Yesterday the funerals were held for the two murdered victims of the London Bridge tragedy of 29th November involving people attending a Learning Together event at Fishmongers' Hall.
As more details emerge, an article in the most recent edition of the London Review of Books serves to not only put the terrible event into some context, but also shed some very uncomfortable light regarding the current state of the probation service under the dead hand of Civil Service control. I'm increasingly coming to the view that it's no longer fit for purpose and selected the following passages which I believe graphically illustrate how the whole probation ethos is being steadily destroyed under pernicious NPS control and as a direct consequence of TR:-
Life on Licence
John’s probation officer found him a room in a shared house in Openshaw, in Manchester. The landlord claimed housing benefit on John’s behalf, and sent a man round each week to collect a portion of his Jobseekers’ Allowance in cash. The company managing the property claimed to be providing ‘supported’ accommodation, but there was no evidence of any support when I visited. Its website gives no information about the services provided and the ‘About Us’ section consists of just a few stock photos and the letter ‘x’, as a placeholder. It’s a private company registered as a non-profit with the Regulator of Social Housing, but the house John was living in belongs to the father of the two men described as company directors at Companies House.
John had almost no money, and had to walk three and a half miles to his probation appointments, and a mile and a half to sign on, unless he could get cash for the bus from one of his sons. ‘It’s fucking burning my head out,’ he told me. ‘I can’t even get a haircut.’ One of the conditions of his tenancy was that he wasn’t allowed to work because this would mess up his housing benefit. When he got a job as a building labourer the landlord gave him a week’s notice. ‘Maybe next time I speak to you I’ll be in Strangeways,’ John texted me.
His probation officer wasn’t much help, and the room he eventually found in a hostel in Cheetham Hill came from a charity for ex-prisoners. For a while he was happier: the facilities were better and he felt validated by having work. He attended the graduation ceremony for the Open University degree he had taken in prison, an experience that wasn’t wholly positive: ‘It just seemed like I shouldn’t be there,’ he told me in a WhatsApp voice note, ‘that I was like the black sheep in a swell of good, law-abiding people ... I felt I didn’t deserve to be there.’
He hoped to move to Cambridge, where researchers he had met through a prison education programme called Learning Together had promised to help him find a job. He had come across Learning Together at HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire, where he also received therapy for the first time after a lifetime of anxiety and negative feelings about himself, exacerbated by years of addiction and grief over the death of his mother in 1988, when he was 17. The prospect of a job in Cambridge was vague – part-time gardening work at the university and perhaps a role in prison education – but he now fixed on it as representing a more hopeful future.
But his probation officer didn’t seem interested in helping him find accommodation in Cambridge, and he had no prospect of finding a room in the private sector without a substantial deposit, so he stayed in Manchester. At least once he let his frustration show by swearing at the probation officer, and she abruptly ended their conversation. When he missed an appointment because he was at work, she sent him an official warning and threatened to refuse to allow him to attend events organised by Learning Together. He felt bullied. ‘Why even mention the best things in my life? She scares the life out of me ... sometimes I think she’s trying to fuck my thing up for Cambridge.’
For reasons that are unclear, in October 2018 his probation officer told him he had to take a drug test. This had never been a condition of his licence, and his lawyers advised him to refuse. John followed the advice, and 1 November he was sent back to prison – this time to HMP Manchester, as Strangeways is officially known.
Some sense of John’s experience is captured in Probationary: The Game of Life on Licence, a board game commissioned by the Liverpool gallery FACT from the artist Hwa Young Jung. Together with academics from Liverpool John Moores University and probation officers, she held a series of workshops with men on probation in Merseyside. They played chess and the original Game of Life board game, while Hwa Young talked to them and tried to get a sense of their life on probation. Some men drifted out of the group and one of them found Hwa Young’s curiosity too painful. ‘The way I work is with a lot of questions,’ she told me. ‘Is life fair? Why is it not fair? What is the purpose of prison?’
