A Reminder How OASys Did For Probation

Thanks yet again to ace researcher and contributor 'Getafix, here is a long but incredibly well-researched article on theConversation.com website into risk assessment and particularly the dreaded OASys so hated by many probation staff. In many people's eyes, including mine,  OASys has been the single most significant factor in probation's demise as a useful endeavour, hence here is the complete article:-   

A ‘black box’ AI system has been influencing criminal justice decisions for over two decades – it’s time to open it up

Justice systems around the world are using artificial intelligence (AI) to assess people with criminal convictions. These AI technologies rely on machine learning algorithms and their key purpose is to predict the risk of reoffending. They influence decisions made by the courts and prisons and by parole and probation officers.

This kind of tech has been an intrinsic part of the UK justice system since 2001. That was the year a risk assessment tool, known as Oasys (Offender Assessment System), was introduced and began taking over certain tasks from probation officers. Yet in over two decades, scientists outside the government have not been permitted access to the data behind Oasys to independently analyse its workings and assess its accuracy – for example, whether the decisions it influences lead to fewer offences or reconvictions.

Lack of transparency affects AI systems generally. Their complex decision-making processes can evolve into a black box – too obscure to unravel without advanced technical knowledge.
Proponents believe that AI algorithms are more objective scientific tools because they are standardised and this helps to reduce human bias in assessments and decision making. This, supporters claim, makes them useful for public protection.

But critics say that a lack of access to the data, as well as other crucial information required for independent evaluation, raises serious questions of accountability and transparency. It also calls into question what kinds of biases exist in a system that uses data from criminal justice institutions, like the police, which research has repeatedly shown is skewed against ethnic minorities.

However, according to the Ministry of Justice, external evaluation poses data protection implications because it would require access to personal data, including protected characteristics such as race, ethnicity and gender (it is against the law to discriminate against someone because of a protected characteristic).

Oasys introduced

When Oasys was introduced in the UK in 2001 it brought with it sweeping changes to how courts and probation services assessed people convicted of crimes. It meant that algorithms would begin having a huge influence in deciding just how much of a “risk” people involved in the justice system posed to society. These people include those convicted of a crime and awaiting punishment, prisoners and parole applicants.

Before Oasys, a probation officer would interview a defendant to try to get to the bottom of their offending and assess whether they were sorry, regretful or potentially dangerous. But post 2001 this traditional client-based casework approach was cut back and the onus was increasingly put on algorithmic predictions.

These machine learning predictions inform a host of decisions, such as: granting bail, outcomes of immigration cases, the kinds of sentences people face (community-based, custodial or suspended), prison security classifications and assignments to rehabilitation programmes. They also help decide the conditions on how people convicted of crimes are supervised in the community and whether or not they can be released early from prison.

Some attempts at more rigorous risk assessments predate Oasys. The Parole Board in England and Wales deployed a re-conviction prediction score in 1976 which estimated the probability of a reconviction within a fixed period of two years on release from prison. Then, in the mid-1980s, a staff member with the Cambridgeshire Probation Service developed a rather simple risk prediction scale to provide more objectivity and consistency about predicting whether probation was an appropriate alternative to a custodial sentence. Both these methods were rather crude in terms of using only a handful of predictors and deploying rather informal statistical methods.

Harnessing computer power

Around this time, Home Office officials noticed the increased interest in the UK and the US authorities for developing predictive algorithms that could harness the efficiencies computers offered. These algorithms would support human opinions with scientific evidence about what factors were predictive of reoffending. The idea was to use scarce resources more effectively while protecting the public from people categorised as being at high risk of reoffending and causing serious harm.

The Home Office commissioned its first statistical predictive tool, which was deployed in 1996 across probation offices in England and Wales. This initial risk tool was called the Offender Group Reconviction Scale (OGRS). The OGRS is an actuarial tool in that it uses statistical methods to assess information about a person’s past (such as criminal history) to predict the risk of any type of reoffending.

The OGRS is still in use today after several revisions. And this simple algorithm has become incorporated into Oasys which has grown to incorporate additional machine learning algorithms. These have developed over time, predicting different types of reoffending. Reoffending is measured as reconviction within two years of release.

Oasys itself is based on the “what works” approach to risk assessment. Supporters of this method say it relies upon “objective evidence” of what is effective in reducing reoffending. “What works” introduced some basic principles of risk assessment and rehabilitation and it gained currency with governments around the world in the 1990s.

Risk factors can include “criminogenic needs” – these are factors in an offender’s life that are directly related to recidivism. Examples include, safe housing, job skills and mental health. The “what works” approach is based on several principles, one of which involves matching appropriate rehabilitation programmes to a person’s criminogenic needs. So, a person convicted of a sex crime, with a history of alcohol abuse, might be given a sentence plan that includes a sex offender treatment programme and drug treatment. This is meant to reduce their likelihood of reoffending. Following Home Office pilot studies between 1999 and 2001, Oasys was rolled out nationally and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) have used the technology widely ever since.

What the algos do – scoring ‘risk’

The Offender Group Reconviction Scale and variations of Oasys are frequently modified and some information about how they work is publicly available. The available information suggests that Oasys is calibrated to predict risk. The algorithms consume the data probation officers obtain during interviews and information in self-assessment questionnaires completed by the person in question. That data is then used to score a set of risk factors (criminogenic needs). According to the designers, scientific studies indicate that these needs are linked to risks of reoffending.

