Friday 5 April 2019

The Surreal World of TR

The things I do for this blog now include getting utterly drenched in Liverpool yesterday on my way to a joint event put on by Liverpool John Moores University and the Probation Journal, a sort of post mortem on 'Transforming Rehabilitation'. The star turn was Oliver Lodge of the National Audit Office and author of three out of the four NAO reports on TR to date.

Having reminded us that the NAO's job is never to question government policy, but rather examine and audit in respect of Value For (Taxpayer's) Money, a trot through the key findings of all four reports, delivered in a typical accountants' flat, unemotional tone, nevertheless was devastating in utterly demolishing this particular bit of government policy. A bit surreal really, but a situation rather neatly encapsulated by a bit of typically British understatement "not a pretty picture" he said.  There really was nothing and I mean nothing, to commend TR, according to the man from the government department whose job it is to never question government policy - well, except this:- 
'At the end of the TR contracts, the cost will be £822m less than before.' 
I had to have a long think about this figure and indeed I seem to recall that the TR architect himself, Chris Grayling, has already quoted it in defence of the TR omnishambles. Lets just ponder for one minute what this figure of underfunding has meant over the last few years:-
  • careers ruined
  • stress caused
  • sick leave increase
  • staff vacancies
  • recruitment stymied
  • reduction in training 
  • more victims
  • more crime
  • more SFOs
  • community orders not made
  • increase in recalls to prison
  • accommodation not found
  • jobs not secured
This is not a comprehensive list, but you get the idea, a situation confirmed in spades by all the other panel speakers whether academics, from NPS, from CRC or Napo. They all spoke movingly and unlike our friend Oliver from the NAO, passionately about the horror of TR and Lol Burke in particular reminded the audience that its introduction has been likened to  workplace violence. I personally know of a colleagues having been diagnosed with PTSD.

The NAO has suggested in the strongest terms that TR2 be 'paused' and are very concerned at the 'huge challenge to come'. We know the outgoing HMI says TR is 'irredeemably flawed' and the Justice Committee are very concerned. As yet there has been no response to last years 'sham' consultation, but some say we will hear in May. We could be in for another round of trauma folks.  

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This letter in the Telegraph confirms the magistrates are not happy:-

Probation reform

SIR – The report by Dame Glenys Stacey, HM Chief Inspector of Probation, on the state of the probation service is extremely concerning (report, March 28), suggesting that existing provision is simply not fit for purpose.

The report highlights poor performance, dwindling confidence among magistrates in the delivery of community sentences, and the risk that people are being sent to prison when a suitable community sentence might have made this avoidable.

As the Ministry of Justice decides on its next steps in reforming the probation service, these matters must be addressed. Magistrates will not be able to impose community sentences with confidence unless they know that they can be delivered.

John Bache JP
National Chairman, Magistrates Association
London SW8


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We wonder what the new HMI and current MoJ insider will make of it all:-

The Secretary of State has announced the appointment of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation.

The Secretary of State has announced the appointment of Justin Russell as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation for a tenure of 3 years. His appointment will commence on 1 June 2019 and run until 31 May 2022.

The appointment follows a report from the Justice Select, Committee into Justin’s suitability for the role, published on 8 March, and a public hearing with the committee held on 5 March.

Appointments and re-appointments are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments, and have been made in line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.

HM Chief Inspectorate of Probation

The Chief Inspector of Probation reports directly to Ministers, but operates independently of government and the services under its scrutiny. The Chief Inspector has a duty to ensure the inspection of probation and youth offending services in England and Wales and to provide independent scrutiny of the quality of work undertaken with individual offenders.

Justin Russell Biography

Mr Russell has spent over thirty years working on a wide range of criminal justice issues as a researcher, policy maker and major programme leader and has a long-standing interest and involvement in probation and youth justice policy. Mr Russell has also worked for the Audit Commission and Mental Health Foundation and was a non-executive Director of Turning Point from 2005 to 2011. Until recently, he was Director General for Justice Analysis and Offender Policy at the Ministry of Justice and is currently the Director General for No Deal EU Exit Planning at the Ministry of Justice.


