Probation Staff Leaving

The plight of probation continues to get good media coverage. This from the Independent yesterday:-

Probation staffing crisis laid bare in damning reports as alarm sounded over public safety

Inspectors warn of ‘unsustainable and counterproductive’ situation as one local probation unit found to be 55 per cent short of officers

A string of new probation watchdog investigations have laid bare the staffing crisis blighting the service’s ability to supervise offenders in the community and keep the public safe. With prisons already dangerously full, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood announced this month that some 5,500 prisoners will be freed 40 per cent of the way into their sentence, starting from September.

But questions have been raised over how the probation service will be able to cope with this new influx of offenders who will pass into their care, amid warnings that the early release scheme enacted by the Tories – which saw 10,000 inmates freed in nine months – had caused “absolute mayhem” for the service.

Each of the four reports published by HM Inspectorate of Probation in the week following Ms Mahmood’s announcement highlighted understaffing as an issue which is already undermining probation workers’ efforts to keep the public safe.

In Essex South, the watchdog found just 45 per cent of the required number of probation officers in post – something inspectors said was understandably hampering the probation unit’s ability to supervise offenders.

As a result, the delivery of probation services in Essex South were judged to be to a level sufficient to effectively support public safety in as little as 23 per cent of cases examined by inspectors. Improvements were also needed in assessments to assess and manage the risks offenders posed in the community.

Similarly, in Northamptonshire, the probation officer vacancy rate was 40 per cent and workloads were too high as a result, with a situation further exacerbated by staff absences. Staff spoke of feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about what to prioritise – which had a detrimental effect on risk management, inspectors said.

In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, inspectors warned that “almost all the assessments we inspected were insufficient in relation to keeping people safe”, with senior supervising officers forced to handle cases themselves because of staff shortages and “very high” sickness rates, which further reduced capacity.

“The situation was unsustainable and counterproductive,” inspectors warned.
Inspectors in Hertfordshire warned that the probation unit’s staffing levels meant workloads too high across all grades. They said managers were signing off risk assessments which too often did not incorporate key information related to domestic abuse and child safeguarding.
The findings came as HM chief inspector Martin Jones reiterated the stark reality that 30 out of the 31 local probation units inspected across England and Wales in 2022-23 were judged to be either “inadequate” or “requiring improvement”.

While the government has pledged to have 1,000 extra trainee probation officers in place by next spring to help the service cope with the emergency prisoner early release scheme, Mr Jones warned it would take time for new recruits to “bed down” and gain the experience needed to supervise offenders.

Thousands of probation staff have left the service over the past two years, with almost two-thirds of the 359 officers who quit in the year to March 2023 taking with them five or more years of experience. As of March, 5,113 full-time probation officers were in post – 25 per cent below the required staffing level of 6,794.

One officer who joined the probation service as a “job for life” in 2018 told The Independent last year that she now reluctantly planned to quit, saying: “We are completely overwhelmed, morale is low, and we have multiple people in our offices on long-term sick leave – so six months or more – because it is so stressful.”

Responding to the four new inspection reports, Tania Bassett of the probation union Napo told The Independent: “The staffing crisis in probation is not going to go away anytime soon. Too few staff and dangerously high workloads lead to increased sickness of staff which only compounds the issue.”

Ms Bassett added: “As we enter the summer holidays, staffing will be at a critical state with many regions seeing their workforce reduce by 50 per cent as many people take annual leave.”

The timing of the government’s new prisoner early release scheme in September means that the pre-release work required for cases will need to be completed over this period – which “will only exacerbate already high workloads and cause additional stress to staff”, Ms Bassett warned.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The prison system is in crisis which is putting significant pressure on the whole justice system. We are gripping the situation and supporting our hardworking staff by improving training and recruiting 1,000 more probation officers nationally to deliver robust supervision and protect the public."

Time To Try Something Else

Many in probation would say OMiC or Offender Management in Custody has been a disaster and a clear sign of HM Prison Service having the whip hand in HMPPS. The Howard League is clear about what needs to happen:- 

What to do about Probation?

We have heard a lot about prison overcrowding over recent weeks, not least because of the Howard League’s own efforts, but there is overcrowding in probation too. And that matters, because the probation service is going to be asked to do more in the future.

Shabana Mahmood has made a welcome commitment to recruit 1,000 more trainee probation officers but as she acknowledged in Parliament, this is not new investment but a redeployment of resources. Probation will need that new investment and one place where the money could be found is in the budget currently earmarked to build new prisons. We shall see if the Ministry of Justice is able to follow the logic of its own announcements in the coming months.

In the meantime, what does probation reform look like? The Howard League is clear that the probation service should be delivered within a localised structure and with independence from the prison service. See, for example, the evidence we gave to the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry into community sentencing.

Such a restructuring will take time, however. What could ministers do right now to address concerns around probation caseloads and ensure, as we have said, that probation is equipped to be the ‘ultimate guarantor of public safety’? Here is one idea.

The probation service currently seconds a significant number of qualified and experienced probation officers to prisons. At the time of the last joint inspection in 2022, it amounted to 135 senior probation officers and 626 probation officers (although the targets for recruitment amounted to 206 senior probation officers and 797 probation officers).

Readers might be questioning why there are hundreds of probation officers working in prisons. They would not be wrong. The joint inspection into the reasons why, the Offender Management in Custody’ (OMiC) model, found that it was “simply not working”. Inspectors found shortfalls in public protection work, information sharing, and relationship building between prison staff, probation workers and prisoners. They went on to remark:

Despite transfer of almost 800 probation officers to POM [‘prison offender manager’] roles in prisons, we found very little added value from these posts. They had little direct contact with prisoners and were not clear about their roles and responsibilities under the OMiC model. Handovers to COMs [‘community offender managers’] were often of poor quality and little work was completed to prepare prisoners to work with COMs for their resettlement. We found little contact by POMs with prisoners, to work with and complete sentence planning with them.

