Sunday 30 October 2016

Pick of the Week 18

Surprised at author's seemingly emotional 'let them fail' conclusion. Problem with privatising key public services is that they cannot be allowed to fail. Think about it, staff and service users take the brunt, the Criminal Justice System is challenged, bad news day(s) for Tories etc. The government needs to bring forward funded solution/strategy which means taxpayer to rescue. Post Mortem of idiocy that brought mess about gets then lost in the long grass. I think that will be direction of travel and not 'let them fail' which granted has an emotional appeal.

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Which is exactly why there should be no market in essential public services. Markets, businesses, companies fail all the time.

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CRC's may be failing but it doesn't stop those at the top being handed out huge payouts for 'hitting targets'. One in Cheshire given a five figure bonus on the basis that her staff hit targets. In a recent staff event we raised concerns about high workloads etc and the same manager told us to shut up and get on with it or leave. It's a shambles and a disgrace that she's profiting from treating staff like this.

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I still believe the responsibility for their impending catastrophic failure lies with the Private Companies. It was their duty to conduct all necessary checks on what they were buying into. It is unfortunate for them, that they did not do all the due diligence necessary and they failed to employ people who knew anything about front line work to do those checks. Therefore, the adage, law of Tort, says Buyer Beware; and on failing, they should have no recourse to a defence of "I didn't know guv"! Hell scud it into them!

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I remember being told that the bidders weren't allowed to ask existing staff questions about anything to do with the work; I think this had to do with not giving one a competitive advantage over others. Presumably they were free to pay for advice from one of the dodgy consultancy firms formed by ex-probation staff who couldn't cut it on the front line anymore. No doubt they all swallowed the line that staff in the public sector don't know how to innovate, and assumed there were rich pickings to be had. My only sympathy is for the staff who continue to suffer under the rule of these imbeciles.

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I remember them being ushered around our office all smiles in suits soaking up the complete and utter bullshit being spouted at them by a couple of ACOs who are now long gone with their pockets stuffed with EVR cash no doubt muttering 'so long suckers'.

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Aye, there are some fancy second homes in rural Europe recently acquired by ex-probation managers - one emailed me a few weeks back asking if I was interested in "mates rates" rental... Cheeky Bastard! Still, they won't have to cope with Trump Corp Probation Services.

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Government will, in time, argue the split is why the CRC's are failing. They won't use this as a reason to renationalise but to give the CRC an increasingly large share of the cases and responsibility for increased risk.

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E3 will pave the ground for this to happen. Court team bolted onto HMCS. Prison teams managing cases up until a few months before release. Community based OMs moved into CRCs (initially as a high risk team) and then job done. No more NPS.

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"It is worth recalling that before the government embarked on the transforming rehabilitation programme, every probation area had been rated as excellent or very good. It is possible for probation to recover its position as a good public service. But only if it is freed from the failed privatisation experiment so foolishly imposed upon in."

Hmmm having been on licence since before TR and continuing to be I can certainly attest that from a service user's point of view there is little difference between pre and post TR. The service in my area was always shit and continues to be shit post TR. I'm not clear who decided that things were all hunky dory before hand but the service users clearly were not consulted in the determining of that.

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Pre and post TR the same shit from service user's point of view as opposed to an award winning service: I wish the person who wrote that would explain from his/her point of view. As a PO my observation has always been they we were judged and awarded by our ability to deal ably and consistently with all the procedures and bureaucracy, and now we no longer can. 


As far as I am aware, apart from some notable exceptions, we were not judged and awarded by our ability to reduce reoffending or by making things happen which were likely to cause that reduction. Much of the rhetoric was anti service user holier than thou speak, and way before the split. An integral part of the way I operated was to strike uneasy bargains in terms of time and effort between process/bureaucracy and effective interventions which made the difference to a particular service user. That is until the PPO/IOM schemes came along and made those interventions more acceptable and manageable, if you were lucky enough to work in one of those teams. 

