PbR Works! - Sort of

Payment by Results is the new wonder solution to all government woes according to some simple-minded politicians, and therefore it damned-well has to work. The idea has been championed by ultra-ambitious Chris Grayling and was rolled out as a payment method for the Work Programme when he was at the DWP. 

Despite having failed miserably as a method of motivating contractors to get the unemployed into jobs, he remains undaunted and is pressing on with plans to use PbR as a way of motivating probably the same contractors to stop offenders offending. Common sense, or good practice even, normally dictates that it's a good idea to thoroughly test a new idea before attempting to introduce it nationally, hence trials of PbR within criminal justice have been running at HMP Peterborough and HMP Doncaster.

However, so confident has Chris Grayling been that PbR will turn out to be a huge success that other trials were cancelled, safe in the knowledge that Peterborough and Doncaster will deliver the goods. Thus it should come as no great surprise that with so much political reputation on the line, Mr Grayling was able to announce yesterday that, well.... 'the results are promising'. Now I don't know about you, but I'd say that was code for 'no matter how many times we did the sums, this is the best we got.'  

Actually Grayling wasn't even referring to both trials, only Peterborough, with the results for Doncaster looking decidedly 'less promising' according to Alan Travis in the Guardian:-

Under the first pilot scheme, which has been running for two-and-a-half years at Peterborough prison, reconviction rates fell from 41.6% for short-sentenced prisoners who left the jail between September 2008 – March 2010, to 39.2% for those who took part in the scheme and left the jail between September 2010 – March 2012.

The scheme provided offenders with help as they prepared for release from jail and then access to services they needed outside prison, including housing, employment and financial services. Ministers are planning to roll this out to all prisoners serving less than 12 months in legislation going through parliament in the offender rehabilitation bill.

Interim results in a second, similar scheme at Doncaster prison, launched in October 2011, appear less promising. The reconviction rate of 41.1% between October 2011 – March 2012 was higher than the 39.8% recorded between October 2010 – March 2011, but lower than the 41.6% recorded the year before. Final results will be published 2014.

Proponents of PbR like expert Russell Webster are going a bit further and saying these results are mediocre at best and simply don't make the case. Talking of Peterborough, before he concludes:-

"These results can be interpreted in one of two ways. Optimists may argue that they are extremely encouraging - a 6% fall in the context of a 16% rise nationally is a strong performance.

Pessimists, however, could make the case that a reduction of 6% is not sufficient to trigger a success payment at a pilot site which had many more advantages - in terms of the amount of development time in particular - than will be available to the new rehabilitation providers.

Conclusion

To be honest, neither of these pilots have been running for a sufficiently long period of time for the these results to be treated with anything other than the utmost caution.

However, the interim figures are hardly earth-shattering and the pilots did have a number of advantages not available to the providers who win the new reducing reoffending contracts which will be awarded next Autumn. 

The principle advantage, of course, is that the prisons and partnerships involved were actively seeking to pilot new approaches and had more time to plan their approach and were in a position, to an extent, to negotiate the terms of their PbR payment process.

My view is that these mediocre results makes the MoJ's recently published proposed payment mechanism seem even more unrealistic.

If we are really talking about transforming rehabilitation, then it will take several years for new approaches to bed in and be successful, yet the MoJ expects them to be delivering improvements in year one despite having to provide a service to many more offenders (50,000+ new short term prisoners) from within a reduced budget."  

Hey, Chris. With supporters like this, who needs enemies?!

Sign the petition here and stop this crazy omnishambles. 

PS Rooting around on the internet has resulted in the following fascinating blog by Jon Harvey a statistics expert. He is clearly irritated by the stats and posed 21 questions to Mike Elkins the person responsible. I think this might be worth following guys - you know, all that stuff about 'lies, damned lies and statistics!'  

Omnishambles Update 6

'Steady as she goes No1!' is pretty much the message from Joe Kuipers the Captain of the good ship Avon and Somerset in a recent circular to all staff:- 

".....our well regarded good ship ASPT is sailing along effectively, well helmed, brilliantly crewed and partnered, but it is now entering as yet poorly charted waters. As well as taking actions to avoid rocks and grounding we have to consider how best to ensure that our effective services have the best chance of improvement, continuity and survival and that our staff have the best future opportunities. In short, what sort of craft or ‘lifeboat’ might we in ASPT need to build to meet these objectives?"

