Editor's Nightmare

It must be every editor's nightmare to publish, only to find you've missed the big story of the day. Well, today's the day because I discover late in the day that the BIG story is this:  

In an environment where the government are actively preparing to do battle with the top tier of the civil service over performance, how does Antonia Romeo walk away with plaudits to the top Home Office job, 

Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, said:

"I am delighted to announce Antonia Romeo’s appointment as Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Antonia has huge experience delivering transformation across a range of Government departments, as well as a track record of delivery and strong systems leadership, both of which will be vital to lead the Home Office to deliver its mission on safer streets and border security."

whilst the day after a crock of shite is 'discovered' at the MoJ? Joint statement from the three probation trade unions, including Napo yesterday:-

This Changes Everything

HMPPS has finally admitted that there is a deep and serious crisis in the Probation Service that bears out everything we have been saying in our Operation Protect campaign, launched back in June 2023.

On the basis of information provided to the unions under confidential cover, and which we are not able to disclose at present, HMPPS now accepts that it is thousands of staff short of the workforce it needs to meet existing sentence management demand.

This public acknowledgment of the depth and seriousness of the crisis only relates to sentence management, we expect to receive more information soon about other areas of probation delivery. Until we receive this further information, we don’t know whether the situation is going to be very different outside of sentence management. What we do know is that our members in other areas of probation delivery are struggling with their own workload pressures.

TOTALLY UNMANAGEABLE WORKLOADS

So now it’s official - sentence management staff have been expected to work for years to deliver totally unmanageable workloads. This obviously did not start yesterday.

It is no wonder that staff are suffering burn-out, work related stress and ill-health. And no surprise that successive HMIP reports have identified weakness in the Probation Service’s ability to provide its statutory services.

We note that HMPPS has listened to our Operation Protect Campaign and now accepts what our members and the unions have been saying for years – that there is a workload crisis in Probation and something needs to be done about it!

WHAT WE ARE CALLING FOR

Given just how extreme the workload crisis really is, the unions are now calling for the following:

• An immediate and complete end of Post Sentence Supervision, via emergency legislation if necessary
• A preview of the business case being made by HMPPS to the Spending Review to reassure our members that serious new money is being sought as part of a probation rescue package
• That employer acknowledges that the WMT is no longer an accurate reflection of workloads as it does not count the full extent of work undertaken and should not be used as such.
• Agreement on the total number of cases that can be held at any given time by a practitioner - to be jointly reviewed on a quarterly basis
• The suspension of capability proceedings against staff where excessive workload is a factor
• The suspension of all Sickness Absence Management proceedings against staff and the application of total management discretion
• An immediate review of the current nationally agreed overtime arrangements with a view to an indefinite extension.
• An immediate review of the Prioritisation Framework with all Probation Regions moving to ‘Red’ status
• Urgent agreement between HMPPS and the trade unions on a new Demand Management Strategy to support all staff in making decisions on prioritising work on individual caseloads.
• A moratorium on the introduction of any new work anywhere in the Probation Service pending agreement to a rescue package for the service
• Performance targets to take second place to staff welfare
• Negotiation on the role of AI in contributing to the easement of the capacity crisis and the need for a collective agreement to cover the same

PROBATION SAFE IN HMPPS HANDS?

HMPPS, and before it NOMS, has been responsible for running probation ever since Chris Grayling first centralised delivery with the creation of the National Probation Service in 2014. Nearly 11 years on, and the probation workloads crisis is the worst that it has ever been. We therefore call on the Government to deliver on its manifesto promise to review the governance of probation as a matter of urgency.

MEMBER BRIEFINGS

As part of the joint unions’ on-going Operation Protect Campaign we are planning urgent on-line meetings for members to come together to discuss the deepening workloads crisis and what we want doing about it. Please look out for details of these meetings.

Napo/UNISO/GMB/SCOOP 

Reviving Probation

Whilst we continue to await the promised Probation Review, my attention has been drawn to the following article from the latest Probation Institute Journal by academic Peter Raynor:- 

Reviving Probation : Ten Evidence-Driven Strategies  

Now that the Government has launched the review of sentencing which should have happened years ago, much of the evidence submitted will likely suggest that the key to reducing prison numbers is to revitalise and prioritise the use of community sentences. The natural vehicle for such developments is seen as the Probation Service, as it was in 1991 when an Act of Parliament tried to achieve much the same shift in the assumptions and practice of sentencing (Home Office 1991). However, a major obstacle might prove to be the current state of the Probation Service. In 1991 it was locally run and clearly linked with the courts, having sentencers closely involved in governance through local committees and able to have a voice in the development of community sentences, in which they demonstrably had greater confidence than they do today. Now the voices raised on behalf of probation tend to be those of concerned academics (often exprobation) and of the staff themselves through their trade union NAPO. In addition, the Probation Institute is perhaps the nearest thing we currently have to a body which speaks for probation. The Service itself is unable to take part in policy debates because it no longer exists as a separate and distinct body but instead looks more like the community arm of the Prison Service within the Ministry of Justice. Managers who control the direction of development in probation no longer need to have had any experience of supervising people on probation in the community, and Civil Service rules prevent the open participation of voices from within the Probation Service. The Probation Order itself, once the long-lived and flexible paradigm of community sentences, no longer exists.

