Pick Of The Week 26

This government systematically and swiftly wreck a proud and effective public service. We who fought it, are told to "get over it and move on", as we are clearly not coping with change and progress. Think of it as a bereavement process, they say, Yup, got that thank you, you patronising bastards. Denial, anger, depression, coping, recovery. Trouble is, on an almost daily basis the Government, the MoJ, the CRC owners, rarely miss an opportunity to insult their staff at every level, and pour salt in the wound. This takes the biscuit. It is not good for our health. 

Under the headline: overpaid suit gets paid bonus despite poor results (hardly news really) is the little issue of decision-making, leadership, choices. The inference is made that because Spurr had hit an efficiency target, there was little choice but pay him a bonus. Lower down there is an account of the MoJ making payments to staff against the rules, and this remaining in place. Despite my daily experience in NPS of there being apparently no scope for anyone at any level to make any choices or decisions, somebody somewhere chose to increase payments to prison staff. Someone, Richard Heaton?, chose to reward Spurr, and Spurr chose to accept it.

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Frances Crook is right. Everyone else is held to account for failure, why aren't ministers? Indeed, that's actually where the buck should stop. Grayling was put in charge of the Justice system with a record of creating chaos whilst employment minister. After creating the total destruction of the CJS, not just Prison and Probation, but courts, legal aid, judicial review, employment tribunals, and many many other areas, he's moved on to Transport. Predictably, he's causing chaos there. Dodgy deals, requesting to address Parliament at 10pm on HS2, and again in the news today with the whole of the North of England disgusted and outraged with his decision to cancel electrification of railways, but plough ahead with his vanity projects for London.

He has the most appalling record and the most skewed moral compass of any minister to ever sit in office. And I've deliberately not mentioned his expenses. But that said, the disastrous changes he inflicted on the Justice system were voted in by the rest of the Tories, and some collective responsibility should be shouldered by them all. I am continually amazed and outraged that government are not being held to account for what I believe is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis in our prisons. 

HMP Hewell and Aylesbury have hit the headlines this week, but the MoJ are getting very good at suppressing news. Askham Grange, a woman's open prison also saw a major disturbance last week. Today HMP Bristol, and Holme House are headlined with staff poisoned by spice and dozens having to go off sick or hospital. That 5 1/2k of drugs were found in one place within the prison is almost anecdotal. 

Probation has also been destroyed, and I think it may be helpful to revisit Hansard and remind everyone of the retrofit that was being peddled at the time, and compare it with the actuality of the current state of the service. "it's not good enough to release prisoners with only £46 in their pocket" they argued, but that's really all you do get now, except your liability for court costs which puts you further in debt then your £46 starting point. No mentors? No housing? No assistance with addiction services because they don't want to touch you if you're on licence, and a merry go round of useless appointments so everyone can skim a few quid off whatever particular pot they happen to be feeding from. 

And salt in the wounds! The same private company that's managing your supervision and resettlement needs, are dealing with your benefit claim with a totally different remit and focus to what's wanted from the other side of the company. It's all f***ed, and the architects need to be made more accountable, and Grayling should be the first in the dock!

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It's only a question of time before a prison officer is killed. What will be the governments response? Lessons learned, more to do, difficult times and we take these instances very seriously.

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Leaves a lump in my throat when I read of the MoJ's concern for 'hard-working staff'. ('Hard-working' is such a favoured political phrase to describe those who are under-rewarded). The MoJ will be tough on rioters as if these outbreaks of disorder can be deterred without dealing with the well-established underlying causes. Pity that bonuses are not linked to good order and discipline.

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The story will also out that Working Links are going under. When even their employability staff and of course previous director are abandoning ship that is a clue to what is coming. It cannot go on. Napo know it and CRC managers know it. There is nothing left. The MOJ have failed miserably and too ashamed to admit it. We are leaderless in the Working Links Wales and SW empire, have been for some time now. Only a few cockroaches scuttling about and eating the last remaining detritus. 

Our service users are similarly afflicted. Benefits pulled, mental health services down the drain, GP's refuse to see them, housing non existent, dead end exploitation for jobs...what a wonderful society this government have created when men choose to re-offend and go to prison rather than try to cope, homeless and destitute on the outside. No wonder crime rates are escalating when corrupt companies like Working Links are left holding some of the most vulnerable yet also risky individuals in the country. I don't know what the alternative is if we cannot re-unite as Napo have pointed out, but one day those of us at Working Links will arrive at work to find that Working Links have basically either folded completely or run off and left us to our fate. So we better get our heads together and figure out how the hell we are going to manage and who is going to oversee the mess and try to put it right.

