IPP and Programmes

I notice the shocking situation regarding IPP prisoners was the subject of an article in The Times by Mathew Parris a few weeks ago:-

"On recent figures more than 3,000 IPP prisoners are rotting in our jails. According to an important paper by Dr Harry Annison of Southampton University, some 80 per cent of them have now gone beyond what would have been the tariff for their crime. Around 470 are more than eight years beyond.

The effect on these people and their families outside is appalling. In 2015 the Prison Reform Trust reported that the incidence of self-harm per thousand IPP prisoners had risen to 550, almost three times that of prisoners serving a life sentence. Without certainty, prisoners despair. There have been suicides and attempted suicides, and there will be more.

Prepare yourself, then, for a shock. IPPs were abolished nearly a decade ago!

Labour’s David Blunkett introduced them as home secretary after a few well-publicised incidents of reoffending by violent or sex offenders. The sentence was intended to be sparingly used but the courts started dishing out IPP sentences by the bucketload.

It had been estimated some 900 such sentences would result. When the figure passed 8,000, ministers took fright. Blunkett has said the outcome “weighs heavily” on him. And in 2012 Kenneth Clarke, justice secretary in the 2010 coalition government, scrapped the sentence altogether.

But to rebut (I suspect) accusations that ministers were “soft on crime”, existing IPP prisoners were to stay locked up, though no new ones would be sent down. Clarke himself later described the anomaly as “absurd”.

IPP inmates, trapped among other prisoners who know their release dates, suffer the injustice as you or I would.

The understaffed and hard-pressed Parole Board, meanwhile, faces a waiting list of IPP prisoners where in each case the board must prove a negative before release: that the applicant would not be a serious risk if released on licence.

Some undoubtedly would: three in ten of all prisoners of every kind do re-offend. The more IPP prisoners they release, the more likely a grisly case of re-offending will hit the headlines. Ministers quail before that prospect. Yet they know the injustice is monstrous, and all those with whom I’ve discussed this are deeply uncomfortable about it."

But as we all know, in order to make a case for parole, a prisoner must first be deemed not to be a serious risk and that invariably involves participating in Offending Behaviour programmes. This from Inside Time serves to highlight the situation:-  

Decline in OB programmes

Courses fall by 40% in a decade, raising fears that lifers and IPPs will miss out on parole

Only one in 16 prisoners takes part each year in courses designed to reduce their risk of reoffending. The number of “accredited programmes” completed in English and Welsh prisons has dropped steadily for the past decade. The decline has brought warnings that some prisoners may be stuck in custody because they cannot gain places on courses which they must complete to show the Parole Board they can be released safely.

In the year to March 2020 there were 5,068 completions of programmes in prisons, according to figures released last month by the Ministry of Justice. It marks a decline of 40 per cent from the year to March 2010, when 8,469 programmes were completed. The prison population remained steady over the period.

The figures include courses for general offending, sexual offending, violence and domestic violence. They exclude drug and alcohol programmes in jails, which have been handed over from the Prison Service to the NHS.

Over the same 10-year period the number of prisoners completing the Thinking Skills Programme, the most widely-used course, has declined from more than 5,000 a year to just over 2,000.

All figures relate to the pre-pandemic period. The number of prisoners taking part in programmes will be greatly reduced since March 2020, when face-to-face activities in jails were suspended due to concerns about virus transmission.

Evidence of a decline in the use of programmes will fuel a wider debate over whether they actually work in preventing reoffending. There are 21 accredited programmes approved for use in English and Welsh prisons by the Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice Panel (CSAAP), an expert body appointed by the Ministry of Justice which decides which courses would be of benefit. It has been criticised for secrecy as it does not disclose who its members are, what it discusses at its meetings or why it reaches its decisions.

In some cases, courses are approved before trials have been carried out to measure their impact on reoffending rates. In 2017 a flagship programme, the Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP), was withdrawn overnight. It later emerged that research had shown as early as 2012 that people who completed the programme were more likely to reoffend than those who had not taken part, but the findings were suppressed and the programme remained in use.

SOTP was replaced by two new courses, Kaizen and Horizon. But the latest figures show that fewer than one in 10 men jailed for sexual offences takes part each year in programmes designed to reduce their risk of reoffending. In 2019/20, out of 13,000 men serving sentences for sexual offences, only 1,154 started on sexual offending behaviour courses. With men jailed for sexual offences serving an average period in custody of two to three years, it means the majority will be released without ever having taken part in a programme.