The risk factors include static (unchangeable) things such as criminal history and age. But they also comprise dynamic (changeable) factors. In Oasys, dynamic factors include: accommodation, employability, relationships, lifestyle, drugs misuse, alcohol misuse, thinking and behaviour, and attitudes. Different weights are assigned to different risk factors as some factors are said to have greater or lesser predictive ability.

So what type of data is obtained from the person being risk assessed? Oasys has 12 sections. Two sections concern criminal history and the current offence. The other ten address areas related to needs and risk. Probation officers use discretion in scoring many of the dynamic risk factors.

The person becomes a set of numbers

The probation officer may, for example, judge whether the person has “suitable accommodation”, which could require considering such things as safety, difficulties with neighbours, available amenities and whether the space is overcrowded. The officer will determine whether the person has a drinking problem or if impulsivity is an issue. These judgments can increase the person’s “risk profile”. In other words, a probation officer may consider dynamic risk factors like having no fixed address and having a history of drug abuse, and say that the person poses a higher risk of reoffending.

The algorithms assess the probation officers’ entries and produce numeric risk scores: the person becomes a set of numbers. These numbers are then recombined and placed into low-, medium-, high-, and very high-risk categories. The system may also associate the category with a percentage indicating the proportion of people who reoffended in the past.

However, there is simply no specific guidance on how to translate any of the risk of reoffending scores into actual sentencing decisions. Probation officers conduct the assessments and they form part of the pre-sentence report (PSR) they present to the court along with a recommended intervention. But it is left to the court to determine a sentence, in line with the provisions of the Sentencing Council.

There is no dataset available to us that directly links Oasys predictions to the decisions they are meant to inform. Hence, we cannot know what decision-makers are doing with these scores in practice. The situation is muddier considering that multiple risk tools put out results in different ratings (as in high, medium, or low) for the same individual. That’s because the algorithms are predicting different offence types (general, violent, contact sexual and indecent images). So a person can collect several different ratings. It could be the person is labelled high risk of any reoffending, medium risk of violent offending, and low risk of both sexual offending types. What is a judge to do with these seemingly disparate pieces of data? Probation officers provide some recommendations but the decision is ultimately left to the judge.

Impact on workloads and risk aversion

Another issue is that probation officers have been known to struggle with completing Oasys assessments considering the significant amount of time it takes for each person. In 2006, researchers spoke to 180 probation officers and asked them about their views on Oasys. One probation officer called it “the worst tax form you’ve ever seen”. In a different study, another probation officer said Oasys was an arduous and time-intensive “box-ticking exercise”.

What can also happen is that risk-aversion becomes entrenched in the system due to the fear of getting it wrong. The backlash can be swift and severe if a person assessed as low risk commits a serious offence - there have been many high-profile media scandals that prove this. In a report for the Prison Reform Trust, one long-term prisoner commented:

They repeatedly go on about ‘risk’ but I realised many years ago that this has nothing to do with risk … it’s all about accountability, they want someone to blame should it all go wrong.

The fear of being blamed is not an idle one. A probation officer was reportedly sacked in 2022 for gross misconduct for rating Damien Bendall as medium risk rather than high risk after a conviction for arson. Bendall was released with a suspended sentence. Within three months, he murdered his pregnant partner and three children. Jordan McSweeney, another convicted murderer, was released from prison in 2022 with an assessment of medium risk. Three days later, he raped and brutally killed a young woman walking home alone. A review of the case determined that he had been incorrectly assessed and should instead have been labelled high risk. But unlike in the Bendall case where an individual probation officer was apparently blamed, the chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, explained:

Probation staff involved were … experiencing unmanageable workloads made worse by high staff vacancy rates – something we have increasingly seen in our local inspections of services. Prison and probation services didn’t communicate effectively about McSweeney’s risks, leaving the Probation Service with an incomplete picture of someone who was likely to reoffend.

‘Bias in, bias out’

Despite its widespread use there has been no independent audit examining the kind of data Oasys relies on to come to its decisions. And that could be a problem - particularly for people from minority ethnic backgrounds. That’s because Oasys, directly and indirectly, incorporates socio-demographic data into its tools.

AI systems, like Oasys, rely on arrest data as proxies for crime when they could in some cases be proxies for racially biased law enforcement (and there are plenty of examples in the UK and around the world of that). Predicting risks of reoffending on the basis of such data raises serious ethical questions. This is because racially biased policing can permeate the data, ultimately biasing predictions and creating the proverbial “bias in, bias out” problem.

In this way, criminal history records open up avenues for labelling and punishing people according to protected characteristics, like race, giving rise to racially biased outcomes. This could mean, for example, a higher percentage of minorities rated in the higher risk groups than non-minorities.

Another source of bias could stem from the way officers “rate” ethnic minorities when answering Oasys-led questions. Probation officers may assess minority ethnic people differently on questions such as, whether they have a temper control problem, are impulsive, hold pro-criminal attitudes, or recognise the impact of their offending on others. Unconscious biases could be at play here resulting from cultural differences in how various ethnic groups perceive these issues. For instance, people from one cultural background may “see” another person with a bad temper whereas that would be seen as acceptable emotional behaviour in another cultural background. Read more: How can black people feel safe and have confidence in policing?

In its review of AI in the justice system in 2022, the justice and home affairs committee of the House of Lords noted that there are “concerns about the dangers of human bias contained in the original data being reflected, and further embedded, in decisions made by algorithms”. And it’s not just the UK where such issues have arisen. The problem of racial bias in justice systems has been noted in various countries where risk assessment algorithms similar to Oasys are deployed.

