New Narrative Required?

A recent reminder from regular contributor 'Getafix pointed us in the direction of the Revolving Doors charity and the following very insightful blog post from last October which we seem to have missed. Although apparently not attributed, I feel it's quite likely to be the work of their policy manager and former Probation Officer Kelly Grehan. We've featured her work before, for example here in 2023 The Need for Probation Reform and she is clearly 'on the money'. 

Time for a change in the narrative for probation and public expectations?

Few would disagree that we are in the midst of a criminal justice system crisis for England and Wales. Years of under-investment have come home to roost, with insufficient recognition of the interdependencies between the police, probation, prison, courts, Crown Prosecution Service and other essential services. Repair work is going to be complicated, but now is the time for a new government to rebuild a comprehensive, connected system fit for the future.

A shift in the rhetoric and public expectations of what can and cannot be achieved through community supervision will be essential. Public media coverage of probation practice is preoccupied with failure. This ranges from a surprise that probation practitioners do not have immediate access to accommodation for anyone being released homeless, to missed opportunities uncovered by serious further offence investigations, which report missed information sharing and swift enforcement opportunities.

It seems timely to ask: Are public expectations of what can be achieved through community supervision realistic and are recommendations being directed to the correct service/agency provider?

‘Rehabilitation does not end at the prison gate’

I would argue that, unless there is a much wider shared community commitment to and understanding of inclusion and access to essential public services, then expectations and confidence in probation practice will remain stuck in an unrealistic and low place.

The excessive use of imprisonment may satisfy appetites for retribution, but the reality is that prisoners come from the community and, for the vast majority, return to the community. Rehabilitation does not end at the prison gate.

If we want to reduce the likelihood of reoffending then our communities need to be ready to support and improve access to providing accommodation, speedy access to mental health and substance misuse services and a readiness to accept and encourage ex-offenders into the workplace and education.

Frustration at lack of community support

Probation practitioners can signpost and support referrals to these essential services, but do they have confidence that the door will be open?

The probation service is one of the smallest and usually most invisible public services – unless something has gone wrong. The public usually shows little interest in the criminal courts and work of the probation service unless they or a member of their family work there or they have found themselves the wrong side of the law or a victim of crime.

Most who work in the criminal justice system are highly committed and passionate about their work, wanting to do all they can to prevent further harm, improve lives and develop safer communities. I don’t think in my forty plus years working in many different roles for probation I have ever met a colleague who did not think the justice system could be improved and did not remain frustrated at the lack of access to services in the community to support rehabilitation and reintegration.

Success stories for probation nearly always demonstrate examples of strong multi agency partnership work that support integration and celebrate the individuals’ efforts to move forward. The challenge has always been one of negotiating the tightrope between care and control.

I question whether we have shifted the expectations and balance too far in the direction of control, raising the bar for public protection measures so high for so many that we have lost sight of the imperative to support and nurture rehabilitation. All too often the starting point is “what is the risk assessment?” rather than “what is the risk and needs assessment”? Effective probation practice requires attention to both the management of risk of harm and reducing reoffending through well planned and delivered rehabilitation support services. If offenders get their lives back together the risk to the public generally falls.

High vs. low risk: a harmful dichotomy

The introduction of the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) at the start of the century had an impressive impact, encouraging probation to separate out those who presented the highest risk of serious harm. The mantra that resources followed risk makes sense; so that the agencies collaboratively take concerted efforts to ‘control and monitor’ those whom we have good confidence could cause further harm and victims.

However, what has followed is a polarisation of political and media reporting of high or low risk of harm. Transforming Rehabilitation, the restructuring of probation services in 2014, crystallised this dichotomy, with oversimplified explanations dividing the caseload between high-risk offenders to the public sector National Probation Service and the ‘low-risk offenders’ to the outsourced Community Rehabilitation Companies. In truth over half of the caseload is assessed as ‘medium risk of harm’. Risk of harm assessment is dynamic and can quickly change, hence the need for regular contact and engagement.

Since the further restructuring in 2021 back to one service, probation has struggled to find the balance between care and control. The direction of travel has been dominated by a mixture of juggling to achieve national consistency, offset rising prison population pressures, struggling to retain or train a sufficient skilled workforce.

We have also seen politicians who have been all too easily swayed by high-profile serious further offence investigations and the promise ‘that it will never happen again’, raising public expectations higher as to what can be managed and assured, when managing supervision of an individual in the community.

Few in the media have paused and asked what can be achieved by one probation practitioner managing a caseload in excess of fifty? How many times a month might the practitioner actually be able to meet with them to develop an influential relationship and remain on top of their needs, risks and changing circumstances? It is not like prison where you know where they are all the time. How much access is there in the community to access immediate accommodation, for instance? If someone is homeless, their preoccupation is with day-to day-survival, it is almost impossible for the probation practitioner to find space to address their ‘thinking behaviour and motivation to change’.

How can we support probation staff and those they supervise?

Probation staff need to be better supported by other services in the community to enable individuals on release from prison to access the immediate needs that bring about some basic stability.

A sizeable chunk of the caseload is assessed as ‘medium risk of serious harm’: people with complex lives that require both significant support for rehabilitation, as well as careful assessment and management of risk indicators such as domestic abuse and/or histories of previous violence. It is here that lies the knot for probation to untangle. What should be expectations and priorities for probation practitioners working with this group?

Good quality probation practice requires attention to both public protection, which involves good information sharing and the use of some controls and restrictions and good interventions and access to services to support rehabilitation. One without the other inevitably falls a long way short of effective practice.

The risk of exposure to criticism for a failure to attend to safeguarding measures now tends to overshadow attention to rehabilitation and resettlement. Low public confidence saps staff morale and motivation. This in turns contributes to turnover, poor recruitment and high vacancies. The imbalance is felt keenly by those being supervised. The supervisor – supervisee relationship becomes one of control rather than engagement and partnership. High caseloads, combined with excessive processes can result in a lack of time to develop effective, meaningful relationships that can support behaviour changes.

Moving forward it would be encouraging to see: 

• Greater public understanding of what realistically can be achieved through supervision in the community.

• Support for community ownership, collaboration and inclusion for those being released from prison, including quick access to services that provide stability.

• An improved balance between attending to risk of harm and needs to support rehabilitation.

Kelly Grehan 28th October 2024

Can Consistency live with Creativity?

In yesterday's blog post I sought to highlight how extremely difficult it is for innovation and creativity to co-exist within a command and control structure. Traditionally, these were features that made probation work so rewarding and was routinely encouraged by management. I raised the somewhat anomalous position of independent hostels, now referred to as Approved Premises and my concern for their future. The following paper by Andrew Bridges, former CPO and HMI, cogently sets out the issues I think:-    

What should the ‘independence’ of IAPs look like? 

A personal viewpoint piece by Andrew Bridges, Strategic Director, NAPA (views not necessarily shared by every NAPA Associate) 

1. Why are there independent APs (IAPs) at all? 

There are historical explanations, described elsewhere, of how ‘Approved’ homes for delinquent boys and others, run by charitable bodies, evolved over time through several changes of use into the IAPs of today. But now, in the first three decades of the 21st century, there are ‘business case’ reasons why IAPs have moved from being an anomalous relic from the past into becoming a key component of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) of England & Wales. 

This transition started once all the APs in England & Wales began to be used almost exclusively for men and women being released from prisons, a change of use that had been long overdue. Once this new usage had become established, demand for AP places began to grow. Rightly, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – established in 2007 – sought to ration the supply of places by restricting eligibility primarily to individuals who were assessed as being of high risk of harm to others, stipulating that the principal purpose of APs was for “public protection”. Nevertheless, the demand for AP places generally has remained high, and projections made by the MoJ still predict further future increases in demand, especially with rising pressures in the prison population overall. 

