The rejected Proposal for an Experiment in Upside-Down Management in Probation
From April to December 2025 most of my ‘spare’ time was taken up in putting together a ‘Proposal for an experiment in upside-down management in Probation’ to the National Research Committee of the Ministry of Justice, together with a linked application to undertake a PhD with the University of Greenwich for this purpose, and also writing an app which would be a key component for implementing the ‘experiment’. The proposal was rejected (for a second and final time) in December 2025.
The whole idea behind the Proposal comes directly from my Modern Probation Theory (MPT). The reason I made the Proposal that year was that Lord James Timpson had been appointed the Minister for Prisons and Probation in July 2024, and that he and his father had described the way they ran the Timpson business as being an instance of “Upside-down Management”, describing an approach that I saw as strikingly similar to MPT. I felt that, if I was ever going to have the chance to demonstrate MPT, now was the time – and I suggested trying it with a small group of volunteer Probation practitioners, in an area where the Regional Probation Director would welcome it. (I had one definite Director, and potentially two more, who said they were interested in trying it, partly because they could see that for practitioners it would both save their time and yet provide focus.)
I was not at all impressed with the letter declining the Proposal. If it had simply said that senior managers had concluded that the Experiment was too difficult or simply not wanted, I could have respected such an operational decision that was theirs to make – I could certainly understand that there were potential “political risks” that they might reasonably be unwilling to take. Instead the letter listed a number of misunderstandings and post hoc rationalisations about the nature of the research proposal, highlighted what they thought would improve it, but denied me the opportunity to attempt that. I was not completely surprised by the outcome, since I had already feared from my earlier in‑person meeting with the Minister that he personally would not be actively supporting it as I had hoped.
Andrew Bridges
To avoid political risks, probation services must balance the systemic pressure of penal populism (the political demand to be "tough on crime") with evidence-based public protection. Because probation operates out of the public eye, it faces severe political risk when high-profile "Serious Further Offences" occur, frequently leading to knee-jerk legislative overhauls or privatization attempts.
The primary political risks facing modern probation services center on being blamed for failures in public safety, being forced into rigid, bureaucratic monitoring metrics that erode professional discretion, and coping with sudden policy shifts like emergency early-release schemes that strain existing resources.
1. Establish Strict Risk-Management Thresholds
Define Clear Acceptable Risk Limits: Probation leadership must align with the Ministry of Justice and government oversight bodies to set transparent thresholds for acceptable operational risk. This shifts accountability from individual officers to a mutually agreed-upon systemic framework.
Utilize Reflexive, Dual-Method Risk Assessments: Combine algorithmic and actuarial assessment tools with qualitative, clinical judgment from seasoned staff. Algorithmic systems alone can replicate racial biases, which creates a separate political risk regarding civil rights and systemic discrimination.
Avoid the "High vs. Low" Risk Dichotomy: Politically, funding often follows high-risk offenders, leaving "medium-risk" cases under-supervised. Statistically, a significant portion of serious further offences are committed by individuals initially categorized as medium-risk. Dynamic risk models must continuously evaluate shifting life factors like unstable housing or sudden job loss.
2. Protect Operational Capacity Against Structural Whiplash
Resist Politically Driven Reorganizations: Over the last decade, probation services have suffered from continuous structural changes driven by ideology—most notably the failed part-privatization in 2014 ("Transforming Rehabilitation") which had to be fully reversed in 2021. Maintaining a unified, stable public service delivery model helps buffer frontline workers from shifting political winds.
Mandate Safe Case-to-Staff Ratios: Political risks spike when understaffed, poorly compensated, and overwhelmed probation officers miss critical warning signs. Demanding institutional guardrails that tie maximum caseload limits to recruitment targets protects public safety and insulates the agency from systemic failure.
Secure Resourced Backing for Emergency Release Schemes: When governments use early-release schemes to manage prison overcrowding, probation becomes the political scapegoat for community anxiety. Service leaders must secure firm funding commitments (such as technology investments or localized restriction-zone mapping) prior to absorbing accelerated caseloads.
3. Build Multilateral Accountability and Partnerships
Utilize Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA): Broaden accountability by co-managing high-risk, violent, or terrorist offenders through formal partnerships with local police, health authorities, and the prison service. Sharing risk governance prevents probation from bearing exclusive political liability if an individual reoffends.
Enforce Swift and Consistent Sentence Violations: Maintaining the confidence of judges, magistrates, and the public requires clear, transparent enforcement rules. When probation demonstrably enforces court orders swiftly and firmly, it protects itself from accusations of being "soft on crime".
Change the Public Narrative: Shift away from a purely punitive rhetoric or a purely social-work lexicon, both of which are politically polarizing. Instead, frame probation through the lens of economic and social utility—demonstrating how effective rehabilitation directly reduces the billions spent annually on the cycle of reoffending.