When something is simply not working, it is time to try something else. The government should redeploy those probation officers working in prisons within the community. Work to prepare people for release from prison can be done just as effectively, if not more so, beyond the prison gates.

There may be resistance from within HMPPS and from those probation officers seconded to working in prisons. It is, as one former chief probation officer has remarked, a simple case of “the pressures in the prison probation officer role not matching those of the community probation officers. There is absolutely no chance of a ‘prison offender manager’ being caught up as the responsible supervising officer in a Serious Further Offence review.”

That shouldn’t stop the Ministry of Justice grasping the nettle, to reiterate our current mantra, and making the change. To deploy so many probation officers in prison when community workloads are so high is just irresponsible.

Andrew Neilson, Director of Campaigns

Comments

This is an interesting take. As an OMiC Senior Probation Officer, I can hardly be distinguished as being impartial to the above, however, I can certainly provide a ‘front-of-house’ view. The concerns I have with this proposal:

1. Many COM’s are overstretched to such an extent that they are unable to prioritise their custodial cases. Therefore, many POM’s go above and beyond the OMiC model to make up for the shortfalls from community teams. If OMiC is dissolved, there will be tens of thousands of prisoners who may feel neglected.

2. OMiC staff retention is generally healthy – transfer POM’s into the community against their will, then they will simply leave the service. Alas, we will have staffing issues in both the community and custody.

3. Due to community staffing levels, OMiC has never had the opportunity to launch as intended. The sensible thing to do would be to wait for the conclusion of the acute recruitment drive and then assess the shortfalls of OMiC.

In contrast, my view is that OMiC has the capacity to work effectively with the following proposals:

1. POM/COM handover date is pushed from 8.5 months prior to release, to 3 months before release. This will allow the COM more breathing space to prioritise community cases, and will put the onus on OMiC/resettlement teams to complete Approved Premises referrals/ generic accommodation referrals.

2. Parole reports, in my view, are the wrong way round. As drawn on above, POM’s generally spend more time with cases as they are more accessible – so they know them best. Parole reports should be led by the POM, with the COM providing an RMP to effectively manage said prisoner should they be released.

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Andrew. I agree and would suggest a further clarification of the role of OMU, POM and COM as experience suggests that there is much confusion over who does what and particularly when it comes to the continuum of sentence planning – preparation for release – post-release supervision. OMU and POM can be the same person but have limited planning/discussion/hand-off with COM. COM personnel changes are frequent. So yes, leave the OMU to focus on sentence planning and pull the POM and COM roles together outside the prison to prep the individual for what comes next and then support them through it. That’s a much simpler system. And the continuity of an individual POM/COM probation officer building a relationship through planning for release whilst an individual is inside and supporting that same individual post-release could provide enormous benefits to all. Even if there is a handoff to a specialist community PO a month after release, having the continuity from the POM/COM ensures a simpler and, logic would suggest, more effective transition.

Time For Probation Reform

With the new government getting to grips with the many problems left by the previous administration, this recent article in the Times highlights the head of steam that's building for urgent probation reform:-   

Plans to re-professionalise probation service are urgently needed

Staff spend a disproportionate amount of time in front of computers instead of engaging with offenders, writes Ian Fox

Any analysis of the complex arrangements and relationships that form our justice system should include a debate on how to deploy, manage, resource and support the probation service.

This issue has never been more necessary — the service is in a parlous condition as a consequence of the last government’s mismanagement and neglect. The increase in the size of the prison population and its apparent imperviousness to attempts by successive justice and home secretaries to reverse the trend is the elephant in the justice system’s waiting room.

Courts in England and Wales proportionately send more adults to custody than other western European countries, yet few commentators have included the role of the probation service in their analyses of this crisis, or rehabilitation per se.

In his in-tray as a new justice minister, James Timpson has to consider both a strategic review of probation governance and the opportunities offered by devolving both youth justice and probation to the Welsh government. Any terms of reference for the former should take into account the learning from both the disastrous merger of prisons and probation and the privatisation debacle that has left the service with only a vestige of its former professional reputation, visibility, respect and experience base.

The traditional top-down command and control structure in prisons has gradually built virtual walls around a service whose social justice and rehabilitation ethos is all but lost in a blizzard of processes and algorithms, reducing critical judgments to paper exercises. Consequently, staff spend a disproportionate amount of time in front of computers and in offices instead of engaging in valuable face-to-face contact with offenders and their families.

Plans to re-professionalise probation are urgently needed to separate it organisationally from the prison service in England, with its own director-general and governance arrangements that are geographically coterminous with police force areas, with a strategic focus on locally commissioned and delivered services. Relationships with the magistrates’ and crown courts also need to be reset.

Given that the Welsh government already has responsibility for employment, housing, education, and drugs and alcohol services, devolving probation and youth justice heralds the prospect of a structurally joined-up approach to crime reduction services in the principality.

With more than 100 years of history and once described as “the jewel in the crown” of the justice system, UK probation expertise was until a decade ago exported to many countries in the form of community programmes, services to courts and victims, and local partnerships. For the service to regain its rightful place at the heart of our justice system, the role of probation in delivering social justice and rehabilitation must be incorporated into the terms of reference of forthcoming reviews.

Ian Fox is a visiting fellow at the University of South Wales and a retired chief officer and regional manager of probation

Old School PO's - A long Shot

Using the blog search facility reveals that Medomsley Detention Centre has only warranted one mention over the years and that was in March 2019 in response to a BBC InsideOut investigation that revealed the MoJ had expended £3.6million settling 237 claims of sexual abuse by a former officer at the youth detention centre.

