Timpson Fails to Join the Dots

Lord Timpson OBE, Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending delivered the 27th Bill McWilliams lecture yesterday, so what did we learn? Well, he's not been a politician for long and is clearly a nice guy, but....he's a government minister and still learning what that's about and the priority has obviously been dealing with the prison crisis, not the Probation Service one. 

He clearly cares about the Probation Service, but how much does he really know about it and understand its distinctive ethos? From the many incongruities in his address he is aware of the issues, but so far is either unwilling or unable to address them.  

• He reminded us that the first probation officers were volunteers - wags might be tempted to say on current pay trajectory, probation staff will in effect be volunteers soon.
• Advise Assist and Befriend got a mention, but a modern service was about Assess Protect and Change.
• He has a somewhat touching belief in technology being the answer to Probation's woes in the vain hope that the 70/30 split in wasted time spent on futile admin can be reversed with more time to spend with clients and 'having a cup of tea' with them.
• Although he stressed "this is a people business", he is clearly enamoured by technology and keen to spend much of the allocated £700 million on AI recording stuff. He doesn't seem to understand how that would fundamentally affect the nature of the inter-action.
• Described probation as "the quiet engine of our Justice System".despite much evidence to suggest it's utterly broken.
• He said "probation was community based working with the judiciary" and also "Prisons and Probation are two sides of the same coin" NO THEY'RE EFFING NOT!
• He said "it can't all be top down, it can't be one size fits all" seemingly to forget probation is part of a Civil Service command and control structure.
• He batted away suggestions that the Civil Service might not be the best structural model for the type of staff required to deliver probation, preferring to highlight how important leadership was instead!
• He also referred more than once to the differences between geographical communities. London, Cambridge and Cumbria (I think) and therefore service delivery being very different. He is clearly unable to spot the incongruity here.
• He ducked the pay question saying "we don't do it for the money" and brushed it off as "they are talking to the unions". Not rewarding the profession appropriately is not a mark of investing of course.
• He cited trauma, addiction and mental health as drivers of crime, but made no mention of poverty.
• He clearly rates HMI inspector Martin Jones (who regularly bangs on about 'localism') and cited him in efforts to not talk about Kim Thornden-Edwards and probation having invisible leadership and an effective voice.
• He acknowledged the havoc caused by Chris Grayling and asserted it takes 5 years to get a damaged organisation back into good shape. That time's nearly up, but in crisis.
• When asked about foreign nationals in prison, having acknowledged there were 10,500, he chose to highlight the plight of female FNO's and how they were 'all victims'. He was delighted that social workers were being employed in prisons to assist them, having earlier avoided the notion of a return to social work training being appropriate for probation officers.
• In pondering in what circumstances a Probation Officer might be sacked, he clearly recognised how risk-averse the whole structure had become and opined that 'a bit more commonsense' might be needed. Touching, given that we are part of a Civil Service command and control structure.
• He was impressed with the Manchester model of partnership working and hoped for a bigger role for the Third Sector, but is not yet willing to concede the present shotgun marriage to HM Prison Service is part of the problem.
• We had the usual 'recruiting more staff' mantra, but he didn't seem that alarmed at rentention rates. He was concerned at sickness levels, but didn't think caseloads of 35 were a problem.
• Despite being given the opportunity posed by a question of how the workload might be reduced, there was no mention of ditching the ridiculous 'supervision' of the under 12mths custody cohort.
• Apparently he's meeting representatives from Wales on Monday, so hopefully the notions of a different probation model will be enthusiastically advanced!