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Finally, Bob Neill writing in the Times makes clear his view that prison reform can only happen if probation is fixed:-

Time for rethink on a prisons policy that amounts to crisis management

The government’s approach to prisons in England and Wales is failing to deliver.

The prison population has nearly doubled since the early 1990s — currently standing at 82,000 — and forecasts to 2022 suggest that even more people than that will be in prison by then. This is against the backdrop of a £1.2bn black hole in the Ministry of Justice’s finances, with many prisons overcrowded and a rapidly changing prisoner demographic.

There are many people in prison with drug, alcohol and mental health problems, and prison is often not the best place for them to get help. Despite this, we use custodial sentences more than any other nation in western Europe, and we get considerably worse results in terms of turning people’s lives around and preventing reoffending.

The Commons justice committee’s wide-ranging report, published today after almost 18-months of evidence gathering, proposes a range of solutions.

David Gauke, the justice secretary, is right in his assertion that there is a strong case for abolishing short sentences of six months or less altogether — and not purely because it is an easy way of saving money or closing prisons.

The ministry has rightly focused on safety and decency in prisons, however this has come directly at the expense of rehabilitation. We heard robust evidence that poor access to rehabilitation has a cyclical impact on the degradation of regimes and on safety, which can in turn lead to violence and self-harm. There must now be a dual approach to maintain safety and decency, but also improve rehabilitation.

Without doubt, prison will always have a role in dealing with the most serious crimes and those who are a threat to society, but cutting the use of short sentences, and instead properly investing in tough and rigorous community rehabilitation services would go a long way to solving many of the problems I have described.

Almost a third of prisoners are on sentences of less than 12 months. Better access to support and opportunities for offenders would reduce repeat imprisonment, bring down the estimated £15 billion annual cost of reoffending, and start to alleviate pressure on jails.

It is time for a serious and open public debate about the criminal justice system, the role of prison and its affordability. The government has acknowledged this, but it should happen sooner rather than later so the public can understand the challenging nature of decisions around criminal justice.

No solution is straightforward, but ministers must produce a plan that shows a more joined-up approach to the way we use imprisonment and how that is linked to the rest of the criminal justice system.

At present, we waste unsustainable vast sums of public money, but also fail the thousands of people convicted of less serious offences who need support to move on from their past mistakes. It is time for a serious rethink.

Bob Neill is a Conservative MP and chairman of the justice select committee.

10 comments:

  1. In the meantime, as the government signal a change in sentencing policy with more emphasis on community sentencing, the probation service rushes headlong into pushing its unwilling workforce into the prisons to bolster the failing regime.
    Yet another two tier workforce is being established with wide discrepancies between staffing levels in the public and the private sector prisons which have an end result of demonstrating and trying to prove the misconception that prison officers can double up as probation officers.
    In the meantime, I am again reminded that those who are thoroughly disillusioned and leave full time employment are taking agency jobs paying 50k a year.
    If you peruse various Twitter accounts, you will be heartwarmed to read that everything in the garden is rosy!

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  2. Well done to all the Agency staff I say. At least you get to go where you want, for as long want and leave when you want. Sounds rosy from where I'm standing.

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    1. I'm aware of ex-colleague POs who, in more flexible personal situations, have been enjoying the agency scene for the last few years after the initial CRC clearances. Shafted by their Trusts & robbed of EVR by their CRCs they baled, took the pisspoor severance then signed up early doors for the best rates on serial contract-work. I occasionally catch up & they describe a healthier situation in many respects, often 3-months here, 3-months there; long enough to make a positive difference to workloads but not long enough for management to pick on them; variety in roles; and a healthy cashflow (at least two are banking the equivalent of £4k monthly after deductions).

      This is what the fuckwits describe as a "market economy", "capitalism in action". And so, Mr ID-S & Mr JR-M, it looks like there are Marxists who have organised to capitalise on capitalism!! Tee-hee-hee.

