Thoughts on a Difficult Case

Following on from my recent piece about Jon Venables, it would seem that the news item was  merely the curtain raiser for the subsequent main article in the Sunday Times Magazine last Sunday 3rd April. Written by David James Smith, the author of The Sleep of Reason : The James Bulger Case, one cannot help but feel the timing is designed to try and influence the Parole process later this year. 

Reading the article with dismay, I was particularly concerned at the level of information the journalist has supposedly amassed and I couldn't help but speculate how he seems to be able to quote verbatim from confidential running sheets, contact logs and internal reports? I find this quite shocking and a serious breach of confidentiality and professional practice by someone very close to a current case. So yet more information is now out in the public domain thus sadly serving to make a difficult case even more so. The main thesis of this article - which is behind the Murdoch paywall of course - is that the whole rehabilitation process has been chaotic. Of course not being involved it's very difficult if not impossible to say, but several things struck me as I read the article.

This case serves to highlight the complete separation of services between child and adult, between Social Services and Probation, between YOI and adult Prison. With hindsight it was extremely unfortunate that, having on the one hand successfully had the earlier 15 year tariff set aside in order to try and avoid the trauma of transfer to adult prison, the trauma of release came just at the point of the transfer of responsibility to the adult Probation Service. Now I can't be sure at what stage this occurred because this case has never been treated 'normally' at all. For instance there was never a transfer to YOI but very unusually Jon was kept at the Secure Unit instead. However, there will have been a transfer of responsibility and no doubt it will have been very unsettling for all concerned, not least Jon.

Of course all this confirms the absolute necessity of establishing and maintaining the 
relationship between client and supervising officer. In lifer cases it was always felt to be good practice that the officer had a 'pair', ideally of the opposite sex in order to bring a different perspective as well as to try and ensure continuity. This will have been even more important in a case like this involving issues of abnormal development, arrested adolescence and transition into adulthood. I would suggest that continuity of supervising officers would be absolutely vital not only in developing good professional and trusting relationships, but also in being able to more accurately assess risk.

It also reminds me as to exactly why it was felt appropriate that probation officers had a social work background. Like it or not, much of our 'offending behaviour' work with clients takes us into issues of welfare and emotional needs for which we are becoming increasingly ill-equipped.

Finally, I can't help noticing that the author continues to use the politically correct term of Offender Manager instead of Probation Officer. In a case like this I would have expected it to be handled by a very experienced pair of hands and not at all suitable for a Probation Services Officer. However you just never know nowadays and of course Offender Manager can mean either.