MoJ: Check-In with your probation officer (E-Supervision)
AWS Rekognition is used within the Check-In with your probation officer service to support identity verification by performing facial comparison between user-submitted video and a photo held on file.
2.1 - Detailed description
"The Check-In with your probation officer (E-Supervision) service uses AWS Rekognition to support identity verification for individuals on probation completing remote check-ins. The tool is integrated into a digital service that allows users to submit a short video as part of their check-in process.
From this submission, a still image is captured and compared against a reference image held on record. AWS Rekognition performs facial comparison and generates a similarity score indicating the likelihood that the images belong to the same individual. This output is used to support practitioners in assessing whether the correct person is completing the check-in.
The tool is intended for use by probation practitioners and service staff responsible for managing and monitoring compliance with supervision requirements. It is designed to operate as a decision-support tool and does not make autonomous decisions. Practitioners review the output alongside other available information and retain responsibility for the final determination.
The scope of the tool is limited to identity verification within the Check-In with your probation officer service. It is not used for broader surveillance, profiling, or automated enforcement decisions.
The performance of the tool may be affected by factors such as image quality, lighting conditions, and camera positioning. As with many facial recognition technologies, there may be variations in accuracy across different demographic groups. Where results are uncertain or confidence scores are low, additional checks or manual review are required."
2.2 - Benefits
The use of AWS Rekognition within the Check-In with your probation officer service supports the Ministry of Justice’s ambition to deliver more flexible, digital-first public services. It enables individuals on probation to complete check-ins remotely, providing greater accessibility and convenience while maintaining appropriate safeguards.
The tool supports practitioners by providing an additional source of information to help verify identity, contributing to more efficient and consistent decision-making. It also reduces reliance on in-person appointments, helping to optimise resource use and support service scalability.
2.3 - Previous process
Prior to the introduction of this tool, identity verification was conducted through in-person appointments or manual checks carried out by practitioners.
2.4 - Alternatives considered
A non-algorithmic alternative was considered to continue relying on in-person, face-to-face appointments for identity verification, without introducing the Check-In with your probation officer service. While this approach reduces reliance on automated tools, it is more resource-intensive, less flexible for service users, and limits the ability to deliver check-ins remotely at scale.
Algorithmic alternatives included other facial recognition and identity verification providers. These tools offer capabilities such as liveness detection and spoofing protection. AWS Rekognition was selected as it provides facial comparison capabilities, alongside features such as liveness detection and spoofing protection, and integrates effectively with existing infrastructure. It also allows similarity scoring to support human decision-making.
The chosen approach balances operational efficiency, scalability, and system integration, while maintaining practitioner oversight in final decisions.
From this submission, a still image is captured and compared against a reference image held on record. AWS Rekognition performs facial comparison and generates a similarity score indicating the likelihood that the images belong to the same individual. This output is used to support practitioners in assessing whether the correct person is completing the check-in.
The tool is intended for use by probation practitioners and service staff responsible for managing and monitoring compliance with supervision requirements. It is designed to operate as a decision-support tool and does not make autonomous decisions. Practitioners review the output alongside other available information and retain responsibility for the final determination.
The scope of the tool is limited to identity verification within the Check-In with your probation officer service. It is not used for broader surveillance, profiling, or automated enforcement decisions.
The performance of the tool may be affected by factors such as image quality, lighting conditions, and camera positioning. As with many facial recognition technologies, there may be variations in accuracy across different demographic groups. Where results are uncertain or confidence scores are low, additional checks or manual review are required."
2.2 - Benefits
The use of AWS Rekognition within the Check-In with your probation officer service supports the Ministry of Justice’s ambition to deliver more flexible, digital-first public services. It enables individuals on probation to complete check-ins remotely, providing greater accessibility and convenience while maintaining appropriate safeguards.
The tool supports practitioners by providing an additional source of information to help verify identity, contributing to more efficient and consistent decision-making. It also reduces reliance on in-person appointments, helping to optimise resource use and support service scalability.
2.3 - Previous process
Prior to the introduction of this tool, identity verification was conducted through in-person appointments or manual checks carried out by practitioners.
2.4 - Alternatives considered
A non-algorithmic alternative was considered to continue relying on in-person, face-to-face appointments for identity verification, without introducing the Check-In with your probation officer service. While this approach reduces reliance on automated tools, it is more resource-intensive, less flexible for service users, and limits the ability to deliver check-ins remotely at scale.