I well remember Timpson's Bill McWilliams Memorial lecture in Cambridge failing to live up to expectation and being a great disappointment. I guess we will never know exactly why, but I strongly suspect he quickly came up against what our fundamental problem all along has been, that of 'political risk'. So, seeing as I know this blog has been helping train AI in the form of Large Language Models for some time, I thought I'd use it:-
Does probation pose political risks?
The probation and early prison release crisis in England and Wales creates severe political risks for the government, as systemic strains damage public safety and invite heavy criticism from watchdogs, unions, and opposition politicians.
Key Political and Operational Pressures
Early Release Backlash: The government's plan to release around 4,500 prisoners early (serving one-third of their sentences) to relieve overcrowded prisons (running near 98% capacity) has sparked fierce political backlash. Opposition figures, such as Joy Morrissey MP, have argued that the early release scheme endangers the public and puts vulnerable victims—particularly domestic abuse survivors—at risk.
Watchdog and Union Warnings: Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation, warned that severe officer shortages mean criminals freed early face an increased risk of reoffending, including serious crimes like murder and rape. Meanwhile, the probation union Napo has threatened industrial action and declared a vote of no confidence in management, stating that staff operate at over 126% capacity in some regions.
Public Accounts Committee Scrutiny: The UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee stated that the Probation Service is near collapse, having met only 7 of 27 performance targets last year while managing record recall populations and a 21% staff vacancy rate.
Blame Shifting Across Parties: Political debate frequently splits along partisan lines, with critics pointing to long-term systemic erosion, historic prison closures, and previous privatization experiments, while current ministers argue they inherited a broken and overstretched justice system.
So AI, did probation always pose political risks?
No, probation did not always pose significant political risks. For nearly a century following its late 19th-century origins, probation operated under a low-profile "welfare and rehabilitation" ethos that insulated it from the political crosshairs. It only transformed into a highly volatile political risk in the late 20th century due to shifting penal philosophies, centralisation, and the rise of "tough on crime" populist politics.
The Era of Low Political Risk: "Advise, Assist, and Befriend"
When formalised in jurisdictions like the UK (via the Probation of Offenders Act 1907) and the US (spreading rapidly in the early 1900s), probation was viewed essentially as a humanitarian extension of social work or religious missionary efforts.
The Welfare Philosophy: Early probation focused on a mandate to "advise, assist, and befriend" the individual. Because the prevailing social consensus leaned toward rehabilitation, reform, and addressing the root causes of crime (like poverty or alcoholism), probation was a quiet, uncontroversial alternative to costly and overcrowded prisons.
Local and Judicial Control: For decades, probation services were managed locally, often directly under the supervision of local courts and magistrates. Because it was decentralized and largely invisible to the national press, politicians rarely faced scrutiny or blame for the behavior of individuals on probation.
The Shift to Political Volatility (1970s–1990s)
The political environment surrounding probation changed drastically due to a perfect storm of ideological and systemic shifts:
The "Nothing Works" Doctrine: In the mid-1970s, criminological research (most famously Robert Martinson’s 1974 study) popularized the idea that rehabilitative efforts had no statistical impact on reducing recidivism. This stripped probation of its scientific and moral immunity, leaving it exposed to political assault.
The Rise of Populist Punitiveness: By the 1980s and 1990s, politicians in both the US and the UK realized that campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform was highly effective. Probation was recast by critics not as a humane intervention, but as a "soft" option or an evasion of justice.
Redefinition as Punishment: To survive politically, governments actively stripped probation of its social work identity. Laws like the UK’s Criminal Justice Act 1991 legally redefined probation as a punishment in its own right, shifting its primary objective from welfare to "public protection," "risk management," and strict "enforcement".
Centralisation and Media Visibility: National governments centralized probation services under federal or state executive branches (such as the creation of the National Probation Service in England and Wales in 2001). While this intended to standardize practice, it stripped away local judicial shielding. Consequently, whenever a high-profile "Serious Further Offence" (SFO) occurred, the systemic failure was dropped directly at the doorstep of the ruling political ministers.
Today, probation is highly politicized because it operates under a risk-averse, highly audited framework where any failure by a person under supervision can trigger immediate media backlashes and threaten ministerial careers.
The probation and early prison release crisis in England and Wales creates severe political risks for the government, as systemic strains damage public safety and invite heavy criticism from watchdogs, unions, and opposition politicians.
Key Political and Operational Pressures
Early Release Backlash: The government's plan to release around 4,500 prisoners early (serving one-third of their sentences) to relieve overcrowded prisons (running near 98% capacity) has sparked fierce political backlash. Opposition figures, such as Joy Morrissey MP, have argued that the early release scheme endangers the public and puts vulnerable victims—particularly domestic abuse survivors—at risk.
