Probation in a Post TR World

Granada has been investigating the worrying number of SFO's:- 

LICENSED TO KILL: The shocking number of killings carried out by criminals released early from prison

An exclusive Granada Reports investigation has revealed the shocking number of killings carried out by criminals who've been released early from prison. In one part of Greater Manchester alone, over the past three years, three offenders have committed murder or manslaughter after they'd been released into the community to serve the rest of their sentence on licence.

The families of two of those victims claim they've been failed by the system that was supposed to protect them. The Probation Service Union says their members have passed breaking point and mistakes are being made. This exclusive investigation comes from our correspondent, Matt O'Donoghue.

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An extremely thorough resume of the situation from the Independent:-  

If you're worried about prison conditions, you should be deeply disturbed by what happens after inmates are released

Privatisation of the probation service hasn't just made it far less effective – it's becoming downright dangerous

It’s not just HMP Birmingham – although the staggering tales of Spice-intoxicated inmates roaming the hallways and guards locking themselves into their offices certainly mark it as an outlier. The whole of Britain’s prison system is in a state of crisis. Staff working in dangerous conditions report chaos on prison wings, and feeling unsupported and fearful on a day-to-day basis. The situation is so bad that a third of those who join the prison service now leave within a year.

Figures compiled by the Labour Party, and leaked this week, found that 33 per cent of prison officers leaving their jobs in the past 12 months had been in the role for less than a year, up from 7 per cent in 2010.

The government had been publicly celebrating its success in recruiting a new generation of officers, but they should hold the champagne corks. The applause sounds rather hollow now.

Meanwhile the prison population just keeps on rising, as the number and length of custodial sentences awarded creeps upwards too. Almost a third of indictable offences carried a custodial term in 2017, and the average term spent in jail is 16 months.

Prisons are at breaking point, and the pressure they are under – due to both a lack of funding and now clearly of experience too – has led to big mistakes. A report published this week found that hundreds of sex offenders had been released from HMP Dartmoor despite posing a public risk, a result of “unplanned” release. That such an event can occur, and multiple times, demonstrates the extent to which control over the business of rehabilitation has been lost. Damningly, many of these men – who, despite their troubling crimes, should be recognised as vulnerable as well as potentially dangerous – were allowed to leave prison despite their release leaving them homeless.

Yet, this is not the full story. If you think things are bad inside prison, take a look at what’s going on outside. It’s not just prison officers buckling under the pressure, the probation service is also nearing the point of collapse.

Private companies drafted in to manage offenders in the community, and paid by results to do this, have failed utterly in their task.

Some three years ago, the probation service was split in two. The government-run National Probation Service continued to manage the most high-risk offenders, those who have committed very serious crimes or who are judged to pose a serious and ongoing risk to the wellbeing of others. And despite being streamlined, and losing a lot of its staff through redundancy, it has been assessed as continuing to do a good job. That in itself should not prompt significant celebration; it is, surely, the least we can expect from a functioning government, that it is able to protect its population from danger and exploitation.

The privatised part of the system, however, is made up of community rehabilitation companies – private organisations who bid for the work and are paid according to their achievements – who look after those offenders who are considered to pose a “low” or a “medium” risk. Their key task is to support their rehabilitation and prevent reoffending; to move former criminals on to new, positive, productive lives.

There are 21 of these companies in operation. So far, only two have managed to cut the reoffending rate. The latest assessment of their work has been damning: Dame Glenys Stacey, the chief inspector of probation, said staff at the CRCs – who are inexperienced, as a huge number of long-standing probation officers took redundancy or retirement when the service split in two – are doing a bad job of managing their caseloads. Too often, communication with their clients was taking place by telephone, with little effort to build the supportive relationships that could turn lives around.

Payment by results means these failing CRCs could make yet more staff cuts, with worse outcomes for their charges – and for the communities in which they live. Payment by results is all very well in manufacturing, for example, but when those measurable results are the health and wellbeing of our society, it isn’t just logistically challenging but also extremely high risk.

What makes the situation even more troubling is the way that some crimes are categorised. At the point of privatisation, women’s charities warned that those convicted of domestic violence may fall under the category of “low” or “medium” risk – even though it is well known that domestic violence can escalate very suddenly. That put them under the care of less experienced officers, who operate a lighter touch approach. There is little recognition in the system for the fact that the risk posed by someone under the probation service can wax and wane. How can an officer possibly know that this risk level is shifting if they have so little face-to-face contact with them? Two woman, remember, are killed by their partner or former partner every week in England and Wales.

