Probation 'Now An Embarrassment'

I see the plight probation finds itself in has once more attracted the attention of the FT no less:- 

Probation ‘mess’ casts shadow over government outsourcing

Bailouts of £500m to private sector, with some offenders only monitored electronically

• £3.7bn privatisation of probation services seen as ‘mess’ and ‘disaster’ 
• Private providers complained contracts were lossmaking and ‘unsustainable’ 
• Questions remain about government plans for new private-sector contracts 

James Alderson joined the National Probation Service a decade ago to help offenders stay out of prison. But when a large part of the service was privatised in 2015, he found that staff cutbacks and piles of paperwork meant he had less contact with the people he wanted to help. 

Privatisation was meant to bring innovation and cost discipline to the service, and cut stubbornly high re-offending rates in England and Wales — where more than half of people with previous convictions go on to commit another crime within a year of being released. But Mr Alderson, whose name has been changed, said “the entire process has been a disaster”. MPs on the Commons justice select committee have reached a similar conclusion, saying in June that privatisation had been a “mess”, with private companies making “little difference” to offenders’ future prospects. 

Last month, justice secretary David Gauke agreed to end the private sector contracts in 2020, two years earlier than originally planned. The government has not disclosed the cost of the experiment, but the Ministry of Justice has been forced to agree bailouts totalling at least £500m to the private sector. The fallout has revived questions about private-sector involvement in delivering key government services, especially after the government contractor Carillion collapsed earlier this year.

“It’s another example of the doctrinaire assumption by politicians that the private sector will always deliver better results,” said Julian Le Vay, a former finance director of HM Prison Service. “Probation wasn’t broken,” he said. “There was room for improvement but we could just have had a more efficient public-sector organisation, without affecting the quality of service.” 

‘It was a big bang’ 

The grounds for privatisation were laid in the 2007 Offender Management Act, which was brought in by a Labour government. But it was Conservative Chris Grayling who, as justice secretary, launched the “rehabilitation revolution” in 2014. He cancelled his predecessor Ken Clarke’s pilot programmes for privatisation, pushing through a more ambitious set of reforms in just over a year.

“It was a big bang that completely reorganised the world, and if it didn’t work there was no easy route back,” said Mr Le Vay. Before Mr Grayling’s reforms, public-sector trusts supervised around 200,000 ex-offenders each year. But Mr Grayling broke up the system, giving eight private firms, including Sodexo, MTCnovo, and Ingeus, £3.7bn worth of contracts to run 21 “community rehabilitation companies” providing supervision and support to “low-to-medium-risk” offenders. 

The community rehabilitation companies were also given the job of working with 45,000 prisoners who had been in jail for less than 12 months, who had previously received no support after release but had a high reoffending rate, with nearly two-thirds committing another crime within a year. Cases involving “high-risk” offenders remained within the National Probation Service, which is now part of the civil service. 

Lossmaking contracts were ‘unsustainable’ 

But after the overhaul, private-sector companies were not getting the level of referrals expected, in part because of errors in Ministry of Justice forecasting. The MoJ had projected that private sector providers would handle 70 per cent of the cases. But in reality, the private providers only handled about 40 per cent of cases. The courts who assigned probation cases had little faith in the private providers, none of whom had any previous experience in the field. 

It also proved difficult to classify ex-offenders, because a change in circumstances, such as eviction, an alcohol problem or family conflict, could easily change their risk category from “low” to “high”. Probation staff were also divided arbitrarily between the public and private providers, even though in some cases they continued to share offices. 

By 2016, the private providers were complaining that the contracts were lossmaking and “unsustainable”. As a result, they axed jobs and closed offices, making it more difficult for offenders to attend appointments. Some contractors, such as Sodexo, monitored offenders using unmanned electronic kiosks. Two out of five offenders monitored by the private providers are now supervised by telephone, with calls every six weeks, rather than in person, according to the chief inspector of probation. 

‘Now we are an embarrassment’ 

The government is now consulting for a new round of contracts, with different financial terms and minimum requirements for the number of face-to-face meetings held with ex-offenders among other changes. The new contracts would also align the community rehabilitation companies with the National Probation Service’s regional operations. MTCnovo has said it is committed to the service and would bid for future contracts.

But few believe that privatisation of the probation system can work, even with the changes. The Welsh government has already decided to use devolved regional powers to take its own probation service back in-house, giving control to the National Probation Service. 

Robert Neill, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons justice select committee, has questioned whether a privatised system “will ever deliver the kind of probation service we need”. Mr Alderson said: “Other criminal justice systems used to look at us as a model for offender intervention,” he says. “Now we are an embarrassment.”

