'Punitive, stigmatising and discriminatory'

I notice the Probation Institute, quietly, politely but thoroughly, pours copious quantities of cold water over the Sentencing Bill proposals:- 

The Sentencing Bill - an opportunity missed?

On 11 July, the Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probaton, James Timpson, delivered the annual Bill McWilliams lecture, in association with the Institute for Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and the Probation Institute. The lecture series was inaugurated following Bill's death, with the aim of commemoratng his research and practce on the history, culture and values of probaton work, and to keep alive the values of the rehabilitative ideal.

Members of the Probaton Institute and a wide audience of probaton staff, former chiefs, researchers and the judiciary were pleased to hear Lord Timpson reiterate the centrality of the Probaton Service in his presentaton, and did not at all disagree with the emphasis he placed on reducing reoffending, and public protection. However, there was some consternation regarding his focus on the possible and extended uses of Electronic Monitoring and AI to enable probation practice, with an apparent vision of 'custody in the community.'

These concerns were justfied by the content and tone of the announcement of the provisions of the Sentencing Bill, made via a press release on 3 September. The Probaton Institute applauds the principle of diminishing the use of short prison sentences, which, as the press release rightly points out, have a poor record of reducing reoffending, notably in comparison with community-based sentences. But we would argue that the current status of community sentences, with the provision of additional requirements to address offending behaviour, would be more than adequate, and suitable, to enable people to reform, and to achieve their rehabilitaton. 

We are disturbed by the proposed new powers to restrict the freedoms of people convicted of criminal offences, for instance, via restrictons of attendance at, amongst other places, 'pubs, concerts and football matches’; and the proposal that the personal details of people undertaking Unpaid Work in their local communites - originally known as Community Service - will be promulgated publicly. These proposals are at odds with any notion of rehabilitaton and reintegraton for people with criminal records - historically, core principles of Probaton work. The publication of personal details, alongside the proposal to electronically tag anyone released from custody, appear to be measures designed to stigmatise and exclude those who have fallen foul of the law, not to enable their rehabilitation and reform.

The Probation Service is identified as integral to the implementation of these new measures. Yet it is difficult to envisage a scenario in which effective supervision can be carried out, given the current strains on probation staff. Issues regarding the retention of qualified staff have dogged probation for over a decade, arising initially from the semi-privatisation of the service, and, more recently, following reunification. This issue, of a sufficiency of suitably qualified and experienced staff, has been raised frequently by the Probation Inspectorate in its reviews into Serious Further Offences, indicating that the organisational change imposed on Probation over the last decade or so has had real, and harmful consequences. Recent research conducted by the Rehabilitatng Probation team based at Liverpool John Moores University suggests that a factor in this attrition is that the role to which practitioners are recruited does not reflect the actual nature of the work; that the motivation to work in probation is, as it has always been, to enable people to make positive changes, not to provide a community based carceral environment.

The Probation Service has more than a century of working with people with criminal convictions to enable them to reform, and to reintegrate into their communities. Probation practitioners recognise that a key aspect of their work is putting clear and firm boundaries in place, alongside creating supportive and motivational relationships with those under their supervision. Probation does not shy away from the control aspects of the work, but does place such controls in a context of care and concern. Research by the Prison Reform Trust with people subject to probation supervision portrays the onerousness of this status. One participant, released from custody, escribed himself as 'free but not free.' Regrettably, this Bill seems to present a picture of justice which is punitive, stigmatsing and discriminatory, and which may only serve to further diminish real opportunities for effective rehabilitation.

Any probation practitioner will be acutely aware that many of the people they are supervising have been victims of crime themselves, with consequences of trauma and diminution in opportunities to achieve, notably in education and work. These structural disadvantages seem likely to be further entrenched by the provisions of the Sentencing Bill. The Probation Institute regards this as a golden opportunity to forefront a rehabilitative narrative and agenda - in its current form, the Bill appears to be a missed opportunity.

Trustees of the Probation Institute. September 2025

Justice Secretary Nonsense

I'm afraid my patience has run out entirely in respect of the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and her latest 'unpaid work is too lenient' nonsense, thus further stoking up right wing rhetoric in response to Reform. With a heavy heart I now feel I have no option but to admit this Labour government hasn't got a clue as far as probation is concerned. There's clearly not going to be any enlightened probation reforms and astonishingly the Gauke Sentencing Report is likely to be rejected as too enlightened! 

As far as I can see, Lord Timpson is going to have a hard time convincing the probation establishment gathering for the 2025 Bill McWilliams lecture in Cambridge on July 11th that probation has any meaningful future at all.  

Criminals could fill potholes and clean bins under government plans

Convicted criminals could be told to fill potholes and clean bins under plans the government is understood to be developing.