Algorithmic alternatives included other facial recognition and identity verification providers. These tools offer capabilities such as liveness detection and spoofing protection. AWS Rekognition was selected as it provides facial comparison capabilities, alongside features such as liveness detection and spoofing protection, and integrates effectively with existing infrastructure. It also allows similarity scoring to support human decision-making.
The chosen approach balances operational efficiency, scalability, and system integration, while maintaining practitioner oversight in final decisions.
Although this naturally jars with a purely humanist view of Probation its use does however allow reliable and secure remote supervision preferred by many people on probation. We must move with the times and be flexible enough not to dismiss this out of hand especially if it helps reduce workload pressures when use with low risk people or those who need more reporting options due to childcare or work commitments.
ReplyDeleteIt just brings back the haunting mantras of management-speak pre-tr:
Delete"positive ways to change the way we work"
"move with the times"
"don't be resistant, embrace the opportunity"
"it is what it is"
"we are where we are"
"look to the future now its only just begun" (erm, wasn't that Noddy?)
And look how successful tr was.
Anyone reading 643 should realise either an idiot or a senior manager and or IT operative.
DeleteOnce you automate a process of smart tech you say goodbye to what it replaces. I recall typists reduced as we got terminals . Way back now and our typist were gone along with memos. It all speed up then to multiples. Put in e supervision and you'll get lots more as you no longer move to interview rooms that will also become offices space. The constant welcome mentality of probation staff is crippling . It is why you are virtual now and or virtually useless in role . Wake up collectively and you might have a small chance. Or do as that fool says "must move with the times."
Anon 06:43. Typical managerial response to every substandard approach is “if it helps reduce workload pressures”, is why probation is in the mess it’s in, when instead you could ditch those responses and do better to pay and retain probation staff.,
ReplyDeleteI can see a place for remote check-ins as an additional option, particularly where work, childcare, disability, distance or other circumstances make attendance unnecessarily difficult.
ReplyDeleteBut I’m less convinced by the argument that we should use them for low-risk cases simply to reduce workload.
Aren’t those precisely the cases where OFPS is already reducing the amount of face-to-face supervision?
The model appears to be: complete the early engagement work, undertake the relevant SPARKS activity, progress the person appropriately and, where the criteria are met, get them towards consideration for early termination.
So within what is already intended to be a comparatively limited period of active supervision, why would we want to remove even more of the human contact?
There is a danger of repeatedly shaving small pieces off probation because each individual efficiency sounds perfectly reasonable.
Fewer routine appointments because they’re low risk.
Fewer home visits because they should be targeted.
Remote check-ins because attending in person is resource-intensive.
Earlier progression because continued supervision may no longer be necessary.
Look at each change separately and there’s a rational explanation for it.
Put them together and eventually you have to ask how much actual probation is left in probation?
A remote check-in verified by facial recognition can tell me that the correct person presented themselves to a camera. That’s useful for compliance.
But early supervision is surely when we’re supposed to be establishing the relationship, understanding the person behind the assessment, testing what we’re being told, identifying strengths and needs and doing the work that might allow us confidently to step supervision down later.
If the destination is earlier termination, I’d have thought there was an argument for making the limited human contact before that point better, not reducing it further.
Technology should make supervision more flexible for the person and practitioner where appropriate. It shouldn’t become another means of extracting “capacity” from a model already designed to extract capacity.
Otherwise we’ll eventually achieve the perfect efficiency saving - a Probation Service requiring remarkably little probation.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis.
ReplyDelete[Think of an API like a waiter in a restaurant. The customer, your App, places an order with the waiter, the API, who takes it to the kitchen, the Server, and brings the food back to you.]
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"What caused the AWS outage - and why did it make the internet fall apart?"
"while maintaining practitioner oversight in final decisions" In other words, someone to pin blame on when something inevitably goes wrong.
ReplyDelete06:43 has a different interpretation of probation to me.
ReplyDelete‘If it helps reduce the workload…..’ indicates a belief that endless bureaucracy and form filling reprints ‘ the work,’ to the exclusion of the service user who is the whole point for the work.
I’m with 09:27 who remembers the days when we had superb clerical support. The advent of technology, firstly word processors and then computers merely ensured that I did a redundant clerical officers job for a probation officers pay.