Last month’s report on sentencing from a group of former heads of the judiciary ended with a stark warning that the country faces a future of “US-style mass incarceration” – overcrowded prisons, mounting costs and deepening social inequalities – “without urgent remedial action to address sentence inflation”.
The gap between the two countries remains large. The UK has the highest per-capita prison population in western Europe. But the 0.1% of the population that is incarcerated in England, Wales and Scotland is still only a seventh of the 0.7% imprisoned in the US (Northern Ireland’s rate is far lower). Still, with the prison population of England and Wales predicted to rise from 88,000 (in August) to 106,000 by 2028, the judges are right to sound the alarm.
Ministers know they have a problem. So did their Conservative predecessors. Spending by the prison and probation service has ballooned to £4.6bn – around three-quarters of which goes on prisons, including £100m spent on keeping more than 2,000 men over 70 locked up. Conditions in many jails are appalling. The latest urgent notification from the prisons inspector, Charlie Taylor, regarding Manchester, described drones delivering drugs through windows that have been broken to enable this.
While Labour’s early release scheme was a sensible opening move, it has not been enough to curb rising prisoner numbers. In fact, the decision to let magistrates hand down longer sentences of up to 12 months is expected to further inflate the prison population. More radical changes will depend on the independent sentencing review promised in the manifesto.
The former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke is the favourite to lead this, and should command cross-party support. This matters because both parties bear responsibility for the sentence inflation of the past 30 years. The lack of alternatives to custody and low public confidence in existing ones have fuelled a widespread belief that voters – along with the rightwing press – prefer harsh sentencing. As a result, successive prime ministers have refused to commit to the penal reform programme that is urgently needed. Under Boris Johnson, sentences were increased, and rules changed so that some violent offenders must now serve two-thirds of their sentence behind bars, rather than half, before being considered for release.
The destructive consequences of the partial privatisation of the probation service were recognised when this was reversed. But further reform has been ducked. Probation should be taken out of the Prison Service and locally embedded instead – with stronger links to councils, housing providers and charities. Investment in the workforce would be part of this process. Effective use of technology could also make community supervision work better. Given the problems with short sentences, including high reoffending rates, robust alternatives including tags, curfews and harm prevention orders should be prioritised.
Victims’ needs must also be considered. Campaigns against perceived leniency are one reason for sentence inflation. If the public is to be persuaded that alternatives to custody are meaningful, the service offered to victims must be improved. Unacceptable delays in the trial process contribute to a general sense of grievance at a broken system. While the last word on sentences belongs to judges, the public’s views on crime and punishment must be taken seriously if confidence in the system is to be renewed. Good communication is crucial. As a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir Starmer has relevant expertise and should be bold in pushing through change.
The strength of the probation service is the unique place it occupies in the criminal justice world because it is involved at every stage in the process from crime prevention, through to pre-trial and to post-release work. One of its fundamental skills is its ability to liaise with all the players. Whatever changes may be made to the service in the future, that unique position must not be weakened.
--oo00oo--
Well, sadly we know all these wise words were largely ignored by successive governments and hence we now face both a prison and probation service largely unfit for purpose.
Postscript 21/10/24
Astonishingly, a further search in the archives has revealed the fact that I submitted my own response to the consultation on 26/11/98. Here's what I said:-
This response is being made in a personal capacity as a current serving Probation Officer. I joined the West Yorkshire Probation Service in 1985 having successfully completed the four year combined BA and CQSW course at Bradford University. I have chosen to remain working for the last 13 years in a generic capacity within a field team based in Pontefract. As a consequence, I believe I have developed a broad experience of core probation practice and familiar with current issues of debate and concern. For the purpose of making this response I have had sight of the response from both the West Yorkshire Probation Service, together with the National Association of Probation Officers.