The game, for four players, begins with their release from prison. One character is released to his own home, two to a hostel, one to homelessness. ‘We had a lot of discussion about how much to factor in luck and skills in the gameplay,’ Hwa Young said. ‘We decided it’s mostly luck.’ Players roll dice, and pick up various cards and tokens under the headings ‘Emotional’, ‘Skills’ and ‘Relationships’. An ‘Emotional’ card might tell you that you feel upset because trains passing by your hostel keep you awake – you lose Emotion tokens as a result. Squares that help a player move forward, like ‘Get Forklift Licence’ are green; grey squares, like ‘Break Curfew – Warning Letter’ or ‘Lose Job’, will send you back. The four characters have to ‘check in’ regularly with the fifth player, ‘The Eye’, representing the experience of supervision, who can recall the four players to prison.
The probation system has suffered badly from the ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ reforms of 2014. Supervision of low and medium-risk offenders was taken out of the direct control of the public sector and contracted out to ‘community rehabilitation companies’, private bodies run by businesses such as Sodexo and Interserve. Post-sentence supervision was extended to all prisoners serving sentences of less than a year, adding around forty thousand people to the rolls but with no increase in funding.
Nobody involved in probation is happy with the situation as it stands. Staff are overworked and often asked to do tasks for which they aren’t properly trained. In the north-west, for instance, the latest report by the Inspectorate of Probation found a 20 per cent shortfall in the number of probation officers. Morale is at an ‘all-time low’, the House of Commons Justice Committee found last year. Some of the 2014 reforms will be reversed from 2021 under the terms of a new plan released over the summer: community rehabilitation companies will be scrapped and responsibility returned to the National Probation Service, which will supervise all offenders, regardless of the severity of their crime or whether they have served a custodial sentence. This has been hailed in the Guardian and elsewhere as the ‘re-nationalisation’ of probation, but the reforms do not represent a return to the status quo ante. Each NPS region will have an ‘Innovation Partner’ from the private or voluntary sector, to which they will be obliged to contract a wide range of services. These include Community Payback (under which offenders do things like clean graffiti and pick up litter), but also accredited programmes like Building Better Relationships, aimed at male perpetrators of domestic violence. ‘The marketised model that was a driving rationale for Transforming Rehabilitation is not to be dispensed with,’ an editorial in September’s Probation Journal argues, ‘but rather reformulated.’
Meanwhile the profession is being hollowed out. In the year to 31 March 2018 an 8.4 per cent increase in the number of frontline staff disguised a 5.3 per cent fall in the number of probation officers, while probation services officers, a lower paid and less highly trained job, increased by 37.9 per cent. Last year the House of Commons Justice Committee recommended that the government develop a ‘probation workforce strategy’ to protect staff retention and morale, and set down expectations for training and maximum workloads. The proposal was rejected.
Learning Together held its first workshops at Grendon in 2014, under the direction of Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow, from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. John had been sceptical at first. ‘The lads were always talking about it, “Oh they’re just studying us like lab rats,” but as the weeks went by ... Ruth and Amy, you just have to meet them and see them in action.’ Each week there was a lecture on a topic like sentencing guidelines, or long-term imprisonment. Working in small groups with a facilitator, students and prisoners presented ideas related to the subject. One week, John’s group had to come up with ideas for improving the criminal justice system. John proposed pairing up officers on the beat with ex-offenders. ‘A lot of people don’t like talking to the police, the kids and that. If I’m there, from the estate, they’d maybe trust me a bit more. That way the police can get their information, and I can keep my eye on the police that they’re not bullying the kids. That makes it a bit more legitimate.’ The response from the academics – encouraging, thoughtful, respectful – was gratifying. He had already spent a fair bit of time studying, in fact he was the prison’s Open University orderly, helping other prisoners navigate their way through their studies, but Learning Together meant more to him because it gave him the opportunity to work with others and to be validated with and by them. ‘I’ve always struggled with self-esteem. I tried arguing with it, but I couldn’t hide from the support and the care that was there.’ At the end of the course students from Learning Together gave him a legal dictionary, and after he left Grendon one of the staff members visited him in HMP Preston during his appeal.
All this led John to join other former prisoners at a celebration of the programme’s fifth anniversary at Fishmongers’ Hall on 29 November. Ruth and Amy were there. So were Saskia Jones, a volunteer John knew, and the course co-ordinator Jack Merritt, who had come to his Open University graduation ceremony: the two people killed when Usman Khan launched his senseless knife attack.
