I must be honest, I've become increasingly demoralised by the criminal justice picture emerging on a daily basis, together with no sign of hope for the Probation Service returning to something approaching the force for good it once was. Having to admit failure is never an easy thing to do and I've always had the naive belief that a blog could be part of trying to make things better. Surely the force of sound argument, evidence and testimony can change things?
Our recent discussions surrounding morality have very neatly brought us to the BBC's Reith lectures and a tantalising notion of hope in the offing. I urge readers to come along on this journey. I didn't catch the first broadcast on Tuesday, but listened to the linear repeat last night. It's good and it's promising:-
The transcript indicates a missing word, so I used AI to sort it:-
"The most likely missing word is "controversial" or another word with a similar meaning, as the full sentence would be: "This may sound controversial, and yet, it's precisely because things can get much worse that they can also get much better." The statement suggests that the potential for extreme negative outcomes provides the necessary impetus for significant positive change."
link to bbc Media Show which includes brief discussion of Aunty Squealer's last minute censoring of the Reith Lecture, which they can't repeat.
ReplyDeleteAs posted here yesterday, Rutger said on social media:
"The BBC has decided to censor the opening lecture of a series they invited me to deliver.
They removed the sentence in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.”
This line was taken out of a lecture they commissioned, reviewed through the full editorial process, and recorded four weeks ago in front of 500 people in the BBC Radio Theatre."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002mmxs
"the controversy over editing Rutger Bregman’s Reith Lecture to remove a line about Donald Trump."
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/27/bbc-donald-trump-corruption-line-removed-from-rutger-bregman-reith-lecture
DeleteBBC presenters and journalists have been told they cannot quote a line removed from its prestigious annual lecture, in which a Dutch writer accused Donald Trump of being “the most openly corrupt president in American history”.
Off topic, but yet another Probation Officer stabbed yesterday
ReplyDeleteOh no this is awful. Hope they are okay
DeleteTrainee probation officer stabbed yesterday. Circumstances being kept tight lipped. Questions raised as to why changes since Preston haven’t been implemented, being blamed on funding and all offices requesting it. Not good enough. I don’t want to work for this service anymore, we are not valued.
DeleteAlmost 6 months after the last one. Still no security or scanners in the office. Yet Martin Davis assures us staff security is at a premium. yeah right sure it is.
ReplyDeleteHe’ll have his chocolate fire guard out again with his head in the sand. Doesn’t actually give a flying fox about the staff really. Getting a cushy bonus for ‘leading’ two regions.
Deletehttps://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2025-10-03/bereaved-mother-shines-light-on-thread-bare-probation-service
ReplyDeleteA woman has spoken out about issues in the probation service, more than four years after her daughter and grandson were stabbed to death.
DeleteBethany Vincent and her nine-year-old son Darren Henson - also known as DJ - were stabbed to death by Bethany's ex-partner Daniel Boulton at their home in Louth on 31 May 2021.
At the time of the murders, Daniel Boulton was subject to community orders, bail conditions and a restraining order for assaults on Bethany a few months earlier.
A 110-page Serious Further Offences review into how the probation service managed Boulton in the period before the murders has now been shared with Bethany and DJ's family.
Boulton had been assessed by the probation service as posing a medium risk to Bethany and her children, and that assessment remained the same throughout the review period, despite the fact Boulton was convicted and sentenced for further offences against Bethany and her mother.
The review also found scant evidence of victim safety planning and said staff over-relied on Boulton's accounts in probation meetings, rather than liaising with other key agencies involved. It concluded that overall, 'probation practice in this case was not sufficient' and the assessment of Boulton's risk should have been reconsidered.
Caroline Vincent, Bethany’s mum, said: “When you're reading 110 pages of this should have been done, that should have been done, it really is hard to take in.
“He'd been in prison before, he'd attacked a former girlfriend before, killed his former girlfriend's pet, he'd attacked police officers, he'd attacked members of the public, he'd had weapons and threatened people with BB guns.
“Then [he] met my daughter, attacked my daughter, and they assessed him as medium.”