Sadly the piece generated little response, partly because the other big news story was the risk of CRC's being expanded and Interserve going bust. It was also a long time ago, the unit closing in 1988. Certainly knowledge of it in County Durham never came to my attention and I only have the vaguest recollection of Detention Centres.

Time moves on and I must admit I was completely unaware of an ongoing investigation by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman and that they are actively seeking people, probation, teachers, social workers, clergy etc., who had dealings and hence knowledge of the regime at Medomsley. So, retired colleagues, and given the passage of time it is most likely to be this group with knowledge going back so far, are you able to help?

Medomsley special investigation: Operation Deerness

Operation Deerness is the special investigation into abuse at Medomsley Detention Centre. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) was commissioned by the Secretary of State of Justice to carry out this special investigation. The final report will be published on this website.

About Medomsley

This facility was open from 1961 to 1987, holding boys and young men aged 17-21. Many of these young men suffered widespread and serious abuse. Police investigations have since led to the conviction of 7 former members of staff.

About Operation Deerness

The PPO investigation will look into:
what the authorities knew about the abuse over this period
if there were opportunities for them to take action or intervene
what action they took, if any

This is not a criminal investigation. The PPO will not re-investigate the facts of the abuse or individual incidents.

View the investigation’s complete terms of reference.

So, What Made You Leave?

With both prison and probation in the limelight and a new government trying to get to grips with the dire situation they've inherited from the Tory government, I noticed this from HM Probation Inspectorate on Linkedin. It would be a shame if it didn't get widespread attention:-

Have you left probation in the last few years?

We are conducting a thematic inspection of the recruitment, retention, and training of frontline probation practitioners. As part of this work, we would like to speak to staff who have recently left these roles to understand their experiences. This is an essential element of this inspection and will help inform our findings and recommendations for improvement.

If you have left a frontline practice role since June 2021 and are willing to talk about your experiences in confidence, please get in touch with Senior Research Officer Kevin.Ball@hmiprobation.gov.uk to arrange a convenient time for a telephone or online interview.

Interviews will take place throughout August, September, and October.

Alternatives to Prison

The prison capacity crisis together with a new government is at last giving us the opportunity of having a grown up debate about everything, including the urgent need to look at sentencing policy. This from Rob Allen:-  

Intermediate Treatment

Not surprisingly, we’re seeing a plethora of proposals for new Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood about how to solve the prison crisis. If I was in her job, I’d be particularly attracted to the Howard League’s idea of returning responsibility for prisons and probation to the Home Office. But I think that’s unlikely and undesirable. Peter Hennessey rightly described the Home Office as the graveyard of liberal thinking since the days of Lord Sidmouth.

Most of the suggestions being floated by think tanks, charities and experts focus on reducing demand for prison places in the short term through early release. Implicit in many proposals is the notion that when the 20,000 new prison places are up and running in a few years’ time, some sort of equilibrium will be restored between supply and demand.

I’ve argued that a new way of developing policy about who should go to prison and for how long, distanced from party political competition, might reverse the sharp rises in the custodial sentencing rate and length of prison terms we’ve seen in the last 14 years.

In addition we need to diversify the range of options that can be used as alternatives to prison.

Some of these are institutional alternatives. Many people in prison should be in hospital but thresholds for transfer and waiting times are both too high. The Justice Select Committee asked then Prisons minister Ed Argar about the number of available secure hospital beds for prisoners but doesn’t seem to have received a reply. There are simply not enough.

Other prisoners could potentially be transferred to residential treatment facilities which are being expanded as part of the 10 year Drug Strategy.

Other options include hostels and other supervised accommodation. From 2019 to 2023 the Approved Premise Expansion Programme delivered 169 additional beds, including opening 4 new Independent Approved Premises (83 beds) and 51 additional beds in dedicated premises for women. But there’s a case for a much more ambitious increase in half way houses. It could be paid for by paring back the prison building plans to say 15,000.

Back in 2001, the sentencing review carried out by senior Civil Servant John Halliday recommended that the Home Office- they were responsible back then- should

“establish a review of the existing “intermediate estate” for accommodating and managing offenders in the community, with the aim of developing a strategic plan for its future use, staffing, management and development. The review should embrace all types of accommodation, whether owned by the prison or probation services, or the independent and voluntary sectors, and whether used for prisoners on temporary release; prisoners on conditional release; offenders serving community sentences; or ex-offenders receiving support voluntarily”.

I am not sure such a review was ever done – but it’s certainly needed now.

Three years after Halliday’s review, then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that “satellite tracking technology could provide the basis for a 'prison without bars', potentially cutting prison overcrowding, and expensive accommodation”.

Progress with electronic monitoring has been chequered during the intervening years. But the review should look at whether the role its currently playing is optimal or whether it can serve to manage security risks for people placed in non-secure accommodation- what Halliday called “containment in the community”.

As well as the where of alternatives to prison, there’s a need to look at the how.

Back in 1979, I started work as a volunteer in IT- not computers (there weren’t many back then) -but Intermediate Treatment. With mixed results, I spent most of the next ten years trying to keep young people out of residential care homes, detention centres, Borstals and their institutional successors.

A generous description of the approach might be “eclectic”- camping trips, sports and drama sessions as much as counselling and groupwork. One troubled young man was placed on a ship in the Caribbean for several months, and an IT officer in a neighbouring area allegedly entered a crew into the Henley Regatta.

Quirky some of it might have been, but with relatively small caseloads, we were able to fashion a wide-ranging package of therapeutic and constructive activities for each individual which would help give them the best chance of staying at home, at school or work and out of trouble.