Many jurisdictions in Europe are developing and building up their community sentencing offers: the Confederation of European Probation draws together research and experience from across the continent and further afield, for example in an important recent report on how to develop and embed probation services in criminal justice systems (Pitts and Tigges 2023). Where is the comparable thinking in British probation? Controlled by civil servants, dangerously understaffed and looking to forensic psychologists for its thinking about methods rather than to its own more-than-a-century of developing probation in the community, is no surprise that the Service now does more work supervising released prisoners than delivering non-custodial options for the courts. What is more worrying is that post-custodial supervision leads to substantial numbers of recalls to custody which themselves help to inflate prison numbers. The Probation Service seems to have become the main overseer of the post-custodial revolving door.

A dispassionate observer might conclude that the Probation Service, named as it is after a noncustodial alternative to punishment, no longer really exists. Certainly, it is no longer the innovative service at the cutting edge of social work that I joined in the 1970s, and I wonder whether I would now be so attracted as I was then to what seemed to be a clear mission of decarceration and social rehabilitation in the community. Despite many important developments since the 1990s, including risk and need assessment, cognitive-behavioural methods, accredited programmes and many technological advances, nothing has stopped the rise in custodial sentencing which was triggered by a Conservative Home Secretary in 1993. There has been no clear political commitment to reducing or even stabilising the use of incarceration, or to empowering the Probation Service to deliver a decisive shift towards community sentences. However, the Service clearly retains great potential, including many excellent hardworking and creative staff. They deserve a better future than simply serving the mass incarceration machine as another brick in the wall of social exclusion.

What then is the alternative? There is in fact much more international research evidence available to guide the development of probation services than there was in the past. What follows is a summary list of promising initiatives which research suggests could and should make a positive difference, helping to deliver a Probation Service that can develop and succeed:

1. Develop the interpersonal skills used by staff in supervising people on probation. Several studies now show that staff who use high levels of personal communication skills are more effective in reducing reoffending, and that appropriate training improves skills and outcomes (Chadwick et al. 2015). Results in these studies are typically better than those reported for programmes. This can be a particularly cost-effective approach since it improves the impact of staff who are already in post and being paid.

2. Move urgently towards appropriate caseloads. Evidence suggests caseloads should be less than 50 and in many circumstances around 30, or even less where particularly high risks and needs involved. Research by HM Inspectorate of Probation shows that both better supervision and sensible caseloads produce better results (HM Inspectorate of Probation 2021, 2023). This was also the conclusion of research carried out as long ago as the 1960s by Bill McWilliams in London (McWilliams 1966). Youth justice workers have much lower caseloads than probation officers and achieve much better results in inspections. In addition, efforts to promote more continuity of contact in supervision are more likely to produce good results than continual changes of supervisor. There is limited research on this, but a Home Office study of 2004 (Partridge 2004) showed that both probation officers and people on probation welcomed continuity. People do not want to tell their story again and again to a series of strangers in pass-the-parcel supervision. A few years ago it was not unusual for probationers to be in contact with the same probation officer from initial pre-sentence or social inquiry report through to the end of an Order, or even through further offending, maybe a prison sentence and subsequent post-release supervision.

3. Ensure appropriate supervision of frontline staff by experienced colleagues, managers or peers to sustain and develop skills. This has been shown to provide effective support for training and implementation in skill development (Bourgon et al. 2010). The need for this kind of supervision has implications for Senior Probation Officers, whose contribution is likely to be particularly important here, and also strengthens the case for probation to be managed by people who have experience in the Service.

4. Reset post-custodial supervision for short-sentence prisoners. A year of supervision following a short sentence is often disproportionate and in some cases simply serves to increase the risk of recall for non-compliance, which now makes a substantial contribution to prison numbers (Raynor 2020; Jones 2024). Supervision should reflect risk and needs, and when it serves no useful purpose and is unwanted it can be terminated early in lower-risk cases. At the same time, practical support for resettlement needs to improve: people released from prison without basic resources such as accommodation are being set up to fail. Giving people a tent as they leave the prison is no substitute for proper pre-release planning.

5. Work locally. The services which people under supervision need, both statutory and voluntary, are more effectively accessed through local contact, particularly when supported by personal relationships. Colocation of services can be particularly effective, as in the Newham Hub for young adults (Phillips et al. 2024; see also Schofield 2024). Different localities need different approaches and probation staff on the ground need the freedom to develop local strategies, rather than arrangements being handled through top-down central tendering and contracting over large areas. The need to work locally, and to free professionals to develop local services, is one of the main drivers of the widespread view among practitioners that locating probation in the Civil Service as an appendage of the Prison Service impedes the development of distinctive probation strategies and practices. It is now widely believed that probation services require more local governance outside the Civil Service, and the Welsh Government's desire to see control of probation devolved to Wales is driven by similar concerns, with the support of the staff unions.