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  3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/06/prisons-damage-british-government-reform-short-sentences

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    1. At least some MPs are doing their day job. This week the Commons justice committee demanded that all prison sentences of less than a year be scrapped, in a drastic measure apparently to slash the prison population in England and Wales, and because short sentences do not work. Assuming it does not just mean longer sentences, this is good news.

      Jailing people is dumb because it treats effects not causes. I once asked a probation expert how many convicts really needed to be locked up to protect the public. She said about 20%. Winston Churchill once declared the issue to be “the most unfailing test of the civilisation of any country”. He was right. Britain, with the highest incarceration rate in western Europe, fails that test.

      The justice committee chairman, Bob Neill, pointed to the absurdity of throwing ever more money at overcrowded prisons and “diverting funds from essential rehabilitative initiatives that could stem or reverse” the overcrowding. To his credit, the justice secretary, David Gauke, says he is determined to take up this cause, facing a prison population that has doubled in 25 years to 82,417. The trouble is that almost every justice secretary has said the same. Michael Gove said it and got moved. Kenneth Clarke said it and got sacked by David Cameron.

      It is the fact of imprisonment, not the length of the sentence, that is society’s retribution against the wrongdoer. It is a lingering echo of medieval torture. Prison exposes the prisoner to drugs, violence, psychological brutality and suicide. It ruins families, makes rehabilitation harder and increases reoffending. I cannot hang you, says the judge (and his puppet master the minister), but I can make your life hell and the rest of it not worth living.

      Prison excites the public imagination and the desire for revenge. It puts iron in the soul of the magistracy and makes judges feel like warriors for justice. A juicy trial is also good media copy. I have sat on three juries and felt the pressure. For conviction not to end in the clang of a jail door would somehow spoil the theatre.

      I keep an archive of the casual way courts now resort to prisons. In the past year, I have a man who was jailed for making a girlfriend lose weight on a treadmill and another for stealing goods from a shipwreck. A former helicopter policeman was jailed for photographing a couple copulating in a back garden. Three anti-fracking protesters were jailed for “causing a nuisance”. One man was jailed for microwaving his rabbit, another for kicking a hedgehog.

      A Labour MP was jailed for swapping a speeding ticket and a 94-year-old man for paedophilic acts dating back 40 years. Dangerous driving or cycling can lead to prison, not for the degree of danger but for the unintentional harm done to an accident victim. A teacher can be jailed for not reporting signs of child abuse.

      None of these crimes are excusable, but nor is the senselessness of the punishment. I’ve asked European friends if any of these offences would be imprisonable back home. Almost invariably the answer is no. As Neill said this week, we can spend money either on prisons, or on keeping people out of prison through rehabilitation. Successive governments have preferred prisons. The Dutch, who have gone over almost entirely to community penalties, have closed about 20 prisons, with no surge in crime. It is a choice. “Tough on crime” has become a political addiction. The Cameron government created 1,073 new crimes, the Tony Blair government about 4,000.

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    2. Unless a convict is a clear and present danger to society, prison is a mindless reaction, led by emotion rather than reason. It is a sign of the immaturity of British politics. There is now a yawning gulf between the generally accepted answer to prison overcrowding, which is fewer prisoners, and what is happening on the ground, which is more prisoners. Legislators are liberals in general but reactionaries in particular. All the criminology research in the world is valueless if it fails to address the cause of this gulf. Why, when it knows it is stupid, does the judicial system cram the jails?

      Ask this question in Whitehall and the answer rarely refers to evidence. It refers to the Pavlovian response of ministers to public opinion, as expressed in parliament and the press. They are scared. Whenever something goes wrong, the cry is simple: “Tougher sentences.” Change never happens. The issue for Gauke is not fewer sentences, but when to take the Daily Mail out to lunch.

      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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  4. 'At the end of the TR contracts, the cost will be £822m less than before.'