As first reported by the Sun on Sunday, the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is said to want to expand unpaid work, which she believes to be too lenient. She is understood to want probation teams to work with councils, so that local authorities are able to assign jobs to offenders. Private companies would also be able to employ those who are on community sentences. Offenders would not be paid wages, but the money earned would be paid into a fund for victim's groups.

It comes as prisons across the country are struggling to deal with overcrowding after the number of offenders behind bars hit a new high. A government source said: "With prisons so close to collapse, we are going to have to punish more offenders outside of prison. "We need punishment to be more than just a soft option or a slap on the wrist. If we want to prove that crime doesn't pay, we need to get offenders working for free - with the salary they would have been paid going back to their victims." They added this meant doing the jobs the public "really want them to do - not just scrubbing graffiti, but filling up potholes and cleaning the bins".

Writing for the Telegraph, external, Ms Mahmood, who describes herself as a "card-carrying member" of her party's "law and order wing", said that "tough community orders work." An independent review of sentencing carried out by the former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke is expected to be published this week. It was commissioned last year after overcrowding led to the early release of thousands of prisoners. 

Gauke is understood to be considering recommending the idea of scrapping short prison terms as part of the sentencing review, and is likely to recommend more community-based sentencing to reduce the reliance on imprisonment. In an interim report, Gauke warned that unless radical changes were made, prisons in England and Wales could run out of cells by early next year.

Ms Mahmood warned that he would "have to recommend bold, and sometimes difficult, measures". In her article, she pointed to examples such as the system in Texas, where she said "offenders who comply with prison rules earn an earlier release, while those who don't are locked up for longer". On Wednesday, she announced more than a thousand inmates will be released early to free up spaces in prisons in England and Wales, and that a £4.7bn investment will be used to fund more prisons.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the announcement was "failing to protect the public" - adding "to govern is to choose, and today she's chosen to release early criminals who've reoffended or breached their licences".

--oo00oo--

Postscript

My Twitter account has either been hacked, deactivated, lost or deleted which is very annoying, but then Elon Musk has completely rubbished it anyway, so seeing as Virgin have lost my email account as well, I'll just accept it all as confirmation that trying to save Probation is fast becoming a lost cause and I'll just shout into an empty ether....

Probation in Wales

An interesting article published yesterday by Walesonline. Regarding the first guy interviewed - no mention of a PSR? Sentenced without one perhaps? Note the absence of any reference to 'POPs' - a sure sign Wales wants to go its own way methinks.

'Most people would run away from them - we try to run towards them': The probation officers working with Wales' offenders

They try to help people who break the law change their lives, while protecting the public from harm, and are always thinking about risk.

A convicted offender is having his first meeting with a probation officer in Swansea after being sentenced for stealing a substantial sum of money from his employer. He was given an eight-month sentence suspended for two years, meaning he will stay out of prison as long he complies with the Probation Service. He must also carry out 130 hours of unpaid work as part of a two-year community order.

The man is in his late 20s and it is his first offence. He sits down opposite probation officer Laura Gray for an induction meeting - and so begins another case for the Swansea Neath Port Talbot probation delivery unit, one of six such units in Wales. Housed over three floors of a dark-bricked office building on Orchard Street, the Probation Service works with prisoners - both those locked up and recently released - and those handed community orders for lesser offences. There are probation officers based at Swansea Prison and also in the city's courts.

As of November 2021, the Swansea Neath Port Talbot unit's total caseload was 1,900 - 977 people on community sentences, 525 individuals being supervised post-release from prison, and 398 still in custody. The service sets out to protect the public from harm and also help rehabilitate those who pass through its doors. Assessing and updating risk is a vital component. "You've got to come with an open mind and not be judgemental," says Laura. "You're working with them because you're trying to prevent future victims. With support, most people have got the ability to change their lives and be functioning members of the public."

Back in the meeting room, Laura explains to the first-time offender that a colleague of hers will be assigned to him, so she fills out some but not all of a lengthy pack which will form the basis of a sentencing plan. She takes contact details, where he is living and with whom, whether he works and if so doing what, and what both parties can expect from one another over the course of the next two years. She also asks him if he understood the sentence and how it came about. There is a pause. The man provides the information. It turns out the crime was committed in London a number of years ago.

She tells him that a home visit will take place in the next couple of weeks, and stresses that keeping in touch and turning up to appointments on time are key. "The whole point of being on probation is to support you so that you don't end up in this situation again," she tells him. The unpaid work will be arranged in due course and might involve litter picking, cutting grass or painting. It emerges that the man's wife lives overseas and that the plan was for him to join her. That won't be happening now for two years.