Of course there are resonances with the best of the approach in youth justice and even parts of probation today. There's a growing recognition that relationship based practice is a key to successful supervision and desistance from crime.

Practitioners need to have the opportunity and training to put that into practice so that more offenders can serve their sentences in the community and those that leave prison don’t go back. By enabling that to happen alongside a wider range of treatment and accommodation options, Ms Mahmood may be able not only to find a solution to the immediate crisis but chart a more positive long-term course. She will need to work with her colleagues responsible for health and local government to make it happen. Let's hope she does.

Rob Allen

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This from Frances Crook 9th July:-

There has been a lot in the news about the crisis in prisons. They are full, rat infested, ridden with drugs and violence, and the most serious challenge is that they feed the crime problem thus creating more victims and mayhem in the community. This has been a problem for more than a hundred years and cannot be solved with a few quick fixes like extending early release.

There are plenty of papers from academics and voluntary organisations suggesting ways to ease the crowding in prisons that would get the issue off the front pages but I would argue that unless we want to revisit this every few years something more fundamental needs to happen.

A succession of ministers have come and gone and given speeches about making prisons work better and introducing initiatives to improve education and ‘rehabilitation’ and yet nothing has changed. Things can only get worse unless we do something radical.

It is interesting that the new government is planning to fix the front door of the NHS by diverting billions to local services. That is what needs to happen in the justice system. We should divert funding to front end services which means to probation but also to mental health, drug services and to support for housing and crime reduction. If we want to prevent crime, this is the sensible way forward. Just in the health service, the expensive use of residential services like hospitals and prisons, should be used as a last resort and the emphasis should be on the front end and prevention.

We cannot build our way out of the challenge. Building more prisons is a criminal waste of public money that embeds the problems. I have written about how new prisons simply replicate the problems of old prisons in a previous blog.

The new government has to get to grips with sentencing reform. The inflation in sentences has seen people spend many years longer in prison than before and I have never seen any research that showed that sending someone to prison for twenty instead of ten years makes them safer. Too many people are sent to prison in the first place and too many are sent to prison on remand. Big changes are required. It will take legislative bravery which is why it needs to be done in the early years of a government.

Secondly, money needs to go to probation. It deals with the majority of people convicted of a crime, either under sentence or on release from prison. It has been starved of funding and respect. Probation should be untied from the shackles of the civil service, linked to local democracy and the service given the freedom to act with professionalism.

Most importantly we need new leadership. It is depressing to hear some senior politicians repeating the tired and failed rhetoric of ‘we must build more prisons quicker (yes, I mean you Yvette Cooper) which will waste public money and embed more crime and drug addiction. New thinking, brave thinking, is needed that talks to the public as grown ups. With a massive Parliamentary majority and a crisis that is generating front page news, the new government should act with integrity and speed. It can do in the justice system what it is doing in the health system. Learn the lessons of past failures and make things better.

Frances Crook

Crunch Time

From yesterday's Mirror:-

Prison crisis talks called as Justice Secretary warned over early release of inmates

Probation staff will warn Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood that the service is at breaking point ahead of an announcement expected on the early release of prisoners.

Keir Starmer is this week expected to sign off emergency measures to let thousands of prisoners out of jail early to ease overcrowding. But the probation service, which monitors newly released offenders, has said it “simply cannot cope” with demand as it is.

In an urgent meeting on Thursday, Ms Mahmood will be told that probation staff are expected to support the “possibility” of strike action for the first time in around a decade after years of being “batted away” by the Tory Government. She and Prisons Minister James Timpson will be told they have the chance to avoid walkouts by reopening pay negotiations with probation staff.

The new Justice Secretary will also be urged to commit to long-term investment to attract more staff to the profession amid fears public safety could be put at risk as workloads increase. This week the Government is expected to announce plans to free some prisoners after serving just 40% of their sentences.

Sources in the probation service told the Mirror this method of early release is favoured as it still means offenders have a scheduled release date. This is compared to the emergency early release scheme, which the Tory government introduced and sees prisoners freed up to 70 days early at a moment’s notice.

Concerns have been raised that rushed releases mean prisoners are being freed without support such as stable accommodation or employment plans. Some people are then either purposely reoffending to return to jail to avoid life on the streets, while others are committing crimes such as shoplifting for food out of desperation, sources say. There are also fears particularly for victims of domestic abuse, if offenders are being released without proper safety plans.

In January Mr Starmer told Rishi Sunak the probation service is "on its knees" in the wake of Zara Aleena’s murder in London. He slammed "systemic failures" after a report found probation staff missed a “catalogue of chances” to stop Jordan McSweeney murdering the 35-year-old law graduate.

Ian Lawrence, the General Secretary at the probation service’s union Napo, told the Mirror: “We know prisons are full but so is the probation service. We cannot simply cope with the sheer volume of people emerging from prison as it is, let alone with the early release.”

He added: “We need to be listened to as we don’t want to get into industrial action. We’d much rather engage positively. With the new Government, what we feel is we’re going to get listened to. The last Government batted everything away and expected the Probation Service to pick up the slack.”

UNISON head of probation Ben Priestley said: "Staff are stretched too thinly to give newly released prisoners the support they need. Plus the stress of the job is so great that experienced workers are leaving the service all the time. Investing in probation is key to fixing the crisis in the justice system. Rehabilitating people in the community is far more effective than locking them up in already overcrowded jails."

A Government spokeswoman said: “The prison system is under immense pressure, which is straining the entire justice system. The Lord Chancellor is committed to addressing this imminent crisis and is acutely aware of the impact this is having on hard-working probation staff. We will work with unions across the justice system to ensure the public is protected and the Probation Service can continue to deliver high-quality supervision in the community.”

