Given the ongoing and worsening crisis in our prisons, largely brought about by Chris Grayling who of course was also responsible for wrecking the former gold-standard Probation Service, I'm surprised there hasn't been greater mention of the Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) project of late? I'm rapidly gaining the impression that probation service staff must have been sufficiently cowed, purged, bullied and silenced under the dead-hand of civil service bureaucracy and central command and control by HMPPS.
Lets be clear about this. Distinguished former governor and academic John Podmore, writing in the Daily Telegraph has this to say about HMPPS, of which Probation is now part:-
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Our outdated prisons have descended into mayhem. Here's how we can turn things aroundLets be clear about this. Distinguished former governor and academic John Podmore, writing in the Daily Telegraph has this to say about HMPPS, of which Probation is now part:-
"But it is a closed world of secretive accreditation and no evaluation, led by people who have only ever worked in the prison service. Outside specialists in counter terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, drug treatment, sex offender treatment, psychiatric and psychological therapy are eschewed - and heaven forbid we involve ex-prisoners or terrorists offenders who have turned their lives around and have a valuable contribution to make. Similarly, those with law enforcement skills and competencies are also detached from efforts to combat serious organised crime in prison and the corruption that underpins it.
Prison service culture is one of insularity and defensiveness - and very little visible leadership. Despite a burgeoning bureaucracy, ministers either micro-manage ineffectively, or accept platitudes from officials instead of holding them to account. This cannot continue."The Probation Service should never have been part of this outfit; its culture and ethos is completely different, so are we to understand the absence of a clarion call for separation and re-establishment of a distinctive probation identity is over? Have NPS staff really accepted all the trappings and Blue Light discount card nonsense that goes with this dysfunctional and inappropriate outfit and are happy with it?
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Our prison and probation services have sadly become chaotic institutions which succeed only in making people worse.
During their incarcerations, prisoners acquire drug habits, experience radicalisation and deteriorating mental health. Serious organised crime is seriously well organised behind prison walls and "imprisonment as a means of incapacitation" has become a myth perpetuated by politicians. If we measured the crime rates inside prisons, we would surely categorise them as crime hotspots in their own right.
There is good work and there are dedicated professionals in our jails but we are asking the impossible of them in the current set-up. Former Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling gets some well-deserved blame for the chaos but the problems have run deeper for over a decade.
The establishment of a Ministry of Justice under New Labour was a logical step but it failed because of poor leadership and, latterly swingeing financial cuts on everything from legal aid to prison officers. We have tried to get a criminal Justice System on the cheap and it has failed.
The system is crying out for more funding, some of which has been forthcoming, and yet the signs are that it will be poorly targeted: Titan jails in the middle of nowhere rather than resettlement prisons in communities; 20,000 police officers but no youth workers. We lock up too many people for ever-longer periods and as they deteriorate they either fail the tests of the Parole Board for release or are quickly recalled to prison when they return to the chaos they left behind. But of the 85,000 people in prison, who really needs to be there? We should lock up those we are afraid of, not who we are mad at.
The prison system is predicated on the Mountbatten Report of 1966, following the escape of Great Train Robbers, Ronnie Biggs and Charlie Wilson and the spy, George Blake. The configuration of the prison estate with its categories A to D has changed little since, while the prison population has become ever more complex. We have a system designed for white, adult men but required to look after those with poor mental health, addictions, the elderly, serious organised criminals, TV licence non-payers, abused women and disturbed children.
Within the mayhem is poor care, ineffective treatment and financial waste. For the difficult, damaged, chaotic and disordered we need to look for community solutions and deal with them in local prisons where the emphasis is on social inclusion not security, and which is run by managers with experience in health, social care, employment and education rather than career civil servants. This group is the majority of those we incarcerate, probably two-thirds.
The remaining 30,000, those posing a real threat to the community need a separate system with secure containment and interventions. Prison is an opportunity to intervene and while there will always be a few who won’t change we should ensure they do not infect or harm others, staff or prisoners, inside or out. Such a ‘Federal’ or ‘National’ prison estate needs no new buildings, our existing eight High Secure prisons are an appropriate starting point for the most serious offenders.