6. Renew engagement with sentencers in the criminal courts. It is often forgotten that probation services used to be run by local committees consisting mainly of sentencers, who were also the employers of probation staff. This connection was weakened when probation became a London-based and centralised service, and since then the judiciary has largely lost confidence in community sentences and makes far fewer of them. Research on presentence reports in the 1990s (Gelsthorpe and Raynor 1995) showed clearly that well-written, thorough and individualised reports were more persuasive and resulted in more community sentences. Judges interviewed as part of this research said that they wanted reports which helped them to understand the person they were sentencing. In those days reports were written by qualified probation officers, seen as professionals in their own right and often well known to their local courts. It is at least questionable whether today's algorithm-driven reports, recently described as ‘formulaic’ by one very senior magistrate (Ponsonby 2024), can command similar confidence. Sentencers can also be reengaged as stakeholders and play a role in the local governance of probation; this could help to ensure that they understand and influence the community options available in their area.

7. Renew probation's mission by aligning the service with government-led decarceration policies. The Probation Service is the obvious agency to drive the development of new community sentences (and maybe even old ones, such as the Probation Order itself). If the Probation Service is given this task it needs to be free to deliver it, and to devise strategies and approaches independently of a Prison Service which has a different role and culture. Liaison between services remains essential and could be managed better, but this does not require probation to be a branch of the prisons. Cooperation between probation and prisons was an established feature of practice long before the two services were joined together.

8. Introduce separate management and governance for probation. To carry out a distinctive policy, probation needs its own distinctive governance and management structures. It is to be regretted that the Ministry of Justice has tended to move in the opposite direction through the project known as ‘One HMPPS’. Senior managers need to be able to discuss and debate policy openly, publish their views and engage in the development of proposals and their implementation. All of this used to happen before the Probation Service was centralised under Home Office control at the beginning of this century. As civil servants, probation officers of all levels and grades are not currently encouraged to express opinions in public. To drive the policy and practice changes that are needed, probation services need to tell a clear story about what they are for and tell it repeatedly (Pitts and Tigges 2023).

9. Embrace appropriate technology. Developments in remote supervision and different types of electronic tagging can help to keep supervisors informed and in some cases can help to keep potential victims safer, for example by prohibiting access by perpetrators of domestic violence to their former victims. Cases, where victims are re-attacked by released perpetrators, have rightly led to public concern about early release and parole. There will be little public support for reductions in imprisonment unless public safety can be shown to be a very high priority. Technological solutions can help increase compliance by supervised people where the motivation to cooperate is limited or variable. The Confederation of European Probation has recently produced a report summarising developments and making recommendations about principles (Confederation of European Probation 2024). These issues cannot be ignored, or left to private sector suppliers who provide little personal supervision. Technology is there to strengthen personal supervision and needs to be part of a package of supervision and help which will improve the chances of willing cooperation. We can also hope that improvements in technology might eventually reduce the need for probation staff to spend so much of their time in front of computers instead of dealing with people.

10. Finally, evaluate everything and build the evidence base. Many of the suggested strategies lend themselves to pilot projects. Accredited programmes need full evaluation, not relying simply on accreditation as a guarantor of effectiveness, which it is not. The three-legged model of evaluation based on understanding, measurement and comparison (Raynor 2019) can be applied to most of the proposals in this paper. Evaluation is not cheap but needs to be understood as an investment: services shaped by sound evidence will be more likely to achieve the intentions of policy

Taken together, it is suggested that these evidence-driven strategies can provide a route to a revitalised the Probation Service. Most of them are not new but would benefit from being revived. Some caveats are in order: the focus here is on work with people who have committed offences, so victims are not mentioned, and in any case, there is little clear evidence so far on how successful the Probation Service’s work with victims has been, or whether it should be the focus of a specialist victim-centred agency or branch. Family work was similarly separated out into CAFCASS some decades ago. Another omission is a detailed estimation of costs: clearly, expenditure would be needed and investment is a political decision which would hopefully result eventually in reductions in prison costs. However, the Prison Service itself faces serious problems and needs investment and development, not just criticism. Close collaborative working with prisons should continue to be a feature of probation practice. Finally, readers will have noticed that many of these suggested strategies are informed by experience of past probation practice. It is important to avoid rose-tinted or nostalgic hindsight: there was no Golden Age. On the other hand, recalling the past is useful and arguably a vital guide to informing achievement and potential, although not in itself a sufficient guide. Evidence-based approaches need to be informed by evaluation and pay close attention to implementation. We often see a marked decrease in effectiveness when pilot projects are rolled out more widely. This gap in implementation presents a challenge, particularly to middle management such as Senior Probation Officers, and their role requires investment, development and support as much as main grade staff. Policy, leadership, evaluation, inspection and staff development need to work together to address this problem. The criminal justice system is in crisis and the Probation Service should be an essential part of the solution.

Peter Raynor 

Swansea University & University of South Wales 

For Wales Probation Development Group
(see full article for references)

Set Probation Free!

Guardian :-

Pat McFadden has vowed to bring about “radical” civil service changes including digitisation and stricter performance targets for officials to mirror private sector practices. Under the plans expected to be announced this week, under-performing officials could be incentivised to leave their jobs and senior officials will have their pay linked to performance.

This blog:-

"Dame Antonia Romeo will be leaving the Ministry of Justice as Permanent Secretary to become new Home Office Permanent Secretary. We would like to thank Antonia for her outstanding leadership over 4 years at the MoJ. Amy Rees, currently Director General, Chief Executive HMPPS, will be interim Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, while a permanent replacement is recruited.”