Even at specialist prisons, participation rates are low. At HMP Littlehey, which holds 1,200 men convicted of sexual offences, only 81 started programmes in 2019 – just one in 15. The highest rate was at Whatton where one in five started programmes.

The Prison Service acknowledged the decline in completions. It said spending on programmes had remained stable over the past decade, but funding had been redirected from shorter courses like Thinking Skills into more in-depth courses for a smaller number of prisoners. A spokesperson said: “The effectiveness of these programmes should not be measured by overall completion numbers. We are ensuring those most at risk of reoffending get the support they need by targeting investment at longer, more intensive programmes.”

A breakdown of the headline figures was released in response to a Freedom of Information request from Donna Mooney of the campaign group UNGRIPP, which supports people still serving indefinite time in custody under now-abolished IPP sentences. IPP and life-sentenced prisoners need to complete programmes to show the Parole Board they are safe to release, but campaigners fear a shortage of places on courses means they are spending longer in custody than they need to.

Mooney, whose brother Tommy Nichol took his own life in prison after being unable to secure places on courses, said: “My brother died over five years ago and one of the main factors at play in his death was the fact he was denied access to the rehabilitation that was required in order for him to be released. Have any lessons been learned from my brothers death? My opinion is no.

“People serving an IPP sentence have always struggled to access these courses, through no fault of their own, and this is made even harder year on year, pushing them ever further past their tariff release date.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said IPP prisoners are prioritised for programmes, adding: “We continue to support those struggling to progress.

“Lack of clarity”

Comment by Graham Towl

“On the face of it, the latest official figures for the number of programmes carried out in prisons show a disappointing decline in the level of activity. But the statistics need to come with two health warnings.

Most immediately, the figures only go up to March 2020. The reported reduction in the numbers of ‘accredited’ programmes is surely now very much worse on the ground, with the advent of Covid-related measures in prisons from March 2020 onwards. The prediction must be that the next set of published numbers for ‘programme completions’ will be far below even the latest disappointing figures.

But more fundamentally, so little is known about these programmes that in one sense we simply don’t know if a reduced number of ‘completions’ is good or bad news in terms of the future risk of reoffending. The programmes industry should be made to get its house in order. For example, it would not be unreasonable to expect that the evidently still much-vaunted “accreditation panel” would operate with sufficient transparency that there would be publically-available minutes around decisions to “accredit” (or not to). Is there a publically-available list of members of this body, where members have the opportunity to share any conflicts of interest? That would be most welcome and reassuring in terms of good governance.

There remains a lack of clarity around what is different about the Horizon and Kaizen courses in comparison with the previous failed Sex Offender Treatment Programmes. Especially in view of past ethical and empirical limitations, it is surely wise to demonstrate more openness.

These latest figures measure the volume of work done, not its quality. When trying to interpret the significance of the declining numbers for future crime rates, it is perhaps worth remembering that the managerial malaise that got us where we are now was one that focussed upon “completions” at the expense of measures of effectiveness.

But what we do know is that reduced opportunities to participate in such programmes for prisoners may very well have real, and personally devastating, consequences for vulnerable groups such as lifers and those serving IPP sentences, if they are required to complete them but cannot access them.

It is interesting to note, within the figures, a reported shift with the NHS appearing to increasingly lead on more programmes in prisons. Just as prison healthcare moved from being an in-house service to the NHS, maybe it is time to consider a similar shift with “offending behaviour programmes” too?”

Graham Towl is Professor of Forensic Psychology at Durham University and former Chief Psychologist at the Ministry of Justice.

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I notice that a Freedom of Information request made by Rob Allen on 7th June 2021 elicited a list of members and the following statement:-

2. The latest annual report on its work

The MoJ does not hold any information in the scope of this part of your request.

The Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice panel does not publish annual reports.

The last published Annual report was the 2010-11 Annual report. The Correctional Services Accreditation Panel ceased to be an Advisory Non-Departmental Public Body on 31 July 2008. While it continued to publish annual reports in the lifetime of that panel (2008-2011) there is no longer a business or legal requirement to do so and when the panel changed its name to the Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice panel in 2012, no more reports were published.

The FOIA does not oblige a public authority to create information to answer a request if the requested information is not held. The duty is to only provide the recorded information held.