Probation Meltdown

The new government is slowly working through the mountain of problems created by the Tories, but the probation service cannot wait much longer for that promised 'review'. When is it being announced? The service is in meltdown, discussed here in some detail on PoliticsHome:- 

The Probation Service is "In Meltdown", Say Staff

Every probation service in the UK is failing to meet minimum standards as the service buckles under the weight of record staff shortages and huge caseloads, an investigation by The House magazine has revealed. Staff describe dealing with unsafe numbers of cases and a “s**t show” system “in meltdown” even before this month’s early release of thousands of prisoners to alleviate a jails crisis.

Some probation services are operating with less than half the number of required staff prompting grave internal doubts about their ability to cope with the increased demand.

And with the consequences for those subject to domestic abuse a particular concern prompted by the early release programme, The House has found every probation service in the UK has been criticised for failures – either protecting others from released detainees or ensuring those released are not abused themselves.

The probation service manages the cases of a quarter of million people, largely those who have been released from prison into the community or have been sentenced to community service. That is three times the number of those actually in prison, and yet it is one of the lowest-profile parts of the criminal justice system.

“It's a really difficult, complicated job,” says Martin Jones, the government’s chief inspector of probation. “I think it’s also under-appreciated because it’s such an invisible job.”

But while out of sight and out of mind, pressures have nevertheless been building relentlessly alongside those elsewhere. An analysis of the last 33 reports into every probation service inspected by the government watchdog – HM Inspectorate of Probation – over the last two and a half years reveals the extent of the crisis.

It shows every service has received a failing grade in that period – either ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’. Two got the lowest score possible. (Typically services are rated from 1 to either 21 or 27, two received a score or 1, a further five of just 2.)

Inspectors repeatedly identified understaffing and "unmanageable" workloads across the country, which had left services failing to do basic jobs like ensuring domestic abusers weren't contacting or threatening former victims, failing to safeguard children and systemically failing to assess the risk posed by former detainees to the public.

Every report found some sort of failure in regards to domestic violence – either failing to support those released from prison who could be victims to it or failing to risk assess those who previously were or could be potential perpetrators of abuse themselves.

Sometimes that wasn’t the direct fault of services themselves – at one unit in Liverpool inspectors found they had a backlog of 1,350 domestic abuse inquiries with the Merseyside Police that had gone unanswered.

At one failing probation service in Peterborough, “nowhere near enough attention” was being paid to monitoring the potential risks posed to the public by released offenders, with officers in 72 per cent of cases failing to properly protect the victims of released offenders.

Sickness and absence rates are so high in some services senior managers were having to handle the casework they were supposed to be overseeing – a situation inspectors called “unsustainable”.

“It’s clear if you read the reports that the probation service is under huge strain,” Jones tells The House. “Having worked in the criminal justice system for over 30 years, the pressures on the probation service are equally as bad as those on prisons by my assessment.”

“It's something that requires urgent attention from the government,” he adds.

At one service he reviewed in Essex, Jones says 55 per cent of the posts for probation officers were vacant, meaning the few staff actually still working there could be dealing with around twice their usual workload. Those kinds of massive staff vacancy rates were common across the country, particularly in big cities like London.

As staff shortages worsen caseloads increase leading in turn to worse staff retention. Some staff are said to be doing up to 200 per cent of their normal caseload as the system struggles to manage 250,000 people.

The personal toll on probation officers can be devastating. “When you see a colleague crying at a desk, that's not at all unusual in a probation office,” says John, who also tells us about another colleague who developed PTSD and attempted suicide from the scale and intensity of the work before being forced to take ill-health early retirement.

John is a near two decade veteran of the probation service who has spent most of his career in the North of England. We changed John’s name to allow him to speak freely and protect him from professional repercussions.

“Everything we do is superficial and last minute. If you've got way more work than you should do, you haven't got the time to sit and spend more than an hour with somebody,” he says.

“If you're always going at 100 miles an hour, you're not doing a considered piece of work when you write up their risk assessment, you’re doing a rush job because you know that you've got another three cases due by a certain time.”

Part of the fear with that kind of overwork is that it means officers are missing chances to stop people from committing serious crimes. Some 578 ‘serious further offences’ were recorded last year, a 10 per cent increase on the year before, though still lower than the record figures set during the system’s privatisation. While those are a small percentage of the total number of people released, each can have an untold, and preventable, impact on the victim or their families.

While the media narrative often focuses on that potential risk to the public, it often ignores the wider impact these failures have on the lives of those newly released from prison. Just under one in seven people are released from prison homeless in 2023-2024, an increase of a third on the year before.

“If probation officers do not have adequate time to address those sorts of issues, then inevitably there's a risk that it just becomes a revolving door,” says Jones. “And the reoffending rates in England and Wales are astonishingly high.”

