Pick of the Week 32

If something looks like it's going to crash at mid-flight point the normal response is to look at contingency or change direction options to avoid the crash. Has MoJ considered any other options?

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As well as incompetence, is there not a large element of fear of being challenged? A big person to be respected would be one who could admit that they had misunderstood the situation and were doing xxx to put it right. That would be a person to respect.

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I have worked for different organisations on the probation side and I can confirm a lack of business competence as well as a total lack of awareness of the value or work that Probation does. There seems to be an assumption that their all civil servants who operate using the stereotypical assumed working practices of civil servants resulting in a lack of respect for CRC staff. I was shocked by the attitudes of the people working either in parent organisations or HMPPS/NOMS/MoJ.

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It had its flaws but it wasn't broken; yet 'they' decided it needed fixing & made untold £millions of public funds & numerous civil service staff available to design & expedite 'their' version of change within months. Now its utterly fucked; yet 'they' won't admit it's broken, let alone consider repairing it. 'They' = Right-wing Tories, supporters, collaborators & enablers. 'It' = INSERT AS APPROPRIATE e.g. probation, NHS, brexit...

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Whilst the staff shafted to the CRC's are working in deplorable conditions stressed to F"""k without any support and with the prospect of losing our jobs at a drop of a target being missed. Forgot to add and those that suffer from disabilities are ignored, and the only passport they will get is one to leave. No protective characteristics/DDA applies to anyone. No basic employment rights are applied, just supplied with a toilet if you are lucky to work from an office.

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I thought we had moved on from Social Darwinism and its promotion of doctrines of laissez faire, survival of the fittest and imperialism. The only doctrine missing was eugenics, though he makes a passing reference to the futility of wasting resources on the 'less able'. The comparisons between the natural world and public policy mutations are fallacious. Never mind the laws of the natural world, if market forces had been allowed to prevail, the banking system would have gone bust in 2008 but for the divine intervention of the taxpayers. All this Meur's verbiage is ideologically driven: reactionary in tooth and claw.

He may not see much role for a strong state, but the public do when it comes to good public services that are focused around meeting social needs, not profits. Given his love of social experimentation and unhindered evolution, isn't it remarkable that TR wasn't trialled and piloted to see if the models would work in the real world. No, it was imposed by a politician in a hurry, who ignored the advice of all the experts. 

TR was the latest pay-off to the shadow state that represents the interests of the private sector as it gobbles up public money because of the ideological obsession with shrinking the democratic state. Muer bangs on about accountability and allowing old structures to mutate, but he is light on transparency, so that we now have billions of public money being handed to private companies who are exempt from Freedom of Information laws. How can the public make informed decisions when they are kept in the dark, save the occasional undercover investigation that exposes abuses and mismanagement? I don't know what the equivalent is for commercial confidentially in the natural world. Muer, as far as I am concerned, is flogging snake oil.

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What reductionist nonsense! Where does political power fit into his schema? Did trade unions naturally evolve, or were they a collective response to social inequalities maintained by a so-called natural order that sought to preserve elite privilege? It's perhaps unsurprising that the phrase 'survival of the fittest' was coined by an economist which means something quite different to Darwin's theory of natural selection. But I can see how it suits Muer's purpose to reduce everything down to individuals and competition. He wants to have us believe that social realities are the outcome of natural laws, that what now prevails is superior in evolutionary terms to what went before. As there was no such thing as society it logically followed that an individual poll tax was the evolutionary answer! It turned out there was such a thing as society and it revolted. In truth social reality reflects political choices – and always will because human beings have the power that no other animal possesses; the power to shape the world – for good or ill.

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Only if those human beings "are aware of a policy" - however, in Muer's academically sesquipedalian world, the human beings conveniently remain as stooopid as the self-declared 'elite' like to imagine they "usually" are...

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The UK has become such a parody of itself that I'd rather sit alone with a pot of live yoghurt, some kleenex (I have a cold) & a VHS movie. Nothing I say, do or believe in has any relevance to the modern world of money, power, greed, deception & over-stimulation. Nothing is left to the imagination. I'm perfectly happy with 625 lines, 50Hz, VHS & some hardback books.