2. Why does MoJ/HMPPS now want IAPs? 

Because the MoJ is forecasting an increase in demand for AP places, HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) wants to increase the number and range of them that are available at any one time. At first sight, the position looks positive, with HMPPS already directly managing c90 APs itself, besides which the dozen or so independent APs (IAPs) might seem to be making a very modest contribution. But the difficulty is with how to increase the numbers of AP places. Sometimes a few bedspaces can be added to existing premises, and this has been done sometimes, but the need to try to meet potential future demand requires new APs altogether, especially in those geographical areas where there are not enough APs – or any, in some instances.

Opening a new AP is a remarkably difficult task. Not only does there have to be a building that needs to be either purchased or built from scratch, but more importantly it has to gain the right planning permission for it to be used as an AP – and any application to house “ex-prisoners” in a local community almost always leads to a strong adverse public reaction. It is not impossible for HMPPS to establish a new AP directly itself, but in the main it is instead a much more attractive option for HMPPS to invite independent providers to bid to provide an IAP in a specified area of the country. To illustrate this point: During 2021 and 2022, HMPPS managed to open one new directly-managed AP itself (though this was replacing an existing AP), but in contrast was able to gain four new IAPs by commissioning them from independent providers.

So although there are, as ever, financial restraints, HMPPS sees APs generally as a key component in its overall task of managing and supervising individuals who have offended, and sees the IAPs as making a particularly important and valued contribution within that component. 

3. Are there other potential considerations? 

The ‘outsourcing’ of some public services can sometimes be driven by overtly ideological motivations, as was the case with rail privatisation in the 1990s, and the part-privatisation of Probation services in 2014. However, although the commissioning of services by IAPs is consistent with Conservative ideology, there is little in its history or development to suggest that ideology has been the main driver in the case of IAPs – instead it has been the pragmatic ‘business case’ outlined above. Nevertheless, within the ‘business case’ approach, when commissioning any service, the question of ‘competition’ arises, which has two potential elements: competition between potential independent providers, and competition between the independent sector overall and the public sector: 

• Competition between independent providers takes place at the stage of awarding contracts, and in the first two decades or so of the 21st century, MoJ/HMPPS has developed increasing care to ensure that contracts for any of its services are to be awarded following full and fair competition between providers, both current and potentially new providers. This process for awarding contracts is heavily regulated within Government, and in the 2020s decade it is being applied conscientiously. 

• Competition between the independent sector and the public sector, however, is rarely discussed openly at all, and probably with good reason. The lesson from prison privatisation has been that it is next to impossible to make a useful and fair comparison on primarily financial grounds between publicly managed and independently managed prisons because of factors such as the costs of public service pensions, of Crown Immunity (compared with commercial insurance), and the various capital costs, which mean overall that you will never really be ‘comparing like with like’. Although direct ‘competitions’ have been run between public and private prisons the evaluations have necessarily had to be made on a series of qualitative judgements on the information provided. Given that, in such competitions, ‘Government’ is acting as both the commissioner and as one of the competing providers, those competitions have been considered by some to be in principle unsatisfactory too. For this reason, and for the pragmatic reasons outlined further above, the question of direct competition between IAPs and the state-run sector may be unlikely to arise.

4. What does MoJ/HMPPS therefore want from the IAPs? 

Despite the many practical obstacles that make it difficult for Government to compare like with like when evaluating competitive bids, nevertheless the desire to maximise value for money for the public during times of continued financial restraint will still apply. But, for the reasons given above, a desire to drive down cost does not seem to be the main motivation for HMPPS to develop the IAP sector. The ‘business case’ for consolidating, and ideally expanding, the provision of IAPs would appear to be a pragmatic one: There is a growing demand for places, and the independent sector seems to offer a much more promising route to meeting that growth in need. 

This then leads to the key question of this paper: If the provision of AP places for individuals being released from prisons in England & Wales is to be met by a mixture of state-run and independent institutions, how far should those institutions be exactly the same as each other, or can there be differences? (and if so, what?) NB A similar issue arose with ‘public’ and ‘private’ prisons. 

As ever with a national service of any kind, there is a strong drive within HMPPS for consistency, and the reasons for this are understandable. When differences can be found between provision of any public service in different geographical parts of the country, a cry of ‘postcode lottery’ is easily raised by critics, and legal actions based on such arguments have been successful in the past. But how far should that drive for consistency go? 

One lesson that has perhaps been learned from the prison privatisation experience is that certain elements of national ‘infrastructure’ must apply to both sectors, notably the facility to allocate and manage individual cases. Standards of physical security etc need to be consistent nationally too. 

But when we focus specifically on managing residents within each local IAP there is some scope for variety that is both feasible and desirable - a mix of national consistency and local creativity. However, the problem is that although MoJ knows it wants, from its providers, some of that enterprising creativity within a high degree of national consistency, it doesn’t have a framework (or rationale, or ‘strategy’) for defining how that mix of consistency and creativity should be made up. 

Without this framework, MoJ/HMPPS goes into its ‘default mode’ of driving for consistency; it has a tendency to slide into setting increasingly detailed prescriptions about how the work should be done. The unfortunate effect of this is to ‘squeeze out’ much of the creativity that MoJ actually wants to see from IAPs. 

In short, MoJ knows that it wants a mix of consistency and creative initiative from its providers (it talks helpfully of “Social Value”), but – I argue – it does not know how to define that mix. 

5. Therefore, how should the mix between consistency and creativity be defined? 

As already indicated, this question probably needs answering under two separate sub-headings, National infrastructure, and Local delivery:

 i) National infrastructure: 

It might sound unnecessary to say it, but there does need to be a high level of consistency in the way that the IAPs function as part of the ‘national system’: standards of building security, drug testing arrangements, being part of whatever case allocation systems that HMPPS establishes, and operating the same national case management, and email/comms systems. The reason that it perhaps needs saying is that with early private prisons they were allowed to establish their own case management IT systems, which led to difficulties with maintaining case management when individual prisoners were moved between prisons and were then release on licence. This arrangement had to change. 

In the AP world, it is already the case that HMPPS acts almost as direct management when it comes to such matters of ‘national infrastructure’, including direct arrangements for providing upgraded security equipment in IAPs. To a very large extent, under this heading there is very little scope for ‘local creativity’, and therefore for good reasons ‘consistency’ is the dominant consideration.

 ii) Local delivery – work with individual IAP residents:

Here, the picture should be quite different. In principle, the answer to the question is not complicated, even though the detailed implementation requires some additional thinking-through: The principle is: 

Prescribe WHAT is to be achieved, but only Advise HOW it should be achieved: 

• The commissioner should specify, wisely, the operational outcomes – the measures of what success looks like – and Prescribe that this is WHAT it requires from its independent providers – 
• But although it might offer Advice, it should avoid prescribing HOW those outcomes should be achieved, because working with individual residents is – of course! – an individualised service. 
• For example: You commission the taxi, the destination and the agreed price, but you don’t then ‘backseat drive’ the driver through every step in the journey. 

The difficulty is in the application of this principle within the ‘messy reality’ of the AP world - indeed in Probation work generally – especially while MoJ/HMPPS continues to make a poor job of defining and managing the outcomes it wants for Probation. However, I have previously demonstrated, both in principle and in my own past practice, how the core outcomes of mainstream Probation work, the Three Purposes of Probation, can be defined, managed, implemented and even inspected. 

The Three Purposes are: Reducing Likelihood of Reoffending, Implementing the Sentence, and Containing Risk of Harm to others. I have also set out how these should be measured as outcomes (and have done so in practice myself in the past). It is difficult to operate this, but it can be done, though it requires a determined focus.