Part of the reason for that huge increase in cases goes back to former Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s “disastrous” partial privatisation of the service, which was overturned in 2019 after the number of serious offences like murder and rape by those on probation skyrocketed to record highs. As part of the privatisation deal, companies were forced to take on managing the wellbeing of previously unmonitored low level offenders on very short sentences. When it was renationalised, that new obligation was taken on by the public sector.

The problems in the probation service are heavily worsened by the problems across the rest of the justice system – from record court backlogs to prison overcrowding – which make managing cases a nightmare.

“The whole of the criminal justice system is in meltdown and we’re an important component of that,” says Ian Lawrence, general secretary of NAPO, the trade union for probation workers. He said the union has been repeatedly pushing for a Royal Commission into the failures across the justice system. “It’s a s**t show, basically,” he concludes.

When Labour first announced its plans to authorise the early release of prisoners, insiders say they had had a grim sense of deja vu.

Just two months earlier, the last government had (more quietly) expanded its own early prisoner release scheme, called ECSL, to mean countless more prisoners would be released early. Probation staff had little warning or time to prepare for releases and few criteria were applied on what type of prisoner might be released. It was labelled by NAPO at the time as an “unmitigated failure” and a trigger for potential strike action.

Lawrence says under that scheme probation staff felt “under pressure to sanction someone's release when they knew for a fact they were a high risk” to the public.

“The new scheme couldn’t be worse than ECSL,” John recalls. “But what they've done again is prioritise prison at the expense of probation.”

Under Labour’s programme which begins this month, prisoners will be eligible for early release after serving 40 per cent rather than 50 per cent of their sentences. In theory, certain serious offences, like those with domestic violence convictions would not be covered, but this month the government confirmed that was not always the case. If someone had a history of, say, serious sexual offences, but was currently serving a sentence for something else, they would be eligible.

Some 40,000 prisoners are estimated to benefit from the scheme, meaning the probation service’s caseload could eventually shoot up by as much as a fifth. Some 5,500 prisoners are expected to be released in the next two months alone.

The new scheme came with a promise to recruit 1,000 new probation officers by March 2025 to help deal with the new caseload and address staffing shortfalls in the service, though given it takes 18 months for an officer to qualify, it could be years before the service feels any benefit.

“I'm concerned about the potential impact that this will have, particularly in the short term,” says Jones. “Extra officers in a year or 18 months is great but you've got to through the next 18 months first.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson stressed that the government “inherited a prison system in crisis” that was “putting pressure on the wider justice system particularly probation staff”. They added they had been “forced into taking difficult but necessary action so it can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public”.

All of those working in probation who spoke The House spoke said the scale of the crisis had made them rethink the entire structure and future of the probation service.

Jones says the “chronic” issues in the service meant the government needed to consider pruning the numbers or types of ex-detainees the service oversees as “it's probably better to do 70 per cent of the job really well than do 100 per cent of the job poorly”.

NAPO also calls on the government to end or phase out short-term prison sentencing.

“There are too many people in prison for offences that realistically, you should put them on a community order or some other form of reparation,” says NAPO general secretary Lawrence.

"We cannot keep doing this. The early release plans may make a difference to overcrowding in the short term, but it’s a palliative not a long-term cure.”

Andrew Kersley

Prison/Probation Tensions

Bit late today due to a lie-in, but back to the day job, the following exchanges came in a couple of days ago and deserves some attention I think:- 

"The prison service was actually more helpful to my OH than probation have been since release. Probation have done absolutely nothing at all to rehabilitate."

That's strange because most people who work in Probation would see it the other way around. Prisons have primacy in most cases and are very good at shifting the risk onto probation as soon as possible. The ECSL has only increased their ability to talk down to probation in the community. These early releases are clearly not risk-informed and there is no rationale given and the prisons hide behind it using the dreaded Annex that community probation has to fill in whilst the clock is ticking until very short notice release.

Resettlement teams, which are costed and funded, are next to useless but remain in the prison for giggles and show. I've had a prison tell me they don't resettle high risk offenders but house them, which makes no sense. They don't alert probation to changes of release dates and ignore pleas from probation to have offenders undertake offence-focused work.

This offender has had a unique experience if prisons helped him more than probation. Prisons do the bare minimum and then shove the risk onto probation and that's been made much easier because there's been no time to undertake offence-focused work and resettlement (they have access to the internet- so no excuses about local this or that) before countdown to yet another early release which has been a pick-n-mix of all kinds of risk levels, despite the public being told 'no high risk ECSL'.

Why can't they just concentrate on the low and medium risk cases; be more risk-informed when these cases are chosen; be accountable in the form of a rationale; not hide behind an Annex which is the obligation of probation to deal with, and just be a bit more team orientated instead of thinking they're the kings of the castle and we're the dirty rascals.

