A Sadly Familiar Thread

The last couple of days has triggered us to return to a sadly familiar thread and I think it's important to pull it together because I'm acutely aware many probation staff are currently under even greater stress. It began with this:-

My partner and I have made the decision for me to resign, after 24 years as a PO with numerous successful secondments, I have simply had enough. The change I have lived through is breath-taking and disturbing. I have seen inspirational POs, who never sought high office and whose professional curiosity was amazing to witness, marginalised and put down by young upstarts not in the slightest ashamed to voice their lofty ambitions. Bullying, racism and homophobia are now rife in an organisation that once was held up as a beacon of progressive professionalism and recognised internationally. My resignation is going in tomorrow morning and the sense of relief is beyond description, odd as it may sound I feel free.

Following yesterday, my notice is in. A very slow response from management, no doubt a huddle took place to formulate a response however one rather youthful SPO passed comment on “how difficult it must for you to adapt to change”. I bit my tongue. At 48 years of age she was young enough to be my daughter but really lacked the dignity of my children. This one moment just solidified my decision to leave. I feel unshackled, I feel free and I feel sadness. But my overriding feeling is of relief. As I speak my wonderful partner is cracking open a bottle of wine whilst she sings only now right now as I type do I realise how my probation frustrations were so visible to her. I respect and love her so much. I wish all of you the best and I have to express my utter admiration and respect to Jim for the legacy of your blog, you are truly a legend.

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The Weight of the Badge - A Personal Reflection on Nearly 20 Years in Probation:

As I approach two decades in the probation service, I find myself feeling more isolated than ever. In a role designed to foster rehabilitation, support, and second chances, it's ironic that I now feel in desperate need of those very things myself. Over the years, I’ve navigated countless changes, adapted to new policies, and checked boxes that seem to multiply by the day. But the toll of it all is undeniable.

I lead a team of dedicated officers who, despite their best efforts, are also feeling the strain. Together, we try to keep morale afloat, to stay motivated amid constant shifts, but the pressures from above – from the Head of Service and beyond – have become suffocating. It feels like we’re caught in an endless cycle of demands that never seem to let up, and each day leaves us running on fumes.

For over a year now, I’ve been covering more than one team, stretching myself thin in every direction. The demands of the job have drained me completely. Where there once was pride in the work, now there’s only exhaustion. Weekends don’t offer enough time to recover, and by Sunday, the anxiety of the week ahead sets in. Monday is a day filled with dread as I face another seemingly insurmountable five days.

I’m struggling. My anxiety is constant, and my depression has deepened. It feels like the joy has been sucked from my life. I’m left questioning how much longer I can keep going like this, trying to juggle the needs of my team, my own mental health, and the overwhelming weight of this job.

I share this not just as a personal release, but in the hope that others who feel similarly might realise they aren’t alone. Probation work is hard – harder than many understand – and we need to acknowledge the toll it can take on us all.

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I totally agree with the sentiments you express and I empathise with the dilemma you are in however merely acknowledging the problem will not make it go away. As has been said previously, and again by [others] there is ample evidence to support a private prosecution by the unions on the grounds of health and safety, but it is also up to individuals to do whatever is necessary to protect themselves and to safeguard their own well-being. Strategies have been outlined in the past but people, for various reasons feel obliged to keep turning the wheel despite it being obvious that nobody listens, nobody cares and nothing will change of its own volition. Simply making yourself ill or taking your frustrations home with you won’t change anything and you are unfortunately no better thought of. Do something positive to help yourself, even if it is going off sick or semi- retirement or taking a sabbatical and surveying your options.

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Hello Jim,

I resigned as a PO in June after joining the service initially as residential support worker in AP. I have met numerous brilliant people who are working within a broken organisation.

I trained as a PO with very much a focus on wanting to aid rehabilitation but found myself ground down by the corporate nature of senior management. A regional director likening his background as an investment banker to managing high risk offenders being an prime example.

The eagerness to recall and enforce rather than explore behaviour left me disillusioned and questioning the point of the job - I concur with a recent submission that the role has essentially an extension of custodial supervision. There is a culture of fear amongst frontline staff of being thrown under the bus by management if something goes awry.

