An Inspector Calls 3

21 – SERVICE USER ENGAGEMENT 

Not all areas of supervision were equally concerning. We continued to find, for example, that many CRCs have invested significantly in engaging with service users across each stage of supervision – with a welcome commitment in some areas to using ex-service users as mentors and to run induction courses for people just starting probation. Service User councils have been funded in many areas to represent their views and feed in ideas for service improvement and routes into paid employment within the service have been created. And there has been a good focus by responsible officers in engaging individual service users in their assessment and sentence plans and the delivery of interventions, with up to 70% of the cases we inspected receiving positive marks for these aspects of supervision. 

Risk of harm 

22 - SHOWING AVERAGE ROSH SCORES YR 1 vs YR 2

By far the weakest area of performance in last year’s inspections however, was the quality of work to manage risk of harm – particularly amongst the type of cases managed by CRCs, where we rated over half the cases we looked at as unsatisfactory. Although, we’ve found that many CRC have invested significantly in retraining staff on the basics of risk management over the past year, it’s been disappointing to see that this hasn’t translated into better management of the cases we’ve inspected more recently. On every aspect of supervision in relation to risk of serious harm, apart from initial assessment, we continue to find that on average less than half the cases we assessed across the 9 re-inspected services were satisfactory in relation to planning, delivery or review of actions to reduce risk of harm. 

23 – CHANGES IN ROSH SCORES FOR EACH CRC – YEAR 1 VS YEAR 2

That’s not to say there hasn’t been some improvement in some services. Four of the eight CRC reports we’ve published so far on our second round of inspections show an improvement in the management of risk of harm – and this was a significant factor in their improved overall ratings . But less than half of the cases we inspected at the remainder were satisfactory on this crucial aspect of probation performance. 

24 - SHOWING % OF DOMESTIC ABUSE CHECKS 

Time and again we are finding that some of the fundamental tasks of effective risk management have been missed. Take the checks that every responsible officer is supposed to run with their local police domestic abuse team at the point of initial assessment. As you’ll see from this chart, our latest inspections continue to show a big variation in the proportion of cases where this is being done – with neither the NPS or the CRC doing these checks in over a third of cases and a couple of areas where less than 40% of cases getting the checks they should have done. 

25 - SHOWING % OF HOME VISITS 

Or take home visits – in pre-Covid times an essential part of proper risk assessment for many cases but something that our latest round of inspections is showing is happening in less than 40% of the cases where my inspectors think it should and in some areas in as few as a quarter of cases. 

26 – SFO REVIEWS 

Where the risk of harm isn’t properly managed then the consequences can potentially be disastrous – for the members of the victims involved and for the reputation of the probation service. Indeed, it’s sad but true, that the only time the public may get to hear about the probation service is when something goes wrong and a high profile Serious Further Offence results. Over the past 6 months we have been looking at these Serious Further Offences, or SFOs and the way that they are investigated, so see if this might be improved. 

There were about 500 reviews of SFOs undertaken by the probation service in 2018 – of which 124 were for cases where someone under probation supervision was charged with murder or manslaughter. Overall, 57% of the SFO offences involved someone under NPS supervision and 43% someone under CRC supervision. About half involved someone already identified as high risk of harm. 

27 – RISK LEVELS IN MURDER SFOs 

For homicide cases, we found that two thirds of cases involved someone who had previously been assessed as low or medium risk – suggesting a previous failure to identify the true underlying risk presented by that person. That decision on which risk level to assign at the point of initial assessment or review is a crucial one which can make a significant difference to the way someone is supervised. 

Someone classified as high risk rather than medium, is more likely to get access to an approved premises bed after release from prison; will be assigned an experienced and trained probation officer rather than a PSO; will be seen weekly by that officer and if identified as a MAPPA level 2 or 3 case will get multi-agency management – including by the police – as well as the probation service. And all of these things can make a real difference to the way that risks are mitigated, when so many other cases will be competing for an offender manager’s attention. Equally crucial, is the way things are managed when circumstances change. When someone under supervision moves in with a new partner, or starts to test positive for class A drug after a period of clean tests; or is arrested or spotted with old criminal associates. 