The game, for four players, begins with their release from prison. One character is released to his own home, two to a hostel, one to homelessness. ‘We had a lot of discussion about how much to factor in luck and skills in the gameplay,’ Hwa Young said. ‘We decided it’s mostly luck.’ Players roll dice, and pick up various cards and tokens under the headings ‘Emotional’, ‘Skills’ and ‘Relationships’. An ‘Emotional’ card might tell you that you feel upset because trains passing by your hostel keep you awake – you lose Emotion tokens as a result. Squares that help a player move forward, like ‘Get Forklift Licence’ are green; grey squares, like ‘Break Curfew – Warning Letter’ or ‘Lose Job’, will send you back. The four characters have to ‘check in’ regularly with the fifth player, ‘The Eye’, representing the experience of supervision, who can recall the four players to prison.
The probation system has suffered badly from the ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ reforms of 2014. Supervision of low and medium-risk offenders was taken out of the direct control of the public sector and contracted out to ‘community rehabilitation companies’, private bodies run by businesses such as Sodexo and Interserve. Post-sentence supervision was extended to all prisoners serving sentences of less than a year, adding around forty thousand people to the rolls but with no increase in funding.
Nobody involved in probation is happy with the situation as it stands. Staff are overworked and often asked to do tasks for which they aren’t properly trained. In the north-west, for instance, the latest report by the Inspectorate of Probation found a 20 per cent shortfall in the number of probation officers. Morale is at an ‘all-time low’, the House of Commons Justice Committee found last year. Some of the 2014 reforms will be reversed from 2021 under the terms of a new plan released over the summer: community rehabilitation companies will be scrapped and responsibility returned to the National Probation Service, which will supervise all offenders, regardless of the severity of their crime or whether they have served a custodial sentence. This has been hailed in the Guardian and elsewhere as the ‘re-nationalisation’ of probation, but the reforms do not represent a return to the status quo ante. Each NPS region will have an ‘Innovation Partner’ from the private or voluntary sector, to which they will be obliged to contract a wide range of services. These include Community Payback (under which offenders do things like clean graffiti and pick up litter), but also accredited programmes like Building Better Relationships, aimed at male perpetrators of domestic violence. ‘The marketised model that was a driving rationale for Transforming Rehabilitation is not to be dispensed with,’ an editorial in September’s Probation Journal argues, ‘but rather reformulated.’
Meanwhile the profession is being hollowed out. In the year to 31 March 2018 an 8.4 per cent increase in the number of frontline staff disguised a 5.3 per cent fall in the number of probation officers, while probation services officers, a lower paid and less highly trained job, increased by 37.9 per cent. Last year the House of Commons Justice Committee recommended that the government develop a ‘probation workforce strategy’ to protect staff retention and morale, and set down expectations for training and maximum workloads. The proposal was rejected.
Learning Together held its first workshops at Grendon in 2014, under the direction of Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow, from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. John had been sceptical at first. ‘The lads were always talking about it, “Oh they’re just studying us like lab rats,” but as the weeks went by ... Ruth and Amy, you just have to meet them and see them in action.’ Each week there was a lecture on a topic like sentencing guidelines, or long-term imprisonment. Working in small groups with a facilitator, students and prisoners presented ideas related to the subject. One week, John’s group had to come up with ideas for improving the criminal justice system. John proposed pairing up officers on the beat with ex-offenders. ‘A lot of people don’t like talking to the police, the kids and that. If I’m there, from the estate, they’d maybe trust me a bit more. That way the police can get their information, and I can keep my eye on the police that they’re not bullying the kids. That makes it a bit more legitimate.’ The response from the academics – encouraging, thoughtful, respectful – was gratifying. He had already spent a fair bit of time studying, in fact he was the prison’s Open University orderly, helping other prisoners navigate their way through their studies, but Learning Together meant more to him because it gave him the opportunity to work with others and to be validated with and by them. ‘I’ve always struggled with self-esteem. I tried arguing with it, but I couldn’t hide from the support and the care that was there.’ At the end of the course students from Learning Together gave him a legal dictionary, and after he left Grendon one of the staff members visited him in HMP Preston during his appeal.
