Pick of the Week 53

I have said it before on here but I think that one of the catastrophic mistakes of the TR debacle was the almost instant removal of the entire top tier of management across Probation by which I mean CEOs, Board Chairs, ACOs and SPOs. What this did was to remove the corporate memory of generations of practitioners and managers who understood the complexities of working with offenders IN THE COMMUNITY. The Prison Service managers who appear to have been universally 'dropped in' to manage parts of the CRCs had no insight into the complex relationships between offender, agency, sentencers and the community. In short, they didn't understand the environment in which they were operating.

Any effort to regroup is going to be made that much more difficult by the fact that many of those managers have now retired and those who have not have moved on to other things. I know many former managers who would not go back for many reasons. Firstly, having been treated so badly once, they do not want to put themselves in harms way again. Secondly, and this is a real deal-breaker, the NPS will not allow a newly recruited employee start at anything other than the bottom of the scale. This means that a manager at the top of the scale in 2015 would be expected to start at the bottom of the scale. Having had the piss taken once, no-one is likely to want to allow it to happen a second time.

The damage Grayling, Spurr, Wheatley, Carter and all the other imposters have done is absolutely catastrophic because they have cut the head off the body. All the blood transfusions and organ replacements are going to fail because the head has been cut off. I think they are going to have to start again.

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Some got financially rewarded or knighthoods so would not want them back. They helped the TR process along.

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I was not a manager but had diligently developed a decade and a half of experience, know how and demonstrated good performance. I left a CRC, having become disillusioned with their incompetence and sliding values, and decided to focus my talents elsewhere. I cannot see that I will ever work for a CRC and neither will I take a slap in the face from NPS and be asked to start afresh on the pay scale or even below the point that I left. TR has been a near disaster on so many levels. I am glad I left and I am enjoying my new profession but dread the TR type revolution will follow me there. I see no let up from the Government's ideology of revolutionising important public services and detrimentally so in my experience.

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Of course there were those who were more heavily involved as things developed but senior management of trusts would have had no realistic option of not engaging at all with the process. I also know that many of them were as critical of TR in public as the unions were. The bulk of those of us who got financially 'rewarded' would have much preferred to stay put and continue with the careers they had loved and invested in for decades.

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Whilst I accept some staff at higher management level were excellent with strong sense of values I dispute that they represented such a crucial "head" of the Probation world. I think we were closer to the WW1 lions led by donkeys analogy. For years there was far too much passivity or acceptance of rubbish from NOMs and MoJ by ACOP etc. Not enough representation of what Probation [was] about but acceptance of others priorities. It's the staff that are key in this organism and thousands have been kicked out or left because they were made to feel unwelcome. We have lost huge talent, experience, creativity and passion for what Probation is truly about. Less about the pseudo-science of "risk management" and more about valuing people, understanding/interpreting what underlies angry voices, recognising strengths and helping people access them so as to move into non offending/re-integration etc. Losing that swell of grassroots energy and commitment is what is horrendous.

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Fascinating how this particular set of Tories have been overtly & roundly slated by all-party committees examining their 'flagship' policies, e.g. austerity, TR & Universal Credit. And yet... Liz Truss denies we've experienced austerity, just a "period of readjustment", IDS describes the NAO report as "shoddy" whilst the Govt's response to the JSC criticisms is "but 40,000 are receiving support who wouldn't have otherwise."

The deluded fantasists continue to wreck everything they touch - destroying the lives of millions with their vicious, spiteful, self-serving ideology whilst wasting £billions of taxpayer money. Grayling - & those who colluded with his stupidity - should be brought to book in a courtroom for the civil & fiscal crimes he's committed, e.g. lives lost, lives ruined, careers ended.

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It's rare for any politician to see accountability as a restraint on what they do – accountability is for the little people, the underlings. It is astonishing that the MoJ riposte to this TR report is that 40,000 are benefiting through the extension of supervision and support.

There is a knee-jerk rejection of returning probation to pubic ownership which basically worked well for a hundred years. Instead various interest groups want to improve TR – even though the sensible act would be to end this mad experiment. It is amazing how in such a short time the scorched earth policies of TR have eradicated probation infrastructure and got rid of experienced staff. I agree that nothing will change, probation will stagger on and things will get worse.