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I notice the article generated a couple of responses on Facebook:-

The FT is still a relatively influential newspaper despite its comparatively small circulation. It has an excellent international reputation for well sourced and evidenced financial journalism that is mainly aimed at looking after business interests rather than having an overtly political axe to grind. Those with power money and influence read it and form their opinions as a result. In other words those who can make a difference read it, including overseas investors in the so called UK 'justice market', and will undoubtedly now be more cautious particularly if they do some research and find a number of articles across the media warning of a mess. This article takes up the best part of page 3 along with a smaller article regarding Grayling failing to take advice regarding Heathrow. The final three paragraphs are particularly telling 'But few believe that privatisation of the probation system can work, even with the changes'.

The Welsh government has already decided to use devolved regional powers to take its own probation service back in-house, giving control to the National Probation Service. Robert Neill, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons justice select committee, has questioned whether a privatised system “will ever deliver the kind of probation service we need”.' I detect a groundswell of opinion that runs counter to the MoJs proposals that are clearly not brave enough given the scale of the problems faced. Yes to end of CRC contracts. Yes to reunification of core probation services. Yes to both English and Welsh probation services returning to public ownership.

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Hats off Mr Alderson, whoever you are. I have a feeling that there is all to play for now, and the biggest hurdle and risk in the path of serious positive progress is the devastating effect of TR on probation people. There used to be a fashion in management theory for drawing analogies between organisations and individual psychology/pathology. Any psychology/psychiatry/etc practitioner would have a their hands full with Probation as a client. If you were to diagnose Probation as a group collective, what would it be? PTSD? Stockholm Syndrome?

News Roundup 7

This from Private Eye:-

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I noticed this on the Inside Time website:-  

The Parole Board has experienced an increase in the demand for oral hearings since the Osborn, Booth and Riley judgment handed down in 2013. This has resulted in delays for a considerable number of prisoners waiting for an oral hearing date. The listing prioritisation framework, which was developed to help us manage the increased volume of cases, currently prioritises recalled determinate sentenced prisoners above most other prisoners when allocating oral hearing dates each month. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the majority of other prisoners experiencing much longer delays before their oral hearing date is set. We recognise that we need to change our current approach in order to ensure fairness across the system.

To address this problem, we have developed 4 trials that we will be piloting from now until the end of March 2017:

1. We will work closer with PPCS to make more effective use of the option of ‘executive release’. Eligible cases will be considered for executive release at an earlier stage of the parole process, before a case is directed to an oral hearing. We hope this will reduce the number of cases waiting in the queue for an oral hearing date and allow prisoners to be released more quickly.

2. We are extending the cut off point for determinate cases with an upcoming Sentence Expiry Date (SED). We currently conclude cases directed to oral hearing if the SED is within 12 weeks’ time of the oral hearing directions. This is because there is insufficient time to schedule an oral hearing before a prisoner will be automatically released. This will now be extended to 24 weeks.

3. We will change the listing prioritisation framework so that prisoners who have 12 months or less before their SED will no longer be prioritised. This means most recall cases will no longer be listed ahead of other sentence types, resulting in a fairer system. A full review of the listings framework will take place by April 2017.

4. We are looking into the possibility of using Ministry of Justice video link rooms across the UK to host hearings for determinate sentence prisoners. Currently, we can only host video link hearings at our London based office which limits our capacity. We hope that by creating regional hubs across the UK, more cases can be heard more swiftly. This will also hopefully ensure prisoners with determinate sentences will not be disadvantaged by the above pilots.

We are taking a flexible approach to these pilots and if any prisoners believes that they have exceptional circumstances that warrant prioritisation of their case they can write to the Parole Board. Such circumstances can include, but are not limited to, medical/mental health issues and/or compassionate reasons for example.

If you believe you are affected by one of the above pilots then we strongly recommend you seek guidance from a legal representative or a member of prison staff.

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On the shocking increase in suicides in prison, this from the Guardian:-

New crisis in prisons as suicides hit record levels

Suicides in prison have reached “epidemic” proportions, with rates of self-harm and violence soaring to unprecedented levels. In addition, experts say the situation in women’s jails is now worse than a decade ago, when a landmark report was commissioned amid widespread concerns about deteriorating standards.

In the 12 months to 16 September, there were 107 self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales – almost double that for 2012, when 57 people took their lives, and nearly seven times the 16 suicides in 1978, when the current recording system began.

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, has used her blog to highlight that at least 26 prisoners have taken their life since Liz Truss was appointed secretary of state for justice in July, the equivalent to one suicide every three days.

Crook, who describes suicides in prison as having reached “epidemic proportions”, said the situation was the worst she had known in her 30 years of campaigning.

