Pick of the Week 19

Bizarre offering from Phil Andrew, Working Links CEO today on the WL Justice website! Biggest heap of shite I have read in a long time! Says absolutely nothing yet he seems to think it is somehow important! Can't trust a thing WL say. John Wiseman should be keeping his staff in the loop but WL have muzzled all the managers, the ones that might have been prepared to speak out and the spineless arse lickers that have only been interested in their own self serving vanity don't give a monkeys anyway and can toddle off for salsa classes without a hint of guilt and pretend they are actually doing a good job as they get pissed every night!

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Wasn't it just! I was intrigued at how the loss of the DWP contract could be spun into such a monumental success story of prudent redirection and corporate reinvention. There was so much 'sparkle' it made my head hurt!! Meanwhile, on Planet Earth, Paul Hindson was due to meet with the Unions and ACAS today...

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I hope they gave him a good roasting! When will we get the feedback on that? I hope they are recording all these discussions and not relying on the WL spin-doctors to report back on how brilliantly it all went for them. Must have been 3 or 4 farewells I read about only today, so many good staff have already left yet continuing with 40% cuts. The maths doesn't add up!

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As played out in my head over & over during the last month, the meeting between the 20-something CRC Operational Manager & 50-something PO.

Mgr: So I've completed your appraisal & it's been scored Poor in all areas. You'll get a copy when we're finished today. Record keeping is especially low scoring, which as you know is critical to the CRC's future development.

PO: You know its been difficult to keep up with the IT constantly crashing & the sky-high numbers on my caseload

Mgr: You were given clear guidance on how to address that

PO: To cut and paste stock phrases to fill any gaps?

Mgr: No, it was to improve efficiency using approved concise entries that met the CRC's clearly defined requirements. Your reluctance to comply with company policy features throughout this appraisal; as are your explicit attempts to frustrate the purpose if the CRC by being outspoken, critical & obtuse. If you were in a union I'd think you were being subversive.

PO: There are hardly any staff, dangerously high caseloads, unstable IT systems & we can't get NPS to take cases that are plainly High Risk. I'm doing sixty hours a week, I'm exhausted and have already spoken to you several times about needing some time off next week but you haven't responded.

Mgr: There you go again. I'm surprised that someone of your experience keeps making excuses for their poor practice. How can I approve time off when all your records are out of date? And I note you've expressed an interest in redundancy, well, there's no way I can recommend that to HR either. Once you're up-to-date we can revisit that. If you want out you could resign. Oh, and you are not being recommended for an increment on the payscale. Last year's appraisal was similar in tone and I see no attempt has been made to effect any improvement. 

Finally, I need to allocate three new DV cases. They were High Risk initially but NPS have recently reassessed them as Med to Low. I've had a quick scan through the paperwork - its all in good order, every box has been completed, so I'm allocating them to you. I don't want to see the records in a mess when I check up next month. All three have been instructed for appointments next week, so there's your answer about leave! Okay? Your Appraisal will be in your in box by 3pm today. Just sign it & send it back please. I won't be available except by email for the next three weeks as I'm at meetings in London, Paris and Birmingham, then I'm working from home during half-term. Got to dash now. See you next month.

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Anyone who breaks the perfectly good laws of this fine upstanding country should be forced to wear an electronic device which law-abiding folk can access via an App on their mobiles (except when they're driving) in order to instruct the law-breakers to complete useful tasks for the benefit of the community. The requests would stack at a G4S comms centre & be distributed according to whichever crim was next available. Control & Command at its most efficient. (NOMS please note this is not a serious suggestion; its just a pisstake).

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Tagging, labelling, branding or simply segregating 'them' from 'us' is just fine & dandy, isn't it? Some don't think so... R4's Analysis programme broadcast last night:

"Should we place more trust in prisoners to help them change their lives? "Trust is the only thing that changes people," says Professor Alison Liebling, the director of the Prisons Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. But, asks Lucy Ash, how can we encourage trust in prisons that are overcrowded, often understaffed, and blighted by rising rates of violence? Prisoners are locked up because they broke trust, and on the wings distrust, rather than trust, is an essential survival skill.