I do not have all the answers but the culture needs to change to empower staff to make brave decisions and not revert to risk averse behaviour out of fear for their job.

Kind regards,
An ex PO

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This is what many of us remember, but it seems the memory no longer extends to current management, but if it does, how can things have become so toxic in the workplace and why is nobody doing anything about it?

I missed this in 20/21... don't know if it made your blog, Jim, but it should hold a place in the archive:

https://www.butlertrust.org.uk/eve-chester/

"As I see it I am doing what I ought to do, work in a way that demonstrates my values and the values of the Probation Service I joined in 1982. [When I started] I was completely bowled over by the amazing staff I met at Hull Probation Office where I took up my first student placement. I work on the basis that we need to treat clients with respect. That doesn’t mean we admire all that they have done in life but we act on the basis that there are reasons why people behave as they do – blaming people for actions is not very productive – and the majority of people want to live lives where they can feel safe and valued. Most people do not care to work with others whom they perceive to be patronising, judging them and/or fault-finding.

“We do hear and see things as Probation staff that disgust or appal but if we want people to move on to live better, less harmful lives then we have to see people as a whole, not just the offence; where feasible, get beneath the behaviour (not ignore it) to understand if possible what it is about, the value and purpose of it to the client and integrate that with where that client wants to be as a person in the future and how to get there. If we want Probation clients to treat their family and fellow citizens with respect then we as staff supervising them, need to demonstrate that in how we treat them; we recognise the capacity to harm and also the capacity to move away from further harming. It also means discussing boundaries, we all have them and know how we dislike others’ attempts to breach them. I see my role in Probation is to address those breaches and to try and help people steer away from further similar behaviour.

“If a person’s behaviour harms people and if society values people, society needs to find ways of unravelling that purpose and helping re-channel that energy. What has taken years to develop isn’t going to dissolve over-night so one has to be patient and tempered. You have to withstand set-backs, client lapses, rejection. It’s a joint enterprise but the engine is the client. If their energy or will can’t be engaged, it’s a very slow process but still worthwhile. I’ve kept true to this approach of respect and looking for ways to connect because I have found it works; it engages most clients, works at a pace they can manage and keeps the majority out of re-offending. That sounds very simplistic but it requires considerable patience, willingness to keep fresh in thinking, attention to detail and adaptability. You can’t work this way on your own, you need good support from colleagues whether in Probation or linked agencies to share ideas, check out assumptions and access resources so you also need to be an adept advocate and team worker.”

Eve concludes with a personal recollection – and a vivid description of how she’s found her career:

“I hated it when as a child and young person I experienced personally or saw others, being ‘labelled’ or ‘written off’ so yes, I have a passion for challenging labels and negativity and I have found in Probation an amazing albeit demanding space in which to do this… It’s a career I have found fascinating, infuriating, wearying and stimulating but overall, incredibly worthwhile in seeing the majority of clients lighten up, move on, have families, handle lurch and sway to regain equilibrium and… stay out of trouble!”

Eve Chester

Probation Meltdown

The new government is slowly working through the mountain of problems created by the Tories, but the probation service cannot wait much longer for that promised 'review'. When is it being announced? The service is in meltdown, discussed here in some detail on PoliticsHome:- 

The Probation Service is "In Meltdown", Say Staff

Every probation service in the UK is failing to meet minimum standards as the service buckles under the weight of record staff shortages and huge caseloads, an investigation by The House magazine has revealed. Staff describe dealing with unsafe numbers of cases and a “s**t show” system “in meltdown” even before this month’s early release of thousands of prisoners to alleviate a jails crisis.

Some probation services are operating with less than half the number of required staff prompting grave internal doubts about their ability to cope with the increased demand.

And with the consequences for those subject to domestic abuse a particular concern prompted by the early release programme, The House has found every probation service in the UK has been criticised for failures – either protecting others from released detainees or ensuring those released are not abused themselves.

The probation service manages the cases of a quarter of million people, largely those who have been released from prison into the community or have been sentenced to community service. That is three times the number of those actually in prison, and yet it is one of the lowest-profile parts of the criminal justice system.

