What Do Monitors Actually Do?

Regular readers will be fully aware of the many and varied failures of the MoJ, especially in the field of contract design and management. The Rainsbrook saga and former probation contractor MTC Novo's involvement is simply astonishing by any measure and here we have former MoJ insider and finance director Julian Le Vay spelling it out in all its gory detail:- 

RAINSBROOK TELLS US TWO THINGS. MTC ISN'T FIT TO RUN PRISONS. AND THE MoJ ISN'T FIT TO RUN PRISON CONTRACTS

The Justice Secretary has just announced that Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre, run under contract by MTC, has been treating the children it its care so badly for so long that he’s taking all the children out of it. It’s a saga that tells us that not only is MTC not fit to run prisons, but MoJ is not fit to run prison contracts.

Secure Training Centres

The Management and Training Corporation (MTC) is an American company that runs 24 prisons in the US, also training schemes for young adults. It gained a foothold in the UK with the privatisation of probation, running the service in 2 areas. Privatisation was an unmitigated disaster and has now been reversed. In 2016 the MoJ gave it the contract to run Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre, which had had a troubled history under G4S. It got worse under MTC. Three successive inspection reports were negative (jointly between Prisons Inspectorate, Ofsted and the CQC for healthcare). Despite this, the MoJ last year extended the contract to 2023.

To be fair to MTC, no company has made a success of STCs, a sort of prison for children, introduced by Michael Howard, but then carried forward by Labour. Four were built, under the Private Finance Initiative. They exemplify the perennial problem – possibly never entirely solvable – of providing in the same place both secure custody for children who’ve been convicted of sometimes quite serious crimes, and also care and education provision for children who are often seriously damaged, disturbed and disruptive. They are small units, 80 or so fully occupied, with high staffing levels and hugely expensive. Two have been closed, two remain, while the MoJ dithers about what’s to replace them. Meanwhile, as the number in custody shrinks, the remaining population has become much more difficult.

The failure of MTC

When the Inspectors returned in October last year, they were so appalled at what they found that they met the MoJ officials and wrote to Buckland on 5 November, who replied on 18 November saying that necessary action was being taken. That inspection report is here. When the inspectors returned in December, they found little evidence of progress. Children were locked in their bedrooms for 23 1/2 hours out of 24. On 16 December the inspectorate issued an Urgent Notification to Buckland, their last resort where institutions don’t just fail, but fail unacceptable and persistently (2). They said:

“Children’s daily experiences were bleak. They continue to receive a spartan regime. They receive little encouragement to get up in the mornings and there are very few efforts by staff to engage meaningfully with children…. there is no evidence of children’s’ educational entitlement being met…. senior managers were unaware of the regime.”

Whatever your views on crime, who in Hell’s name could think such a place could do other than lasting harm to deeply troubled children? Even Priti Patel might blench.

Buckland replied on 15 January, again saying that the necessary action was in hand. The inspectors returned on 26 January and found some improvement - an action plan had been drawn up - but little of it actually actioned. In March the Justice Committee held a special one off session and questioned the inspectors, Buckland, MoJ officials and MTC managers. The transcript is here.

It should be said that the Committee’s session focussed primarily on the Urgent Notification and the report made at that time. It paid relatively little attention to the brief report of the further visit in January, which noted some early signs of improvement. Nor did the Committee pay much attention to the fact that there was a COVID outbreak at the time, causing staff to be off duty and requiring newly arrived children to be isolated (though Oakhill STC managed isolation with a lot more time out of cell). MTC may well have felt aggrieved at that. And it was especially hard on the new Director, Ian Mulholland, who’d arrived only on 4 January. But clearly MTC had by then expended all credit with its critics. It had had one too many drinks in the Last Chance Saloon. The unfortunate Mulholland arrived just in time to pickup the tab.

The Committee reported on 29 March (2), saying that they were

‘shocked and appalled by what we heard’ and were ‘deeply concerned about MTCs ability to manage the Rainsbrook contract’.

What shocked them most was that not only did the MoJ and YCS not know, at the time of the inspection, the state of affairs at Rainsbrook, but neither did MTC managers on site. Indeed, when inspectors told them face to face, in their December visit, that children were still being locked up 23/12 hours a day, the response by MTC managers was first to tell the inspectors they were wrong, and then to add that the children themselves were wrong.

Here’s the Ofsted Inspector:

“When I sat…with the director and deputy director and said ‘Children are still being locked up for 23 1/2 hours a day’ and they said ‘We don’t think they are’, I do not think they were lying. I just do not think they know the basic principles of going once a day to talk to the children…they were just not doing it…it was utter incompetence.’

The inspectors pinpointed the root of the problem:

“senior managers issues instructions; they write procedures and protocols, often very detailed; but they are not implemented at middle and junior management level…. they do not have the means…. to follow through to make sure these things happen on a day-to-day basis, so they just keep repeated….”

This is a familiar problem in prison management. The task of ‘managing upwards’ is very time consuming, and more so when an institution is in trouble and there are lots of inspectors and lots of questions. But all the more important to ‘walk the walk, and talk the talk’ to ensure that you are not blinded or mislead by all the paper, and that what you said should happen is happening.

