Pick of the Week 58

So much evidence, so many testimonies, a tragedy of errors; it should surely be a piece of piss for unions representing staff to address these issues? Staff are clearly at breaking point but too scared to stand up & say so, hence they are effectively enabling the shitshow to continue. If Probation staff blew the whistle it would all collapse, wouldn't it? That's not to blame staff. 

Whistle-blowing isn't an easy thing to do. I know from experience. But does make things change. And it seem that there are plenty of staff in shit situations. I'm a union steward (not NAPO), and can assure you that staff are all encouraged to speak out by me. But you can't force folk and as you say they are scared of repercussions. Very sad but true.

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What's a "parole officer"? Once again the media can't even get our job title correct let alone understand what we do. I shouldn't be surprised as it's not the first time and won't be the last but when Buckland went on the Today programme to stand up this reactionary knee jerk crowd pleasing bollocks he mentioned the importance of the role of every agency by name except, you guessed it, Probation! I remain heartily sick of being ignored and undervalued for my role in protecting the public by helping people change but sadly, not surprised.

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The Guardian offers one perspective, and one perspective only. Never liked the paper and never will. When you deal with criminals of any calibre there is no fail safe way to ensure they will never offend again. Mix and match who you like in prisons and the results are the same. You either keep your head down, and get on with your lives or you entangle yourself further into criminality. Most will give up through age and the usual social and environmental factors, and others are so far gone they enjoy and revel in what they do, it gives them satisfaction. This is the conundrum we face, but until the CJS gets a grip on itself not much is going to change. Old lag, reformed.

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It will always be a battle, and wearying: the really depressing thing is that from the time I started in Probation way back in the last century, we (practitioners, academics, progressives) seem to have been losing ground. I formed a view a long while back that when UK looked to Europe for influence on its criminal justice policy, things got a bit better, and when we looked to the US, things got worse. So that wearying fight looks even more desperate now.

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There's always reforms and policy changes in the CJS. But they're never accompanied with any explanation of how they're intended to advance the system. They're reactionary, politically motivated and short sighted. I can totally understand why people call for longer prison sentences, and an end to automatic release at the halfway mark. It should be remembered however that under the old two thirds system that many prisoners were released on parole having served much less then half their sentence, and if released after two thirds they were not subject to supervision.

Just making sentences longer changes what? If someone's sick and admitted to hospital for a week and receives no treatment, then they're still likely to be sick when they're discharged. Simply saying that they are now going to spend two weeks in hospital without any treatment just means they stay in hospital longer, but still get discharged with the same issues. Sometimes I wonder if the CJS is a too valuable political tool for politicians to really want to fix it.

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It's been announced that Interserve are not bidding for UPW/Interventions in the new round of tenders. Nothing on google as of yet but it has been announced to staff. Interesting times ahead.

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Probation Officers are using out of date risk assessment tools to ascertain risk and in my case, release was not supported by 3 probation officers including a senior one. This was not because of any serious or imminent risk of serious harm to the public but perceived and wrongly forecast risk of psychological harm to CJS professionals. The PB saw right through it and ripped all three probation officers to shreds. I'm very pleased that one resigned as an OS in HMP Downview shortly after, stating stress.

The Parole Board told probation staff that their evidence was not credible and that they could not be believed although they had conspired, and I don't use that word lightly, with the prison psychologist to get their stories straight and song from the same hymn sheet about not recommending release. The PB deemed my recall to prison for daring to tweet about how awful NPS had become, to be unlawful and ordered immediate release.

For the most part probation officers are decent, kind and properly trained but the cuts and mass exodus has left the service broken and in tatters. Unless and until there is root and branch reform of the way probation service operates, staff will continue to be overstretched and people will be recalled unlawfully and cases seriously mismanaged. Probation workers should be subject to the same scrutiny and accountability as all other social service workers, albeit they have an overriding public protection role...It's deeply worrying that staff are not accountable for bad decisions and people pay with their lives.

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A lot of probation staff now rely on & hide behind the pseudo-science of 'risk assessment', a growth industry in recent times. It takes far more than correctly entering data to assess risk, but it's just that approach that seems to be where many of the errors of judgement originate. It would perhaps be unkind to call it lazy; maybe more that its as a result of not enough time, not enough experience & not enough support from management.

Above observes: "For the most part probation officers are decent, kind and properly trained but the cuts and mass exodus has left the service broken and in tatters." I think it is certainly true that those being assessed pay a higher price for errors of judgement than those doing the assessments.