Watchdog and Union Warnings: Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation, warned that severe officer shortages mean criminals freed early face an increased risk of reoffending, including serious crimes like murder and rape. Meanwhile, the probation union Napo has threatened industrial action and declared a vote of no confidence in management, stating that staff operate at over 126% capacity in some regions.
Public Accounts Committee Scrutiny: The UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee stated that the Probation Service is near collapse, having met only 7 of 27 performance targets last year while managing record recall populations and a 21% staff vacancy rate.
Blame Shifting Across Parties: Political debate frequently splits along partisan lines, with critics pointing to long-term systemic erosion, historic prison closures, and previous privatization experiments, while current ministers argue they inherited a broken and overstretched justice system.
So AI, did probation always pose political risks?
No, probation did not always pose significant political risks. For nearly a century following its late 19th-century origins, probation operated under a low-profile "welfare and rehabilitation" ethos that insulated it from the political crosshairs. It only transformed into a highly volatile political risk in the late 20th century due to shifting penal philosophies, centralisation, and the rise of "tough on crime" populist politics.
The Era of Low Political Risk: "Advise, Assist, and Befriend"
When formalised in jurisdictions like the UK (via the Probation of Offenders Act 1907) and the US (spreading rapidly in the early 1900s), probation was viewed essentially as a humanitarian extension of social work or religious missionary efforts.
The Welfare Philosophy: Early probation focused on a mandate to "advise, assist, and befriend" the individual. Because the prevailing social consensus leaned toward rehabilitation, reform, and addressing the root causes of crime (like poverty or alcoholism), probation was a quiet, uncontroversial alternative to costly and overcrowded prisons.
Local and Judicial Control: For decades, probation services were managed locally, often directly under the supervision of local courts and magistrates. Because it was decentralized and largely invisible to the national press, politicians rarely faced scrutiny or blame for the behavior of individuals on probation.
The Shift to Political Volatility (1970s–1990s)
The political environment surrounding probation changed drastically due to a perfect storm of ideological and systemic shifts:
The "Nothing Works" Doctrine: In the mid-1970s, criminological research (most famously Robert Martinson’s 1974 study) popularized the idea that rehabilitative efforts had no statistical impact on reducing recidivism. This stripped probation of its scientific and moral immunity, leaving it exposed to political assault.
The Rise of Populist Punitiveness: By the 1980s and 1990s, politicians in both the US and the UK realized that campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform was highly effective. Probation was recast by critics not as a humane intervention, but as a "soft" option or an evasion of justice.
Redefinition as Punishment: To survive politically, governments actively stripped probation of its social work identity. Laws like the UK’s Criminal Justice Act 1991 legally redefined probation as a punishment in its own right, shifting its primary objective from welfare to "public protection," "risk management," and strict "enforcement".
Centralisation and Media Visibility: National governments centralized probation services under federal or state executive branches (such as the creation of the National Probation Service in England and Wales in 2001). While this intended to standardize practice, it stripped away local judicial shielding. Consequently, whenever a high-profile "Serious Further Offence" (SFO) occurred, the systemic failure was dropped directly at the doorstep of the ruling political ministers.
Today, probation is highly politicized because it operates under a risk-averse, highly audited framework where any failure by a person under supervision can trigger immediate media backlashes and threaten ministerial careers.
How can probation avoid political risks?
The primary political risks facing modern probation services center on being blamed for failures in public safety, being forced into rigid, bureaucratic monitoring metrics that erode professional discretion, and coping with sudden policy shifts like emergency early-release schemes that strain existing resources.
1. Establish Strict Risk-Management Thresholds
Define Clear Acceptable Risk Limits: Probation leadership must align with the Ministry of Justice and government oversight bodies to set transparent thresholds for acceptable operational risk. This shifts accountability from individual officers to a mutually agreed-upon systemic framework.
Utilize Reflexive, Dual-Method Risk Assessments: Combine algorithmic and actuarial assessment tools with qualitative, clinical judgment from seasoned staff. Algorithmic systems alone can replicate racial biases, which creates a separate political risk regarding civil rights and systemic discrimination.
Avoid the "High vs. Low" Risk Dichotomy: Politically, funding often follows high-risk offenders, leaving "medium-risk" cases under-supervised. Statistically, a significant portion of serious further offences are committed by individuals initially categorized as medium-risk. Dynamic risk models must continuously evaluate shifting life factors like unstable housing or sudden job loss.
2. Protect Operational Capacity Against Structural Whiplash
Resist Politically Driven Reorganizations: Over the last decade, probation services have suffered from continuous structural changes driven by ideology—most notably the failed part-privatization in 2014 ("Transforming Rehabilitation") which had to be fully reversed in 2021. Maintaining a unified, stable public service delivery model helps buffer frontline workers from shifting political winds.