“It's a really difficult, complicated job,” says Martin Jones, the government’s chief inspector of probation. “I think it’s also under-appreciated because it’s such an invisible job.”

But while out of sight and out of mind, pressures have nevertheless been building relentlessly alongside those elsewhere. An analysis of the last 33 reports into every probation service inspected by the government watchdog – HM Inspectorate of Probation – over the last two and a half years reveals the extent of the crisis.

It shows every service has received a failing grade in that period – either ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’. Two got the lowest score possible. (Typically services are rated from 1 to either 21 or 27, two received a score or 1, a further five of just 2.)

Inspectors repeatedly identified understaffing and "unmanageable" workloads across the country, which had left services failing to do basic jobs like ensuring domestic abusers weren't contacting or threatening former victims, failing to safeguard children and systemically failing to assess the risk posed by former detainees to the public.

Every report found some sort of failure in regards to domestic violence – either failing to support those released from prison who could be victims to it or failing to risk assess those who previously were or could be potential perpetrators of abuse themselves.

Sometimes that wasn’t the direct fault of services themselves – at one unit in Liverpool inspectors found they had a backlog of 1,350 domestic abuse inquiries with the Merseyside Police that had gone unanswered.

At one failing probation service in Peterborough, “nowhere near enough attention” was being paid to monitoring the potential risks posed to the public by released offenders, with officers in 72 per cent of cases failing to properly protect the victims of released offenders.

Sickness and absence rates are so high in some services senior managers were having to handle the casework they were supposed to be overseeing – a situation inspectors called “unsustainable”.

“It’s clear if you read the reports that the probation service is under huge strain,” Jones tells The House. “Having worked in the criminal justice system for over 30 years, the pressures on the probation service are equally as bad as those on prisons by my assessment.”

“It's something that requires urgent attention from the government,” he adds.

At one service he reviewed in Essex, Jones says 55 per cent of the posts for probation officers were vacant, meaning the few staff actually still working there could be dealing with around twice their usual workload. Those kinds of massive staff vacancy rates were common across the country, particularly in big cities like London.

As staff shortages worsen caseloads increase leading in turn to worse staff retention. Some staff are said to be doing up to 200 per cent of their normal caseload as the system struggles to manage 250,000 people.

The personal toll on probation officers can be devastating. “When you see a colleague crying at a desk, that's not at all unusual in a probation office,” says John, who also tells us about another colleague who developed PTSD and attempted suicide from the scale and intensity of the work before being forced to take ill-health early retirement.

John is a near two decade veteran of the probation service who has spent most of his career in the North of England. We changed John’s name to allow him to speak freely and protect him from professional repercussions.

“Everything we do is superficial and last minute. If you've got way more work than you should do, you haven't got the time to sit and spend more than an hour with somebody,” he says.

“If you're always going at 100 miles an hour, you're not doing a considered piece of work when you write up their risk assessment, you’re doing a rush job because you know that you've got another three cases due by a certain time.”

Part of the fear with that kind of overwork is that it means officers are missing chances to stop people from committing serious crimes. Some 578 ‘serious further offences’ were recorded last year, a 10 per cent increase on the year before, though still lower than the record figures set during the system’s privatisation. While those are a small percentage of the total number of people released, each can have an untold, and preventable, impact on the victim or their families.

While the media narrative often focuses on that potential risk to the public, it often ignores the wider impact these failures have on the lives of those newly released from prison. Just under one in seven people are released from prison homeless in 2023-2024, an increase of a third on the year before.

“If probation officers do not have adequate time to address those sorts of issues, then inevitably there's a risk that it just becomes a revolving door,” says Jones. “And the reoffending rates in England and Wales are astonishingly high.”

Part of the reason for that huge increase in cases goes back to former Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s “disastrous” partial privatisation of the service, which was overturned in 2019 after the number of serious offences like murder and rape by those on probation skyrocketed to record highs. As part of the privatisation deal, companies were forced to take on managing the wellbeing of previously unmonitored low level offenders on very short sentences. When it was renationalised, that new obligation was taken on by the public sector.