Things like the programmes and safeguarding when they were working well did make a difference to people's lives, but all in all when service users say that they can barely tell pre- and post TR apart I am not that surprised. Pre-TR there was not at a sufficiently high-level the rooting for the service user or consistent enough investment in those rehabilitative intervention options which would have made a difference to a lot of our service users. And much of the time staff were not trusted to be able to make sound suggestions. Anything not from "the top" was considered worthless.

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The death of 'Advise, Assist & Befriend' is a fair point which has been often discussed here, i.e. CJA 1991 politicised probation; various other Acts during the '90s consolidated that move; the choreographers of the new millennium brought us NPS v.1 & OASys; then the creation of Noms imposed death-by-bureaucracy, Trusts, "metrics", totally shit IT systems & a new ethos of Control and Command which ensured that senior probation staff with years of compassion-focused knowledge & experience were squeezed out, to be replaced with ambitious bullies eager to please their masters, shit on their staff, ignore the end-user & progress into the Noms hierarchy.

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I agree, "let them fail", and they will! It'd be sooner rather than later if Napo, the Probation Institute and probation senior management (the probation officer qualified NPS and CRC) would stop being complicit in this mess!!

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This is all very well but I am seriously worried that one day I will turn up at work, CRC, and there will literally be no one there but me! Our team is so small, we have lost admin support so already multi tasking, staff off sick for long periods and delius problems are constant. Really, can we take much more? We desperately need someone experienced and pro probation at the helm in our CRC. Not a brainwashed puppet. I for one would love to see our previous CPO back at the helm. The current director and existing ACO's have lost all credibility because they have failed to speak out and towed the line to keep the privateers and their pockets lined. If they want to be part of any post TR service then they need to stand up to the private companies and fight for the future of probation and its credibility admit that TR is failing and speak out, speak to Noms/MoJ and work with the unions. Ok, they may get the sack but they can walk away with their heads held high and then return to help sort out the mess once the privateers go. Many PO's and PSO's have already done this and hopefully some of them will also do the same.

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A good point about markets failing - though let's remember that in several CPAs there was only one bidder, meaning that there was no 'market' as such at all! TR was predicated on the Tory mantra of 'private good, public bad', and the assumption that the public sector Trusts were bloated and full of non-jobs. Funnily enough they are now discovering that the magic of competition won't suddenly uncover mystical new ways of lean, efficient working that people who had done the job for decades were ignorant of.

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I am in the CRC but not the one in question here. My managers have informed us that there is no limit to the cases they will pile on our caseloads. If they need allocating they will be allocated no matter what our workload is already. Call me old fashioned but is that not totally unreasonable and grounds for a grievance? Do grievances even count for anything any more?

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We are being told similar things - it's not about the number of cases that you hold but the throughput. Get them through their Order as quickly as possible, never mind whether it worked or not, otherwise you'll drown in allocations.

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At one level, it makes no difference how many cases you hold - be it 50,100, 200.There are still only 7.5 hours in the working day, and you can only do what you can do. Harden your heart, look after yourself and record everything on delius. It is my understanding that the MoJ can access delius independently (whereas previously files had to be requested for inspection) and that they roam around the system checking records. 'Workload issues', 'operational issues' and 'staffing issues' are phrases I use regularly.

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What on earth was that all about Glenys? Placating the sentencers? Had I been a sentencer listening to that I would have been none the wiser. And those RARs, it is a mystery what they are meant to be for. Not easy to know where to signpost people so they can be "seen to" and their offending behaviour cured. Even if you signpost someone to go somewhere you would need to have a system whereby you can check that they have attended. You would have to have an agreement with the relevant organisation that confirmation of attendance would be ok. Apparently you are not supposed to count attendance to see probation officer as a RAR session. But at the same time probation staff get slated if the service user hasn't been "seen". 