Mandate Safe Case-to-Staff Ratios: Political risks spike when understaffed, poorly compensated, and overwhelmed probation officers miss critical warning signs. Demanding institutional guardrails that tie maximum caseload limits to recruitment targets protects public safety and insulates the agency from systemic failure.
Secure Resourced Backing for Emergency Release Schemes: When governments use early-release schemes to manage prison overcrowding, probation becomes the political scapegoat for community anxiety. Service leaders must secure firm funding commitments (such as technology investments or localized restriction-zone mapping) prior to absorbing accelerated caseloads.
3. Build Multilateral Accountability and Partnerships
Utilize Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA): Broaden accountability by co-managing high-risk, violent, or terrorist offenders through formal partnerships with local police, health authorities, and the prison service. Sharing risk governance prevents probation from bearing exclusive political liability if an individual reoffends.
Enforce Swift and Consistent Sentence Violations: Maintaining the confidence of judges, magistrates, and the public requires clear, transparent enforcement rules. When probation demonstrably enforces court orders swiftly and firmly, it protects itself from accusations of being "soft on crime".
Change the Public Narrative: Shift away from a purely punitive rhetoric or a purely social-work lexicon, both of which are politically polarizing. Instead, frame probation through the lens of economic and social utility—demonstrating how effective rehabilitation directly reduces the billions spent annually on the cycle of reoffending.
Perhaps “political risk” is actually the thread running through far more of probation’s recent history than we realise.
ReplyDeleteNot because probation itself is uniquely politically dangerous, but because allowing professional discretion involves accepting something that modern organisations and politicians find extremely uncomfortable: uncertainty.
If you genuinely give probation practitioners autonomy, they will sometimes make different decisions about apparently similar cases. That isn’t necessarily inconsistency or poor practice. Human beings are different, circumstances are different and risk is dynamic. Professional judgement exists precisely because a rulebook cannot anticipate every situation.
But from the centre, variation is frightening.
What happens after an SFO? What happens when a journalist, inspector, coroner or select committee asks why something wasn’t done?
It is much easier institutionally to answer: the policy was clear, the guidance was issued, the assessment was completed, the practitioner undertook the required training and the prescribed process should have been followed.
Which raises an uncomfortable question.
Have we designed probation increasingly around managing organisational and political risk rather than managing human risk?
Because those two things are not necessarily the same.
Organisational risk encourages prescription. Standardise the assessment. Specify the process. Define the contact. Record the decision. Create the audit trail. Monitor the dashboard. Demonstrate compliance.
Human risk is considerably messier.
It requires somebody to understand another person well enough to notice change. It requires information from different places to be connected. It requires curiosity, experience, judgement and sometimes the confidence to do something that wasn’t conveniently predicted by the process.
And here is the paradox.
The more frightened an organisation becomes of professional discretion, the more it attempts to control practice through systems. The more systems it introduces, the more practitioner time is consumed servicing them. The less time practitioners have to know the people they supervise. And the less they know those people, the more dependent the organisation becomes upon assessments, classifications, processes and systems.
So the attempted solution reinforces the original problem.
That is why Andrew Bridges’ proposed experiment interests me, regardless of whether his particular model would ultimately have worked.
It was an experiment.
Try something small. Give willing practitioners greater ownership. Measure what happens. Compare outcomes. Learn from it. Stop if it doesn’t work.
Isn’t that supposedly what an evidence-led organisation should do?
If an idea which transfers some authority downwards is considered politically risky, while continuing with a model already producing repeated inspection concerns is somehow considered the safer option, then perhaps we need to ask what “risk” actually means inside HMPPS.
Risk to whom?
Risk to the public?
Risk to the person under supervision?
Risk to the practitioner?
Or risk to the organisation and those accountable for it?
Because they aren’t always identical.
Continued...
...continued
DeleteAnd perhaps this also explains why probation can repeatedly acknowledge the importance of professional judgement while simultaneously constructing more elaborate systems around it.
Professional autonomy transfers some control away from the centre.
Process transfers it back.
Which brings us straight back to the discussion of the last few days. We keep asking why decades of research about relationships, professional judgement, experience and human interaction struggle to influence the direction of probation.
Perhaps part of the answer is that these things require organisations to tolerate professional discretion, variation and uncertainty.
A dashboard offers certainty.
A prescribed process offers assurance.
A completed assessment offers an audit trail.
None necessarily tells you whether somebody is safer.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply whether probation poses a political risk.
Perhaps we should be asking whether fear of political risk has become one of the forces preventing probation from practising what it already knows.
good work jb.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4916258.stm
ReplyDeleteAnger at probation chief's remark
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4529930.stm
Warning over probation scrutiny - "Time spent on assessing risk of harm had slipped because of the priority given to introducing a new computer system, Andrew Bridges said."
