The latest Probation Journal carries an extremely important article by Professor Rob Canton and in my view should be regarded as essential reading for all probation staff past, present and future. I don't say this lightly and in an ideal world I'd rather hope it gained the attention of politicians and indeed anyone in positions of power and influence.
We find ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented prison, probation and criminal justice crisis and it's election year. Essentially this article sets out in forensic but clear detail much of how and why we got here and one would hope it convincingly makes the case for a fundamental rethink of the role and purpose of probation. In my opinion, failure to grasp the urgent need for change will inevitably mean that probation not only becomes increasingly irrelevant but most worryingly, entrenched as part of the problem.
Being conscious that the article may not be easily accessible for those who are not members of Napo, together with a desire to bring it to the attention of a wider audience, I've taken the liberty of sharing it in a number of posts.
Probation as Social Work
Abstract
In England and Wales probation was regarded as social work for most of the twentieth century, but some thirty years ago the government rejected this conception. In the context of continuing deliberations about the purpose and character of probation, it is timely to revisit its relationship to social work. It is argued that a principal reason for the politically motivated repudiation of social work was its associations with care, but this rested on confusion about care and a comparable misunderstanding of the concept of control. Appreciation of social context is argued to be fundamental to the work of probation. Social capital is no less important than human capital in achieving desistance. The skills and values of social work continue to inform probation because they match up to the demands of the job. Reaffirming connections between the professions would enhance the policy and practices of both.
Introduction
Many countries regard the activities of probation agencies as social work undertaken in the criminal justice system. This used to be the case in England and Wales, but this understanding was overturned when social work was rejected as a way of characterising probation's work. The Probation Service, set back and damaged by the project of Transforming Rehabilitation (Burke and Collett, 2015; Deering and Feilzer, 2019), has now embarked on a process of unification as a national service. Since the organisation of any agency should be fitted to its purposes, a review of the character, meaning and point of probation is timely. In a recent contribution to this debate, the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (2023) remarking that ‘Caseloads are unmanageable and job satisfaction is low.’ (page 4), referred to an occupational ‘identity crisis’ (page 70). In this paper it will be argued that, while the matter of whether probation ‘is’ social work sounds like a stale debate, reopening discussion can illuminate much about what probation is or ought to be and in particular the values that should find expression in its practices.
How probation was separated from social work
The view that probation was social work within the criminal justice system was scarcely controversial and even taken for granted in England and Wales for most of the twentieth century. Indeed, while the idea that probation might be part of a unified Social Services Department now seems implausible, in the 1960s the possibility was seriously considered. An awareness that families were poorly served by the fragmented arrangements under which services were provided by separate agencies led to an enquiry into the organisation of social work (Dickens, 2011). The resulting Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services (the Seebohm Report) recommended the creation of generic social work departments. This report acknowledged that a further impetus to the enquiry and an influence on the Committee's thinking had been the 1965 White Paper The Child, the Family and the Young Offender. It was abundantly clear to many that crime was bound up with disadvantage and deprivation and that a social work service for families might reduce the incidence of offending.
Outside of the new amalgamated services, ‘probation had severed its umbilical cord from the rest of social work’ (Whitehead and Statham, 2006: 46). Nevertheless, it was to be many years until probation formally renounced its parentage. The political debates of the 1960s and 1970s were more about organisation than purpose or ethos: probation staff continued to regard their work as welfare, sharing with social services workers the commitment to social casework as a mode of intervention.
With the collapse of the broad consensus that had prevailed for most of the mid- twentieth century, crime and punishment became ever more salient as an arena for political contest (Downes and Morgan, 1994). As ‘[t]he emotional temperature of policy-making shifted from cool to hot … the welfarist image of the offender as a disadvantaged, deserving, subject of need’ was replaced by ‘stereotypical depictions of unruly youth, dangerous predators, and incorrigible career criminals’ (Garland, 2001: 10). Welfare was to give way to punishment and control as fitting responses to crimes, together with a stated ambition that much could be accomplished in the community (for fear of an expensive and ineffective prison estate becoming even more overburdened). The Criminal Justice Act 1991 envisaged a ‘centre-stage’ role for probation, but at the price of presenting its work as punishment - a characterisation with which many practitioners were ill at ease.