Time was when "relationship" played a part in the process, when a service user would have some continuity, seeing one officer for a while, establishing a rapport and from there begin to acquire the confidence to take on the world differently. Time was when end to end work was the buzzword. I am not saying there is only one way to skin a cat. Having options and flexibility is good. But you can signpost till you are blue in the face, you still have to be sure that the organisation you signpost to is not just another signposting organisation. Who will actually do the actual work with people when in austerity Britain all services have been pared down to the bare bones?

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The other thing to take into account is that the RARs are "up to", which theoretically means there is no obligation to complete all or any of the RAR sessions. Are the sentencers aware of how wishy washy, unspecific and badly written this law is? Glenys does not appear to have pointed this out in her speech.

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Some of this is good but some of it not so much. For example a smaller NOMS? NOMS should be done away with entirely as it serves no useful function whatsoever & merely adds a layer of bureaucracy that is unnecessary. It's functions should be done in house at the MoJ like they used to be.

As for giving governors more power, well first you would need to weed out all those ineffective and corrupt governors (Hello Helga Swidenbank) and have some sort of mechanism to ensure that governors get some sort of psychological assessment to ensure that they are the right people for the job not simply the next in line for a lucrative boost to their career or rewarded for failure so that the extra power is not abused.

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In our NPS team meeting in a office 'up north' we were asked to look for cases to pass to new PSO's who arrived 2 weeks ago, they have no experience and have had no training. They all look like they have come straight from school. If only the public knew this is how seriously their safety is being taken. The whole shitty mess is an absolute joke. But so, so worrying. Where will it all end? Tragedy no doubt. Somebody do something before it's too late.

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Oh, and more essential, mandatory training - parole and oral hearing stuff! I concede this would be helpful, but none of us can access the justice academy website! More reminders arriving every week to get it done! We are told we can log in using free standing PC's in the office - we don't have one! Some guys arrived last month with an all singing, dancing photocopier and scanner, plumbed it in, and our fax and PC hasn't worked since! The solution it seems, is to do the work on your home PC, really? I work with someone who doesn't even own a mobile phone, so how can she get equal access to learning and self development? We have been told we will soon be receiving lap tops, one per office, but no expected date of arrival! Needless, to say, once I've done the on line stuff, I will once again be hunting high and low for a classroom, to complete the training! Crock of shite!

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Sounds like NPS is in a sorry state too. At CRC things were still working ..ish at BGSW CRC up until about a year ago. Then they did away with a perfectly usable system My HR, which we could use to quickly fill in our timesheets and request leave or toil and brought back old methods that take ages to complete and then swap some managers around and no one knows what the hell is going on.offices move, phone numbers change constantly, new system or person for pool car booking. 

Call WL IT to report that you have problems with delius and they just log it and ask you to call your CRC IT team who are rapidly shrinking. Staff leaving on a weekly basis and their tasks having to be swallowed by someone else. And that is before the major cuts we are now facing! Try to transfer a case to another area, good luck with that! 

No more joined up system, all using different e mail providers so can't just tap in a name anymore. What happened to napo directory? London CRC apparently needing that new wall mounted invention a lot these days! Any more news? Training? What is that? A rare commodity these days! Remember all the great training we used to have from experienced probation officers who had earned their stripes moving around within the organisation? If I think back to the training I have had over my career, the courses I can actually remember what would stand out would be this:
A trainer who inspires respect through broad knowledge and experience that relates to your organisation. 
A common objective and ownership. All staff owning a way of working and feeling enthusiastic in taking it forward and making it work.
Putting the service user/public at the heart of what we do.
This could also apply to the pre-requisites of any functioning organisation.

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Are you all deluded? If the NPS was interested in staff training and development it wouldn't be replacing qualified PO's with PSO's. Nor would it have just replaced the previous sub-standard PQF PO training with the far worse PQiP PO training.