Organisationally, the Probation Service is clearly an anachronism and therefore I can appreciate a bureaucratic imperative to 'tidy' thins up a bit. But it must always be borne in mind that one of the Service's strengths has been a high degree of local 'ownership' together with accountability. There may be a clear case for some service amalgamations, but in my view some strong degree of local involvement must remain. Tackling crime and offending is increasingly viewed as best achieved through a partnership approach and the Probation Service has a proven track record in being able to deliver such initiatives, both by its local management and by being able to be flexible and responsive. My major concern is that this ability will be considerably hampered by making the service directly accountable centrally as envisaged by turning it into a Next Steps Agency. In my view this goes counter to accepted orthodoxy and may add yet further to our existing high levels of non-productive form filling and bureaucracy.
There may be a case for making the service a stand alone QUANGO that could retain a high degree of local organisation, whilst at the same time benefitting from a coherent national image, together with some greater standardisation in service delivery. However, it must always be borne in mind that historically one of the main strengths of the Probation Service has been its ability to innovate and respond flexibly to changed needs and situations. Traditionally many significant developments in probation practice have been initiated by main grade officers on the ground identifying a problem and being allowed by a flexible management structure to experiment and develop an appropriate response. Should ant organisational changes result in over-centralised control, this vital and valuable ability will, in my view, be lost.
The Probation Service has always in my experience suffered from an image problem in that most people do not understand what we do, and in fairness the complexity and variation of tasks does not lend itself to easy explanation. In the absence of a popular TV drama series how does the public form a view of an important public service such as ours? Changing the name would, in my view, be counter-productive and only serve to increase confusion in the public's mind. The name is widely recognised, both nationally and internationally, has a proud history and is viewed with a high degree of professional integrity across many other disciplines in the legal, medical, social and academic fields. Of all the changes proposed, changing the name would in short be potentially the most damaging in terms of staff morale.
It is widely accepted that change can be a threatening and unsettling process, but it may also afford an opportunity by which a service can improve and develop. This is certainly my hope, but it should go without saying that change should only be considered if improvement can be demonstrated with conviction.
JRB 26/11/1998
“and probation service largely unfit for purpose.”
ReplyDeleteThat’d be accurate if going by the two last HMIP reports.
“a lack of resources continued to impact service delivery, with most staff working under excessively high workloads.“ “Inspectors were concerned that some staff reported feeling unsafe and had experienced racism, discrimination, and poor behaviour at their workplace.”
https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/media/press-releases/2024/08/essexnorthpdu2024/
https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/media/press-releases/2024/08/bedfordshirepdu2024/
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmhaff/486/486ap01.htm
ReplyDeleteHome Affairs - Third Report
Here you can browse the report which was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 28 July 1998.
https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/10/The-history-of-HMI-Probation.pdf
ReplyDelete"9. A further significant part of the Inspectorate's work was involvement in the selection, training and subsequent confirmation in post of all probation officers, to ensure that the right individuals were appointed to do the work. Following an initial paperwork sift, inspectors interviewed every person applying for training and later visited students on their training courses. They also ran the Home Office's own training course for probation officers at Rainer House near Sloane Square in London, which combined two practical placements in probation offices with three months of lectures and teaching. After appointment every new probation officer would receive two visits from an inspector during their first year of work. A large number of probation officers at this time were also being recruited directly by probation areas in order to meet the increasing demands on the service, and here too the Inspectorate provided teaching input on short residential courses to people who were having to learn the work 'on the job', sometimes with only limited supervisory input wherever they were working.
10. The confirmation of every new probation officer in post was a key part of the Inspectorate's work and it remained its responsibility until the end of the 1960s. Its importance cannot be over-emphasised. It ensured that no probation officer (whether trained or a direct entrant) could continue in post, unless the Inspectorate had assessed their practice as satisfactory, and as such gave the Inspectorate a crucial role in maintaining standards of good practice. All probation officers would receive two visits from an inspector during this period who would look at their work and make a recommendation which could lead to confirmation in post, the appointment ending, or confirmation deferred to a later date for improvements to be made."
