So, the 'bigger, better' Probation Service was duly launched to much enthusiastic tweeting from the 'excellent' leaders, one of whom had the pleasure of hosting Robert Buckland to Chippenham yesterday and who just couldn't avoid offering proof as to why the Service must break free of political control if it's to be of any real use once more:-
The new unified Probation Service will better protect the public and will help us cut crime. This morning I visited the Chippenham Probation Service to thank our unsung crimefighters and see the benefits of the £300m of extra funding we have invested since July 2019. There are already 1000 new probation officers helping to prevent reoffending and we plan to recruit 1,500 more this year. Read my article in Daily Mail to see how the new Probation Service will keep our streets safe:-Probation system WILL work better for victims
I share the frustrations of many Daily Mail readers that Colin Pitchfork could soon be out of prison. His were the gravest of crimes which left two families in unimaginable grief.
Three decades on, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth’s loved ones still live with the pain, and they have been front and centre in my thoughts in recent weeks. If convicted today, he would almost certainly have received a whole life order, behind bars without any hope of release. That will become the default for any premeditated child murder under our new Sentencing Bill.
But such a power was not available then, and so it fell to the independent Parole Board to decide, not if the original punishment was right, but if he is now safe to release.
My role as Lord Chancellor here is limited. The Government cannot overrule the Board’s decisions, but I can ask them to reconsider if it looks like the way they reached a decision was wrong or if it’s out of step with the evidence. After careful consideration, I will be doing that with the Pitchfork decision today. And while I can’t control the outcome of that review, we can control the level of supervision he would be given by the Probation Service if released.
He would face strict controls on his movements, have to wear a GPS tag and undergo regular polygraph testing to make sure he is being honest. If there’s any sense he poses an increased risk they wouldn’t hesitate to put him back in prison.
Probation staff do amazing, difficult work every day keeping the public safe, but it’s rarely spoken about. They are unsung crimefighters with eyes trained on offenders released from prison to prevent reoffending. We’ve invested an extra £310million in probation since I took office so they can do that even better.
We’re recruiting record numbers of probation officers, with over 1,000 trainees employed last year and plans to bring in 1,500 this year. That will mean staff can spend more time supervising offenders and working with the police to share intelligence. They will carry out more visits to offenders’ homes to protect children and partners from domestic and sexual abuse.
Three-quarters of the decisions the Board makes are to keep prisoners inside for the public’s protection. But, occasionally, decisions like the Pitchfork one rock public confidence. We are conducting a review of the system so it works better for victims and to restore people’s faith in its ability to keep them safe. It will report back later this year and, in the meantime, you can rest assured that the Probation Service will now be protecting the public even better than before.
--oo00oo--
If someone is not going to get some benefit from being subject to probation, what's the point of imposing it on them? What's gained? 'Getafix
Well there's a conversation starter, 'Getafix. It depends what the point of it all is. Punishment. Never been a fan of punishment for its own sake but I see our Sec of State extolling the virtues of visible Community Punishment. Or Community Service when I was starting out there. Service such a more attractive notion. So that is one tussle to be tussled with. Then there is Risk Management, now a neurotic exercise in risk avoidance. Risk is risk, you can narrow the odds but it doesn't go away, and if you had an ethical bone in your body you would have to balance that with (trigger alert for Daily Mail readers) human right.
And then we get on to rehabilitation, the poor relation of current probation priorities, when it should be shining front and centre, (in my view) of everything we stand for. Strange times. First day at work in the "new" reunified in the public sector Probation Service. The more our hashtag leaders bleat excitedly about this brave new world, the more I feel angry and bereaved. Not as bereaved as those who have suffered the loss of loved ones as a result of this fiasco. The upbeat 'here we go' announcements are utterly tone deaf to the misery and exhaustion, the loss, experienced by so many. It is a step in the right direction, but oh lord we are all so weary. It takes minutes to demolish something, a lifetime and lots of skill to build it back. Pearly Gates
“Probation staff do amazing, difficult work every day“, really means they have no clue what probation does.
ReplyDeleteWhere was the promise of rewards, of improved terms and conditions, of increased pay, etc.
Where I disagree with Getafix is because probation is no longer, Advise, Assist, Befriend, but a punishment which is why they always bang on about Community Payback, and so cannot be voluntary or optional.
I could not put it better than as said in the previous post;
Probation will not be #Probation, until it rids itself of;
1. Prisons
2. Civil Service
3. Institutional racism
4. Police vetting of our staff
And that’s just for starters.
