Sobering Reflections

Thanks go to everyone for keeping things rolling along on autopilot whilst I've been otherwise engaged. There's an awful lot to digest and much of it is frankly alarming. I'm greatful for the reader who supplied the following apposite reflections:-

What a line-up. The guest blog 104 author is right to ask: where are our voices and champions today? Reading through these essays, I see familiar and respected names, Mike Guilfoyle, Russell Webster, Fergus McNeill, alongside our Napo Mike Guilfoyle essay winner and others. Their words, written so far back in 2013, still ring true with unsettling relevance.

It sends a cold shiver to realise how accurately and easily these voices foresaw the shambles that followed, and how completely they were ignored. Perhaps that is why so few speak out now: because it was all said over a decade ago, and nobody took notice.

Consider these warnings:

“If the Ministry of Justice does not get it ‘right first time’ then its reforms may fall incredibly short of its proposed intention to draw on the best services that can be offered by practitioners across the public, private and voluntary services, so that better support can be delivered to offenders. The risk is that if the current level of support, rehabilitation and risk management is not maintained, in conjunction with the necessary opportunities for the continuous training and development of practitioners within the field of probation and community rehabilitation, then it is not just probation workers that will affected, but to a larger extent service-users, victims and the public that may suffer, potentially with grave consequences.”

https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/articles/the-implications-of-transforming-rehabilitation-and-the-importance-of-probation-practitioner-skills-methods-and-initiatives-in-working-with-service-users/

“The long term outlook is either the consolidation of a society based on surveillance, control and warehousing of an underclass or the resurrection of tradition probation through social work with offenders provided by extending the remit of local authority social work - if, that is, it has in the meantime managed to escape a similar fate.”

https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/articles/risk-and-privatisation/

“Re-offending is a social and costly problem, therefore unless the social issues are addressed, more punishment will not work.”

https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/articles/a-social-approach-to-the-process-of-rehabilitation-2/

“Probation has made a unique contribution to criminal justice and although many would argue that it has lost much by way of its traditional roots, professionalism and identity, it still merits its place at the centre of any rehabilitative revolution. Arguably it has long been transforming rehabilitation. Let us hope that it can find its voice again?”

https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/articles/a-probation-officers-brief-reflections-on-twenty-years-of-rehabilitative-transformation/

“Of course, this plan is politically naive and relies on a hard-to-imagine long-term cross-party alliance that focuses on effective justice policy instead of a competition to be seen as the toughest on crime.”

https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/articles/my-rehabilitation-revolution/

“Doing justice is not a task that we should contract out because it is a civic duty that citizens owe to one another. When we seek to sell off our mutual obligations to one another, we weaken the moral bonds between us, because we treat as merely instrumental things that are in fact constitutive of ‘the good society’. Rehabilitation is one such good; it is a duty that citizens owe to one another. Those that offend owe it to those they have offended. Those that punish also owe it to those that they have punished.”

https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/articles/transforming-rehabilitation-evidence-values-and-ideology/

So I ask again: Lammy, Timpson, Jones, are you listening?

--oo00oo--

I'm greatful to the reader for supplying some edited highlights from David Lammy's recent conference speech:-

This is not just another brief for me, it feels like coming home. Conference, in taking the role of Lord Chancellor, my starting point is Magna Carta:

No one is above the law. No one should have justice delayed. No one should have justice denied.

And yet under the Conservatives, Prisons bursting at 99% capacity. Courts with record backlogs — rape victims waiting years. Legal aid deserts across the land. Probation officers at breaking point. Justice delayed. Justice denied. That is the Tory legacy we have been left to fix.So, conference, this is how we will put it right. 

First, we will rebuild trust. Because justice is not a slogan...

... Probation officers told me: “Help us spend less time on forms, more time changing lives.” So, we will use technology for people, not against them: AI to cut paperwork. Electronic tags to keep communities safe. Digitalised courts that deliver justice without delay.

Third, punishment that works. In fourteen years, the Tories built just 500 extra prison places. In fourteen months, we have delivered 2,500 — and we’re on track for 14,000 extra prison places by 2031. The fastest prison building programme since the Victorian age. 

We are recruiting thousands more probation officers. And let me just say, we in this room know that probation officers are the unsung heroes of our justice system.And we are reforming sentencing, so justice is not just locking people up, but turning lives around. 

If you go into prison addicted, we will help you clean up. If you go into prison without skills, we will help you train up. If you go into prison without a chance, we will help you leave with an opportunity. Our Labour Party will never give up on the power of redemption. Working hand in glove with our NHS, with DWP, with businesses and industry, with Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

Because justice is not the work of one minister, it is the project of a nation united in its pursuit of fairness.While others divide, we will build coalitions that work. 

And today I can confirm my commitment to the expansion of Intensive Supervision Courts. For too long our criminal justice system has been stuck in a cycle – short sentences that change nothing. The same people reoffending again and again. Intensive Supervision Courts are about breaking that cycle. They bring the full force of the courts together with local services. And they keep reoffenders coming back to face the judiciary as they turn their lives around. It’s tougher, it’s more demanding. And its punishment that works.