Prisons need to do and be much better. Probation is damaged and broken but as we get to little to no funding and it's harder to manage offenders in the community, frankly on what we get, which are crumbs, we perform miracles. Perhaps the £46K a year they save on shoving/imposing ECSL cases onto probation can be used to sort out some of the issues in probation. Just a thought. Oh, that's passed. Back to reality.

Lying or Misinformed?

This from Napo yesterday on the prison early release fiasco did not mince words:- 

Lies, and more lies?

The ECSL scheme has attracted further attention in the media and in Parliament this week, including being the focus of exchanges between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions. But was everything that was said true?

Members will be aware that HMPPS’s End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme has attracted further attention in the media and in Parliament this week, including being the focus of exchanges between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Those of us with any experience of the ECSL will have struggled to recognise the scheme as described by the Prime Minister (as detailed in the Parliamentary record – Engagements – Hansard – UK Parliament).

“There are strict eligibility criteria in place, with exclusions based on public safety. No one would be put on the scheme if they were deemed a threat to public safety.“

“Let me be crystal clear: no one would be put on the scheme if they were deemed a threat to the public.”

“Offenders are subject to the toughest of licensing conditions and, if those conditions are broken, they are back in prison for considerably longer.”

“As I said, no one should be put on the scheme if they are a threat to the public.”

The true story

To be crystal clear, these statements are inaccurate and Napo members across England and Wales can cite hundreds of examples since the ECSL scheme was launched in October 2023 to evidence this.

Whether the Prime Minister deliberately lied to Parliament depends on how well he was advised on ECSL before he stood up in the House of Commons and started speaking. It may well be the case that, rather than being an outright liar, he simply hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about and just parroted out whatever nonsense was written down in his briefing papers.

The problem for HMPPS is that this isn’t the first time that a Government minister has made inaccurate statements about ECSL.

In what seems to be the most recent written Ministerial Statement on ECSL, dated the 11th of March 2024, – https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2024-03-11/hcws332 – Alex Chalk (Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice) made these comments.

“We will also extend the existing end of custody supervised licence measure to around 35-60 days.”

“This will only be for certain low level offenders.”

Napo believe the truth is being stretched beyond breaking point on the question of whether “around…35-60 days” covers the Government’s recent extension of ECSL to 70 days. Of even greater concern is the outrageous claim the scheme is restricted only to a select group of “low level offenders”. Again, on this latter point, Napo members across England and Wales have first-hand experience that this simply isn’t true – and has never been the case – and that HMPPS senior leaders, at HQ as well as in each Probation Region and Prison Group, know this just as well as we do.

HMPPS is quick to threaten its workforce with the consequences of breaches of the Civil Service Code (The Civil Service code – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)), and all too often bend over backwards to spuriously include it in disciplinary allegations against individual members of staff. The question from Napo for HMPPS senior leaders is, in line with the Code and its expectations on ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’, what they’ve done to make clear to these Ministers they’ve misled Parliament and the public about the ECSL scheme? Unless they act – evidenced by the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor going on to correct the Parliamentary record – this looks a lot like yet another case of HMPPS having one set of rules for front-line staff and another for its senior leaders.

Next steps in our campaign

Napo continues to maintain contact with figures in Parliament and the media as we’ve set out in previous mailouts about ECSL, as well as having ongoing meetings with HMPPS on the issue. Yesterday the Napo General Secretary was interviewed by Sky News who have afforded extensive coverage of the Prisons crisis see the interview here.

It remains vital for members to continue to keep us updated with their experiences of this ECSL – without including confidential or sensitive information on the individuals released under the scheme – as we have used these in the work Napo has undertaken in publicising our concerns. We want to again extend our thanks to members who have been in contact with us to this point, it’s very much appreciated.

Please contact your Link Officials and Officers or use the following email address if you want to share any of these experiences with us as your trade union representatives info@napo.org.uk

Crisis Created by Government

Regular readers will be fully aware that Bank Holiday Friday's are the MoJ's preferred opportunity to sneak bad or inconvenient news out and last Friday May 3rd was no exception. Coming straight on the heels of another 'probation re-set', we've been discussing ECSL all weekend and quite rightly it's generated a lot of anger amongst probation staff, but this caught my eye from overnight:-

"I hate to say this, but isn't the whole point of being in public service to administrate policy on behalf of the Government of the day? It's not about what we think or what is convenient to us.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't voice our opinions, dwell on the likelihood or the impact these changes will have on our service users, or to fail to evaluate where our worth lay in the bigger scheme, when such changes occur, regarding pay and conditions, but that still doesn't negate the fundamental purpose of what it means for us to be public servants.

