What Price a PSR?

Regular readers will be aware that I have previously discussed at some length the disgraceful fall in standard of computer-generated Pre-Sentence Reports and have gone as far as to predict their complete demise. When the history comes to be written, I believe that the blame will be placed fairly and squarely at the door of OASys. It's been pretty much a self-inflicted double-whammy, not only making the production of a quality piece of work nigh on impossible, it's more than doubled the time it takes to prepare and hence doubled the cost.

Rather than admit that the whole thing has been a disaster, management ushered in the so-called Fast Delivery Report which had the handy aspect of avoiding the time-consuming OASys completely. They could be completed by non qualified staff and within a matter of an hour or so. But, according to Jonathan Ledger's NAPO blog, even this is being dispensed with by some courts in the rush to deliver speedy justice to some of the early riot defendants. Of the two young men sentenced at Chester Crown Court recently to four years each for Incitement on Facebook he says:-

"Word is that in this case the Court did not want either a standard or even a fast delivery report but merely an on the spot assessment of the impact of custody on the defendants by the Probation Service. I don't know how common this practice is becoming but it is a disgrace and runs against the state's duty to properly assess background and behaviour."

If correct, it seems my ominous prediction some time ago has come to fruition rather sooner than even I predicted. It will be very interesting indeed to see what the Appeal Court makes of this aspect of these two cases. According to press reports, Lord Justice Judge has cleared his diary in order to fast-track any appeals, so we should find out what the higher courts' view is pretty quickly. My feeling and hope is that the sidelining of proper probation PSR's in this somewhat unseemly rush to summary justice for the rioters will be scrutinised thoroughly by the Appeal Court and Judges reminded of their duty to commission full reports.  

As an aside, I notice that there are several urgent appeals on the Guardian website for qualified probation officers in London required immediately for court work.