In addition to the introduction, I've selected the whole of 'Section 4 Reaction to the reforms' and 'Section 5 Government position', which pretty much brings us bang up-to-date. A long read, especially on a smart phone, but important to bring it to people's attention and absolutely vital in helping to understand the whole bloody mess that is TR:-
Contracting out of probation services
This briefing paper charts the implementation of controversial reforms to the probation service. Most offenders are now supervised by Community Rehabilitation Companies, which are primarily led by private companies. A new public sector National Probation Service manages high risk offenders. So what's the verdict so far? Jump to full report >>
This briefing paper charts the progress of recent reforms to probation services in England and Wales. It also brings together some of the commentary.
Background
In the 2010 Coalition agreement, the Government said it would introduce a “rehabilitation revolution that will pay independent providers to reduce reoffending”. On 9 May 2013, the MoJ published Transforming Rehabilitation: A Strategy for Reform, announcing its plans to invite providers from the voluntary and private sectors to bid for rehabilitation services.
One of the main new changes was splitting the probation service in two, with the public sector managing high risk offenders and providing services to the courts, and the new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC) managing low and medium risk offenders. In September 2013, the MoJ invited bids to run 21 CRCs across England and Wales, worth a combined £450 million. The list of new owners of CRCs was released on 18 December 2014. Only one of the CRCs was won by an organisation outside the private sector.
Implementation
Payment by Results (PbR) is an outcome-based payment scheme central to the Government’s reforms. Under the contracts, a proportion of a provider’s payment is determined by the reductions in reoffending they achieve. The Transforming Rehabilitation strategy document said this would create an incentive for providers to “focus relentlessly on driving down reoffending”.
Transforming Rehabilitation introduced a nationwide “through the gate” resettlement service. The intent was to give most offenders continuous support, usually by the CRC, from custody into the community. CRCs began providing “through the gate” services from 1 May 2015.
Inspections
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) produced five reports evaluating the reforms as they progressed. The final report, published in May 2016, found improvements in joint working and communication between the CRCs and the NPS, particularly in dealing with breaches or increased risk of harm However, there were problems with court work, staff training and morale.
In its thematic inspections, HMIP said that the ‘Through the Gate’ services were so poor that if they were removed the impact would be “negligible”. HMIP also found in a separate report that the reforms had meant services for women offenders were less focused.
HMIP began individual area inspections in summer 2016. They have found overall that CRCs are performing below expectations, with particular criticism for some CRCs monitoring offenders by telephone.
Reactions to the reforms
There has been widespread comment on the reforms in Parliament, and by charities, inspectors and directors of prisons and probation.
Transforming Rehabilitation has primarily attracted criticism since the reforms were announced. Initial concerns focused on the speed of the reforms, the splitting of the probation service into two, and the possible ideological reasons behind the changes. During the reforms, criticism focused on the performance of CRCs, with lower than expected workloads causing financial difficulties. The Public Accounts Committee found that the MoJ had yet to bring about a “rehabilitation revolution” and questioned the effectiveness of the reforms.
More recently, in 2017, both the Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service and the Chief Inspector of Probation have said the new system is not working well. The Justice Select Committee is conducting an inquiry into Transforming Rehabilitation, seeking to find out how effective the Government reforms have been and what else could be done in the short term to help the probation service.
The Government’s position
In July 2017, Sam Gyimah, the Minister for Prisons and Probation, accepted that there had been problems with the delivery of the reform programme, blaming in part the reduction in the number of low or medium risk offenders. The Minister said the Government acted urgently to adjust the payment mechanism to make CRC income “less sensitive to changes in demand”. The Government hopes that this will provide CRCs with more certainty of their future income, allowing them to invest in delivering the necessary services.
The Government also set out plans to develop a joint protocol with the health authorities, as well as funding a new inspection framework for probation.
The Government set up a dedicated unit in Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service in the summer of 2017 to coordinate implementation of all recommendations made by Inspectorates and other bodies in relation to offender services.
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4. Reactions to the reforms
Summary
There has been widespread comment on the reforms in Parliament, and by charities, inspectors and directors of prisons and probation. Transforming Rehabilitation has primarily attracted criticism since the reforms were announced. Initial concerns focused on the speed of the reforms, the splitting of the probation service into two, and the possible ideological reasons behind the changes. During the reforms, criticism focused on the performance of CRCs, with lower than expected workloads causing financial difficulties. The Public Accounts Committee found that the MoJ had yet to bring about a “rehabilitation revolution” and questioned the effectiveness of the reforms. More recently, in 2017, both the Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service and the Chief Inspector of Probation have said the new system is not working well. The Justice Select Committee is conducting an inquiry into Transforming Rehabilitation, seeking to find out how effective the Government reforms have been and what else could be done in the short term to help the probation service.
