Pick of the Week 40

Has anyone picked up on HDC changes? Those who qualify are pushed out of custody unless exceptional circumstances. Compliance no longer a factor.

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Yes. Madness. Home visits to proposed address no longer a must. Assessment of suitability can be completed by, you guessed it, a phone call. Trained and qualified PO / PSO’s are no longer to make a proposal. Just provide information. More evidence of being de-skilled. It’s all just bonkers!

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Yes - we get the request 3 months before and have a ten day target to return form! Then there is the increasing difficulty to get a breach agreed, the increasing difficulty to get a recall Agreed with the targets for alternative to recall, lovingly recorded by a NSI. It’s obviously designed to alleviate the full to bursting prisons.

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Very well known experiment [Milgram], and a lot to be learned from it. But in the words associated with Jo Cox, prisoners and prison staff have more in common now then divide them. The Tories have created such a divided society, many prison staff come from the same place as those they're locking up. Rented accommodation, no opportunity to buy, same housing estates, financial difficulties and worries. When there's no ladder to climb, everyone finds themselves in a similar place. The Tories have really f****d things up.

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You are absolutely 'on the money',  and have made the point well. My post was a clumsy attempt to say: (1) HMPPS are putting prison & probation management in the role of the original Milgram guards, i.e. that probation chiefs sold their staff down the river, or that prison governors are playing Russian roulette with their staffing complement, and: (2) that HMGovt via HMPPS are expecting prison & probation staff to treat those they are responsible for with increasing levels of contempt. Thankfully this idea isn't taking off, as we see from Bionic's posts & other contributors, plus the independent will of HMI's to highlight & publicly shame HMPPS. Equally 'Hats Off' to Bob Neill for calling "Foul!" & challenging the piss-poor management by Spurr & co.

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Just thought I'd write this for balance because it irks me to hear revisionists unfairly blaming honourable hardworking trade unionists, who are if anything realistic and forward looking, for things they did not do and were not responsible.Blaming Raho and Rogers for the collapse of the National Negotiating Committee and with it collective bargaining is ludicrous. It was a dead duck that has been mythologised by extreme left wingers after its demise as some kind of golden goose that Raho and Rogers jointly conspired to strangle into non existence. It died because it was not fit for purpose and no one wanted to be part of it least of all the NPS and most of the CRCs.

Completely agree with your comment Jim. We need to hear more from those like Rogers and Raho who are undoubtedly influential and willing to engage in a more nuanced debate that might include offering different visions of probation that some other powerful voices wish to silence or do away with completely.

I can tell you that their views do carry some weight where it counts. Napo has lost some respect in recent years as a professional association under a somewhat anti-intellectual leadership however both Raho and Rogers have regained some of this respect in forums where a more nuanced understanding is required and Napo are now gradually being taken more seriously in the debate about the future of probation. This recent progress can easily be stopped.

Any amount of showboating and tub thumping never achieves respect or traction with those in power who are charged with running things and making decisions even if this is more entertaining and satisfying for those concerned. Both Raho and Rogers are in my experience politically moderate but also savvy trade unionists who actually have skills that are needed to deal intelligently with those in power.

The membership of Napo is not left wing and could hardly claim to be militant. Those calling for more radical or extreme leadership are not in touch with the majority of Napo members or how things get done in the real world which is far less exciting and mundane. Both are certainly not crude reductionists by nature (leave that to the angry tub thumpers and fans of RT and Socialist Worker)but I do see them writing in a more appealingly human and less politicised way and not using complex terms and jargon for a closed group on Facebook (3000+ members) in order to have an inclusive discussion with those interested in probation and probation issues. I presume this is why you reproduced some of their discussion on the blog Jim?

Unfortunately if they were to step away then this would be a loss to the probation profession that needs more not less intelligent voices and has been slow to recruit new champions.

Inevitably there are always a few who think that they could do what others do better (with no training or experience) like unfit hecklers at a sporting event criticising much fitter sports people but in reality find that it is a harder to do the do than being an unrestrained armchair performance critic. That said if you think you can do better or make a difference then I'm sure your branch could find something suited to your talents.