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This from yesterday's Guardian:-

Starmer ‘shocked’ about prisons crisis as early release scheme prepared

Government to announce terms which could free more than 20,000 inmates in coming months to manage capacity.

The “shocking” prisons crisis is even worse than feared, Keir Starmer has said as the government prepares to release tens of thousands of inmates early in a bid to prevent jails becoming full.

The prime minister suggested he was opposed to freeing violent criminals and sex offenders when ministers announce the terms of a new prisoner release scheme for England and Wales on Friday.

The Guardian understands that ministers are examining whether the scheme can exclude domestic abusers.

It is expected to allow early release for those who have served 40% of their sentence, instead of 50% under current rules for inmates serving determinate sentences. Whitehall sources have said this could lead to the release of more than 20,000 inmates over many months.

The former Conservative justice secretary Alex Chalk is understood to have pushed the former prime minister Rishi Sunak for months to change those rules, but Sunak is said by insiders to have repeatedly overruled Chalk, believing that it would be politically toxic and that numbers could be managed within existing systems.

One figure from the previous administration said: “We held our nerve on this for months and found other ways to keep the system operational and get new prison places online – Labour have bottled it.”

Speaking to reporters on a trip to the Nato summit in the US, Starmer said that Conservative government had been reckless in letting prisons come within a fortnight of reaching overflow.

“It is shocking for our country to have got into a state where we have too many prisoners and not enough prison places,” he said. “To a point where any government is now in a position where it has to release prisoners early. That is a shocking indictment. That is a total failure of government.”

Prisons are understood to have been operating at 99% capacity for 18 months with 100 net prisoners being added every week. A government source said: “What we encountered when we came in was a shocking act of self-harm to the country. They had pulled small levers to try and delay prisons reaching capacity by weeks, but had never taken the tough decisions. There are now no good options.”

A decision must be made this week to prevent full capacity being hit by 1 August. The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will make a statement on Friday about the terms of the prisoners’ release.

Starmer pointed to a report in May which found that a high-risk prisoner had his release date brought forward despite a history of stalking and domestic abuse, and being subject to a restraining order.

Asked what the terms of the prisoner release scheme would be, Starmer said he had “pressed Rishi Sunak hard” on that case in parliament, adding: “We will set that all out when we make a statement in coming days. But you know from my question to Mr Sunak … where I stand on this.”

Starmer said: “Some of what we’ve found is shocking … The situation is worse than I thought it was. I’m pretty shocked that it’s been allowed to get into that situation.

“It’s reckless to allow them to get into that place … We’re going to have to set out the state of affairs; what we intend to do about it, but it will include this question for risk categories.”

Labour’s manifesto promised a tough line on domestic abuse and pledged to halve violence against women and girls within a decade, including dedicated “rape courts” and domestic violence experts taking 999 calls.

On Wednesday a Home Office adviser warned that the pledge would put more pressure on prisons, with an additional 10,000 domestic abuse convictions if just one in three victims came forward.

Nicole Jacobs, the government’s domestic abuse commissioner, wrote to Starmer to highlight that the current prisons crisis was taking place at a time of historically low rates of convictions for those perpetrating domestic abuse.

Other experts warned that the early release system was a short-term fix and the overcrowding crisis would need significant investment in the coming years. Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors Association, said Starmer appeared to have heeded warnings for emergency action, but warned that investment would also have to be found to fix a broken system.

“We’re hopeful that the penal populism of the last government is a thing of the past and that the new government is willing to invest in our service so that we can effectively protect the public by reducing the likelihood of reoffending,” he said.

Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, said Starmer’s promise to act followed years of neglect by Tory governments.

“By the end of July, prisons will be full,” he said. “So no matter what people’s opinions are, or how unpalatable the announcement may be, there is an urgent need to decrease the prison population and give our members some breathing space so we can start to reverse the chaos of the last 14 years.”

Last week Starmer appointed James Timpson as his prisons minister. The owner of a successful chain of keycutters, Timpson has long employed ex-offenders and has argued the country is “addicted to punishment … locking people up far too long. And we’re sending people to prison when actually all the evidence suggests prison is not the right place for them.”

A Ministry of Justice source said there were no plans to extend the early release scheme from 70 days early, as announced in May. It was previously extended to 60 days, from 18 days in March. The government is understood to have no plans for a queuing system for sentences and it is hoped that the releases will buy enough time to begin efforts to build capacity and start to address reoffending rates.

Speaking to the Today Podcast, Chalk said the releases were “the right way to proceed” but said it would “buy you 18 months, but it won’t buy you any more than that. You have to, as the new justice secretary, be very frank and credible about the long term.”

Prison Crisis and Probation Irrelevance?

Now we know Keir Starmer did have a plan and there are responsible and knowledgeable adults in charge, I guess it's time to find something to say about the prison crisis and there's quite a bit of material to choose from. A contributor pointed me in the direction of this article from Yorkshire Bylines and it's a good trot through the issues, but somewhat alarmingly we're told "rehabilitation is a myth" and mention of probation is half-hearted to say the least:-

"contact with a probation officer who genuinely cares about the former inmate and their future can also support change." 

In this piece, probation is clearly an irrelevance. Have things got that bad and is this the new government's view? 

New government: new approach to the prison crisis?

Conservative neglect has left the prison service in a state of advanced crisis – Labour must take swift action

The prison service is running out of places. Prisoners are already banged up in threes in cells designed for one, along with their shared ‘piss pot’ as there are insufficient staff to unlock cells to let prisoners out to defecate.