All this led John to join other former prisoners at a celebration of the programme’s fifth anniversary at Fishmongers’ Hall on 29 November. Ruth and Amy were there. So were Saskia Jones, a volunteer John knew, and the course co-ordinator Jack Merritt, who had come to his Open University graduation ceremony: the two people killed when Usman Khan launched his senseless knife attack.
Harry Stopes
More details regarding the board game 'Probationary' can be found here.
Thanks Jim.
ReplyDelete"The person with a fire extinguisher who tackled Usman Khan during the London attack was John Crilly, a former prisoner. I was working on an article for @LRB about John's post prison experience (we first met 18 mths ago) shortly before the attack happened" (Harry Stopes on Twitter)
Harry Stopes is a postdoctoral fellow at the Free University of Berlin.
He does some good work.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/investigative/harry-stopes/
He also wrote this thoughtful piece:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/august/peterloo-and-after
The best way to improve the entire criminal justice system - top to bottom - is to work with people who have been convicted. They know from first hand experience what the issues are and many of them are articulate enough to be able to posit ways to improve the system. But virtually no one is interested in listening to them
ReplyDeleteNo, the best way to improve the CJS would be to listen to those that it is designed to serve, i.e. victims. Are you actually suggesting that the authorities should ask sex offenders about how to ensure victims feel the CJS is working for them rather than for offenders? Too often it is victims that are completely forgotten about.
Delete"No, the best way to improve the CJS would be to listen to those that it is designed to serve, i.e. victims."
DeleteThe aim of the CJS is surely to benefit everyone?
Annon @16.42
ReplyDeleteIm quite sickened, and frightened by your comment.
If you see people regularly sent to you by the courts, and yod don't see any of them as a victim of some sort, then you're either in the wrong job, trained wrong, or heartless.
I could post as Annon, but I won't.
'Getafix
'
Hard to say, getafix. Is it selection? Is it targetted recruitment? Is it training? Today's blog contains enough 'red flags' for me:
Delete"John’s probation officer found him a room in a shared house... The company managing the property claimed to be providing ‘supported’ accommodation, but there was no evidence of any support when I visited... One of the conditions of his tenancy was that he wasn’t allowed to work because this would mess up his housing benefit."
No address check then? Or if there was one, why collude with such conditions?
"John had almost no money, and had to walk three and a half miles to his probation appointments"
No bus fare refund/assistance? When our organisation was told we could no longer officially issue travel assistance, staff simply volunteered a monthly cash sum which was held by reception staff & used to refund travel to appointments for those in receipt of benefits.
"When he got a job as a building labourer the landlord gave him a week’s notice... His probation officer wasn’t much help, and the room he eventually found in a hostel in Cheetham Hill came from a charity for ex-prisoners... his probation officer didn’t seem interested in helping him find accommodation in Cambridge... so he stayed in Manchester. At least once he let his frustration show by swearing at the probation officer, and she abruptly ended their conversation. When he missed an appointment because he was at work, she sent him an official warning and threatened to refuse to allow him to attend events organised by Learning Together... For reasons that are unclear, in October 2018 his probation officer told him he had to take a drug test. This had never been a condition of his licence, and his lawyers advised him to refuse. John followed the advice, and 1 November he was sent back to prison."
Sounds like someone took something personally...
It's not hard to call at all.
DeleteIf a 27 year old woman presents with heroin addiction, a history of domestic violence,dental problems, prostitution and shoplifting, 3 kids in care and as many short prison sentences for whatever.
Then tell me what you mean when you say 'it's all about the victim".
How has that been allowed to happen? When, and how many times has that person been a victim?
Sometimes you've got victims both side of the desk. Don't they both deserve a bit attention?
Those that have come through the courts have already been judged. It's not for the agencies that the court sends them to, to make further judgements, it should be impartial, focused on solving the problems, and not having a bias.
'Getafix
An old git of a PO used to always tell me that when a defendant was in court facing sentencing they were on a hiding to nothing from all sides, that the only chance of an independent, impartial voice being heard was if a well-written PSR was available.
Delete"Sometimes you've got victims both side of the desk."
DeleteThat is also true in a probation appointment situation but the power imbalance usually means the probation staffer calls the shots, even if/when their own unresolved issues are getting in the way of an impartial call.