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I'm always cheered up by the term "leaderless", it makes me think we can now finally get down to business. No one standing in our way trying to trip us up with their irrelevant distractions . But yes, we do want to get paid.

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That article made me laugh. Sadly if the Swindon Advertiser swallow their crap it is because they are not exactly investigative journalists! Working Links basically speak with forked tongue. They have zero integrity and remind me of those sad little vermin sales people who repeat their stock phrases and actually think we are fooled. They are repulsive hook-worms feeding on a starved intestine. When the last bit of food disappears out of the CRC arsehole they will shed away and be expelled and look for another host to parasitise! Vile, the lot of them.

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I'm just worn out with it all. I surely cannot be the only one left in this boat can I? I have invested into this career path for 15 years now and have never seen it so bad. I am sick to the back teeth of political spin when all I want to do is help those that have offended in my community move on to better things - that is it. Somewhere this has all been lost in the corporate world we live in now where money means more. I'm desperate to leave, but I don't even have the energy to apply for new jobs as am so worn out dealing with politics, negativity with offenders and managers towing the party line. It's not what I joined for.

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The Troubled Families Programme was we are told 100% successful. With no Troubled Families anymore and a record number of people in good stable employment, then crime must surely be falling, meaning fewer people being processed through the courts, a falling prison population, and fewer being made subject to probation orders and supervision. With record numbers of affordable housing being built, the number of homeless people are also far fewer. 

Where did it all go wrong? It all goes wrong when the politicians can't be truthful about the reality and spin everything for political advantage or ideological gain. It all goes wrong when the wealth of the nation is only measured in fiscal terms, and your ability to have a voice is more dependent on your bank balance then your right to free speech. Even last night Tornado Squads were sent to HMP Hewel to quell a disturbance. The prison service say that 'a small number of inmates were involved in causing trouble and the situation is now resolved'. But how serious was the disturbance really? It warranted the use of distraction grenades to bring it to an end! It all goes wrong when you cannot only not believe the rhetoric but you can't even believe the official data anymore.

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Recent media and social media has a nostalgic edge, as posts and articles from three odd years ago, saying TR consequences would be crap, pop up between articles and inspection reports showing that they really are. Justice Select Committee have done hand-wringing but failed to publish an even superficial review. Unions - depleted in membership and clout - are working hard on damage limitation with staff pay and conditions. There isn't a real debate yet about what to propose next. I doubt that there would ever be much by way of acknowledgement of the catastrophe, or a willingness to change direction, from the current government, although there is room for manoeuvre now given their lack of majority. So I am interested in where we could go from here, what we should be proposing, and who we should be pressing the argument with.

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When I joined this organisation over 10 years ago, I didn't sign up to being a political pawn. I genuinely wanted to steer vulnerable people away from offending behaviour for the good and benefit of my local community. Since joining this shower, I have continuously been pawned off the back of what is now more than ever political spin. I have been witness to offenders now being subjected to nothing more then the fat cats that is the private sector. I'm off from this shower, not what I signed up for and when I am gone, I will make it a life goal to expose this Government for what it is. Absolutely disgusted with how money and capitalisation / corporate greed comes before meeting the needs of vulnerable offenders who 9 times out of 10 have been dealt a bad hand in life. Shocking. Absolutely shocking that it has all come to this.

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The question is not "where did it go wrong" but "what do we need to do to make it right".
It's all gone so drastically wrong that's it's insulting to all to even try and put spin on it.
Forget the blame game and trying to point the finger at who's responsible for the mess. That's just a matter of opinion in the end. What can't be argued is that everything really is a mess, and urgent action to clean up the mess is needed. The condition of the CJS is not just a crisis, it's become a national disaster. It's disgraceful and dangerous. No argument, no blame, just urgent action.

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"The decision to announce the closure was taken in the context of prison population projections which indicated a fall this year. But instead of the decrease the population has increased significantly within the last two months, at the beginning of May the population was 85,129 but by the middle of this month, that number had increased to 85,994."

It's been said that CRCs have been reluctant to breach people because of fear of losing money because of the way they are paid. If that payment mechanism is altered (and I think it may have recently been changed), would that make CRCs more comfortable in instigating breach because they won't lose money? I'm just very curious as to why a predicted decline in prison population should actually turn out to be a significant increase. Could a change in payment mechanism for CRCs increase the pressure on the prison service?