__________________
THE BACKGROUND TO 'NOMS': EFFECTIVE PRACTICE, EVALUATION AND THE POLITICS OF PENAL REFORM
January 2006
Authors:
Peter Raynor
Swansea University
"in 1995 the Home Office issued a circular (Home
Office 1995) encouraging (or requiring) probation services to adopt effective methods and promising a follow-up inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP). Instead of a normal inspection to follow up this circular, a research exercise was set up involving a detailed survey of probation areas by Andrew Underdown, a senior probation manager who was already closely involved in issues around effective practice. The results, eventually published in 1998 (Underdown 1998), after the election of a Labour government expected to be better disposed towards the probation service, were alarming. Of the 267 programmes which probation areas claimed they were running based on the principles of effective practice set out in the 1995 Circular, evidence of
actual effectiveness based on reasonably convincing evaluation was available only for four. "
Interesting to read of HMI being involved in POs confirmation in post. By 1985 I suspect Rainer House was no more and qualification was by means of CQSW, in my case a four year combined degree and certificate from Bradford University. Confirmation in post was following 12 months 'probation' and a full inspection of all cases and reports by the ACPO.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is a model of how another body will be involved in probation officer professional registration.
DeleteIt shows how much back then we had a different calibre of chief inspectors and chief officers of probation. Their respect and even protection of probation was on a different level.
ReplyDelete“Sir Graham Smith was an outstanding figure in the probation service for 20 years, first as chief probation officer for inner London (1980-92), and then as chief inspector of probation at the Home Office (1992-2001)”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/aug/14/guardianobituaries1#:~:text=Sir%20Graham%20Smith%2C%20who%20has,Office%20(1992%2D2001).
Sir Graham Smith, who has died of cancer aged 62, was an outstanding figure in the probation service for 20 years, first as chief probation officer for inner London (1980-92), and then as chief inspector of probation at the Home Office (1992-2001).
DeleteIn both these posts, during a period of rapid and turbulent change, the service was fortunate to have someone with the political skills and confidence to argue strongly for its place centre-stage within the criminal justice system. In his last annual report, he wrote: "One thing is certain - there cannot be a successful criminal justice system without an effective probation service."
Smith was born in Salisbury, where he attended Bishop Wordsworth's school. After national service, he worked briefly in insurance before going to Newcastle University to complete an applied social studies course. He joined the Durham probation service in 1965 and, after four years, became a senior probation officer. Two years later, he moved to London.
He was assigned to the probation service after-care unit in Borough high street, working with homeless, disturbed, and often heavily convicted offenders. A senior manager recalls him as "immensely flexible and resilient, not deterred by the unknown, intractable or the apparently insoluble". He found immense satisfaction in this setting, and continued to see offenders - and use his basic professional skills - long after he had moved to more senior positions.
Smith was 40 when he was appointed chief probation officer. He set about his new tasks with determination and energy, and worked at a punishing pace: he was never ill, never missed a probation committee meeting, and rarely any of its sub-committees. He was always well briefed, focused and clear about his aims. He made a point each week of visiting one probation office and meeting all the staff.
He used his communication skills to great effect with the media, and devoted time to building contacts outside the service. Increasingly, he travelled abroad, particularly to America, and was much in demand as a keynote speaker at international conferences.
A dedicated and forceful leader during a period of unprecedented change, Smith was determined to raise professional standards, and establish clearer objectives. Although often involved with the wider national scene - he was a very successful chair of the Association of Chief Officers of Probation,representing the service to ministers - he was never an absentee landlord.
Of all the initiatives and developments he inspired, the one which probably gave him most satisfaction lay in the area of pre-trial services and bail information schemes.
He faced a daunting task when he moved to the Home Office shortly before the appointment of Michael Howard as home secretary in 1993. There was a dramatic change in policy - while prison had been seen as a last resort, it was now claimed that "prison works". It began to look as if probation was moving back-stage: the national training scheme for probation officers was scrapped, the probation budget was cut, and, with the proposals in the 1995 green paper, Strengthening Punishment In The Community, some began to fear that the very future of the service as an independent agency within the criminal justice system might be at risk.
Smith had a very difficult hand to play and not too many cards. He had to strengthen the credibility of the inspectorate within the Home Office, persuade the service that it had to accept greater accountability, and - most importantly - ensure that effectiveness and "what works" programmes were developed, without which he was convinced there was no future for the service.
DeleteIn the absence of a national probation service, there was no national voice, and he filled that gap. He needed all his political nous and sensitivity to cope with the often conflicting demands of the politicians and the probation service. He was made CBE in 1990 and knighted in 1999.