"We also have ambitions to put Unpaid Work hours to even better use, establishing more partnerships with national organisations to help improve the visibility of the punishment in local communities.
ReplyDeleteOur commissioned rehabilitative service providers will be crucial in delivering other interventions."
Jim Barton confirming the political imperative - hi-viz punishment & private-sector "rehabilitative service providers".
Seen on twitter:
"#HMIProbation & many others either looked the other way or greedily cashed in when #Probation was being vandalised by #Grayling, #Romeo, #Spurr et al.
The result was a predictable tragedy but no-one has been held to account & the same self-defined 'leaders' are still there. Why?"
Or, more to the point, How?
Barton is just another of those time-served NOMS/HMPPS names, always in the background, never held accountable but always enjoying a pocket full of public cash & throwing weasel words around extolling the virtues of whatever's in vogue.
The so-called 'excellent leaders are not only stone-deaf, they are also accomplished shape-shifters, morphing to please whoever is above them.
Its a grotesque masquerade; and this from a service that is supposed to be assessing, managing & challenging offending behaviour.
As Pearly Gates says, their weak, neurotic, risk-averse approach to difficult & important work that requires courage, strength & creativity is driven by populist politics & egomaniacs who are never wrong.
High Visibility Punishment?
Lock 'em up. Lock 'em up for longer. Throw away the key. Demonise them. Dehumanise them. Heads on spikes on the city walls. Public executions via the press & social media. The 'new' NPS have already shown this to be true via the massive increase in recalls to prison since they were gifted the risk assessment remit.
Commissioned Rehabilitative Services?
Simply more lo-rent, profit-driven corner-cutting where low paid staff are forced to hit impossible targets & those for whom the service is intended are irrelevant to the service providers. CRCs have already shown this to be true.
It is NOT a new dawn; its just another day at the office. As Johnson, Jenrick, Hancock etc have all stated:
"Its all perfectly normal."
Anonymous by email:-
ReplyDelete"Already a lot of concerns with many staff facing demotion and pay cuts. Failed behind closed doors job evaluation procedures etc. Civil service procedures not fit for purpose. Many staff unaligned despite someone acting up or there being a temp in a post they could be aligned to. There is another issue that many NPS were promoted just prior to reunification to ensure CRC staff were in junior positions on transfer. Recruitment of young naive staff with the expectation existing staff at the sharp end will train them despite having high caseloads."
Goodbye from Interserve:-
ReplyDeleteProbation services transitioning to UK Government
Interserve’s justice business is transitioning to the Ministry of Justice as part of the UK Government’s renationalisation of offender rehabilitation.
Interserve’s justice business was launched in 2015 after the company won a contract from the Ministry of Justice to deliver probation services via five Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) across a large part of England.
The company’s 1,600 staff have supported more than 162,000 service users since 2015 and its Hampshire & Isle of Wight CRC was the first in the country to receive a “good” rating by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation.
The contract is being renationalised on Friday as part of the Ministry of Justice’s decision to merge the National Probation Service with England’s 20 Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to create a new Probation Service.
Kim Thornden-Edwards (pictured above), Managing Director of Interserve’s justice business, said: “I’m deeply proud to have led our probation services and greatly admire the work we have delivered – especially during the last 12-months and the complications caused by COVID-19.
“We introduced a wide range of new initiatives to support people on probation and help them stop reoffending. These included changes to how we supervise our service users so that we could build upon their strengths, new behavioural programmes and rolling out Breaking Free, the country’s first ever accredited online application that helps people quit substance abuse.”
21 June 2021
I hope Jake Phillips, editor of Probation Quarterly, won't mind my quoting his observation of the MoJ promotional 'bigger, better' probation service video on Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"I watch this and I just don't see probation in it. It's all just stigmatising language, punitive rhetoric and risk. Where are the values, the respect, the belief in people's ability to change, the empowerment and desistance-based approaches to working with people on probation?"
I think it has the look and sincerity of a hostage video about it.
Trustees of the Howard League for Penal Reform are delighted to announce the appointment of the charity’s new Chief Executive, Andrea Coomber.
ReplyDeleteAndrea Coomber is an experienced leader and qualified lawyer who has held senior roles at human rights organisations in the UK and overseas. She is currently the Director of JUSTICE and will start work with the Howard League on 1 November.
The Howard League has played a key role in the life of the nation for more than 150 years, dealing with issues of great public concern that are central to the rule of law, public safety and social justice. It campaigns for less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.
The charity’s work will be vital in the years ahead. Having endured enormous difficulties during the pandemic, prisons must provide more open and positive regimes. A reunified probation service faces huge challenges, while the recruitment of thousands more police officers risks sweeping more people into the criminal justice system unnecessarily.