Skilfully written in a measured tone, the document seeks to convey to staff as much information as possible that can be gleaned from the Transforming Rehabilitation process, aka omnishambles. It's clear from reported meetings with the MoJ/Noms TR team that there are still loads of unanswered questions as the whole shambolic process begins to gain momentum, but I'm sure something will be cobbled together.

As with other Trusts, Avon and Somerset are busy talking to other interested parties in the hope that some form of 'lifeboat' can be constructed in order to try and keep some staff safe and dry and ready to crew some new probation vessel.* The document makes clear that ASPT is 'not rushing into anything', but the outlined timetable and obvious hurdles involved must make any such viable initiative highly unlikely. 

In the meantime reports are beginning to emerge of some Trusts using the annual staff appraisal process to assess the degree to which individual staff members are willing to 'embrace' the TR agenda. Very naughty!

The Welsh government have made it clear that they want nothing to do with the TR proposals and are demanding that responsibility for probation in Wales is transferred to the Welsh Assembly. Plaid Cymru have confirmed their opposition to the privatisation plans and we wait to see if the government is prepared to devolve responsibility, leaving just England to go it alone. 

Interestingly a recent article in the Daily Telegraph by Peter Oborne hints at unease within Tory ranks that Conservative radicalism 'has gone too far'.

"If anything this admirably radical administration deserves criticism for doing too much. In its urgent ambition to leave an enduring mark on society, it is arguably in danger of trying to make too many changes at once. 

But there is also a deeper criticism. There are too many radicals at the heart of the Cameron government - and not enough Conservatives. These radicals fail to share the Conservative insight that continuity matters more than change, and stability more than either. Conservatives understand that there is a great deal to be said for leaving things alone. They respect the wisdom of the past, the necessity to preserve inherited institutions, and the rule of law.

This is the reason we Conservatives, contrary to popular opinion, value a strong state, so long as it is virtuous and not corrupt. We do not (as many believe) merely value a powerful state for purposes of national defence and to uphold law and order. All serious Conservative thinkers grasp that only the state can embody all those ideals which bind us together, and which count for so much more than self interest."

Yes that really is from the Daily Telegraph and sounds like a case for keeping the probation service as it is to me.

The petition can still be found here.

*Some might say a better analogy is up shit creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle.

Seeing the Light

Regular readers will be aware that I've been following Ben Gunn on his journey from being one of Britain's longest serving prisoner's, to a new life of freedom and high profile commentating on all things criminal justice. It's been quite a journey by any standards and I have to say I've been both dismayed and bemused in equal measure at his sheer energy and capacity to wind people up, especially on twitter. 

It takes two to tango as they say, but I think he would perhaps admit that he met his match recently with a seriously robust run-in with some very angry wimmin on twitter that seemed to take him genuinely by surprise. If ever you needed some evidence as to the limitations posed to decent discussion by 140 characters at a time, this was it! That's the thing about twitter - it's either mostly platitudinous bollocks, political puffs, or soundbite flame mail. 

Anyway, it's good to see that Ben has decided to return to using the medium that brought him to wide public attention in the first place, the blog. In what could either be described as a masterstroke of perversity, or sign of divine revelation, he has confounded us all by posting a piece in defence of probation. It seems it wasn't prepared under the influence of mind-altering substances, but rather the result of some thoughtful reflection. I hope he will not mind me quoting from it:- 

My – improbable, maybe – objection to this is that the Probation Service has met every target set by Government to reduce reoffending. Indeed, it is a fact that the reoffending rate for those under supervision is the lowest level ever.

I hold no brief for Government and its bureaucracies. As a general proposition, I think Government can screw anything up. And yet the Probation Service is not merely performing well, it is possibly one of the best performing public services.

In planning to break up this service and sell it, the Government is acting out of pure ideology. There is no evidence whatever that the private sector can do as well, let alone better. Indeed, the discussions I was in with the private sector revealed that they hadn't any clue how to even begin to do the job of probation.