28 – COMMON WEAKNESSES IN RISK MANAGEMENT 

A failure to show the necessary professional curiosity about these things or trigger the appropriate action can prove literally fatal – as we found in our analysis of the case of Joseph McCann which was published today. This showed a catalogue of errors, from a downgrading of his MAPPA classification too soon after release from prison; to a lack of coordination of prison, police and probation intelligence; to the three different probation officers he had during the 3 months before his release from custody in February 2019. And most damningly of all eight missed opportunities to revoke his IPP licence between 2017 and 2019, which would have ensured he could not have been re-released from prison without a Parole Board hearing. 

All of these things – lack of professional curiosity; the wrong assessment of risk; poor information sharing with the prisons and police; over-optimistic assessments of progress and premature relaxation of controls – are things that we find again and again in the cases we look at in our local inspections. Which is why it’s so important to learn the lessons when things go wrong. 

29 – SFO THEMATIC SUMMARY 

SFO reviews are conducted by local probation services themselves and quality assured by a central HMPPS team. For a thematic inspection we published in May, we undertook a detailed inspection of almost 50 of these reviews. We also visited 8 probation areas – NPS and CRCs - to talk to probation officers and managers about what the process felt like to them. 

Overall, we found that about half the reviews we looked at required some improvement. There were long delays with the central quality assurance process and we felt opportunities were missed for learning lessons which could improve national practice or policy. 

The reports themselves were often very long and dense and focused more on what happened rather than why. And although it was good to see that victims can now access the full reports, they weren’t drafted in a way which made them easy to understand and we were surprised that so few victims or their families asked to see them. 

Some of the probation officers involved in the process told us they found it a “horrible” or “shameful” experience and felt it was more about assigning blame than learning lessons. 

We’ve made a number of recommendations to improve the learning from these reviews – including, in particular, that other agencies like the police or social services should be involved when they have also had contact with an offender. Of the 46 reviews we looked at only 3 had involved this sort of multi-agency element. 

And to bring greater transparency to the process, we recommended that an outside body like HMIP should independently quality assure a sample of SFO reviews on a regular basis and publish an annual summary of its findings. A recommendation I’m pleased to say that the Lord Chancellor has accepted and which we will start to do from April of next year. 

30 - IN CONCLUSION  

So, in conclusion, and to return to my original question. Whilst I don’t believe the probation service as a whole is, or was, in ‘crisis’ – it was undoubtedly severely tested by the transforming rehabilitation reforms and some CRC services remain of significant concern. 

Of the nine CRCs we have reinspected since last September, it has been encouraging to see that almost half have responded to our previous recommendations and shown signs of improvement – with three now rated ‘good’. It’s also been good to see the very real progress that’s been made with through the gate services – with 6 services now rated outstanding on this standard – even where day to day offender management may still be inadequate. This shows the impact that significant new resources can make on quality and the importance of properly resourcing the next stage of probation reform. 

For the other half of the services we’ve re-inspected however, things don’t look so encouraging. Reducing budgets have led to a significant loss of trained probation officers and the skills and experience that went with them – with caseloads for those that remain and the PSOs who have often replaced them continuing to be unacceptable and unmanageable as far as these staff are concerned. 

Good, committed leaders in these services are doing their best to engage staff and improve services, but they are often fighting a losing battle as resources diminish and there is a real risk to delivery over the next year as increasing numbers of CRC leaders are recruited by the National Probation Service to the new regional divisions that go live from this Autumn. 

The new, unified national offender management model is the right way to go from next year, but it won’t be a magic bullet by itself. Adequate resourcing will be crucial. 

But it’s also important that we don’t lose the innovation that transforming rehabilitation did unleash in some areas. Not all the CRC staff I speak to relish moving into the NPS. They’ve enjoyed the freedoms they’ve had to try new things; to move into decent office accommodation for the first time or to work out of community hubs; to develop much easier to use offender management software. And service users as well have benefitted from the real commitment shown by many CRCs to listen to their views and give them a role in their services as mentors and ultimately as paid staff. 

So, a service that is on the road to recovery, but still a long and winding one to traverse and huge challenges ahead as they deal with a new crisis that none of us had expected 5 or 6 months ago. It’s going to be an extremely interesting and challenging year ahead for all of them.