    As you have already started to do this claim needs thoroughly shredding. I seem to recall that the Probation budget in total was set to remain the same given the extra work of post sentence supervision. The fact that the Magistrates' have lost faith in community sentencing is one reason for the above figure. In other words it represents a failure and is based on miscalculations. I also think that that figure represents a form of Probation Service now where doing nothing would achieve the same or better results than what certain aspects of Probation work presently achieve. If the figure is true, we should be angry, not overjoyed, for all the damage that has been caused and even worse left unrepaired.

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  5. It is a well known maxim in criminology that crime is a reflection of police activity rather than actual crime. Police activity now concentrates almost entirely on domestic abuse, knife crime or sexual offending. As a result offending outside these areas is rarely prosecuted. The impact of this is interesting as probation work seems reduced in courts with a bifurcation between serious offending and lower level simple possessesion of cannabis - this is actually reducing demand for court reports and the numbers coming into supervision. Is anyone doing any thinking about the impact of police activity on probation caseloads?

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  6. 'At the end of the TR contracts, the cost will be £822m less than before.'

    "Chris Grayling, justice secretary, started the process by turning 35 probation trusts into 21 community rehabilitation companies earlier this month. These will be sold off for £1 each later this year in preparation for the transfer of almost 10,000 staff, premises and resources to the winning private-sector contractors.

    The MoJ is seeking £2bn cost savings across the department by 2014/ 2015 but hopes to reinvest savings on the probation contracts – estimated at around 30 per cent – into the service."

    https://www.ft.com/content/4e2db6b2-fddd-11e3-bd0e-00144feab7de


    Here's a link to a govt excel doc entitled "probation trust unit costs 2011/12":

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwjwn4eolLvhAhUJkxQKHfSmAE8QFjAAegQIBhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F163295%2Fprobation-trust-unit-costs-tables-11-12.xls&usg=AOvVaw1H84rMtnHBFYNQLFvp5Zl4


    This document shows:

    * cost of 35 probation trusts in 2011/12 was £820m

    * average Cost per Pre-Sentence Report was £215
    * average Cost per Offender Supervised on Licence Post-Custody was £2380
    * average Cost per Community Order/ Suspended Sentence Order was £4135

    **National unit costs are calculated from the total fully apportioned cost to NOMS allocated across all Probation Trusts providing an average overall unit cost**

    But numbers are numbers are statistics, and any amount of spin is possible. Here's the NAO view:

    "By March 2018, CRCs faced collective losses of £294 million over the life of the contracts, compared to expected profits of £269 million, increasing the risk of providers withdrawing services, performance deteriorating further and potentially multiple providers becoming insolvent. Terminating these contracts will cost taxpayers at least £171 million. The Ministry originally expected to pay CRCs up to £3.7 billion over the life of the contracts, but by August 2018 it was expecting to pay CRCs £2.3 billion through to December 2020 when it ends its contracts. Yet, together with its earlier unsuccessful efforts to stabilise CRCs, the Ministry will pay at least £467 million more than was required under the original contracts. The full costs will not be known until at least December 2020."

    https://www.nao.org.uk/press-release/transforming-rehabilitation-progress-review/

    "together with its earlier unsuccessful efforts to stabilise CRCs, the Ministry will pay at least £467 million more than was required under the original contracts."

    So is it £822m less or £467m more?

    £2.3bn over 5 years = £460m/year for CRCs only

    I've found it almost impossible (so far) to identify the costs of NPS as they're buried in different cost headings, e.g. Probation & Women, HMPPS Wales, Community Interventions which total £967m

    35 Probation Trusts used to cost £820m/year

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  7. We’re run by lunatics in government who have caused more damage to UK society with TR than they can ever comprehend. Everyday is a chaotic mess and we cannot support service users or proactively manage risk. If only the courts had any idea, they’d stop giving Community Sentences out altogether. It’s about targets and money over risk, we’re not fit for purpose and continue to draw taxpayers money for hitting targets that are fudged half the time. The targets arent a measure of meaningful work, just administrative measurements. It’s not ethical and bordering on being fraudulent in my opinion. I’ve worked in this field for 14 years and I’m hanging on in the hope that the MOJ regain their sanity and reunify the service.

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