To read some of the indignant comments above, from many of you, it's as if the prison and probation services should adapt to a more preferred model of yesteryear, to suit our own personal aspirations to what the probation service ought to be - because we would enjoy the work more that way and it would be less burdensome and less computer driven. If there is a strong service user advantage, fair dues, but is there? Why did the so called Gold Standard befriend, assist model change at all, if it worked so well before?

I've donned my armour in readiness for your spears. I think it is really a case of 'suck it up' or find another profession."

--oo00oo-- 

This has been drawn to my attention, recently seen on the wall of a northern city:-

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The Times have been a bit late to the party. This from yesterday:-

Prisoners to be released 70 days early to ease overcrowding

A scheme announced in March is being extended as jails struggle with capacity in a move branded ‘a national scandal’ by Labour

Some prisoners will be freed up to 70 days early after ministers quietly extended an emergency early release scheme to alleviate the prison overcrowding crisis. An email sent to probation and prison staff, obtained by The Times, said measures introduced less than two months ago had failed to ease pressure in men’s prisons in England and Wales. It said that a scheme that allows prisoners to be set free before their release date will be extended from 35 days to 70 days from May 23.

In the email, labelled “operationally critical,” officials accept that the changes will “create additional work for many people at a time when we know we have our own resource challenges”. It says prisons face “significant challenges” and despite the emergency schemes earlier in the year to create more space, the “pressures continue in the male estate”.

The move comes in response to internal Prison Service forecasts which have estimated that space will run out in male prisons from June without further measures to free up cells. Violent offenders, including domestic abusers, sentenced to less than four years in prison are eligible for the scheme, as are burglars, thieves and fraudsters. However, the early release measures will not apply to sex offenders, terrorists and all criminals serving a sentence of more than four years.

It is the second extension since the early release scheme was introduced in October, when eligible prisoners were able to be released up to 18 days early. This was extended to “around 35-60” in March as part of a series of emergency measures to free up capacity in overcrowded jails, with fewer than 250 places left available in men’s prisons. Spaces have since been made available, partly through the measures that were introduced in March as well as cancelled renovation work and more rapid deployment cells being installed in jails. However, as of last week there were still fewer than 1,400 places available across the men’s and women’s prison estate in England and Wales.

A Prison Service source said: “Analysis shows that looking ahead, the direction of travel isn’t looking good. This is about preparing ahead of time.” The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has so far refused to disclose how many prisoners have been released early under the scheme since October or a provide breakdown of the cohort of offenders benefiting.

The latest changes, revealed in an internal email sent to probation and prison staff on Friday, have not been put in the public domain despite previous announcements being formally disclosed in parliament. Government sources pointed out that Rishi Sunak is facing pressure from right-wing Conservative MPs to cancel the early release scheme.

Earlier this year The Times revealed that he was at loggerheads with Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, over delays to the Sentencing Bill, which will scrap short sentences and is viewed by Chalk as vital to easing the prisons crisis. However, the prime minister is also facing calls from Tory MPs to ditch the plans over fears it will expose the party as soft on law and order before the general election.

Labour has accused the government of trying to cover up the latest extension of the early release measures. Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary, told The Times: “The Tories have once again used a cloak of secrecy to hide their early release of violent criminals. It’s completely unacceptable and the public has a right to know the truth.

“After 14 years of Conservative chaos and the utter mismanagement of the prison estate, the government cannot keep extending the early release of prisoners without facing public scrutiny. The Conservatives’ cover-up of this early release scheme is unprecedented. They are still refusing to answer how many prisoners have been released early, which prisons are using the scheme, and which types of offenders are being put back on our streets. This is a national scandal, and Rishi Sunak must come clean with the public today.”

The MoJ was previously accused of trying to suppress coverage of its handling of the overcrowding in prisons when it announced the measures late in the evening on March 11. Chalk announced five measures to make it easier to deport foreign prisoners alongside the extension of the end-of-custody supervised licence scheme (ECSL).

Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner, warned at that time that the early release scheme would risk putting victims of domestic abuse in danger. She pointed out that perpetrators of domestic abuse are often repeat offenders and their sentences frequently do not reflect the severity of harm and the risk they pose.

Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, also warned that violent prisoners who could be a risk to the public were being released early under the scheme. He told Times Radio that he was concerned about the lack of preparation for prisoners being freed early to ensure they fitted back into society without reoffending.

The MoJ insisted that those released early were under strict supervision and licensing conditions, which included being fitted with electronic tags, given curfews or no-go areas.

A spokesman said: “We will always ensure there is enough capacity to keep dangerous offenders behind bars. We are carrying out the biggest prison expansion programme in a hundred years, opening up 20,000 modern places, and ramping up work to remove foreign national offenders. To ease the short-term pressures on prisons, in March we announced an increase in the number of days governors could, under existing powers, move some offenders at the end of their prison term on to licence. These offenders will continue to be supervised under strict conditions such as tagging and curfews.”