This from Civil Service World:-

Think tank calls for ‘clear-out’ of MoJ and HMPPS leadership

Current bosses ‘not up to task’ of delivering transformation required, Policy Exchange claims

Think tank Policy Exchange has called for the senior leadership of the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison and Probation Service to be removed as part of proposals for a reboot of the criminal justice system.

The right-leaning organisation is calling for a £5bn-a-year boost in spending on prisons, courts and policing as part of a whole-system crime reduction drive. Its proposals include the delivery of an additional 53,000 prison places – more than double the planned increase to deal with the current prisons capacity crisis.

However, the report argues that the current leadership of MoJ and HMPPS are “simply inadequate to the task” of overseeing the implementation of its plans and “should be dismissed entirely” from the civil service.

Policy Exchange says MoJ and HMPPS need “a cadre of leaders who will focus on empowering governors to run their establishments effectively” and on holding them to account alongside publicly-available performance measures.

Report authors Roger Bootle, David Spencer, Ben Sweetman, and James Vitali said there was a need to “entrench greater accountability” among civil servants in the criminal justice system.

“There are undoubtedly large numbers of individuals who work hard, demonstrate remarkable courage and deliver to the highest standards for the public," they said. “For too long, however, there has been a culture of impunity for failure, a lack of strategic prioritisation, a degree of mission creep, and a corresponding decline in the ability of the police, prisons and probation services to discharge their core duties effectively."

The report authors said the current leadership of MoJ and HMPPS had “overseen a culture of micro-management and bureaucratic expansion which has done little to improve the condition of prisons or the safety of the public”.

“This can be particularly observed in the dramatic expansion in the size of the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS bureaucracies – where huge increases in those working in non-operational roles in the five years between 2018 and 2023 have been the norm,” they said. “This trend contrasts with pitiful increases in the number of operational staff actually working and leading people on the prison and probation frontline.”

Policy Exchange estimates the impact of crime on UK society to be £250bn a year – made up of £170bn in “tangible costs”, such as losses to individuals, business and the public sector, plus an additional £80bn in “intangible effects” resulting from the fear of crime.

It said police-recorded shoplifting was up 51% relative to 2015 and police-recorded robberies and knife crime offences were up 64% and 89% respectively over the same period, while the cost of fraud in the benefits system has increased “almost eightfold” since 2006.

Policy Exchange said such areas of “acute growth” were “obscured by the aggregate downtrend in crime since 1995 that the Crime Survey of England and Wales reports.

The think tank praised the new Labour government’s inclusion of halving serious violent crime and raising confidence in the police among its five core “missions”. But it said prime minister Keir Starmer should go further by “explicitly rejecting the permissive approach to crime that successive governments have allowed to develop”.

In addition to calling for a change of leadership at MoJ and HMPPS, and a dramatic expansion of the prison estate, Policy Exchange is also proposing sentencing and courts reforms, and “smarter” policing.

The recommendations include minimum two-year custodial sentences for what the think tank describes as “hyper prolific offenders” and for those criminals to be the subject of mandatory individual intervention plans for the duration of their time in prison. It said the plans could cover treatment for drug addition, education or skills tuition, depending on their needs.

Policy Exchange is also calling for the amendment of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the UK Borders Act 2007 to allow foreign nationals convicted of criminal offences to be deported immediately at the end of their sentence.

In an introduction to the report, former home secretary Sir Sajid Javid described Policy Exchange’s work as “excellent”.

Robert Eagleton, national officer for the FDA union, took a different tack. He said the think tank's suggestion that senior leadership at MoJ and HMPPS should be sacked was “not credible”. “Policy Exchange is championing an unserious proposal to address a serious problem,” he said.

“Crime has a detrimental impact on the British public as well as the economy, and we need a serious conversation about law enforcement and the funding it receives. Successive governments have failed to invest in the prison estate and the issues we see today are a direct result of years of underfunding. These are political decisions which require political will to resolve.

“The government would be better served drawing on the experience and expertise of staff working in MoJ and HMPPS, who have first-hand experience of the huge challenges facing the justice system.”

Home Office minister Dame Diana Johnson listed a range of current initiatives aimed at reducing crime.

“In the next decade, this government plans to halve violence against women and girls and knife crime, and restore public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system, as part of the Safer Streets Mission,” she said.

“Through the Plan for Change, we will also bring visible policing back to communities, with 13,000 extra neighbourhood police officers, PCSOs and specials. Alongside this, the government will build 14,000 more prison places by 2031 to lock up dangerous offenders.”

The Home Office added that a £5m investment will fund the deployment of specialist staff to speed up the removal of foreign national offenders. The programme, which is creating 82 roles to oversee removals from jails, is due to be fully operational by the start of next month.

Civil Service World sought a response from the MoJ on Policy Exchange's proposals. It had not provided one at the time of publication. This story was updated at 15:10 on 4 March 2025 to include a Home Office response

What A Mess!