In their ideological frenzy, the Government has blown its cover. If it had the slightest interest in reducing reoffending and protecting the public, it would allow all qualified parties to bid for future contracts. But, and this is the tipping point for me, the Government is barring Probation Trusts from even bidding for the work. The only people with any expertise in this work are being specifically forbidden from being involved in it.

Now wouldn't it be interesting to see Ben being interviewed on tv about Graylings plans for privatising the probation service and giving a client's perspective? I look forward to further reflective pieces in the coming months. Oh, by the way Ben. Did you sign the petition that can be found here?     

A Post Revisited

In December 2010, when this blog was still relatively new and I was in a particularly depressive state of mind, I published an ominous-sounding piece entitled '10 Reasons Why Probation is Finished.' Given our present predicament, I thought it might be instructive to revisit and reflect upon it, but be warned, it is not suitable for those of a nervous disposition or if prone to emotional outbursts.    

"As we head to the end of one year and the beginning of another, I find that I'm in a particularly sombre and increasingly angry mood, hence the stark title of this piece. I know I'm prone to being a pessimist, but those who really know me are aware that throughout my career I have always tried to be positive. I'm by nature a fixer of problems - you have to be to be a Probation Officer in my view. But a good Probation Officer should also be able to analyse a situation and sort the wood from the trees. Talking my profession down gives me no satisfaction at all, but there comes a time when we have to recognise the direction of travel and face up to some uncomfortable truths. Only then can we begin to do something about the situation.

The following is my analysis of where I think we are and where we are heading and it's not good. I seriously believe we are destined for the same treatment as the Forensic Science Service whose demise was announced last week with little ceremony. If others think I'm wrong, misguided or over-stating the position, then please tell me." 

1) Ken Clarke can't stand the Probation Service for some reason and hasn't mentioned it once since taking up office as Justice Minister. This does not bode well for the Minister responsible for the Service to come to its aid. Indeed I think the groundwork is being prepared so that he can 'do a John Reid' and declare the whole thing 'unfit for purpose.'  

Well that's pretty much what's happened. Ken Clarke was a pussy cat compared to Grayling. There isn't even a minister with probation in their official title any more. Despite some warm but half-hearted words from ministers on occasion, most can't stand us because they don't know what we do, a situation that makes it very easy to marginalise us and plot our demise.  

2)The Coalition government are privatising Approved Premises and Community Payback, so have a very clear agenda of wanting to see the Service slimmed down and operated more cheaply. In relation to Unpaid Work, the government obviously feel that the current ethos would not be conducive to the implementation of a tougher work regime.

In the end the government ducked out of privatising Community Payback, largely because they decided to go for the 'big bang' approach, abolish trusts and privatise virtually the whole thing. London was the exception and serves to indicate what is likely to happen when cost savings are introduced by private contractors such as Serco. There will be less supervision, redundancies and a one-size-fits-all approach to clients.    

3) Pre-sentence reports have been 'dumbed-down' and are rapidly becoming useless as sentencing documents. This is all too clear to people who have been around for a while. Together with the inexorable growth in short format FDR's, even at Crown Court, it will only serve to convince sentencers that they can largely dispense with PSR's completely.

The number of PSR's being prepared continues to fall, but incredibly the courts seem oblivious to the reduction in quality brought about by them being OASys generated. It does make you wonder if they ever bothered reading them thoroughly in the past? Maybe we've been largely wasting our time all along? The lack of critical comment regarding the change to OASys computer formatted reports has been truly astonishing to me.  
  
4)There is an inexorable move towards PSO's doing the work of fully qualified PO's. I predict that the full role of PO will be undertaken by PSO's in a couple of years. The training has already been dumbed down and there is a growing chorus from PSO's that PO's weren't that skilled anyway. This is great news for management because they are much cheaper to employ. 

Well we now know that virtually all PSO's will be destined to transfer to the privatised service, leaving most PO's as civil servants within a rump public service looking after the high risk cases. It's inevitable that terms and conditions for PSO's will deteriorate under the auspices of the private and third sector contractors. The future for the probation profession in terms of training looks bleak with the only glimmer of hope coming from the formation of a professional Probation Institute.   