There is then the further additional challenge of trying to focus on just one, relatively ‘short’, stage in the rehabilitation journey that is being undertaken by each person on Probation, such as a period of residence in an AP. (Individuals deemed to be of High Risk of Harm to others will normally stay at an AP for no more than 12 weeks on their release from prison.) In principle there is the need to set ‘interim’ outcomes for this stage of the rehabilitation journey – i.e. achievements by the individual that will mark progress towards, or ‘stepping stones’ towards, future desistance and the other longer-term outcomes. It is these that provide the basis for the ‘WHAT’ that the commissioner needs to specify for AP work. APs make their contribution to the longer-term outcomes by enabling residents to achieve such ‘stepping stones’ of progress on their individual desistence journeys, and APs – particularly IAPs – need to be able to demonstrate that they are delivering that contribution. So, it is argued here, IAPs should be accountable for demonstrating that they are making that contribution, but there should be the scope to be creative in how they make that contribution. 

Accordingly, when MoJ/HMPPS asserts that it wants a mix of consistency and creativity from its IAPs, it is logical to argue that the consistency should be with WHAT it wants to see achieved during the period of residency, and the creativity is about the HOW it is to be achieved.

6. For example ….. 

Quality of practice: Rightly, both managers and practitioners like to talk about this. It can be defined as a key ‘Enabler’ in the process – that enables the individual to progress on his or her desistance journey. Assessment and preparation before arrival, induction and assessment after arrival, and continuing interaction during residency, all require good quality practice by IAP staff. 

Unfortunately, there has for many years now been a tendency to try to promote such Quality by issuing ever more detailed stipulations, guidances, checklists, forms and formats – all with the best of intentions – often designed by skilled current or former practitioners; but this is a mistake. These wellintended initiatives are based on the fallacy of ‘comprehensiveness’ as they endeavour to cover every eventuality. Yet a single format, such as OASys (Offender Assessment System), cannot cope with every eventuality anyway, and meanwhile it runs the great risk of becoming ‘a long form that you just have to fill in’ rather than an opportunity for the practitioner to engage with and think about the unique features of the individual they are working with. This ‘comprehensive stipulation’ approach is a classic example of Prescribing the HOW, which, as well as being time-consuming, also stifles creativity.

 Alternatively, when defining Quality of practice, it is instead possible to Prescribe the WHAT. You define what you want the individual to have experienced as a result of the interaction – i.e: the resident will have been assessed well before arriving, is inducted well on arrival, and is managed well during their stay. Doing each of these things “well” can be made more specific, e.g. For Induction, “The resident will have experienced a humane and respectful face-to-face interaction in which she/he has been made aware of her/his rights, responsibilities, constraints and opportunities while at the AP.” 

By Prescribing the WHAT instead of the HOW, skilled practitioners will undertake and write their assessments, plans and reviews in way that is focused, succinct and appropriate to the needs of the case, rather than as a series of ‘answers’ on a long form that was designed to meet some external ideal of comprehensiveness.

Staffing: In terms of staffing of any individual AP, this is also a matter for local delivery – not national infrastructure – so again it should be Prescribed in terms of WHAT is to be achieved – that residents will be in an environment which is safe, and where they are treated with respect, and are being expected to work to progress their own rehabilitation journey etc. It is not necessary or desirable to prescribe HOW the staff profile or establishment should be made up.

7. Why is this all very difficult? 

‘Drawing the line’ between the WHAT and the HOW is difficult at the best of times. It is especially difficult for the commissioning authority – MoJ/HMPPS – to do this while it remains insufficiently clear about the overall outcomes it wants from Probation work overall. While that overall strategy remains unclear at the macro level, it is not surprising when at the micro level its managers and commissioners find themselves composing increasingly detailed procedure manuals, guidance documents and forms in their efforts to stipulate how Probation work should be carried out.

It is not the purpose of this paper to set out the full case for how Probation work overall could and should be much better managed – that has been done elsewhere. But in a nutshell, a clear focus on the core Three Purposes of Probation would make it clear to Parliament and to the public what Probation work is aiming to achieve, and at the same time would provide a framework within which the various elements of the ‘Probation world’ should make their contributions towards the achievement of those Three Purposes. In the case of APs – both state-run and independent – although they generally keep a resident for no more than 12 weeks, they can still be expected to make their contribution towards that person becoming less likely to reoffend, complying with their sentence, and having their Risk of Harm to others contained and managed. When successful, a period of AP residency serves as a ‘stepping stone’ on an individual’s desistance journey. 

These ‘contributions’, or ‘stepping stones’, are difficult to define at the best of times, but when the overall strategy is insufficiently clear, then micromanagement, overprescription and setting plausiblesounding detailed objectives will seem to some to offer an attractive way of filling the vacuum, even though these can all easily stifle the individual creativity that is also wanted. That lack of strategic clarity by MoJ/HMPPS is why defining the boundary between the WHAT and the HOW, which is difficult to do anyway, has become especially difficult at the operational level. Instead, a strong focus on the Three Purposes could provide the clarity needed to enable Probation work generally to be managed with the ‘right mix’ of consistency and individual creativity.

8. Summing up: 

A commissioned service, such as an independent AP, should certainly expect to work within a centrally managed national infrastructure as it aims to achieve the outcomes that have been specified (“Prescribed”) by the commissioning authority – it should not expect to be able to decide, ‘independently’, to aim for different outcomes. However, what an IAP should be able to do – independently – is exercise its creativity in how it goes about achieving the Prescribed outcomes. Accordingly, the commissioning authority should Prescribe WHAT outcomes are to be achieved, but should do no more than Advise HOW those outcomes should be achieved. 

It is understandable that MoJ/HMPPS, the commissioning authority, finds it difficult to carry out this approach in practice because it does not yet focus clearly enough on the core Three Purposes of Probation supervision. Once that focus is reached, it will become a little easier to specify the interim outcomes – the “stepping stones” – that IAPs need to be aiming for in order to demonstrate that they are making their contribution towards making more likely the achievement of the Three Purposes. 

Andrew Bridges 

Strategic Director, National Approved Premises Association CIC 

December 2023

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.

Taking a Risk

I've been pondering how to follow up the chord that's been struck with the sublime enquiry:-

How exactly does anyone "manage" someone else's offending behaviour?

and it sent me searching the archive very early this morning and a reflective piece about risk I wrote over 10 years ago and triggered by another blogger writing on the subject of 'what makes a good probation officer?' In turn it had triggered some caustic responses from readers of Inside Time. Now the bad news is that the link to the latter is no longer available, but the good news is that I chose to include one of the most interesting in my blogpost of 24th August 2012. The other good news is that the original piece is still available on the Russell Webster website.

As is often the case, does any of this hold true today, indeed did it ever?   

He Has a Point

I hope the author of the following comment to Zoe Stafford's piece in Inside Time will not mind me quoting it in full because I think it very neatly sums up what many clients feel about their probation officer. It makes for uncomfortable reading, but in my view it's no good trying to pretend otherwise and the points raised need addressing.

"Those who say that they have a good probation officer are either gullible, naive or living in cloud cuckoo land. Yes of course they always welcome you when you report. 'how are you today?' 'how's things?' and so forth like they care. All they care about is that you are not offending as that means a recall if you are on licence and you do not even have to offend to be recalled. Never tell them that you have a problem, lost your job, lost your flat etc as that becomes risk. Report on time, smile and tell them everything is fine even if it's not. Never ever trust a probation officer for they have all the options open to them, recall, recommending in their reports that you should receive a custodial sentence and steering you to banal and irrelevant offending behaviour courses which are as useless as they are. Believe me they are the biggest con merchants going but so many ex-offenders fall for it. You do so at your peril."

What makes a 'good' probation officer is a fascinating question and of course the answer will depend to a great extent on who you ask and what side of the desk they sit. Top of my list if I were pushed to come up with a response would be the ability to take appropriate risks.