Reactions to the initial proposals
Justice Committee report In January 2014, the Justice Select Committee published its report following an inquiry into the MoJ’s probation reform proposals. The Committee expressed a number of concerns about:
• the pace of the reforms;
• staff qualifications;
• the maturity of the probation services market;
• the likelihood that a small number of large business will dominate; and
• the lack of contingency planning in the event of market or provider failure.
Public Accounts Committee report
On 20 May 2014, the PAC published the report of its inquiry into the MoJ’s probation reforms.34 The Committee concluded, among other things, that the scale, complexity and pace of the reforms gave rise to risks around value for money, particularly considering the MoJ’s poor procurement track record. The PAC recommended that the MoJ should set out how it would assess risk at each stage of the programme and that the current performance levels of the probation service should be used as a benchmark against which the reforms would be judged.
In Parliament
The new reforms did not need primary legislation, apart from the new supervision requirements. Nevertheless the reforms were the subject of much debate when the Offender Rehabilitation Bill 2013 was going through Parliament.
In brief, criticism in Parliament centred on the perceived lack of parliamentary scrutiny for such major reforms to the probation services given the lack of primary legislation, the speed of change, structural issues in the new set-up, and staffing issues.
Library Research paper 13/61, Offender Rehabilitation Bill and
Library Research paper 13/72, Offender Rehabilitation Bill Committee Stage Report, provide full background on the policy debate around this Bill.
Westminster Hall debate, October 2015
A Westminster Hall Debate on the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme took place on 28 October 2015. Stephen Kinnock (who secured the debate) described the record of probation trusts before the reforms as “highly successful”:
"They had won European-wide awards for public service and all the trusts had been recognised as either good or outstanding by recent inspections. Trusts had established good local partnerships with other agencies, including in the private sector, that had been producing excellent results."
Mr Kinnock went on to say that some experts had argued that splitting probation was “a far riskier solution” than wholesale privatisation, However, “the greatest flaw” was the rushed political timetable, which, he said, had led to confusion, guesswork about resource allocation and delivery problems.
Robert Neill, the Conservative chair of the Justice Committee, said that his discussions with probation providers had not contained “a word of ideology”. Asked by Labour’s Wayne David why the changes had been introduced so quickly if not for ideological reasons, he said:
"First, because if one spoke to any sentencer, for example, they would say that the need to have a better approach to those being released from short sentences into statutory supervision was real and pressing. Those people are immediately at risk of recidivism, which leads to lost opportunities for life in every case. Secondly, the need to improve the “through the gateway” services was real and immediate. That is not to say that we should not review and improve the programme as things go along. Of course, that is right and sensible. The Select Committee recognised that point on a cross-party basis, and I think the Minister does, too."
However, he went on to raise the “significant operational and information sharing concerns” which practitioners had raised.
For the Government, Andrew Selous said that one of the key reasons for the reforms was to finance the additional supervision for offenders with short sentences:
"The key point is that we would not have had the money to introduce supervision for the under-12-month group without the reforms. No Member who has spoken has mentioned that. We could not have done what everyone has called on us to do without putting in a lot of extra money that was not available."
He continued:
"The transforming rehabilitation reforms have made substantial changes to the way in which offenders get help, in the through-the-gate process and in the community. The reforms are still bedding in, and while they do that we are turning a greater focus on the rehabilitation of offenders in prisons. As the Secretary of State and I have said before, reform of our prisons is a key area of focus, and we have made it clear that our current prison system fails to rehabilitate offenders or to ensure that criminals are prevented from reoffending.
[…] We have very robust contract management for every CRC and will hold them to account on what they have said they will do."
Commentary during implementation
National Audit Office, April 2016
The NAO published a report in April 2016 on Transforming Rehabilitation. It concluded that:
"The Ministry [of Justice] has successfully restructured the probation landscape, avoiding major disruptions in service during a difficult transition period. But this is only the beginning. If the Ministry is to stabilise, and improve, the performance of CRCs and the NPS it needs to continue to address operational problems, such as underlying capacity issues, weaknesses in ICT systems and performance data, and improve working relationships between NPS and CRC staff – some of which are unsurprising given the scale of reforms.
Ultimately, the success of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms will depend on the extent to which they create the conditions and incentives to reduce reoffending. While NOMS’ oversight of CRCs is robust, significantly lower levels of business than the Ministry projected will affect some CRCs’ ability to deliver the level of innovation they proposed in their bids. Furthermore, the NPS is not yet operating as a truly national, sustainable service. Achieving value for money from the new probation system will require resolving these fundamental issues, and ensuring the right incentives for all participants in the system."
The NAO also said that the NPS had “higher than predicted caseloads and faces a difficult further period of change if it is to play a fully effective role in the transformed and national probation service”.
The NAO said in its press release that the performance of Transforming Rehabilitation would not become clear until performance data on reoffending was released in late 2017.