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'Going Underground' is a must see, hard to believe that Working Links ever allowed this use of public libraries to interview offenders in west country. You would think even one member of their management or CRC management with half a brain cell would have foreseen this bringing them into disrepute. Just shows how out of touch they are. ' Should do better' is a massive understatement. Surprised no one has taken them to court yet.

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Ian’s most at home showboating and tub thumping because it is simple and no one asks difficult questions but what is really needed at the helm is some understanding, guile and strategy. Employers fear someone who comes back at them speaking their language not 1970s trade union cliches and by performing competently in front of the cameras and who backs up any points and arguments with damning facts and figures.

Whenever I’ve witnessed him at a formal meeting such as the NEC he has been fiddling around with his laptop or tablet and clearly finds everything tedious or perhaps it is all going over his head. He gave his first re-election campaign speech at the AGM that was not exactly inspiring in front of the home crowd. 

For goodness sake, Napo should be forging alliances and making joint statements with those who represent the Magistrates, Police and Prison Governors and Prison Staff not cosying up to the RMT (fine people though they are) who will put off moderates across the political spectrum. We should be at the same events as The Howard League and all the other non governmental criminal justice organisations who have cross party support. We need to have a presence in Parliament on both sides of the house advising and influencing or we are sunk.

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RT and Sputnik are beyond the reach of UK government spin doctors, and for me that is their main attraction -- I can read/watch news and opinions that my own government would prefer not to be broadcast. Yes, it's Russian government propaganda, but they are totally blatant about it so actually that makes it harmless. If you have something to publicise that is embarrassing to the UK government then RT might be your best hope of getting the story out there. It's not the first time they have broadcast about TR and the outcome.

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The statement that the RRP is closing "all of the probation offices in the Black Country with the exception of Wolverhampton" is not quite correct. Under this definition of the "Black Country" there are 4 RRP offices all of which are shared with the NPS. The Dudley Office (Hope House) will currently remain a shared site and the only change may be a slight increase in the number of RRP staff. The other 3 offices (Walsall, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton) will remain open as NPS offices and the RRP staff will be moving out of all of them (yes, including Wolverhampton) and moving to a new combined Wolverhampton office. I think facilities at the new office are a considerable improvement but the criticism of extra travelling for both staff and clients is very true and a considerable disincentive.

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Recent (paraphrased) irony-free account given to me (paid off after 24 years) by a PO I trained (about 5 years ago) in a supermarket aisle: "I just love this agency contract work. 4-day week; time limited in any one location; premium rates; dip-in, dip-out; expenses to cover living & travel costs during the week; long weekend at home or on a Euro city-break before another week *somewhere*."

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Email received from an agency, my name removed. "Good afternoon ****, I hope you're well and had a good weekend. I wanted to get in touch with you as we've been approached to provide people to complete OASys assessments. The reports are a mix of Layer 1 and 3 so I wanted to see what sort of pay you'd be looking for for this sort of role, whether it be pay per report or per hour. Please let me know."

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I was listening to the new Lord Chief Justice on the radio today, commenting that if the population loses confidence in its judiciary, law and order is threatened. I think we can extend that to the entire criminal justice system.

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It's what you get when the public service ethic gets lost in the privatisation of services, not to mention the loss of experience and motivation to do a good job for its own sake. The criminal justice system is being degraded.

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G4S are so passionate about child detention that they've had Medway taken off them & they've been trying to sell the Oakhill contract since Feb'16, but no-one is daft enough to want to inherit another G4S disaster. They'd rather have it taken off them as well, which doesn't bode well for the children incarcerated at Oakhill.

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When persistent and poor performance and reputational damage are no obstacle to being awarded multimillion pound contracts there is no incentive in getting things right. G4S and Co don't have to do things right, nor do they even have to pretend to anymore, the next contract is only around the corner.