People who worked with Graham felt that they had a personal relationship with him. He was a good listener, kind and considerate, wonderful company and passionate about his many interests, particularly history. He had a considerable hinterland. In private discussion, he could show disarming insight and honesty about himself, and, when he moved up the promotion ladder, he did not change his relationships with friends and colleagues. He had such grace.
He is survived by his wife Jeanne and their three children, Adrian, Emma and Julian.
· Graham William Smith, probation officer, born August 15 1939; died August 11 2002
They’ve been ignoring sound advice for over a decade. I came across this elsewhere today. How much we’ve gone downhill since pre-TR. This from our lost friend Paul Senior in Editorial: Probation: Peering Through the Uncertainty 2013.
ReplyDelete“Probation deals with complex, difficult and intangible problems in a quietly authoritative, caring and committed way. Moreover even in the language of government it works. Probation on the Justice Ministry's own figures reduces re-offending and moreover offers service users real opportunities to reintegrate into society. Rather than throw this away in the rush to appeal to an ideological dogma hardly demonstrably successful in any other field of welfare reform surely now is the time to stop and think again. These contributions suggest that is self-evidently the case. We invite the government and the Ministers to take note.”
https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/editorial-comment/editorial-probation-peering-through-the-uncertainty/
Name one SPO, manager, senior manager, chief officer or RPD you can say this about today.
ReplyDelete“He found immense satisfaction in this setting, and continued to see offenders - and use his basic professional skills - long after he had moved to more senior positions. Smith was 40 when he was appointed chief probation officer. He set about his new tasks with determination and energy, and worked at a punishing pace: he was never ill, never missed a probation committee meeting, and rarely any of its sub-committees. He was always well briefed, focused and clear about his aims. He made a point each week of visiting one probation office and meeting all the staff.”
10:00, In truth, I can’t name any senior manager, chief officer or RPD. They are faceless bureaucrats and ‘yes men (and women). They have led us into a death spiral whilst lining their own pockets and have no vision or practical ability to pull us back from the brink
ReplyDeleteThere is no strategy for the future but they remain the epitome of The Emperors New Clothes.
Time and money needs to be directed into addressing the issue at source. Our communities, and all that keeps us together is well and truly broken. To keep pouring resources into the probation service is like trying to stop the flood but not mending the hole in the dam! Early intervention and education has got to be the way forward. Sadly, there is little hope for many of those who's dire childhood experiences have left them severely lacking in those basic skills which enable us all to lead a law abiding and productive life. That's not to say they should be ignored but that valuable and costly interventions should be directed to those who want to engage. It should be put on toes of individuals to self refer (with support) to interventions, to complete their own housing applications etc. That way they are more likely to take ownership and more likely to engage, rather than keep going over the same ground over and over again at great cost to the tax payer.
ReplyDeleteOne HMPPS is a model "irredeemably flawed" . We all know it. Everyone in positions of authority, knowledge, practice, is saying it. At soem point, hopefully in advance of the "last report" the chief inspector will summon the courage to say it. The beaurocrats in charge of HMPPS know it, but they are welded to to the model, which is why they appear so wooden and why their coms are so ghastly and repetitative.
ReplyDeleteWhat next is the question. We lurch from one shoddy reform to the next. Can we use your blog Jim to imagine a future Probation? Someone has to
Reform will not be based on a blog. Probation will not determine it’s own policy and future. Unions are unable too. We will be led by whatever shoddy half-baked review, department or agency the government selects for us. The only decent alternative could be the Probation Institute but hasn’t enough clout to demand the responsibility as not enough of probation engages with it. Whoever takes the oversight of probation registration would be well placed to have a voice.
DeleteContribution left yesterday on an old blog post:-
ReplyDeleteI am a probation officer who has been qualified for less than three years but previously worked in other roles within the service. I have met some of the most dedicated, hardworking, caring and genuine people, who in my opinion represent everything the service should. However, sadly the culture that exists can only best be described as toxic. It is destroying me from the inside out to the point that I see no light at the end of the tunnel and fear that I will have no choice but to leave a career which means so very much to me to save my sanity.