A new government

The celebrations are over. Permanent secretaries and civil servants have welcomed ministers to their departments and the new minister will have said a few words about how honoured they are to work with them for the country’s good. It is now down to business. There will matters to be dealt with immediately – those relating to national security and any immediate decisions that have been awaiting the new minister’s arrival. Civil servants will open discussions on the most pressing items on their department’s risk register. At the top of the list for the home secretary will be the broken immigration system and the prisons crisis.

Labour has staked its claim to government on getting a grip on policy areas and processes, good governance and good management. The prisons crisis will be its first test. The prison service has run out of places. Prison inspection reports have highlighted the dire state of prisons in England and Wales. Violence is endemic and there are serious and imminent risks of rioting and destruction. Already prisons are dealing with ‘mini-riots’ on a day to day basis. A hot summer will be a powder keg. If prisons blow, it will risk death, millions of pounds in damage and the final collapse of the prison system.

Cause of the prison crisis

Every prison crisis is driven by overcrowding. Overcrowding erodes positive regimes, creates tensions amongst inmates and enables drugs and weapons to enter more readily. Overcrowding also impacts on officer overwork, their capacity to do the job well and with empathy. Ultimately, it destroys staff morale. New officers are naïve, lack judgement, and are insufficiently trained and experienced when being placed on the landings for the first time. They become vulnerable to prisoner exploitation, including developing inappropriate relationships with inmates. It can also feel safer to have a drugged-up prison population than to try and manage prisoners locked in their cells 23/7.

Two things cause overcrowding: more people entering the prisons and/or people being imprisoned longer. Both are occurring just now. In December 2023 there were 87,489 inmates incarcerated across England and Wales, a 7% rise on the previous year and 19,028 new receptions, a 20% rise on the previous year. More people are entering the system and sentences have been getting longer.

The length of prison sentences has risen hugely over the past few years. in 2010 the average custodial sentence was 16 months. By 2019 in was 21.4 months. The length of time people spent in custody (with remission or early release) rose from 8.1 to 13.7 months. Most of the increase in the average length of sentence and times served was down to longer sentences at the higher end of sentencing (over four years). At this rate prison places would need to rise by one third every decade.

Government response

The problems have been brewing for some considerable time. And reached a critical emergency in the summer of last year. Under the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act, the government began releasing offenders 18 days early in October 2023. Early release was extended to 60 days in March 2024 and 70 days from May. Also in May, under Operation Early Dawn, the government ordered the delay of court cases to avoid more people entering the prison system. Victims and witnesses, as well as defendants, were turning up at court to find their cases adjourned because of prison overcrowding.

The sentencing bill (abandoned with the general election) included clauses would have restricted courts’ ability to sentence people to under twelve months imprisonment, requiring them to impose a community alternative with a new suspended prison ‘order’ in case of failure.

Prison governors are also recommending that people are released after 40% of their sentence and government officials are considering implementing Operation Brinkman, a one-for-one in-out approach to immediate custody. The Conservative government ducked implementing new measures, fearful of an election backlash. These schemes may be necessary to avert a national emergency and Labour will have a short window in which to build on public sympathy for mess they have been gifted.

But these measures can only be a stopgap. Early release or deferral schemes have the long-term effect of undermining the criminal justice system and faith in sentencing, leading, in turn, to calls for longer and harsher sentences as the public believe that sentences are already too soft or are not being fulfilled as intended.

Longer term options

Longer term there are only three options to reduce overcrowding: build more prison places, reduce sentence length, or sentence offenders in some other way.

The Conservative government promised 20,000 new prison places in 2010 – at a cost of just under £50,000 per place, per annum. Since then, 6,000 have been brought on stream and Labour promises to finish the rebuilding programme. More prisons are being built and more places added to existing prisons. However, these places were intended to replace and modernise the existing prison estate, enabling some of the oldest prisons to be closed, and some have been. They also need to be staffed and there is a shortage of able recruits.

The courts already have many sentencing options open to them. They can discharge offenders without a punishment, fine them and place them on community orders with a whole range of conditions they think might be appropriate – unpaid work, residence, drug treatment etc. There is no shortage of ‘alternatives’ to imprisonment yet the UK continues to imprison at a rate double that of most other European countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy. Even France at a rate of 100 people imprisoned for every 100,000 is nowhere near the UK’s 167 per 100,000.

Prison – the ultimate failure of criminal justice policy

Punitive measures do not deter or reform and often accelerate an offending trajectory. Only a tiny proportion of reported crime (4-7%) comes to sentence. The offences people are most concerned about – sexual offences and violence against women and girls are rarely reported. Levels of crime in prison are far higher than they are outside although most ‘offences’ are categorised as disciplinary ‘adjudications’ not criminal matters.

In 2023, in just three months, there were 53,287 adjudications, 35% higher than the previous year and loss of remission for these infractions added nearly 5,000 prison place days in a year to already overcrowded prisons. The cost of reintegration following sentence is borne by the poorest communities whose public services are slashed to pay for increased incarceration of their neighbours and families.

Increased imprisonment does not even make the public feel better or safer. The public continues to believe sentences are shorter than they are, and, in any case, always too short. At best, imprisonment provides symbolic support for the law-abiding intentions of those who remain free.

The myth of rehabilitation

There is now a wealth of research on ‘what works’ on reducing offending, though it might be more accurately called ‘what fails’. Not much works. There is no magic approach, no effective treatment and nothing that deters. Crime levels are driven by economic and social conditions and the criminal justice system is almost irrelevant. It rarely prevents reoffending although it can have a positive impact in some individual cases and can support the conditions for desistance (a stable family, home job etc.). The contact with a probation officer who genuinely cares about the former inmate and their future can also support change.