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I dread to think what will happen when these contracts are tendered again. Imagine the stress and change that staff will have to undergo again. Imagine the flux and disruption through the wider system. I would love some fearless politicians and thinktankers who dreamt up this concoction to stand up, be accountable, and say this was my idea or I thought this was a good idea and I stand in front of you all now to explain why I am still minded to think so. Yeah, right, dream on. At most we'll get the party line, the sound bite, delivered across benches in the game called politics.

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It cannot hold together for much longer at Working Links. Despite the valiant efforts of staff who are still grafting away, it is like a seriously leaking boat. You bail out but it keeps flooding in and sinking. Soon staff will tire and collapse, like Roman slaves in a galleon, the masters keep whipping us but sooner or later we will collapse and be thrown overboard unless we escape. Christmas period will probably be the tipping point as the few staff around will be unable to manage, that and more staff handing in notice, looking for other jobs, going off with work-related stress due to the complete lack of any health and safety standards. Zero acknowledgement from anyone above SPO level that there is a catastrophe looming. No recognition, no one bothering to check on staff welfare. Offenders rightly complaining about their constant move from one OM to another, chaotic supervision, changes of office and distance to travel. Meanwhile they are ground down by benefit changes and sofa surfing due to housing crisis.

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Clarke's reference to 'exotic sentences' sounds like IPPs, which suggests it was another of The Sun's ideas that did find favour with New Labour. It's also been rumoured that Gove is in the cabinet on Nurdoch's insistence. Aside from the yellow journalism of Murdoch, it's no surprise that money buys influence – it's why there is a lobbying industry. It's why Rolls Royce paid backhanders to win contracts and BAE was mired in a serious fraud inquiry over the Al-Yamamah deal with the Saudis until it was stopped on national security grounds by Blair.

There is tendency to assume that some politicians impose policies and laws – in the face of all reasonable evidence – for ideological reasons. But maybe the explanations lie in other motives. The growth of the private sector in the delivery of public services does mean that willing politicians win new friends and offers of consultancies when they leave office. G4S and A4E employed two former New Labour home secretaries, Reid and Blunkett.

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The most shocking thing about Ken Clarkes revelation is that it's not really shocking at all. We all know the power of the press and powerful corporations. In a world where we have fake news and alternative facts, a reality TV star as leader of the 'free world' who governs from a twitter account, and the butchers and greengrocers on our high street replaced by bookmakers and payday lenders, no one can really be surprised at the grip corporations have on government. It's how far it goes is the real concern. Will the UK become Orwells airstrip one after Brexit? Will we have a choice between 'I'm a celebrity' and the 'running man' for Saturday night TV? An even bigger concern is how do you disentangle it all when you can never be sure where the tail ends and the head begins? Orwell and the dystopian movies of the 80s seem more and more fact then fiction.

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I've been reliably informed this week that within CGM Interswerve that anyone who undertakes the Pquip qualification will no longer be seconded to NPS for high risk offender training - that didn't last long did it? - again more corner cutting in reduction of quality staff training.

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Staff on Pquip have also been asked to sign a contract, with terms on it such as if you fail you have to pay back 4K, they will also not have the freedom of movement to the NPS. They were asked to sign these contracts 6 months after starting, it's now in a solicitors hands, they've been told not to sign. How can you sign a contract so many months in, they should have been given that choice at the beginning of the course and then they could have decided to continue or not. INTERSWEREVE are just disgusting, I also note Ian Mullholland has cancelled his meetings with staff until next year. Probably because he has no plan other than to make everyone redundant.

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Well, at least now we all know how much our overlords think we're worth! Ironically it's exactly the same amount as how much I now care about this job.

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It's also going to be interesting to hear what their plans are once they close the PSC in Fareham and who's going to deal with all the programme scheduling since they got rid of all the experienced staff in the district's in order to open the PSC's - its all been very quiet on that front!

