Some Observations 5

In yet another example of how common sense might at last triumph, the grandly-titled Global Commission on Drug Policy has issued a report making it plain that the 'war on drugs' is completely pointless and that as a matter of urgency the problem needs a more imaginative response. This is a high-powered outfit consisting of some extremely influential former world leaders including Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, George Shultz former US Secretary of State and George Popandreou, former President of Greece. Their report can be found here.

I guess it was no coincidence that publication was on the same day that a group of celebrities published an open letter to the Prime Minister urging drug decriminalisation. Sadly though this was swiftly condemned as 'naive' by the usual suspects, thus once more demonstrating how any debate on drug policy in this country quickly becomes reduced to a very low level of sophistication. 

For those interested in knowing how the Ministry of Justice's flagship Payment by Results scheme at HMP Peterborough is progressing, I would suggest they have a look at this first report by the independant research team. Amongst other things, they confirm that allocating payment to the right agency for any improved outcome might be a bit tricky. It will be appreciated that a great deal is riding on this experiment whereby rehabilitation of offenders will be paid for on a results basis funded through Social Impact Bonds. It's a world's first and the government hopes it will be the next 'big idea', I suppose a bit like the Public Private Initiative. Or maybe not given the developing realisation of the true costs associated with that particular wheeze.

In fact this is not a good time to be championing the involvement of the private sector in public services with the news about Southern Cross. I seem to remember it was a Tory government that decided that Local Authorities were very expensive and inefficient at running care homes for the elderly. Much better to allow the private sector to do it more cheaply. As a result in little over 20 years only 3% of residential care is now provided by councils and we're faced with the largest private provider, Southern Cross with a staggering 750 homes, going bust. Why? Because of that other financial innovation, the Private Equity Investor. They bought the lot, sold the real estate and then sold the company making a £billion in the process. I think that's called asset stripping, or a good investment depending on your view, but obviously not care for the elderly. 

It's been pointed out to me that Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party spokesperson on Criminal Justice has set up a committee of enquiry consisting of some of the great and good, but conspicuously there is no probation representation. 

Finally, something seems to have gone wrong with the appointment of the new Chief Inspector of Probation. According to Jonathan Ledger of NAPO, Diana Fulbrook is no longer the preferred candidate following her recent appearance in front of the Justice Affairs Committee. I wonder if they were as underwhelmed by her performance as I was?   

    

Somewhere to Live 2

The Probation Service has a long and proud history of innovation and in particular of being able to find solutions to social problems. In essence this was because two key elements were present at one and the same time. Firstly some very able and life experienced officers and secondly a benign management structure that gave staff encouragement and freedom to innovate. Unfortunately a predominantly young and first career workforce, coupled with a centralised command and control structure means that innovation is very definitely not on the agenda nowadays. We are therefore pretty much stuck with what has been developed in the past, or responding to outside initiatives.

In my part of the country we were very fortunate that many years ago a probation officer had the foresight, initiative and freedom to found a housing project for offenders. Basically it became hugely successful, was floated off by the Service and is today a major Social Landlord serving all kinds of disadvantaged people, including many offenders still. In such schemes it's vital that support is provided as part of the package, with the hope that a transition can be achieved either to a full council tenancy, or to a private landlord. But supply has never come close to meeting demand and there seems to be a continually reducing quantity of Local Authority housing available. Also, resources for offender accommodation is no longer 'ring fenced' and it has to compete with other groups, such as the disabled for funds out of the local 'Supporting People' budget. When this change was brought in I pointed out, sadly to no avail, that this would merely serve to re-introduce the notion of the deserving as opposed to the undeserving. To a certain extent this has indeed happened.

One glimmer of success in recent years has been the growth of the Foyer  movement, an idea borrowed from other European countries and that has rapidly taken hold here in Britain. Basically each project takes in young people, provides supervised accommodation for up to 12 months and during that time arranges either employment or training as well as general support and guidance. A great idea, but I still have a few misgivings about some Foyers selection policy. The same old issue arises of the distinction between who is perceived as deserving as opposed to undeserving. Now in the good old days, I'm convinced the probation service, or to be precise, one or two individual officers, would have been right in there sorting issues like that out. But we're not allowed to now of course, that's a job for management and they don't like rocking the boat with partners. 