What makes this incomprehensible in this case – certainly to the Justice Committee – is the tiny scale of this institution. In a prison of 1,800 prisoners and maybe 500 staff spread out between many blocks and with layer upon layer of management, such a failure to check on reality would be more comprehensible. But this unit had, at the time of the last inspection, just 45 occupants. 45! From the Director’s office to the children’s rooms was a 2 minute walk. But they just did not do it. Moreover staff: prisoner ratio, 1:5 in some adult jails, was here more like 1:1, or even lower (3). How could managers not know the reality of something so fundamental as time out of room - something inspection after inspection had focussed on as unacceptable, and on which MTC gave assurances to the MoJ which were simply untrue?

To my mind, this alone should disqualify MTC from any further contracts for custodial facility in this country. If it gets the basics of management this wrong, under this much external pressure, in such a tiny, heavily staffed unit, how on earth could they cope with a 1,800 prisoner new prison?

The report reveals other fundamental and long-standing problems with MTC’s operation:

• An impossibly high turnover of managers – 4 different appointed Directors in 4 years, and interims in between
• Recruitment of staff with a background in adult prisons, with few having experience of the very different world of child offenders
• An impossibly high turnover rate for staff as well – the Justice Committee was told that most left before a year in the job (as I note in my book, in the past this was often seen in prisons that failed)
• A culture focussing on paperwork and meetings

I suspect there is another problem behind this all. MTC is a huge American company with a tiny UK business, that’s not doing at all well. The majority of Directors of MTC (UK) appear, from the accounts, to be Americans. I have experience of just such an environment in the IT sector. I know how difficult it is to get backing or even understanding from the US parent for the very different trading and operating environment of the UK – especially when, as is the case with Rainsbrook, they were not making a profit. (I’ve seen critics denounce MTC for making money while failing the children in its care: incredibly, it didn’t.) I suspect the UK business was not regarded at all positively by the American parent, especially after the failure of the bid for Wellingborough prison, and the collapse of the probation contracts.

Then there is another failure, equally fundamental to a good contractual relationship. Incredibly, MTCs reaction to the inspector’ comments, and (it would seem therefore) Buckland’s decision to withdraw all children from the unit, is to say that they are wrong! They said :

“Given the previous positive assessments, including Ofsted’s follow up visit in January, we were very surprised to receive Ofsted’s feedback at the end of last week’s inspection. We have a number of concerns about their approach and ultimately the conclusions they have reached. We plan to vigorously challenge this as we go through the fact checking process”

And this is MTCs’ preferred style – confrontation, not contrition. We’ve seen they told the inspectors to their face they were wrong – that the children were wrong about what they were actually experiencing. Mulholland then upset the Justice Committee by declaring that MTC would only accept Inspector’s recommendations they thought ‘fair and grounded in evidence’– an exceptionally foolish thing to say, in the circumstances. Likewise, in the recent competition run Wellingborough prison, when their bid was unsuccessful, they immediately threaten legal action against MoJ. (Again I suspect this comes from the very different American background, where there are many possible customers, so you can afford a fight – here, one only, and you can’t.)

The relationship between a prison contractor and its customer is a subtle one. Relying just on the formalities of the contract is not enough. These contracts are long term – typically 15 years for prisons – and inevitably, in prisons, there are problems, inevitably, requirements change, and inevitably, sensitivities to be managed with ministers, with the media. So there has to be some sense of partnership, and partnership must be based on mutual trust and understanding of each other’s position, without of course losing sight of their fundamentally different roles.

MTCs track record of assuming such an adversarial role – and so quickly and so publicly – suggests to me that it will not be possible for them to enter into the right sort of long-term relationship with MoJ as customer. I am not, God knows, saying MoJ is always right. And in fact, I have sympathy for the stance that what is to be done in an institution should be determined by MoJ as customer, not by an outfit whose role is inspection and which is not charged with considering the resource consequences, feasibility or effectiveness of its recommendations, nor considering other approaches. But it’s the bull-headed way MTC charge at its critics frontally and publicly that is so unacceptable.

For all these reasons – the failure over many years to provide a decent environment for children, the failure over a long period to do what they said they’d do, the failure in the basic management grip on what is going on in the institution, the high turnover of staff and mangers alike, the lack of understanding of work with children, and the ready assumption of a legalistic, adversarial relationship with MoJ and the inspectorates – it seems inconceivable that MoJ can now ever offer MTC a contract to run any custodial institution.

MTC is currently on the MoJ’s framework agreement to enable it to bid to run new, 1800 place adult prisons. It should now be removed. MTC has no prospect of significant further business in the correctional services of the UK. And that means, looking at its accounts, it would then no longer be viable in the UK. It is finished.

The failure of the MoJ

A truism to which I often return, so often ignored by those criticising the private sector, is that when a service is being supplied under contract, failure by the contractor very often reveals failure by the customer also. Failure to properly appraise the supplier before contract, failure to specific the service properly, buying a service too cheaply, failure to get the commercial terms or performance sanctions right, failure to manage the contract properly, failure to deal with failure, failure to ensure a competitive market. As I note in my book, most of these have applied at one time or another to the market in corrections in the UK.