What we do in such jails needs careful thought and planning, research and evaluation. For now the prison and probation service has its own treatment industry delivering a range of programmes inside and out ranging from de-radicalisation and sex-offender treatment through to anger management.
But it is a closed world of secretive accreditation and no evaluation, led by people who have only ever worked in the prison service. Outside specialists in counter terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, drug treatment, sex offender treatment, psychiatric and psychological therapy are eschewed - and heaven forbid we involve ex-prisoners or terrorists offenders who have turned their lives around and have a valuable contribution to make. Similarly, those with law enforcement skills and competencies are also detached from efforts to combat serious organised crime in prison and the corruption that underpins it.
Prison service culture is one of insularity and defensiveness - and very little visible leadership. Despite a burgeoning bureaucracy, ministers either micro-manage ineffectively, or accept platitudes from officials instead of holding them to account. This cannot continue.
The prison service has built its own walls to resist the winds of change, it’s time we built windmills.
John Podmore is professor of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Durham. He is a former governor of Belmarsh, Swaleside and Brixton prisons.
Meanwhile the Parole Board continue to cause distress:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-51396966
"Outside specialists in counter terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, drug treatment, sex offender treatment, psychiatric and psychological therapy are eschewed..."
ReplyDelete... unless they are 'in favour', 'on message' or have otherwise managed to charm the senior management team to throw large sums of public money at their snake oil projects.
I'm no longer employed in Probation. Last week I spoke with an ex-colleague who is still employed by NPS. They told me the staff group in the area are battered & bruised, tired, frightened: "If you don't make waves you get left alone. No-one has the time or emotional space to fight. We're under-staffed, under-resourced & overwhelmed. Its head down, do the best you can & hope nothing goes wrong because there's no support from management & you're under a bus before you can blink. I'm ashamed that my passive compliance gives the green light to NPS, but that's how it is as a PO these days."
ReplyDeleteJim - I reckon you're right on the money with your observation: "I'm rapidly gaining the impression that probation service staff must have been sufficiently cowed, purged, bullied and silenced under the dead-hand of civil service bureaucracy and central command and control by HMPPS."
Where are NAPO?
Deletehttps://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/sex-offender-attacked-norwich-probation-officer-1-6501974
Delete08.48 - with respect, if you're paid to do a job then your employer has a right to expect you to do as you're told. People who create waves won't get far in any company or organisation, be it HSBC, Tesco, NPS or wherever. Some staff seem to want to undermine their employer at every opportunity yet are happy to bank their salary every month. My message to anybody who dislikes the NPS so much that they want to 'fight' is that they need to leave and not let the door hit them on their way out. Go and do a job that makes them less unhappy.
DeleteMaybe - that is how it is now with most probation jobs - but when I was first appointed as a probation officer - my employers were the court and my directions to work came in the court orders relating to the convicts who were allocated to me for attention.
DeleteI think that is what being an officer ofd the court did mean - though I accept that since probation work management was taken away from the local judicary, so that the actual employer is now the Government - matters may have changed.
The prison system is just a reflection of a broken society. It won't be fixed as long as its seen as being seperate from society, its part of our social structure, and solving the prison crisis requires major change both sides of the gate.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone is sent to prison, effectively the state take control of that persons life. They have some responsibility by taking that control, not just to that person in prison, but to the wider society aswell.
Yet the time in prison has no direction, no pathway to take that ownership of life back. Its just a dangerous and destructive ordeal.
Then ownership is passed on upon release to probation services. Its clear just by the comments on this blog over the years that probation services are no longer in any position to assist someone to reach a place where they're in a position to take that ownership back with the prospect of any real success.
Infact the only thing that a prisoner has ownership of is responsibility for the offence they've been sent to prison for in the first place.
I think it's right that someone who commits an offence should take responsibility for it, but when the state take ownership of that life they too need to take responsibility for what they do with it.
Sending someone to prison today isn't too far removed from fostering a damaged juvenile with alcoholic chaotic parents. It's not going to bring anything else but more problems.