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Stop Press

Napo Press Release issued noon today:-

Probation Union warns of Early Prisoner Release Chaos

Napo, the largest trade union representing Probation staff has condemned the Governments recent announcement that from the 23rd of May, certain categories of Prisoners in 84 premises across the male estate in England and Wales will be eligible for early release up to 70 days prior to the end of their sentence. A similar scheme that has been running in the female prison estate has now been suspended.

The End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme was launched last October as a temporary response to the capacity crisis which has seen the prison population soar to nearly 88,000. The Government narrative that the (then 35-day release) process, would ease the increasing pressure on prisons and allow probation staff to safely and effectively manage clients back into the community has been seriously criticised by the unions representing prison and probation staff.

Napo General Secretary Ian Lawrence said: “We have spent many months trying to convince the Secretary of State that in order for early release schemes to work in an effective and safe manner, it has to be recognised that the probation service is also over capacity, and that the members we represent are also now at breaking point.”

Adding: “The ECSL scheme is an unmitigated failure and has not only been extended without Parliamentary scrutiny but represents an increasing risk to public safety. Ministers have failed to heed our warnings that the Government’s refusal to provide workload relief to all probation staff and address the disgraceful situation of a two-tier pay structure in HMPPS where Napo members are the poor relations, will result in us considering our mandate to ballot members for potential industrial action and a possible legal challenge which may involve other stakeholders.”

The Probation Unions are seeking an urgent meeting with the Secretary of State.

Probation Held in Contempt

Just in case there is any doubt as to the contempt in which probation is held within HMPPS, the statement from Napo and published on Friday should clarify matters. Both the MoJ and HMPPS are completely dysfunctional and serve as powerful metaphors for an imploding fag end Tory government. Probation must break free of HM Prison Service and the stifling bureaucratic control of the civil service because to be frank, many feel in its present form it has become the problem not the solution. Wales is already well down this road of necessary and well-argued probation reform - England must make the case and follow.    

ECSL To Be Extended Again

Napo were informed by HMPPS senior managers this morning that the failed End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme was to be further extended to 70 days (therefore doubled) in 84 adult male prisons across England and Wales from Thursday the 23rd of May 2024 until further notice.

We have, in no uncertain terms, communicated the anger and frustration that our members will feel at this decision to the HMPPS senior managers we have been in contact with. HMPPS has once again, in our view, demonstrated by its actions that it views the prison overcrowding crisis as the overriding priority for this organisation, to the detriment of all others. Napo have been clear throughout our discussions with the employer on ECSL, and the joint unions wider ‘Operation Protect’ workloads campaign, that Probation has been treated disgracefully in comparison to the attention and money spent elsewhere in HMPPS, all while this employer demands our members take on huge amounts of additional work at the shortest of notice to help them sort out a prison overcrowding crisis a generation or more in the making.

Some in HMPPS have attempted to claim ECSL merely brings forward work that would be done by Probation staff anyway. Napo have consistently and vociferously argued against this position, which we do not believe for a second would be credibly adopted by anyone with any actual experience of this area of Probation practice. Members would seem justified to take the fact that such comments continue to be made by some in HMPPS as good evidence of the size of the chasm between their understanding of our work and reality.

As members will be aware of from previous communications on this issue (for instance ECSL – Napo’s position) in discussions with HMPPS senior managers Napo have stressed the huge range of practical issues with the ECSL scheme as it existed previously. This latest extension of ECSL only exacerbates these difficulties, especially in the weeks prior to and following this extension coming into force when the demands on us are at their height, but also brings additional concerns. For instance, and a point repeated to HMPPS senior managers when this extension was disclosed to us, was its apparent impact on the ability of some of our members to comply with their statutory responsibilities (and HMPPS’s own policies) under The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (e.g., the ‘Duty To Refer’). Also, HMPPS have discussed an extension to the notice period Probation staff in the community should receive that of a person on their caseload is being considered under the ECSL scheme, but this remains far short of what we have previously discussed as being the minimum required for staff to complete such work safely and effectively.

It is clear, and has been stressed to HMPPS in earlier talks, that any possible workload relief for some staff in ‘sentence management’ resulting from the ‘Probation Reset’ plans had already likely been wiped out by various ‘early release’ schemes introduced, and in ECSL’s case drastically extended, in recent months (ECSL, changes to Fixed Term Recalls and the extension of the Home Detention Curfew scheme) even before today’s news. Members should expect a further communication on ‘Probation Reset’ and the ongoing work by Napo and the other Probation trade unions under the ‘Operation Protect’ early next week.