Caroline said after this happened, she was also attacked by Boulton, and he attacked Bethany again too. Despite this, the assessment of the risk he posed to Bethany did not change and there was no reference to the risk posed to herself - a finding Caroline described as “just unbelievable".
“I think you could ask any member of the public to read his background and then say to them, ‘what would you risk them as?’
“I would say 100% of people would say that would be a high risk person.”
The review found that overall the probation practice wasn’t sufficient, and the assessment of Boulton's risk should have been considered.
In a statement, a probation service spokesperson said: “This was a horrific crime and our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Bethany Vincent and Darren Henson.
“On behalf of all the agencies involved, we apologise for the failings in this case. We have already taken action to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again, including improving information sharing between probation, police and children’s services, and strengthening domestic abuse training for staff.”
Martin Jones, HM Chief Inspector of Probation, told ITV News Calendar that his assessments of probation services so far suggest around two thirds of offenders are not being managed properly.
DeleteHe joined the inspectorate in March 2024, and has assessed nearly 40 probation units since then.
He said: “Every single unit that I've inspected since my appointment has been rated as 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate'. The work they're doing is not good enough.
“I've decided I need to pause my program and focus on their work on public protection. We need that work to improve urgently.”
"The probation service does have a very difficult job to do, it's dealing with a caseload of almost a quarter of a million people. We need to make sure there is government investment for the long term to ensure they can cope with their growing caseload."
Mr Jones said failings within the service are often because there are too few staff, with not enough experience, managing too many cases - which leads to things being missed.
Failure to share information between agencies was another issue raised by Mr Jones.
He said: “Every serious further offense that I've ever seen tends to be a failure of information sharing between agencies. Our systems are far too antiquated for a modern world in which information flows through the system. It must be possible to join up information on people that may represent a significant risk to the public.”
Caroline said numerous red flags were raised about Boulton’s behaviour, but nothing was done.
She said: “He threatened our family multiple times. He'd attacked me and Bethany multiple times. He told people what he was going to, he made comments that he wanted to wipe out the bloodline. He told probation services [of his] hatred for DJ. I would hate any family to feel what we've, we've gone through. I will not stop until they realise they have to do better.”
interesting...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/probation-officers-warnings-removed/7YBGB3PB3OH5B7JSE7QUON7Q74/
Probation officer Stanley Gilmore to challenge what he says was the sanitising of his risk assessment of a violent offender, at the High Court in Wellington
In an exclusive report, Phil Taylor reveals a probation officer's safety warnings about a prisoner were secretly removed. The man cut his bracelet and attacked a man with a bottle only months after release.
Bloody paywall!
DeleteGood on Mr. Gilmore. Win, lose or draw, he should be able to clarify a situation which exists in this country too.
ReplyDeleteI had issues previously about a pre-sentence report where there was a great disparity between what the quality control audit people felt and what the sentencing judge thought.
I asked the question, who are we writing the report for, the probation service or the sentencer. There was much huffing and puffing and a bit of threatening before it all went away unanswered. I know from speaking to colleagues that I was not on my own.
I can recall being in a parole hearing when the case manager was asked to express their opinion on how manageable was risk.
ReplyDeleteThe initial response was, ‘my manager says…..’ the panel quite rightly pressed the matter in line with parole board rules and we’re then told, ‘ the area manger thinks,……’ Upon being asked a third time, they were told,’the MAPPA committee has decided……’
This is what they have created. Supposed professionals who either don’t have, or who aren’t allowed to express an opinion.
https://capx.co/our-probation-crisis-is-no-laughing-matter
DeleteDavid Lammy didn’t cover himself in glory this week in Parliament. Our Lord Chancellor chortled and guffawed while his shadow Robert Jenrick tried to hold him to account for the release in error of a registered child sex offender from HMP Chelmsford whose crime sparked national protests. The shelf life of ‘but the Tories’ as a reflexive response to every ill is running out. It has kept Labour MPs well fed and with some justification, but voters are less easy to satisfy.
DeleteThe latest security calamity comes, after all, a year and change after the arrival of the supposed changemakers. Hadush Kebatu was an illegal migrant who was turfed out of the prison on Friday morning a free man instead of being transferred for deportation. On both ends of the small boat spectrum, from mass arrival to minuscule removals, it is Labour’s core vote that is in danger of capsizing.