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/133435/pdf/
"I do not seek yet another restructuring, but instead I make the case for a coherent strategy, ... the remedy that would not have the intended helpful effect would be to develop the idea of so-called “tougher” community sentences. Instead we need a comprehensive ‘Probation Refocus’ that would replace the existing top-heavy cumbersome management with a much more ‘bottom-up’ approach to managing Probation work, to liberate its creative potential." - January 2025
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmjust/519/11032902.htm
"Q292 Chair: I thought, just to clear our own minds, we would establish what the structural changes have done in your view and whether they have had a significant impact. There are a number that one could mention. There is the creation of NOMS—the National Offender Management Service. Then there is the removal of the regional tier in NOMS. If we just take those two for a start, how do you see or foresee the impact of those two things?
Andrew Bridges: My overall view is that structure should always be secondary. It should be strategy first and structure second, to keep it in alphabetical order. That is my suggestion. I wouldn't have created a NOMS myself if I had been given the choice, but equally I wouldn't change it back now either. That is just more and more structural change. The creation of a single NOMS—which was basically a takeover of the Probation Service by the Prison Service..."
There’s a good reason this failed — and let’s thank our lucky stars it did.
ReplyDeleteThe proposal by Andrew Bridges is essentially: “I developed a model based on how I managed probation 25 years ago. I believe it still works. I’ve built an app around it. Now I want to see whether practitioners will use it.”
That is a very big leap from “this worked for me then” to “this is what Probation needs now.” The biggest problem is that the proposal is heavily centred on Bridges himself and his own experience. His work in Berkshire in 1998–2001 becomes the foundation for a model being presented as relevant to contemporary Probation. But Probation has changed enormously since then. What worked in one service, under one set of circumstances, 25 years ago does not automatically become a model for the future.
The methodological problems are just as significant:
* The intervention has been built before the contemporary problem has been properly established.
* The research mainly asks whether practitioners will use and find the app helpful, rather than whether the underlying model actually improves Probation.
* It relies on a volunteer/convenience sample.
* There is no meaningful counterfactual or impact evaluation.
* The researcher openly acknowledges a conflict of interest because he designed the intervention and wants it to succeed.
* The proposed risks focus largely on recruitment, management support and whether the technology works — rather than whether the theory itself is wrong.
* The suggestion that practitioners will simply “make time” for something interesting feels particularly detached from the reality of contemporary probation workloads.
And perhaps most tellingly, the proposal seems to start with the answer and then look for a way of testing it. Bridges’ experience undoubtedly gives him a perspective, but it shouldn’t become the lens through which the future of Probation is viewed. The world has moved on since he was Chief Inspector.
Ultimately, this feels less like an evidence-led investigation into what Probation needs now and more like an attempt to validate a model developed from one person’s experience of what worked then.
Personal conviction isn’t the same thing as evidence.
Seen on Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"This blog is currently on fire spewing out ideas and answers for probation. Today it's politics destroying probation and how to reverse it."
The irony it’s called Modern Probation Theory (MPT) when it’s actually based on a very selective personal past history. It’s neither Morden nor a theory.
ReplyDeleteFor the sheer enthusiasm though they’d should at least have people like this on board as consultants.
DeleteAh risk, the fluid mistress which means different things to different people at different times….the attempt to quantify risk is behind much of what we do yet it varies so much………for example when a Mappa case is doing well, Police are happy to say that the risk is being well managed, yet when an incident takes place it’s all down to probation…..the quantification of risk is like trying to
ReplyDeleteplatt smoke and will vary across offices,organisations and even between individuals sharing an office so perhaps we need to think again about how we classify individuals and the likelihood of them committing a similar or different crime in the future…….
It's so funny.. Instead of just saying yes we allowed an idiot or a bunch of idiots to design the OFPS they are all running around like headless chickens trying to make the idiots plan work! They are legitimasing the idiot rather than egg on their face! 😂
ReplyDeleteThe idiot said get rid of HDC and put everyone on tag but only if the tenancy holder agrees. Tenancy holder doesn't agree but person has nowhere to go a and prison won't take them back as they have address. Look right we can still make the idiot's plan work by having a bit professional curiousity. 😂
ReplyDeleteA few frontline staff with long experience tried to warn before the '91 change of direction to punishment in the community. A few more when the existing training was trashed around 95/96 and not repaired in 1997.with New Labour. and increasingly more before 2001 and 2014. This fails to address the issue of unassessrd early release from '91, deprofesionalisation, under pay making it a feminisrd career when most clients are young male and casework assessments for vourts done by untrained inexperienced probation service assistants. Comment in fetail seems almost pointless .