In my experience a good PO has got to continually weigh up what risks to take with a case in order to achieve the long-term aim of public benefit that flows from crime reduction. Admittedly this willingness and scope to take risks has got much harder over the years with crap like OASys, an increasingly proscriptive culture and management scared witless by what might appear in the press. But deep down all PO's worth their salt know that we are in the risk business and risks have to be taken sometimes in order to achieve progress. Life without some risk is no life at all.

Risk-taking can take many forms such as deciding to give a guy a chance, even when the track record has not been good and he's not responded to previous interventions. It's about the officer wanting to take a risk and then putting an argument to the court that's convincing. Of course this is a risk in itself as there is always the possibility of ridicule from the court, from colleagues or management even. There's the risk that if the court goes along with a positive outcome it will all go pear-shaped at any point. On the other hand the fact that the client knows you've taken a risk and helped give them a chance should help build a good working relationship.

There are always risks associated with exercising judgement. A good PO in my view must decide what it is appropriate to record or pass on to management. Sometimes what is heard in the interview room might be more appropriate to keep between officer and client. The information can form the basis of constructive work at a later date and need not require immediate action. Just to be clear, I'm not referring to child protection issues or discussion of unreported criminal activity, but for example I have not always passed on threats to myself if I felt they were not meant or likely to be carried out.

Sometimes unwise things are said at moments of great stress and an apology at a later date has much more worth than the alternative of adding yet more trouble to an already desperate situation. It should be self-evident that a client is hardly going to be open and honest during supervision sessions if everything they tell you either results in lectures or draconian responses. A degree of trust has to be established if the magic of probation is to have any chance of working.

Good officers always consider what is best for their client and society and act accordingly. Like the comment author, I share the irritation surrounding referrals to courses as a matter of routine and only do so if I feel it appropriate. Shamefully there was a period some years ago when management harassed us as a result of targets introduced by NOMS and in order to justify the hugely expensive investment in accredited programmes. No longer as fashionable thank goodness and with targets a thing of the past, such courses are now only reserved for those who really need them.

Essentially, being a PO is not about winning a popularity contest, it's about doing a useful job for society and a popular officer might not necessarily be a 'good' officer.

--oo00oo--

The post generated the following response at the time:-

I think it is important to acknowledge also that the average caseload of a Probation Officer nowadays is increasingly chock full of higher risk people than it was in my day (1994-2000). I had my share of sex offenders and dv cases but they were about 30-40% of my caseload. Most POs have about 80-90% high risk cases. I could not recall people in my day; the option was unavailable. The nature of the relationship between offender and PO is very different nowadays. A 'good' PO to an SPO, may not be a 'good' PO to a magistrate or a CEO or a member of the public or an offender. I think, by the very nature of their role, POs cannot ever please everybody and are inevitably going to be criticised. One of the core skills (?) is the development of a thick skin.

Blowing The Whistle

I'm not aware we've ever discussed 'whistleblowing' on here and I have to confess I know almost nothing about the process. Of course the Ch4News scoop last week by a 'whistleblower' regarding pressure being applied by mangers to alter risk assessments for resource reasons has now brought the issue to the fore. 

Here is the MoJ guidance document, but I'm not at all sure it helps a great deal and indeed even if it covers the risk 'manipulation' issue? What about allegations I've heard from time to time that electronic records have been known to be 'doctored' during various investigation processes such as SFO's? 

It's noteworthy that 'bullying' is not covered and this from the Mirror recently reminds us that the staff survey found the MoJ had a higher incidence at 11% than the average of 7%. 

Guidance

Whistleblowing advice questions for civil servants

1. What is Whistleblowing?

‘Blowing the whistle’ occurs when a person raises a concern about past, present or imminent wrongdoing, or an attempt to cover up wrongdoing, in an organisation or a body of people. The information that they disclose should be in the public interest, i.e. the issue must affect others, for example the organisation, work colleagues or the general public. Further information on whistleblowing can be found on the GOV.Uk site See the Whistleblowing intranet page.

2. What is the Civil Service Code?

The Civil Service Code (the Code) forms part of the terms and conditions of employment for all civil servants and sets out their duties and responsibilities. Civil servants are expected to carry out their role with dedication and a commitment to the Civil Service and its four core values: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. The Code can be accessed online on the GOV.UK website (see the external sites on the whistleblowing intranet pages). Links to the relevant codes for Welsh and Scottish civil servants can be found on the CS Commission website.

3. What can I raise under the Whistleblowing Procedure?

If you are asked to do something which conflicts with the values in the Code, or are aware that another civil servant is acting in conflict with the values, you should raise a concern as soon as possible, using this procedure. The whistleblowing procedure does not cover HR related issues which can be raised using existing departmental policies.

Below is a list of examples of concerns which fall under the Code:

• misuse of official position, for example by using information acquired in the course of one’s official duties to further one’s private interests or those of others
• deceiving or knowingly misleading Ministers, Parliament, or others
• being influenced by improper pressure from others or the prospect of personal gain
• ignoring inconvenient facts or relevant considerations when providing advice or making decisions
• frustrating the implementation of policies once decisions are taken by declining to take, or abstaining from, actions which flow from those decisions
• acting in a way that unjustifiably favours or discriminates against particular individuals or interests
• acting in a way that is determined by partly political considerations, or use official resources for party political purposes
• allowing one’s personal political views to determine any advice you give or your actions

You may find that your concern relates to general wrongdoing and does not fall under the Code but would be considered under the whistleblowing procedure, for example:

A threat to National Security:

• failure to follow security vetting procedure
• falsifying incident reports

Failure to comply with legal policy obligations:

• not protecting personal data as required by the Data Protection Act 1998, Gender Recognition Act 2004, Health and Safety regulations or any other relevant legislation.

Danger to the environment:

• improper disposal of hazardous materials
• failure to put in place proportionate controls to manage environmental risks that could cause harm to individual(s) or the environment

The above lists are not exhaustive. Nominated Officers can provide further advice if you are unsure whether your concern is covered by the whistleblowing policy. It is important that any concerns you may have, are raised as soon as possible.

4. What is the Civil Service Commission and what type of concern can I raise with them?

The Civil Service Commission (the Commission) have been helping to uphold the standards of the Civil Service since their original appointment in 1854. The current Commission was established as an executive Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. The Commissioners are appointed by the Crown following open competition. The Commission and its Commissioners are therefore independent of the Civil Service.

The Commission has powers under the Act to hear and decide on complaints raised by civil servants under the Code specifically. It does not hear complaints on issues outside of the Code, for example personnel grievances. The code can be accessed via the link on the whistleblowing intranet pages.

5. How can I contact the Commission?

Further information on how to raise a concern with the Commission is available from:

Civil Service Commission
G/8 1 Horse Guards Road
London SW1A 2HQ

E-mail : info@csc.gov.uk Tel: 020 7271 0831

6. Can I take my concern straight to the Commission?

You may take a concern direct to the Commission, however, in most instances the Commission will expect you to have raised the concern within your own department first. If you raise a concern directly with the Commission, without the issue being raised within the department the Commission will ask why it was not appropriate to raise the matter internally first. The Commission they will inform you directly about whether they are prepared to investigate the concern. Information on raising a concern directly with Civil Service Commission can be found on their website (see the whistleblowing contact list).

7. What is not covered by the Whistleblowing Procedure?

Issues around your treatment as a member of staff or personal complaints about your employment, for example: complaints about your terms and conditions; promotion or selection procedure are not covered by the whistleblowing procedure. Any other complaints connected to your working conditions, including harassment, bullying and discrimination are also not covered by the whistleblowing procedure. These would normally be dealt with by your line manager through day-to-day management action, or through appropriate departmental procedures.