Basically if Ken Clarke is going to achieve his aim of reducing the prison population and particularly the re-offending rate for short term prisoners - the group most likely to have serious housing problems - some extra resources have got to be found from somewhere to help with their accommodation needs. At the risk of repeating myself, in an era of spending cuts, I can only see the likelihood of this coming through the new idea of Social Impact Bonds and Payment by Results.     

A Clear Signal

I think the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke sent out a clear signal to the Probation Service during the course of his talk to lawyers at Grays Inn on Monday evening. During questioning from Joshua Rozenberg and carried in the latest edition of Radio 4's Law in Action programme, Ken Clarke confirmed much of what had already been trailed, but also gave some more insight into his thinking and general direction of travel. He agreed that his department's settlement with the Chancellor was only based on estimates of re-offending and that a reduction in prison numbers of 3,000 was extremely modest and only brought us to the position of two years ago. He reminded the audience that prison numbers had increased by 20,000 since Michael Howard was in charge.

Significantly Mr Clarke said clearly that a renewed emphasis on community penalties was not about saving money. He appreciated that schemes had to be paid for and he hoped that Probation Trusts would get involved as providers of Payment by Results projects. In answer to a direct question, he confirmed this would be an additional role for probation. He wanted the money to go towards the best schemes and confirmed there was no shortage of good ideas 'out there', but that so far HM Peterborough was the only pilot.

So there we have it. A clear signal and in my view it's now up to all those highly paid Probation Trust Head Office managers with fancy titles including words like 'business development' or 'partnership' to earn their keep, read up damned quick on Social Impact Bonds and seize the moment before the 'third sector' or private companies get too involved. Here is an opportunity to bid for extra work, with external funding and prove to any remaining doubters what works in terms of reducing re-offending. 

This is not rocket science, but is something the probation service has expertise in. We know that people commit offences for a reason, not because they've got a genetic predisposition or are bad people.  It's because they've missed out on a good childhood, been abandoned by state education and do not have the skills, confidence or resources to gain employment or decent housing and get help with alcohol or drug addiction. What ever else Ken Clarke might be doing, he is offering us the opportunity to design a support package specifically for the short-term prisoner, based on our knowledge and experience and paid for through Social Impact Bonds and Payment by Results. I simply do not understand NAPO's philosophical opposition to such an idea, particularly if the funding comes from respected charitable bodies and represents additionality. 

I can see no point at all in making an enemy of Ken Clarke. He agreed that his plans are hardly 'populist' and are not going to win him many friends. By instinct and nature he is generally a liberal Justice Minister, having absolutely no political ambitions and in all these ways admirably demonstrates to me a refreshing desire to move away from the old Blairite tendency of trying to appease the right wing press. I might add that in that regard he's put plenty of 'blue water' between himself and  Michael Howard, a former Conservative Home Secretary for whom I have nothing but contempt. This could be the beginning of an attempt to return to the days when criminal justice policy was not a political football. It was felt to be far too important for that and proceeded gently by means of research, Royal Commissions or cross-party consensus. I would remind people that Payment by Results has cross-party support.

Make no mistake, if we fail as a Service to grasp this opportunity and allow the third sector and private companies free reign, we will not be understood by the public or possibly even our many friends in high places, and we will be set firmly on the slippery slope of decline and marginalisation. Now is the time to try and seize the agenda that will inevitably be put in train by the Green Paper and demonstrate that it's us that know about rehabilitation and we can be just as adaptable and imaginative as in days gone by.  




    

Meeting Targets

When I started out on this blog I really didn't envisage having to get quite so involved in economic theory. I think I'm reasonably ok on social theory, but all this stuff about Payment by Results (PbR) I find is confusing the two. I'm grateful to the NAPO Hampshire and Isle of Wight forum page for pointing me in the direction of yet another Guardian article on the subject. It's becoming obvious that PbR is definitely becoming popular with the coalition government and Crispin Blunt the probation minister told NAPO members as much at the recent AGM. As I've already mentioned, the idea was initially set rolling by the previous Labour government at HMP Peterborough with cross-party support.