And this applied in spades to the Rainsbrook saga. Something the Justice Committee understood:

‘The Ministry of Justice, Youth Custody Service and HMPPS are equally responsible for some failings at Rainsbrook because of significant and fundamental failings in the way they have overseen what happened there…. the YCS and MoJ manifestly failed to understand what the conditions were at Rainsbrook…and it is a question that goes wider than..…one custodial institution.’

The inspectors also understood this. They told the Committee:

“You cannot lay this solely at the door of the provider. The YCS when it contracts for a service does not absolve itself of responsibility for making sure the service is delivered…”

I set out here different ways in which the MoJ, in which I include the YCS and HMMPS, failed to do their job as customer for Rainsbrook and for youth custody services generally.

1. They did not know what was going on

This is perhaps the most extraordinary thing: that MoJ did not know that children were being locked up 23 1/2 hours a day. Of course, MTC consistently misled them. But – here’s the thing -the great strength of contacting for prisons in the UK, unlike the US, is that the customer has a permanent staff of monitors within the prison. At Rainsbrook, there were three YCS monitors working fulltime inside the institution. Three, full time! With just 54 children! Their failure to notice what was happening is even worse than that of MTC managers, because the monitors were there only you monitor what was actually happening. What on earth did they do with their days – in this tiny, tiny institution – is beyond comprehension. (MoJ’s response on this is a Civil Service classic: to appoint a fourth monitor!)

2. They extended the contract in 2020 - despite MTCs serious failures documented by inspection after inspection

The Justice Committee were perplexed by this, but, as with so much of this story, never got an answer from the MoJ. It is surely linked to MoJ’s other failure, their endless dithering over the future shape of youth custody, see 4) below. MoJ were perpetually ‘planning’ to replace STCs, having already closed 2, but are still years way from doing so. In those circumstances, no other provider would take on the poison chalice of Rainsbrook, two operators already having failed. Nor could the Prisons Service step in, because the whole point of STCs was to be an alternative to mainstream prison culture (and the absorption of that culture into Rainsbrook was part of the reason it failed).

3. The YCS failed to use the contract to push MTC into doing better

As I’ve said, a good contractual relationship doesn’t rely solely on contractual sanctions when dealing with persistent failure. But a time comes when they should be used: they get the attention of senior management in the company because it’s all lost profit (4). My book showed this in relation to earlier failures by prison providers. And in the case of an institution which has failed so completely for so many years that the customer withdraws all business, you’d expect significant financial penalties. Well, the grand total for the 5 years of MTC’s contractual failures at Rainsbrook is…£76k. Against a total contract value of £50 million. An irrelevance. I’ve FoI’d the details, but expect to be stonewalled – this Government has set up a unit specifically charged to obstruct FoI requests. So, I can’t say whether the fault was in the way the contract was written or the way the contract was managed, but either way, it makes a mockery of contracting. (By comparison, the operator of the now closed Medway STC was fined nearly £1 million.)

4. MoJ have dithered for years about the future of youth justice

Following the Taylor report in 2016, the Government accepted his recommendation to replace STCs with ‘Secure Schools’ and proposed two pilots would be opened, one in the north, the other in the south of the country (see Justice Committee's summary in their report on the future of youth custody, here ). They said the one in the south would open in 2020. That was then postponed, to 2022. And postponed again, to the end of 2022 (‘working towards’ December 2022, so let’s be clear, 2023). Seven years after the report. Never mind the points made by critics, that 1 or even 2 are not remotely enough, that there are still huge questions about what they will be like. This timetable means that STCs cannot be fully replaced for the best part of a decade after Taylor’s recommendations were accepted (certainly a decade after Grayling announced 'Secure Colleges' would be the future of youth custody, in 2013 - on which he spent some millions before cancelling 2015). And still MoJ cant spell out how they will be different from STCs (5).

The reason for the delay isn’t, as often with prisons, finding a site, nor planning consent – they are using the site of an old STC, it’s ready and waiting – but because MoJ let the contract to a charity only to find that….. a charity can’t legally run such an institution. They seemingly hadn’t thought to check.

This delay echoes the truly pathetic failure of the MoJ to deliver on the promise of 9 new prisons with 10,000 new places, originally made in 2016, of which 5 were to have opened last year. In actuality the first will not open til 2022. That delay was also self-inflicted. MoJ believed they could only afford the programme through Private Finance. But HMT had decided to drop PFI. That meant a long and – of course! -doomed paperchase to persuade HMT change its mind.

5. The original choice of MTC to run Rainsbrook

As I say, MTC is an American company. When I was FD, we were dubious about appointing an American company as prison contractor, because of the very different culture of American prisons. MTC has since tried several times to enter the prisons market here and has consistently been rejected, most recently for the Wellingborough contract. Yet the YCS nevertheless appointed them to the far more specialised, notoriously sensitive job of looking after troubled children, of which the MTC had seemingly no experience, certainly not in the UK. (This is why, in my book I argued that an STC should never be a new operators first experience of running a custodial facility). Of course, G4S had already failed with its STCs, it is possibly that none of the other UK custodial operators – Sodexho, MITIE - wanted to get involved. Nevertheless, appointing MTC turned out to have precisely the consequence one might have predicted, a failure to understand the specialised work of STCs.