Many of us had high hopes of a new Labour Government taking a more thoughtful and insightful approach to criminal justice matters and deliver the promised thorough review of both sentencing and Probation, but sadly no! The rather more intelligent response to much of the current problems would have been to re-instate the integrity and requirement for full PSR's in all cases, but instead we have yet another justice secretary deaf to the worth and value of probation, subsumed as it is by the dead hand of the MoJ and civil service. This from the BBC news website this morning:-     

 

Mahmood rejects sentencing changes after 'two-tier' claims

The justice secretary has called for the scrapping of planned changes which would make the background of offenders from minority groups a bigger factor when deciding whether to jail them. Shabana Mahmood called for the Sentencing Council to reverse course, after the Conservatives accused Labour of overseeing "two-tier justice", in which prison sentences are less likely for ethnic or faith minorities.

On Wednesday, the council - which is independent but sponsored by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) - published new guidelines for judges, external aimed at avoiding bias and cutting reoffending. But Mahmood said she would write to its leaders to "register my displeasure and to recommend reversing" the change.

"As someone who is from an ethnic minority background myself, I do not stand for any differential treatment before the law, for anyone of any kind," Mahmood said. "There will never be a two-tier sentencing approach under my watch."

The updated sentencing guidance, which is due to come into force from April, places a greater emphasis on the need for pre-sentence reports for judges. Pre-sentence reports give judges details on the offender's background, motives and personal life before sentencing - then recommend a punishment and what would work best for rehabilitation. But over recent years their use has decreased.

Magistrates and judges will be advised to get a pre-sentence report before handing out punishment for someone of an ethnic or faith minority - alongside other groups such as young adults, abuse survivors and pregnant women. These factors are not an exhaustive list, the council said. A pre-sentence report can still be necessary if an individual does not fall into one of these cohorts.

In a social media post, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the new guidelines were biased "against straight white men". "Under Two-Tier Keir [Starmer] our justice system is set to have an anti-white and anti-Christian bias," he said. Pre-sentence reports were "the first step to avoiding a prison sentence", he argued.

Earlier on Wednesday, Jenrick told the House of Commons the changes were an "inversion of the rule of law" and would make "custodial sentence less likely for those 'from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, or faith minority community'". Official figures, external show that offenders from ethnic minorities consistently get longer sentences than white offenders for indictable offences.

The previous government was also consulted on the sentencing changes when the council was considering reforms between November 2023 and February 2024. In the Commons, Mahmood dismissed Jenrick's claims - telling MPs there would never be a "two-tier sentencing approach" under "this Labour government". She waited several hours before announcing on social media that she had asked the Sentencing Council to undo the change.

Prior to Mahmood's call for the changes to be scrapped, the Sentencing Council said the changes were aimed at ensuring courts got full details on the offender and ensuring consistency in sentencing. Analysis by the council has found offenders from some ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to receive harsher sentence, externals for drug offences.

Prison sentences have grown longer for ethnic minority offenders, driven in part by fewer pleading guilty, the council found. Sentencing Council chairman Lord Justice William Davis said the updated guidelines would ensure courts had the "most comprehensive information available" to them before deciding on a punishment.

He said they took into account "evidence of disparities in sentencing outcomes, disadvantages faced within the criminal justice system and complexities in circumstances of individual offenders".

The Prison Reform Trust said there were "very good reasons" for changes to sentencing guidelines. Mark Daly, the charity's deputy director, told Radio 4's The World Tonight: "It has always been a factor that has been on the mind of sentencers and in this guideline it is simply reflecting the fact that if we look at outcomes from sentencing, there is disproportionality.

"So we know already that if you are from a minority ethnic background you are more likely to receive a custodial sentence for an equivalent offence, particularly for certain types of offences such as drug offences, than you would if you were white."

"It seems to me that this current dispute is a bit of a storm in a tea cup," he added.

In other reaction to the Sentencing Council's announcement, Janey Starling, co-director of feminist campaign group Level Up, said the changes were a "huge milestone" in the campaign to end imprisoning pregnant women and mothers.

Liz Forrester, from the group No Births Behind Bars, said it finally recognised the "deadly impact" of prison on babies and pregnant women.

How About That!

I've just listened to David Gauke on the Today programme saying:-

"Our addiction to longer sentences is a serious mistake"

Now that's an understatement if ever I heard one, so the question is, what is his independent review into sentencing going to deliver? As we've seen from the Justice Secretary's diktat last week, Labour have reneged on the election promise of a fundamental probation review, so we must rely on a former Tory Justice minister to say something sensible. Interestingly, he ended this morning's interview by repeating that the 'bidding war must end', Labour of course having done their bit several times since being elected! 

I don't think we covered this New Statesman article from last October, but it clearly gives a strong hint as to the direction of travel. The question of course is, have the government got the bottle?   

How to fix the prisons crisis

The political bidding war over tougher sentences must end.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Perhaps a Godfather quotation is not entirely appropriate for the subject matter but, more than five years after leaving the Ministry of Justice I am back – rather to my surprise – chairing an independent review of sentencing policy.

It is a privilege to serve, not least because such a review is timely and necessary. It is timely because we face an immediate crisis in prison capacity. The current government inherited a situation in which we were very close to running out of places and had no choice but to take emergency measures and release prisoners early. Anyone in office over the summer would have done the same. But these emergency measures, including further releases today, only provided a brief respite. Demand for prison places is currently growing at 4,500 a year, much faster than the supply of places. This means that unless strategic measures are taken, we will repeatedly risk running out of places.