5)The Probation Unions refuse to acknowledge Payment by Results as worthy of field trials. I have repeatedly said that this stance is a big mistake and arguments about it not working are utterly futile because if necessary, the figures will be fiddled to prove otherwise, just like all those in the past. Oh, of course it just might work too. I think the public image of NAPO looks tired and needs sharpening up.

I've probably been a bit naive about PbR, but as originally proposed it was about levering in new money from charitable sources in order to fund work with those sentenced to less than 12 months custody. But the idea has proved so attractive to politicians as a 'silver bullet' that no trials are felt necessary because it will be made to work, or more accurately fiddled so it appears to work. As for Napo, it needs taking by the scruff of the neck and shaken hard.  

6) Probation Trusts continue to support large Head Offices at the expense of field offices. I continue to be amazed at the size of the management bureaucracy, just as local offices are being shut to save money. One Assistant Chief is currently trumpeting a 'going local' initiative at the very time that he's closing a local office. Such humbug will not go unnoticed. The same Service is introducing a leave purchase scheme to save money with each officer being able to buy up to 30 days extra leave a year. That not only says a great deal about current attitudes to the job, but I wonder who is expected to cover for all these missing people when caseloads are so high?

The closure of field offices and retreat into ever-larger out of town bunkers has continued apace, whilst the Head Office bureaucracies have remained largely intact. Utterly inexcusable, but the inevitable product of our having fully embraced managerialism with gusto. Our profession has not been served well by senior management in recent time and a great deal of the blame for our current predicament must lie at their feet.

7)The Service has no unified public identity, national champion or high profile leadership. Since the control freak government of Tony Blair, Chiefs of Probation have been effectively silenced and have yet to find an effective voice. The new Chiefs Association has been ominously silent for a couple of months now, and even before only spoke in relative hushed tones. There is no longer any central Probation Management, it having been completely dismantled and subsumed into a prison-dominated NOMS.

The probation voice has all but disappeared with no senior people within NOMS and a gagging order placed on probation staff. The spokesperson for the Chiefs is a former civil servant and accountant who is simply unable to speak authoritatively on behalf of the profession. Napo centrally has imploded amidst scandal and significant departures and may never recover in time to mount an effective defence.      

8)The public simply do not understand what the Probation Service does. This is extremely handy for a government intent on breaking the whole thing up. There will be absolutely no public opposition to our demise.

The public still don't understand what we do and neither do most politicians. The No10 petition has struggled to make 21,000 signatures, as opposed to that in relation to the proposed cuts in criminal legal aid. With no real understanding and appreciation of what we do, there will be virtually no public opposition to our demise.

  
9)The Service is paralysed with bureaucratic processes which hinder client contact. The imposition of OASys was utter ill-thought out madness and has done more damage to client contact and morale than any of the worst excesses wreaked on our Service in living memory. Can I remind people that, far from management having the bottle to admit this, the real driver behind them imposing the short format FDR's is that they cunningly avoid a full OASys.

Unbelievable I know, but things are now much worse with the national roll-out of the utterly frustrating and time-consuming nDelius case recording system, together with OASys R proving to be incapable of producing a professional-looking PSR for court. Not surprisingly the pressure continues to dispense with as many full PSR's as possible in the name of efficiency and speeding up justice. An absolutely key part of the job ruined by an IT disaster resulting in probation reports being increasingly marginalised and more of our time spent on the computer instead of seeing clients.    

10)The architecture is in place to facilitate the dismantling of the Service. Together with the powers contained in the legislation that set the National Offender Management Service up and the compulsory transition to independent Probation Trusts, the government would find it administratively very easy to transfer all probation functions to any organisation it felt appropriate.

Well this has certainly proved to be the case with Chris Grayling intending to make full use of the legislative changes so handily provided by the last Labour government in order to effect its privatisation and without having the trouble of going back to Parliament. Of course Labour now cries 'foul!' But it's all a bit late in the day thanks to Tony Blair listening to Carter all those years ago and his crazy ideas of 'introducing a bit of tension' into the system. We really could be finished guys.  

Politics is a Dirty Business

We all know most politicians of every persuasion are professional liars and not to be trusted in normal circumstances, but this is a battle for the survival of a vital public service and the rest of us just have to swallow hard and do what ever it takes to win. Politics has always been the art of the possible.