6. Organisational complexity

I do not know, but I suspect another factor is the labyrinthine structures and relationships with the MoJ. When I was FD of HMPS, things were blissfully straightforward. We held all the prison contracts; we had the procurement people and the contract managers and the operational managers; we decided, subject to ministers, what prisons should be asked to do: we decided on the shape of the make and how and when it should move forward. And, I may say, we made a fair success of it (little of that down to me, I should say – I had just very able procurement people).

As far as I can see for youth custody, the contracts are held by the Youth Custody Service, they rely on MoJ for procurement, someone in the MoJ decides on policy and on development of new operating models, the YCS answer to the head of HMPPS even though HMPPS also supply custodial services to the YCS….plenty of opportunity there for accountability to diffuse.

Note: what is the difference between the failure of MTC, and the failure of MoJ?

Come on – you know this! It is of course that people at MTC will lose their jobs, while no one in the MoJ will suffer the least consequence. That, Buckland has already made clear, at his appearance before the Committee. They never, ever do.

Why I've changed my mind on contracting for custody

My book, published in 2015, argued the case that competition for running custodial institutions worked to the public good. I think I now have to revisit that conclusion. Not because I think contracting out inherently wrong, nor because the private sector always does badly – in fact, at present, privately run adult prisons are doing better than publicly run ones. But because I have come to the conclusion that the MoJ is institutionally incompetent as customer. And as I’ve said before, an incompetent customer sooner rather than later leads to failure by the supplier.

As it has with contracts for probation, with Birmingham prison, with facilities management, with electronic tagging, now with Rainsbrook, and with the replacement, Secure Schools.

The catch 22 of outsourcing : a Government that isn't good at managing services is probably not good at managing outsourcing.

Afterword: the curious incident of the dog in the night time

And what of Barnardos, paid to supply an advocacy service for these children on site? It seems it did not bark…

UPDATE 22 JUNE

MoJ has just published here a further letter from Ofsted which explains why Buckland had to act to remove all children from Rainsbrook immediately. So much for MTCs extraordinary decision to publicly challenge Ofsted's findings. I doubt I've ever seen a more damning report, and that's certainly saying something.

Julian Le Vay

NOTES

1. About £160, 000 per occupant per year, or 4 times the cost of a place in an adult jail, PQ, 23 May 2018. Secure childrens' homes cost even more, around £180,000 - £200, 000 a year per place. Most bizarre thing is, no one has ever properly evaluated either of them, despite these eye watering amounts.

2.The Committee's report contains the correspondence on the Urgent Notification. 17th report HC 1266, Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre. Can be found here.

3. MoJ wont let us know actual numbers. Commercial secret. Or that’s what they say now – in the past they freely published these figures. See

4. For those who accuse MTC of profiting through maltreating children: it appears from what they said to the Justice Committee that MTC are making a loss on the contract.

5. For those who appreciate the ebb and flow of history, a mordant account of the endless circling of policy on youth custody round 'punishment' or 'care' can be found at: Hagell, A., and Hazel, N.: 'Macro and micro patterns in he development of secure custodial institutions for serious and persistent young offenders in England and Wales', Youth Justice 1 (1), 2001

Just a Bit of External 'Noise'

Welcome to Friday's edition of an "unfair, poorly informed, unhelpful and sometimes demoralising distraction.."

Clearly MTCnovo must feel pretty confident of a better HMI report this time round because they're positively 'chipper' in the latest edition of the dreadful house magazine 'Connect'. Here's some of the best bits, starting off with the new 'hipster' MD:-

All's good in the Hood
Introducing David Hood, MTCnovo's new Managing Director

I’m delighted to have been appointed as MTCnovo’s Managing Director and would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and talk to you about the future of our business.

Over the past four years, I worked for the Ministry of Justice, and most recently for the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). At NOMS I was responsible for a number of the Department’s outsourced services, including the Community Rehabilitation Companies and private prisons' contracts.

I enjoyed many aspects of that role, but by far the most enjoyable was the time I spent travelling the country meeting staff in prisons and probation offices – I was constantly impressed and inspired by the dedication of the people I met. And it was those experiences that led me to take this role – to play my part in helping you continue MTCnovo’s mission of improving the lives of the people and communities we work with and support, and reducing reoffending.

Something else that struck me in my previous roles continues to be apparent – there’s a significant amount of external 'noise' about our business, particularly the Community Rehabilitation Companies, but also our Secure Training Centre at Rainsbrook. Some of it reflects very important ongoing issues that we must and will address, but too much of it is an unfair, poorly informed, unhelpful and sometimes demoralising distraction from the vital work we do.

It’s important that we see past this distraction and focus on the stuff that matters – overcoming the real challenges and achieving our mission. Ultimately, this is why we exist as an organisation, and I’m personally committed to this approach.

Looking to the future
I want us to set measurable and challenging goals that guide us through the coming years. Over the last month, the MTCnovo Executive Team has developed the following set of long-term objectives:

• To be the most trusted provider of justice and social care services in the UK.

• To be recognised as a leader in developing and delivering successful interventions and evidence-based outcomes.