This capacity issue highlights why it is necessary to look more fundamentally at sentencing policy. We now incarcerate more people per head than any other western European country. Since 1993, the prison population of England and Wales has doubled, even as crime has consistently fallen (a fall, by the way, that can be seen in countries that have not increased their prison population). The reason for the increase in the prison population is clear. We sentence more people to prison and we sentence them for longer than we used to do.

Prison, of course, should continue to be a vital part of our criminal justice system. There are many circumstances in which it is the right form of punishment and the best way of protecting the public. But the large majority of prisoners will be released at some point and our very high reoffending rates suggest that our overcrowded prisons are not successful in rehabilitating offenders. We need to look at ways in which sentencing policy can better contribute to reducing reoffending and, as a consequence, crime.

There are some who will argue that we should build our way out of our prison capacity issues. But we cannot simply dismiss the reality that we will run out of capacity long before any new prisons can be built. And even if we do, there is a question of cost. On current projections, just to keep up with the growth in prison numbers, we would have to build three large prisons a year at a total cost of £2.3bn. Then there are the staffing, maintenance and other ongoing costs, which mean that it costs the taxpayer £52,000 per prisoner. Maintaining the current approach is, in effect, a significant and unfunded spending commitment at a time when tough decisions must be made about the public finances.

We really ought to be able to do better than an expensive system that fails to rehabilitate offenders. But how to do so? The Sentencing Review Panel is, of course, only at the beginning of its process and there are many aspects of sentencing policy we will want to review but let me highlight three aspects here.

The first is short sentences. As justice secretary, I argued that short prison sentences did more harm than good. The evidence at the time supported this contention but I want to revisit it and, in particular, look at how we can more effectively deal with the most prolific offenders.

Whatever we do with short sentences, however, will not solve the capacity issue when the prison population is increasingly made up of those serving four years or more, very often considerably more. Prisoners, like everyone else, respond to incentives and other jurisdictions have done more than us to reward good behaviour. Texas, for example, introduced a new approach which results in prisoners who complete their programmes, behave well and show evidence of rehabilitation spending less time in jail. The (admittedly very high) Texan prison population has fallen, as has its crime rate. So a second area of interest is whether we could develop an incentives policy appropriate for our system.

The third area is technology. Specifically, does it provide an opportunity to punish, protect society and rehabilitate offenders outside of prison in a way that is much more effective than has previously been possible? Electronic tagging, for example, is increasingly used but we need to understand whether more could be done. The same can be said of drink and drug monitoring. We need to understand the potential for current and future technologies to keep offenders out of prison in the first place, or to safely release some prisoners at an earlier stage than is currently the case. There may well be lessons to be learned from other jurisdictions to ensure that sentencing policy is properly able to exploit these technologies.

For the last 30 years, there has been a sentencing bidding war between the political parties seeking to compete to be seen as the toughest on crime by promising ever-longer prison sentences. Rightly, the public expects criminality to be punished and prison is often viewed as the only effective means of punishment. But the capacity crisis in our prisons has meant that – at the very least – we have no choice but to pause the increase in the prison population. It is also sensible that we now look more broadly at the evidence and ask whether sentencing policy should be more fundamentally reformed. By next spring, we should have the answer.

David Gauke

A New Diktat

No Review then, just a diktat from Labour government:-

Probation Service to cut crime by focusing on dangerous offenders

Speaking at a probation office in London (12 February), Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood set out her vision for the future of a Probation Service that protects the public, reduces reoffending and makes our streets safer as part of the Government’s plan for change.

To support this work, the Justice Secretary announced that 1,300 new probation officers will be recruited by March 2026. These new hires are in addition to the 1,000 officers to be recruited by this March, previously announced by Shabana Mahmood when she took office in July last year.

In her speech, the Justice Secretary argued that probation officers have been asked to do too much for too long. They have been burdened with high workloads and a one size fits all approach to managing offenders, regardless of the risk that they present to the public. This has meant officers have been unable to pay enough attention to those offenders who pose the greatest risk to society. This has led, in some cases, to missed warning signs where offenders have gone on to commit serious further offences, including murder.

With all probation units inspected in 2024 marked as “inadequate” or “requires improvement”, changes will now be made to help staff refocus their efforts where they have the greatest impact – with the offenders who need the most attention.

The Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood said:

The Probation Service must focus more time with offenders who are a danger to the public, and the prolific offenders whose repeat offending make life a misery for so many.

That means for low-risk offenders, we need to change our approach too. We need to tackle the root causes of their reoffending, and end a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t working.

The first job of the state is to keep its people safe. Today, as part of our Plan for Change, I have set out changes to the probation service to protect the public and make our streets safer.

Greater time with higher risk offenders will be made possible by changing probation’s approach to the management of low risk offenders. Probation staff will now intervene earlier with these offenders, to understand the support they require and refer them to the services that will tackle the root causes of their reoffending.

These interventions are crucial as the latest data shows that the reoffending rate for those without stable accommodation is double those who are homeless, offenders employed six weeks after leaving prison had a reoffending rate around half of those out of work, and reoffending amongst those who complete drug treatment are 19 percentage points lower. This will help tackle a pressing issue the Criminal Justice System faces, with around 80 percent% of offenders now reoffenders.

