Tuesday, 6 September 2022

What Do Others Think?

We've heard from Napo, Probation Institute, HM Chief Inspector and Russell Webster, but what about other significant criminal justice stakeholders and agencies? What are their thoughts regarding the prison takeover of probation by the prison service? 

The Howard League has a long history of being extremely helpful to the probation cause and I notice they are currently advertising for a 'policy manager'. Unless I've missed something, it seems we have to go back to 2019 and this from Frances Crook the former CEO for their view:-    

Principles for Probation


I attended a meeting today on how to sort out probation. We agreed that it was under the ‘Chatham House Rule’, which means I can talk about what we talked about but I will not identify who was there or who said what. All I will say is that the meeting included some representatives from the professions and users in the system and the group will carry on working.

We tried to bring together some overriding principles that should govern any future reform of community justice. The Howard League has already drawn up a blueprint of ideas that includes principles and suggests a structure, and we submitted this to the Ministry of Justice consultation.

These are some of the principles that struck me as things we should agree:
  • Probation should be reunited into one whole service. The split created by Chris Grayling has been disastrous on every level and will never work. Community sentences must have a voice in court if they are to merit confidence and private companies cannot do this because of the inherent conflict of interest.
  • Probation should be separate to prisons. Some 200,000 people are sentenced to a community intervention each year and the service that manages them should have integrity and independence. Whilst the reintegration-from-prison function of probation is also critical, it should be not subsumed into the prison system but should be independent from it.
  • Probation should not be a growth industry. Community supervision should be targeted and focused on only those who really need it.
  • Probation should be linked to the services that support desistance. It is having somewhere to live, something to do all day and social interaction that turns lives round. Links with local authorities, voluntary groups, employers and health services are the most important relationships.
  • Probation must be professional. No public service can be a profession if it is dancing to the tune of the overriding profit motive inherent in private companies.
  • Probation must be coterminous with local services. Links with local authorities, voluntary groups, employers and health services are the most important relationships.
  • Probation should be reconstructed to bring back community payback. Unpaid work was one of the most shambolic parts of the so-called service delivered by Working Links before it went bust. Community payback must be integrated into a public service because that is where the essential relationships with voluntary and faith groups, which provide the work opportunities, sit.
I also believe that punishment should not be party political and so the delivery of sentences must not be accountable to local politicians. Of course, community services must be engaged with local people. For example, in South Wales sheep stealing is a problem and it might be that community payback could respond to that.

Ministers are thinking about what to do next. Something has to change as probation is not working and that is a disaster for victims and communities, and it is feeding the prison population. I hope they are listening to our sensible and workable suggestions.

Frances Crook

--oo00oo--

Somewhat surprisingly, I notice that the recent report on the Criminal Justice System by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies doesn't mention probation at all. Some mistake surely?

11 comments:

  1. CCJS completely omits Probation from its report? That is shocking and alarming. Probation erased it seems. deeply dissappointing from these authors

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  2. "Probation should not be a growth industry. Community supervision should be targeted and focused on only those who really need it."

    Probation was never a catch all agency for all that left custody.
    That came with the introduction of automatic release at the half way mark.
    In my opinion that was the point where probation first started its merger with the prison service. Releasing prisoners became a transfer and probation became an extension of the sentence. People simply were moved from HMP Indoors to HMP Outdoors.
    Probation does need to be targeted, and there are far too many people subjected to the service where the process is pointless. In some cases probation only serves to keep the revolving door rotating.
    If the government want everybody released from custody to be monitored then employ Serco or G4s to do the monitoring and let probation get on doing probation work in the way the service was designed for.

    'Getafix

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    Replies
    1. "Probation should not be a growth industry. Community supervision should be targeted and focused on only those who really need it."

      It shouldnt be, but with these rotten capitalists leading the country, one representing the right of capital, the other the left, all they see is ££££ - everything run for profit, instead of human need. Everythings referred/outsourced/insourced to these other organizations, so probations just a name above a door, and in the nhs its same, plus they dont even own the buildings the names on (thanks Tony Blair).
      We're all being thoroughly mugged off.

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  3. Garside & Grimshaw: "Though our knowledge of criminal justice has developed over a long period, the scope of the project proved to be wider and more complex than we initially expected. It has led us into some parts of the criminal justice system with which we were not at first familiar."

    Clearly they didn't stray very far from the path of control & command. Still, I guess probation's only been in existence for just over a century (1907 - 2022 = 115 years). Perhaps, if they couldn't be bothered to write anything themselves, they could have spoken to Paul Senior who might have provided them with a starter for ten:

    1907–2007 – PROBATION: WAKE, CELEBRATION OR RE-BIRTH?

    https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Editorial_5.1.pdf

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    Replies
    1. Anon 12:26 - Don't think I've ever seen that piece by the late and much missed Prof Paul Senior from the bjcj - thanks for sharing.

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  4. Personally I have always preferred the aftercare model whereby people discharged from prison after a short sentence could opt for voluntary aftercare - it was always a bit of a challenge to our paymasters; although we were required to offer a service the punters were not required to take it up. It was heartening when some clients actually came to see you post release for advice, assistance and some friendly contact. Can you imagine it these days?

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    Replies
    1. Generally our prison aftercare should be voluntary. It’d work much better.

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  5. IN
    Kwasi Kwarteng - Chancellor
    Therese Coffey - Health Secretary/Deputy Prime Minister
    Suella Braverman - Home Secretary
    James Cleverly - Foreign Secretary
    Brandon Lewis - Justice Secretary
    Ben Wallace - Defence Secretary
    Nadhim Zahawi - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster / Equalities Minister
    Penny Mordaunt - Leader of the Commons

    OUT
    Dominic Raab
    Grant Shapps
    Steve Barclay
    Andrew Stephenson
    Greg Clark
    George Eustice
    Shailesh Vara

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    Replies
    1. Hitting the diversity quota there, the wokescolds will be pleased.

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  6. I miss the cohort model London CRC had. It had its troubles at first but it was a good model.

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    Replies
    1. It was a terrible model. Totally hated it.

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