The Inspector Speaks

I'm grateful to Mike for pointing me in the direction of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee and the oral evidence given to it on March 29th by HM Chief Inspector of Probation Andrew Bridges. This in effect is his swansong as he is retiring in May and although his performance could be described as somewhat pedestrian, his measured tones deliver quite a lot and is worthy of taking a look at.

Even though we all know it, I still felt shocked when almost his opening remark concerning the creation of NOMS was the throwaway line that 'we might as well admit that probation was taken over by the prison service.' He said it had been a great sadness, he wouldn't have done it, but he wouldn't reverse it now either. He made the point that all the changes that probation had suffered meant that senior management had been too concerned with managing upwards at the expense of effectively managing downwards. In effect that all change has a cost. He felt that overall prison management had been better at financial management, but that the move to Trust status had been beneficial for the Probation Service in preparing it for the new environment of contestability.

I found it encouraging to hear the Inspector confirming that it is the one-to-one relationship between officer and client that remains key to the effectiveness of the work, although he was critical of cases where it seemed like the client was running things and not the officer. Now I think I would say that it has been an awfully long time since Mr Bridges was a main grade officer and to be honest the exponential growth in drug addiction has changed the whole landscape of probation work beyond recognition since his day. It is nigh on impossible in my view to have any kind of effective control over a chaotic drug user.

It was interesting to hear the Inspector discussing the three core aims of the Service and just how difficult it is to measure effectiveness sensibly, especially as we move towards an environment of Payment by Results. We had to deliver the sentence of the court, try and deliver a non-offending outcome and protect the public, but as he pointed out, results might not be felt for quite some time and were therefore difficult to measure. He went on to say it was possibly better to concentrate on 'interim outcomes' and at this point I found my mind wandering back to the days of Geoffrey Parkinson who famously got into serious trouble for suggesting he tried to persuade a bank robber to do some benefit fraud instead.

In essence the Inspector said that he felt that future for Probation was positive, but I have to say he didn't really sound that convincing. He did say however that he could see no problem in Probation Trusts being able to commission services as well as provide them. The more I think about this, the more I'm of the view this might be the very key to our survival. I notice that the Probation Association have been quite emphatic about this in their response to Ken Clarke's Green Paper. 

In order to ensure local accountability, commissioning must be by Trusts and not by NOMS centralised management. I can see quite an internal fight over this, but possibly the dismantling of the NOMS regional structure will help win the argument. I think it's worth bearing in mind that Local Authorities have been in this situation for years and they both commission and provide services.