It remains unclear whether this extension to ECSL will stand up to parliamentary scrutiny, given in the last ministerial statement on the matter in March 2024, the Lord Chancellor referred only to that the scheme being extended to “around 35-60 days”. Napo members can be assured that we are in discussions with our contacts in Parliament, including the cross-party Justice Unions Parliamentary Group, to attempt to bring publicity to, and accountability for, this decision. Similarly, Napo will continue its numerous contacts with various media outlets to attempt to publicise our significant concerns over this news.

As previously discussed in our earlier communication HMPPS continue to refuse the calls of Napo and others, including in parliament, for figures on the impact of ECSL to be publicly released. This relates not just to the impact on the workload of staff but also on the numbers of people released under the scheme who have been released without any accommodation, recalled, committed Serious Further Offences, or died while subject to ECSL. Given this, members will draw their own conclusions, based on the first-hand experience of themselves and their colleagues or the apparently unauthorised disclosures made occasionally by some senior regional figures to staff, on just how disastrous these figures must be.

Napo will continue to meet with HMPPS senior managers at every opportunity to repeat our concerns over ECSL and the make clear the strength of feeling of our members on this issue. In addition to this we will maintain our contacts with figures in Parliament and the media. For this reason, it is vital that members continue to keep us updated with their experiences of ECSL – without including confidential or sensitive information on the individuals released under the scheme – as we have used these in the work Napo have done to this point. Please contact your Link Officials and Officers or use the following email address if you want to share any of these with us as your trade union representatives info@napo.org.uk.

Finally, members will recall the mandate provided by Emergency Motions 3 and 4 passed at our last Annual General Meeting (AGM) in relation to pay and workloads. Napo would take this opportunity to remind all members of the importance of ensuring that your membership details – including those we should use to contact you – are up to date. Similarly, members should continue to check emails from both Napo HQ and your respective Branches in the coming weeks as further updates regarding these Emergency Motions, and possible next steps for us as a trade union, will be shared very soon.

Napo and Early Release Fiasco

Here we have Napo's take on it all, published yesterday:- 

ECSL - Napo's Position

The Ministerial announcements on Prison capacity are in the news regularly. From the outset we want to make it clear that Napo’s starting point for any discussion on prison overcrowding is that it is a tragedy.

Too often the focus is on one part of the unfolding crisis, but we believe it’s important to first acknowledge the sheer scale of what is happening. This is beyond even the terrible and degrading conditions individuals are imprisoned in while being denied the opportunity of rehabilitation, the impact on victims denied what they believed justice would be, as well as being placed at risk by this policy and the unbearable anxiety caused to the families of both prisoner and victim.

It's about something greater than the increased risks of physical violence to Prison staff or the levels of psychological harm caused to Probation staff pushed too far by the excessive workload they are subjected to by an employer that consistently fails us on even the most basic of their responsibilities – to not harm its workforce by their actions or inactions. And it’s also more than the evaporation of what little confidence members of the public must have in the criminal justice system, contributed to in no small part in this crisis as the reputational damage to the Probation and Prison Services that Politicians, through senior leaders in HMPPS inflict with each mis-step they take on this, as with so many other matters.

Time for a completely new approach to the problem

The crisis of prison overcrowding is one that’s been decades in the making, and for which previous Tory, Tory/Lib-Dem Coalition and Labour Governments all bear some level of responsibility. For too long, politicians have traded in simplistic arguments that misled the public, and not challenging the lies perpetrated by the media and have sought a quick fix to deeply complex problems. The failure of so many of the political class of one of the richest countries in the world over all this time to demonstrate sufficient courage and leadership to commit adequate resources to Probation and Prison Services over decade after decade has been truly shameful to witness.

Unfortunately, the most recent comments of the current Shadow Justice Secretary announcing an intention to attempt to ‘prison-build’ their way out of this abhorrent mess suggests that honest political leadership, evidence-based (or even reality-based) policymaking and a commitment to make generational changes for the good of the country aren’t seemingly going to be a feature of a likely incoming new Government, at least in terms of this policy.

Napo’s efforts to influence Early Release Schemes

The End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) was introduced in October 2023. It has been apparent to us from the outset that the Government has chosen to prioritise the crisis of prison overcrowding over that of excessive Probation workloads. Nothing that has been done by HMPPS since that time has caused us to change our view. As it was a legislative change being driven forward by an elected Government our role has been limited to one of consultation rather than any form of negotiation with HMPPS. It is fair to reflect, and we’ve made these points clearly at every opportunity, that HMPPS have not consulted as often or in as sufficient detail as we would have expected. Through all this we’ve been informed and guided by the experiences of practitioners across a range of Probation work which is impacted by the ECSL scheme, and we want to take this opportunity to thank all the members who have raised this in their Branches or to Napo HQ for their contributions to this point. At the end of this message, we’ll say more on how we see this moving forward from this point.