“I haven’t seen anything like this, this is really, really bad,” she said. “There used to be enough experienced staff to know when someone was in distress, but they don’t have time to talk to anyone, there simply aren’t enough of them. I’ve been in prisons recently where you have two uniformed officers on duty with several hundred men on the wings. All they can do is go along the landings and open all the doors to allow people to fetch their lunch and then go back down the landings and shut all the doors again. They can’t say anything to anybody because they haven’t got time.”

Last Sunday, Celeste Craig, 26, became the 19th woman prisoner to take her own life this year. With two months of the year still to go, the number dwarfs the levels of a decade ago when the Corston report warned that too many women were being jailed for minor offences while their mental health needs, addiction problems and troubled backgrounds went largely ignored.

“I was commissioned to write my report in 2006 because in two years, 2003 and 2004, a total of 13 women took their own lives in prison,” Lady Corston said. “Now we’ve had 19 in one year which is a scandal.”

The Corston report made 43 recommendations, but much of its impact has been reversed, she said. “In 2003 there were 9,000 women taken into our prisons,” she said. “In 2009, two years after my report, it went down to 5,724.

“Now, at a time of staff cuts, there are 11,000 women going through our prisons this year. We are back to the same old story. Women prisoners, who are 21 times more likely [than average] to commit suicide, are being sent to prison for ridiculously short times and nothing is achieved. I am very depressed about it all.”

Deborah Coles, director of Inquest, branded the death toll in women’s prisons as unacceptable. “We see the brutal consequences of criminal justice policies that see prison as the default solution and incarcerate some of the most disadvantaged women in prisons that are ill-equipped to keep them safe. These deaths raise the question as to why women were in prison in the first place.”

The rest of the prison system is also experiencing profound problems. Statistics published by the Ministry of Justice show that the death rate in prisons in England and Wales – which includes suicides, natural causes and homicide – has risen to almost one a day. In the 12 months to the end of June 2016, assaults in men’s prisons rose to a record high at 22,915 – an increase of 69% in only three years. Over the same period there were 36,440 incidents of self-injury – equivalent to 100 per day.

The crisis comes as Truss prepares to make her first major speech as justice secretary this week. She told the Observer that prison reform was her priority and that she was committed to making jails safer. “These statistics demonstrate the serious violence and self-harm in our prisons,” Truss said.

“The consequences are devastating and go far beyond the confines of the prison walls, spilling out into our streets and communities. That is why I have invested an initial £14m at 10 of our most challenging prisons, and shortly I will be publishing a white paper outlining the much needed reform across the prison estate to 2020 and beyond.”

But Crook said the crisis merited a more urgent response. “Legislation will be introduced some time next year, by which time 100 people will have taken their own lives. She [Truss] has to do something now,” she said.

“It’s deeply distressing that this sort of thing is still happening almost 10 years after the Corston inquiry,” said Ben Summerskill, director of the Criminal Justice Alliance, who pointed out that half of all prisoners return to jail after release. If we had any other industry in the country where half the products got returned to the factory, ministers would have acted decades ago,” he said.

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Finally, the Howard League press release on the subject:-

Prison statistics reveal a bloodbath of assaults, suicide and self-injury

The number of people dying in prison has risen by 21 per cent in a year as safety in jails deteriorates further and faster, figures seen by the Howard League for Penal Reform reveal today (Thursday 27 October). Statistics published by the Ministry of Justice show that the death rate in prisons in England and Wales rose to almost one a day – a record high of 324 in the 12 months to the end of September 2016.

They included 107 prisoners who took their own lives as the suicide rate behind bars rose by 13 per cent to unprecedented levels. The number has almost doubled since 2011-12, when 57 people died by suicide in prison.

Official records of assaults and self-injury incidents show that prison safety is declining at a faster rate year by year. The total number of assaults recorded in prisons increased by more than 34 per cent to 23,775 – about 65 per day – in the 12 months to the end of June 2016. Assaults recorded in men’s prisons rose to a record high at 22,915 – an increase of 69 per cent in only three years. Assaults in women’s prisons have also risen, increasing by 25 per cent in a year.

In the 12 months to the end of June 2016, 36,440 incidents of self-injury were recorded in prisons. This equates to 100 per day and represents a rise of 26 per cent compared to the previous year. The number of incidents of self-injury by men in prisons has more than doubled in six years.

Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: 

“The Ministry of Justice is presiding over a bloodbath of assaults, suicides and self-injury in prisons. Cutting staff and prison budgets while allowing the number of people behind bars to grow unchecked has created a toxic mix of violence, death and human misery. The Secretary of State for Justice, Elizabeth Truss, has declared that making prisons safer is her priority, and we expect her plans to be made clear next month. But today’s figures show that we cannot wait for legislation – bold and radical action is needed now to stop the death toll rising further. The Howard League is about to publish a plan of action to tackle the immediate problems. We will be suggesting that small behaviour change by magistrates, prisons and probation could ease the pressure on prisons and save lives. I will present this to the Secretary of State at our meeting next month.”