Governments and rehabilitation services need to have a much more honest discussion with the public about what can be achieved. Punishment neither deters nor reforms. It should be the absolute minimum required to show society’s disapproval or to protect the public from dangerous offenders.

Distorted public perception on sentencing

Almost everything that the public believes about sentencing is wrong. It believes fewer than 25% of convictions for rape result in a prison sentence (the starting point for rape sentencing is four years and is applied in almost every single case). It believes people serve half the time of the average life sentence and that it has got shorter rather than longer over the years. It believes less than half of those who commit burglary are sentenced to imprisonment (it is over 80%).

The public believes prisons are ‘holiday camps’. While there are some new prisons and some of a higher standard, overall the prison estate is one of wall to wall rat infested squalor, degradation and violence. While there may not be much sympathy for the inmates, even though most are petty offenders in need of support, staff in these establishments are also at great risk.

Options for the new government

The Labour government is likely to implement some of the emergency measures listed above. It will need to do enough to enable the prison service to get itself back on track and to create some headroom so longer-term solutions can be found. While prison sentences under twelve months achieve only poor outcomes, I am not convinced their abolition is the solution. Already 37% of receptions into prison are for people who have breached community sentences or post release licence conditions. The more we sentence to community penalties, the greater the risk of breach and subsequent imprisonment.

It would be far more useful to reduce prison sentences to days instead of months for offences such as drunk and disorderly behaviour, breach of the peace, minor thefts, or breach of community orders etc. it should also be possible to have sufficiently short sentences so that those held on remand are immediately released. Too often they are sentenced to a community alternative, having spent months on remand, and then breach it.

Longer prison sentences could be reduced by years. While the public may believe that abhorrent crimes such as rape deserve strong retribution, sentences could be halved and would still be twice as long as the public believes the crime to deserve.

Prison sentences of days rather than months would mean people would retain their jobs, relationships and accommodation and would not have to start afresh on leaving prison. There would not need to be such a range of costly ‘rehabilitation’ services to put right the damage of imprisonment. All this can be achieved at no greater risk to the public and probably a great deal less.

Dr Stella Perrott

Stella Perrott is a consultant in criminal justice and children’s services who has spent 25 years reviewing public services when things have gone wrong. She lives in North Yorkshire.

A Very Bad Idea

Regular readers will recall that one unfortunate casualty of Rishi Sunak having a hissy fit and calling a very unexpected general election was the last minute cancellation of a BBC Newsnight investigation into the mess HMPPS was making of sex offender programmes.

Sadly, but very conveniently for HMPPS, this film will never see the light of day due to the BBC culling all the investigative journalists from Newsnight and reducing the programme to 30 rather than 45 minutes. Fortunately, I see the subject gets a thorough airing in this piece published yesterday by ByLine Times:-

Ministry of Justice Downgrading of Sex Offender Rehabilitation Will Have ‘Catastrophic Effect’ on Public Safety, Union Warns

The salaries of specialist probation officers who manage sex offenders are being cut – and 77% say they plan to leave the job.

New plans to cut the salaries of specialist probation officers who manage the risk of sex offenders could have a “catastrophic” effect on public safety, unions warn.

Sex offenders in England and Wales are often required to take part in Horizon, a programme designed to reduce their risk of reoffending. Around 1 in 10 sex offenders go on to commit a similar crime.

The programme is facilitated by specialised officers, many of whom have decades of experience working with sex offenders, but the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has decided the role will drop from band 4 to band 3 for new recruits from 1 August 2024, which will result in a pay cut of up to £10,000.

Facilitators will no longer be required to be qualified probation officers, which comes with two years’ training, including risk management and risk assessment.

Around 93% of Horizon facilitators think the public will be at increased risk following these changes, according to an internal survey of members of the union Napo seen by Byline Times.

These changes are like “putting the teaching assistants in charge of the school,” says Laura, a specialist probation officer with experience facilitating and managing these programmes. Laura, (not her real name) added that it takes a lot of experience to be able to idenitfy the signs that someone may reoffend.

“People with 10 to 20 years’ experience are really good at picking up on the signs when someone is becoming risky,” the specialist probation officer says. “And we have a degree-level qualification in managing risk."

“My concern is that we’ll lose these experienced staff who are good at identifying risk, and I can think of a number of situations where staff running these programmes have identified risk that has led to us finding out that men have been having contact with children they shouldn’t have been, which has led to them being recalled to prison.”

Facilitators who are currently at band 4 will have their pay frozen for three years, then it will drop to band 3, and their job roles will encompass a broader range of programmes.

The decision has caused a “serious loss of trust” among facilitators, says Max (not his real name), a probation officer with over a decade’s experience of facilitating sex offender programmes. “A lot of people around me, with a lot of experience, are thinking about leaving the service,” he says.

According to NAPO’s survey, 77% of specialist probation officers say they will leave their team. This will leave inexperienced staff to do the work, says Napo’s Tania Bassett. 

“Inexperienced staff will need to be trained in Horizon, which will take time, and in some cases there is no training provision,” she told Byline Times. "As a result, we expect large parts of the country to be left unable to deliver any sex offender work for quite a few months."

“Existing groups are likely to be withdrawn as there won’t be any staff left to complete them. Evidence shows that, where a programme is only partially completed, risk of offenders increases.”

Probation officers that manage people on probation are supported by divisional sex offender units, which consist of specialist probation staff that deliver Horizon. They’re trained to conduct thorough risk assessments and sentence management plans for sex offenders, and provide tailored interventions.

“A lot of probation officers with caseloads lack the confidence of how to work with people with sexual convictions, and look to us for advice,” says Max. 