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You ask a good question that no-one seems to want to answer. The original blog post ended with three conflicting arguments about breach, i.e. the CRCs are deliberately refusing to breach, the NPS is frustrating their efforts, and the CRCs are not doing anything to prevent breaches:

"...there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that breaches are less likely to be enforced as a result of TR. It has been suggested to us that the way in which the contracts for CRCs have been designed has created perverse incentives to disengage with an offender if the breach process is triggered. Once an offender breaches their conditions, the MoJ issues a financial penalty on the CRC, as an offender is only eligible for PbR the first time they commence an eligible sentence, meaning that those who breach their sentence are no longer eligible for payment, regardless of the support the CRC may have already provided.

HM Inspectorate of Probation has found variability in enforcement processes across the CRCs, with some experiencing high rejection rates from the NPS for their breach recommendations. HMIP found that many recommendations were returned because of minor spelling and grammatical errors, and the NAO also identified an “inherent risk that offender managers may avoid ‘breaching’ offenders where this would affect CRC performance against targets for successful completion of orders if the court order is subsequently revoked”. A recent Justice Inspectorate report followed these earlier warnings, and stated “we were disappointed to find, in a third of cases where the individual was breached, insufficient effort was made by the CRC responsible officer to re-engage them and encourage their commitment to continued engagement”.

Then there's 12 months' post-sentence supervision, a ticket to ride the magic roundabout of eternal custody. That alone will have increased prison numbers significantly, making it easy for folks to nip in & out of prison on short sentences - couriers for drugs, weapons, 'phones; respite from loneliness, homelessness & hunger; or simply shelter for those with "untreatable" mental illnesses (e.g. personality disorders that community mental health teams won't touch).

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There have been reports of staff being ordered to put entries on ndelius to indicate OASys assessments completed when they are not to 'meet targets' and avoid loss of capital. Please think carefully before you collude with this. All your assessments and records are classed as legal documents and can be scrutinised by inspectors or MoJ as well as in the case of an SFO. If you lie about the date you could be held to account, disciplined or even charged! Please report any such requests immediately to your union rep and include any written request. It appears that some such requests are coming from ACO level which is truly shocking as they are putting their staffs integrity and character at risk.

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A blog of shame for the Ministry of Whateveritscalledthisweek. I, too, left and am having a decent enough time despite losing about £6K and 10 annual leave days a year. What I find distressing is that the conversations I have with colleagues still in Probation are generally taking the form of: 'it's really s***. I only have two years to go until I can retire so I think I can stick it out until then'.

During the 25 years I was with Probation, I was motivated and enthused by what we were doing and fully engaged in the industry surrounding community sentencing, offenders, courts etc etc. Now all I hear about is dissatisfaction, anger, frustration, lies, deception, corporate bullying, threats, misdirection, offenders being fobbed off with dumb initiatives like phone or SKYPE interviews, unqualified staff working with high risk offenders with poor supervision (I know of one sex offender specialist who has had ONE supervision session in nearly two YEARS). Unqualified people are now working with offenders who I was not allowed anywhere near until I had been qualified for a year. It's just a sad, sad thing to watch the ship I cruised the world in being run onto the rocks and left to rust and decay. Grayling's shame.

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I left around ten years ago. Done a few jobs since in police, local authorities now work for a regulator (I enjoy doing different things). I have to say though when I worked in Probation there were some incredible practitioners who were absolutely inspirational (mean that genuinely). Something I have not found anywhere else so would agree about missing the colleagues. The service did not realise the quality of some of the people it had. Was a tragedy and should never have been allowed to happen.

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Bob Neill chair of the justice select committee wrote in the Times the other day that urgent work is need to be done on legal aid, prison and probation. He expressed concern that the select committee was not yet operational, and with only 2 weeks between Parliament reforming and the conference season beginning it was unlikely that the issues needing addressing were unlikely to get the urgent attention required. It seems that the government are putting so much resources into suppressing information about the chaos in the criminal justice system, it hasn't the time to actually deal with the problems.

In today's Independent, there's a long article which claims Michael Gove was right, we need to stop sending people to prison that don't really pose a risk to society, and more community based sentences should be imposed, particularly for non violent offenders. I agree with that approach. Prison is the cause, and not the solution to many of problems within the world of criminal justice.

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Think about your working day. Of all the actions you take or tasks you complete, haw many can you truly say were rehabilitative? What proportion of your day did those actions and tasks take up? WTF are we actually doing every day?

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This must have the hallmarks of corruption written all over it. It is so obvious now, surely evidence presented which is what we have all said from the very beginning of this shambles is happening. What makes it worse is that more money is being thrown the privateers way. Surely, living in a democracy, this can be pursued.

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If the MoJ are prepared to throw more money at the CRCs when they're not delivering things like TTG, I'm wondering what will be demanded when the TR contracts come up for renewal?