The rapid decline in the quality of the probation service has created a dangerous cycle of neglect, where criminals who are not properly supported both pose a higher risk to the community and are also more likely to seriously reoffend – which leads to a further conviction, which then (thanks to rising incarceration rates) leads to a sentence, and yet more pressure on the buckling prison system.

The government admits, in its own statistics, that more than a third of offenders now have what it describes as “long criminal careers”. That situation is untenable.

In managing the post-prison lives of violent and dangerous criminals, the government, ironically, has proved it can do something well for itself. Too bad it is still so seduced by the whiff of profit that it’s willing to cast aside our most vulnerable in pursuit of ideology over success.

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Penelope Gibbs and Transform Justice have produced a report on Domestic Violence. There was a time when you'd expect the probation voice to be prominent in such a discussion, but it seems no longer:-

Love, fear and control — does the criminal justice system reduce domestic abuse?  

Executive Summary

In my view the criminal justice system is a very blunt tool to address domestic abuse. Disposals which assist perpetrators in addressing issues which lead to domestic abuse are more likely to meet needs of all parties, including complainants, than the stress and uncertainty of the criminal process. (defence lawyer) 

I think that the whole system should work better. I don’t like the idea of just a slap on the wrist and victims feeling unprotected and perpetrators feeling like they have impunity and that there are no consequences, etc. On the other hand, I’m sort of against the whole criminal justice system – I think it does a really, really bad job. (magistrate) 

Where officers are not arresting and attempting to charge perpetrators, domestic abuse victims are not being properly protected, and criminals are not being brought to justice. (police inspectorate)

Domestic abuse is an immensely contentious area. Campaigners, police and victims agree they want to stop it, but not how this can be achieved. Some are fatalistic about the chances of changing the behaviour of those who abuse, and want all efforts focussed on furthering gender equality, supporting victims and imprisoning perpetrators. Others believe we can only reduce abuse through reforming perpetrators. 

The recent government consultation on combatting domestic abuse focussed on an expansion of restrictive civil orders and on prosecution, conviction and harsher sentences. But the College of Policing says there is no evidence that criminal sanctions stop abusers abusing. What's more, harsher sentences are associated with higher rates of reoffending. So criminal sanctions punish, but don’t help victims in the long term. 

This argument against increased sanctions is common amongst many justice reform campaigners. What complicates matters in domestic abuse cases is the complex emotional backdrop. Victims often love the perpetrators, who may be their husband or their child, and don’t want to destroy their relationship with them by involving outside agencies. This creates tension between respecting victims’ wishes and using criminal law. While everyone wants abuse to stop, views differ about how to do it. 

But if criminal sanctions don’t work well and restrictive civil orders are of limited value, what does reduce domestic abuse and the harm it wreaks? Everyone agrees that victims need more support to stay safely in their own homes or to be rehoused (if they want to), to report abuse and to leave abusive relationships. But opinions are divided as to what else is worth doing. Some are fatalistic and feel that it is not worth spending money on perpetrator programmes – that the evidence shows they don’t work because abusers are entrenched and manipulative. But others say that behaviour change is possible, with the right programmes and the right incentives. In fact there is good evidence from England and elsewhere that some perpetrator programmes do have significant success in stopping abusers continuing to abuse, and in improving relationships. And it's clear that many victims’ greatest desire is for the abuse to stop and their perpetrators to get help. In one study over half the victims interviewed wanted their perpetrators to be arrested, but most did not want their partner to be prosecuted. Instead, they wanted to “teach him a lesson” and to send an important symbolic message.

This report highlights problems with the current criminal justice response to domestic abuse cases, and outlines the interventions available, the evidence (or lack of) on their impact, and the next steps required to reduce abuse. High attrition rate in domestic abuse cases continues to be a concern. Scepticism around the use of out of court responses such as community resolutions, cautions and restorative justice means their role is potentially underestimated. The government’s proposals to expand use of the domestic violence protection order is unlikely to make a positive impact. Instead, we need to work out whether all commonly used perpetrator programmes work and expand those that do. 

Some abusers need to be imprisoned to protect current and future victims. But we cannot lock up every abuser and throw away the key. We need to stop throwing money at “solutions”, like short prison sentences, court fines and ASBO-like orders, which don’t reduce abuse, and focus instead on supporting victims and on behaviour change. Behaviour change takes time, skilled facilitators and the best of evidence of what approaches work. If we focus on getting that right, we’ll save a generation of victims – partners, family members and children - from abuse.