And yet Professor Liebling's latest evidence surprisingly shows that ultimately it is only staff-prisoner relationships built on trust that ensure better outcomes. "Values grow virtues", she argues. Treating prisoners with the same values as other people - dignity, respect, trust - will help them turn their lives around."

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Exactly, good support and supervision is what works well, but the MoJ killed that when they did away with 'supervision' with the new Offender Management Act.

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When the government imported Lie Detectors, they where seized be the customs because they were not CE approved. The MoJ retrieved them arguing that they were Defence Equipment not subject to CE approval. The truth is that they are Non Intrusive Medical Monitoring Equipment and need CE approval as such. If anyone is using one the CE mark should be on page one of the manual.

Probably GPS tracking equipment used to monitor the location of an individual is Non Intrusive Medical Monitoring Equipment, the ones that measure alcohol in perspiration certainly are.

The official guidance says GPS-tagged offenders will be banned from “unsuitable activities”, including water sports such as diving and surfing, as well as contact sports such as football, rugby, hockey and kickboxing, because they risk hurting themselves or damaging the tag.

This implies that a Lithium Ion Battery is in use, intrinsically very very dangerous due to their combustibility, attaching one to a persons ankle, probably breaks health and safety law, its foreseeable that you are fixing a firebomb to their ankle.

The Samsung Galaxy fires where not caused by a failure in design, but a very very small oversight in quality control specification. Incredibly microscopic particles of metal in the electrolyte caused the fires. The more modern higher capacity batteries all fail the nail test, drive a nail into them and they catch on fire. Banning certain activities does not lead to safety. My local roads are so full of potholes it's only a matter of time before one causes me to crash on my bicycle. Imagine picking yourself and finding your ankle is on fire. No one is above the law including the MoJ, if they fail in their duty of care they must be prosecuted.

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Having been involved in junior and open age football for 18 years now, I have on many occasions felt I did my best social work with the men and boys I have coached. So, it fills me with horror to hear those subject to these tags will not be able to participate in football, rugby, hockey or kick boxing, 'for their own safety' as for many of the young men I encounter, this is the only pro social, healthy activity they engage with; where they get praise and get to do something they are good at! I've coached many lads on tags, or who are only available to play alternate Saturdays, as the Attendance Centre calls them in on the others. Removing their capacity to achieve and mix with non offenders, ex offenders, just alienates them all the more!

Also, I don't see magistrates, judges or governors buying into this, save for a small group of people for whom it would be the right and proper response, to protect people. I fear it'll be used as an add-on to the sentences they already had in mind.

Then there is the MoJ/Noms! I rang them a few weeks ago, to check that it would be deemed proportionate and necessary to include a total of 14 hours in a licence? The general rule, not exceeding 12 hours doesn't apply to ROTL! Why? I was advised that overnight ROTL is to rehabilitate, to provide opportunities for clients to take part in purposeful activity. I was told in no uncertain terms that if my lifer is a high risk of harm, he shouldn't be eligible for ROTL, and if restrictive licence conditions were required, he should not be deemed safe, for any type of release. 

I found this to be an interesting point of view, so described where I was coming from. Parole Board at last oral hearing asked that I provide opportunities for client to demonstrate through ROTL his capacity and willingness to comply with supervision/licence conditions and Mappa and VLU insisting on all manner of restrictions and exclusions! The representative of the MoJ/Noms was clear in his response 'ROTL should not be used to satisfy the requirements of Mappa or the Parole Board or the Governor when assessing risks when approving ROTL? I put the phone down and laughed out loud, what planet are they on? My colleague had no idea, as far as he was concerned, until a prisoner achieved low risk, he should not have access to ROTL, he should not require ANY bespoke licence conditions!

Sorry, I digress, my point is that this GPS sentence is not the panacea being peddled, and as long as there is no joined up thinking in Noms/MoJ, I can only ever see it as the belt to match the braces of existing sentences, which is little more than a money making exercise. If, following the pilots, there is any positive outcomes I will pickle my walnuts!