The project to characterise probation as the agency responsible for administering punishment in the community was always likely to struggle (Brownlee, 1998; Worrall and Hoy, 2005). Not only did staff not understand their work in this way, but it has always been problematic to convince the public that community supervision, whatever else it is, counts as punishment. Supervision can be extremely burdensome and even painful (Durnescu, 2011; McNeill, 2018; Hayes, 2018), but these punitive hardships are seldom acknowledged in public or political debate. However that may be, the envisaged role for probation made connections with social work politically awkward. Association with a caring profession was altogether at odds with how government wanted to present the service.
The structures of governance, however, did not make probation readily amenable to control. The service was made up of 54 local Probation Committees (later reconstituted as Boards and reduced in number to 42). While the Home Office retained a level of oversight and direction, considerable latitude was retained locally, with councillors among the membership of Committees to represent local interests. If political promises were to be credible, central government would need to assert a much stronger and more direct control. That probation was substantially dependent on central funding gave government the leverage necessary to effect their changes. The Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (Home Office, 1984) required local services to draw up their own plans within parameters set nationally. 1989 saw the first National Standards (for community service), with a full set promulgated in 1992 in support of the implementation of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. Changes in funding formulas from 1992 tightened the screw of control and enabled central government to mould policy and practice.
While the Home Office had increasingly been seeking to exercise a more immediate control, in its assault on probation as social work it was able to exert a direct influence on training. The overall qualifying framework and curriculum had (since 1971) been overseen by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, on the basis that probation officers needed the same generic training as (other) social workers. Yet qualifying courses for probation officers in universities and polytechnics had to be approved by the Home Office, who also ‘sponsored’ students with (relatively generous) remuneration.
Concern began to be expressed that the distinctive knowledge required by staff was overlooked or suppressed, vanishing in a generic curriculum (Coleman, 1989). In response, the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work was replaced by the Diploma in Social Work in 1991. The new curriculum required much greater involvement from the agencies which were to employ their staff at qualification. ‘Streams’, including a probation stream, were devised to ensure that suitable knowledge was imparted. But they remained streams within a generic curriculum, still regarded as fully relevant to all social workers. Even though the probation stream came to be called the ‘jewel in the crown’ in social work education (Marsh and Triseliotis, 1996: 203), the government persisted in its concerns about over-genericism. It is likely there was also a suspicion that it was during their education that attitudes were shaped, perhaps including those that made staff inimical to the government's vision of probation as community punishment. If the ethos were to be changed, there had to be an altogether different approach (Dews and Watts, 1994). A social work qualification would no longer be required.
Political contest in this area intensified in the mid-1990s as parties competed for the claim to be ‘the party of law and order’ (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998). While promising to be tough on the causes of crime as well as on crime itself, as it came into government in 1997 New Labour did little to disturb the policy trajectory for probation. Punishment in the community would still be the watchword. And as the government moved quickly to set up a qualifying university education for probation officers, it was made clear that social work departments should not apply to deliver it.
Connotations of caring associated with social work, then, were still unwelcome. The administration seemed especially preoccupied with terminology. Probation service users had traditionally been referred to as ‘clients’, an established term for users of social services. But the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (1998) averred: ‘We agree wholeheartedly with the Home Secretary's comments regarding the language used in relation to community sentences; in particular we deplore the use of the term ‘client’ to describe criminals who are serving sentences.’ (paragraph 152) The word ‘offender’ was now insisted on. ‘Deplore’ is a strong word and it is worth pondering why the Committee and the Home Secretary (Jack Straw) were quite so vehement. Most plausibly, their aversion rested not on the precise denotation of the word so much as its connotations: offenders are to be condemned and punished; clients are entitled to service and to respect. Seeking ever more punitive credibility, other changes in terminology followed. After-care was to become resettlement; the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 changed Community Service into Community Punishment; the venerable Probation Order was renamed a Community Rehabilitation Order.