The Chief Inspector of Probation, Martin Jones said:

The Probation Service does a vital job; however, our independent inspections highlight the serious challenges it faces- too few staff, with too little experience, managing too many cases to succeed.

These plans, which rightly focus on increasing probation resources and prioritising the most serious cases, are a positive step towards increasing impact on reoffending and better protecting the public.

To reduce the administrative burden resting on probation officers’ shoulders, the Justice Secretary will also introduce new technology including:

• A digital tool that will put all the information a probation officer might need to know about an offender into one place.
• Trialling a new system for risk assessing offenders, to make it more straightforward for probation officers to make robust decisions.
• Exploring the potential of AI to be used to automatically record and transcribe supervision conversations by taking notes in real time, which will allow probation staff to focus on building relationships while removing the need to write up notes into a computer afterwards.

In her speech, the Justice Secretary also exposed one of the inherited workload challenges faced by the probation service, which the Government will now address. Accredited Programmes are rehabilitative courses handed down by the courts to offenders to address the causes of their criminality.

Over the three years to April 2024, the probation service did not deliver these courses to nearly 13,000 offenders before their sentence expired. To address this issue, the Probation Service must now put in place a process of prioritisation so they will be delivered to offenders at the greatest risk of reoffending or causing serious harm. For those who will now not complete an accredited programme, they remain under the supervision of a probation officer. All the other requirements they face will remain in place.

Further information:Today’s speech will be published on gov.uk
Guidance will be issued to staff in the coming weeks to deliver these crucial changes that will ultimately help to cut crime and keep the public safe.

Advice for NQOs

Oh man, you have any idea how comforting it is that I found your blog. It just makes all my feelings (and my colleagues’) valid. Now here’s my situation and I would really appreciate some advice.

I qualified in December 2024 so only two months ago. Last couple of months of PQiP were overwhelming but I haven’t complained not even once during PQiP however I did take a full month of a/l as I really felt that I needed it. When I was about to come back to work, I had a death in the family and had to take another week off (unpaid) to deal with everything . Now keep in mind that I left on leave with 18 cases. When I came back, the next day I had a meeting with my new SPO who assured me that I will be protected the first months (gradual increase in cases and no HROSH allocations and constant support, especially given my personal circumstances). By the end of that week, I already had 33 cases in my name (some allocated while I was on a/l), 4 of them were HROSH, 3 co-working HROSH and some ROTLs and caretaking not even in my name - all within a WEEK! I literally can’t even look at my SPO no more as he literally lied to my face! I requested a supervision meeting and he just didn’t seem to take me seriously, reasoning that I am more than able to cope with it because I’m so good at what I do. He wanted me to take this as a compliment but I know it’s a “push” disguised as a compliment actually.

Oh, I forgot to mention that other NQOs from my cohort have many LROSH cases in their name and no HROSH, meanwhile I have 0 LROSH, only complex MROSH and HROSH.

I really love this job and I cannot believe that I already, so soon, got to the point where I want to quit. I feel like I have been lied to and the “business needs” are always a priority even before personal circumstances.

My question is: Will I still get my top up degree if I leave the service? Or should I wait and give notice only after I receive it? Will leaving 3 months after qualifying impact my status as an NQO? Assuming that at some point (if things get better) I will return?

I’d really appreciate some advice :) Thanks in advance!

--oo00oo--

Being good at your job or being gaslit to convince that you are is something probation does a lot of. As an NQO your caseload should be protected and it should be a mixture of cases up to certain B-2 level. Nothing above unless it's a co-work (even though you do most of the work).

If you're qualified then 'the board' that certifies you means that your degree is intact. I would look for other work if it's getting too much or have another conversation with your SPO. It's probation shooting itself in the foot with a lack of PDU culture uniformity. In other words, if you don't get on with the culture or you don't feel supported or you feel others are being treated better, you'll leave. 

At least they got rid of the 8-10,000 word dissertation to send most people over the edge at the end of their PQIP. I was bullied through much of mine and given cases as PQIP out of spite and because of low staffing levels, including a very dangerous rapist. I went to MAPPA without much training and was expected to carry out Maps for Change, even though a PQIP isn't supposed to have contact sex offence cases. I had 8 professional discussions, but I got through it. 

They exploit the fact that you're new, that you don't want to upset the apple cart and not have a reputation as someone negative or unable to handle it. They also exploit good staff as many organisations do, whilst the not so good manage to coast. Protect your health and your work/life balance - these are your priorities, not Probation's who are target driven to the impossible whilst still Jedi mind tricking you that you're great. 

It's all ok until an SFO turns up. Juggling so many plates with complex cases, it's bound to happen. It's not how you approach the work, but the workload itself. Probation emphasise the opposite and put the responsibility on you. You haven't been there long enough to find your lane. Don't volunteer for cases and downplay the 'I love the job' angle. 

For a supposedly compassionate end of the criminal justice system, it can be very toxic indeed with SPOs being absent of empathy whilst reminding you to have them for the POPs. 6 years in and it's a daily negotiation. Look elsewhere for something more befitting you. Don't leave until you have another job and when you look back on it, the training will have some value for anything you chose to do next. Good luck.

--oo00oo--

Don't burn any bridges get through your academic and any practice reviews to consolidate the training outcome. Don't give practice managers any reason to block your end certification remember it's also a practice based qualification not just the training period. Soon as your sorted, resign go to a different area where possible Good luck.