Public Accounts Committee, September 2016
In September 2016, the Public Accounts Committee published a report into Transforming Rehabilitation. The Chair of the Committee, Meg Hillier, commenting on the launch, was critical of Government’s reforms:
"There is a real danger the Ministry of Justice has bitten off more than it can chew. It set out with some fervour a programme of reforms not just to rehabilitation but also to the courts and prison systems. Ambition is one thing but, as our Committee continues to document across government, delivering positive results for taxpayers and society in general is quite another.
'Revolution' is a potent word the Government may regret using to describe its reforms to rehabilitation. After two years these are far from complete and there remain serious risks to achieving the performance levels expected by the end of 2017.
We are disappointed that, given the human and economic costs of reoffending, gaps in data mean the overall effectiveness of the reforms cannot be properly assessed. But even without this information there are grounds for concern over the restructuring of the probation system. Evidence suggests new commercial arrangements could threaten the provision of rehabilitation services for minority groups, including women; we received testimony of excessive caseloads, and of the neglect of services focused on individuals."
The Committee found that the MoJ had yet to bring about a “rehabilitation revolution” and questioned the effectiveness of the reforms. On CRCs, the Committee concluded that they needed to work with local and health authorities, and the police, to ensure offenders could access services including housing, education and employment. On innovation, the Committee said there were “significant barriers”, and that a lack of prescription from the Government posed risks to maintain services for specific minority groups such as female offenders.
The Government responded in December 2016, agreeing with all of the Committee’s conclusions and recommendations.The Government said that:
"The Department is aware that the rehabilitative and 'Through The Gate' resettlement services provided to offenders serving short custodial sentences are still developing and are not consistent across CRCs. As part of the Department’s review of the probation system, the Department is examining how these services are being delivered to this cohort, and the performance outcomes used to measure success. The Department will set out its plans by summer 2017."
Justice Committee, March 2017
At the end of the last parliament, the Justice Committee launched an inquiry into Transforming Rehabilitation. In evidence sessions in March 2017 the Committee questioned a range of stakeholders about the reasons for the challenges with the implementation of the programme and potential mechanisms for overcoming them.
The Committee held two evidence sessions, including taking evidence from HM Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, who said “we are in a very unsettling position”:
"The first point to make is that CRCs are facing substantial financial challenges. With workloads now some 30% smaller than anticipated, and payment largely linked to the number of service users through the door, CRCs are having to cut their cloth accordingly. They are running with ever fewer professional staff and taking other steps to contain or manage expenditure— and to reduce it, wherever possible. They are pared back, if you like, and focus predominantly and understandably on what is measured and rewarded. Of course, they are seeking to avoid stinging penalties for non-delivery against contractual targets.
That is the first issue: the financial model and the financial underpinnings for these organisations are not sufficiently stable, and that is substantially inhibiting CRCs as they seek to develop and implement new operating models."
Dame Stacey also commented on a lack of expected innovation and the cultural challenge involved in the programme:
"The second issue is that, in making these changes, Government hoped to see substantial amounts of innovation— new ways of turning people’s lives around and, hopefully, reducing reoffending. You will know from our reports that we have not seen very much innovation in the way in which service users are progressing through probation. We do not see a wealth of new interventions; indeed, we see a bit of a dearth of tried and tested interventions. Rather than seeing a large amount of activity, with many different things happening, we are seeing less happening than any of us would be comfortable with.
[…]The third thing is that, of course, this was a very significant cultural challenge and change for probation. It is a caring profession, not dissimilar to social work, teaching and nursing, yet this wholesale move to fragment the service and to give it a commercial edge has been enormously difficult."
The 2017 General Election caused the inquiry to close without a report. In the current Parliament, following on from their previous work, the Committee announced a new inquiry on 12 October 2017 into the Transforming Rehabilitation programme, addressing two key questions:
• How effective are current Government measures in addressing the challenges facing the probation service?
• What more needs to be done in the short term to improve the probation system?
Recent commentary
The Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service, Michael Spurr, said on 13 October 2017 that the new system of offender supervision “wasn’t working” as it should. Mr Spurr expressed concerns that CRCs were providing only basic signposting for offenders.
Dame Glenys Stacey, the Chief Inspector of Probation, said in a speech in September 2017 that the new system was not working as expected:
"[…] probation services are not being delivered consistently to the standard we expect. The National Probation Service, responsible for those assessed as high risk, it is delivering to an acceptable standard overall, although there are inconsistencies in the quality of work across the country, and some anomalies as well.
The majority of individuals, however, are categorized as medium or low risk, and although there are exceptions, the Community Rehabilitation Companies responsible for their supervision are not generally producing good quality work, not at all. Probation reform has not delivered the benefits that Transforming Rehabilitation promised, so far.