So it is that we must now find the will to applaud the architects of the whole probation privatisation fiasco, the Labour Party, as they seemingly mount a 'spirited' opposition to Graylings proposals in the House of Commons.

There's no point in even mentioning matters of principle here, or what might be the right thing to do. Labour are just going through the motions for a bit of political expediency, as HM Loyal Opposition is paid handsomely to do. It's all a game, as they know full well that they don't have a cat in hell's chance of inflicting a defeat on the government due to the Liberal Democrats remaining firmly in bed with their Conservative partners. 

Anyway, I quote from the Labour Party press release issued yesterday:- 

"Labour has tabled amendments to the Offender Rehabilitation Bill that would force the Government to pilot their controversial changes to the probation service.

We believe their proposals constitute a serious risk to public safety because of their untested and untried nature.

Because the Government is misusing 2007 legislation, this means they require no change in the law to introduce their proposals. By tabling these amendments, Labour is ensuring that their ill-thought through plans receive proper parliamentary scrutiny.

And, if successful, they would mean that the Government’s changes to probation could not happen until they have been properly piloted and independently evaluated to ensure there is no risk to public safety."

Things are always different in the Upper House though with so many non-politically aligned cross benchers and today probation's good friend Lord Ramsbotham has been leading opposition to the proposals by tabling some key amendments to the Bill that, if passed, would effectively kill it. The key amendments proposed are 21, 22 and 23 which respectively prevent changes to the probation service without parliamentary approval, prevent the introduction of PbR for 3 years and without the results of pilots being evaluated first and ensure probation trusts can bid for any contracts. 

But any amount of sound reasoning might still come to nought as the government can in the final analysis invoke the Parliament Act in order to exert their will over a troublesome House of Lords. What is much more likely to be effective in saving our bacon is pure chance and good luck. As Harold Macmillan once famously remarked, events have a habit of throwing the best laid political plans off balance and there's quite a few possibilities in the wings. 

For a start the whole parliamentary corruption issue has been re-ignited as a result of those pesky media types setting up MP's and Peers with yet another honey-trap sting operation. They always fall for it don't they? But I have to say I'm not sorry to see the smug look removed from the face of that dreadful self-serving ex-copper Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate. 

Then there's the astounding secret affair that's so shocked the Prime Minister. Despite gagging orders, it won't be secret for too much longer. Finally, we still await news in relation to the police investigation into historical child abuse allegations at the Elm Guest House in West London. All these and more can derail the best laid plans of any government.

Word has it that Grayling's job and career are on the line over his plans for 'reforming' the criminal Legal Aid system. As the first non-lawyer to become Lord Chancellor, he's made lots of powerful enemies in the legal profession and as we know many politicians are lawyers. If he screws it up, and some are confidently saying he's massively under estimated the guile and sheer power that the law still exerts within the Establishment, it's curtains for Chris's prospects which can only be good news for us. A dirty business indeed - but hey ho! 

I know you've signed the No10 petition - but please tell others to sign it here.        

Omnishambles Update 5

More details are beginning to emerge concerning the timeline for the proposed probation omnishambles and I'm grateful to a reader for supplying a summary from their Trust and I quote selectively from it:-

Phase 1 (to August 2013) The implications of the split between the public sector and competed services for staff and for workload will be worked through on paper. 

Phase 2 (August 2013 - March 2014) operational staff will be allocated to either the public sector probation service or the competed services through a matching and selection process. The competition will be advertised in August/September. 

Phase 3 (April - October 2014) all staff are transferred to either the National Probation Service or the 'NewCo' - a government owned holding company. This will allow the new operating model to be tested. 

Phase 4 (November 2014 onwards) Contracts will be signed with the providers who will take over the 21 'NewCo's'.

"From April 2014 staff who will be working in the competed services will move over to one of 21 ‘NewCos’, coterminous with the contract package areas announced in the government’s response to Transforming Rehabilitation. Essentially, these will be holding companies which will be government owned.  Each ‘NewCo’ would be led by a management team from within the Trust.  It will operate in this way for between three and nine months until all staff and assets move over to the new provider in the autumn/winter 2014. It is not anticipated that there will be any immediate changes for staff, although restructuring is likely over time.