In the US, the Compas and Pattern algorithms are used widely, and the Level of Service family of tools have been taken up in Australia and Canada. The Compas system, for instance, is an AI algorithm used by US judges to make decisions on granting bail and sentencing. An investigation claimed that the system generated “false positives” for black people and “false negatives” for white people. In other words, it suggested that black people would reoffend when, in reality, they did not and suggested that white people would not reoffend when they actually did. But the developer of the system has challenged these claims. Read more: AI: why installing 'robot judges' in courtrooms is a really bad idea

Studies suggest that such outcomes stem from racially biased decision making embedded in the data which the developers select to represent the risk factors that will determine the algorithm’s predictions. Criminal history data, such as police arrest records, is one example.

Other socio-economic data that developers select to represent risk factors may also be problematic. People will score as being higher risk if they do not have suitable accommodation or are unemployed. In other words, if you are poor or disadvantaged the system is stacked against you. People are also classed as “high risk” for personal circumstances which are sometimes beyond their control. Risk factors include “not having a good relationship with a partner” and “undergoing psychiatric treatment”.

Meanwhile, a report issued by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation in 2021 alludes to the problem of conscious and unconscious biases which can enter the process via probation officers’ assessments, thereby infecting the outcomes. More transparency could be useful for tracking when and how probation officer discretion has potentially tainted the final assessment, which could have resulted in people being incarcerated unnecessarily or being allocated inappropriate treatment programmes. This could result in flawed risk predictions.

For example, the report states:

It is impossible to be free from bias. How we think about the world and consider risk is intrinsically tied up with our emotions, values and tolerance (or otherwise) of risk challenges.

Social engineering?

Miklos Orban, visiting professor at the University of Surrey School of Law, recently engaged with the Ministry of Justice seeking information on Oasys. One of us (Melissa) spoke with Orban about this and he expressed concerns that the system might be a form of social engineering. He said that governmental officials were eliciting personal and sensitive information from defendants who may think they are making these disclosures to get help or sympathy. But the officers may instead use them for another purpose, such as labelling them with a drinking or drugs problem and then requiring them to go on a suitable treatment programme. He said:

As a convict, you know very little of how risk assessment tools work, and I have my doubts as to how well judges and parole officers understand statistical models like Oasys. And that’s my number one concern.

Not much is known about the accuracy of Oasys in relation to gender and ethnicity either. One available study (though a bit dated as it looked at a sample from 2007) shows the non-violent and violent predictive tools are less accurate with women and minority ethnic people. Meanwhile, Justice, a legal reform organisation, recently cited a lack of research on the accuracy of these tools for women and trans prisoners.

In terms of racial bias, an HM Inspectorate of Prisons’ audit found that an Oasys assessment had not been completed or reviewed in the prior year for almost 20% of black and minority ethnic prisoners. This is a serious issue because further evaluation can help ensure that minority ethnic people are receiving similar treatment or being assigned to helpful programming. It can avoid probation officers simply assuming the risk status of minority ethnic people is unchangeable and thus reduce their chances of early release since Oasys assessments are required to ascertain whether interventions have reduced risks of reoffending.

Researchers with the Inspectorate of Probation encouraged designers of Oasys to expand the ways it can incorporate a person’s personal experiences with discrimination and how it may impact their relationship with the criminal justice system. But, so far, and to the best of our knowledge, this has not been done.

Algorithms affect real people

Oasys results follow a person’s path through the criminal justice system and could influence key decisions from sentencing to parole eligibility. Such serious decisions have huge consequences on peoples’ lives. Yet officials can decline to disclose Oasys results to the defendant in question if they are thought to contain “sensitive information”. They can ask and be shown their completed assessment, but they are not guaranteed to see it.

Even if they are given their scores, defendants and their lawyers face significant hurdles in understanding and challenging their assessments. There is no legal obligation to publish information about the system, although the Ministry of Justice has commendably made certain information public. Still, even if more data were released, defence lawyers may not have the scientific skills to examine the assessments with a sufficiently critical eye.

Some prisoners describe additional challenges. They complain that their risk scores do not reflect how they see themselves. Others believe that their scores contain errors. While some also feel that Oasys mislabels them. In another report compiled by the PRT, one prisoner stated: “Oasys is who I was, not who I am now.” And a man serving a life sentence described the repeated risk assessment when he spoke to a researcher at the University of Birmingham:

I have likened it to a small snowball running downhill. Each turn it picks up more and more snow (inaccurate entries) until eventually you are left with this massive snowball which bears no semblance to the original small ball of snow. In other words, I no longer exist. I have become a construct of their imagination. It is the ultimate act of dehumanisation.

Not all judicial officers are impressed either. When asked about using a risk assessment tool that the state required, a judge in the US said: “Frankly, I pay very little attention to the worksheets. Attorneys argue about them, but I really just look at the guidelines. I also don’t go to psychics.”

There have been relatively few legal challenges to any of the risk assessment algorithms in use across the world. But one case stands as an outlier. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the case of Ewert v Canada that it was unlawful for the prison system to use a predictive algorithm (not Oasys) on Indigenous inmates.

Ewert was an Indigenous Canadian serving time in prison for murder and attempted murder. He challenged the prison system’s use of an AI tool to assess his risk of recidivism. The problem was the lack of evidence that the particular tool was sufficiently accurate when applied to the Indigenous population in Canada. In other words, the tool had never been tested on Indigenous Canadians.

The court understood that there might be risk-relevant differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples as to why they commit crimes. But since the algorithms had not been tested on Indigenous people, its accuracy for that population was not known. Therefore, using the tools to assess their risks violated the legal requirement that information about an offender must be accurate before it can be used for decision making. The court also noted that the over-representation of Indigenous people in the Canadian justice system was in part attributable to discriminatory policies.