By the way Raho is an elected branch chair and my sources tell me that he may well not seek reelection to a second term but will probably continue to work in connection with probation in some capacity. He has done his bit and no doubt has other projects. Rogers is a career trade union official and Napo is actually pretty lucky to have him as an employee.

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I left probation before the split and have frozen local gov pension. I returned just after split to CRC and paid into their private pension arrangements. I wish I had opted out now! What is the point when they are likely to hand the contract back at some point or be liquidated. I am unlikely to get anything back. I went back to work partly because I felt I needed to top up my existing pension so I have enough to retire on. We are all being let down by the current system and I feel really angry. No way could I carry on with CRC until I retire anyway. They don't value older staff and the contribution they make and all their knowledge and experience. They value staff who tow the line and are faster with their IT and less interested in their service users. Maybe I should just cut my losses and stop paying into their pension?

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I find the idea of private companies such as G4S, Serco or Interserve being sanctioned by the state to enforce debt collection and even arrest very sinister indeed. Not least because there are various private companies that can now impose fines through fixed penalties for parking offences, littering etc. It's Orwellian and another demonstration of Tory party oppression. It'll cost money not save it, but it doesn't matter as long as the private sector are doing alright from it. How much has the MoJ saved the taxpayer through its outsourcing projects, digitalisation and court closures?

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To be honest, that all sounds reasonable, I wouldn't have had my chance if at the time the net was not cast wide. I always enjoyed the diversity and more often than not passion for working with people that I met amongst my former colleagues.

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It's not the diversity that causes me concern, its just symptomatic of the headlong rush everybody seems to be in, "never mind the quality, feel the width!" (Originated from unscrupulous London backstreet tailors palming you off with cheap material instead of the good stuff for your suit.) A 3 year degree course (4 years if studied to a masters) was first compressed to a 2 year diploma & is now reduced to 15 months' PQiP. Where's the space to learn? When will the students have time to reflect, to discuss, to explore? And where have they hidden the news that you'll have a caseload of 60, plus court duties & a VLO caseload to boot?

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Everyone remembers the great outsourcing scandals. The Olympics. Tagging. Transporting prisoners. Emergency service phone services. All big news stories that somehow get lost in other news stories a week later and dragged up again when the next outsourcing scandal breaks. But there's other important issues that don't really resurface that should be considered within the Carillion debate. Athos for example walked away from its disability assessment contract about 2 years ago at a cost of over £100m.

There was the outsourced education, training and apprenticeship company, that went belly up without warning about 18mths ago costing £10s of millions, (I can't remember their name, but was noted on this blog.) It's important too to also consider the governments argument that Carillion went bust not because of its public sector contracts, but it's private sector ones. That begs the question of how much money from public sector contracts is being used to subsidise private contracts? Will Interserves portion of the governments £342m go on making probation services better, or be used to subsidise private loss making contracts?

The big accountancy firms like PwC and KPMG have rightly come under the spotlight since Carillion collapsed. But they are also the companies the government use, and pay millions to each year in consultancy fees. The incestuous nature of the relationship between these companies need to be broken up.

It's almost amusing to hear ministers like Grayling when they're asked about why Carillion were given multi billion pound contracts after continued profit warnings. It was a joint bid they say, it was given on the understanding that the other two companies would step in and absorb Carillions obligations if Carillion went bust. Isn't that also an admission that they knew Carillion was on the brink?

So too the finger pointing at KPMG by the government for giving Carillion the thumbs up. But isn't that what Grayling did by giving them Hs2 contracts? With such large contracts it gave Carillion the opportunity to extend its credit notes to its sub contractors and even run up bigger bills. The Carillion collapse is huge, and likely to headline for much longer then other outsourcing scandals, which is a good thing.

Not many of the general public paid much attention to Carillion, many probably had never heard of them. Yet there's other giant companies with large government contracts that are creeping very close to the same page as Carillion who are even less well known. The Labour Party need to grab the Carillion fallout and shake the bones out of it, expose its seedy relationships with government and other outsource companies, it's conflicts of interests, and remind the public that the new buzz word being used by local councils is insourcing.