Of the 18,000 staff currently employed by Probation Trusts, approximately 6,000 will transfer to the new Public Sector Probation Service. The structure of the PSPS will be seven divisions and the Local Delivery Units based on local authorities will be the building blocks. These will be clustered to form units which take account of police force areas. 

The competition will be advertised in late August. Between august and October, prime bidders will go through a pre-qualifying questionnaire process.Those who meet a quality threshold and who are financially viable will go forward to a dialogue process (autumn 2013 - January 2014) and will submit full bids by spring 2014. Contracts will be awarded by October 2014.

I can promise that we will endeavour to treat all staff fairly and follow due process when it comes to the difficult process of allocating staff either to the National Probation Service or to the services going to the new provider."

The latter point seems to confirm that it will be left up to individual Trusts to undertake the invidious process of selecting who stays and who goes. As has already been pointed out in several quarters, this will inevitably lead to to a huge number of grievances being lodged and that should clog the system up nicely for quite a few months.

The Ministry of Justice recently published further details of how the contracts will be framed and has invited comment on the proposals. Russell Webster outlines the main aspects in his recent post here and makes the point that the MoJ clearly intend to leave it up to individual bidders as to how much risk they are prepared to take in terms of the Payment by Results element. So bidders will not just be competing on price, they will have to compete on the proportion of PbR as opposed to fixed fee. Oh it's definitely an omnishambles in the making this one! 

Meanwhile NAPO are still bravely trying to give the impression that it's 'business as usual' despite having now lost the services of a joint chair, thus leaving some members concerned regarding the remaining incumbent's mandate. Still, at least Harry Fletcher has at last 'broken cover' and has started tweeting somewhat half-heartedly for the cause whilst undertaking his new work on anti-stalking. I wonder if he might be tempted in the coming months to shed some light on what exactly has been going on behind the scenes at Chivalry Road?

The No10 petition can still be found here.  

Time to Heal

George Monbiot has written a moving piece in the Guardian today about the tragic loss of little April Jones and the effect it's had on their community. As he so rightly says, now that the trial is over, Mark Bridger convicted and sentenced to a Whole Life term of imprisonment, the healing can begin.

I also felt moved to write about this sad case last October and made the point that a probation officer would almost certainly have been allocated the case right from first remand. Cases like this touch people and for that officer now charged with preparing the Post Life Sentence Report, I made the point that we should return to the practice of allocating such an officer a 'pair' both for support and to provide a degree of continuity through a very long sentence.

It's quite clear to me that Mark Bridger will continue to try and exercise a degree of cruel control by denying the police and family details as to the whereabouts of April's body. Some people we are required to work with tax our professional integrity and moral compass to the limits and I'm sure this man will pose any officer many sleepless nights.

Long after the police attention has waned, they will be engaging in a regular intellectual, moral and philosophical battle with him, all the while conscious of the inherent danger of falling victim to his cynical manipulation. We've seen this with Ian Brady and the so-called mental health advocate, and today we read of Bridger's 'confession' to a priest at HMP Manchester while he was on remand.

Just imagine the moral dilemma and anguish this priest was put through in having to make a decision between respecting the sanctity of 'conversations' (not a Confession we are told) on the one hand, with the moral and civic duty of reporting the content to the police on the other. Bridger would know this of course and as with Brady, it just represents another twist in the utterly cruel game of holding out false hope to those desperate in wanting to bury their loved one. 

My heart goes out to April's parents who have remained dignified throughout.     

Justice for Sale

No doubt wishing to try and further his political career, I notice that Justice Minister Chris Grayling has been one of the first to agree further spending cuts in his department with the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. A clue as to how these extra cuts are to be achieved featured on the front page of The Times yesterday 'Courts to be privatised in radical justice shake-up'.

According to a post on the Scriptonite Daily website, Grayling hinted at changes when he told Parliament in March:-

“The courts and tribunals are at the centre of our justice system, relied on by the public to enforce their rights and uphold the rule of law. As in other areas, we need to look at the way we deliver our services to provide a more efficient service that delivers access to justice quickly and effectively, while delivering value for money for the taxpayer. At the same time, we must preserve the independence of the judiciary, which lies at the heart of our constitutional arrangements.”