Training in the NPS cannot really be called training. You'll see various training advertised on the civil service website we're directed too by various 'NPS Communications' emails, simply so they can blame us for not accessing or implementing training when something goes wrong. It's either online tick box rubbish or a self read workbook/document that doesn't tell you anything new. If you manage to get onto a classroom based training it will be a PowerPoint presentation (not training) by NOMS trainers who can't or won't say anything more than the script in front of them.

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Have not been on any Nationally Mandated training since 2014. Cannot find my way round the Phoenix system. I get told to look on this site or that site and cannot find them, cannot get on them when I do, cannot access the right page should I actually find them and finally cannot find any relevant training in the mass of pointless programmes when I do. Its a bit shit really.

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Prisoners coming out of HMP Liverpool saying that inmates are forcing people to move cells and staff having no part in it. Wings with 2 staff and lawlessness - weak inmates being falsely accused by other inmates and forced to pay-up and intimidation rife. HMIP needs to start from scratch with the prison system as it is broken. HMP Kennet closing so cram those prisoners in already over-croweded establishments.

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Knowing this is happening should probation staff be recalling to prison those who fail to comply with their licences?

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In my area recall is the last resort when all else fails but I agree that the stories coming out of prisons now make me dread having to consider recall. Prison just doesn't seem to be working for anyone.

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If you have serious concerns about someone being risk to general public or known potential victim then you have a duty to recall in the right circumstances. I think we need to use our discretion. The problem is we rely on having the right tools for the job and yet we know offenders we supervise will be at increased risk both personally and in terms of further criminal associations from going into custody. 

At CRC it is further frustrated because we don't write PSR's when someone re-offends and rely on NPS to reflect our views. I did what I could to argue a case for keeping one young woman in the community following harassment offences but they sent her down. Not doing well emotionally or physically and unlikely to reduce her risk once she comes out because no one is working on her issues in custody. What we need are stronger more effective community sentences. 

My seeing someone once a week for an hour at most will never be enough. We need multi disciplinary working with a team including probation officers, police, mental health, social workers, IDVA, housing, education..women's centres and men's centres, effective groups in the locality. What we could do with is effective services and funding yet we are being reduced to a handful of de-moralised PO and PSO's in offices not fit for purpose. We know what we need to do to make a difference, but we are ignored and decisions made by people who have never worked with offenders or disadvantaged groups. 

We could fund this by reducing prison numbers and moving funds over to community supervision. Also more approved premises instead of prison. Prison is extremely expensive and de-humanising. It is not about simply putting a tag on someone, however, and off you go but really being creative and understanding what package would work for each individual.

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Didn't we have all of that before the split called IOMs Integrated Offender Management Teams? We even had a prison officer from the nearby prison seconded to the team. Guess what It Worked!

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Exactly! But we need to make a case not to 'bring it back because it worked' but allow an egotistical politician or MoJ big-wig to call it something different and announce it as their latest knee jerk light bulb moment written on the back of a beer mat or inscribed into a satsuma! Then hey presto!

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Violence in prisons is of course a very real and major concern for the CJS. However, the lack of access to health care and mental health services, addiction services etc should warrant just the same level of concern. The whole system is in such disarray that decision makers should surely face prosecution for their failings. Corporate manslaughter? Health and safety legislation? Failing in duty of care?

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Just read the news article in the Northern Chronicle about the levels of violence, drugs, bullying etc going on in HMP Northumberland. Napo Northumbria branch raised this with the local media and MPs in 2014 and warned it would get worse. What a shock we were right! The contract should be taken off Sodexo. How can a company be awarded the contract for providing prison services and also the contract for supervising released prisoners. Can we ask Mr and Mrs Paul McDowall both working for Sodexo, but prior to that Noms employees and then so called independent Probation Inspector. It all stinks!