The problems in the probation service are heavily worsened by the problems across the rest of the justice system – from record court backlogs to prison overcrowding – which make managing cases a nightmare.

“The whole of the criminal justice system is in meltdown and we’re an important component of that,” says Ian Lawrence, general secretary of NAPO, the trade union for probation workers. He said the union has been repeatedly pushing for a Royal Commission into the failures across the justice system. “It’s a s**t show, basically,” he concludes.

When Labour first announced its plans to authorise the early release of prisoners, insiders say they had had a grim sense of deja vu.

Just two months earlier, the last government had (more quietly) expanded its own early prisoner release scheme, called ECSL, to mean countless more prisoners would be released early. Probation staff had little warning or time to prepare for releases and few criteria were applied on what type of prisoner might be released. It was labelled by NAPO at the time as an “unmitigated failure” and a trigger for potential strike action.

Lawrence says under that scheme probation staff felt “under pressure to sanction someone's release when they knew for a fact they were a high risk” to the public.

“The new scheme couldn’t be worse than ECSL,” John recalls. “But what they've done again is prioritise prison at the expense of probation.”

Under Labour’s programme which begins this month, prisoners will be eligible for early release after serving 40 per cent rather than 50 per cent of their sentences. In theory, certain serious offences, like those with domestic violence convictions would not be covered, but this month the government confirmed that was not always the case. If someone had a history of, say, serious sexual offences, but was currently serving a sentence for something else, they would be eligible.

Some 40,000 prisoners are estimated to benefit from the scheme, meaning the probation service’s caseload could eventually shoot up by as much as a fifth. Some 5,500 prisoners are expected to be released in the next two months alone.

The new scheme came with a promise to recruit 1,000 new probation officers by March 2025 to help deal with the new caseload and address staffing shortfalls in the service, though given it takes 18 months for an officer to qualify, it could be years before the service feels any benefit.

“I'm concerned about the potential impact that this will have, particularly in the short term,” says Jones. “Extra officers in a year or 18 months is great but you've got to through the next 18 months first.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson stressed that the government “inherited a prison system in crisis” that was “putting pressure on the wider justice system particularly probation staff”. They added they had been “forced into taking difficult but necessary action so it can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public”.

All of those working in probation who spoke The House spoke said the scale of the crisis had made them rethink the entire structure and future of the probation service.

Jones says the “chronic” issues in the service meant the government needed to consider pruning the numbers or types of ex-detainees the service oversees as “it's probably better to do 70 per cent of the job really well than do 100 per cent of the job poorly”.

NAPO also calls on the government to end or phase out short-term prison sentencing.

“There are too many people in prison for offences that realistically, you should put them on a community order or some other form of reparation,” says NAPO general secretary Lawrence.

"We cannot keep doing this. The early release plans may make a difference to overcrowding in the short term, but it’s a palliative not a long-term cure.”

Andrew Kersley

D-Day Is Here

So, D-Day is here and probation has to try and deal with a massive emergency release of prisoners. I notice Danny Shaw has written a piece for the Spectator, helpfully summarising the grim probation reality and possible routes towards a solution. We're only some 60 days into a new Labour government, but as yet no sign of the promised fundamental review of probation. The only way to fix the problem is get probation out of HMPPS control and civil service and rebuild it as an independent agency. Nothing else will stop probation being part of the problem rather than a key element of a solution.

Thousands of prisoners are about to be released early. Is probation ready?

I met Anthony by the gates of Thameside prison in south-east London. A skinny, gaunt-looking man in his 40s, he’d spent much of his adult life in and out of jail for offences linked to his mental health problems and addiction to drugs. His latest spell inside had lasted eight months. He was hugely relieved to be out and vowed, like so many other newly-released prisoners, never to go back.

Over the next few hours I joined Anthony and a support worker from a charity on a car journey across London as they raced against the clock to find him a bed for the night, register with a GP, so he could get the medication he needed, visit a benefits office and attend a probation appointment. It was a crazy few hours – complicated by the fact that Anthony’s identification documents were stuck in another prison and there’d been little time to organise things in advance of his release.