Individual vs group risk

The feeling that the scores produced by risk assessment algorithms such as Oasys may not be properly personalised or contextualised finds merit when considering how predictive algorithms in general work. They assess people and produce risk scores and this has a longer history in business. The lending industry uses algorithms to assess the creditworthiness of customers. Insurance companies deploy algorithms to generate quotes for car insurance. The insurance algorithms often use driving records, age and gender to determine the likelihood of claiming against the policy.

But an all too common and mistaken assumption is that algorithms can provide a prediction about the specific person. On the contrary, publicly available information shows that the algorithms rely upon statistical groups. What does this mean? As we said earlier, they compare the circumstances and attributes of the person being risk assessed with risk factors and scores associated with criminal justice populations – or groups.

For example, what if “John” is placed in the medium-risk category, which is associated with a reoffending likelihood of 30%? This does not mean there is a 30% chance that John will reoffend. Instead, it means that about 30% of those assigned medium risk are forecasted to reoffend based on the observation that 30% of the medium risk had in the past been reconvicted.

This number cannot be directly assigned to any individual within that medium-risk group. John may, individually, have a 1% chance of reoffending. The scales are not individualised in this way and so John, himself, cannot be assigned specifically with a number. The reason for this is that the predictive factors are not causal in nature. They are correlated, meaning there may be some relationship between the factors and reoffending. Oasys uses male gender as one of the predictive factors of reoffending. But being male does not cause reoffending. The relationship as perceived by Oasys merely suggests that males are more likely to commit crimes than females.

There are important consequences to this. The individual can thereby be seen as being punished, not for what he or she is personally predicted to do. They face imprisonment because of what others – who share a similar risk score – have done. This is why more transparency of predictive algorithms is needed.

But even if we know what the inputs are, the weighting system is often obscure as well. And developers are frequently changing the algorithms for a host of reasons. The purposes may be valid. It could be that predictors of reoffending change over time in connection with societal shifts. Or it could be that new scientific knowledge suggests a modification is necessary.

Nevertheless, we have been unable to discover much about how well the Oasys system, or its components, performs. The Ministry of Justice has, to our knowledge, only released retroactive results. Those statistics cannot inform on the predictive performance of the tool for predictions made today, or for how accurate they are when we relook at the offenders in two years. Frequent retrospective results are needed to provide up to date information on the performance of algorithms.

Independent evaluation

To the best of our knowledge (and to the knowledge of other experts in the field), Oasys has not been independently evaluated. There is a clear need for more information on the effectiveness and accuracy of these tools and their impact on gender, race, disability and other protected characteristics. Without these sources it is not possible to fully understand the prospects and challenges of the system.

We acknowledge that the lack of transparency surrounding Oasys is a common, though not universal, denominator that unites these types of algorithms deployed by justice systems and other sectors across the world. A court case in the state of Wisconsin that challenged the use of a risk assessment tool that the developer claimed was confidential succeeded only to a point.

The defendant, convicted of charges related to a drive-by shooting, claimed that it was unfair to use a tool which used a private algorithm because it prevented him from challenging its scientific credentials. The US court ruled that the government did not have to reveal the underlying algorithm. However, it required authorities to issue warnings when the tool was used.

These warnings included:

• the fact that failure to disclose meant it was not possible to tell how scores were determined
• the algorithms were group-based assessments incapable of individualised predictions
• there could be biases toward minority ethnic people
• the tool had not been tested for use in the state of Wisconsin.

Opening up the black box

Problems such as AI bias and lack of transparency are not peculiar to Oasys. They affect many other data-driven technologies deployed by public sector agencies. In response, UK government agencies, such as the Central Digital and Data Office and the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) have recognised the need for ethical approaches to algorithm design and implementation and have introduced remedial strategies. A recent example is the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard Hub which offers public sector organisations the opportunity to provide information about their algorithms.

A relatively recent report published by the CDEI also discussed bias-limitation measures, such as reducing the significance of things like arrest history as they have been show to be negative proxies for race. A post-prediction remedy in the CDEI report requires practitioners to lower the risk classification allocated to people belonging to a group known to be consistently vulnerable to higher risk AI scores than others.

More generally, researchers and civil society organisations have proposed pre and-post implementation audits to test, detect and resolve AI problems of the kind associated with Oasys. The need for appropriate regulation of AI systems including those deployed for risk assessment has also been recognised by key regulatory bodies in the UK and around the world, such as Ofcom, the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Competition and Markets Authority.

When we put these issues to the MOJ, it said the system had been subject to external review, but it was not specific on the data. It said it has been making data available externally through the Data First programme and that the next dataset to be shared with the programme will be “based on” the Oasys database and released “within 12 months”.

An MOJ spokesperson added: “The Oasys system has been subject to external review and scrutiny by the appropriate bodies. For obvious reasons, granting external access to sensitive offender information is a complex process, which is why we’ve set up Data First which allows accredited researchers to access our information in an ethical and responsible way.”

In the end, we recognise that algorithmic systems are here to stay and we acknowledge the ongoing efforts to reduce problems with accuracy and bias. Better access to, and input from, external experts to evaluate these systems and put forward solutions would be a useful step towards making them fairer. The justice system is vast and complex and technology is needed to manage it. But it is important to remember that there are people behind the numbers.

--oo00oo--

The article generated some interesting responses:-

Not an AI in 2001. The article goes on to refer to an algorithm which is likely correct. An AI is not an algorithm. I’d imagine the one being used by Oasys probably started out like something used by actuaries to calculate risk, the two fields look like there considerable overlap. Also the calculations done to calculate a credit score. I doubt it’s an AI even now..