By 2008, Mr Straw, now the country's first ever Minister of Justice, congratulated himself that ‘Probation officers now routinely talk of the criminals they are dealing with as “offenders”, which is what they are, and not the euphemistic nonsense of “clients”, when the client is the victim and the tax-paying public.’ (Mulholland, 2008) There was little (party) political objection to this kind of stance. Still, the year before, at a service celebrating the centenary of the 1907 Probation of Offenders Act, the Bishop of Worcester reflected: ‘“Clients” have become “offenders” it seems; and “offender” slides easily from being a statement of fact – that a person has committed an offence or some offences – into an assertion of identity; they like the publicans and sinners of the gospel reading become a social class, a “them”.’ (Worcester News, 2007). Some words can help to sustain a protective dignity without which people may be ‘distanced and so pushed outside the boundaries of the moral community’ (Glover, 1999: 337). Language matters and is one of the principal ways in which the meanings of punishment are conveyed. To be the agency of punishment in the community, probation had to end its association with social work and the lexicon of penal policy rewritten.
In England and Wales probation was regarded as social work for most of the twentieth century, but some thirty years ago the government rejected this conception. In the context of continuing deliberations about the purpose and character of probation, it is timely to revisit its relationship to social work. It is argued that a principal reason for the politically motivated repudiation of social work was its associations with care, but this rested on confusion about care and a comparable misunderstanding of the concept of control. Appreciation of social context is argued to be fundamental to the work of probation. Social capital is no less important than human capital in achieving desistance. The skills and values of social work continue to inform probation because they match up to the demands of the job. Reaffirming connections between the professions would enhance the policy and practices of both.
Introduction
Many countries regard the activities of probation agencies as social work undertaken in the criminal justice system. This used to be the case in England and Wales, but this understanding was overturned when social work was rejected as a way of characterising probation's work. The Probation Service, set back and damaged by the project of Transforming Rehabilitation (Burke and Collett, 2015; Deering and Feilzer, 2019), has now embarked on a process of unification as a national service. Since the organisation of any agency should be fitted to its purposes, a review of the character, meaning and point of probation is timely. In a recent contribution to this debate, the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (2023) remarking that ‘Caseloads are unmanageable and job satisfaction is low.’ (page 4), referred to an occupational ‘identity crisis’ (page 70). In this paper it will be argued that, while the matter of whether probation ‘is’ social work sounds like a stale debate, reopening discussion can illuminate much about what probation is or ought to be and in particular the values that should find expression in its practices.
How probation was separated from social work
The view that probation was social work within the criminal justice system was scarcely controversial and even taken for granted in England and Wales for most of the twentieth century. Indeed, while the idea that probation might be part of a unified Social Services Department now seems implausible, in the 1960s the possibility was seriously considered. An awareness that families were poorly served by the fragmented arrangements under which services were provided by separate agencies led to an enquiry into the organisation of social work (Dickens, 2011). The resulting Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services (the Seebohm Report) recommended the creation of generic social work departments. This report acknowledged that a further impetus to the enquiry and an influence on the Committee's thinking had been the 1965 White Paper The Child, the Family and the Young Offender. It was abundantly clear to many that crime was bound up with disadvantage and deprivation and that a social work service for families might reduce the incidence of offending.
Outside of the new amalgamated services, ‘probation had severed its umbilical cord from the rest of social work’ (Whitehead and Statham, 2006: 46). Nevertheless, it was to be many years until probation formally renounced its parentage. The political debates of the 1960s and 1970s were more about organisation than purpose or ethos: probation staff continued to regard their work as welfare, sharing with social services workers the commitment to social casework as a mode of intervention.
With the collapse of the broad consensus that had prevailed for most of the mid- twentieth century, crime and punishment became ever more salient as an arena for political contest (Downes and Morgan, 1994). As ‘[t]he emotional temperature of policy-making shifted from cool to hot … the welfarist image of the offender as a disadvantaged, deserving, subject of need’ was replaced by ‘stereotypical depictions of unruly youth, dangerous predators, and incorrigible career criminals’ (Garland, 2001: 10). Welfare was to give way to punishment and control as fitting responses to crimes, together with a stated ambition that much could be accomplished in the community (for fear of an expensive and ineffective prison estate becoming even more overburdened). The Criminal Justice Act 1991 envisaged a ‘centre-stage’ role for probation, but at the price of presenting its work as punishment - a characterisation with which many practitioners were ill at ease.