That encounter with Anthony, for a radio feature a few years ago, came to mind as the government prepares to free some 2,000 prisoners on Tuesday – double the number they usually let out in a week. It’s the first stage of a scheme which will see 5,000 prisoners let out early in September and October to create space in jails across England and Wales, where the population has reached a record high of 88,521. Inmates will serve 40 per cent of their sentence in custody instead of the standard 50 per cent.

However much planning has taken place, many of those released will face the same mad dash as Anthony did to access the services that will help them re-settle in the community. Key to it all will be the probation staff charged with their supervision. Since 2015, every offender, no matter how short their sentence, must be monitored by probation for at least 12 months after they leave jail. It’s a huge burden on a service which is overstretched and under-performing.

Only two out of 12 probation regions are operating satisfactorily, according to the latest ‘scorecard’ from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Three areas – East Midlands; London; Kent, Surrey and Sussex – are rated ‘inadequate’, seven are said to require improvement. In his final report after four years as chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell said his ‘greatest’ concerns were around public protection with staff unable to accurately assess and robustly manage the potential risk of serious harm posed by some offenders. Russell highlighted poor supervision and unmanageable workloads, with some officers dealing with 40 or more cases each.

A large part of the problem is that there aren’t enough staff. The MoJ wants there to be 7,339 fully-qualified probation officers, yet there’s currently a shortfall of 2,179. Leaving rates are up and most alarmingly, every year up to 20 per cent of trainees drop out before they even qualify.

To address the staffing crisis Martin Jones, the new chief inspector, has suggested reducing the burden on existing probation officers by removing the requirement to supervise prisoners who’ve served short sentences. It would cut the caseload by around 40,000, 17 per cent of the current total, and give staff more time to do meaningful rehabilitation work with offenders who pose a greater public threat. It’s an attractive idea but politically deadly: an unsupervised prisoner will inevitably commit a ghastly crime and ministers will get the blame.

A better option would be to tackle the bureaucracy surrounding probation work so staff have more one-on-one time with offenders. Russell highlighted Civil Service rules that meant it could take weeks to order equipment and fill posts. ‘Multiple layers of approvals and standardised and centralised commissioning processes stifle innovation and can feel disempowering for local leaders,’ he wrote. Officers also complain about legislative demands and data management requirements that they have to fulfil but which aren’t part of their core duties, as well as clunky IT systems that make every task take longer. If workloads are to be made manageable, this is an area the MoJ must urgently focus on.

The department appears to be pinning its hopes on a campaign to hire an extra 1,000 trainee probation officers. That will undoubtedly ease some of the pressures, but it would be a mistake to think that simply boosting numbers will improve performance. A theme of recent reviews into murders committed by offenders on probation is a lack of ‘professional curiosity’ on the part of officers entrusted with their supervision – they’re too willing to accept what they’re told at face value and don’t inquire deeply enough into what’s going on in the background. Much of this is down to inexperience: one-third of probation staff have been in the service for less than five years. A recruitment drive is unlikely to address that problem unless it’s targeted at older people who can bring skills from different walks of life.

Indeed, that was the recommendation from a report carried out for the Conservative government which said the probation service needed to hire more ‘career changers’ in their 30s, 40s and 50s. The findings of the review, which wasn’t published, also called for the service to bring in more men. Seventy-five per cent of probation staff are women but 91 per cent of those they supervise are male. The chief probation officer, Kim Thornden-Edwards, has agreed that the gender mix needs to change to give senior staff more options when allocating cases. ‘It might be really good for a woman to be leading on a domestic abuse case – but also, it might be good for a man to be challenging those kind of issues around masculinity and power from a male perspective,’ she told the BBC.

Thornden-Edwards made those remarks 18 months ago, but the gender balance in probation hasn’t shifted. If the service is to be more effective at keeping the public safe and helping offenders with rehabilitation the workforce needs to be more diverse, particularly in terms of age, life experience and gender. That is not to denigrate those who currently work there, they are doing a valuable and challenging job. But we should acknowledge that they need more support so that former prisoners like Anthony and the thousands exiting jail this week get the best chance to turn their lives around.

