I make no apology for returning to the issue of privatisation because the coalition government have made it plain that they intend to go much further than the previous Labour administration and probation is very much within their sights.
Many people voiced concerns at the time when the decision was taken to abolish the Forensic Science Service and instead allow the private sector to compete with Police Forces in providing this vital aspect of our criminal justice system. Many, including myself, still feel that only the state should undertake tasks that involve a citizens fundamental rights such as their safety and liberty.
An announcement is imminent regarding a further tranche of prisons that may well be turned over to the private sector and it's rumoured has only been delayed because of the G4S Olympic security scandal. The boundaries between the state and private enterprise is getting dangerously blurred in my view and I note with concern that G4S is the only non-governmental organisation that has access to the Police National Computer database.
It feels morally repugnant to turn a profit arresting people, prosecuting them and ultimately incarcerating them, so the news that a man was wrongly charged with rape and held in custody for two months because of sloppy practise by a private forensic laboratory should concern us all. LGC Forensics allowed DNA samples to become contaminated due to 'unsatisfactory' practise's within the laboratory and the man was only ruled out of the investigation by mobile phone location evidence.
Who the hell is LGC I hear you ask? Well, until privatised by the last Labour government, it was the very well-respected Laboratory of the Government Chemist.
And when it was Government run, did it make no mistakes?
ReplyDeleteNow, there are alternative laboratories - so LGC can be fired and replaced with a better laboratory if there is one - and there is no civil-service musical chairs with the same people being one year managers and the next inspectors of the establishments they managed, with every incentive to cover up for their colleagues - strike that - give their colleagues the benefit of the doubt.
An adversarial relationship is a good thing for justice.
This cuts both ways. Since the FSS was closed and the work it used to do put out to tender, many police services have decided to take much of the work in house, although not one single police forensic testing facility is accredited by the Regulator, and of those assessed to date only five have been recommended for accreditation. This distorts the market, because only accredited private labs are allowed to bid for such work, whereas police testing services are exempt (unless they want to take on work from other forces), and as a result they're clearly not competing on a level playing field.
ReplyDeleteWhat worries me more is the loss of the "bigger picture" and the increasing compartmentalisation of forensic testing. The FSS was far from perfect (as shown by a number of high profile blunders), but it did at least try to see the wood through the trees. There is little evidence to date that the Regulator has any similar overarching concern with improving standards, and some that it sees its rôle as simply ensuring that commercial labs meet minimum standards (which in many cases represent a "lowest common denominator").
But all of this highlights what is, for me, the great deception over the 'free market' approach to service delivery.
ReplyDeleteWhenever a company is 'privatised', the management goes from public to private sector bur, because of TUPE regulations and the limited number of people qualified to deliver these services, the actual people doing the job day to day doesn't change. WHen, after three years, the decision is taken to change the provider, the new provider, usually a management company lacking the infra-structure to take on the new work, TUPE's the workers over from the other private provider and uses them to do the work. In short, change the managers 100 times but none of them offer any effective long term commitment to training etc and, so, the worker who actually do the job, are always the same people. It is just the management that changes and the amount of money they redirect away from front line service provision. Employees and customers get poorer outcomes and nobody that actually matters wins.
Except the shareholders.
The model is perverse.
The real problem is that DNA evidence is seen as infallible. At one time, he would have been released on police bail while his alibi was checked. What about witness identification? Did she recognise his photo? There's no substitute for real detective work.
ReplyDeleteLook up "The Phantom of Heilbronn". The German police spent years chasing an imaginary serial criminal before finding out the DNA on the swabs came from a worker at the factory that manufactured them.