8. What is the difference between whistleblowing and a personal grievance?

Concerns raised under the whistleblowing policy should address wider issues that concern your department, colleagues or public in general, rather than personal complaints that you may raise under other policies. For civil servants, they will usually relate to the Civil Service values, as outlined in the Code.

Personal grievances and complaints, including complaints of bullying, harassment and discrimination will not be accepted under the whistleblowing policy and should be raised under the department’s appropriate policy.

9. Is a ‘crisis of conscience’ complaint the same as blowing the whistle?

A ‘crisis of conscience’ may occur when you are asked to do work which conflicts with your faith or personal beliefs. This is not the same as whistleblowing where there is suspicion of wrongdoing, or a breach of the values in the Code, by the department. If you have a crisis of conscience you should discuss this with your line manager in the first instance.

10. Do I need to formally raise every concern under the Whistleblowing Procedure?

No. You and your line manager should engage in regular, open discussion about your work and working environment. If something is on your mind, you may wish to discuss this informally with your line manager before raising more formally under the whistleblowing procedure.

11. I don’t have any proof of my concern yet. What should I do?

You do not need to wait for proof when reporting a concern. When raising a concern with your line manager or Nominated Officer, you only need to have a reasonable belief that wrongdoing has occurred, is occurring or is likely to occur. It is not for you to investigate or prove that your concerns are justified, as that is the responsibility of the department.

12. Why should I follow the Whistleblowing Procedure?

The whistleblowing policy and procedure have been designed to:

• offer you protection when raising a concern that is accepted under the policy
• ensure that your concerns are addressed and resolved at the right level and as quickly and effectively possible

13. What are the benefits of raising Whistleblowing concerns?

A positive whistleblowing culture has numerous advantages. For example, it can:

• encourage an open culture where employees feel confident that concerns can be raised and dealt with quickly and that they will be protected for doing so
• detect and deter wrongdoing
• provide managers with the information they need to make decisions and control risk
• save lives, the environment, property, jobs, money and both personal and organisational reputations
• reduce the chance of anonymous or malicious leaks (including to the media)
• reduce the chance of legal claims against the organisation

14. Will there be repercussions if I blow the whistle?

The department’s whistleblowing procedure, if correctly followed, will afford you protection from any detrimental treatment or victimisation on the grounds of raising your concern. See question 29 regarding the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA).

15. What would happen if an employee raise malicious, vexatious or knowingly untrue concerns?

If an employee raises malicious or vexatious concerns other than in the public interest or raises knowingly untrue concerns in order to harm colleagues or their department, they will face disciplinary action. This could result in dismissal, unless, they can demonstrate a reasonable belief that the concern was both true and in the public interest.

16. What happens if an employee is treated badly by a co-worker because they raised a concern?

It is the responsibility of the employer to stop any bad treatment and take reasonable steps to prevent any further issues arising. If an employee feels they are being treated badly because they have raised a concern, they should report this to their line manager or someone else in their line management chain, or they should seek advice from a Nominated Officer.

Where an employee has been victimised for raising a concern, the department will take appropriate action against those responsible, in line with the Disciplinary Policy and Procedures.

17. I am a non-civil servant seconded into the Civil Service. What procedure should I use?

If you are seconded into the Civil Service, you are a civil servant for the duration of your secondment. You will therefore be subject to the Civil Service Code and Civil Service Management Code and should use the Whistleblowing Procedure for Civil Servants. You will have access to the Civil Service Commission.

18. I am a civil servant who has been seconded out of the Civil Service and I want to raise a concern about a departmental matter, what procedure should I use?

If you are a civil servant seconded out of the Civil Service, you retain your status as a civil servant. This means you will continue to be bound by your Civil Service terms and conditions, the Civil Service Code and the Civil Service Management Code. If your concern relates to the actions of another civil servant, you may use the Whistleblowing and Raising a Concern Procedure and will have access to the Civil Service Commission. If your concern relates to matters within the non-Civil Service organisation you have been seconded to, you should use the organisation’s own whistleblowing policy and the matter cannot be brought to the Civil Service Commission (this may depend on the terms of the particular secondment.)

19. I am a civil servant on loan to another department and I want to raise a concern. What procedure should I use?

As a civil servant you are bound by the provisions applicable to all civil servants, including the Code and the Civil Service Management Code. You should therefore, depending on the terms of your loan, either use the whistleblowing procedure of your parent department or the department you are seconded to. You will have access to the Civil Service Commission.

20. I am a service provider i.e. contractor, working within a government department and I want to raise a concern, What procedure should I use?

As you are not a civil servant you are not subject to the Civil Service Management Code, nor the Code. However, service providers will normally be dealt with under the procedure of their host department and so the principles of the whistleblowing procedure for employees will still apply and you should follow this to raise a concern. As a non-civil servant, you will not be able to raise a concern with the Civil Service Commission.

21. I am an employee working for a non-Crown non-departmental public body (NDPB) and I want to raise a concern. What procedure should I use?

As you are not a civil servant, you are not subject to the Civil Service Management Code, nor the Code. Please refer to the Whistleblowing Procedure for Employees of a NDPB.

22. Where can I go for support during this process?

We recognise that you may experience anxiety when raising or considering whether to raise a concern. There are various channels of support available to you throughout the process:

• the Integrity Line: 0800 917 6877 Monday to Friday
• your line manager, or another locally based manager and a Nominated Officer can advise you on available support. More information can be found in the contact list on the whistleblowing intranet l pages.
• you can contact the MOJ employee assistance programme, HELP: 0800 019 8988. They may provide counselling to whistleblowers.
• trade union members can seek advice from their representatives. DTUS contact details can be found in the contact list on the whistleblowing intranet pages.
• The department may also provide legal representation or cover legal costs if you are involved in legal proceedings as a result of blowing the whistle, this only applies in very particular circumstances as outlined in Section 12.2 of the Civil Service Management Code. This will be decided on a case by case basis. A link to the management code can be found on the whistleblowing pages on the intranet.
• The ACAS Helpline 0300 123 1100 provides free and impartial advice for employees on a range of issues, including whistleblowing in the workplace
• Public Concern At Work is a whistleblowing charity which advises individuals on whistleblowing matters at work. The website can be accessed via the intranet pages.

Please note however that these sources of support (excl. line managers and Nominated Officers) are not themselves bodies to whom you can raise your concern. They can only provide help and advice and you should not divulge details of the matter itself to them.

23. What is a Nominated Officer and how might I contact them?

Nominated Officers are employees, Band B/SEO and above, who can offer impartial support and advice, outside of the management chain, to those who have potential whistleblowing concerns.

They are able to provide advice on:

• the Civil Service Code
• whether your concern falls under the whistleblowing policy
• the appropriate channels available for you to raise your concerns
• the alternative channels to follow where your concern falls outside of the Whistleblowing and Raising a Concern Policy
• whether the Permanent Secretary needs to be consulted / informed
• what the next steps should be.

Contact details for Nominated Officers can be found in the contact list on the whistleblowing intranet page.

24. Will my identity remain confidential?

The best way to raise a concern is to do so openly, as this makes it easier for the department to investigate and provide feedback. You can however request that the department keeps your identity confidential and they will respect this request as far as possible. If requested, your identity will be restricted to a ‘need to know basis’. However, a situation may arise where it is not possible to resolve the concern and guarantee confidentiality (for example, in matters of criminal law). If this is the case, the department will advise you of this before proceeding.

25. Can I raise a concern anonymously?

If you raise your concern openly, this makes it easier for the department to investigate your concern and provide feedback. You may choose to raise concerns anonymously, i.e. without providing your name at all. However, the investigation itself may serve to reveal the source of information. Employees are therefore encouraged, where possible, to put their names to concerns raised, but raising a concern anonymously is preferred to silence about potential serious wrongdoing.