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/07/bail-hostels-due-to-house-early-release-prisoners-in-england-and-wales-closed
ReplyDelete'Getafix
Eleven bail hostels that were supposed to have housed dangerous prisoners during the early release of stalkers and domestic abusers in England and Wales have been closed, the Guardian can disclose.
DeleteSeven of the halfway house facilities, known as approved premises, were shut because of a lack of qualified staff and the other four because of problems such as infestations or lack of running water, Whitehall sources said.
The figures have emerged six days after about 700 male offenders, including violent criminals and burglars, were released. Some told journalists they had nowhere to stay and that they were likely to reoffend as a result.
Nearly one in eight approved premises for dangerous prisoners have been closed during the early release scheme, an increase from nearly one in 10 in July.
Martin Jones, HM inspector of probation, said the figures were concerning. “Approved premises play a critical role in the safe reintegration of the most complex individuals back into the community,” he said. “It is therefore concerning if there has been an increase in closures at a time when releases are increasing. Action needs to be taken to ensure adequate staffing cover and contingency plans.”
Ian Lawrence, the general secretary of the probation officers’ union, Napo, said his members were concerned that approved premises had been closing because of staff shortages or poor maintenance.
“At a time when we are seeing greater pressure on accommodation needs due to early releases, these closures are adding additional issues for our members to deal with and for those coming out of prison,” he said. HM Prison and Probation Service “needs to urgently address this issue so safe and robust release plans can be made in advance of early releases”.
Approved premises supervise about 2,000 criminals considered too dangerous to release back into the community across England and Wales.
Residents often have drug and alcohol problems and complex mental health needs. They live in the hostels for up to 12 weeks and can be recalled to prison if they refuse to submit to drug and alcohol tests or have their rooms searched.
Staff are required to monitor residents, with rapid enforcement action needed to stop violent incidents, self-harm and overdoses.
Western approved premises, a hostel for 27 offenders in Weymouth, will close on Friday because of staffing shortages.
Bridgewood approved premises in Northampton, which monitors 17 high-risk offenders, was closed earlier this year because of staff shortages, sources said.
A report from the probation watchdog in February found that Bridgewood required improvement. It highlighted “concerns over the workplace culture, training gaps and inconsistent supervision” and found “there were occasions when staffing levels did not meet the requirements for safe and effective operation”.
Staff are required to monitor residents, with rapid enforcement action needed to stop violent incidents, self-harm and overdoses.
Western approved premises, a hostel for 27 offenders in Weymouth, will close on Friday because of staffing shortages.
Bridgewood approved premises in Northampton, which monitors 17 high-risk offenders, was closed earlier this year because of staff shortages, sources said.
A report from the probation watchdog in February found that Bridgewood required improvement. It highlighted “concerns over the workplace culture, training gaps and inconsistent supervision” and found “there were occasions when staffing levels did not meet the requirements for safe and effective operation”.
Ian Lawrence says
DeleteWhat exactly is he saying and what is he going to do.
He's going to do nothing which translates to saying nothing of use.
You been on the sauce Andrew Hatton?
ReplyDeleteYes, dyslexia sauce, affects systematic behaviour and sometimes prompts a failure to proof read.
DeleteThe criticism of Andrew Bridges’ proposal raises some perfectly legitimate questions about research design, evidence and whether a model developed from earlier experience remains applicable today. Those questions should be asked. Professional enthusiasm is not proof of effectiveness, and a successful feasibility study would not automatically demonstrate better outcomes.
DeleteBut isn’t that precisely why we conduct research?
There is an important distinction between an idea being insufficiently evidenced to implement nationally and an idea being unsuitable even to investigate. We shouldn’t confuse the two.
I would be interested to know what opportunities actually exist within HMPPS for testing genuinely different approaches to probation practice, particularly those which challenge the prevailing assumptions about central control, standardisation and performance management. What evidence would be required? Who decides which ideas deserve investigation? And are we as rigorous in evaluating the models we impose nationally as we expect independent researchers to be when proposing alternatives?
Because that brings us rather neatly to the Guardian’s revelations about approved premises.
Eleven facilities reportedly closed, seven because of staffing shortages, at precisely the point when Government is increasing the number of people being released into community supervision.
Now consider the contrast.
An alternative management approach may be considered too uncertain, insufficiently evidenced or operationally risky to test. Yet we are prepared to expand early release while essential elements of the infrastructure required to manage that release are already unavailable.
How is the risk being assessed in each situation?
I am not suggesting that a rejected research proposal and the closure of approved premises are equivalent decisions. They plainly aren’t. But they expose a question about the consistency with which organisations assess uncertainty, evidence and consequences.
We are extremely concerned about the potential risks of doing something differently. Are we equally concerned about the demonstrable risks of continuing as we are?
And who is responsible for examining the cumulative consequences of these decisions?