Nitpicky stuff out of the way, it does illustrate the problems with black box systems and peoples reactions to them. First you can’t easily work out why the results are what they are. Secondly people tend to blindly accept the output even when it clearly diverges from reality, remember when people just followed satnav systems into fields or rivers? Generative systems are already fairly opaque, but it’s going to get worse.

*****
“I have likened it to a small snowball running downhill. Each turn it picks up more and more snow (inaccurate entries) until eventually you are left with this massive snowball which bears no semblance to the original small ball of snow. In other words, I no longer exist. I have become a construct of their imagination. It is the ultimate act of de-humanisation”. The person quoted is maybe not aware just how accurate they are. It used to be my practice to share what their files said with the person I was assessing for a DV or a Sex Offenders group. In every single instance the range of inaccuracies was enormous, from those with insignificant impact to those with monumental impact. Clearly, just like Chinese whispers, the initial mistake is made, repeated by the second worker with another couple added in and so on and so on. 

With AI taking over so much and humans more and more cut out of the equation in gaining information based on relationship (and hopefully a highly skilled interviewer aware of their own inherent biases) God knows where all this might end up. Whilst outcomes for this AI system have not been analysed outcomes for the What Works Approach (imported here into Western Australia) and for Sex Offender Treatment programs have both been analysed and found to be significantly flawed with positive outcomes seriously over-estimated. We still use these patently flawed systems in Western Australia. 

When I was first employed by the (in)Justice system I was one of about 15 Senior Programmes Officers delivering these awful programs with 1 worker only focusing on prisoners education and job seeking stuff. It needed to be the other way around. And any money saved on the fairly useless work we were doing (and I was a very highly skilled and experienced practitioner) would have been better spent on dentists, tattoo removals, and secure accommodation post release. What would AI make of that I wonder?

*****
I have no doubt that OASys has many flaws and would benefit from rigorous academic assessment of its accuracy and biases, but it remains a risk assessment tool and is not AI. Now, if a computer was tasked with analysing videos of defendants in court and generating assessments based on their behaviour, that would be dangerous reliance on AI. On the other hand, analysing OASys outcomes and suggesting improvements in the algorithm would be, if properly managed and evaluated, a positive use of AI.

NPS Staffing Crisis

The new Chief Inspector of Probation published a fairly positive report on NPS in the North East yesterday, but once again it highlighted the staffing crisis largely brought about by TR:-

North East probation service delivering innovative work, despite heavy workloads

A probation service in the North East of England has been commended for its strong leadership and the innovative way it supports individuals to move away from further offending. The North East Division of the National Probation Service (NPS) supervises almost 19,000 high-risk offenders across a large area that stretches from the Scottish border to The Wash in Lincolnshire.

HM Inspectorate of Probation conducted a routine inspection of the North East Division of the NPS and looked at 10 aspects of its work. The Inspectorate has given the Division an overall ‘Good’ rating, its second-highest mark.

Chief Inspector of Probation Justin Russell said: “Leaders in the North East Division of the NPS have a clear vision and strategy to deliver a quality service, and this has been communicated well to staff and key stakeholders. However, the Division is not always able to achieve this ambition because of staff shortages and high workloads.”

There is a lack of qualified probation officers across England and Wales, and inspectors found significant shortages across this Division too. Restrictions to local recruitment have further hampered efforts to place newly qualified officers in the offices where they are most needed.

Mr Russell said: “Despite staff shortages and some heavy workloads, staff across the Division take the time to develop professional relationships with the individuals under their supervision. If individuals missed appointments or broke the rules of their orders, staff did excellent work to engage individuals again and get them back on track.”

Inspectors found the Division offers a comprehensive range of services to individuals to support their rehabilitation. Pioneering initiatives include ‘Project Beta’, a collaboration between HM Prison and Probation Service, Durham County Council and Darlington Borough Council. The project works with individuals who are leaving prisons across the North East to help ensure they enter stable accommodation on release to provide a foundation for beginning a life free from crime. Inspectors also noted a network of community hubs in Cleveland has supported women to move away from crime and reoffending.

The Division has also been proactive in addressing gaps in its services. Probation staff wanted to strengthen their work with sexual offenders so set up additional training and a library of resources. Staff can now work with this complex and challenging group of offenders with greater expertise and confidence.

Work with victims of serious crime was found to be of a good standard. The Division runs a statutory scheme that provides victims with updates on the perpetrator’s sentence and gives them an opportunity to contribute their views on release plans. Contact with victims was timely and supportive in nearly nine out of 10 inspected cases, and victims received clear communications throughout the course of the sentence. However, inspectors found a small number of victims were not contacted about the scheme; the Inspectorate is now encouraging the Division to make sure all eligible victims are approached.

Inspectors found the overall quality of work with individuals under supervision was generally good, but some aspects require improvement.

Mr Russell said: “The Division needs to take a more robust approach to risk management in order to keep potential and actual victims safe. In a third of inspected cases, the risk assessments did not contain enough information about who might be at risk of harm from the individual under supervision and the exact nature of that risk. For example, some assessments overlooked victims of previous offences.”

The Inspectorate has made seven recommendations to improve the quality of the Division’s work.

Mr Russell added: “There is much to commend in the innovative and proactive leadership of the North East division of the NPS. Taking the opportunity to learn from this inspection will enable the division to further improve its service delivery.”