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Two hours charging time means the technology being used is cheap crap. Offenders already have an excuse to go under the radar, "my battery ran out when I was sleeping". This is why previous pilots failed because offenders have to voluntarily agree to keeping it charged and know they cannot be penalised when it is off unless somebody physically visits their house to check in they're in.

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This is about the government rehashing old news in a bid to earn revenue from tagging. It doesn't work because the technology is not advanced enough and this is common knowledge. A quick google and here is a probation pilot of GPS tagging in 2012 which obviously didn't continue for the same reasons of cost, technology and practicality. 

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Never mind all this. Bigger things are occurring as E3 spreads it's cancerous claws. In our office, PSO's with no experience at all have pinched our caseload. They have had NO training at all and will not have any for months aside from online workbooks. They are out of their depth completely and working with medium risk cases, who were all high risk cases up to very recently. SFO responsibility should this occur, which it almost certainly will, is left ambiguous. Meanwhile we are being flooded with brand new cases from another office. No workload for ARMS assessments or address checks. 

Now extra hidden workload as we have been told we need to oversee and train the PSO staff but the case points go on their workload. We are being expected to mentor them as well. What can we do? Train others to take our roles over eventually. They are trying to kill PO roles in my view over time. No PSR's as all done in Court. No longer supervising cases in prison soon, hardly any new cases aside from online sex Offenders who don't have any chance of completing Programmes. It's all going to hell in a handcart before our eyes. E3 will do for the NPS what TR has done for CRC's.They are planning the demise of Probation Officer's I am sure.

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It's happening in SY, the view from management is let them get on with it and us hard pressed POs don't care anymore. We just do what we can in an impossible situation dictated by Noms. It's dreadful.

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With all responsibility, including, typing, administration, for both NPS and HMP - those damn ROTL 007,008,009, our job to send for and collate responses from VLU and police. Responsible for our own development, which requires a log into Equip every day, at least to soak up new information, and hear of changes in how we do things; in addition, we are being asked to train PSO's and co-work with trainees! I'm good, but I'm not f**king Paul Daniels!

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Refuse to train or mentor PSO staff. This is not in your contract and unless you are a probation trainer it cannot be a "reasonable instruction". Hand them the case file and let them get to work, and if they ask for help tell them to go to their managers.

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'A voice for Conner'. I wish the family success in their fight and will donate to this cause, we all should. And let's be clear about who 'Wales CRC ' are. This is CRC contracted out to Working Links who in turn were bought by another company called Aurelius! They run all CRC's in Wales and South West. BGSW CRC, Devon and Cornwall. A very large area! Despite this appalling situation they are right now ignoring union advice and making sweeping cuts to 40% of staff across the board, experienced managers, PO's and PSO's. losing our most experienced staff will only increase risk of further SFO's. We need to retain experienced staff but WL prefer staff who tow the line, can be manipulated, put up and shut up and this is dangerous for the public.

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Look we know they're dumbing down probation officers. The training is now slimmed down to about 16 months or less and there's no degree or guarantee of a job at the end of it. The CRC is filled with agency temps and the NPS is replacing qualified staff with unqualified PSO's who are either former admin staff or anyone off the street that applied. Everyone does the same work and professional status/qualification means nothing any more.

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The NPS encouraged its admin staff to apply for the PSO jobs because nobody else was applying. The funny thing is that the NPS was designed for the "high risk, MAPPA and dangerous offenders". What a croc of shite because now this work is to be done be untrained admin staff and the qualified probation officers will be transferred elsewhere or made redundant.

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I am sure that I am right in remembering that in the one of the first Home Office inspections after the split (possibly here in Dorset or did I read it elsewhere?) Inspectors queried why PSO' s had been sifted into the NPS when, according to the forward model, there was no role for them as all only cases coming into the NPS were those deemed high risk.

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I currently have an SFO as does my colleague on the same team - NPS. I welcome the review. I have 45 cases with more coming in all the time I am almost 130% in the red WLMT and 3 parole hearings this month. I feel confident that I did everything possible in the case including arguing to keep it a MAPPA case and high risk. Unfortunately, I can't say the same amount of time is going to all cases it feels like a game of roulette.