26. Will I be able to find out the outcome of the investigation?

Whilst the department will try to keep you informed of progress, and where possible provide you with an update within 28 days. You will be advised when the matter has been concluded. However it cannot be guaranteed that you will be given all the details of the investigation and the final outcome will be disclosed. Security and confidentiality must be maintained for all parties.

27. I am not happy with the outcome of the investigation, what now?

If you have raised the concern with your line manager, someone else in your management chain or a Nominated Officer in accordance with the whistleblowing procedure, and you do not think that you have received a satisfactory outcome, you may raise your concern with the Permanent Secretary and from here, the independent Civil Service Commission. Although the Department / Commission cannot guarantee that the outcome would be as you may wish, it will seek to handle the matter fairly and correctly.

28. Can I go straight to my Permanent Secretary with a concern?

You may raise a concern directly with the Permanent Secretary if you feel your concern is of such a serious nature that you would be justified in doing so. If you are unable to raise the concern with your manager or a senior manager then you should consider raising your concern with a Nominated Officer if possible.

29. What is PIDA and how does it link with the department’s Whistleblowing Procedure?

The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) is more commonly known as ‘whistleblowing legislation’ and forms part of employment legislation. The department’s whistleblowing procedure primarily focuses on breaches of the Civil Service Code. However in some cases, PIDA legislation may also be relevant. PIDA serves to protect ‘workers’ who make a ‘qualifying disclosure’ in one of the permissible ways set out in the Act. Having made a ‘protected disclosure’ they are entitled to the protection set out in the Act.

By law, the employer has a duty to protect that worker from suffering any detriment as a result of making a protected disclosure. Any dismissal of an employee as a result of the disclosure would be automatically unfair. Whilst not permitted under the Whistleblowing and Raising a Concern Policy, disclosures to certain regulatory bodies, known as ‘prescribed persons’ can be permitted by PIDA in certain circumstances. See GOV.UK for information on prescribed persons.

In order to be protected, an employee will need to follow the procedure set out in the Act. If you wish to raise a concern in this way, it is advisable to seek legal advice.

Look Where 'tick box' Got Us

Thanks go to the reader for reminding us of this from the Guardian 10th June 2009 and the aftermath of the notorious Sonnex case. Of course it's from the days when probation had autonomy and a distinct voice:-

Is the probation service in crisis?

In the wake of the Dano Sonnex case, we get insider views from four senior figures within the beleagured probation service

Diana Fulbrook, chief officer, Wiltshire probation area and public protection lead, Probation Chiefs Association

I think London is a special case simply because of the size and scale of the area. We manage some very difficult and dangerous people, so at any point in time something can go wrong – occasionally because we didn't do our job properly, but more often because, despite what we do, offenders choose to act in that way. You cannot eliminate risk but you can contribute to managing and controlling it in many cases.

Resources are a key issue. The challenge for chief officers is to make the right decisions to manage those resources to best effect. There are severe financial pressures on the service, which means we are unable to recruit as many people as we would like. Retention is not so much of a problem in my area but it is in others. Morale can be pretty low among staff because of uncertainty and negative public opinion, and a case like this doesn't help.

The death of Baby P has exacerbated the recruitment and retention issues for social workers, and there's a danger that cases such as the Sonnex case could make this a real issue for the probation service too.

Unlike prisons, we can't close the doors to cases. We have to take whatever the courts give us, and managing demands is a real challenge.

We are very successful at managing high-risk offences. The majority of serious reoffending comes from those who are medium risk, so it is absolutely essential we get better at assessing and managing this.

Resources follow risk, so everything depends on getting that first assessment right. Our resources dictate that we therefore concentrate more on the most risky group of people. That means there will be some in the medium group of offenders who have got the potential to commit very serious offences. It comes down to being able to spot this early enough to move them into a higher risk category and manage them accordingly. Sometimes this is easy to spot but at other times it is not.

If you want to have fewer people in prison, you do need to grow the capacity of the probation service longer term to manage people effectively in the community, and you need the public to have confidence in our ability to do this.

Our fear as chief officers is that cases like this one undermine that confidence, and that without longer-term committed funding and growth, the probation service will be increasingly unable to deliver the level of public protection required.

Dino Peros, national vice-chair of Napo (the trade union and professional association for family court and probation staff), Devon and Cornwall probation area

People employed in the public sector feel really angry, extremely betrayed and let down by the Labour government, and what will likely be seen as failing criminal justice policy.

We are looking at 25% overall budget cuts in the south-west. Our projected cuts are £1m this financial year, £1.5m next and a further £1m by April 2011. These cuts will potentially create more cases like Sonnex. It is an unacceptable risk to take.

Caseloads in Devon and Cornwall are managed through a workload weighting system. If an officer has too much work, their line manager will sign off on what work can be left or taken away from the practitioner.

Cases are often very complex and officers need proper time to deal with the unique circumstances of each one. No two people are the same and all have different assessed needs. What is obvious is that if you decrease resources, and that means staffing, then inevitably it will increase the workload.

By doing that, you compound the problems and increase the risk. The public won't take long to work out that stretched staff, lack of resources and an over-burdened, target-driven culture is not tough on crime.

There is nothing consoling in the words we hear too often these days that we will draw from lessons learned. What will it really take for politicians to stop playing roulette with people's lives? The system failed.

Steve Collett, vice-chair, Probation Chiefs Association, and chief officer, Cheshire probation area

The difference between London Probation and the other 41 areas in England and Wales is the scale. It is 10 times the size of my area in Cheshire. London's budget is £150m, Cheshire's £15m, yet Cheshire is a medium-sized area. London has about 20% of the total workload of the National Probation Service, ie 40,000 cases out of the 200,000 we supervise.

London Probation is facing a number of similar issues to other public sector agencies in the capital that set it apart from most other areas:

1) An increasingly diverse population.

2) A more transient population: an offender without a fixed address who commits a further offence, for example, is much more difficult to track down.

3) Recruiting staff is much more difficult.

4) It is subject to far greater scrutiny because it commands the greatest proportion of resources and is much closer to the seat of power, Westminster, and the Ministry of Justice.

Caseloads are only one part of the job. Probation officers also write court reports and conduct prison visits. In Cheshire, probation officers typically have 40-60 cases comprising higher-risk offenders among their total caseload. It's relatively easy in Cheshire to take contingency action to make sure workloads are not excessive.

The problem for probation is that we have no control over the inflow of work. This is largely determined by the courts and the sentences handed down. For example, community payback is a very popular sentence with magistrates and judges in low-level offences, where before they might have historically handed out fines. This means we have to divert resources, which could have been spent on medium-risk offenders.

We have been very successful at reducing reoffending. Some 59% of those sent to prison for less than a year will be reconvicted within 12 months of their release as compared with a reconviction rate of 38% for those given community orders.

When things have gone wrong, this is usually due to poor risk assessment and risk management decisions, but in circumstances and an environment that may not be entirely supportive. Typically, it will be the result of a combination of factors that may include a lack of support and good line management, inefficient resources or IT systems.

Geoff Dobson, a former chief probation officer and deputy director of the Prison Reform Trust

Many questions have been raised in the media about pressures on probation staff, and the performance of police and probation in dealing with recalls to prison. At a time when we are locking up more and more children and young people, this examination of the time Dano Sonnex spent in custody from the age of 17 raises a number of concerns about the effectiveness of the young offender estate such as: why was a highly disturbed young man transferred frequently within the young offender estate, preventing continuity of care and attention; what was the impact of repeated periods of separation; and how did he manage to access drugs so readily throughout the early years of his custodial sentence?

As we seek to learn lessons from this horrendous and, thankfully, unusual case, it is important that we do not overlook the years that Dano Sonnex had already spent in our custodial system.

--oo00oo--

Lets contrast the above with something contributed on here from yesterday:-

Just sent this to NAPO. I don’t expect anything back, but enjoyed the vent.