The project to characterise probation as the agency responsible for administering punishment in the community was always likely to struggle (Brownlee, 1998; Worrall and Hoy, 2005). Not only did staff not understand their work in this way, but it has always been problematic to convince the public that community supervision, whatever else it is, counts as punishment. Supervision can be extremely burdensome and even painful (Durnescu, 2011; McNeill, 2018; Hayes, 2018), but these punitive hardships are seldom acknowledged in public or political debate. However that may be, the envisaged role for probation made connections with social work politically awkward. Association with a caring profession was altogether at odds with how government wanted to present the service.
The structures of governance, however, did not make probation readily amenable to control. The service was made up of 54 local Probation Committees (later reconstituted as Boards and reduced in number to 42). While the Home Office retained a level of oversight and direction, considerable latitude was retained locally, with councillors among the membership of Committees to represent local interests. If political promises were to be credible, central government would need to assert a much stronger and more direct control. That probation was substantially dependent on central funding gave government the leverage necessary to effect their changes. The Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (Home Office, 1984) required local services to draw up their own plans within parameters set nationally. 1989 saw the first National Standards (for community service), with a full set promulgated in 1992 in support of the implementation of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. Changes in funding formulas from 1992 tightened the screw of control and enabled central government to mould policy and practice.
While the Home Office had increasingly been seeking to exercise a more immediate control, in its assault on probation as social work it was able to exert a direct influence on training. The overall qualifying framework and curriculum had (since 1971) been overseen by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, on the basis that probation officers needed the same generic training as (other) social workers. Yet qualifying courses for probation officers in universities and polytechnics had to be approved by the Home Office, who also ‘sponsored’ students with (relatively generous) remuneration.
Concern began to be expressed that the distinctive knowledge required by staff was overlooked or suppressed, vanishing in a generic curriculum (Coleman, 1989). In response, the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work was replaced by the Diploma in Social Work in 1991. The new curriculum required much greater involvement from the agencies which were to employ their staff at qualification. ‘Streams’, including a probation stream, were devised to ensure that suitable knowledge was imparted. But they remained streams within a generic curriculum, still regarded as fully relevant to all social workers. Even though the probation stream came to be called the ‘jewel in the crown’ in social work education (Marsh and Triseliotis, 1996: 203), the government persisted in its concerns about over-genericism. It is likely there was also a suspicion that it was during their education that attitudes were shaped, perhaps including those that made staff inimical to the government's vision of probation as community punishment. If the ethos were to be changed, there had to be an altogether different approach (Dews and Watts, 1994). A social work qualification would no longer be required.
Political contest in this area intensified in the mid-1990s as parties competed for the claim to be ‘the party of law and order’ (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998). While promising to be tough on the causes of crime as well as on crime itself, as it came into government in 1997 New Labour did little to disturb the policy trajectory for probation. Punishment in the community would still be the watchword. And as the government moved quickly to set up a qualifying university education for probation officers, it was made clear that social work departments should not apply to deliver it.
Connotations of caring associated with social work, then, were still unwelcome. The administration seemed especially preoccupied with terminology. Probation service users had traditionally been referred to as ‘clients’, an established term for users of social services. But the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (1998) averred: ‘We agree wholeheartedly with the Home Secretary's comments regarding the language used in relation to community sentences; in particular we deplore the use of the term ‘client’ to describe criminals who are serving sentences.’ (paragraph 152) The word ‘offender’ was now insisted on. ‘Deplore’ is a strong word and it is worth pondering why the Committee and the Home Secretary (Jack Straw) were quite so vehement. Most plausibly, their aversion rested not on the precise denotation of the word so much as its connotations: offenders are to be condemned and punished; clients are entitled to service and to respect. Seeking ever more punitive credibility, other changes in terminology followed. After-care was to become resettlement; the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 changed Community Service into Community Punishment; the venerable Probation Order was renamed a Community Rehabilitation Order.