@19:52 highlights such a possibility at the end of their post.
Bigotry, prejudice, bias, bullying, abusive behaviours; all are born out of & are reactions to experiences as a victim at some point in one's life, regardless of one's position or status - probation staff, prison governor, unemployed, forklift driver, shop assistant, accountant, company director, prime minister, president of your country, etc, etc.
A bit of Sunday gossip from aol news:
ReplyDeleteBoris Johnson's chief aide in Downing Street, Dominic Cummings, is paid three times the average UK salary, a Government report has revealed.
Mr Cummings, the brains behind the Vote Leave campaign who was brought into Number 10 when Mr Johnson became Prime Minister in July, is paid between £95,000 and £99,999 for his role as chief special adviser.
The average UK salary is £29,500, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The 48-year-old's pay was revealed in the annual report on special advisers published this week by the Cabinet Office.
Special advisers, known in Westminster as spads, offer senior ministers political advice away from the impartiality of the civil service.
Other salaries declared in the report included Downing Street communications director Lee Cain, chief strategic adviser Sir Ed Lister and director of legislative affairs Nikki Da Costa.
All three earn between £140,000 and £145,000 – not far off the PM's £150,000-a-year salary.
Ms da Costa, who is on maternity leave, is said to have advised Mr Johnson over his decision to prorogue Parliament, a move the Supreme Court later deemed to be unlawful.
Sir Ed, a former chairman of Homes England, previously worked with Mr Johnson when he was London mayor, while Mr Cain is an ex-Daily Mirror journalist who also worked for the Vote Leave campaign that was spearheaded by Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings.
Robert Oxley, the PM's press secretary – and another ex-Vote Leave staffer – makes between £85,000 and £89,999 before tax, according to the report.
He was caught saying "for fuck's sake" at a journalist live on ITV's Good Morning Britain during the General Election campaign as the broadcaster tried to interview Mr Johnson.
The Cabinet Office document says: "Special advisers are temporary civil servants appointed to add a political dimension to the advice and assistance available to ministers.
"In doing so they reinforce the political impartiality of the permanent civil service by distinguishing the source of political advice and support."
As of November 5, there were 108 full-time equivalent spads working across Government, costing the taxpayer £9.6 million once pension and national insurance contributions are factored in.
The cost is £700,000 higher than the 2018 total.
The number of full-time equivalents is also up by nine under Mr Johnson compared with his predecessor Theresa May, while the Conservative leader's personal advisory team has expanded to 44, from 37 during Mrs May's tenure.
And now Bozo's in No.10, here we go with the UK jumble sale. Those in probation provider companies will remember Aurelius? And Quadrant?
Delete"The family behind UK defence company Cobham has attacked the Government over its decision to give the go-ahead to a £4 billion takeover of the business by a US private equity firm... The deal with Advent was criticised because of the private equity firm's lack of experience in the sector and the short-term mindset of investment companies... Lady Nadine said: "This is a deeply disappointing announcement and one cynically timed to avoid scrutiny on the weekend before Christmas. In one of its first major economic decisions, the Government is not taking back control so much as handing it away."
In the latest of a series of buyouts in Europe, with private equity firms seeking new targets for their bumper cash balances, Advent is offering 165 pence in cash for each Cobham share representing a 50% premium to the three-month average price.
Shares in Cobham, whose technology is found on F-35 fighters and Airbus jets, jumped 35%... The deal will be part funded by about 2.5 billion pounds of debt... Chief Executive David Lockwood embarked on a turnaround strategy two and half years ago... Advent has a track record in buying British technology, having snapped up electronics company Laird for $1.65 billion last year. Cobham’s CEO Lockwood was Laird’s chief executive between 2012 and 2016... Buyouts of companies in Europe hit a 12-year high in April...
A second top-10 shareholder, who declined to be named said “This is a great example of how there is really good value in the UK market.” (Reuters, July 2019)
Unlimited cash bonanza for the liars & cheats, straight-jacket for the workers:
Delete"The government has set out plans for a new law which aims to reduce disruption to passengers caused by rail strikes.
Under the legislation, minimum services would have to be provided during walkouts by railway workers, with the threat of financial penalties.