According to the Times article:- 

“Courts in England and Wales are facing wholesale privatisation under revolutionary plans that would end the system that has existed since Magna Carta. The idea would establish the courts service as a commercial enterprise, paying its way and freed from Treasury control, with court buildings and thousands of staff put in the hands of private companies. It would save the Ministry of Justice £1 billion a year.”

Of course this could be a bit of 'kite-flying' just designed to judge the reaction and distract us from other things going on, but if it has any traction it will of course involve the usual suspects like G4S and Serco. They are rapidly becoming a 'one stop shop' in terms of the criminal justice system and could end up making money at every stage from initial arrest and investigation, right through court, legal representation, bail, tagging, transport, custody to probation supervision. Quite a neat business empire eh? 

The Scriptonite Daily article goes on to provide a very useful and enlightening resume of just how far G4S's tentacles have spread already in our criminal justice system. The campaign to stop them getting their hand on probation continues and the No10 petition can be found here. 

Meanwhile the legal profession continues to turn the heat up on Chris Grayling with 90 QC's apparently putting their names to a letter in the Daily Telegraph warning that the restrictions to legal aid "will seriously undermine the rule of law". The relevant No10 petition can be found here and has already attracted a very respectable 64,561 signatures.

Trigger Happy

When Chris Grayling began plotting the demise of the Probation Service he realised there were one or two problems. Even he could see that the public would be just a tad nervous about the private or voluntary sector looking after some very dangerous people, so clearly they would have to stay with a small public service who would continue to carry the blame when it all goes 'Pete Tong'.

Initially it was proposed that the public sector would retain responsibility for everything with civil service staff 'embedded' in contractors offices so as to advise when a case was looking decidedly dodgy and was time to hand it back to the public sector. In this back-of-a-fag-packet process going on down at the Ministry of Justice, they quite quickly realised that this would be rather expensive given the vast number of prime and sub contractors involved. 

So the latest idea in the development of what will undoubtedly become a super omnishambles is to place a responsibility upon the contractor to press a 'trigger' at the first signs of trouble and get shot of the case to the public service 'toot sweet' and certainly before they've had chance to swing the proverbial axe and kill anyone.

Timing is clearly of the essence as this article in the New Statesman by Alan White makes clear because in the inevitable blame game that will follow, a private contractor will not want to be associated with the reputational damage that will surely result. The article quotes Mark Ormerod of the Probation Association:- 

We understand the provider would be accountable if they hadn’t pulled the triggers. It would come to a review of the case in the way that happens now. The issue we drew attention to is that it’s more likely to go wrong because you’ve introduced an interface. Things go wrong when communication breaks down. And it gets more complicated when some of the triggers have been pulled, and when the person goes forward and backwards between providers it becomes more difficult to assign responsibility - whose fault is it? Risk levels change in about 25% of cases. In some of the cases we’ve looked at, the risk levels change substantially. Low or high-risk cases are easier to manage. They’re the minority though. It’s the bit in the middle where change is dynamic and contextual.

But as the article makes clear, there's not just risk involved here, there's also the small matter of money.

Of course the other thing about this system is that money’s involved: we’ve seen exactly the impact it’s had on the Work Programme. Surely it could mean the providers will be incentivised to pull some triggers and leave others? “Therein lies the difficulty: other factors come into play. They have recognised this - the public sector will be able to carry out renewed risk assessments. It goes back to the point about how the operating model works in practice: it’s difficult to regulate it by contract,” says Ormerod.

Savas Hadjipavlou, Business Director of the Probation Chiefs Association expands on this:

Originally the public sector could pull in a case - we asked how would they know when they could call it in. This is an attempt to say the public sector doesn’t have responsibility for the whole thing. It places more emphasis on the assessment system. But risk assessment is not that precise a science. The culture will be new to the providers. It’s about looking at the behaviour of an individual intelligently, looking at the person intelligently. Is the risk assessment system capable of that fine granularity? 

As always, the article is worth reading in full, particularly if there are still people out there who either feel this is all a good idea, or even more bizarrely, think it's all likely to work. After all, you could be forgiven for missing the news sneaked out at 5.00pm on Friday and just as you were on your Bank Holiday travels that a significant number of government projects are in trouble.