We rarely see the innovations expected to come with freeing up the market, and instead proposed new models, new ways of delivering probation services on the ground and supporting them with better IT systems have largely stalled. The voluntary and charitable sectors are much less engaged then government envisaged. Promised improvements in Through the Gate resettlement – mentors, real help with accommodation, education, training and employment for short sentence prisoners - have mostly not been delivered in any meaningful way. And too often, for those under probation supervision we find too little is done by CRCs. On inspection, we often find nowhere near enough purposeful activity or targeted intervention or even plain, personal contact.
Why is this? Staff morale, workloads, training and line management are highly variable and need to improve if probation is to improve. Staff are change weary and more than that, too 2 many are too overburdened with work. Their employing companies are financially stretched, with some unable to balance the books, as unexpected changes in the type of cases coming their way have resulted in lower payments than anticipated.
The government must face this squarely, knowing that CRC contracts are currently set to run until late 2021. It must consider its options, in order for there to be any prospect of consistently good probation services nationwide."
Dame Stacey concluded that new probation standards and more regular inspections, announced with the support of the Government, would help drive improvement. She also called for two additional changes:
a better financial footing for CRCs, without losing the incentivisation of the current system, and a new way of incentivising CRCs by using HMIP ratings to provide rewards for high achievers.
BBC Panorama report
A Panorama programme, entitled Out of Jail: Free to Offend Again?, first televised on 25 October 2017, investigated the Government’s reforms of the probation service. Panorama exposed that one private contractor did not take action on more than 15,000 missed appointments over 16 months in London. One whistle-blower on the programme said there had been an “explosion” in reoffending following the reforms.
Reacting to the programme, Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon said on Twitter that the Government’s reforms had been “a monumental failure” and said the Labour party would undertake its own review of CRCs as part of its wider policy to return the probation sector into a public service as before.
In response to the Panorama investigation, the MoJ told the BBC it was “right to reform the system”.
5. Government position
• the pace of the reforms;
• staff qualifications;
• the maturity of the probation services market;
• the likelihood that a small number of large business will dominate; and
• the lack of contingency planning in the event of market or provider failure.
Public Accounts Committee report
On 20 May 2014, the PAC published the report of its inquiry into the MoJ’s probation reforms.34 The Committee concluded, among other things, that the scale, complexity and pace of the reforms gave rise to risks around value for money, particularly considering the MoJ’s poor procurement track record. The PAC recommended that the MoJ should set out how it would assess risk at each stage of the programme and that the current performance levels of the probation service should be used as a benchmark against which the reforms would be judged.
In Parliament
The new reforms did not need primary legislation, apart from the new supervision requirements. Nevertheless the reforms were the subject of much debate when the Offender Rehabilitation Bill 2013 was going through Parliament.
In brief, criticism in Parliament centred on the perceived lack of parliamentary scrutiny for such major reforms to the probation services given the lack of primary legislation, the speed of change, structural issues in the new set-up, and staffing issues.
Library Research paper 13/61, Offender Rehabilitation Bill and
Library Research paper 13/72, Offender Rehabilitation Bill Committee Stage Report, provide full background on the policy debate around this Bill.
Westminster Hall debate, October 2015
A Westminster Hall Debate on the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme took place on 28 October 2015. Stephen Kinnock (who secured the debate) described the record of probation trusts before the reforms as “highly successful”:
"They had won European-wide awards for public service and all the trusts had been recognised as either good or outstanding by recent inspections. Trusts had established good local partnerships with other agencies, including in the private sector, that had been producing excellent results."
Mr Kinnock went on to say that some experts had argued that splitting probation was “a far riskier solution” than wholesale privatisation, However, “the greatest flaw” was the rushed political timetable, which, he said, had led to confusion, guesswork about resource allocation and delivery problems.
Robert Neill, the Conservative chair of the Justice Committee, said that his discussions with probation providers had not contained “a word of ideology”. Asked by Labour’s Wayne David why the changes had been introduced so quickly if not for ideological reasons, he said:
"First, because if one spoke to any sentencer, for example, they would say that the need to have a better approach to those being released from short sentences into statutory supervision was real and pressing. Those people are immediately at risk of recidivism, which leads to lost opportunities for life in every case. Secondly, the need to improve the “through the gateway” services was real and immediate. That is not to say that we should not review and improve the programme as things go along. Of course, that is right and sensible. The Select Committee recognised that point on a cross-party basis, and I think the Minister does, too."
However, he went on to raise the “significant operational and information sharing concerns” which practitioners had raised.
For the Government, Andrew Selous said that one of the key reasons for the reforms was to finance the additional supervision for offenders with short sentences:
"The key point is that we would not have had the money to introduce supervision for the under-12-month group without the reforms. No Member who has spoken has mentioned that. We could not have done what everyone has called on us to do without putting in a lot of extra money that was not available."