• Through our people, partnerships and use of innovative technology, to improve lives and build safer communities by reducing reoffending rates by 15%, by 2030.

These goals are rightly ambitious and will guide us towards material improvements in outcomes for the people and communities we work with. I’m determined that we track our progress towards achieving these goals using a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and that our performance is regularly shared for all of us to see.

How will we get there?
It’s important to recognise that we’re already on the journey to achieving our ambitious goals. During my visits to Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre and a number of our CRCs’ offices, it’s become clear to me that there’s a huge amount of effort being made by our dedicated and capable people to improve our services. And, it’s our people who will ultimately dictate our success.

But how do we best support and develop our capable people in a world of diminishing funding for public services? In that context, I believe we have an obligation to use our resources more efficiently, prioritising activities which support our mission and allow us to deliver high quality services despite the ongoing shortage of public funds – in short, we need to be 'efficient and effective' at what we do. This approach is obviously easier said than done, yet it should be our mantra to guide decisions about how we operate in the future.

Our priorities
The MTCnovo Board has given us six months to develop a long-term plan for the organisation, which will explain our goals and how we intend to deliver against them over the coming years. Our plan will focus heavily on three key areas:

• People: ensuring we have capable people across all areas of the business who have the time and tools to deliver excellent services – this is first and foremost a business about people and we simply can’t be effective if we don’t develop and look after our high calibre staff.

• Partnerships: we must have effective links and working relationships with our local communities, agencies, partners, local councils, the police, and prisons – we can’t do our best work without the support of these local networks.

• Innovative technology and analysis: we need good systems, analytical and research capability to help us target our efforts where they are most likely to benefit our service users.

What do you think?
As I continue to travel around our offices, it’s important that I hear your thoughts about what is working well and how we can improve. I want, and need, to hear your perspective in the context of our Business Plan. So, please don’t be shy, tell me what you think. I hope to have visited all of our locations by April, so there will be a chance for me to speak with most of you.

I’m extremely fortunate that I am surrounded by so many dedicated, professional and hardworking colleagues who strive every day to help offenders lead safer, better and more fulfilling lives. I look forward to meeting you, and thank you for your ongoing commitment.

--oo00oo--​

Omnia: bringing it all together
MTCnovo’s ICT Programme Manager, Michael Snodden, tells us how Omnia will transform the way CRC's work with service user records

Straight from implementing Rainsbrook STC’s ICT infrastructure, Michael Snodden has recently joined the Omnia Team as the lead project manager. Michael is responsible for co-ordinating the final stages of Omnia’s development and for ensuring a smooth roll-out across London and Thames Valley CRCs. He reflects on the project’s progress to date and what’s next on his ‘to do’ list.

"Omnia, which means ‘all’ in Latin, brings together service user risk and needs assessment, action planning, and case management onto one platform for the very first time and will transform how staff create and manage service user records. Not only have we designed a much improved interface into nDelius, we’ve also built a bespoke, strengths-based Risk and Needs Tool to replace OASys.

The Risk and Needs Tool will bring an innovative approach to how we assess and manage service user’s needs. As a result of the size and complexity of this project, and our commitment to ensuring a secure and robust interface into the Ministry of Justice’s systems, a huge amount of work and time has gone into scoping, planning and building Omnia. It’s heartening to know that we’ve made a significant amount of progress and are ahead of the other CRCs.

The other good news is that we’re now at an exciting and crucial stage: a team of frontline employees are putting Omnia through its paces, extensively testing its functionality."

Our challenge
"The challenge is to check that each of these elements – and the processes that underpin them – work effectively in Omnia. It’s important that this testing is thorough, so it will take a number of weeks to complete.

The challenge for me is that I’ve got a lot of work to do to coordinate the various elements of the project plan, not least fixing the inevitable bugs that always crop up during testing (thankfully, we’re making great progress on this). Then, there’s a lot of ongoing work to be done with the Ministry of Justice and the National Probation Service to ensure our processes align with theirs so that the feed from nDelius populates the correct fields in Omnia, and vice versa. We’re also in the process of setting up an all new Service Desk to support Omnia users once it’s launched."

Leading the way
"Despite all that we’ve still got to do, we’ve made great progress and, as I’ve said before, I’m delighted that we’re currently well ahead of the other CRCs in terms of developing a new interface into nDelius. In fact, we’re laying much of the groundwork to ensure smooth data transfer between nDelius and the CRCs’ new systems.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the CRCs for the support and patience they have given, and continue to give, the Omnia Team. The experience, recommendations, hard work and commitment of the CRCs’ frontline staff has been instrumental in shaping Omnia and creating an online tool that will truly transform how we work with service user records."

What to expect
"With our very own bespoke Risk and Needs Tool to replace OASys, and a much improved and intuitive interface into nDelius, Omnia will streamline and improve how we create and manage service user records. Here are just some of the benefits you can expect:

• Just one log-in
• No more duplication of information
• User friendly dashboards
• Simplified and more intuitive processes
• Much improved search functionality
• Great new features, including Google Maps."

A phased roll-out
"We’re now edging close to launching Omnia and this will be done on a phased basis across each CRC once we’re confident that it can be done safely and securely.