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Sadly the way it works is that somebody has to die for changes to be made. HMP Pentonville is a public sector prison but look how much around it has been privatised and sold off. Of course people in prison and on release are going to kill and be killed when they're caged like animals for the period of sentence and then released to hardly any support from probation, social service, housing, mental health, and so on. Outsourcing plus cuts has led to this current disaster where CJS and public sector services are designed to be useless and the buck stops at the offices of the meerkat-looking Justice Secretary and the Thatcher-wannabe hag of a Prime Minister, and we have no idea how Brexit is going to affect it all.

In 2013 I read this in the Guardian:

"What happens when these firms, with their inexorable expansionist logic, bite off more than they can chew? We pay anyway. We paid G4S; we will pay it again when its prisons catch fire. We will pay A4e when it finds no jobs, we will pay Serco when its probation services fail. We will pay because even when they're not delivered by the public sector, these are still public services, and the ones that aren't too big to fail are too important. What any government creates with massive-scale outsourcing is not "new efficiency", it is a shadow state; we can't pin it down any more than we can vote it out. All we can do is watch."

30 comments:

  1. Probation Officer30 October 2016 at 09:35

    A sign of things to come for all probation officers set to be forced to transfer to prisons.

    .. Cells and offices were damaged in the disorder at HMP Lewes, which POA chairman Mike Rolfe blames "poor management and severe shortage of staff", he said: "There were only four staff on that wing and all four retreated to safety after threats of violence and the prisoners went on the rampage."

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-37810249

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    1. I visited a prison in the South East last week and the prison officer said they have TWO prisoners officers per wing!

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    2. Specialist officers were called in to control a riot at a notorious east Sussex jail after prisoners “went on the rampage” for six hours.

      Cells and offices were damaged in the disturbance at Saturday at Lewes prison, said Prison Officers Association chairman Mike Rolfe.

      Mr Rolfe blamed “poor management and severe shortage of staff” for the incident at the prison, which began at 10.30am and continued until 4:30pm.

      He told the BBC: “There were only four staff on that wing and all four retreated to safety after threats of violence and the prisoners went on the rampage.”

      Lewes prison was at the centre of a scandal two years ago when a serving officer alleged that severe staff shortages and a drug-smuggling problem meant it “resembled a warzone”.

      Kim Lennon, who was later dismissed from her position, told The Argus in August 2014 she feared a prisoner or prison officer would be seriously injured due to dangerously low staffing levels.

      The Ministry of Justice confirmed that a national response unit had to be brought in to control the prisoners during the incident.

      A Prison Service spokesperson told The Independent: “Specially trained prison staff have resolved an incident involving a small number of prisoners on one wing at HMP Lewes.

      “We are absolutely clear that prisoners who behave in this way will be punished and could spend significantly longer behind bars.“

      Earlier this year, The Argus reported an MP had asked for a meeting with the prisons minister to raise concerns about conditions at Lewes Prison.

      The newspaper alleged that a 19-year-old was found dead in a suspected suicide and that there had been 10 seizures of a drug known as Spice – a type of synthetic cannabis – from prisoners.

      Syrian Refugee and chef Roudi Chiko was given a year’s sentence at Lewes prison for using a false Canadian passport to travel to the UK in 2012.

      He told The Guardian he had seen “many terrible things” in Syria but his time in the prison brought him to tears for the first time.

      “There was a lot of fighting and violence in the prison,” he told the newspaper.

      “I saw many terrible things in Syria, but the first time I cried was when I was in Lewes prison. It was horrible to see all the violence there."

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  2. Michael Gove's 11-year-old son 'was found wandering corridors of B&B after ex-minister 'left him alone for SIX HOURS to party with celebrities'

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3886166/Michael-Gove-s-11-year-old-son-wandering-corridors-B-B-ex-minister-left-SIX-HOURS-party-celebrities.html

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    1. Really? What a pratt! Not sure what this has to do with probation but even so!

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    2. Our former justice secretary- character!