He continued:
"The transforming rehabilitation reforms have made substantial changes to the way in which offenders get help, in the through-the-gate process and in the community. The reforms are still bedding in, and while they do that we are turning a greater focus on the rehabilitation of offenders in prisons. As the Secretary of State and I have said before, reform of our prisons is a key area of focus, and we have made it clear that our current prison system fails to rehabilitate offenders or to ensure that criminals are prevented from reoffending.
[…] We have very robust contract management for every CRC and will hold them to account on what they have said they will do."
Commentary during implementation
National Audit Office, April 2016
The NAO published a report in April 2016 on Transforming Rehabilitation. It concluded that:
"The Ministry [of Justice] has successfully restructured the probation landscape, avoiding major disruptions in service during a difficult transition period. But this is only the beginning. If the Ministry is to stabilise, and improve, the performance of CRCs and the NPS it needs to continue to address operational problems, such as underlying capacity issues, weaknesses in ICT systems and performance data, and improve working relationships between NPS and CRC staff – some of which are unsurprising given the scale of reforms.
Ultimately, the success of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms will depend on the extent to which they create the conditions and incentives to reduce reoffending. While NOMS’ oversight of CRCs is robust, significantly lower levels of business than the Ministry projected will affect some CRCs’ ability to deliver the level of innovation they proposed in their bids. Furthermore, the NPS is not yet operating as a truly national, sustainable service. Achieving value for money from the new probation system will require resolving these fundamental issues, and ensuring the right incentives for all participants in the system."
The NAO also said that the NPS had “higher than predicted caseloads and faces a difficult further period of change if it is to play a fully effective role in the transformed and national probation service”.
The NAO said in its press release that the performance of Transforming Rehabilitation would not become clear until performance data on reoffending was released in late 2017.
Public Accounts Committee, September 2016
In September 2016, the Public Accounts Committee published a report into Transforming Rehabilitation. The Chair of the Committee, Meg Hillier, commenting on the launch, was critical of Government’s reforms:
"There is a real danger the Ministry of Justice has bitten off more than it can chew. It set out with some fervour a programme of reforms not just to rehabilitation but also to the courts and prison systems. Ambition is one thing but, as our Committee continues to document across government, delivering positive results for taxpayers and society in general is quite another.
'Revolution' is a potent word the Government may regret using to describe its reforms to rehabilitation. After two years these are far from complete and there remain serious risks to achieving the performance levels expected by the end of 2017.
We are disappointed that, given the human and economic costs of reoffending, gaps in data mean the overall effectiveness of the reforms cannot be properly assessed. But even without this information there are grounds for concern over the restructuring of the probation system. Evidence suggests new commercial arrangements could threaten the provision of rehabilitation services for minority groups, including women; we received testimony of excessive caseloads, and of the neglect of services focused on individuals."
The Committee found that the MoJ had yet to bring about a “rehabilitation revolution” and questioned the effectiveness of the reforms. On CRCs, the Committee concluded that they needed to work with local and health authorities, and the police, to ensure offenders could access services including housing, education and employment. On innovation, the Committee said there were “significant barriers”, and that a lack of prescription from the Government posed risks to maintain services for specific minority groups such as female offenders.
The Government responded in December 2016, agreeing with all of the Committee’s conclusions and recommendations.The Government said that:
"The Department is aware that the rehabilitative and 'Through The Gate' resettlement services provided to offenders serving short custodial sentences are still developing and are not consistent across CRCs. As part of the Department’s review of the probation system, the Department is examining how these services are being delivered to this cohort, and the performance outcomes used to measure success. The Department will set out its plans by summer 2017."
Justice Committee, March 2017
At the end of the last parliament, the Justice Committee launched an inquiry into Transforming Rehabilitation. In evidence sessions in March 2017 the Committee questioned a range of stakeholders about the reasons for the challenges with the implementation of the programme and potential mechanisms for overcoming them.
The Committee held two evidence sessions, including taking evidence from HM Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, who said “we are in a very unsettling position”:
"The first point to make is that CRCs are facing substantial financial challenges. With workloads now some 30% smaller than anticipated, and payment largely linked to the number of service users through the door, CRCs are having to cut their cloth accordingly. They are running with ever fewer professional staff and taking other steps to contain or manage expenditure— and to reduce it, wherever possible. They are pared back, if you like, and focus predominantly and understandably on what is measured and rewarded. Of course, they are seeking to avoid stinging penalties for non-delivery against contractual targets.
That is the first issue: the financial model and the financial underpinnings for these organisations are not sufficiently stable, and that is substantially inhibiting CRCs as they seek to develop and implement new operating models."