I’ll share more detail with you when we’re at that stage, including information on training for frontline staff."

--oo00oo--

It's full steam ahead for London CRC, says Helga

London CRC has the unique challenge of managing low to medium risk service users in one of the most diverse cities in the world. With a geographical span of over 600 square miles, we have to ensure that our 900 staff are providing a quality service to the 31,000 service users we manage across all of London’s 32 boroughs.

Ambition 2020 Change Plan
The Government’s Transforming Rehabilitation agenda has given companies like us an opportunity to radically alter the way we all work in the criminal justice sector. In order to do so effectively, it became clear to us that we would need to make far reaching changes throughout the organisation.

We needed a comprehensive change programme that would reform and modernise everything from our working practices, to our culture and environment.

In 2016, we developed and launched our Ambition 2020 Change Plan. Driven by a single ambition – to be the best at reducing reoffending – the Plan features 16 work streams, containing over 90 work packages and 900 activities. Each element has been carefully designed to innovate and transform, embedding good practice and operational delivery, and putting our service users at the centre of what we do.

Green shoots of performance improvement
A lot of positive progress has been made since the start of this year: we launched our new Operational Model; opened our Model Office in south east London; introduced our Custody Team, and began our quarterly Working Better Together event for key stakeholders. I am also encouraged by the green shoots of performance improvement, as well as the healthy interest we have seen from our national recruitment drive.

But the progress won’t stop there. We are well into a three to five year improvement programme which is on the right trajectory. Last year we also began a Back to Basics campaign, aimed at addressing inherited legacy issues. The end of this year will see us step into our quality practice agenda – thorough assessments, followed by appropriate interventions, leading to positive outcomes.

2018 and beyond
As we move into 2018, the next stage of the Ambition 2020 Change Plan will see us roll out of our new IT app Omnia, finesse our interventions offer, and look to create more collaborative workspaces.

We will take these next steps with confidence and ensure new changes are firmly and safely embedded in our everyday working life.

I am confident we are on track to achieve our ambitions.

News Roundup 14

Having failed to find a buyer for their secure training facilities, the government seem loathe to take action against G4S despite another alarming inspection report. This from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies:-

Comment on damning new report on G4S-run Oakhill

The controversial security company G4S should be stripped of its contract to run Oakhill secure training centre, the Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Richard Garside, said today, following a damning Ofsted report on the institution. Richard also called for the government to close the three secure training centres – Medway, Oakhill and Rainsbrook – as part of a plan to end the imprisonment of children.

The damning report on Oakhill is only the latest scandal to hit the controversial security company. G4S lost a contract to run the Rainsbrook secure training centre in September 2015, following a critical Ofsted report earlier that year. In July 2016, the management of another G4S-run secure training centre, Medway, was handed over to the Youth Justice Board, after a BBC Panorama programme exposed widespread abuse of the prisoners by G4S staff.

Earlier this month the Justice Minister, Phillip Lee, told the House of Commons Justice Committee that he was satisfied that G4S was fulfilling their contractual obligations at Oakhill. He also told the Committee that G4S was 'passionate about doing a good job at Oakhill' and were 'determined to continue to deliver a service'.

But he told the Committee that he would not rule out forcing the company to surrender its contract to run Oakhill if there was 'any doubt' about G4S' ability to fufil its obligations.

Speaking today, the Centre's director, Richard Garside, said:

"This is the third secure training centre in as many years where G4S has appeared incapable of running safe and secure services for imprisoned children and young people. It concerns me greatly that the Justice Minister, Phillip Lee, told MPs earlier this month that G4S was providing a 'satisfactory' service at Oakhill. This was clearly not the case when he made this statement. He now needs to make good on his commitment to end the G4S contract. Secure training centres are neither secure for the children imprisoned, nor do they prepare children for adult life. The government should end this failed experiment and close all three centres. It would be a fitting legacy if Oakhill, and those other children's prisons, Rainsbrook and Medway, were razed to the ground and something fit for human habitation built in their place."

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According to this in the Law Society Gazette, one wonders how the cash was recently found to pay extra to the failing CRC privateers:-

MoJ reveals massive budget cut as new advice deserts open

The deeply worrying scale of the budgetary pressures bearing down on the Ministry of Justice is laid bare in new figures which will dampen already faint hopes of public funding reform. In a written parliamentary answer, justice minister Dominic Raab revealed that the MoJ will have suffered a cumulative 40% real terms cut in its budget over the fiscal decade ending in 2020.

Current projections show the departmental spending limit will be £5.6bn by 2019/20. In real terms, the comparable budget in 2010/11 was £9.3bn and in the current financial year it stands at £6.4bn. This week’s budget is unlikely to see any change of heart over spending plans, with justice secretary David Lidington confirming to the justice committee last month that his department faces ‘real constraints’ on resources.

He told MPs: ‘I would always welcome being given a crock of gold by the Treasury, but I am conscious too [that] I sit around the table with ministers for departments of health, education, defence and work and pensions – all, like me, could make the argument ‘we could really use some extra money’.

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon, whose question prompted Raab’s release of the figures, said cuts on the scale indicated threaten to take the justice sector from ‘repeated crisis to a full-blown emergency’.