Danny Shaw

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Also from today's Spectator:-

Probation officers won’t be able to cope with 5,500 prisoner releases

Today the government is releasing an estimated 1,700 prisoners early, under the scheme (SDS40) in which most inmates will only serve 40 per cent of their sentence. By the end of October, some 5,500 prisoners will have been released early. The idea is to take pressure off the prison system, and buy enough time to build more capacity. Life may become a little easier in our jails, but for the probation service, this means yet more pressure.

Probation is a crucial part of the justice system. It is responsible for supervising people who are serving community sentences, and those who have been released from prison ‘on licence’. Probation officers are expected to ensure that people do not breach the terms of their licence, do not reoffend, and that they participate in programmes to address substance or behaviour problems. If an offender breaches their licence, a probation officer may have to ‘recall’ them, sending them back to prison for some or all of their sentence. In many ways, it is much harder to supervise offenders in the community as opposed to a prison. At least in jail, we generally know where a prisoner is sleeping each night.

The early releases will challenge a service that is already in crisis. Staffing is in a critical condition, with only 70 per cent of the needed number of qualified probation officers: a shortfall of around 2,000. While the government has promised to recruit another 1,000 trainees by March next year, the reality is that trainee hiring has collapsed, down almost 60 per cent year-on-year, and the service actually lost 178 officers in the last quarter.

Morale is terrible. A probation officer in the Midlands said: ‘Staff don’t feel protected. They don’t feel like the service cares about them.’ The view of many probation officers, from speaking with their union, NAPO, and individual POs, is that management and the organisation will not support them if the worst happens and someone they are supervising commits a serious further offence. This fear is likely one factor behind our astonishingly high rates of recall. Around 55 per cent of prisoners released from jail will be recalled. While for many this is because they’ve committed further offences, probation officers often take the decision to recall because they don’t believe they can keep the public safe in any other way.

Of course, public protection has to be at the heart of the justice system, but a properly staffed and resourced probation service would be able to manage far more offenders in the community. Instead, understaffed and overworked, probation oversees a system in which more than a quarter of released prisoners are proven to have reoffended within a year.

This stressful environment has significant consequences. Tania Bassett, of the probation trade union, NAPO, said: ‘We’ve got really bad levels of sickness at the moment, mainly as a result of poor mental health.’ A probation officer in the South West remarked that ‘staff go off sick with work-related stress, then get given a warning and an 18-month improvement period, but there’s no change to their workloads’. In a hostile and unsupportive management culture like this, it is no surprise that staff are leaving.

I understand that probation staff have only had a few weeks’ notice of the additional people they will be supervising, and in some cases were only told last week. This provides no time for the staff to familiarise themselves with the prisoners’ needs and risks, or to put in place support around drugs, housing or behaviour which may keep them out of prison. Prisoners who are released homeless, without a job and without any meaningful support are at a particularly high risk of reoffending. As a probation officer from the north of England said, ‘I just don’t think SDS40 has been thought out properly. It’s unsafe.’

This, combined with the pressure on individual probation officers, may well mean that this early-release cohort is even more likely to be recalled or commit further offences. If so, we might expect more than 60 per cent of the 5,500 prisoners to be back in jail before too long. It is hard to see how the government is going to find enough extra capacity. The prison population continues to climb, and we are already seeing hints that the Tories’ laughable plan to send prisoners overseas may be revived. This isn’t serious policy. Our prisons are full because of longer sentences, a court backlog which this government has exacerbated by reducing court dates by 2 per cent this year, and the soaring rate of recalls.

As Tania Bassett said to me: ‘We need to start the long-term conversations now.’ Serious reform would mean significantly expanding the open prison system and working to deport the estimated 10,000 foreign nationals held in our jails. Early release isn’t the solution, and if it results in a wave of reoffending, while failing to save the prison system, then the government will only have itself to blame.

David Shipley

David Shipley is a former prisoner who writes, speaks and researches on prison and justice issues.