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    3. Boris Johnson's sister puts in her two penneth:

      "Can I just say in their defence, the only reason they left their son is because he was babysitting their two dogs. They left the dogs as well. I think it's absolutely fine.'
      Explaining the circumstances, Ms Johnson added: 'We were both invited to the Sunday Times Cheltenham Literary Festival where we did a very jolly event together.'"

      Anyone up for a safeguarding referral? Neglect & emotional abuse of an 11 year old child. Presumably a few drinky-poos were consumed, so maybe drunk in charge of a child as well? Without the dogs, these are very similar circumstances to the grounds on which children were removed from clients of mine. The children were eventually returned, but only after being in local authority care for several weeks. Maybe it was the lack of dogs that tipped the balance? If you're going to abandon your children, make sure they have a dog to sit.

      Relevance? Two-tier world, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, "we're all in it together", etc etc, etc.

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  3. Liz Truss unveils fresh strategy (probably not fresh actually) as jails suffer ‘epidemic’ of self-harm.

    But Frances Crook said the crisis merited a more urgent response. “Legislation will be introduced some time next year, by which time 100 people will have taken their own lives. She [Truss] has to do something now,” she said.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/29/prison-suicides-record-levels-scandal

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  4. Very interesting article in the Gaurdian today about the prison crisis which brings home just how desperate the situation is.
    For instance, I found it quite shocking that since Liz Truss was appointed Justice Secretary (only seems like yesterday to me), at least 26 prisoners have committed suicide! Thats a shocking number.
    And this quote from the same article is also very telling,
    “If we had any other industry in the country where half the products got returned to the factory, ministers would have acted decades ago,”.

    'Getafix'

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  5. Good news story? Once I am made redundant you will hear alot more about the reality of TR! Is that good enough for you and please don't strain too much as it will give you piles!

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  6. Just read an article in the F.T. regarding Capita and how it's being forced to consider its contracts that are not cost effective:
    "Capita, the FTSE 100 outsourcer, is planning to root out contracts where further investment or cost-cutting is needed as part of a sweeping review of its operations and strategy."
    Wonder which one might be top of their list?

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  7. Anyone know anything about the law? Our team made a complaint about safety in the prison with escalating violence and drugs being used. The email returned was that we have all had personal protection and safety training so we're equipped to deal with all eventualities so it's business as usual. Is this right? I never had this training.

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    1. In first instance discuss with your manager and identify training need. If not satisfied contact Union health and safety representative and discuss concerns would be my initial advice.

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    2. ACAS has a helpline.

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  8. I agree with the Service User who said you were as crap before TR as after. So many of the Probation Officers I met during my supervision made a bad impression on me. If there was an independent survey conducted anonymously with Service Users where anything negatively they had to say wouldn't impact on recalls or bad reports then a clearer picture would emerge.

    Lets face it if you have a Service User who criticises what you do, tells you what you are doing and the way you are doing it is not helping them move forward in their life then you are more likely to report that they are more likely to reoffend, which reinforces the unhelpfulness even further. Very many Service Users HAVE to say all is wonderful and that they have learnt so much from Probation not to get further screwed over by Probation.

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    1. That's extremely simplistic - make your case and we can debate the points you raise.

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  9. Sorry, I understand this blog is not concerned with its effect on the individuals it processes. Its about how much money you can get if you leave.

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  10. 19.48 actually i tend to agree as a po that asking people to complete these forms whilst they wait in reception and then hand them in to reception staff who could read them, and judging from what i have seen, do read them is off-putting and not appropriate. Also dyslexia etc can make it difficult for some to complete. It would make more sense for a genuinely independant body to send someone around the offices to do random samples from time to time.

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    1. There were alot of genuinely independant bodies who were employed to find the correct statistics that advocate alot of the alchemic devices that have been dished out in the direction of Service users down the years.

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  11. It is simplistic. It is the simple truth of the matter for the vast majority of Service Users. Has been for very many years. Disagree? Why not ask the next Service User you meet? I'm sure they wouldn't dare say otherwise.