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You need to focus on managing your cases and less so on your perceived workload. You're no different to anyone. That's the best advice I can give as a manager new to probation.

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That's not advice. It's a sop; something yielded to placate or soothe. As a very experienced Manager, I chose to leave because the plan was to deliver a service that was tokenistic and superficial. The staff recognise this, the managers recognise this. There is nothing left to do but fail. Quarts and pint pots, I am afraid. Workload prioritisation only works when not everything is a priority. When everything is a priority, you simply have too much to do!

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Nothing like a bit of bad publicity ie. Prisons news, to get the government to wake up. So prison officers have been cut by 10,000 and meeting with Truss yesterday results in agreement to recruit 2,000 back! Hmmmm! Impressed by the prison union leader on BBC news this morning. Sticking up for his members. Hopefully more will follow than the paltry 2,000 who will hopefully be frontline staff on the wings and not jobs for civil servants sat at desks!! CRC/NPS need similar outspoken union leaders to get up on the soap-box!

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The current Rehabilitation Revolution is so new, that the governments rhetoric is that CRCs are still bedding in. I'm surprised that no one I've seen speaking about the present crisis has alluded to this. I'm just as surprised that Grayling has hardly been mentioned at all. I've just watched Liz Truss being interviewed on BBC, and thought she looked like a rabbit in the headlights. What I did find very interesting though was her reference many times to the unacceptable level of reoffending rates. The figure given at justice questions this week was said to be 'roughly 30%', Liz Truss this morning spoke of a 'over 50%' reoffending rate. Wonder what they really are, and if that's the next big failing of TR?

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Truss is getting a roasting on radio 4! Increase prison officers by 2,500 but cut staff by 40% in some CRC's including experienced PO/PSO's! It doesn't make sense if the objective is to reduce re-offending does it! We need a joined up system. Now the public know prisons are in crisis they need to know that community rehabilitation services are also in crisis.

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Really? I thought she was let off extremely lightly and was allowed to mouth a lot of sound bites with little or no serious challenge from JH. Extremely short on detail; just lots of sweeping intentions. The only positive thing I heard was the plan to introduce (reintroduce?) Personal Officers for all prisoners. I await this development with interest.

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Liz Truss I'm afraid is clueless. I've just heard her say on Sky news that's it's "ultimately down to the parole board to decide who's fit for release or not". Isn't one of the biggest problems with the CJS whether it's prisons, probation, crime or rehabilitation, the shaping and policies that get developed as solutions to the problems are designed by people who have no experience in those areas, and probably no great interest in those areas either.
It's not really Liz Truss's fault that the whole CJS is on its knees, but nor is she the right person to be charged with sorting it out, especially when she sees the solution to everything as tackling 'drones, phones, and drugs.' They're all problems yes, but focusing just on those issues is like decorating a house and ignoring the fact it's got structural damage.

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Unfortunately no matter what Truss says in her White Paper or in Parliament about how she's going to solve this current crisis, I really doubt anything will actually happen that would actually solve the current disaster. By all means hire more staff but if all you're going to hire is a bunch of clueless 18 yr olds at minimum wage you're not going to get the staff you need to actually bring prisons back into safe running. 

This is an ideal time to completely re imagining what you want the prison estate to be and turn it into something that works like in Holland or Scandinavia. But we're saddled with a completely clueless justice secretary who fixates on unimportant things like cheese and pork rather than the important stuff and a prisons minister clearly out of his depth from his turns in the House. It's the blind leading the really stupid which does not bode at all well. I doubt anything will really change and prisoners will continue to die because the government considers them expendable. Pretty sure prison staff will start dying soon - it's only a matter of time - and then the entire POA will walk out and the system will crumble completely. Truss will still be burbling about drones at that point. Fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind.

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How lucky must Liz Truss feel today? She woke up thinking she had a thousand interviews to do, and then the front pages were taken over by the court ruling on Brexit! But as the old man in the pub says, "Tomorrow never forgets today." The POA are playing hardball, and rightly so, it's a short respite Liz, but you still have to come home with the bacon!