Dame Stacey also commented on a lack of expected innovation and the cultural challenge involved in the programme:
"The second issue is that, in making these changes, Government hoped to see substantial amounts of innovation— new ways of turning people’s lives around and, hopefully, reducing reoffending. You will know from our reports that we have not seen very much innovation in the way in which service users are progressing through probation. We do not see a wealth of new interventions; indeed, we see a bit of a dearth of tried and tested interventions. Rather than seeing a large amount of activity, with many different things happening, we are seeing less happening than any of us would be comfortable with.
[…]The third thing is that, of course, this was a very significant cultural challenge and change for probation. It is a caring profession, not dissimilar to social work, teaching and nursing, yet this wholesale move to fragment the service and to give it a commercial edge has been enormously difficult."
The 2017 General Election caused the inquiry to close without a report. In the current Parliament, following on from their previous work, the Committee announced a new inquiry on 12 October 2017 into the Transforming Rehabilitation programme, addressing two key questions:
• How effective are current Government measures in addressing the challenges facing the probation service?
• What more needs to be done in the short term to improve the probation system?
Recent commentary
The Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service, Michael Spurr, said on 13 October 2017 that the new system of offender supervision “wasn’t working” as it should. Mr Spurr expressed concerns that CRCs were providing only basic signposting for offenders.
Dame Glenys Stacey, the Chief Inspector of Probation, said in a speech in September 2017 that the new system was not working as expected:
"[…] probation services are not being delivered consistently to the standard we expect. The National Probation Service, responsible for those assessed as high risk, it is delivering to an acceptable standard overall, although there are inconsistencies in the quality of work across the country, and some anomalies as well.
The majority of individuals, however, are categorized as medium or low risk, and although there are exceptions, the Community Rehabilitation Companies responsible for their supervision are not generally producing good quality work, not at all. Probation reform has not delivered the benefits that Transforming Rehabilitation promised, so far.
We rarely see the innovations expected to come with freeing up the market, and instead proposed new models, new ways of delivering probation services on the ground and supporting them with better IT systems have largely stalled. The voluntary and charitable sectors are much less engaged then government envisaged. Promised improvements in Through the Gate resettlement – mentors, real help with accommodation, education, training and employment for short sentence prisoners - have mostly not been delivered in any meaningful way. And too often, for those under probation supervision we find too little is done by CRCs. On inspection, we often find nowhere near enough purposeful activity or targeted intervention or even plain, personal contact.
Why is this? Staff morale, workloads, training and line management are highly variable and need to improve if probation is to improve. Staff are change weary and more than that, too 2 many are too overburdened with work. Their employing companies are financially stretched, with some unable to balance the books, as unexpected changes in the type of cases coming their way have resulted in lower payments than anticipated.
The government must face this squarely, knowing that CRC contracts are currently set to run until late 2021. It must consider its options, in order for there to be any prospect of consistently good probation services nationwide."
Dame Stacey concluded that new probation standards and more regular inspections, announced with the support of the Government, would help drive improvement. She also called for two additional changes:
a better financial footing for CRCs, without losing the incentivisation of the current system, and a new way of incentivising CRCs by using HMIP ratings to provide rewards for high achievers.
BBC Panorama report
A Panorama programme, entitled Out of Jail: Free to Offend Again?, first televised on 25 October 2017, investigated the Government’s reforms of the probation service. Panorama exposed that one private contractor did not take action on more than 15,000 missed appointments over 16 months in London. One whistle-blower on the programme said there had been an “explosion” in reoffending following the reforms.
Reacting to the programme, Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon said on Twitter that the Government’s reforms had been “a monumental failure” and said the Labour party would undertake its own review of CRCs as part of its wider policy to return the probation sector into a public service as before.
In response to the Panorama investigation, the MoJ told the BBC it was “right to reform the system”.
5. Government position
On 21 June 2017, the Government said that it has carried out a review of the probation system and that the findings will be published “in due course”.
In a written ministerial statement on 19 July 2017, Sam Gyimah, the Minister for Prisons and Probation, accepted that there had been problems with the delivery of the reform programme, blaming in part the reduction in the number of low or medium risk offenders:
"[…] it is clear that the current delivery of some aspects of probation services must improve. It is inevitable that such fundamental reforms to a complex public service will take some time to bed down. In addition, since the contracts were negotiated the number of offenders sentenced to community orders has fallen, and there has been an increase in the proportion of offenders assessed as posing a higher risk of harm. The result is fewer offenders are being referred to CRCs, leading to falls in CRC income to significantly below the levels expected at the time of the competition. This has made it extremely challenging for CRCs to deliver the services outlined in their contracts. In turn the NPS has seen a growth in their caseload and increased demands on its staff. That is why we have been reviewing the probation system, and why we are now taking steps to improve services."
The Minister said the Government acted urgently to adjust the payment mechanism to make CRC income “less sensitive to changes in demand” by better reflecting the “fixed nature of most of the costs that providers incur when delivering services to offenders”. It is hoped that this will provide CRCs with more certainty of their future income, allowing them to invest in delivering the necessary services. The Minister noted that the additional investment provided by the Government would be “no higher than originally budgeted for at the time of the reforms”.