--oo00oo--

A few weeks ago a question on Facebook sought to address the staffing problem and the responses might prove enlightening, not just to the MoJ as they beaver away in earnest on the new probation model, but also to those currently contemplating a career in this line of work:-

What would it take to convince you to return to probation or retain you as a member of frontline probation staff if you are thinking of rejoining or leaving? If you are temping what would encourage you to move from temping to permanent work? 

A parking space would be a start.

Ditto.

I would want more pay and manageable caseload but that's a pipe dream.

I was recently tempted back to a permanent PO post from agency, as they’ve agreed to give me extended leave (unpaid), to enable me to maintain flexibility to xxxxxx each year. I feel very lucky - have yet to see how the reduced income will impact though!

I’d like that. To spend more time xxxxxxxxx.

Definitely. Ill health and the privatisation made me re-evaluate life’s priorities .. go for what makes you happy and live your best life. x

Yes time to re-evaluate definitely.

Reduced stress helps! X

Yes. I get told by friends that stress can kill even. I’m XX. If I early retired this year I’d only get £XX a year pension. I’m looking into flexible retirement. I’m XX this year and no matter what pension is - at 60 I’m going to early retire.

I agree totally .. my plan is to retire early and move to Xxxxxxxx full-time, where the cost of living is much lower. xx

More official recognition, less of a blame culture and less aggressive intervention into private life - needing to seek managerial permission before needing to do virtually anything outside of work, excessive vetting, social media embargoes etc.

More manageable workloads. No more weekly emails saying this that or the other is missing or out of date. Not having to wait two months for an OHA. More facilities time for reps. A less draconian absence management policy.

To be honest nothing would tempt me to move from agency to permanent. I work part time- take a month off Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx, as well as other shorter bits of leave - have a degree of independence and autonomy - which also allows me to work in different places. I’m mortgage free so have few financial commitments and retire in 2021! For others I would suggest a robust WMT, flexible hours and technology to work from home - parity re conditions - parking - reopening offices - ongoing training!

I forgot about the WMT- not fit for purpose.

I forgot about the no bullying!

Workload, by which I mean LESS assessments. OASys tells us nothing that we do not know in advance. What EXACTLY is SARA for? Why ARMS? Still more pay, lets get back what we lost since 2012. Less counting things, more time with people. If we have to be civil servants how about non contributory pension and retirement at 60?

My thoughts exactly. Don't forget VISOR! Another useless tool we don't need, we don't want!

Yeah, that too.

Oh and RSR! Fill out this form that tells us that serious re-offending is very rare. Well ain't that a surprise!

I’m a temp and no price to go permanent would be enough. X

I have been banging the ViSOR drum for years! Hopefully this will be the end of it once and for all.

Totally agree about SARA. Utterly pointless. 

Fingers crossed but I doubt it as it's about us doing the police's work for them, same as for the ARMS!

I never look at it

I have seen it and the bulk of the info on there is supplied by us anyway! It’s completely unnecessary and even if it was imperative, access should have been granted without vetting. I cannot explain how much upset and concern this caused amongst some of my colleagues.

I don’t look at SARA.

They are ALL pointless. OASYs takes hours. OGRS takes five minutes. Scores are always very close. Do an OGRS. Ask a question covering all the areas in OASYs Use those as the basis of a sentence plan done via the web. SORTED.

It seems to be widely agreed that SARA is useless.

Agree.

Is temping much more money?

Not really when you take in to account no annual leave or sickness pay. However, I prefer the autonomy - the feeling that if I’m unhappy there is a plethora of other jobs in the sector. I also think you have more authority when it comes to flexible working - I do condensed hours with Xxxxxxx’s off. I have done 2 spells permanent and 2 spells temping. I really would not consider permanent work again.

The RSR is not significantly different in what it looks at than what you get from an OGRS. The only time it is ever different is for sex offenders, when it increases the numbers.

My take from Court work. Can we ditch the EPF? Unless the person is out of area, this is a waste of time. If people are from out of area, let us just call it an Accredited Programme and the other area can figure out which, according to what they have. Could we get rid of RAR? Not an effective way of supervising anyone. It can result in someone receiving a minimal service even if their circumstances change and mean they need more support. The considerations when doing a report on someone should focus on *if* they need Probation intervention and what sort would help the most. There is no such thing as a catch-all, one-size-for-all intervention.

SARA? Well, it helps you remember what areas can be relevant to domestic abuse and its causes, but the practitioner is still the one deciding the risk.

What’s EPF?

Effective Proposal Framework, which must be done before doing the proposal on your reports, including before delivering any stand down reports.

Pay according to years experience and holidays to match. I know that’s not fair on permanent staff but it’s what I would push for on an individual basis. Anything less - no thanks. Temping has saved my mental health and enabled me to continue to work as an OM. At the end of the day, I’ve been able to carry on working on the job I love and serve the community.

My mental health is certainly suffering. I’m stressed re workload. Not fit for purpose WMT and how we are all being treated. And made to feel we are to blame for being stressed and not being able to manage that.

Nonsense emphasis on ‘resilience’.

Left for YOT - not sure anything would tempt me back, especially not as YOT matched my NPS salary and to return would put me back on bottom of NPS scale. Had forgotten what being appreciated for work effort was like as not had that for years in probation.

Sounds like you are much happier.

Well if a lot changed maybe you could be swayed.

Odd. As a seconded PO in Xxxxxxxx YOT l was treated with contempt. As were all the staff. So happy to have a way back.

This is second time in YOT as had previous secondment to different YOT. Welcomed and valued by both. Current YOT has just taken on ex-probation officers with others having been seconded to that YOT.