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Postscript

Hello, I work as a ARD German Television Producer. We are the main public broadcaster in Germany comparable to the BBC and our London office deals with any UK based stories.

I am putting together a report for one of our prestigious prime time Sunday evening current affairs programmes about Britain's prisons overcrowding crisis and the ways in which the new government is looking to solve it.

We are hoping to speak to probation officers about the challenges they are currently facing and also if they have any concerns about the new early release scheme. We are also looking to speak to ex- offenders who were recently released from prison about the conditions of overcrowded prisons and the challenges they face once they leave prison. This could be both on and off the record just for my background information or as part of the programme.

If interested please contact me directly via email on r.hayes.fm@ndr.de or on my direct line on 02073916263.

Rabea Hayes
ARD German TV | Studio London
Producer

Probation Reality of Early Release

This came in yesterday and highlights the grim reality for many probation staff:-

Hi Jim,

I would prefer this is kept anonymous for obvious reasons.

Today, I was at work. Today, I actually cried at my desk. If that isn't horrible enough, two other colleagues were in tears at other parts of the day too.

I speak as a qualified PO. It is unsustainable. I haven't felt like I've been able to fully help someone in months, there have been no wins.

We all know the problem areas; housing, substance misuse support and mental health treatment are struggling as much as we are, but it feels like we are the only ones expected to take on more and more. Empty the prisons onto our caseloads with no extra resources and expect miracles.

In the last 36 hours I've recalled two people, mostly because their needs haven't been met adequately, either through lack of provision in the community or lack of proper focused work in custody. I imagine other POs have exceeded that particular disgraceful statistic.

SDS40 is a longer term plan really. And I fully understand something needed to happen, but there has been absolutely no meaningful emergency support for us. I've lost track of our staffing numbers. At least 3 long term off sick, and other leavers roles not filled. I haven't seen a temp in my office in about 18 months.

Oh, but why am I complaining? Because after reset my WMT is under 100%. So no overtime for me. Even though I am sending this at 10 o'clock on a Friday night and my last email sent for work was at about 7.

Anon

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This from the Guardian on Friday:-

Some probation officers given a week’s notice of serious offenders’ release, union says

Exclusive: Napo says officers do not feel protected as 2,000 offenders to be let out early to try to ease prison crisis

Probation officers have been given as little as a week’s notice to prepare for serious offenders to be freed in England and Wales under the government’s early-release scheme, the Guardian has been told.

About 2,000 prisoners are expected to be let out on Tuesday 10 September amid warnings of a coming spike in crime. But members of the probation officers’ union Napo were only informed on 3 September that this would include some serious offenders being released into their supervision.

Officers are usually given more than three months to prepare services to help monitor and rehabilitate a serious offender. The development comes as the prison population reached a record high on Friday.

The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said in July that the SDS40 scheme – under which offenders with standard determinate sentences will be released after they have served 40% of their term – would be introduced in September to give the Probation Service time to prepare.

Tania Bassett, a national official at Napo, said: “Our members from across the UK have not been given eight weeks to prepare for the high risk of harm of some dangerous offenders. We have received reports of late information about releases from the north-east, Reading and other areas. In some cases, our members were told on Tuesday – a week before the early release date – that serious offenders would be released in their area.”

She said the number of recalls of offenders was expected to rise because of the increased workload on officers. “If prisoners are released so late that our members are given a few days to prepare for people who may be serious offenders, then, inevitably, recalls are likely to go up.”

While the majority of people being released under the scheme will be lower-level offenders, there have previously been serious incidents after prisoners were released on licence, including Jordan McSweeney, who murdered two days after he had been recalled to prison.

The union said some members have said the early release scheme has left them feeling further exposed to persecution if their clients commit a serious offence. One officer told the union: “We don’t feel protected. It feels like the service doesn’t care about us.”

The probation watchdog has told the Guardian that “a small proportion” of the 2,000 offenders due to be freed could be expected to go on to commit serious crimes.

Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation in England and Wales, said that late information about who was being released would place “huge additional pressures” on probation staff.

“The eternal optimist says that the scheme will go well. But the realist in me says that some of those released will go on to reoffend, and a small proportion of those will be serious offences,” he said.