The news cycle fell voraciously upon this ludicrous and embarrassing blunder, and we now have the cooling carcass of yet another story almost designed to collapse public confidence in our justice system. But another scandalous revelation has dropped almost unremarked, and it is one that should give the Justice Secretary even less cause for mirth: the wreckage of our probation system.
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is an unloved shotgun marriage that started off with the best of intentions in 2004 in a previous Blairite construction called the National Offender Management Service. The view then was that the integration of offender treatment into one seamless service ‘through the prison gate’ would create efficiencies and deliver better outcomes for prisoners with better public protection for the community.
How’s that going? A bit pants, to tactfully paraphrase the spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO) which published its findings last week. After two decades of ludicrous and ruinous organisational vandalism – part privatisation, reunification, staff cuts, retention crises and overwhelming risk – the service is understaffed, unsustainable and ill-prepared for a looming increase in caseload, as the Government’s solution to the prisons capacity crisis leads to fewer offenders ending up behind bars.
The NAO’s report looked at probation performance since 2021, when the absurdity of a part-privatised service was finally buried after lining the pockets of multiple failing commercial providers for low-risk supervision. It found a severe decline in performance, with the organisation meeting only 26% of its targets in the last reporting year. Probation practitioners adequately assessed an offender’s risk in just 28% of cases – a public protection scandal hiding in plain sight.
The service has a gaping shortfall of 1,479 officers, despite emergency recruitment. Experience has evaporated. Meanwhile the report says bean counters at the Ministry of Justice have grossly underestimated the number of staff required to properly supervise sentence management of prisoners. Probation officers routinely manage 118% of their capacity, and even after countermeasures to reduce workloads, 10 out of 12 probation areas now say they are working at 100% capacity all the time. Burnout ensues, and the spiral of retention and recruitment crises intensifies.
The Government has gambled all on mass release of prisoners and the effective abolition of short sentences to reduce strain on overloaded prisons. Yet relying on the community punishment of offenders given the current state of the system will simply push the problem out onto the streets. It is clear that the probation service can’t even cope now, and little reason to hope it can expand to meet these new demands.
DeleteRehabilitation programmes and supervision of offenders have already had to be slashed, to enable swamped probation officers to cope with the management of high-risk cases, which are increasing exponentially. That means there’s much less capacity to enforce unpaid work or offending behaviour programmes for lower and medium-risk offenders who will simply fall off the radar. Until they do something awful.
Ineffectiveness like this costs money and lives. Reoffending by prisoners who aren’t properly supervised or helped to change through and after custody is estimated to cost £20 billion a year. More to the point, understaffed and overwhelmed probation offices have directly contributed to some ghastly errors in risk management such as the brutal slaying of Zara Aleena in 2022 by a released prisoner supposedly under community supervision by an office with only 61% of its officer complement in post.
For years, the probation side of this besieged organisation has been starved and neglected of profile and funds. There are many good reasons to say that probation and prisons are philosophically and organisationally so different they should remain separate. Prisons are law enforcement, probation should be more like forensic social work with the emphasis on its founding principles, ‘befriend and advise’. I can still remember when these organisations were different but complementary entities. As the Governor of a prison with a lifer unit, I was inclined to keep most of the risk inside the walls and my colleague, the seconded senior probation officer, had the opposite perspective. That creative tension meant good risk-based decisions happened. It was certainly no worse than the algorithmic, push button approach that dominates today.
But there’s no time and no appetite for any more change in this much abused and misunderstood service. The Government has made its choice on sentencing, and that is to load even more risk onto an agency that can’t guarantee public protection and rehabilitation with existing workloads.