By 2008, Mr Straw, now the country's first ever Minister of Justice, congratulated himself that ‘Probation officers now routinely talk of the criminals they are dealing with as “offenders”, which is what they are, and not the euphemistic nonsense of “clients”, when the client is the victim and the tax-paying public.’ (Mulholland, 2008) There was little (party) political objection to this kind of stance. Still, the year before, at a service celebrating the centenary of the 1907 Probation of Offenders Act, the Bishop of Worcester reflected: ‘“Clients” have become “offenders” it seems; and “offender” slides easily from being a statement of fact – that a person has committed an offence or some offences – into an assertion of identity; they like the publicans and sinners of the gospel reading become a social class, a “them”.’ (Worcester News, 2007). Some words can help to sustain a protective dignity without which people may be ‘distanced and so pushed outside the boundaries of the moral community’ (Glover, 1999: 337). Language matters and is one of the principal ways in which the meanings of punishment are conveyed. To be the agency of punishment in the community, probation had to end its association with social work and the lexicon of penal policy rewritten.
Rob Canton
(to be continued)
good work jim
ReplyDeleteFrom Rob Canton's recent manifesto on Youth Justice:-
ReplyDelete5 Extending the Youth Offending Team approach to Young Adults
"Locally based Youth Offending Teams have proved largely effective vehicles for applying multi agency work with children who offend. Inspection reports have been mainly positive in stark contrast to those about probation services. The YOT approach would have value with older teenagers and young adults, who often do not reach adult maturity until their mid-twenties. Piloting the use of youth justice measures with this older cohort should produce better outcomes than interventions led by a probation service still struggling to recover from rapid organisational changes and unsustainable demands."
I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Gwyn Griffith of Aberystwyth University recently during which he reminded me, with bales of data, of what I knew way back when... The huge majority of young people who enter the criminal justice system will exit it before they are 26 years old. The arguments, humanitarian, rehabilitative and economic, for diverting all but a tiny minority of 25's and under from custodial sentences is compelling.
DeleteI have also heard solid academic evidence that what we might call "adult maturity" is not cemented until that age. And on an anecdotal front, all my pratitioner experience with clientele in their early 20's corroborates that. So while personality and identity is still malleable, WTF are we doing, maximising the experiences, eg prison, that would encourage the individual on the wrong trajectory, and for that matter, hampering their life chances thereafter, however well intentioned they might be.
Don’t let the Government fool you. The prison overcrowding crisis and delays in the courts is because of funding and incompetence, and NOT because of COVID or the barristers strike, or anything else.
ReplyDeleteIt’s because the Government, the Ministry of Justice, HMPpS, do not fund justice and community services properly, do not rehabilitate people either in prison, on probation or elsewhere, they allow for people to be sentenced to prison for minor things and it takes months and years for them to get their lives back on track, and I mean access to housing, education, employment and health services which is needed is a lot of cases.
They haven’t resentenced the IPPs, they have not adjusted Post Sentence Supervision (PSS) to make it more relevant, and now they are instead suspending PSS and all probation supervision for the final third of someone’s licence period, Community Orders and Suspended Sentences meaning they won’t get the rehabilitation, support or help they need which increases the risk of reoffending, including high risk offenders and those convicted of violence, domestic abuse and more.
They seem to think that releasing people from prison early will free up prison spaces and it does in the short term but as a result there are no spaces in probation hostels and they are being shoved into unsuitable and unliveable shared accommodation. So the people being released early are being put in “red flag” situations, including high risk prisoners released homeless onto the streets, which increases their chances of being returned to prison. Their vacated prison beds are then immediately filled and the cycle begins again at a quicker pace.
So the prison population is increasing because there is ZERO effort being put in to actually reducing reoffending. Not to mention prison officers, probation officers and other justice and rehabilitation professionals are completed overworked, undervalued and underpaid. Not to mention that lawyers, justice professionals and other support workers within the Criminal Justice System are completely underfunded and so many have packed it in, meaning there is less representation and support.
They focus on short term fixes which result in long term problems. The Government need to stop blaming other people, stop funding themselves and their conglomerate friends and other things, and take some responsibility for the safety and future of our people, towns and cities.
I read earlier that our Napo General Secretary needs to stand up and better speak up for every “Probation Officer” and the “Probation Service”. Every other probation union, probation institute, probation academic and probation senior manager needs to get behind him too.