From my own experiences and what I have witnessed, staff are punished for speaking up when things are wrong. Management turn on them and label them as a problem because they do not want to admit the failings happening and take accountability for their role in it. Not all, but the vast majority of senior managers cannot handle being challenged even when there is evidence to support the challenge, they speak to staff like dirt, lie, manipulate and gaslight. Despite their claims to the contrary they have no real understanding of the impact of the decisions they make on staff because they are not doing the job and do not spend any sufficient time with those of us who are.
I have witnessed bullying and discrimination and that includes from senior managers and middle managers who should be leading by example. I have also seen employment law frequently broken and public protection placed at risk. I myself have spoken up, not to be a trouble maker but because I know that we and the public who we are seeking to protect deserve better. In doing so I have found the service does not value honesty, despite claiming it to be one of our core values. I would refuse to lie to cover for managers who quite frankly couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag. I am tempted to take my situation higher, but am fully aware that this could be career suicide.
We often speak about treating the people on probation with respect and meeting their individual needs, but sadly the same does not seem to apply to staff. During my PQIP I did not have a mentor for large periods of time and when I did they were mentoring several people in one go on top of their own work. The office I work in is mainly composed of staff with less than 10 years as a Probation Officer. The experienced staff with over 10 years experience who I have worked with, have taught me so much that my training has failed to. In order to tackle the issues in probation, things need to change right from the very top. In my view the government needs to set up an external task force.
T
ReplyDeleteSince 2010 this blog has been the go-to destination for many when they want to document the sad & scandalous corporate sacking of probation; the unbelievably abusive assault launched in 2012 upon an organisation already enfeebled by the faux privatisation expedited by labour via the OMA2007 (Offender Management Act) & the inappropriately named "trusts". No-one trusted them to do anything but disassemble the probation service... & that's exactly what happened.
"In October 2012, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling, announced that the Government now intended to apply PbR [Payment by Results] to the majority of rehabilitation work conducted with offenders in the community, as part of broader reforms."
This blog has been an earpiercing alarm ringing out the concerns, cataloguing the distress & highlighting the catastrophic incompetence of the politicians & management at all levels.
It has provided a running commentary on the progress of civil service's death grip around probation's throat.
The utter fuck-up that was TR was fucked-up beyond all repair by the so-called "unification/reunification", the ultimate omnishambles (I prefer clusterfuck) celebrated by napo's GenSec:
https://www.napo.org.uk/sites/default/files/REUNIFICATION%20SPECIAL%20Napo%20Magazine%20-%20FINAL%20Single%20Pages%20Print%20Ready.pdf
"In decades to come let us hope that the 26th June 2021 will be writ large in the annals of Probation Service history. It’s a date that signifies the final victory over a disastrous privatisation policy perpetrated by a Government whose Ministers believed that they knew the price of everything but, in reality, appreciated the value of nothing."
NOTHING has changed for the better.
For many its simply become even more toxic. The leaving rates have rocketed, experience & knowledge has haemorrhaged, & HMI Probation says "Probation chief warns 97% of service already failing – even before launch of early release prison scheme".
What about probation service provision? What about the frontline staff? What about those subject to probation supervision?
They matter not. The stalling, the reviews, the denials, the blaming & the pushbacks simply mean that the incompetent bullies, the deluded ideologues & the abusers-in-chief remain in post pocketing handsome amounts of public cash while they plan their next moves.
timpson, mahmood, reeves, starmer - not one of them gives a crap or understands 'probation'... they are, like the govts of the past forty years or so, wedded to budgets & prisons & corporate grooming.
Some links relevant to the idea of reviews:
ReplyDeletehttps://hansard.parliament.uk/%E2%80%8CCommons/1998-03-04/debates/18560727-f5da-462e-ba9d-7df1a1b436b2/PrisonAndProbationServiceReview
https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/ppreview.pdf
And here is Ken Clarke's pre-grayling vision for TR:
https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/effective-probation-services/supporting_documents/probationreviewconsultation.pdf
"I share public concern that sentences can require just a weekly meeting with probation officers – and that, in the past, unemployed offenders sentenced to Community Payback have on occasion been required to work for only six hours per week."