The statement also set out plans to develop a joint protocol with the health authorities, as well as funding a new inspection framework:
"In addition we are working with the Department of Health, NHS England and Public Health England to develop a joint protocol setting out how probation, health and treatment services should work together to support those serving community sentences in England. We will seek to implement the protocol in a number of test-bed areas this year, and have agreed with the Welsh Government that we will seek to establish a similar protocol in Wales. We are also providing additional funding to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation and supporting them to introduce a new framework for the inspection of probation services from April 2018. This will provide stronger scrutiny and increased transparency of the performance of probation by introducing annual inspection of CRCs and NPS areas and the publication of individual ratings for providers."
The Justice Secretary, David Lidington, in July 2017 also provided an update on the probation system in an open letter:
Over the past year my department has been reviewing the progress of these reforms, and I will myself take a close and careful look at overall performance in the coming months.
The structural reforms saw the caseload divided between the National Probation Service (NPS) – which took on higher-risk offenders - and 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs,) set up to supervise those judged to be low- and medium-risk. Here, the system has encountered unforeseen challenges. Demand has been stronger for the NPS caseload and this has created different financial and operational pressures for both CRCs and the NPS.
We are putting in place balancing policies aimed at addressing these challenges. To date, we have adjusted the CRCs’ contracts to reflect more accurately the cost of providing critical frontline services: given this, we are calling on them to provide better support as they help offenders build more positive lives.
In response to a PQ in October 2017, asking about the high workloads in NPS and CRCs, the Government praised the performance of the NPS:
"The great majority of Quality & Impact Reports by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation have commented favourably on the performance of the National Probation Service (NPS). We recognise that staff shortages in certain parts of the country have resulted in high caseloads in those areas. The NPS is addressing this via a major recruitment campaign and is on target to recruit around 500 additional trainee probation officers, and over 1000 probation service officers in 2017-18.
Contracts with Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) require each that each CRC ensures that it employs a sufficient level of staff, and that its workforce is competent and adequately trained. We closely monitor and robustly manage providers to make sure they fulfil their contractual commitments to reduce reoffending, protect the public and provide value for money to the taxpayer."
Another PQ in October asked the Government what plans existed to ensure recommendations by HMIP were implemented across the NPS and CRCs. The Government explained that “a dedicated unit was set up in Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) in the summer of 2017 to coordinate implementation across the Department of all recommendations made by Inspectorates and other bodies in relation to offender services”.
Selous: "The key point is that we would not have had the money to introduce supervision for the under-12-month group without the reforms."
ReplyDeleteIt was never about money according to Grayling, Brennan & Romeo. Their argument was about the fabled '£46 in yer pocket', cutting reoffending rates & neutering left-leaning probation.
The fact it has cost many many £m's more than leaving things as they were makes me ask the question - on what basis, and from where, was the extra money released because of TR?
From the salaries & withheld payments of the hundreds made unemployed by TR reforms, perhaps?
It's notable that in this potted history of the deconstruction of probation, the unions are absent. The TR bang was met with a whimper. The raison d'etre of through the gate has been shown to have been a chimera – or con trick – such that if this poor service was removed its impact would be negligible. But we must ignore the true motivation for these changes: ideology. All the various quangos will flatter to deceive us with their prescriptions: some tinkering here, some tweaking there – but all refusing to accept that you cannot teach a crab to walk straight.
ReplyDeleteThe Tory Lib Dem coalition should also be reminded that they used a vulnerable disadvantaged and damaged population with no voice at all as they're USP.
ReplyDelete£46 isn't good enough, they need resettlement prisons, TTG services, housing, mentors, all sorts of services to assist them getting on the right tracks.
TR Infact reduced the services available. It was never going to be the all kicking and dancing service promised.
They all knew that too.
The needs of service users were exploited for political ideology, and that in my book is simply abuse of power.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5127171/The-British-prison-inmates-800-spice-day.html
'Getafix
All god above and no one disagrees. We must focus on those doing the day job. Overwork under resourced no meaningful contributions to offending behaviour. Tired old packages still being deployed as the innovations of the draining privateers saw an opportunity to exploit more cash through complaining than delivering innovations. The government have been had through poor procurement and fiddled contracts with friends of large investors. Connections through marriages both real and the secrets. The attempts to convice what is clear rotten is in fact good are all part of the stuck in this until 21. However we are not all the government have to do is recognise anyone in a CRC should be redeployed to the NPS as they are recruiting 800plus. Or wholsale reintergration as trusts as we were and rid the profit element. Contract managers can retain a job managing more effectively the old national standards and make those resources linked to incentivise the staff and management deliver more with more in rewards. What we do not need is any more of the robbing profiteers take public money to offshoots in Germany Aurelius France Sodexo and still give them another pay day in Brexit. Is there any budget for our home grown poverty struck offender services anywhere more important than local communities in this Country? No this issue is going to get very ugly as it divides us as we are now talking offending profits to euro companies and we have no idea how much more expensive CRC experiement has been over trusts why not. How much has been the profit margins in all CRCs Why not and what possible reasons could there be to extend all these failures in the next 3 and a bit years. Please end the likelyhood of that now so the Privateers can look elsewhere soon. In any case labour will save the day and as soon as we can get them in we will.