The RMT union called the proposed law "a draconian measure which amounts to an attempt to ban transport workers from going on strike."
The move was announced amid RMT strikes on South Western Railway services.
Under the new law, which was outlined in the Queen's Speech on Thursday, any strike would be unlawful unless a "minimum service agreement" is in place.
If the agreement is not honoured, the strike would be unlawful and damages would be sought against unions."
One of the shop stewards members of that union is on You tube Tory voting for brexit trade unionist get that one figured out then look at the rest of it.
DeleteI think I'm in a parallel universe, or at best on an alien planet. I have no idea what's going on...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-50650665
Summer is a time for festivals, long lazy days in the park and for some of us... being single. But come September, as the daylight hours get shorter and temperatures drop, you might find yourself wanting someone to cuddle up with.
DeleteThat is basically the premise of "cuffing season" - that's when people who are normally happy being single decide it's time to find a plus-one for the Christmas party. And then swiftly dispose of them before their trip to Ibiza in the spring. Brutal.
Getafix's comment is spot on. I started my Probation career in the late 1970s. My PO Supervisor when i was a Trainee said exactly what Getafix said, over and over:
ReplyDelete"It's not for the agencies that the court sends them to, to make further judgements, it should be impartial, focused on solving the problems, and not having a bias." They are called "Judges" because that's what they do. We are not called "Judges".
Getafix @ 19.26 - if I'd wanted to be a liberal do-gooder then I'd have become a social worker rather than a probation officer.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 19.52 - sounds fair enough to me. This guy should have played by the rules if he wanted to avoid going back to prison. I'm sure the victims were relieved when he was recalled.
Getafix @ 21.08 - convenient that you pick that example. Why didn't you pick the example of an offender that raped six children over a 10 year period? Or the example of an offender that murdered three people in cold blood? That's the reality in the NPS. Try telling the victims, their families and the wider public that those offenders are victims too.
Apparently you have forgotten that anyone, including you, in the right set of circumstances, can be prosecuted for a crime (including one they didn't commit). And anyone in the right set of circumstances can commit murder and other heinous crimes. Surely you would want to be treated with scrupulous fairness should you ever end up in prison and then on probation for such a crime? You'd also want your background and what led you to commit said crime taken into consideration. You should not judge someone until you've walked a mile in someone's shoes. And if you are a probation officer, I would strongly suggest that you need to look for a new career because you are totally unsuited to one in the probation service.
DeleteThe probation service was built on the social Work ethos. Probation officers had to be qualified social workers. That was removed.
DeleteHave you noticed the state the service is in now?
'Getafix
Exactly and the attitudes have become entrenched in all aspects of the activity.
DeleteRepost - Anonymous 13 December 2019 at 11:03
ReplyDeleteNote to Regular Readers - Brace yourselves for a plethora of antagonistic posts from the craven shapeshifters, the parasites & those good old fashioned bullies who will see this election result as a green light.
"if I'd wanted to be a liberal do-gooder then I'd have become a social worker rather than a probation officer."
ReplyDelete"I would strongly suggest that you need to look for a new career because you are totally unsuited to one in the probation service."
I think rather neatly illustrates the issue. Probation Officers used to be CQSW qualified - it was a huge retrograde step moving away from this grounding.
Why is being Liberal and a do-gooder a bad thing?
DeleteBecause you become so far removed from reality that you lose all relevance and credibility.
DeleteIs that you Ebenezer?
DeleteNah. Its Cummings's crew.
DeleteHere's Carole Cadwalladr in the guardian: [Cummings sees the current situation as] "an opportunity to drive an axe through everything he most hates about the British state, starting with parliament, and ending, I suspect, with the civil service. That’s the deal I believe he will have done with Johnson: he’ll help Johnson get Brexit through, and in exchange, Cummings will blow up his hated civil service."
https://www.basw.co.uk/system/files/resources/basw_123916-1_0.pdf
DeleteCan you be a Tory and a social worker?
In an age of austerity, can social workers be divorced from politics? And if not, must they automatically be opposed to an economic system that is hurting their clients most? Shahid Naqvi examines how the current climate asks some fundamental questions about what it means to be a social worker.
A slightly longer &, for me, very disturbing read...