The new plans will eliminate this oversight across the country, says Rebecca (not her real name), a senior probation officer, who declined to provide her name. “There will be a two-tier workforce that will be watered down over time because experienced staff have left and continue to do so. They don’t want to go back into the field doing case management and overseeing an extremely high caseload, which holds a significant level of accountability. We’re walking into a furnace.”

This move could have a “catastrophic” effect on public safety, says Unison, one of the UK’s largest trade unions.

“With the probation service suffering from an acute workload and staffing crisis, it’s all the more important to hold on to experienced employees to supervise complex cases effectively,” says Ben Priestley, the union’s national officer for police and probation. "Doing away with specialist units with expertise in dealing with sex offenders will lead to a significant loss of skilled staff with the necessary experience. Communities will be left without the protection they deserve and require."

The agenda around punishing sex offenders seems to focus on increasing sentences, rather than protecting those at risk of being targeted by sex offenders, says Harriet Wistrich, founder and director of the Centre for Women’s Justice.

Wistrich, a solicitor who acted for some of the victims of John Worboys, known as the ‘black cab rapist’, told Byline Times: “Unless you lock everyone up forever, people will come up of prison, usually on license, and this is a critical time. If they’re regarded low enough in risk, that risk should be very carefully monitored by probation, which requires particular skills and experience.

“Sex offending is a specific type offending. It’s quite different from a lot of other offending because it seems many sex offenders are quite able to present themselves in ways that won’t necessarily make them appear to be a risk to those who aren’t very skilled at identifying and understanding that risk and manipulation,” she says.

There are also plans to replace Horizon, which is designed specifically for those with sexual convictions, with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ course, Next Generation of Accredited Programmes.

Simon (not his real name) completed Horizon while on probation after serving time for a sexual offence and credits it with changing his life. “Getting caught helped me see there were things I needed to address to understand why I did what I did, and I’m a better person now,” he says. “Horizon provides an understanding that we’re all built differently, and it takes a trigger to send you over the edge.”

Simon praises the facilitators, saying they were “excellent” and know how to “treat people”. “If one of us stepped out of line, they were soon told,” he told Byline Times. “You could see their experience in how they spoke to you. Having that experience was vital.”

The move should be a concern to the public, says George Georgiou, GMB’s national officer.

“The work undertaken with people who have committed sexual offences is – and has been for decades – specialised,” he says. “The way people offend and the theories and approaches to addressing this behaviour varies by offence type. “Evidence shows the effective treatment of people who have committed offences of a sexual nature does reduce the risk of their reoffending. GMB is concerned removing specialist workers leaves the public at risk of increased reoffending.”

Daniel, (not his real name) was sexually abused by a teacher when he was 13.

The 55-year-old says he’s struggled with feelings of guilt for not going to the police about his abuser, who went on to sexually abuse other children. “It’s so vital that the right infrastructure is in place to support and rehabilitate people so they don’t reoffend,” he says.

A Probation Service spokesperson told Byline Times that sex offenders are “supervised by qualified probation officers and the Horizon behaviour change programme they undertake will continue to be delivered by appropriately trained staff. These changes will ensure these programmes are delivered consistently across the country to reduce the risk of reoffending.”

Jessica Bradley

Guest Blog 99

Future victims and a denial of cost cutting

Programmes is in a mess. Absolute turmoil, staff in meltdown, off sick or leaving in their droves nationally. Yet when we talk to our OM colleagues we are either met with a shrug, or indifference. Well, good luck, as shit rolls downwards.

Due to a job evaluation that has taken over two years the highly qualified band 4 officers who deliver sex offender programmes are being ‘re-banded’ to Band 3. Many have decades of experience with this cohort, imparting knowledge and risk assessments to OM colleagues and the courts.

Equally highly qualified Band 3 PSOs (many of whom are educated to Masters level) are taking on the sex offender group work. This is not the job they signed up for, and numerous have the attitude of ‘why should we, for ten grand less?’ Considering the Band 3 has such a low starting salary its now possible to be paid more in an admin level job in local authorities and councils. Now we value admin colleagues but lets face it the stress of dealing with DV perpetrators or those who offend sexually is markedly lower in admin than a PSO in programmes.

Recent VLO banding to Band 4 was of course welcome, but this is even more a kick in the teeth to PSO’s in Programmes who will often spend in excess of over 70 hours face to face with people on probation (BBR totals around 70 hours face to face work). The only PSOs who deal face to face with High Risk sexual and domestically violent offenders in the service are now wondering should they jump ship into Band 4 VLO positions, or head into a Domestic Abuse Safety Officer (DASO) role? But, hang on – they can’t because all band 4 roles are ringfenced for the Band 4 programmes officers being transferred in. Band 3 PSOs are facing a future as Intervention Facilitators, unable to access any other PSO roles in courts, or sentence mangers as they will be second class employees. They will be seen as external candidates for the PQiP route, closing every door internally. All TM roles are being allocated to the Band 4 probation officers being thrown out of the sex offender programmes. Therefore the TM training pathway and interview process for BBR and TSP is being watered down, resulting in the TM’s of the future never having delivered these programmes before telling those highly experienced BBR facilitators how to do their job.

The JES appeal is being appealed by NAPO as it was widely inaccurate and yet radio silence from the Unions to the wider probation service.

Many suspect the handling of this process is reminiscent of a nicely packaged up Interventions service heading for the private sector. Sold off twice – charming. Wonder how the public would react if they knew that highly specialist teams dealing with this cohort are being disbanded ready for another Grayling moment?

In the meantime in many regions of England and Wales there are no programmes being run for sex offenders, Band 3 teams cut in half, hampered in their attempts to offer domestic violence rehabilitation work, long waiting lists building up. What a shambles, again.

Anon