The risk-averse culture of organisations avoiding taking any blame means that unless there's a compelling case to answer the organisation wins out every time, and the person who feels (or who is) 'wrongly' assessed can be deprived of their liberty, deprived of their children, deprived of their rights or, in some tragic cases, deprived of their life.

MoJ says: "Criminal behaviour is influenced by a range of individual, social and environmental factors. People tend to interpret others’ behaviour as because of the sort of person they are. We often fail to see situational, environmental or social influences. Much decision making in criminal justice needs to be informed by an assessment of whether someone poses a risk to the public....

... What makes a good risk assessment tool?

It is important that the risk assessment tools we use are theoretically sound and provide reliable and valid estimates. Criteria for approving risk assessment tools is supported by advice from MoJ’s Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice Panel (CSAAP)."

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Was that fake news regarding Purple Futures/Interserve not bidding, or are we still waiting for confirmation?

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NAPO have sent all members an email confirming it and Ian Mulholland head of Interserve Justice has also confirmed it during a conference call to staff. I look forward to a blog on it. btw, managers still cracking the whip for us to tick those boxes - I think we should all go off sick so that everything fails as I assume they will still get fined until the contract expires?

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The assumption must be that they will be paid handsomely until the contract expires. Cute Mulholland knows how the game is played; when he was 'on the inside' he helped Spurr et al write the rules. He knows there's no risk of being fined between now & whenever the contracts actually expire. You don't get this level of protection for knowing nothing.

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Pay has been a major issue throughout but the NPS deal on pay worsened the CRCs position. Seetec have set the bar now but not because of union pressure. There are TR2 issues and recruitment. That pay offer is a done deal to mirror NPS pay. About time but no backdate awards says it all the unions seem powerless.

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Perhaps we could be told how this was specifically negotiated. What arguments were used that persuaded the employer? What researched information was submitted. When will this result be rolled out to other areas in the CRC regardless of who owns/runs them? Looking forward to this!

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I think for some years now social explanations for criminal behaviour and offending have been rubbed out, and been replaced with the notion that any such behaviour is largely an innate aspect of a deviant personality. A decade of Neoliberalism governance has tapped into the older Liberalism ideology of everyone being born equal in the eyes of God, ergo all have equal opportunity to follow the right path. Not to do so is a personal choice and a demonstration of an innate leaning to'wards deviance.

I think austerity has perpetrated and embedded that notion quite dramatically. It's much easier to explain huge cuts to social institutions and support networks when criminal behaviour is explained in the context of nature rather then nurture. Indeed, I'd argue that the removal of the social Work ethos of probation, and it's privatisation can be seen as a shift in ideology towards offending being seen as an innate aspect of personality. Removal of the social Work ethos is self explanatory, but privatisation saw offenders only through the prisim of risk. Ability, social status, personal opportunity and social need never really got a look in. Why? Because criminal behaviour should be seen as innate?

I think too that the drive to digitise the CJS also pushes towards the nature not nurture argument. Algorithms are being introduced everywhere from determining whether a defendant should be granted bail, whether they'll reoffend and even to what type of prison they should be held in. When technology is being applied in this fashion it surely negates many social explanations for offending? It;s a very cold and clinical approach all about process and devoid of the human understanding and knowledge that we learn throughout our personal journeys through life.

The nature/nurture argument is age old. I personally believe both play a part. We're all a little different to each other. Our genes determine parts of the way we are. That's nature's loaded gun. But I think it's nurture and our social position and understanding that inevitably decides if, when where or how we pull the trigger on that gun. All humans exhibit behavioural traits. Surely those that exhibit behaviour deemed unacceptable to society should not be seen as irredeemably flawed by nature?

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Counter-terrorism POs already exist, I think they are on the same pay as other POs. Not sure that they get much additional training. They don't supervise all TACT offenders either. I wonder what impact doubling the numbers will have, given the chronic shortage of POs. Will other POs take the strain. Given the increasing lack of diversity amongst POs, I also wonder how this client group responds to supervision by staff from different backgrounds and with different values.

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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."

Jim - 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."

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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.

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The prison system is just a reflection of a broken society. It won't be fixed as long as it's seen as being separate from society, it's part of our social structure, and solving the prison crisis requires major change both sides of the gate. When 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 as well. Yet the time in prison has no direction, no pathway to take that ownership of life back. It's just a dangerous and destructive ordeal.