Andrea Coomber said: “It is a privilege to follow Frances Crook in the Howard League’s historic mission for criminal justice reform.
“As the world emerges from brutal lockdowns, it has never been more important to discuss incarceration, rehabilitation and the kind of societies that we want to live in.
“Forging a just society for the future means moving away from a reliance on prisons and locking people up, to investing instead in communities and solutions to crime that lie outside of the criminal justice system. I look forward to leading the Howard League and making this case in the years to come.”
Professor Fergus McNeill, Chair of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “We are delighted to have been able to appoint a new Chief Executive with such an outstanding track record. Andrea has been an exceptionally effective and successful leader at JUSTICE and she shares the same values, commitment and dynamism that already characterise the work of the Howard League for Penal Reform.
“Though we are all very aware of the profound challenges that face us – both organisationally and in criminal justice – as we seek to navigate both the pandemic and the recovery, we can now look forward with renewed confidence and with excitement about what we can achieve together.
“Andrea will be building on very strong foundations, working with staff and Trustees and our members, to help develop and implement a fresh and exciting vision for the criminal justice reform we so urgently need.”
Frances Crook, Howard League:-
ReplyDeleteI welcome probation reform, but have some concerns about the new structure
The probation service has been taken back from the divided and privatised shambles set up by Chris Grayling seven years ago and is once again a public service. This is a very welcome reform.
Over the last seven years the failures in the part privisation have resulted in more victims, more crime and a shameful shovelling of public money to profiteering companies. I welcome the change. But I have some concerns about the new structure and hope that over time they will be addressed.
Managing people who have transgressed so that they can make amends for the harm they have caused is a central duty of government. It must be done with skill and compassion, so that everyone feels better at the outcomes. Victims and local communities must be included. The people who have offended should know that they have been treated fairly and asked to atone appropriately. As the criminologist John Braithwaite argued, once people have recognised the shame of their actions and paid the penalty, they must be reintegrated and forgiven. Probation is the fulcrum in this process.
In order for communities and victims to understand the process and feel confident, there must be local accountability and high profile local presence. This is where my apprehension at the new structure is at its most serious. The probation service has been nationalised, not localised. Just before Grayling inflicted privatisation, every local probation service was assessed as functioning well or extremely well. The local structure complemented the police and local authority structures and that was a key reason that it worked so well.
The new service is nationally directed and divided into twelve arbitrary regions that do not mirror other services; this will make it challenging to work with housing, health and social services.
Pre-Grayling the local services had an identifiable chief officer, who was part of the local community and liaised with other agencies. This will not be the case in a national probation structure that is part of the civil service. Indeed, because it will be part of the civil service and have no autonomy or independence, there will be no local voice. Unlike police and local authorities, the probation service will be a faceless national administration. Local civil servants are not able to speak to the media, promote their work or represent the service with other agencies. Quite rightly, the civil service is an administration driven from on high, not part of the local community. Rightly for things like tax but not when it comes to delivering local probation.
This may sound a bit technical, but it matters. My local police force has a chief officer, who is seen and accountable. Even the emasculated NHS structure (after the Lansley reforms) has some local accountability and visibility.
Public confidence in public services, particularly criminal justice, is difficult to assess. It is clear, however, that public confidence increases when people know and understand how they work, who runs them and what the outcomes are. The lessons from the track and trace fiasco was clearly that, when local government ran the service, it had greater public confidence.
Crime generates great emotion and can tear at the fabric of society. It is therefore all the more important that efforts to reduce crime are clearly explained and garner public confidence. I remain unconvinced that having a monolithic national probation service restricted from having a local voice or presence will have that confidence.
Frances Crook
It was ever thus. Politicians will start with a crime or crimes of horrific violence and then in the same breath talk about the need for Community Punishment to be hard, visible and shaming. The subtext is a message that every individual who is sentenced in a court poses an existential threat. Which neatly segues into a call for "cracking down" etc. Its why probation must be as far removed as possible from politics
ReplyDeleteSo I attended London probation welcome event and was utterly disappointed. Within 30 minutes we were subjected to a diatribe about the importance of targets, updating risk registers and the usual drivel about data entry and updating case records...was the assumption that whatever has beleaguered NPS data entry endeavours applied also to the CRC staff? Every person who spoke was in position in NPS pre transfer, so clearly this was the "takeover" they said it wasn't. If this was meant to be a warm welcome, they utterly failed in my view.
ReplyDelete