The impact of cuts continues to be felt keenly in legal aid, and further evidence has emerged of ‘advice deserts’.

The Legal Aid Agency said last week it had identified an ‘access’ issue for housing and debt services in the Buckinghamshire area. Since last year the agency has had to plug gaps in the provision of housing and debt services in at least seven procurement areas. A Law Society infographic last year showed that nearly a third of legal aid areas had only one solicitor provider who specialised in housing and whose advice was available through legal aid. The agency has also identified access issues for the Blackpool and Preston, and Milton Keynes housing court duty schemes.

The MoJ revealed last week that 36 offices advertising themselves as a law centre withdrew from their legal aid contracts between April 2012 and April 2017. Raab said: ‘The Legal Aid Agency regularly reviews market capacity and accessibility to make sure that there is adequate provision of legal aid around the country, and moves quickly to safeguard provision where gaps may appear.’

--oo00oo--

Finally, Penelope Gibbs provides some further evidence as to why video links are damaging to effective practice, especially that of probation:- 

Video links make court into "another virtual experience" - a prisoner speaks

This week is a guest "blog" from a serving prisoner who wrote to me about his experience of video hearings having seen a Guardian article about our report "Defendants on video - conveyor belt justice or a revolution in access". He is serving a sentence for a non-violent offence:

"I am not arguing either against my conviction or punishment, but the way I was convicted and the severity of my sentence were both influenced by the use of video technology.

My first court appearance was via a video link from a police station. I was in shock. I did have a duty solicitor but she was not with me. I knew nothing of "the system" as this was my only offence. I was in one room, the magistrate in one small box on the screen, my solicitor in another. The images were OK but tiny, the sound quality poor and we all waited for one another to speak or tried to do so at the same time. The magistrate kept taking advice from a person I couldn't see, and necessary documents were not available. The whole process was both frustrating and surreal. The outcome was that I was remanded to appear in a couple of weeks.

The second appearance took place without me - I never discovered why! The third appearance was again via video link before which I had 15 minutes to speak to my barrister who I'd never met before. The judge then offered for the next "proper" appearance to be via video link. I believe her intention was to benefit me as she'd been told that many prisoners prefer a video link.

As I was offered the choice, I opted for a personal appearance at which I pleaded guilty. This was not at all a pleasant experience, and it would certainly have been less stressful for me to have simply had 30 minutes out of my cell for a video appearance in a prison room, rather than all day in a court cell for a 20 minute appearance in a real court. Hearing the prosecution listing his understanding of my thoughts and actions, and the judge reiterating them and then condemning me, had an effect no video link would ever have had. From even my brief experience of video links it was clear that I could have convinced myself that this was all merely another virtual experience. It was the real court experience that made me face up to my crime.

My assessment of the virtual court process is that the only people who could benefit are the truly hardened criminals who know the score, have little respect for the system and just want to get the whole thing over and done with. I doubt there are many who really fit this stereotype".

The prisoner has also been forced to communicate with probation on video link.

"It is hard enough to talk about having committed a crime, but when technical inefficiencies and the difficulty trying to establish some sort of rapport with a complete stranger many miles away are added, the whole process becomes almost impossible. Once I had pleaded guilty I was remanded for a pre-sentence report. This again took place over a video link. Naturally I was anxious and had no idea what was expected of me, or of the role of the probation officer. I was in a small room, much like a cell. The probation officer was in a similar room which sounded as if it was in the middle of a building site, with mechanical drills and hammers. Whether it was this noise, a delay in the audio feed, or the lack of clear visual cues, I found myself not knowing when to speak, interrupting her questions and rushing to fit in answers in any available gap. I'm sure I came across as an out of touch, incoherent person. That session was cut short when the officer said my time was up. As a result of this premature end, another session took place but this was a disastrous repeat of the first.

I feel the whole video process introduced a disconnect between me and the probation officer. It made it impossible for me to see her as a real person. One indication of her failure to understand my attitude towards my crime, was that in her report she said I was "in denial". This despite the fact that on arrest I'd admitted everything, given a full and open life history and, of course, pleaded guilty. As a result of this pre-sentence report, produced only from video interview, I was given a much harsher sentence than predicted by my legal team.

Since being sentenced eight months ago I have spoken to my appointed probation officer only once, again by video link. For this one interview I arrived late because of "operational reasons" within the prison, and again the link was ended before she could begin to know me - I certainly don't know her. I understand that it is a foundation of the probation service to "aim to reduce offending by establishing positive relationships with offenders..." I do not see how this can ever be achieved by using a video link with someone you have never met. I fear that the sentence plan my probation officer is producing, my time in prison, and my future on licence and thereafter will be determined by the flawed view she has of me as a result of relying on video technology".

I'm really saddened by this testimony. This prisoner's experience of the criminal justice system has been mediated by video, through no choice of his own. Who knows how typical his experience is? At no point since 2000 have defendants/prisoners been asked their views on video links. To say prisoners prefer them because they are more convenient patronises prisoners (who wouldn't "prefer" not to travel for hours in a disgusting van) and denies the importance of effective participation. Until we know through research how video links really effect participation, we should pause any programme to increase their use. Trust in our justice system is too fragile to risk damaging further.

