charity shops, churches, charities etc) who had long supported UPW in London decided they could not deal with the cold ruthless corporate morons they were now faced with and pulled the plug. 

Serco got rid of workshops reducing the capacity for those who could not work outside or in charity shops to perform meaningful work. UPW became a skeleton service run by corporate yes people loathed by the staff. They got rid of vans so many offenders wasted time wandering from project to project. Above all there were hours being recorded that had never been worked. The entire system was a sham conning Sentencers and the public. 

When it came back to the CRC, staff were relieved but not a lot changed other than getting new uniforms with the MTCnovo logo. Projects are still oversubscribed and it is actually quite hard to get breached. There are reports of offenders doing very little at all throughout simply by turning up to oversubscribed projects and spending half the time travelling to another one after get time credited for turning up. There has been an increase in assaults on staff. However MTCnovo is keeping a tight lid on things as UPW earns them money.

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I am London PO and after Serco took over the UPW but before the split I stopped proposing UPW in my PSRs (we were working "end to end"). I would find reasons not to proposes UPW because I began to find it really difficult to persuade the service users to comply after the type of work offered became meaningless. One service user complained that he was made to move a big pile of earth with a spade from one end of a small park to another, no wheelbarrow and no explanation as to why. He said it was lucky there was not a man with a short fuse there that day deciding to take the spade to the supervisor's forehead. 

It is a shame we cannot persuade our report writing NPS colleagues to desist from proposing unpaid work. But since they don't have to supervise anyone on it, they forget or become increasingly unaware what a nonsense it is. I sincerely wish I knew a few magistrates I could make aware. Surely something would eventually find its way into their association and on into the media. Didn't the magistrates help to see off those court fees?

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NPS are required : No they are directed, by the sentencer, to look at punitive sanctions such as EMS curfew, UPW and exclusion requirements. They have to say if the offender is suitable or not. They cannot say they would not recommend such a sentence as an UPW requirement as the removal of a pile of earth from point A to point B isn't explained to said shoveller as to its end purpose and all without the aid and use of a wheel barrow and therefore a wholly inappropriate disposal. 

I am afraid that a lot of the lay magistrates/DJs, even worse: Crown Court judges, would not only rebuke said author but out of sheer devilment would sanction an UPW requirement immediately, and then demand a review report to ensure that it was enforced. Sorry, but report authors do not have such sway on the judiciary!! Ask any case manager in this great land of ours where UPW has been added by the sentencer, despite the fact that the report author did not recommend such a requirement...... Pejorative I know (sorry), but you get my point....

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I don't propose it when I've asked, for instance, BBR as I think that's what's required. Sometimes they go with it, other times they may add UPW. How punitive it's all got. When I started a 2:2 order was about as onerous as you could have.

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I think there is a similar problem arising in the NPS in my shire county. So many sex offenders are sentenced to COs on the basis that they will be 'treated' in the community and short custody doesn't allow for it, but in my area SO programmes are being withdrawn or men are getting on to groups half way through their Orders. So their treatment might be not at all, or two years or more after their offence, when their motivation has usually gone. The NPS must surely do what they have told the Courts they will do with sex offenders. But we seem to have lost sight of our responsibility for administering justice as required by the Courts.

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The new tiering exercise seems to me to be designed to enable more cases to be managed by cheaper staff. I have no particular issue with PSO's managing medium RoSH IPP's and Lifers. Like sex offenders, there has been far too much smoke and mirrors about these people over the years. RoSH is dynamic and as we all know, offending rates amongst lifers are stubbornly low, to coin a phrase. 

My issue is the formulaic means by which the new tiers have been defined. As a comment above says, people need to be assessed on their individual needs and circumstances. We all know that the most effective practice comes from addressing diversity. Don't we? An illustration of the current lack of joined up thinking in NPS is the E3 proposed end state for staff numbers. It fails entirely to take into account the OMU in custody review that says that prison OMU'S need to be staffed exclusively by PO's starting in the Spring of next year. That means PSO's currently in prisons, as well as a significant proportion of those in AP's, will be coming into the community and PO's will be going to jail. 

In addition, all custody cases will be managed by an OM in prison until six months prior to release. A review of my caseload indicates that the PSO managed tiers plus the custody managed cases mean that I have three left. Two of them are in hospital on Section 47/49 and the other is UAL in India and never likely to return. Oh well, better get my prison suit dry cleaned then.

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Rehabilitation Practitioners are on the way. The clue is in the title, they'll fit in anywhere, NPS, CRCs, or even helping out in under staffed prisons. Apprenticeship time served, cheaper to employ, and ratified by the Institute of Probation, the centre of excellence.
Probation services are being phased out, and will be replaced by rehabilitation services.

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"The role we will submit will be named Rehabilitation Practitioner - and incorporates the PSO role." More evidence that the PI is part of the problem rather than part of the solution!!

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"Rehabilitation practitioner" is a meaningless title. I suspect that, if we did a Family Fortunes style 'our survey said' quiz, the large majority of the population would think it was something to do with physiotherapy or sports massage. Moving away from the word "probation" - which is at least understood in the wider population, even if we complain about our media invisibility - is just foolish. Clearly the PI is desperate for the cash that PACT and St Giles Trust may be able to trickle in their direction.

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I'm more worried about the Apprenticeship part of the job title - cos it's all in the choice of terminology. Apprentices have less legal (employment) rights than is enshrined in other employment contacts, including being exempted from the minimum wage. Considering the starting wage for a PSO is more than the minimum, I would be interested to know how much these apprentices are to be paid. Basic apprenticeship wages normally work out at about £2.50 an hour.

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Rehabilitation Practitioner is an ambiguous title designed to supply a work force to CRCs on a wage that CRCs are willing to pay, ie national living wage. But don't be fooled. Rehabilitation Practitioner is not just ambiguous, it's all encompassing. Where would such a job description place you? Working with the police? Mental health services? HTC? Or walking the beat to fill in for community support officers? It's a very broad spectrum that can be filled with such a general job title.

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Staff used to join probation as a PSO and look forward to training as a probation officer and getting a uni degree in the process. Now they're being offered a bloody apprenticeship to be less than a PSO and probably paid at the minimum wage. Maybe okay for school-leavers but not for the majority. Can this so-called Probation Institute hurry up and rename itself as the Rehabilitation Institute so then it can stop pretending to represent probation practitioners!!

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This is the PI showing its business interests and more evidence it has no interest in probation.

1. The MoJ have been trying to align us with the police for the past few year. Being aligned with the police in any way is something I'm wholeheartedly against as our ethos and work is completely different.

2. The PQF had a pathway for students of police studies. I believe the reason was financial related on the part of university and training providers and the police service spreading its wings into 'offender management'.