It has many attractions in terms of not requiring government capital funding up front, no risks because payment is only by results and it funds activity in the private or 'third' sector. But the suspicion is that the figures will be 'fudged' and this article confirms that the big downside of this big new idea is indeed how everything needs to be measured. Just when we thought the target culture that Tony Blair was so keen on could be dismantled, it seems it has to reappear as a method of measuring the outputs as part of this big new idea. 

By nature I will admit to being a pessimist. I have an over-powering sense of foreboding about our future as a public service in an environment of spending cuts, contestability, value for money exercises and straightforward privatisation. But I am also attracted to the whole Social Impact Bond idea as a method of doing things that are not being done at the moment, as at  HMP Peterborough. However, I'm not stupid or that naive to think it's going to stop there though. The idea is clearly going to take hold and inevitably move into areas of our core work. Now at least one person has commented on this blog that the essential ethos of the probation service might be safer and possibly have a brighter future, if it moved into the third sector.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but would we be better embracing all this PbR and Social Impact Bond stuff? We could carry on doing what all public bodies do in response to targets and fiddle the new outcome figures? In my area, we've been doing some 'creative accounting' on the numbers of clients getting employment for ages. As the Guardian article points out:-

"Targets failed nearly everywhere partly because the most important objectives – education, health and so on – are not really susceptible to narrow measurement. So services had to make do with something less precise, which was bound to distort. But they also failed because of the phenomenon known as Goodhart's Law, named after a former Bank of England director: any measure used to control people – and all targets are that – are bound to be inaccurate.

It doesn't matter how inefficient the service is, staff and managers always know how to manipulate the definitions so that their numbers look better. That is why the Labour government spent huge sums checking, auditing, redefining and systematising their controls. Every time they did so, the rules became more complex, more expensive and less connected to reality."

So even though we all know targets don't work, are a huge distraction and distort an organisations operation, we will need them to measure outputs with this great new idea. We're all independent Trusts now and fiddling the figures is precisely what all the third sector bodies will be doing anyway. The government won't mind if we do the same, don't get found out and everyone can claim success. Oh dear, it seems I'm even more cynical than I thought.    

  

A Cunning Plan

It has been obvious to me for ages that our policy on drugs is simply not working. Any probation officer who has been around for any time will be aware of the phenomenon whereby a drug dependent client will beg you for a period of time in custody. I'm sure magistrates will be aware of this too because I've heard heart-felt pleas of 'please lock me up' from the dock on more than one occasion. The same goes for solicitors and it is hard not to be moved by the sheer desperation and hopelessness of such an individuals situation. This has come about basically because it is virtually impossible to obtain an in-patient bedspace for drug treatment. If by some miracle one was located, funding would be an impossibly bureaucratic nightmare. 

One might be tempted to ask how this has come about? The answer is partly the sheer numbers involved, but also that the politically correct, and by happy coincidence cheapest form of drug treatment, is by means of so-called community-based methadone prescribing. It's politically correct because the ethos says it enables the client to remain in their home, possibly employment and maintain their community support networks. The only trouble is the people I'm talking about are invariably homeless and 'sofa-surfing' hopelessly unemployable and all their mates are on drugs as well. So, in a situation like this, a request to be either remanded in custody or serve a sentence is an extremely rational decision. In the old days the itinerant town drunk would lob a brick through a shop window in order to spend Christmas eating HM Prison's festive turkey. Nowadays offences such as shoplifting are frequently committed deliberately by drug users as a route to residential drug treatment provided by HM Prison.

Again, one might be tempted to point out that prisons are hardly drug-free environments. I've certainly had clients go in clean and come out addicted and vice versa, but the key thing is the degree of motivation. Many clients have told me that it's much easier to get clean and stay clean in prison if you are minded to. It obviously helps if your 'padmate' is similarly inclined and you're on a drug-free wing, enforced by the inmates by the way, not the staff. Prisoners can be the best form of support for each other, or the worst of bad influences, such is the reality of incarceration.