Now I'd never heard of the Major Projects Authority before. It's a rare beast being a new QUANGO set up by the coalition government, as opposed to one of the many that got the chop. Anyway, a whole range of projects are going seriously awry and I notice that the MoJ shared services project is one of the 8 in the top red category and the MoJ PbR pilot programme is regarded as amber/red. 

The No10 petition still needs more signatures and can be found here.  

Political Interference

This post was intended to be about the eternal conflict between punishment and rehabilitation using the example of how Community Service was transformed into Community Payback, via Community Punishment. However, as is often the case, I've been blown off course by events and although not entirely unconnected, that topic will have to wait for another day.  

I notice that Rob Allen's most recent blog is dedicated to former Tory Home Secretary Michael Howard and his lasting legacy. It serves to remind us that if anyone was the architect of our present rehabilitation problems, together with probation's demise and imminent abolition, it was him:- 

Twenty years ago this month, Michael Howard became Home Secretary , bringing a sea change to penal policy in England and Wales with which we have been living ever since.   Overturning a consensus that Home Office policies could do little to reduce crime, he embarked on an ambitious programme designed to increase arrests, prosecutions, and convictions but it is his view that “prison works” and the impact of his policies on the numbers behind bars for which he will be most remembered.

Howard’s 27 point law and order package  delivered to the Conservative Party Conference in October 1993 included new Secure Training Centres for children as young as 12 and  mandatory minimum sentences for repeat  burglars and drug dealers to be served in decent but austere prisons.  Later policies to abolish parole and severely limit early release were never implemented but during his four year tenure prison numbers rose from 44,500 to 61,000.

Howard’s legacy was longer lasting however. By provoking political adversaries to oppose his reforms, he pushed his shadow Tony Blair and New Labour as a whole into a repressive approach to penal policy.  Prison numbers have continued to rise ever since 1993.

Howard’s treatment of the probation service was equally cavalier, removing the requirement for university based social work training and threatening the very existence of the service.  When he left office recruitment had almost dried up and it was left to Jack Straw to introduce a new scheme of professional training as an urgent priority.

But Rob also reminds us that Michael Howard unashamedly used his political position to interfere in criminal justice matters in order to further political aims, something which continues to this day despite legislative changes that have sought to reduce political interference. In particular he cites the tragic Bulger case:-
  
More disturbing perhaps was Howard’s  shamelessly  populist approach to law and order- most notoriously in his attempts to increase the tariff for the juvenile  killers of James Bulger, later described by  a senior judge  as “institutionalised vengeance ... [by] a politician playing to the gallery”.  In respect of his sentencing policy the Lord Chief Justice told the House of Lords that “Never in the history of our criminal law have such far reaching proposals been put forward on the strength of such flimsy and dubious evidence.” Indeed the most recent review of evidence by the Ministry of Justice has found that  “to date there has been no clear consensus from criminologists and commentators about whether there is an incapacitation effect at all, and if so, its scale.”

Now some see a certain similarity between the 'tough' approach of Michael Howard and the current Justice Secretary Chris Grayling. The case of David McGreavy serves to admirably illustrate this I think. On Monday the High Court overturned a gagging injunction imposed in 2009 that prevented any publication of details surrounding this prisoner and the offences committed in 1973. Apparently the application to overturn the injunction had been made by several national newspapers, including the Daily Mail, but with the active encouragement of Chris Grayling, Justice Secretary.

Now as far as I can see the only purpose for Mr Graylings intervention is as a blatant attempt to interfere with the Parole process by in effect encouraging newspapers to whip up a public outcry. Sadly some politicians always feel there are votes to be had by such tactics and of course it could be said that this was the real reason why Myra Hindley could never be released safely.

Interestingly it is said that McGreavy was first considered for a move to open conditions 23 years ago, but of course only those with intimate knowledge of the case will know the real reasons why progression has been repeatedly frustrated. I am absolutely and firmly of the belief that such matters must remain the purview of the independent Parole Board and they must be trusted to make sound judgements on our behalf, utterly free of political interference. It didn't stop Grayling gloating though:-

The justice secretary welcomed the ruling, saying: "This is a clear victory for open justice. The public has every right to know when serious offenders are taking legal action on matters which relate to their imprisonment."


Sign the No10 petition here.