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As was said in response just now on the BBC news, theses officers won't be all in place until 2018. The problem is that salary, terms and conditions have been tampered with and because of the violence in prisons staff are leaving faster than they're being recruited.

The POA are rightly not buying this rubbish. Liz Truss hasn't really got a clue which is why she's trying to grab headlines by talking about 'no fly zones' over prisons. As usual too, no mention of the probation service even though this is key to rehabilitation, resettlement and reducing reoffending.

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No-fly zones for drones is headline-grabbing but distracting: though drones are highly-publicised as a source of illegal contraband they are dwarfed by that smuggled in by corrupt prison officers. But in view of the need to recruit staff, the drones get all the blame.

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Napo should comment about the rush to put 60% of POs into prisons (to be expensive clerks to do the Oasys that prison staff find themselves too busy to complete) until the new staff are in post and the powder kegs that are currently prisons have settled down.....prisoner released this week relates horror stories about current lack of respect for officers and bullying is rife...not an environment that I want to be shafted into.

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So how are NPS supposed to cope if 60% of their staff end up in prisons? Who will manage community sentences for high risk offenders? Oh I forgot, newly recruited PSO's!

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What the hell is going on in London CRC? A transfer-in case and the person supposedly managing the case called herself a 'responsible officer' and was unable to tell me what level of risk the offender was! She said she was 'not trained to assess risk'! We could refuse to accept cases where there is not an adequate risk assessment. For ***** sake Noms/MoJ, why are you continuing to allow this shambolic mess? Sort it out before we go the same way as the prisons and please get more properly trained staff. You are not selling potatoes here, we work with people and need professionals not call centre workers!

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They are in special measures after miserably failing the inspection. Not sure what the so called measures are but hopefully it may include getting rid of private company and putting in place proper management who know what they are doing!

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So, after her tawdry effort to revolutionise the prisons system & impose no fly zones for drones we have Justice Secretary & Lord Chancellor Truss who is happy to sit back in silence (dreaming of past good times when she was opening up new pork markets?) allowing the judiciary be vilified by the gutter press & the privatised probation services to disappear up their own business model.

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WL clearly regard the dispute with the unions and referral to ACAS as a sideshow that will have no influence on their plans. They are not interested in a collective agreement and if individuals are applying for exit packages, it would seem staff are marching to the WL music, not the unions. It's a replay of the Sodexo approach which also sidelined the unions, ably assisted by the union membership.

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Staff not marching to WL music. Most totally disillusioned and consider that things will be so dire soon that the VS money is worth going out on, rather than wait to see how it pans out with the union negotiations. It's down to the individuals decision around their self preservation. Good luck to all those who leave, and particularly for those who stay.

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It is each to their own! No one looking out for us so just have to get on with it and follow our instincts!

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If staff were marching to WL's music they would be staying, having listened to all the corporate horse shit about "changing a million lives" and claims that the all-singing, all-dancing new operating model will transform probation work as we know it. Given that we can all see through the lies, and have barely even seen any details of the operating model beyond the rehashed tiering model that is the BRAG system, the majority of staff know it can't possibly work, and realise that getting out now is the safest option.

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It's not over till the fat lady sings. ACAS talks not over yet so BGSW and DDC staff can still afford to wait before making final decision on VS. Why let WL shaft you.

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The union leadership in these situations is undermined by its members. There is no discipline, no solidarity. If staff are in unions they should follow union advice and not go their own sweet way, because by doing so they undermine their union and undermine those other members who seek to hold a union line. Whether it's crossing picket lines or applying for offers, this individual behaviour betrays the collective.

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Sit tight, don't go for voluntary severance. Better wait for WL to be pushed to their limits. They have no consideration for our legacy - don't walk to their tune. Stand up for yourself, ask questions ....... I'm standing firm for so long as I'm here, they have to pay me. Can't get any worse, so sticking it out til ACAS + Unions do their work.

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Yes stick it out as we can ask for our money they want my future they can F****** pay for it. I earned my career from hard work and several years study and poverty. They may see hundreds apply but no one with sense will take the penny when we are owed a pound and they have to go to bank or government with the keys Pay up Sharks.