About 300 offenders on probation commit serious further offences every year, which relate to specific violent or sexual offences that make them a particular risk to the public.

Under the SDS40 scheme, an estimated 2,000 prisoners serving sentences of less than five years will be released on 10 September, followed by a further 1,700, who are serving sentences of more than five years, on 22 October.

The scheme was announced by Mahmood days after the general election amid warnings that the criminal justice system was on the brink of collapse.

Official figures showed there were 88,521 people in prison on Friday, 171 more than the previous record set at the end of last week.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new government inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons on the point of collapse. It has been forced to introduce an early release programme to stop a crisis that would have overwhelmed the criminal justice system.

“That is why the new lord chancellor announced in July that she was scrapping the previous government’s early release scheme, replacing it with a system which gives probation staff more time to prepare for a prisoner’s release and a live database for affected cases that staff can check in real time.”

--oo00oo--

Postscript

David Shipley, a former prisoner who now writes about prison and justice issues, and who has written for On Probation, is writing an article for the Spectator about the dangers and extra pressure for Probation staff as a result of SDS40. He would welcome any anonymous quotes and views from current probation staff. David@david-shipley.com

Probation Over Capacity

This confirmation of the situation from Channel 4 News Sept 3rd does not bode well for the impending emergency release of prisoners:- 

The probation service for England and Wales has been working over capacity every month since January 2023, FactCheck can reveal.

Figures obtained exclusively from the Ministry of Justice show the service has consistently been working at around 120 per cent capacity – meaning the average officer has about six days’ work to do in a five-day week.

Our findings come as the government plans to release around 2,000 prisoners on a single day next week as part of plans to ease overcrowding – which is expected to put even more pressure on the probation system. FactCheck takes a look.

How are probation workloads calculated?

Probation officers have access to a “workload measurement tool“ which estimates how many hours of work are required to manage their caseload. If an officer is assigned a certain case, the tool will estimate how many hours of work that case will likely demand from the officer.

We understand that the percentage workload compares the estimated number of hours it should take to manage all of an officer’s cases, to the amount of time that officer is actually contracted to work.

So if an officer has 12 hours’ worth of work to do, but only 10 hours in which to do it, they would be deemed to have a workload of 120 per cent.

Exclusive FactCheck figures

We obtained exclusive data about probation workload through a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Justice. The data shows that the probation service – which covers all of England and Wales – was working at an average of 120 per cent capacity across the months of 2023.

For an individual officer, this would be equivalent to having six days’ worth of work to do in a five-day working week. And the service has been working at 117 per cent capacity on average in 2024 so far. The data for 2024 goes up to June.

It’s important to note that the figures come in the form of snapshots – telling us about a single day at the beginning of the relevant month.

Even worse than the data shows?

The Ministry of Justice highlighted that the workload measurement tool data is “based on averages and assumptions, and gives an overall measure [of workload] across the system”.

It pointed out that as the tool is based on estimates, it is not a perfectly accurate reflection of real-life workload, or the “peaks and troughs of sentence management”.

NAPO, the union representing probation officers, told FactCheck that the workload measurement tool often underestimates how much time a given probation case will actually require from an officer. The union said that this means the percentage workloads calculated by the tool are understated too.

‘Excessive’ workloads?

The probation service has its own measure of overwork. It says that if a probation officer is working at 110 per cent capacity for four weeks in a row, their workload is “excessive”.

Our exclusive data suggests that the average officer would have been above this threshold in every month since January 2023. However, since we don’t have data on the workload of individual officers, we can’t say for certain how many officers were over this threshold for every week in the month.

But the probation officers’ union told us that they have anecdotal evidence of many of their members regularly working at 150 per cent capacity. (We put this to the Ministry of Justice, which did not directly respond to the claim.)

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told us: “The new Lord Chancellor has already committed to recruiting 1,000 new trainee probation officers to bolster the supervision of offenders, ease workloads and better protect the public. We’ve also brought forward planned pay rises by six months meaning entry level frontline staff will receive a bonus of more than £1,000”.