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    1. If no-one can give an honest reply, what's the point in asking? And indeed, what's the point of your comment, if you haven't actually spoken to "the vast majority" of clients over the "very many years" that you speak of.

      If you were speaking in such wild generalisations to me about how I wasn't helping you move forward with your life, I might not necessarily think that you were more likely to re-offend. But I would definitely think that you took very little responsibility for your own life.

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    2. Ah so being a Probation Officer you want to draw me on specifics, well being a Service User I was only to happy to talk to a number of your ilk for a considerable amount of time, it boils down to being expected to update you on all things in my life without reciprocation from any of the people who were put infront of me. Very unsupportive, very one sided relationship, many down right abusive people. After a while I learnt that to get on in Probation don't say anything, maybe even talk complete crap to their face. None of you as people impressed upon me that you were worth spending any time with.

      There's a vouyeristic bent to being a Probation Officer, many of you past and present are very psychologically abusive in your mindset towards Service Users.

      I enjoy the mess you're in, it's sure sickening about SFO's but it's taken all of you powerless pawns to drive the whole damn thing into this mess. Don't blame anyone but yourselves, each one of you stood by and did nothing to try to stop TR from happening. You deserve the mess that you are in.

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    3. "I despise all these people because they wanted to do the job they were paid to do, and didn't tell me all about their lives!"

      Do you not hear how petulant and whiny you sound? If I met you in the any other context and you were behaving in such a demanding, self-important and hostile way, I wouldn't want to tell you about my life, let alone if we had to have a professional relationship.

      Of course it's a one-sided relationship, one person is told to be there by a Court! I do sometimes tell clients about my life, but only small amounts and only where it's relevant. It would be disrespectful to them to do any more than that.

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    4. Good, then we would be great, if you were my PO that suit me down to the ground. You have no insight to bring from your own experiences so do not expect me to demonstrate anything of value to yourself or anybody else...

      As Probation is for so many, an unhelpful hindrance, more likely to cause bad feeling and reoffending than prevent it. So many of you will never hear that side of it, not in the ivory tower of proffesionalism that you reside in.

      Heartless, unthinking, uncaring, one sided relationships are just what Service Users require don't you think?

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    5. Some of my clients want and need my help and support. They're usually the most professionally satisfying to work with, where I can see a difference is being made.

      Some want help and support, but don't really need it, or at least not from me. I try to help these clients find the right places to go.

      Some genuinely neither want nor need the help. I'm ok with that - but they still have to check in with me every now and then, because a court has told them they have to. And of course things might change.

      The most challenging group are those that need the help, but don't want it. I think you fall into this group, and I'm afraid, the more hostile you get, the more I think you need the input. At this point it becomes about public protection. The people who report to us aren't the only users of the service: so are the courts, victims and other members of the public. It's a one-sided relationship because you've been told to be there, because you broke the law. Your experience may have been that it was unthinking and uncaring, but if you looked outside your cloud of self pity, you might realise it's dangerous to generalise from your own narrow experience.

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  12. What help would that be then? What do you have to offer that is going to help?

    Or do you not know enough about me and are making your own broad generalisations on your own narrow experience based on what you have read on some internet comments section?

    You're just not nice people. You aid and abet the Prisons crisis, making private profits from crime, and are have to take a degree of responsibility for reoffences.

    You just stand by and have done nothing to stop any of that. Complicit in the extreme. So tell me, what do you have to offer that is of more value to me than a genuine caring friendship for another human being?

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    1. There's none so blind as those that will not see. Perhaps you should think about taking some responsibility for yourself and stop blaming everyone else.

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    2. TR is the fault of the individuals employed by the service. Stop blaming everyone else for it.

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    3. With such a rational, reasonable example of your world view, I can't for the life of me understand why you didn't get a more friendly response from any of your POs. Nothing short of a dereliction of duty on their part.

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