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Similar to this scandal is the farce that is E3 agenda which is trying to shoehorn 60% of POs into the currently unsafe and dangerous prison estate. The stated aim is to make things better for prisoners, yet prison officers see us as a bunch of well paid admin designed to free up uniformed staff to get back on the wings. Despite the empty promises that no one is going to be directed into a prison, one ACE in the North has already suggested that 'operational need', will see a % of POs directed.....what's the betting Napo reps are amongst the first tranche....the CRCs have been royally shafted and the NPS is next...why else the fever pitch recruitment of PSOs? Keep a look for a regrading exercise in the near future so that previously High risk cases magically become medium risk overnight and so on...not sure what the answer is but would like to see Napo push a unification agenda as a starting point.

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The emphasis on High ROSH being only cases POs should work with has long been a bug-bear of mine; complexity of need/concerns is more often what characterises most of my NPS caseload which does not always correlate with imminence of sig risk to others because of the safeguards established - one of which is PO supervision.I have concerns too re hoisting of staff into prison.

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Has anyone benefited from the TR debacle?

- Antonia Romeo is a British civil servant. She is currently the Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Trade. She was recently British Consul-General in New York at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

- Dame Ursula Brennan - In 2012 she moved to run the Ministry of Justice, with responsibility for running the courts, tribunals and prisons in England and Wales, the administration of legal aid, probation and youth justice, and policy on human rights and data protection. Ursula retired from the Civil Service in 2015 and is a trustee of the National Theatre. She has an Honorary Doctorate from Kent and was made a DCB in the New Year’s Honours 2013.

The McDowells (ex-Probation Inspector & his Sodexo wife), the Bennetts (ex-CEO of KSS CRC & his CRC-monitor wife); & the Numb Grayling himself who appears to be made of magic teflon which doesn't allow ANY shit to stick, regardless of how much he generates. Also...

- The boss of private security firm G4S (Ashley Almanza) received a record £4.8m in pay and bonuses over the last year despite the firm being embroiled a string of scandals.

- Senior managers at a privately run children’s jail received bonuses this year despite the prison being taken out of their hands following allegations of abuse. The managers received performance-related pay awards in April, weeks after the chief inspector of prisons said that “managerial oversight failed to protect young people from harm at the jail”.

Meanwhile Spurr, Allars & friends continue to enjoy the fruits of corrupt self-serving government policy. The bonuses have been a feature during times of austerity. This from 2011:

- "I just thought you would all like to know that in the NOMS Report/Accounts 2010/2011 while we were all getting a pay freeze and effective pay cut. The NOMS Board were getting bonuses of £5000-15000"

And from Jan 2016:
- "a higher percentage of Ministry of Justice staff received bonuses last year compared with the year before – and the average size of bonuses was also up, according to figures released today."

So it looks like the Noms brigade have been pocketing large bonuses - potentially 6x £20k for Spurr alone - throughout the TR shitstorm whilst refusing pay reform for main grade staff.

Welcome to Tory Britain.

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354 deaths in prison, up 38%
119 self-inflicted deaths up 32%
37,784 incidents of self harm, up 23%
18,510 recorded prisoner on prisoner assaults, up 28%
6,430 assaults on staff, up 40%.

Should be prosecution not bonuses.

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The smoking ban worries me a lot as I don't think the unforeseen consequences that it will bring have really been considered if at all. Tobacco is the main currency in every prison in the land. What happens to the economy when the currency is removed? There will still be drugs, there will still be prisoners that want drugs. But no tobacco means alternative ways of payment will have to be found. More pressure on family, friends and visitors? 

There's always been ways of finding a bit of tobacco to make yourself self sufficient in prison, a bit of extra kit from the stores, a bit of extra snap from the kitchens etc etc. The removal of the standard currency hands the drug barons significantly more power, if not all the power, and that can't be a good thing. 

80% of prisoners smoke. I'm a long term smoker myself, and as anyone who's ever quit the habit, or taken a break from the evil weed will know, you feel more lively and energetic. Why would the authorities want to energise 80% more of the prison population when there's nowhere for that new found energy to be channelled into? I'd predict a significant raise in violence in the near future. 

And punishment will also be significantly changed. A couple of days in the 'block' always a deterrent for bad behaviour. Loss of gym, loss of association, and no smoking. But if you're not getting the gym and association anyway, and now smoking loss won't be a deterrent, I'd argue that being in the block is the most desirable place to be. No queueing in volatile locations such as dinner queues and kit exchange queues, doctor and governor at your door every day checking you're OK? The block has become the new penthouse within the prison system. It's not just the flash violence the introduction of the smoking ban will inevitably bring the MoJ need to worry about, there will also be much more longer term consequences attached that they should consider.