Napo have been consistent in representing member’s interests and Probation’s identity by repeatedly raising concerns over the increased workload, assault on professional judgement and the obvious increased risks to the public, and individuals (including some of the most vulnerable in our society), that the ECSL scheme represents. We’ve done this in numerous face-to-face meetings with HMPPS senior leaders as well as written communications. Our view remains that in too many cases it is simply neither feasible or safe to bring forward many of the Risk Management Plans that will be in place – and will have been for some time – for the individuals involved at such short notice.

The problems around ECSL

Napo have set out a range of practical issues faced by you as practitioners when forced to do this which, by way of only a few illustrative examples, include: a lack of Approved Premises bed spaces, or other accommodation, available for the revised release date; an inability to rearrange substance misuse, health (especially mental health) and other appointments (e.g. state benefits) previously arranged for day of release; the increased likelihood that a supervising officer will be unavailable to conduct the post-release induction appointment due to other pre-existing work commitment on the revised release date; an inability to make alternative arrangements for transport between releasing prisons and the home area, meaning more risky modes of transport are required on the revised release date than would have been used otherwise. Napo have made clear the ultimate responsibility which HMPPS hold for this scheme, including the consequences that they obviously failed to anticipate, such as: where the demand for rapid action to release an individual increases the likelihood of HMPPS breaching the part of the Victim’s Code relating to pre-release notification of information to some victims.

Napo have also pressed HMPPS to produce evidence for the feasibility and safety of this policy while stressing our member’s opposition to it. For example, we’ve asked for data on the amounts of ECSL releases to each Region and Probation Delivery Unit or on the numbers of recalls, Serious Further Offences and deaths of people subject to ECSL as well as a range of information on applications for exemptions made by practitioners. HMPPS initially denied holding such data but have since claimed that what they might have is subject to a lengthy verification process which would mean that information would be released much later, potentially annually (i.e., October 2024). Napo understands this was in line with an earlier comment made by a Minister in Parliament. Very recently we have received information that at least some of this data has in fact been shared with senior regional leaders and we will be following this up urgently with HMPPS to request access to this, using data protection legislation if needed.

Media activity

In addition to the internal work Napo has undertaken, we’ve also sought to publicise the flawed ECSL scheme in the media, and it’s clear that over the last three weeks this has seen significantly increased interest. A number of interviews for various media outlets – television, print, radio and online – have been undertaken by Napo Officials to follow up on our earlier contacts with journalists where our position on this scheme, and our range of concerns, have been shared. While we cannot control the decisions of media outlets to then run these interviews, or publish articles, we’ve also been active on social media to stress our opposition to ECSL and the reasons for this.

In Parliament

Napo also work particularly closely with a cross-party group of politicians who form the Justice Unions Parliamentary Group (Justice Unions Parliamentary Group (@JusticeUnions) / X (twitter.com)) and we’d encourage members to view their work to see the results of this collaboration. Here is an example of some of the exchanges that took place this week: https://x.com/justiceunions/status/1767570456108826632 these following the Lord Chancellors Written Statement https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2024-03-11/hcws332

In our close working with the JUPG, Napo can make significant contributions on how the Government is held to account in Parliament, putting forward issues for public debate on the criminal justice system and promoting the interests of members. As you would expect, we’ve been sharing our concerns about ECSL with the Justice Unions Parliamentary Group since October 2023 and our work with them has only increased as the scheme has been expanded.

Other developments around ‘early release’

In terms of other ‘early release’ matters, members can be assured that Napo have also made clear to HMPPS our concerns about the impact on both members as well as the public from the imminent introduction of an expansion to eligibility for the Home Detention Curfew (HDC) scheme and the increased use of Fixed Term Recalls for those people serving custodial sentences of less than 12 months. Following a similar approach as ECSL we’ve set out how these changes will negatively impact on practitioners and your ability to do your jobs effectively (providing examples of this to support our arguments); requested data such as forecasts and equality assessments of the proposals; and offered practical suggestions as to how the full force of this additional work on members could be mitigated, for instance by suspending ESCL for periods of time in those Regions where an increased number of people are being released on HDC.

Operation Protect

Napo also want to stress that the months long work we have been completing with HMPPS in relation to the joint union’s workload campaign – Operation Protect – should be about to produce the first results in terms of what HMPPS are referring to as a ‘Probation Reset’. Discussions remain ongoing and more information will follow from us very soon, but we want to make clear that, for us as well as our sister trade unions, this is only the beginning of the substantive workload relief we hope to see for workers in many roles across the Probation Service.