Penelope Gibbs

Children Being Traded

This news on the Buzzfeed website will be of considerable concern:-

A Private Firm Criticised For Its Probation Services Is In Advanced Talks To Buy A Youth Jail

BuzzFeed News has learned that outsourcing firm Working Links is in exclusive talks with current owner G4S to buy and run Oakhill Secure Training Centre, near Milton Keynes.

A training and rehabilitation company that has been criticised for its handling of probation services is in exclusive talks to buy and take over a youth prison, BuzzFeed News has learned. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Working Links is in advanced negotiations to buy Oakhill Secure Training Centre (STC) in Milton Keynes from its current owner, the outsourcing company G4S.

Privately owned Working Links, which was set up in 2000 and acquired by the German private equity firm Aurelius in 2016, provides a range of public services, although this is the company’s first move into the youth prison sector. Private companies running youth prisons remains controversial and a number of providers have been the subject of scandals relating to the treatment of children in recent years.

Frances Crook, CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform, told BuzzFeed News: “Caring for children in custody should not be a commodity to trade between profit-seeking companies. These prisons have been plagued by scandal, have failed children, and should be immediately closed. Working Links has no record of running such an institution and no record of caring for children. This would be a case of tossing children out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

Any deal would need to be approved by the Ministry of Justice and would also face scrutiny from lending banks, who were part of the private finance initiative (PFI) deal that funded the construction of the centre in 2003. A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the talks were “a good way along the line”. Working Links declined to confirm or deny the talks, adding that it “does not comment on speculation”. G4S declined to comment.

Working Links runs three of the 21 regional “community rehabilitation companies” (CRCs), which were set up in 2015 to monitor low- and medium-risk prisoners upon their release into the community, as part of a government drive to part-privatise the probation system.

A violent former prisoner who Working Links was supposed to be monitoring while he was on probation went on to kill an 18-year-old man at a caravan park in Porthcawl, south Wales, in 2015. It later emerged that David Braddon, 28, who beat Conner Marshall to death, had missed eight appointments with Working Links while on probation, but wasn’t recalled to court for his non-attendance. The victim’s mother, Nadine Marshall, has criticised Working Links over its supervision of her son’s killer. She said: “Multiple agencies were supposedly supervising Braddon, yet this is despite many areas of supervision being missed, absent, or nonexistent.”

On the Braddon case, a Working Links spokesperson said: “Serious further offences are rare but each one is taken extremely seriously and investigated fully. All decisions were made and supervised by fully qualified and experienced probation workers. The management of the case has not been linked to the crime committed – the serious further offence report found that Conner’s death was not predictable or preventable.”

Liz Saville-Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, has tabled more than 40 parliamentary questions on the performance and accountability of Working Links, which runs the CRC for Wales. She told BuzzFeed News: “Yes, I would have concerns [about a deal to buy Oakhill], given Working Links’ track record on CRCs.” Saville-Roberts did not comment further.

Andy Slaughter, the Labour MP and former shadow justice minister, who has been seeking answers on what will happen to the youth justice estate, said: “No one regrets the decision by G4S to cease their involvement in running STCs given the scandals and disasters they oversaw, but it is the job of the MOJ to ensure that whoever takes on responsibility for the contracts and the institutions is able to run them in a fit and proper manner. The privatisation of probation and the crisis in our prison system are legacies of the chaotic policies of Chris Grayling while Lord Chancellor. His successor needs to address both issues quickly to prevent further corporate mismanagement and personal tragedies.”

Working Links announced before Christmas that it was “streamlining” its services by shrinking its workforce through a voluntary redundancy scheme, a move slammed by the National Association of Probation Officers. According to one report, companies running CRCs are not being paid as much as they had previously hoped due to lower-than-expected numbers of offenders being managed in the community.

Oakhill – which has capacity for up to 80 boys and girls – received a mostly positive review from Ofsted at its last inspection in March 2016, but has faced criticism in recent years. An MoJ report in May 2016 found evidence of “routine verbal bullying and intimidation of trainees by staff, with abusive and racist language a daily occurrence”. Oakhill is the last STC to be run by G4S – the company said last year that it planned to exit the children’s services market by selling off its youth prisons and children’s homes.

Medway STC, which was the subject of a BBC documentary in January 2016 that uncovered systematic abuse there while it was run by G4S, was taken over by the Ministry of Justice five months later. The MoJ declined BuzzFeed News’ invitation to comment, but referred to a parliamentary question that mentioned the STC’s future last week.

Answering Jo Stevens, the MP for Cardiff Central, prisons minister Sam Gyimah said: “G4S are undertaking a process to sell this contract as part of their announcement in February 2016 to withdraw from the children’s services market. As per previous answers to the house, the Ministry has been in regular contact with G4S and other relevant bodies. This engagement includes monitoring the progress of the potential sale to ensure it does not jeopardise the delivery of services at the Oakhill Secure Training Centre. Given this is a G4S commercial undertaking, the stage that their process is at and the identity of any preferred buyer, that may be arrived at through that process, are covered by contractual confidentiality considerations and the Ministry is unable to share this information.”

Patrick Smith is a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.