Fool Me Once, Shame On You:

Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me

Those with long memories will recall the electronic tagging scandals of the past when the dead and a false leg were tagged as part of a massive and systematic fraud committed over many years by both G4S and Serco. Well, the hapless HMPPS have decided both companies are now rehabilitated and each has been rewarded with brand new contracts, as reported here on the Civil Service World website:- 

HMPPS says ‘lessons have been learned’ as Serco and G4S bag electronic monitoring contracts

Deals worth up to £450m come almost a decade after firms admitted overcharging government to the tune of £170m. The boss of HM Prison and Probation Service has told MPs that lessons from past experience with electronic tagging contracts have been learned as Serco and G4S have been awarded new deals worth up to £450m.

The firms wrongly billed the Ministry of Justice for tens of millions of pounds under electronic-monitoring contracts first awarded in 2005. Sometimes multiple charges were made in relation to the same offender, in other cases charges were made for offenders who were dead.

G4S repaid the department more than £100m after details of the overcharging scandal emerged in 2013; Serco repaid £70.5m. Both firms removed themselves from the procurement process for the “next generation” of electronic monitoring devices. G4S subsequently returned to supplying electronic tags to government.

Investigations by the Serious Fraud Office resulted in Serco being fined £19.2m plus £3.7m costs and G4S being fined £38.5m plus £5.9m costs over the scandal.

Earlier this month Serco landed a £200m MoJ contract to deliver electronic-monitoring services in England and Wales for six years to May 2030. The deal will be worth an additional £75m if two one-year extension options are exercised. G4S was granted a £175m contract to deliver monitoring technology, which includes devices for location monitoring and alcohol monitoring.

In a letter to members of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, HMPPS chief executive Amy Rees said the service’s approach to the new contract arrangements had “been informed by previous experience and lessons learned, as well as government best practice”. She said specific supplier “accountabilities, roles and responsibilities” had been set out in the respective contracts agreed with Serco and G4S.

“During implementation of the new service, both suppliers will be required to report on progress and risks through an implementation board,” she said. “This board will oversee delivery of the integrated implementation plan and ensure risks are appropriately managed through the various phases of transition. The implementation board will report into a service delivery board, chaired by the head of EM operations, where ultimate responsibility for holding suppliers to account and dealing with any issues will take place. This will ensure there is senior-level oversight of progress and risks.”

Rees’ letter was prompted by a recommendation in PAC’s Transforming electronic monitoring services report last year, which called for HMPPS to set out how it would handle risks in the programme once suppliers had been appointed. The letter was dated 27 October but was only published yesterday. The Serco and G4S contracts were announced on 8 November.

Rees said that as field and monitoring services supplier, Serco would act as service integrator and be responsible for the running and management of the end-to-end service. She said that in addition to their individual contractual obligations, Serco and G4S had also signed a separate collaboration agreement setting out clear expectations on behaviours and ways of working.

“Both suppliers will appoint a suitably senior lead officer who will be specifically accountable for ensuring their respective teams adhere to the requirements set out in the collaboration agreement,” she said. “These leads will attend the service delivery board.”

Published in October last year, PAC’s Transforming electronic monitoring services report detailed a litany of concerns about HMPPS and MoJ’s handling of tagging.

Committee chair Dame Meg Hillier said the current system was “outdated” and at “constant risk of failure”, while the report flagged £98.2m wasted on the scrapped Gemini case-management system, which MPs described as “high-risk and over-ambitious”. MPs also criticised the MoJ and HMPPS for failing to rigorously evaluate whether tagging reduces reoffending before pushing ahead with a £1.2bn programme to expand it to another 10,000 people. As of March last year around 15,300 offenders were tagged, according to the report.

--oo00oo--

Of course tagging is seen by politicians as a 'silver bullet' and cheaper way of punishment for much criminal behaviour, alongside community service as part of so-called 'tough' community sentences as alternatives to imprisonment. However, it does nothing to address rehabilitation, but that's just indicative of politicians never understanding what's involved in that. 

Anyway, there's a chronic shortage of prison capacity and I notice the Sentencing Council have launched a consultation on the whole subject and this must surely be the opportunity for some serious submissions on the central role a reformed probation service could play from PSR through to proper, meaningful supervision. Reported here on the BBC news website:-

Courts to issue fewer short jail terms under plans

Courts could soon be handing out more rehabilitative community sentences, rather than sending people to jail for short terms, under radical new plans. The Sentencing Council for England and Wales says judges and magistrates should think more about sentences that are proven to reform offenders. The plans tell courts to think twice about jailing women because of the impact on children. The plans, years in development, come amid a prison overcrowding crisis.

The council is the official body that advises all criminal judges and magistrates on how they should sentence criminals fairly and consistently, following rules set out by Parliament. The new consultation covers the principle of choosing community sentences, such as unpaid work or drug treatment programmes, or prison.

For almost 30 years the trend in sentencing has meant that more criminals have been sent to jail and for longer periods. However, academic studies show that community sentences do more good in rehabilitating low-level offenders than prison. In the major consultation, the council argues that if judges and magistrates conclude that an offender potentially deserves to be jailed, they must first pause and consider if a community order would actually be more effective at achieving rehabilitation, one of the key purposes of sentencing.

"Increasing academic research has covered the importance of rehabilitation in reducing reoffending," says the council. The Council believes it is important to reflect the findings."

The document suggests that judges needs to take extra care in assessing the lives of offenders from specific backgrounds including young adults, women, people with dependants, people who are transgender, ethnic minorities or people with addictions, learning disabilities or mental disorders. Crucially, before judges jail a woman, the council says they must consider the harm that could be caused to a pregnant woman's unborn child.

"A custodial sentence may become disproportionate to achieving the purposes of sentencing where there would be an impact on dependants, including on unborn children where the offender is pregnant," says the council. "Courts should avoid the possibility of an offender giving birth in prison unless the imposition of a custodial sentence is unavoidable."

That highly significant guidance comes after the death in 2019 of a baby whose mother went into labour unaided in a cell. The proposals also tell judges for the first time to consider whether older women who commit crimes may be experiencing changes in their mental health caused by the menopause.

Sentencing Council chairman, Lord Justice Davis, said the existing guidelines were among the most important in use. "The revised guideline updates and extends the current guidance," he said. "It reflects new information and research in relation to young adult and female offenders and findings from research on the effectiveness of sentencing."

Tom Franklin, head of the Magistrates Association, said it welcomed the "robust emphasis on alternatives to custody. Magistrates want effective community sentences and more information about their impact on the people who are given them," he said. The consultation runs until 21 February next year on the Sentencing Council's website.