Time to remember

 

New Year - Old Story

We might as well start a new year with a very old story. This from the BBC news website last week, but only just come to my attention because - well, because I suppose I'm worn out writing about it all to little effect and I guess I'm depressed. Apologies to everyone who tried to post a link, but I've not looked at the blog for ages and unfortunately Virgin have seen fit to 'disappear' my email account. 

Probation: 'Too few staff, with too little experience, managing too many offenders'

Holding his chin in his hand and staring into the distance, a probation officer tells me how he planned to end his life. "I started to prepare how I was going to do it," he says. "I needed to get out of this work situation - I'd been doing the job for so long and it had got even busier and chaotic. I just couldn't cope and I needed an exit." 

His face is expressionless and his voice is solemn. Thinking about his family stopped him from going ahead - but he says panic attacks have become a regular occurrence because of his increasing workload. "It happens three or four times a week," he tells me. "Waves of nausea, heart racing, profuse sweating, and I wake up in the night thinking: 'Have I missed something at work that could lead to someone getting hurt?' "This is no way to live."

This isn't an isolated case - the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), which represents thousands of probation officers in England and Wales, says its members are "burning out due to the relentlessly high workloads".

Probation officers supervise offenders after prison sentences and check they follow other terms of their release, such as sticking to curfews and not taking drugs. They also help former prisoners with housing, employment and access to benefits, and protect the public by assessing the risk of further offending.

In its 2022/2023 annual report, external, the probation watchdog assessed most of the probation service was working beyond its capacity. The probation caseload - that's the number of former offenders staff are attending to - was 238,646 at the end of June 2024. That figure is slightly higher than in 2023, when it was 238,264. Probation officers may have multiple appointments with each person.

Since the HM Inspectorate of Probation report was published and those caseload figures were captured, probation officers' workloads have increased significantly - because the government released more than 2,000 offenders early from prisons in England and Wales to deal with overcrowding.

The justice secretary said this had prevented the penal system from reaching maximum capacity, and "a total breakdown of law and order".

"We used to have around eight appointments a day - some with people of high risk," the probation officer explains, "but that's gone up to 12 appointments - colleagues are crying at their desks as it's too much."

Appointments can involve a probation officer and offender discussing the rules of the probation, the dates and times of future appointments, and job and training opportunities. Some offenders are serious criminals who require close and regular monitoring, and if probation officers are overworked they might miss opportunities to prevent them reoffending.

The murder of Zara Aleena in east London in 2022 was partly blamed on mistakes made by probation staff. Her killer, Jordan McSweeney, attacked Ms Aleena nine days after his release on license from prison. The unit responsible for supervising him had staffing levels of just 61%.

The probation officer tells me about a former prisoner who should have been visited by a probation officer but wasn't - and then went on to stab someone. "That's what we're dealing with," he says. "It's not our fault, we can't do it all. "And then we have to live with feelings of guilt."

The government said it would recruit 1,000 new officers by March 2025 to help with the additional duties, but critics argue it takes at least a year to train a probation officer. Staff say it will take time before additional staff make any difference.

"It's not like we're going to have these extra staff now up and running which is what we want," another probation officer, who's been working in the sector for several years, says. "There's not a day that passes where I don't think about quitting. We're facing excessive workloads and poor pay - all of which have led to entrenched problems of staff retention and sickness rates in crucial roles."

Sickness levels among probation officers have gone up nationally. In the year to September 2024, HMPSS staff each lost an average of 11.4 working days to sickness absence - an increase from 11.2 average working days lost for the year ending 31 March 2024.

Senior probation staff claim at least 75% of that sickness is down to stress. The service is also facing a significant shortfall in staff. Last year's annual report from HM Inspectorate of Probation cited "chronic under-staffing" and the "knock-on impact on workloads" as key issues of concern. There are 20,652 full-time probation staff in England and Wales - an increase of 103 on the previous year.

His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) says 790 probation officers left the service in England and Wales over the last year (to the end of Sept 2024). This is a slight decrease (0.8%) compared to the previous year.

"My mental health is a mess. I'm getting upset stomachs and feeling drained all the time. It's my job and its affecting my health," the second probation officers says. "I get why people are leaving - I would if I didn't have a mortgage and bills."

Recent inspectorate reports into probation services in various parts of the country also make for grim reading - with many identifying staffing to be an issue. In November, the Bradford and Calderdale Probation Delivery Unit in West Yorkshire was assessed by the Inspectorate to be "inadequate", and at risk of not protecting the public from harm because of "large gaps in staffing".

Martin Jones, chief inspector of probation, says he's deeply concerned warning signs could be missed because of the excessive workload. "The more pressure probation officers are under, they may miss things going wrong, so - of course - I'm acutely worried about that. "What you're seeing is a service under huge pressure. My assessment is the probation service has too few staff, with too little experience, managing too many cases. Is that really sustainable for the long term?"

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told the BBC the new government inherited a prison system in "crisis", and it had been "forced into taking difficult but necessary action so it can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public".

"This included replacing the last Government's early release scheme with one that gives probation staff more time to prepare for a prisoner's release and with new protections in relation to domestic abuse offences."