Deletehttps://brightblue.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Giveandtake.pdf
* The first conservative principle we identify is a belief in individual control and personal responsibility. Conservatives tend to see individuals as agents who can shape and determine their circumstances, and so are seen to be more responsible for their impoverishment.
* The second principle we unearth is that Conservatives make a clearer distinction between the deserving and undeserving among benefit claimants.
* The third conservative principle we identify concerns the rational agency of claimants. Claimants are often understood by conservatives as making a rational choice to rely on the state.
Thanks for unearthing this very disturbing and depressing read - sadly I suspect we will become increasingly familiar with its contents over the coming months and years.
DeleteIt's not a conservative view, it's just common sense. Why should one half of society work hard so they can be taxed to pay for those that just want to sit on their arse all day?
Deletehttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7818217/Home-Secretary-Priti-Patel-set-handed-control-sentencing-powers.html
ReplyDeleteIn other news, the Home Secretary is expected to take charge of sentencing, prisons and parole. Will that be the demise of the MOJ?
I'm picking up on the housing stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that the officer didn't care, it's the obviously John whilst inside didn't put any effort into looking towards future accommodation favouring instead to join some sodding open university programme. This is the problem, prisoners are being treated as babies - they're totally reliant on the prison regime and have a massive sense of entitlement. In jail they're fed, watered, have services on tap, quicker to get seen by a prison doc than a GP or mental health specialist, don't have to worry about bills. They can do what they like, because they'll get released automatically or go to the parole board who will like always take the side of the prisoner instead of the professionals who will be managing them. I'm sick of reading stories which advocate for the prisoner, and present them as some helpless victim of the system - they weren't that helpless when they killed someone. I'm not a Tory but the power dynamics need to change.
Blimey! What a contrarian view. Can you write us a guest blog?
Delete13.42, I completely agree. If you can't do the time then don't do the crime. If prisons weren't so soft then maybe offenders would actually try and avoid being recalled.
Delete"I completely agree. If you can't do the time then don't do the crime. If prisons weren't so soft then maybe offenders would actually try and avoid being recalled."
DeleteI think we've attracted some trolls.
From Twitter:-
Delete"Post hoc reasoning. Just because something happened after a change, it doesn’t mean it happened because of that change. The state Probation is in now probably has a lot more to do with transforming rehabilitation than the removal of the SW qualifying route."
From Twitter:-
Delete"I have been training probation officers for the last 15 years. Those that do not have traditional Probation values and ethics (which for me include social work principles) struggle. My principles will never ever change."
From Twitter:-
Delete"True that TR has an impact but there is still something toxic lurking IME. A P.O. telling a vulnerable client that they 'haven't the time' to listen to them, or even respect rights, is not OK!"
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"Probation has gone down hill. I’ve complained several times and how I’m getting treated. I’m still waiting for a meeting to be arranged with the head of probation. This was 2 months ago!! I’ve had 8 different probation officers since February. Useless!!!"
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"In 20 years I’ve only ever met 2 decent probation who do their job properly 2 out of dozens ????? 2 decent honest upfront caring people pretty shameful."
Reminds me of those offenders who claim their POs 'screwed' then over by recalling them when they 'only' got charged with violently assaulting their partner!
DeleteGoodness gracious, JB, Dom & Bozo's troll-babies have been very busy on the social media today. Looks like they don't approve.
ReplyDeleteStill, won't be long now before the civil service is swept clean of naysayers, all new probation provider contracts are in the hands of private equity sharks, dangerous blog-sites are closed down and Antonia Romeo replaces Kim Darroch as UK Ambassador in TrumpLand; simply the perfect way to end a chapter on the demise of the Probation Service.
"The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Antonia Romeo, who took up her role as Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Trade (DIT) in March, spent tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on flights to and from London... It meant the 43-year-old stayed in New York at her grace-and-favour residence until her three children finished the school year. In four months she clocked up a bill of more than £31,000 on flights – some of which were business class – and accommodation for eight 7,000-mile round trips for meetings in London from April to the end of July. It is not known exactly how much the civil servant – who only received one salary while carrying out both jobs – is paid but the Permanent Secretary role was advertised at £160,000 a year.
The DIT said all her expenses were within civil service rules."