An approved premises closes. A release still has to happen. An alternative address must be found. The practitioner must assess its suitability. Additional safeguarding enquiries may be necessary. Licence conditions may need reconsidering. Other agencies must be consulted. The risks do not disappear because the accommodation is unavailable.
The work moves elsewhere, usually into a service already struggling to meet its existing responsibilities.
That is the political-risk question I find most troubling.
Are we evaluating decisions according to their consequences for public protection, or according to how manageable their consequences appear from the centre?
Because avoiding a difficult decision today can create a much more dangerous one for somebody else tomorrow.
The 12:14 comment about risk being fluid raises something fundamental about OFPS that I don’t think we’ve properly examined.
ReplyDeleteWe assess people using the information available at a particular point in time. That information is entered into OASys, informs scores and predictors, and contributes to decisions about risk classification and supervision packages. But the assessment is only ever as reliable as the information available, the accuracy of what has been recorded and the professional judgement applied to it.
And human behaviour is not static.
Someone may be assessed accurately today and present a very different picture in three weeks. A relationship deteriorates, accommodation becomes unstable, substance use increases, a protective factor disappears or something happens that the practitioner doesn’t yet know about.
Of course, practitioners are expected to reassess when circumstances change, and supervision packages can be reconsidered. That is an important safeguard. But consider what this actually requires.
First, somebody has to recognise the change. That requires information, professional curiosity and often an established relationship. Then the practitioner needs time to investigate, reassess, update the relevant records and determine whether the new information changes the assessment sufficiently to alter the supervision arrangements.
And what if the practitioner is concerned but the recalculated scores or classification don’t materially change?
The information may be accurate, the concern entirely legitimate, but the model may not translate that concern into a different package.
This is where I struggle with the underlying logic. We are using assessments and predictive tools to help determine the amount of professional contact available, yet that contact is itself one of the ways practitioners obtain the information needed to keep those assessments accurate.
Surely there is a danger of creating a circular dependency?
The less contact somebody receives, the fewer opportunities there may be to observe changes, test what they are saying, recognise inconsistencies or discover what isn’t being disclosed.
That doesn’t mean everyone requires intensive supervision. Clearly they don’t. Nor does it mean structured risk assessment is worthless.
But a predictive assessment is not a guarantee about future behaviour, and a supervision package is not proof that the person’s actual needs have been met.
We should be very careful about confusing the precision of a classification with the accuracy of our understanding of the individual.
Are we using risk assessment to support decisions about supervision, or increasingly using the assessment to determine how much opportunity practitioners have to understand the risk in the first place?
Contingency contact: professional discretion or permission by exception? I think this is another aspect of OFPS worth examining, particularly in relation to the discussion about professional judgement.
ReplyDeleteThe model does contain mechanisms for responding to changing circumstances. Risk can be reassessed, supervision packages can change, and contingency contact exists where additional face-to-face supervision is required.
So it would be wrong to suggest practitioners have simply lost the ability to respond to emerging risk.
But the detail matters.
As I understand the training, contingency contact becomes available once the allocated face-to-face appointments have been exhausted. It is intended to be exceptional and time-limited, where risk cannot be adequately managed through existing arrangements. Practitioners are expected to consider other options, and although individual approval is not required every time, its use is subject to management oversight and monitoring.
Now consider what that means for professional practice.
A practitioner may believe that additional contact would be helpful because somebody is beginning to struggle. Not necessarily because there is an immediate crisis or a clearly demonstrable escalation in risk, but because they know the individual and recognise the early signs of deterioration.
Perhaps they have become withdrawn. Perhaps their explanation for missing an appointment doesn’t quite fit. Perhaps a relationship is becoming unstable. Perhaps the practitioner wants to increase contact temporarily to prevent matters deteriorating further.
That is precisely the sort of preventative judgement we should want practitioners making.
But if additional face-to-face supervision beyond the allocated package must be justified as an exceptional response to risk that cannot otherwise be managed, are we subtly changing the threshold for intervention?
Instead of asking whether more contact would help prevent deterioration, do we begin asking whether the circumstances are sufficiently exceptional to justify it?
And what happens to the less easily evidenced aspects of professional judgement? The instinct that something isn’t right. The knowledge built through months of contact. The concern that hasn’t yet translated into a change in a predictor or a clearly identifiable risk event.
I understand why a national organisation wants to monitor how additional appointments are used. Resources aren’t unlimited, and there must be proportionality.
But there is a difference between oversight of professional discretion and creating a system in which practitioners increasingly have to demonstrate why they need to exercise it.
If preventative contact has to become an exception, are we in danger of waiting until the problem is sufficiently visible to justify the intervention that might have prevented it?
That is the distinction I would like HMPPS to explain.
The discussion about OFPS and risk also raises a question about accountability that I think deserves much closer examination.