I keep reading Guest Blog 26
Advise, Assist and Befriend http://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2015/02/guest-blog-26.html?m=1 and can’t help think how far we’ve fallen now we’re pushing those in need away from probation and rehabilitation support instead of offering it to them.
HMIP need to do better. Tell the truth
DeleteThe removal of the social work ethos from probation, and subjecting everyone leaving custody to post sentence supervision, has effectively turned probation into the nations largest open prison.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to see any positive future for probation until the social work ethos is reinstated.
'Getafix
Post sentence supervision is not the problem. Some need and benefit from it. The problem is the way it’s attached to every short term prisoner and enforced by legal processes.
Delete“post sentence supervision, has effectively turned probation into the nations largest open prison.”
DeleteNo it has not. The problem is probation can’t make up its mind with what it’s trying to do. It’s not a bad thing for every short term prisoner to have access to probation help and support.
It should be voluntary though... for up to a year of your sentence date you may call on Probaton
Delete"every short term prisoner to have access to probation help and support."
DeleteThat was Graylings line when privatising probation.
We keep hearing the prison population is currently so high and prisons only a few free spaces away from capacity. Prisons have approximately 90,000 prisoner in single, double and dormitory cells. Double the number of beds in every prison cell and we’ll have 45,000 free spaces. If a cell can’t take extra beds then sleeping bags on the floor will do. Crisis solved and we can scrap the £2b prison building programme and spend the money on building schools, youth centres, healthcare services and preventing people going to prison.
ReplyDeleteTruth is emerging about high risk prisoners the government is releasing early from prison. Think when the public finds out the same high risk offenders under probation supervision having their licence and supervision periods ended prematurely!
ReplyDelete“High-risk offenders including a domestic abuser who posed a risk to children have been freed from jail under the government’s early release scheme, a watchdog has revealed.“
https://amp.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/14/high-risk-offenders-included-in-early-release-scheme-prisons-inspector-says
It’s beggars belief they’ve got away with Alex Chalk saying the early release scheme would “only be for certain low-level offenders” and Ministry of Justice excusing it as “some lower-level offenders at the end of their custodial term on to licence”.
Too much scrutiny and methinks prison early custody release and the probation reset supervision suspension schemes might be scrapped.
I'm now pretty much convicnced that post-conviction support should only be available to anyone who wants/needs it.
ReplyDeleteImposing it upon those who choose to persist in law-breaking, who insist on pursuing a criminal lifestyle or who are condemned to a cycle of offending (for whatever reason) is (in the current political climate) a waste of scarce public resources.
Probation work should, at this time, be focused upon those who want to change their life circumstances, who express interest in making changes & those who engage with interventions offered.
Those who are resistant, cynical or otherwise uninterested should be left to the cyclical washing machine of criminal injustice unless/until they make a different choice. That's what they do whether they're subject to supervision or otherwise.
In short, probation should return to being an option the court can use that is NOT a sentence of the court. UPW & custody should remain as sentencing options but supervision & assistance in the community should be an option available at the discretion of the court based based upon the assessment of a qualified probation officer. Failure to comply would result in a re-sentencing exercise.
Exceptional cases (crown court only) could include suspended sentences reserved to the sentencing judge, with immediate imprisonment as/when a failure to comply is reported. No complicated scheduling, just a supervisor's report & JiC.
Post-custody supervision would only be available to those who had been assessed pre-release who gave a clear commitment to a schedule of appointments for the three (3) months after release. Any failure to comply with any appointment would lead to immediate recall.
All other releases where no such commitment was given would receive no support from probation. Local police would be notified accordingly.
It's a contradiction to exempt MAPPA cases from Probation Reset but allow these cases to be released on the 70 day (very likely to be increased given what we've seen so far). The ECSL form for POs that want to reject proposed ECSL releases, which are clearly not being risk-assessed, has such a high threshold for evidence that 99 out of 100 would be rejected. So here's the mechanism, which is little more than an unlikely to be effective sop, as they already know that they'll most likely reject it. This also has to occur in the already counting down 2 week pre-release window (this doesn't pause because you're having concerns) in which you'll have to get your skates on for housing referrals, licence conditions and all that jazz. Why aren't they just concentrating on the Medium/low risk cases they said they were going to in the first place? Probably because a community POs version of Medium/Low/High is not the same as the prisons assessment; this doesn't help if at the point of sentence they were incorrectly risk assessed as this is locked-in to the OASYs PSR via the Courts and which may wrongly be informing this team of faceless bureaucrats of whom should be being safely released.