People who lose ownership of life need a route of getting it back any many need help in achieving that.
There's a desperate need for penal reform, but much of what's needed to achieve that lays far beyond the institution gates.
'Getafix
https://www-cityam-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.cityam.com/rory-stewart-we-need-less-politics-and-more-action-to-tackle-terrorism/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE%3D#aoh=15809890169388&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cityam.com%2Frory-stewart-we-need-less-politics-and-more-action-to-tackle-terrorism%2F
ReplyDeleteJim - having read today's blog & some of the posted comments I think it really IS all over now.
ReplyDeleteSo it looks like the truly nasty amoral political class have finally succeeded in their efforts to eliminate the remnants of what was a free-thinking, independent, humanitarian vocational profession by slicing & dicing, ducking & diving, slipping public money into the greasy palms of unscrupulous profiteers, and getting HMPPS to tailor a bespoke political straight-jacket for the NPS, i.e. the Civil Service.
If you build it, they will come: "My message to anybody who dislikes the NPS so much that they want to 'fight' is that they need to leave... if you're paid to do a job then your employer has a right to expect you to do as you're told."
If I were to write the book it would be entitled "When Advise, Assist & Befriend became J.F.D.I."
Yes most people but evidently not all came into the job to help others and with human decency stand by what they feel is important not just shut up and do as they are told no matter what that may be and how wrong it may be.
ReplyDeleteThe point is under the "officer of the court" system the cpo could not direct his appoinred spo to tell a po how to manage a client. He could reallocate the case maybe, but not direct the officer.
DeleteIn 2002 I was directed to lie to a client when an spo refused to approve my plan to travel on a prison visit and appointed me to another duty. I refused to lie on behalf of the cpo.
What have we come to? Nobody has even suggested that 08:48 is a troll.
ReplyDeleteWe are trained to challenge, confront and change offending ( and offensive behaviour) but are we expected to simply bow, scrape and tug our forelocks to those who claim to be in control but who have driven the ship onto the rocks.
Sometimes I despair.
Totally agree and on both points. We are treated like disposable robots now, numbers and god forbid we display the very skills they incorporated in training. 848 does not acknowledge we are professionals in a so called career with degrees and those without experience and responsible decision making. Why should we then simply shut up and follow mis management and organisational bullying and accept the stress and blame culture they place on us. Are we not supposed to be honest and fair people by nature of wanting to do a job working with others.
Delete16:56 - I think you are missing the point; people ARE doing a job they love, they are devoted to it and want so much to do it well. But the sheer weight of work they know is meaningless and irrelevant is what makes them unhappy - they express themselves, as any good employee should do - they say "this isn't right - can we suggest change" and are told NO YOU MUST DO IT THIS WAY.
ReplyDeleteNobody, at least not myself, is suggesting that an assessment is not required, followed by a meaningful risk management plan and a good sentence plan; I don't think most people suggest that these plans shouldn't be amended when required. But it's the sheer weight of bureaucracy which is towing them down.
The focus is ALWAYS on the OASYS filling out every box meticulously using prescribed guidance under which people fear getting "Requires Improvement" (even though most do), the ARMS, the Delius risk registers, using "CRISSA format" in every single Delius entry, filling out "HETE" data.....NONE of this has any meaning to the service user, and people know this - the focus is never on what goes on in the probation room, what have you achieved with this person and how did you achieve it or if not why not?
It makes people sick and yet you, 16:56, say "with respect, do what your employer says, or just LEAVE".... comments like yours create the culture of fear people say they are working in. Your comments have incensed me, but would love to hear your reply.
Excellent well said.
DeleteExcellent post. From your knowledge of the current model you clearly know how the system operates and what the emphasis is placed on. I've done thirty years in the service and stayed in offender management throughout, as Jim's article says the estate is not up to the job, the one size fits all approach simply doesn't work. What hasn't been mentioned is the fact that other Justice agencies are also failing, the police and Courts are under resourced and this has a knock on effect on what we can do as well.
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