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"Scandal-hit Concentrix adjusted or terminated around 108,000 cases of claimants' tax credits - nearly a third of which were overturned at appeal." The taxpayer foots the bill for 108,000 'outcomes' and then the taxpayer picks up the bill for 90% of those decisions going to appeals, with nearly 40% of them being successful appeals? Is austerity only necessary because of botched outsourcing?

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Black Rock were responsible for managing Carillions pension fund, yet astoundingly made millions betting against their demise. Does George Osborne have questions to answer? As an adviser to BlackRock, the former Chancellor may have questions to answer after it emerged it is among group of investors to have made millions from Carillion’s demise. If he has shares in BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, then he is set to personally benefit from last week’s liquidation, which has put thousands of jobs at risk. Mr Osborne has sought to distance himself from the troubled construction giant.

The newspaper he edits last week ran a leader column criticising the Government for awarding Carillion £1.3billion in contracts after it issued its first profit warning in July last year. The editorial read: “Why has the state found itself so dependent on a few very large outsourcing firms? “The failure to use a variety of smaller, mid-size companies undermines innovation and leaves services hostage when things go wrong.” But when he signed off a Carillion contract as Chancellor in 2014, Mr Osborne declared: “It’s great to see successful companies like Carillion winning contracts around the world.”

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George gets paid £650,000 a year for one day's work a week. It not hard to see how the Oxfam report published today puts 82% of the world's wealth in the hands of 1% of the population, or that half the worlds wealth is held by just 42 people.

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Michael Spurr and RH full of s.... The MPs understand very little of the TR system, of its contracts and of the nonsensical answers they are given to their questions. When one of the questioners is closing in on MS his reply is that her demand for a precise answer is unreasonable without preparation. The whole thing is very yes ministeresque, farcical, and sadly probably fairly inconsequential. Nice to have it all recorded, but parading the failures is not the same as addressing them. They will be allowed to continue. Something stronger than the PAC is needed to bring this farce to an end.

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We hope. We think. We would like. We anticipate. We didn't expect. And..RH said there was another round of negotiations to come. They did not want to pay more than they had to but they did want to ensure the services continue. The PAC asked when this would be? RH said the key date would be when the PbR reoffending statistics come out later in January. That will cost! People might be forgiven for thinking that the drugs drones and mobile phones issue in the prisons is really MoJ racketeering to raise funds to pay the ever increasing costs of the CRCs!! Putting more money in will only improve the shareholder dividend not the services. Renationalisation is the only way to improve the services and reduce costs.

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Could it be true that Grayling & the Right are intentionally erasing Probation from the face of UK politics? I have noticed that Rory Stewart uses either Minister of State or Prisons Minister, not Prisons & Probation Minister. Its neither petty nor pedantic - language is important. Still, I guess young Rory knows more than enough about the subtleties of expediting regime change after his stint in Afghanistan.

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I agree the lexicon matters and it would be easy, if you were following the language, to wonder why Probation is a yesterday term of reference. In part it is because the subject rarely reaches the higher strata of general newsworthiness despite its obvious calamity. There may be other reasons too.

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The Tories just continue to lie and lie and absolve themselves of any responsibility at all about the monumental mess they’ve made of Probation. They just can’t admit they got it so very wrong. Oh wait we run programmes for that — oh hang on not enough staff to run said programmes!

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It is an alarming trend that politicians all over the world have apparently realised that lying to get out of a question no longer even requires the skill of avoidance, distraction and sleight of hand. A perfectly placed lie will suffice. More disturbing is that fact that the lie no longer needs to be credible. Any old nonsense will do.

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"The Ministry over-estimated the number of people who would be subject to tagging. The number of offenders who are subject to tagging orders has been falling and is now well below expectations, which could suggest that confidence in electronic monitoring has been undermined." Luckily the MoJ has come up with a wheeze to deal with the under-use problem - remove all professional assessment from HDC decisions and shove as many prisoners out on tag as possible, suitability be damned! So what if it leads to more offending, breaches and recalls? Can't have the contractors' volumes hit!