So how about career progression? Training etc. Those who are PSOs would you like to train to be a PO with no loss of pay or maybe a bit on top? How about the creation of Senior Practitioner posts on the same points as SPOs? Management training for POs? Transfer without penalty? If we don’t ask we won’t get.

Some good ideas there, especially the Sr Practitioner posts.

I’m a big supporter of SP roles as we are not all cut out or want to be managers but certainly know our onions. I also think that not developing the PSO role to enable movement is a travesty.

I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than be a manager. But senior practitioner role sounds an excellent idea.

All social workers have senior practitioners posts and when I started as a P.O. the only route in was with a social work qualification.

Yes all of the above! We need more emphasis on progression through OM skills not management. So if u have done a counselling course - that ought to lead somewhere rather than nowhere. I’m not interested in management, I see that as a separate career. Or, make managers carry a caseload to make it more integrated.

It’s so so sad we won’t be able to do a stint in programmes now. I want group work skills! I want skills in rehabilitation. I want to be coached in rehab skills and have people actually interested in how I work in supervision. I know how to risk manage, but the real practise improvement - no one seems to care.

Sorry to rant - but when inspectors look at our cases they care what happens in sessions. Managers don’t really. We all know that that is the point of our work. Practitioners have to scrabble around digging up old worksheets from 20 years ago to actually structure their sessions. We ought to have ready access to these as well as a comprehensive partnerships directory which is updated on a six monthly basis in every office. Also: every new case needs to be brought before a weekly allocation meeting so they can get partnership appointments booked in from the word go. I know this is not strictly speaking about career progression but I’m just putting an idea out.

Trouble is, all of this gets in the way of doing assessments.

I'd say that as far as I’m aware it does in the NPS but in London CRC and TV there is at least, in recent times, a genuine concern about trying to improve quality at the coal face after most staff made clear their dissatisfaction with command and control targets obsessed approaches. I’d have liked the sort of innovation now being rolled out to have happened sooner but contract times have been shortened and reliable systems take time to develop and roll out. However, I really don’t want the good progress in certain areas - particularly in advances in tools and technologies - to be lost as progress has been hard won and involved many dedicated practitioners. Some of the best stuff has just started to gain some traction not least due to a change in senior management direction but also it is evident that the green shoots of what we might want are evident and mostly welcomed and I’m relatively hard to convince. I would like NPS colleagues to benefit from the best of what has been developed and available. There is an opportunity to improve things across the board.

What both NPS and CRC desperately need are well trained staff both PSOs, POs, SPO and hopefully SPs and certainly something suitably creative in respect of PSOs who all need to feel positive about their employers, leaders, and newly motivated to do the job they were trained to do in the way that is best not directed by faceless bureaucrats.

As a PSO I’d have appreciated the opportunity to train as a PO - as did many highly qualified PSOs in my region - but when we were told we’d have to pay for our own ‘top up’ modules none of us had odd 2 grand to spare.

Exactly. Many would do it but not at their own expense.

I’m doing it now at my own expense but gaining the modules via an Xxxxxxx from Xxxxxxx Uni, hence a huge student loan. At least this way I’ll get a Masters at which point I’ll walk out of Probation. I think what was so difficult for us CRC PSOs was the knowledge that NPS PSOs don’t face the same financial penalty. I really must leave this group - I sound like a moaning old git, and I’m not! I’m very peaceful but this second kick in the teeth for programmes has just destroyed my love for this job.

You don’t sound like that. I’m really angry about it.

My CRC has management training, CPD, innovation, opportunity to have input in how the organisation ran, Associate Tutors roles for operational staff who wanted a chance to deliver programmes and brush up on rehabilitation skills and CA's who wanted skills and experience to apply for operations roles, to lead or work on projects ..... I hope these innovations don't get lost in the move and that the new NPS takes forward all of the positives from both current NPS and CRCs. However, Programmes Rule!

Easier application process rather than civil service competencies that bear no resemblance to the actual job!!

So true. Excellent point.

Better pay, free parking and flexible working and I would consider coming back

Better pay, flexible working including working from home at times and free parking, plus team building.

Easier application process.

As PSO with ten plus years experience it’s frustrating that you have to have a degree to firstly apply for PQUiP. It seems that experience and consistent good/outstanding appraisals doesn’t mean much!

Less hours.

Competent and trained management without a bias of who you are mates with. Work progression routes and personal development. Investment in staff.

Generic case loads like there was back in circa 2003-2007 so there's a mixture of different types of cases - makes the job more emotionally/mentally sustainable.

Guaranteed pay increase every year. And the money owed from the pay freeze. Not too much to ask is it?!

Unfortunately the reality of modern day NPS is not conducive to such cosy discussions. Any such suggestions are usually ignored. Civil Service if that is what is coming is not a panacea. It is very much top down command and control. There is little scope for discussion mostly because purse strings are held tightly at the very top.

For a friend of mine who wanted to get into general office admin work (band 2) they laughed at the wages and told me not for that - would rather stay doing retail on 45 hours a week and get 15k more per year.

For me the only thing would be to put wages up by at least 15% (I know it's gotta be a followed process) but I will be honest I have had enough of it. The only reason I'm still here is the pay cheque at the end of the month. And yes I am looking elsewhere. There are lots of issues and not enough solutions.

Essential car user allowance.

A welfare support system that supported people rather than punish them. Services that I could refer people into. Quality housing, drug and mental health support that is not so cash strapped that most "Assessments" come down to "how do we deny this poor bastard any help". 

Less, no sorry, NO obsession with public safety. There is a part of the Criminal Justice system which should prioritise the good that a person can do rather than the bad which they have. Where better than the Probation Service.