How members can help

As we continue our work on your behalf on ECSL, as well as the other ‘early release’ schemes, we continue to need your support and contributions to inform our response to HMPPS. For that reason, and to attempt to provide a single point of contact for any experiences you might wish to share, can members please contact your Link Officials or use the following email address if they want to share any of these with us as your trade union representatives info@napo.org.uk

You may also want to make clear in the subject line of your email that this relates to ‘ECSL’, ‘HDC’ or Fixed Term Recall’ (or a combination of these). Members should share their specific experiences of these schemes, and how this has impacted on them and others, do not include the personal details, or identifiers, of any of those you are working with. We hope, after ensuring all are properly anonymised and cannot be traced to a particular individual or location, to use these experiences in discussions with the employer and others to better publicise the huge challenges faced by many of our members.

We need to stress that members must not, under any circumstances, breach the rules issued by the employer on data protection, confidentiality or information sharing.

Please look out for further news on the key issues being faced by our members. Meanwhile, thank you for taking the time to read this detailed commentary on our work so far on ECSL.   

Ian Lawrence          Ben Cockburn
General Secretary  Acting National Chair

13th March 2024

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Postscript

Thanks go to the reader for pointing me in the direction of this from Wales Online:-

The 'horrendous' reality of being a probation officer

'The pressure on staff is unbearable some days. Morale is horrendous at the moment. I don't know a single person here who works the 37.5 hours a week they're meant to'

A furious whistleblower says changes to the crisis-hit probation service will make the public less safe as well as "insulting" victims of crime. WalesOnline can reveal that offenders under suspended sentences and community orders will no longer need to see probation officers during the last third of their orders – the latest cutback to a service that for years has been stretched almost to the point of breaking.

Justice secretary Alex Chalk announced this week that some prisoners could be released up to two months early due to jail overcrowding in England and Wales but this will mean a heavier burden on the probation officers monitoring them in the community. In an attempt to reduce pressure on the chronically understaffed service a new policy was announced on Monday in an internal video meeting. Staff were told the UK Government had signed off on offenders in England and Wales no longer needing to see probation officers during the last third of their suspended sentences or community orders, which are up to three years long.

An experienced probation officer in south Wales told us: "This will outrage courts and victims of crime, especially domestic violence victims. They will feel even more let down by the system. People are placed on orders of certain lengths for a reason." He pointed out domestic violence offenders are meant to have two years of programme work. The new approach, he fears, will mean issues around drugs, mental health, and housing advocacy are not fully addressed. The government says the change will not affect "the most serious offenders" but the whistleblower told us that offenders labelled 'medium risk' – who are already supervised less – account for most of the serious offences committed while under an order.

The whistleblower works in a south Wales team that is little more than half the size it was in 2007. "The pressure on staff is unbearable some days," he said. "Morale is horrendous at the moment. I don't know a single person here who works the 37.5 hours a week they're meant to. Staff take their work home with them, they work on evenings and weekends. Until about 2012 you couldn't work with a sex offender until you had two years' experience. Now newly-qualified trainees are given sex offender cases."

The increased pressure has been accompanied by worse pay leading to "woeful" recruitment and retention problems. Recently our source learned that more than a third of staff in his team were looking for new jobs. He said: "In the past 15 years of wage freezes and below-inflation pay settlements staff have seen their pay devalued by over 25% in real terms. I didn’t have a pay rise for over 10 years. If someone can work in Aldi for £38,000 a year they are not going to train for a year to work with the most dangerous people in society for £32,000."

While under an order high-risk offenders tend to be seen by probation officers weekly, medium-risk offenders fortnightly, and low-risk offenders monthly. If they are involved in a "reportable incident" – very often domestic violence – the probation service would call the offender and decide whether the next face-to-face meeting should be brought forward. The whistleblower says it is unclear what will now happen in those circumstances when offenders are in the last third of their order.

When courts impose community orders and suspended sentences they often include a certain number of rehabilitation sessions. How will the new policy affect those sentences? "I think it's likely to mean those sessions are front-ended to the first two-thirds of the order, putting even more pressure on staff," said the whistleblower, adding that they already "regularly" find themselves terminating orders without all of the rehab sessions being completed. Offenders often miss appointments but if more than half of sessions have been carried out the order can be ended. The whistleblower fears the final-third policy will only add to the number of incomplete programmes.

According to figures from last year the probation service was 1,700 officers short of its target of 6,160. In 2014 many senior staff left after the then-justice secretary Chris Grayling's disastrous part-privatisation of the service. It was renationalised seven years later following a series of damning reports by parliamentary committees and watchdogs.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We recognise the pressures facing our hardworking probation staff which is why we are making changes to make sure they can continue to deliver high-quality supervision in the community. These measures, alongside our £155m investment in the Probation Service each year, will reduce caseloads and mean staff can maximise supervision of the most serious offenders."