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Get something wrong in work and there is usually some accountability. For the governing classes there are, however, different norms – from John Prescott getting a peerage for his sexual dalliance with his secretary, to wasting millions of taxpayers' money – money which could have been spent on useful things. While we constantly hear about vital support services being cutback or closed, we also constantly read about government departments' profligate spending on ill-thought-out projects. And departmental leaders later sit in front of select committees and harp on about their prudence, value for money and departmental expertise. It's no wonder the populace become disillusioned with leaders who have the look of self-serving elites, who prosper no matter how often they do stupid things that harm the public interest.

This government rants on about the need to increase productivity while it fritters away money. The message that gets through is that our rulers have feet of clay – they are out for themselves and their friends in business. Their governance has more in common with the mafia than democratic accountability.

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I don't want to come across as misty-eyed about the new prison minister, but I thought Rory Stewart intends to be hands-on and ensure that where HMIP recommendations are made, they are implemented and identified individuals in the bureaucracy are held to account. It's early days but he doesn't spout the usual defensive bullshit.

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The Ministry of justice clearly doesn't have a clue. It's failed across the board to deliver anything that could be described as remotely success and wasted eye-watering amounts of public finance. Should it not just be disbanded? Put everything back under the remit of the Home Office?

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"They've never understood us and were always nervous and irritated by our proudly independent voice and notorious historic resistance to all attempts at imposing command and control." I'm not sure that the Tories don't understand probation. I think it may be more that they view it almost as an extention of the welfare state. Extending support and assistance to the undeserving who don't pay for that support and assistance must stink of socialism and is offensive to their capitalist neolibral ideology. I have no doubt they'd wipe probation out completely if they could, and replace it with G4S truncheon wielding security guards, and charge those under their watch for the privilege. Because neanderthal neolibral ideology knows that the only way to solve social problems and enforce conformity is to not spare the rod.

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Carillion have left our prisons in a terrible state. It's reported that the need of essential repairs doubled under their watch. However Interserve are also in considerable trouble. They have many projects experiencing severe delays, all of which incur financial penalties.
In a statement last week the Government said Interserve are not the next Carillion but today their shares have fallen another 10% and a warning of hard times to come. They might not be Carillion, but neither are they secure my any means.

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Has anyone else noticed that not a single part of the prisons crisis, NOT ONE THING, is the responsibility of Michael Spurr, CEO HMPPS? Reminds me of my dear, dead mother's account of her driving experiences after finally passing her test on her 19th attempt: "You know, its funny, but I've seen loads of accidents and yet I've never been involved in one." (I was a passenger just the once. Never again!)

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"the obvious disappearance of a Minister for Probation"..Oh God, first they stick their fingers in their ears, now they have just walked away. Bastards.

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They haven't walked away - Spurr is dancing merrily on Probation's grave. If Spurr has to leave his job tomorrow, he can rest easy in the knowledge that he has single-handedly killed off the pinko arse-wipers, the soft liberal do-gooders & the middle-class spoon-feeders. All that's left is for Gauke to delete the second 'P' in the departmental moniker & its a wrap! Well done, Michael. I hope you're feeling smug & self-satisfied in your mean, bitter, negative little fascist fantasy-world. And please don't worry about me. I can sleep at night. I don't have to spend hours in the shower trying to scrub the bloodstains off my conscience, because I tried to make a POSITIVE difference. At least I did that.

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It has to be said that our so called leaders have made it easy for them thus far. Not a word, not a peep from those who are supposed to be at the helm. Chief police officers and chief fire officers have recently been in the news demanding greater resources, our CEO parasites are nowhere to be seen or heard! Speak, say something....say anything, prove you are not simply a hologram!

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I expect the challenge for Rory Stewart is of the Sisyphean variety. He may well turn out to be another glib politician, but there was something refreshing about a prison minister who readily accepted some operational accountability. His JSC appearance was specific to the conditions at Liverpool prison and back to basics was specific to physical conditions in prisons. All he was saying is that there is no excuse for tolerating squalor and infestation - having a clean environment without broken windows are basic requirements for decent regimes – you don't have to be an advocate of the broken window theory or feng sui to know it makes good sense. Extrapolating from 'back to basics' or criticising his use of military analogies should not be used to detract from the simple point he was making: there is no excuse for turning a blind eye to squalor and allowing it to become the norm.