An obsession with getting alongside people rather than alongside a computer to fill in another assessment. Some distance from the Prison Service and the Justice Ministry to allow us space to breath and be the Service we were and can be again.

Some or all of that would mean that I could enjoy my last 10 years in the service, rather than spend every birthday trying to calculate if I can survive THIS year on a reduced pension or do I have to stick it out longer. Not a lot to ask is it?

Less targets and being allowed to get on with the job and doing the work that matters, work with clients.

Being able to work from home is a huge bonus. Flexible working. Having fabulous colleagues and managers.

I am glad that senior managers are finally starting to recognise these issues. They never seemed too bothered about retaining staff, which has had a catastrophic effect. Hopefully they are realising that their methods of control and direction are not working, and that there should be more ‘carrot’ than ‘stick’! For me they need to offer more creative and flexible working options, we have the IT to support that now. They need to look at particular offices or areas that struggle to recruit and retain and consider the issues and how to encourage people to want to work there. A senior practitioner role is an excellent idea, otherwise there are limited career progression opportunities for those not interested in management. Make improvements to OASys/all the assessments that we have to do, to avoid constant duplication of information. The focus should be on working with people, having the time to do meaningful work with them instead of prioritising ‘targets’.

The way it used to be. Working with a smile on your face. Reduced blame culture manageable time frames. Having your own secretary who felt valued and personal to you and colleagues. Parking - enough staff to share the workload - managers who were not guided by performance targets - professional autonomy - and overall respect from employers - but from what I hear that’s going to be a hard one to achieve when it all gets lumped back together. When I heard the news I sort of did a little flip. But as this goes on and I hear the rumblings from the jungle commonly known as the ministry of magic! Well I’m not filled with enthusiasm and glee.

I left in 2016. After the split there seemed to be a move to reduce everything to the 'quickest' or 'most efficient' way of doing things to the point where the value in doing them at all was lost. We used to stand up for ourselves - if a Court asked for a PSR on a DV case with an unrealistic turnaround then (if we knew a thorough risk assessment couldn't be done in that time) we as professionals would say no and we'd be backed up in doing so. I think we need a clear culture of who we are and what we do and we need senior officers to also know that too and who will stick up for the service when needed (I'm still saying we even 3 years after leaving!). I think probation is going to need to prove itself - be clear about its values and what it stands for and what as a profession it offers - before many would go back. That will take time.

Also, having left, you soon realise quite how bad the pay and career progression is in probation. It's a fairly flat structure with not many opportunities. I left as a PO and would need to go back in as well above SPO grade to make it worth my while. It was never about the money, but the jobs you guys do, you deserve more that's for sure.

Probation by Numbers

Just as the Ministry of Justice launches a consultation on making criminal justice statistics more transparent, it triggered several thoughts in me about numbers generally. Basically old-style probation officers don't like them, not least because of the difficulty of making people fit neatly into measuring boxes, like OASys and OGRS. Readers will be aware of my contempt for the former, but as regards the latter, I have to say I've never really understood the argument for the Offender Group Reconviction Scale.

Although refreshingly short in comparison to 'War and Peace' OASys, I've nevertheless found the process tedious and pointless when having to use it, especially at court when preparing FDR's. It's supposed to predict re-offending, but only measures static factors such as age, gender and criminal history, so does it really tell us anything we didn't know already? Along with dreaded OASys, it supposedly helps to categorise people neatly into one of four risk tiers, but we all know management manipulate that process in order to help massage the workload figures. 

I'm pretty sure magistrates and judges find the predictive risk section of PSR's confusing, irritating and dare I say, useless. I remember reading a report written a couple of years ago by a very well known probation officer on an elderly recidivist. Helpfully the risk of reconviction was stated to be something like 96%, a figure that the author felt in his professional opinion "was almost certainly an under-estimate."    

Of course figures and especially all this predictive stuff are the domain of the academic and I was interested to read an article on this topic written by Leigh Brauman and concerning Prof Lawrence Sherman in the latest issue of the Cambridge Alumni Magazine. Now to avoid any speculation I must hasten to say I have no connection with such an august institution, but happily blogging seems to attract information from all sorts of quarters. Anyway, this extremely eminent person who holds the prestigeous Wolfson Chair of Criminology, according to the article:- 

"........ is developing a general theory of crime, harm and criminal justice - a theory of how to use the criminal justice system to reduce total harm to society. Employing a 'crime-harm index' (CHI), the theory seeks to focus justice not on 'how to punish criminals' but on producing less harm to society at large."

He is about to embark on research with 10 police forces to test his hypothesis that society should focus on harm reduction, rather than punishment. Apparently one group of offenders will be 'prosecuted' fully, whilst the second will be processed using this predictive tool. Now I'm no lawyer, but I can already see some scope for an appeal here and wonder just how ethical this research is? The method seems to rely on measuring 49 variables and a computer with a brain the size of a planet in order to tell judges and magistrates which people should go to prison and for how long. The professor appears to be scathing of current sentencing practice using mere 'guidelines' and acknwledges that:-

"Social justice reformers don't like this approach because they are ideology-driven, and one of their ideologies is that numbers are bad. But that's not my problem."

Well I'm going to stick my neck out and say that maybe the professor has spoken a little prematurely and he has possibly under-estimated firstly the ability of finding an adequate IT system capable of performing these tasks (OASys regularly crashes) and secondly that anyone, especially sentencers, intend to take a blind bit of notice. People have that irritating habit of just not being willing to fit neatly into boxes, no matter how hard scientific endeavour tries to force it upon them. Thank goodness.