The moral injury of too few staff doing too little to manage the risks posed by too many will make their own headlines in due course. Despite the theatrics, I think David Lammy was genuinely infuriated by the failings at HMP Chelmsford. I fear for his blood pressure when he reads what’s being said about managing safety outside the prison gates.
ian acheson echoing & re-presenting sentiments, words & phrases found on this blog many times; so many times; in fact, too many times:
Delete"David Lammy didn’t cover himself in glory this week in Parliament. Our Lord Chancellor chortled and guffawed while his shadow Robert Jenrick tried to hold him to account for the release in error of a registered child sex offender from HMP Chelmsford whose crime sparked national protests. The shelf life of ‘but the Tories’ as a reflexive response to every ill is running out.
...
But another scandalous revelation has dropped almost unremarked, and it is one that should give the Justice Secretary even less cause for mirth: the wreckage of our probation system.
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is an unloved shotgun marriage that started off with the best of intentions in 2004 in a previous Blairite construction called the National Offender Management Service. The view then was that the integration of offender treatment into one seamless service ‘through the prison gate’ would create efficiencies and deliver better outcomes for prisoners with better public protection for the community.
How’s that going? A bit pants, to tactfully paraphrase the spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO) which published its findings last week. After two decades of ludicrous and ruinous organisational vandalism – part privatisation, reunification, staff cuts, retention crises and overwhelming risk – the service is understaffed, unsustainable and ill-prepared for a looming increase in caseload
...
The NAO’s report looked at probation performance since 2021, when the absurdity of a part-privatised service was finally buried after lining the pockets of multiple failing commercial providers for low-risk supervision. It found a severe decline in performance, with the organisation meeting only 26% of its targets in the last reporting year. Probation practitioners adequately assessed an offender’s risk in just 28% of cases – a public protection scandal hiding in plain sight.
...
For years, the probation side of this besieged organisation has been starved and neglected of profile and funds. There are many good reasons to say that probation and prisons are philosophically and organisationally so different they should remain separate. Prisons are law enforcement, probation should be more like forensic social work with the emphasis on its founding principles, ‘befriend and advise’. I can still remember when these organisations were different but complementary entities. As the Governor of a prison with a lifer unit, I was inclined to keep most of the risk inside the walls and my colleague, the seconded senior probation officer, had the opposite perspective. That creative tension meant good risk-based decisions happened.
...
But there’s no time and no appetite for any more change in this much abused and misunderstood service. The Government has made its choice on sentencing, and that is to load even more risk onto an agency that can’t guarantee public protection and rehabilitation with existing workloads."
there's one seriously important & invaluable observation from acheson, one that noms/moj/hmpps has never understood and will never understand, as they have no concept of managing that tightrope:
Delete"I can still remember when these organisations were different but complementary entities. As the Governor of a prison with a lifer unit, I was inclined to keep most of the risk inside the walls and my colleague, the seconded senior probation officer, had the opposite perspective. That creative tension meant good risk-based decisions happened."
This puts me in mind of the similar *necessary* tensions that existed between Pre-Sentence Report authors & sentencers, carefully crafting argument & counter-argument, balancing all facts & considerations in a bid to realise the most appropriate & effective outcome.
A balance that was shattered - & shat all over - when 'the centre' decided that concordance rates (probation proposals were in alignment with sentence outcomes) were a key performance indicator. Proof positive they had no concept of what constituted meaningful risk assessment.
Again, to quote acheson:
"It was certainly no worse than the algorithmic, push button approach that dominates today."
you might want to trim some duplicate copy, JB, i.e. my post @14:45 can go
DeleteTwo stabbing in the space of five months and no actual physical changes in offices to safeguard staff. Lockers to be installed but what about weapons concealed against the person? Workloads through the roof, a culture of bullying from senior management, and a pay deal that isn’t likely to materialise this financial year leaving staff struggling against the cost of living rises. What a sh*t place to work.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately since the Damien Bendall murders in 2021 HMPPS have forced Probation to over risk, cover backs and have trained new staff (and bullied/threatened experienced staff) to see offenders as the 'enemy' and to breach and recall for any slight issue. New staff haven't been encouraged to build rapport or develop relationships but to hit targets and write Oasys. This has made offenders see us as basically police or community prison officers who aren't there to help and support but to hinder, control and punish. I'm generalising but it's how I see the situation and I don't think it's possible to turn the tanker around...
DeleteFair evaluation. We’re headed for the rocks…
Delete