Then ownership is passed on upon release to probation services. It's 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. In fact 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.

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Having read today's blog & some of the posted comments I think it really IS all over now. So 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."

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What have we come to? We 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.

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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. We are professionals in a so called career with degrees and [not] 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.

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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.

Nobody, 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 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.

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Excellent 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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You think oasys and ndelius is bad try using mysis and msat. Didn't work for 3 days last week. No-one knows what they are doing on it. Very little information and doesn't make sense the rest of the country and NPS are using different systems.

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Did I just read correctly...YET ANOTHER OASYS QA??? Have they not realised that the first three iterations have been complete FAILURES - they demoralise staff and as pointed out, chain staff filling out irrelevant information into boxes, after boxes after boxes! I've seen some wonderful sentence plans lately, and yet, according to OASYS QA cannot technically score "GOOD" if the "assessor" and "offender" comments boxes have not been completed with a few sentences of crap. CAN THESE EPF PEOPLE NOT HEAR US - IT IS OASYS that needs changing, NOT the people using it - perhaps if we got rid of the EPF team, and all the salaries that go into paying them to churn out tools, the money can go into creating an OASYS which works? Or better still....just write assessments on a Word for Windows document generated through delius, like ARMS is.

In a climate where the NPS has just been told in no uncertain terms by the HMIP that it's not working well, in a climate where staff are leaving in droves (perhaps created by the climate of fear generated through incessant focus on spending hours and hours updating OASYS in such meticulous terms), in a climate where there are hundreds of vacancies, when will NPS understand that THEY need to change not the staff working for it?

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As for Omic as a PO being given jobs that that prison don't have the resources to cover and told that we work for HMPPS now. God knows what it will be like when we come under the line management of the Governor. They set Oasys targets and supervision targets that there is not enough time to meet because we are expected to deliver for example Court documents to offenders appealing their convictions. Cover a large amount of admin tasks, but our stationery, etc. Oh and the prison does not promote diversity as it claims nor understand we are on more flexible working patterns. Horrid but apparently less stressful than our counterparts in community offices. It sounds horrendous out there.

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I'm a bit confused. YHCOSA preventing hundreds of victims? I don't think so. Sorry but this CEO's exaggerations do nothing for the repute of Circles. COSA is a great idea in theory, but Probation rightly found it intolerably expensive. In my experience the concept of Circles works best in church and faith communities....where the volunteers come from the congregations and most likely know the core member and effectively cost nothing....the unfortunate thing about CoSA was that the volunteers were often flaky and fickle, only applying to get something on their pyschology student CVs,And like most charities this CEO seems to have struggled with credibility with funders and the more general vagaries of funding.

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Meanwhile in the grim reality of Civil Service, a whole morning spent on "briefings for staff" with no mention of anything other than processes and targets. New processes and handy guides, etc etc. I am looking forward to the day when a New Process, with Handy Guide including Flowcharts, Quality Assurance Grid, and mandatory e-learning will be issued to guide me in the decision as to whether I need to go for a pee.

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Yep, that will be next and like call centres timed on how long we go to the loo etc via our computer log ons. You can't even easily search anything in equip nor do we have the time to muck about reading the mass of instructions they spout.

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Lost in the QAGmire. Motto for NPS - "Sorry we missed you. Maybe not as sorry as the victims of your SFO but never mind..."

After the official whitewash, denials, deflections & ritual sacrifice of expendable PO/PSO staff, above rightly highlights the introduction of a whole series of 'new processes', the Civil Service's 'grown-up' version of comics down your pants when you're called to see the headmaster for a jolly good thrashing.

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Have to love the tone. It's all a process of perpetual progress and continual improvements. It's exciting times! It should however be a much more apologetic tone, "we've made such a total f*** up, we're now scratching our heads wondering how to put things back together again. That would be honest at least.

Personally I think this new design is being tailored to eventually hand the reigns of probation services over to the regional PCCs. The local sheriff will decide what goes on in this town folks! For me however, it seems all about making the model look good. For sure there's objectives, but very little meat on the bone about why and how this model will achieve them. Maybe I just need things spelling out a bit more then most, but I want to hear "by doing this we are going to achieve x, y, and z." By not doing this it will allow us to achieve d, e and f." Architect's don't just design good looking buildings, they have to make them safe and functional too! More detail please.