ReplyDeleteI wonder just how much that team of faceless bureaucrats is costing, a) in money per year b) in the damage they are doing and have done. And I wonder if there was ever, at any point in this debacle, which has been gathering momentum for years and years, any push back against the politicians?
Deletehmpps 22/23 accounts show:
Delete£4.7million on consultants
52 staff on salaries over £100k (~£6million/year)
24 on salaries £70k to £100k (~£2million/year)
Approx £100k paid in bonuses to senior staff
148,000 km travelled in domestic flights
1.7million km travelled on intl flights
£58million cost of agency staff
approx £70k for non-exec directors' remuneration
Total cost of exit packages £23.6 million -
"In 2022/23, the figures include the costs of 2
departures for HMPPS staff members leaving
under the Probation Service voluntary departure
scheme (2021/22: 62 exits). These exits were
agreed in exceptional circumstances in April 2022
under a second tranche."
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/656869f25936bb000d316783/15.85_HMPPS_annual_report_2022-23_WEB.pdf
why are hmpps staff flying the equivalent of 42 times around the world?
Deletewhy are hmpps staff flying the equivalent of 185 times the length of the uk?
In a single year.
Airline analysis shows a formula of cost per fliying mile per trip of $50 + 11 cents/mile, or approx £40 + 9pence/mile.
Using the distances given & basing a calculation on single trips, the cost to the taxpayer would be approx £100k (intl) & £10k (domestic); but its likely to have been far higher as hmpps staff couldn't possibly travel cattle class (business class is usually 4x the price).
So we can probably assume £half-a-million in flights in one year for hmpps staff.
Or the equivalent of one Truss, Cleverly or Cameron jolly.
They'll say that it's cheaper than the £50k it cost to keep a prisoner in custody for a year versus the £3-4k a year it costs on Probation. So, whilst they're 'saving' that money- they can spend some of these savings in the community on mental health and social and housing provision to reduce further offending. They can also hire more probation officers to allow a cap on cases (30) or 99% on WMT to develop so we can enjoy, as a human right, a work/life balance. After all, it's the workloads that are the problem, not our approach to it. It's probably not a bad thing that people are being released early so long as they're not the high risk (and it's confirmed that several are high risk and MAPPA) cases. But it will take months if not years to see any benefit- but it needs ratifying and more support from prisons around interventions and pre-resettlement. Probation Reset, whilst welcome, is a response to community probation being overworked. Remove the 'excuses' via Probation Reset and there won't be any or far less pushback from Community Probation who are very overworked already. But much of the being overworked is both a caseload issue and the culmination of too many high risk MAPPA cases which are exempt from Probation Reset. It's a start but it needs to gather momentum and ultimately prisons and Community Probation need to work together rather than be divided by ECSL. I don't think being dictated to by a piece of paper: the ECSL guide, without feedback from or accountability to Community Probation, is really the way to go about it.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that's odd is why have they waited until the prisons were at bursting point to do anything about releasing offenders early? Surely there's a system in England and Wales for checking how much capacity is left in prisons. All PDUs know how many cases they have. The CAT A prisons often have single prisoner cells- that could help alleviate this situation- not all prisoners in CAT A prisons are assessed as CAT A. Arson cases and other reasons why prisoners need to be single-housed can be reviwed at as well. Or build more prisons. Or don't over criminalise. Or don't just target certain groups. Or don't run prisons as businesses like they do in the U.S. Or try and get many of these people help and support in the community upon release- perhaps down the line this will happen? Much of Northern Europe seems to have a grip on these things. It's the U.S and U.K that seem to have a similar punitive model- bums on seats; guaranteed work for those in small towns. Will Labour, if they get into power, do much differently? Probably not and their get out of jail free card will be that the present government's handling will take years to unravel so ECSL won't be switched off after the election. The question remains is how much of a detrimental effect it will have on Community Probation?!
ReplyDelete