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Yes Grayling et al should be brought to book but for me the priority has to be the start of restoring probation to a workable model. If I were GS (and never will be) I would call a special NAPO conference to discuss a strategy on how we respond to this, an agreed roadmap of what we do, how and when. This is too important to leave to those numptees on the top table. It's an amazing opportunity to re-engage the membership.

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It's not enough. Rory Steward states 40k more offenders are now benefiting from probation services because of TR. I think he should be asked to explain just what those "benefits" are, and just how much is being paid to provide those "benefits". Unfortunately, today's report is covered by the Guardian and the Independent and has a mention on the BBC news website.

The whole issue will be buried under the June Brexit summit, Trumps State visit, and Boris dodging his vote on Heathrow runways on Monday. The issue needs to be kept alive and needs media attention or its yesterday's news already. Personally, I think that can only be achieved by hanging the whole mess around Graylings neck. He deserves it too. That gives rail unions ammunition for their own cause by raising the complete chaos caused in the probation service already by Grayling. Grayling is the man in the news right now, and I think he may be there for a while, and the opportunity that provides needs exploiting.

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I suspect CRC’s will now fold and the only option will be to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I wish this report had named all the Probation Chief Officers and CEO’s that helped implement TR and should be today hanging their heads in shame. This includes those that received OBE’s and MBE’s, those that received huge redundancy and retirement packages, those now employed by HMIP, the Parole Board and CRC’s, those now lecturing in university, and those the Probation Institute made Fellows.

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A summary analysis provided by Russell Webster (well worth signing up to his work, always a balanced and thoughtful writer on Criminal Justice matters).

'Perhaps the most important component of the Committee’s report is the demand for a review which looks at alternative models. The MoJ has been working on this for well over a year now and the latest rumours to reach me suggest an even more fragmented and complex system is being constructed out of the ashes of TR. While it seems clear that the role of private Community Rehabilitation Companies will diminish, it is far from clear where the responsibility for the offender management of low and medium risk offenders will sit. Whatever solution is proposed, surely the MoJ must seek to create a more coherent structure than we have now.'

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"The splitting of probation services between the National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Companies has complicated the delivery of probation services and created a 'two-tier' system. Although we heard about joint working going on at a local and national level, problems in the relationship remain."

I've fucking had more than enough of this fence-sitting, equivocal don't-rock-the-boat bollocks. TR was a scam; a politically motivated scam which included the aim of eroding the social work ethic from probation, the last bastion of compassion in a penal system run by neo-fascist pseudo-religious bullies. The BlueLabour government had already opened all of the doors, answering the BlairWeasel's prayers, while the last 10 years of 21st Century Tories ("the nazti party") has hammered home the nails in the coffin of humanity. Every middle-class fuckwit has fallen for it; every xenophobe has voted for it; and every greedy pig has profited from it.

Grayling is without emotion or empathy, the perfect sledgehammer to crack the various tricky 'nuts' of benefits, justice & transport - with a side order of brexit.

It's been said already by many other commentators, including those whose lives have been more directly impacted than mine, that the costs of this travesty of a social experiment perpetrated by charlatans, fraudsters & other vile collaborators stretch far beyond the £BILLIONS of wasted public funds... those costs reach into our communities & include no more resources for women, children & families; they effected the endings of the careers of dedicated professionals; they led to the loss of lives in prisons, whether through abuse by others or self-harm; the loss of family members - of mums & dads & children & partners; the loss of a professional workforce with experience & knowledge of working with damaged, difficult & criminally active individuals; the loss of any meaningful interventions with people who wanted & valued that work... the list is boundless...

And all of these things were predicted in advance, were warned about - but were DISMISSED, RUBBISHED & IGNORED.

This wanton vandalism of public service has parallels with the arrogance, the ignorance & the greed that characterised Grenfell - when the informed warnings & fears of the residents were ignored by the smug, the brazen & the powerful. No-one is ever going to be brought to book. And the best the JSC can do is recommend a review by February 2019? Sorry, Bob. You did well, you & your colleagues fought hard, but this isn't good enough. Those responsible need to be held publicly accountable and punished for their deceitful, self-aggrandising actions in imposing TR.

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I am not following this in any length other than to thank you. A long time since we read a decent well written and response. You have captured it all and although the report is not looking to hang the idiots soon it has started the end. Sadly the moron at the top of the Union will not have the raw abilities to drive forwards what is needed to get the change right. Instead we will have to pay to watch them think they are there to help make a new service. Someone like you needs to stand for a place in office and I would vote for you on that statement. Great piece.