I wanted to write to you, my union, to express my utter frustration, anger and huge regret at the state of the probation service and the terrible impact on victims of the inevitable SFOs that are starting to come to the public’s attention.

May I ask what is your strategy for moving forward to really engage employers to move to improve the experience of operational staff and stop the misery?

From my perspective the response by the MOJ to recent events looks like “same old”. In my 30 years of working in the service I fear what is coming down the line is another political sticking plaster on a weeping wound. “If we make them look over here, no one will notice that nothing has actually changed” more victims and more frontline careers in tatters.

I am begging the Union to push back on any proposed “MOJ solutions” that equate to bolt ons in the maelstrom of probation data bases. There are no answers there to the problems we are facing.

History tells us that is where they will go hunting. It therefore raises the question do we really need additions to ever lengthening drop down lists and yet more questions in OASys? All that appears to do is spew out stats and keep operational staff on the task of recording, not necessarily doing. The employers actually need to interrogate data bases and recording tools. Strip out time wasting tasks, endless inputting and inputting.

We need time for one to one contact with those we supervise and meaningful multi agency working in the local area and the communities we live and work. Activities that actually aid monitoring, control and skilling up offenders.

If yet again, operational staff are instructed to do more IT tasks I would encourage NAPO to tell it’s members not to engage. Instead ask the employer what their contingency plan is as the main plan could well fail.

Also with spending cuts coming down the line again, perhaps NAPO could encourage the service to consider moving “experienced” seconded staff back into operational posts for a time to help stabilise the relentless failings of the service? Invest in the front line, start getting the basics right again and stop the ridiculousness of the facade that all is going so well we can afford to have significant numbers of qualified staff seconded into non operational roles.

--oo00oo--

The Sonnex case examined in Centre for Crime and Justice Studies:-

The conveyor belt of criminal justice: the Sonnex case, risk, and de-skilling in probation

Wendy Fitzgibbon explores recent high profile probation cases

The murder of two French students last year by Dano Sonnex is the latest of several recent cases involving murder committed by an individual on parole licence for previous violent offending. Some of the key issues have already been given a public airing: resource pressures in probation, and the failure of multi-agency and risk assessment procedures.

Coming so soon after the high profile ‘Baby P’ case in Haringey, the Sonnex case has, despite the differences (a social services child protection issue, where none of the adults concerned were on parole), inevitably reinforced a popular image of institutional failure. As with Baby P, the high profile ministerial response forced the resignation of senior managers. Justice Secretary Jack Straw claimed probation was not using its resources effectively and threatened David Scott, Chief Officer for the London Probation Area with a ‘performance capability review’ (Straw, 2009). Scott resigned and hit back accusing Straw of hiding behind lack of clarity about what was an acceptable workload for individual probation officers.

The London Borough of Lewisham where Sonnex was supervised was found to be in ‘meltdown’ and severely lacking in resources. Sonnex was supervised by a probation officer who was inexperienced, and only qualified for nine-months, with a caseload of over 127.Ten years ago the caseload for such an officer would have been around 30-35. Moreover only one out of the 22 probation officers in Lewisham had more than two years experience. The official inquiry reports into the Sonnex case noted high sickness rates due to stress and anxiety and missing risk assessments in 650 out of the 2,500 cases supervised by the Lewisham office.

There was confusion over the risk of harm levels regarding Sonnex. He was placed as a tier three (i.e. medium) risk when on probation supervision. This assessment should in hindsight have placed him at a higher level of risk as some other databases (OASys – Offender Assessment System) consistently assessed his behaviour as a high risk. This had implications for resource allocation and the progress of the Multi-Agency Public Protection Panel (MAPPA) referral. This panel is made up of interested agencies (probation, social services, police, mental health services) who meet to discuss and manage cases referred to them on the basis of assessment of high risk of harm to others. Although referred to MAPPA this case was not followed up due to administrative errors and the level of assessed risk (medium) recorded. Neither were other incidents, which should have changed Sonnex’s risk level, notably his attack on a pregnant woman and her partner to extort money. These were not included in the risk evaluation due to the charges being dropped but, as it later transpired, this was due to victim intimidation. Finally, when the order did go out for a recall to prison, the police delayed acting on it and a police officer has been disciplined for this.

But if the discussion remains at the level of case loads and interagency risk assessments, important as these issues are, more systemic problems indicative of a more general malaise in the probation service will remain unexamined. By far the most important of these is the issue of deskilling of probation officers combined with an automated ‘tick box’ approach to risk assessment.

Sonnex was in fact in many ways a model client – his attendance at supervision meetings was punctual; he was well-turned out and cooperative. He ticked all the boxes. Problems might have been identified earlier if he had been more closely scrutinised by a more experienced probation officer. But the combined effect of resource constraints and the new division of labour in the probation service, has led to a concentration of skilled and experienced probation officers on very high risk cases while low or medium risk offenders (80 per cent of all offenders) are (according to the goals elaborated in Home Office circular PC08/2007) to be supervised by the newer grade of semi-skilled Probation Service Officers (PSOs).

This allocation of cases on the basis of tick-box risk assessments continues despite research by Ansbro (2006) and Craissati and Sindall (2009) showing that low/medium risk offenders can go on to commit serious further offences and that risk is a dynamic evolving phenomena. The predominance of ‘tick-box’ risk assessment tools such as OASys sustains management belief that risk assessment and the management of the majority of offenders on probation can be effectively undertaken by deskilled operatives.

Robinson and Burnett (2007) found that older skilled staff felt marginalised: like ‘dinosaurs’. They were trained to deal with the offender as a whole person in contrast to the correctional model in which the new recruits to probation are trained. Experienced, long-serving staff felt alienated from their role and distanced from the values of the new management bureaucracy.

This anxiety and stress is compounded by the concentration of work with high risk offenders within the more qualified staff group. This was also shown, in a small research study I recently undertook, (Fitzgibbon, 2009 forthcoming) to have a detrimental effect on a group of highly qualified probation officers. Asked to identify the most difficult part of working in a public protection team they all indicated the intensity of workload and pressure of scrutiny. The National Probation Audit in 2006 found that a third of sickness in the probation service was due to stress and anxiety. Oldfield and Grimshaw (2008) found that main grade staff on average worked five hours extra per week to get work finished! A clear example of this practice was the fact that the overworked probation officer supervising Sonnex had to go into the office out of hours to complete the recall papers in time, despite, ironically, the police failing to arrest Sonnex when the papers were submitted.

Oldfield and Grimshaw (2008) showed that a fall of 9 per cent in qualified staff in probation over a five-year period was accompanied by a 35 per cent rise in workload. They also found that there had been a 77 per cent increase in the recruitment of unqualified staff, and a parallel 70 per cent increase in management grades during this period.

Qualified staff feel that their ‘professional territory’ has been encroached upon by unqualified staff. They were overwhelmed by ‘change fatigue’ regarding the pace and number of changes their role as a probation officer has been subjected to (Robinson and Burnett, 2007).This has led to rapid staff turnover. Lewisham is an example of this with their high proportion of inexperienced staff.

The lack of morale and professional identity is heightened by confusion regarding the future of probation training and the probation service in general. The drawing up of the proposed new probation training qualification has been a complex and lengthy process, which many fear will either lead to a shortening of the training or a reduction of the academic content or both. Already Treadwell (2006) feels the ‘core curriculum’ is too narrow and not academically focused enough.

Justice minister Claire Ward in July 2009 said the rate of serious further offence convictions was low at 0.3 per cent last year, and paid tribute to frontline officers. She said this was due to ‘hard work and dedication of probation officers, who deal on the frontline with some of the most dangerous and unpredictable people in our society’ (Ward, 2009).This was following the publication of official figures showing that criminals on probation committed more than 1,000 serious crimes over the last two years, including nearly one murder a week in England and Wales.