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Working Links have definitely bitten off more than they can chew. They are currently dealing with a larger than average number of SFO's. The fact that they have cut staff down to the bone should act as a wake up call you would hope! They need qualified and experienced staff to deal with the medium risk domestic violence cases and manage risk. PO's need to be able to devote more time to these unpredictable people. Middle managers are spread over multiple office bases to save more money. Supervision thin on the ground and certain managers have zero experience and brought in to manage targets by sending snotty e mails on a regular basis to harassed staff. 

Let us not forget 300 plus women die each year in UK at the hands of an abusive partner or ex partner. Latest SFO. I wonder how many cases the OM had? Was he or she a PO or PSO? If caseload was over what it should be, then Working Links should be faced with serious questions. They should be taken to court and asked to justify how they can safely manage all these DV cases when they have cut maingrade staff by over 50%. Too many for remaining PO's so PSO's increasingly carrying multiple DV cases also. Utterly disgraceful and beyond contempt when lives could have been saved over the last 3 years in Wales and South West. The most uncaring organisation.I have ever heard of. 

NAPO will need to give their members some massive support in WL because from what I hear the few staff left are in dire straights. Many have left or in process of leaving and more will surely follow unless CRC's go back to public ownership or are taken over by someone who actually knows what they are doing and gives a damn. Managers who sit back and ignore the situation will ultimately pay the price, whether that be their reputation or job or both. They should be sticking up for their staff and grow a backbone.

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"The cash-strapped contractors". Can't quite believe they are cash strapped. No one knows presumably how much or little money they have made from our taxes. Chances are they're not cash strapped,  just not raking it in quite to the extent they had hoped for. FOI requests would not be able to reach as far as the private contractors' balance sheets would they?

This assertion that my CRC employer is cash strapped, no one seems to question it, not even a critically analytical investigative journalist from the Economist, seemingly. The assertion is definitely a well worn one in our team meetings here in London CRC. No money to cover long term sick leave, working "under capacity" is a favourite phrase, no money to employ admin staff, site management staff. I'm sure they would have us all on an office cleaning rota if they thought they could get away with it. £2000 penalty for every case that is not "released" on delius on the day of actual release. If it slips your mind to do that on the day, feel guilty. You are costing the company money. Cash strapped? I don't believe it. Mean, secretive, exploitative? That's more likely.

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Here in CGM we feel your pain - recently been told if we don't meet our SL10 targets (UPW) we could end up in competency regardless of the fact that in some clusters the UPW managers are useless and offenders constantly get sent home as there are no supervisors! How do these companies say they're cash strapped when we now manage more offenders on Adult ORA PSS custody cases than we ever have.

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Most UPW Supervisors are on zero hour contracts now. CRC's cannot afford to offer contracts so haven't enough contracted staff to run the units. Another result of cost cutting. Most UPW Managers are being told to get paid projects at all costs, Magistrates have lost confidence in UPW, how much time left for Community Payback in this environment?

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I'm glad the mags and judges have lost confidence in UPW, though not enough of them have and those that have have been an awful long time about it. Are sentencers still stuck because of the need to provide a punishment as part of their sentencing? In our CRC we still get people put on UPW who have so many other probs that they could not possibly be expected to comply. The judiciary should take the PSR authors by the hand and visit some sites. They should interview staff and service users and evaluate what they see. Then they should refuse to sentence to UPW until the projects are funded adequately, the staff are remunerated properly under decent employment circs and the work is meaningful. Common y'all. Let's each of us take some responsibility for the resistance required.

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WTF! They are exempt? That is ridiculous. So WL could be selling CTC estates and pocketing the cash or claiming money for completion of BBR programmes when they have not been completed or are compromised because they are being delivered by only 1 member of staff as opposed to 2 and we can't even get an answer? Oh sorry, just realised one of these statements is actually true! Freedom of information by someone in the know.

Q. Are working links staff having to interview offenders in front of public/ children/ anyone who wants to listen in?
A. Yes they are. At more than 1 location.
Q. Have Working Links lost so many staff over past 2 years of their own making, in order to save money and maximise their profits for shareholders that the service is now unsafe and putting public at risk?
A. Yes. All true.
Q. Have SFO's increased since privatisation?
A. Yes. Need I say more.