ReplyDeleteIf supervision packages are determined through a national framework informed by assessments, classifications and predictive information, who ultimately owns the consequences when those arrangements prove insufficient?
The practitioner remains responsible for identifying changes in risk, keeping assessments updated, responding to new information and taking appropriate action. Quite rightly.
But the organisation determines the operating model, the available resources, the assessment architecture and the processes through which changes to supervision arrangements are managed.
And the practitioner has to make all of that work within an already overloaded working day.
We are told that OFPS will release capacity. Yet reassessing risk is not an instantaneous administrative exercise. A meaningful OASys review requires gathering information, analysing it, updating the assessment and considering the implications for risk management and supervision.
Where does that time come from?
If someone is struggling, surely we want the practitioner spending time understanding what is happening and intervening appropriately. Instead, we risk requiring them to spend additional time formally demonstrating why the person needs the professional attention they have already identified as necessary.
And the more complex the circumstances, the more important it becomes that the reassessment is thoughtful rather than rushed.
There is another difficulty. If a serious further offence occurs, the investigation will understandably examine whether risk was properly assessed, whether information was recorded, whether the correct package was applied, whether changes were recognised and whether additional contact should have taken place.
But will it examine with equal rigour whether the practitioner had sufficient time to undertake those reassessments properly? Whether the allocated supervision package provided adequate opportunities to recognise deterioration? Whether the model was responsive enough? Whether competing demands made timely intervention realistically achievable?
Because there is a difference between a practitioner failing to exercise available professional judgement and a practitioner operating within arrangements that make exercising that judgement increasingly difficult.
I am not arguing for unlimited appointments or the abandonment of structured assessment. Risk-based allocation of resources is sensible in principle.
But the operating model must be evaluated as part of the risk-management system, not treated as an unquestionable framework within which every failure must be explained.
If OFPS determines how supervision is organised, then the effectiveness of OFPS itself must be open to the same scrutiny as the practitioners expected to deliver it.
Otherwise we risk scrutinising the individual decision in extraordinary detail while treating the organisational decisions that shaped it as background circumstances.
Thank you to Jim for mentioning my website and my recent proposed Experiment etc, and many thanks too for the thoughtful comments, including the critical ones. I also enjoyed the analysis by the Large Language Model (AI) which was pretty decent in its analysis of the past, and a bit 'mixed' in its prescription for the future. After all, it is condensing the majority of viewpoints that it finds on the internet, and in that sense does it remarkably well I suspect. For my part, I would add these observations re the critical points: Yes, it's not great to have some elderly blast-from-the-past arriving like a ghost and saying "You're all doing it wrong" - but I thought I would have a go at contributing a possible way forward; Yes, calling my approach Modern Probation Theory is a bit presumptuous but I had to call it something for reference-back purposes; Whether my focus on individualised relationships is "Modern" all not I'll leave the reader to decide - you can decide after reading simply the first two pages of "MPT": It wasn't the technology I was trying to prove, it was the updated vehicle for operating MPT I was wanting to test (might it be relevant in today's world?); Yes, you could say I was trying to 'prove My Answer', and Yes I declared my interest in so doing, but in my head I'm putting forward an hypothesis with an Experiment for testing it, and I was and am quite prepared for the possibility that it might not 'work'. The two main risks are the political ones Jim rightly explores, and also the potential problem for practitioners who would be much more accountable for their own individual judgements (rather than to be able to say "I am (was) following all the prescribed procedures), AND they would be dependent on an individual reviewer being able to decide that that practitioners judgement had been 'reasonable'. The whole thing is not an easy slam-dunk at all. My further best wishes go to all current practitioners who are endeavouring to do the right thing with the right individual(s) in the right way at the right time within their current top-down micromanaged world.
ReplyDeleteYour acknowledgement that greater professional autonomy would bring greater individual accountability is particularly interesting. But isn't the crucial question whether HMPPS would be prepared to stand behind a practitioner's reasonable professional judgement when the outcome was nevertheless serious or tragic?
DeleteA practitioner can follow every procedure and still make a poor decision. Equally, they can make an entirely reasonable decision, based on the information available at the time, and an SFO can still occur.
If we move towards greater professional autonomy, surely we also need a fundamentally different approach to reviewing decisions — one that distinguishes what was reasonably foreseeable at the time from what becomes apparent with hindsight, and examines the organisational conditions within which that judgement was exercised.
Otherwise, are we genuinely empowering practitioners, or simply transferring more responsibility to them without transferring the authority and institutional protection needed to exercise it safely?
You are precisely right, reflected briefly in my mention of an independent reviewer, and in my extensive writings on that very subject, during and since being Chief Inspector. Too many people in the ‘hindsight industry’ trap themselves and their subjects into an unrealistic expectation of Perfection.
ReplyDelete