DeleteToday Chris Grayling, arguing. to hand over track maintenance contracts to network providers claims its obvious that a single unified service is always going to preform better then one that's split up or divided!!!!!!!
DeleteNot surprising that the unions did not get a mention as they did not present as a united front. Let us not forget that UNISONs response was non existent, GMB sat on the fence with them, and the majority of conservative minded probation staff failed to show strong support for industrial action. Whilst many probation staff said that they opposed TR they nevertheless worked very hard to make it work and a large number of probation staff were quite pleased to be made second rate civil servants or have the opportunity to throw of the apparent constrictions of nationally negotiated terms and conditions and looked forward to the exciting innovations that the new companies appeared to promise.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is the split was disastrous producing a much weakened NPS dominated by the prisons agenda many of whom are deluded in thinking they are some sort of elite service. The CRCs who supervise the majority of cases continue to be described as supervising low to medium risk offenders although it is blatantly obvious that they supervise as many high risk offenders as the NPS only these are called medium risk because if they were all transferred then the NPS would not be able to cope and the CRC would not be able to make any money. We have a ridiculous situation that would not exist in any true market where staff who want to leave the CRC are forced to stay because the NPS would reset their salary to the bottom of the scale and where you have newly trained staff in the NPS looking down on experienced CRC staff simply because they were placed in the CRC on the flip of a coin. You have to leave the CRC and become a temp if you want to work in the NPS and ironically you then earn more money than if you were a permanent member of staff in either organisation.
Of course, the unions agreed to the split by signing-up to the framework agreement and then promoting it as a negotiating achievement of the chess masters at Chivalry Road. It transpired to be a 'peace in our time' document which did not provide any lasting protections for the workers, though it left the union hierarchies undisturbed.
DeleteSurely that is like blaming a victim of crime for not locking their valuables in the boot? The behaviour of the privateers in squirming their way around the agreements was a legal loophole that no-one foresaw. The sleight of hand was not the fault of the unions, even though they may have failed to pre-empt it. Dishonesty cannot be the fault of those who trust the dishonest.
DeleteIt's not akin to blaming the victim of a crime: victims don't negotiate. There was a loophole and it was known about at the time of signing – but the unions for some reason signed-up. (See Blog, 30 August, 2015:
Deletehttp://probationmatters.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=loophole
In negotiations, it's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of a legally sound, watertight agreement that is enforceable in law. It's why legal advice is sought in most circumstances.
The 7 month loophole was never put to members, nor was any of the appeasement document. And no-one has ever explained why it was there or why they agreed to such a bizarre condition, except that...
Delete1. MoJ NOMS had already lined up the Modernisation Fund monies to cover the KNOWN costs of staffing cuts (which they openly acknowledge were included in the bids), so...
2. ... NAPO, Unison etc will have been aware and must therefore have agreed to sacrifice staff, &...
3. ... The unions were necessarily tight-lipped to the point of utter silence while Sodexo started the ball rolling & ripped the guts out of their CRC areas. Presumably because they knew that they had signed up their members to the piece-of-shit deal & there was nothing they could say.
Good, seasoned professional Probation staff in all roles (admin, CS, PSO, PO, SPO) were seen as acceptable collateral damage while deals were done to secure power in government & Shivery Road. NPS are now feeling the consequences of the selfish Collaborators' deal at the crossroads.
Napo is not well led and the members voted for their chairs at the time based on popularities and grade Not ability. They have long gone one resigned amid allegations the other making allegations and also went. To be fair one was cleared. Voting rubbish chairs you get rubbish outcomes. The same situation to date. Napo gets what it deserves.
DeleteThis is certainly correct. There's a lot of difference between being a PO and being a trade unionist. Very different skills and abilities. That's where the current top table fall down.
DeleteAnon 11:17 Couldn't agree more, I know PSO's in NPS that are now writing PSR's at court that struggled to write breaches, yet the CRC's have the most experienced PO's years of service and we are looked down at. I know a colleague of mine that used to send socialist Party emails to us he stopped when he became a second rate civil servant because he did not want to compromise being in the NPS. Not one of NPS staff stuck their necks out to be counted, I doubt if there are many now who would fight for the service t be reunited. Whilst on the other hand the CRC staff speak out everyday, ironically I really feel that the true Probation Service is the CRC's.
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