The vast majority of serious further offences are committed by offenders given a community order by the court having been convicted of less serious offences. In most cases, nothing in their previous offending histories has indicated that they would be capable of such serious offences. (my italics). (Ward, 2009)

This final statement would again support the fact that having unqualified or inexperienced officers supervising offenders of medium to low risk is inadequate and fails to recognise research and statistical findings.

When I conducted interviews with newly qualified probation officers in 2008 I found them to be more concerned with managerial processes, targets, and tasks than with the offender or their relationship with the offender. Again this could indicate distancing of practitioners from their offenders, allowing the possibility of not accurately reading or following up worrying risky behaviour or seeing risk in a contextualized way.

More cases like Sonnex may just be waiting to happen.

Wendy Fitzgibbon

Plight of the Long-term Prisoner

Right from the beginning of my career in the Probation Service and working in a Field Team, meant that a significant proportion of the the caseload were serving custodial sentences and a few were serving life. Regular contact through visits and letter was quite normal right from first remand or sentence, as was being part of the sentence planning process. I've always felt it was a vital part of the job and good practice for all prisoners serving 12 months or more to have community contact maintained and actively supported by a field PO.

It doesn't surprise me at all that a recent report from the Prison Reform Trust on the plight of long-term prisoners paints an extremely bleak picture and despite some optimism for OMiC, I can't help but feel this is a situation created largely by the absence of former practice.    

Prison system failing to prepare long term prisoners for release

Prisoners serving long sentences are spending years in jail unsure about what they can do to prepare—and ultimately demonstrate their readiness—for release, a new report by the Prison Reform Trust reveals.

Making Progress?, is the first consultation report of the Prison Reform Trust’s Building Futures programme. It follows collaboration with people from around 30 prisons, who have all served—or will serve—a continuous period of at least ten years in custody.

The consultation found that prisoners were confused and disillusioned by the apparently simple proposition that they are required to reduce ‘risk’. Whilst talk of risk pervades prison life and affects many aspects of prisoners’ experiences, this catch-all term masks important details—risk of what, from what, to whom, in what circumstances?

Demonstrating reduced risk is of particular importance to those whose release ultimately depends upon approval by the Parole Board—and if recent proposals become law—the Secretary of State for Justice.

The report suggests that this confusion stems from a mismatch between what prisons appear to expect from prisoners—broadly, compliance with the rules—and what those in probation and the Parole Board are looking for prisoners to demonstrate to secure their own development and eventual release.

Participants told us that this was leading to them spending years of “nothing time” in prison. Years, often in the middle part of their sentence, where the sentence felt purposeless and stagnant.

“Progress? Which part? Serving a life sentence longer than I have lived—is that normal? It felt as if the prison estate did not even know what to do with us. The reality is lifers at the beginning of our sentences were just warehoused like livestock…sadly many lifers, myself included, saw progression as somewhat of a myth” A life sentenced prisoner, quoted in the report

Another highlighted that their sentence length was acting as a barrier to progression:

“Offending behaviour programmes are prioritised by earliest release date. Which means I have little to no prospect of progressing through my sentence plan or the prison system.”

For others it was their age:

“A minority (but still a substantial number) of long-term prisoners are aware that they are unlikely to live until the end of their sentence. Being rehabilitated to re-enter society is for them (myself included) a false goal.”

The report recommends that HM Prison and Probation Service should develop a long-term prisoner policy framework. It should equip staff working with long-term prisoners to assess risk; communicate this effectively with prisoners and other criminal justice professionals; and give explicit guidance and direction on what kinds of behaviour may demonstrate lowered and elevated risk in future assessments.

It also recommends earlier involvement with the Parole Board in reviewing progress. This would allow any potential roadblocks to release to be identified and a plan to be developed which outlines the steps prisoners can take. With so many years in custody to work with, the system should be aiming for far more prisoners to be ready and safe for release when the period set for punishment expires.

Executive Summary 

This report presents the findings of a prisoner consultation carried out by Prison Reform Trust’s Building Futures programme. Initial scoping work on the programme revealed that sentence progression was a major concern of people serving long sentences. For some time, worries about progression have formed a significant part of the caseload of our Advice and Information service. We carried out the consultation remotely and via a series of roundtable events. Around 100 responses were received to the consultation, which asked prisoners to reflect on four questions relating to their progression. 

Section 2 of the report describes the structure of the different kinds of long sentences being served by consultation respondents. It also unpacks two key terms in the consultation responses that follow. 

The first is ‘risk’. Prisons assess and manage a large variety of risks and the term is used in many ways. For clarity’s sake, we therefore take some time in section 2.2 to unpack the term ‘risk’: what different forms it takes, what we mean by it in the report, and some of the reasons prisoners appear to become confused or disillusioned by the apparently simple proposition that they are required to reduce it. 

The second key term is ‘progression’. Prisoners who responded to the consultation tended to understand ‘progression’ to mean something more broad than ‘risk reduction’ and a gradual reclassification into lower-security conditions as they neared the date of their release. Sections 2.3 and 2.4 question whether ‘risk reduction’ alone can provide a coherent basis for thinking about ‘progression’, given that many sentences are now decades long, meaning that offence-related rehabilitative work may be completed many years before risk can be adequately tested in the community. We suggest that what ideas of ‘progression’ will engage prisoners will depend on factors beyond risk, including the age they are at conviction, and the length of their sentences. This, we suggest, points to the need for an individualised, personalised approach to ‘progression’, sensitive to the individual circumstances of the person whose sentence is being planned. 

Section 3 sets out the findings of the consultation. Section 3.2 shows how many long-term prisoners felt confused and uncertain about how they were meant to progress or to make positive, productive use of their time. Many believed that compliance and the completion of offending behaviour programmes (OBPs) were the only expectations coming to them from the prison, and some pointed out that mere compliance offered very little to motivate or challenge them over the long term. Their evaluations of OBPs were mixed, but there was a consensus that only in rare cases was participation in them enough to secure a progressive move, leading to the perception that the sentence plan left many ‘stagnant’ years in the sentence. Respondents also described problems where information used in risk assessment could appear inaccurate, irrelevant or out-of-date. We suggest that for many, there is a mismatch between what prisons appear to expect from them (broadly, compliance), and what will secure their own development.

This led to challenges that some respondents called ‘nothing time’: the years, often in the middle part of the sentence, where the sentence felt purposeless and stagnant. Section 3.3 presents responses from those who described how they had tried to give these years purpose and meaning, for example by pursuing their own plans and objectives. Educational opportunities were of major interest to many in this group, but all kinds of prison work and other activities were described as worthwhile. Many thought that achievements in these areas went under-recognised by prisons. Respondents also suggested it was difficult to access the right opportunities, and difficult to have their efforts taken seriously and recorded by the prison. Some said taking responsibility for their own personal development required initiative, persistence and determination, and often also strong reading and writing skills to put their case to the prison. These are not possessed by all prisoners. 

Section 3.4 discusses respondents’ views on casework and on how their relationships with staff affected their progression. These views were mixed. There was positive feedback on recent changes in policy, especially relating to the introduction of the Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) policy framework. In particular, the introduction of the keyworker role was positively received by those in prisons where keywork was operational. However, respondents also expressed the view that the Prison Offender Managers (POMs) and Community Offender Managers (COMs) relationships were distant and remote, and that these did not always take account of information that the respondent saw as relevant to their personal development. In fact, respondents noted that officers on the wings, whom they saw and interacted with daily, should be more directly involved in recording information relevant to progression, as they are most likely to notice positive changes in behaviour. 

Finally, in section 4, we set out the recommendations arising from this consultation which draw on contributions from prisoners to set out ways of improving the routes to progression for long-sentenced prisoners.