News Roundup 5

Another good article in Private Eye I see reminding us that many of the contract winners were in fact 'second best' in order to give the illusion of a great deal of interest and to stop the big boys scooping the pool:-



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I think most would agree that Dame Glenys Stacey has made an excellent start as HM Chief Inspector of Probation and I notice there is an invitation to provide comments on how her task might be assisted. Too good an opportunity to miss I'd have thought:-   

HMI Probation Stakeholder Survey 2016

As one of our stakeholders, your views are very important to us. Feedback on various aspects of our work, such as our reports and communications, will enable us to identify potential areas for development and improvement, thus maximising our effectiveness and impact.

The survey should only take 10-15 minutes to complete, and your responses are completely anonymous. There will be an opportunity to provide an email if you would like to be added to the distribution list for our 2017 stakeholder survey, but this information will not be used for any other purpose.

The survey will close on Friday 04 November 2016.

Many thanks for your input.

Take our annual stakeholder survey here

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In order to try and counter much of the negative publicity that inevitably flows from poor inspection reports and with much of probation now being a commercial operation with companies effectively competing with each other for future business, I guess we can expect more of this sort of stuff in the propaganda war. This from Cheshire and Greater Manchester CRC:- 

THROUGH THE GATE SERVICE ENSURES JOHN GETS A BED ON HIS FIRST NIGHT

Thanks to the Through the Gate (TTG) service, provided by Shelter and the Cheshire & Greater Manchester Community Rehabilitation Company (CGM CRC), John spent his first night out of HMP Risley in a bed rather than sleeping rough.

Shelter’s Lisa Snow established contact with John on the weeks leading up to his release. To ensure that the risk of future reoffending was minimised she worked closely with John’s probation officer, Case Manager Emily Curbishley, completing a detailed resettlement plan in order to understand his accommodation, financial and employment needs.

The assessment revealed that upon release John, who had been sentenced to three years for burglary, didn’t have access to stable accommodation. As a result Riverside Housing Association’s Gate Buddies scheme, together with the prison, provided support by helping to organise a suitable move-on address.

Numerous applications were made to find John accommodation before suitable housing in Manchester was found, but on the morning of John’s release plans had to be changed at the last minute, a challenge frequently faced by the TTG team. However, thanks to support from Gate Buddies, a bed was successfully secured for John at SASH, a sheltered housing initiative run by Riverside Housing.

Lisa said: “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to secure accommodation for prisoners being released as many accommodation providers are losing their funding and our options are becoming more and more limited. It’s therefore imperative that Shelter and CGM CRC work as closely as possible. Shelter has established strong links with Gate Buddies and SASH and this case is a great example of effective joint working and communication between all of the organisations that worked to support John. We worked closely together, from first meeting John through to the day of his release. As a result we were able to best assess John’s needs and make an appropriate referral resulting in a very positive outcome.”

Emily said: “Securing accommodation for service users has a significant impact on reducing a person’s likelihood of re-offending. Having a stable base, with support, improves a person’s chances of engaging with relevant services such as attending appointments with medical services, benefits agencies and drug and alcohol teams. This can have a really positive effect on a person’s risk of re-conviction. Not only does Through the Gate support someone to make efforts to gain suitable accommodation it also supports good communication, as I was able to relay messages to John regarding his housing needs through my Shelter colleagues whilst he was still in prison. In this instance, Gate Buddies has provided invaluable support. One of their team met John, took him to his new address and helped him when he needed it most. Without these organisations working together it’s likely John’s first night out of prison would have either been spent sofa surfing or on the streets.”

Sarah Cooke Regional Contacts Manager said: “John’s case illustrates the innovative work we do with service users across the North West, in partnership with CGM CRC and other providers. TTG is only a year old, but we have already helped nearly nineteen thousand people. In the first quarter alone we have supported 2,815 people into accommodation. Housing is intrinsically linked to the risk of future reoffending and everyone deserves a home. We won’t stop until no one has to face bad housing or homelessness.”

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I see from this tweet that Harry Fletcher is hard at work with his latest employers:-

"A dozen Questions drafted by Hfletcher and Tabled By Plaid on lamentable performance by CRCs go down this week in Commons" 

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Finally, I'm afraid the blog is going to have to return to auto-pilot for another week as I'm away again and internet connection is going to be difficult. Please keep an eye out for any significant developments while I'm away and as always, share the information with us all here. Thanks.