Apart from cost and the absurdity of it, the main problem with this way of society dealing with the chronic drug problem is the length of sentence. Even with a record and history of failed community sentences, a string of new shop lifting offences will not often result in more than 6 months, and usually much less given an early guilty plea. Now the punitive amongst us might be surprised to hear that many clients would dearly love longer behind bars because they know a release in just a few weeks isn't enough to detox completely or to make the most of treatment that's on offer.

The answer to this has to be a bit more sophisticated than longer prison terms, essentially for drug treatment. We need a way of providing residential drug treatment facilities that are sufficient in number, relatively easy to access and affordable. But we're in a recession and government has no spare cash. Having read further about Social Impact Bonds and the project at HMP Peterborough, I think this could be a possible funding route with payment made on results.

We are all aware that many of our prisons hold inmates who have drug problems and I have outlined how many choose custody as a way of dealing with their addiction. If a way could be found to fund a network of residential treatment facilities, I feel there would be merit in exploring a radical alternative for low level drug dependant offenders that diverts them from the Criminal Justice System completely. I envisage such people being offered the opportunity of a residential treatment place as a possible alternative to a conviction and sentence following an admission of guilt. I suppose technically it could be viewed as a Deferred Sentence with a return to court should the placement break down for any reason. Successful completion would ideally in my view result in no conviction being recorded. I'm fairly sure this wouldn't be possible at the moment and might therefore require legislation, or at least some better qualified legal opinion than mine. 

What is obvious to me is that drug policy is failing completely at the present time and therefore some radical thinking might be appropriate. I think a scheme like this could deliver better treatment and lower prison numbers, with capital funding for the centres off the Public Sector books, and all with the prospect of real savings to the taxpayer. The Holy Grail and a cunning plan I think.     

Lets Try Inclusion

The news from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission that in England and Wales we imprison more black people proportionally than America is quite shocking. The figure is seven times greater than their representation within the wider community. In the US the equivalent figure is four times. A quarter of all people in prison are now from ethnic minorities and the figure has gone from 11,332 in 1998 to 22,421 by 2008. Apparently some prisons in the South East are virtually all black with a high conversion rate to Islam. 

The report speculates that the problem may start in schools which I find to be a somewhat staggeringly obvious conclusion to draw. It makes the point that black kids are three times more likely to be excluded from school than white kids. For many of my clients, black or white, things started to go wrong when trouble at school resulted in either exclusion or expulsion. It's always amazed me how easy it has been for the education system to wash it's hands of so many youngsters. There are over 10,000 exclusions a year apparently. I routinely ask young clients when they left school and invariably the answer is about 13 or 14. Now of course this cannot be right because the statutory school leaving age is 16 and as far as I know it is still the duty of a Local Education Authority, or whatever the equivalent is nowadays, to supply appropriate education until that age. I know they don't of course, or at least any that works and they don't seem to put a great deal of effort into trying to engage with these troubled kids. 

It's always been glaringly obvious to me as a probation officer that this is simply storing up major trouble further down the line. Why on earth doesn't society put greater effort in at the stage when difficulties first begin to manifest themselves? I'm sure Tony Blair's SureStart initiative has been worth the investment, but something equivalent is needed for these older kids or, as the figures are proving, they end up in custody and costing society a great deal more than if the problem had been tackled at the appropriate stage. Sadly though, as another recent report has highlighted, all we've done is inappropriately diagnose thousands of children with ADHD or a whole range of other similar behavioural conditions.

I suspect, like most intractable social problems, there is no 'silver bullet' but part of the solution might be a charity I hadn't heard of before called School-Home Support. Having been started by an Educational Welfare Officer in London 25 years ago, they aim to avoid school exclusions by supporting the family and working with the school. Growth has been slow but steady and now operates in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire partly thanks to support from the Private Equity Foundation, but maybe the time has come for a more rapid expansion through the new big idea of Social Impact Bonds and so-called Payment by Results. I know there are deep suspicions about this concept, but at the moment I think it's our best hope in a period of reduced government funding especially as it would be paying for an additional resource. As I say, I'm sure it's not the complete answer because I know we desperately need a fully resourced Youth Service as well. But it could be a useful start.