A few minutes later we are in another meeting room where Laura is talking to one of the 34 mostly medium and high risk offenders she has on her caseload. He lives with his partner, their daughter and a new-born son. There have been some noise complaints from a neighbour, which are being looked into. Laura asks the man, who has assault convictions, about his drinking - he previously had to wear a sweat-sampling alcohol tag around his ankle for 72 days - and is encouraged by his response. "Seeing people drunk around Swansea, I think, 'That could be me.' I just want to be with my family," he says.

Laura says he has engaged well with social and housing services, and that his risk category has dropped from high to medium. She is constantly asking questions, assessing risk and, it seems to me, looking for solutions. She tells me later: "I know so much about him, he has talked to me about things that have happened in the past, I have been to his house, I have met his partner. You become so involved with these people. You've got to be constantly curious." She says "professional curiosity" is integral to the role.

The probation service runs programmes and works with organisations to deliver others. They cover substance misuse, employment and housing support, mental health services and domestic violence awareness, among others. Running the service in Wales costs just under £80 million per year. There is additional probation officer training for managing sexual offenders, which is managed in partnership with police.

Laura, 32, qualified as a probation officer seven years ago. It was while studying sociology and criminology in Manchester that she first came into contact with the probation service - in what was then called Strangeways Prison. "I thought it was really interesting," she says. Returning to Swansea after graduating, she volunteered at Swansea Prison and later completed a 15-month professional qualification in probation.

Asked if there was one thing that really offenders really benefited from in their lives to make progress, she replies: "It's hard to say one thing. Having employment gives someone that sense of purpose, and a structure to the day. Support networks are such a huge thing. Then accommodation is another factor - it makes everything more settled for them."

Laura says cases where offenders have turned their lives around were very rewarding. She gives an example of a man who had been in and out of prison since he was 17 and had now hit 50. Prison, she says, had become much harder for him. She says he has dealt with his drug problems, that he has a flat, and has re-established contact with his adult children. "He came out (of prison) with a different mindset," she says. "He really worked with us. We are helping somebody to help themselves. That's when the satisfaction comes."

Equally, there was disappointment in other cases, particularly when someone's actions or behaviour warranted being remanded to custody. "It's difficult not to feel we have not let them down in some way," says Laura. "We do try to work with people, but it's ultimately down to them to decide if they do it."

Kristian Hooper, 36, qualified as a probation officer in 2020 after stints as a play worker, youth worker and drugs charity worker. "I always had an interest in criminology and psychology, and had a higher education certificate in counselling," he says. A good probation officer, in his view, had to be able to build a good rapport with someone and have an understanding of complex needs. His 26-odd cases are mainly high and very high risk. "It is a difficult job," says Kristian. "You do read about what people have done, which can be pretty horrific, but you need to be able to compartmentalise that. Most people would run away from them - we try to run towards them."

He says 60-70% of his time was spent on reports, the remainder on meetings with offenders. Trying to prioritise his work when "multiple things" were happening with "multiple cases" could be challenging. "It is relentless," says university graduate Kristian. But it suits him. "I don't think I would ever have a normal job," he says.

The Swansea Neath Port Talbot probation delivery unit was scrutinised by HM Inspectorate of Probation in autumn 2021, when Covid and the discovery of asbestos in the office building severely hampered operations. "The impact of both these events cannot be underestimated," said a foreword to the report by chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell. To have "kept the show on the road", he added, was to the credit of senior managers. But the report said the quality of work undertaken with people in probation was weak, and that there were shortfalls across all elements of case supervision. The unit was rated "inadequate".

Strengths were cited though, such as relationships with partner agencies, the positive impact of certain specialist teams, and senior management's high profile and commitment to improve. Inspectors made six improvement recommendations, and an action plan with target dates for completion was drawn up in response. Staff and managers at the unit say the disruption during Covid of face-to-face meetings with people in probation was immense.

"We were operating in a different way, which is inherently challenging," says head of the unit, Deanne Martin. "The impact of not being able to see people and rely on technology instead - it worked for some people, but not for others. Risk assessment is a really intuitive process. You need all your senses." Deanne has worked for 20 years in probation. Her role includes liaising with police, prisons, and councils, attending safeguarding meetings, and understanding the needs of staff and what pressure they might be under. A recall to custody - something not taken lightly, she says - or returning someone to court, would require her attention.

The unit has 139 staff, around three-quarters of whom are probation practitioners and senior probation staff. "Our colleagues come from all different walks of life, and for some people it's a second career," says Deanne. "It's still a vocation for a lot of people - they're really committed to it. "The most important this for us is protecting the public. Having a real emphasis on risk and understanding risk is really important. We have a dual focus on rehabilitation. That takes a lot of skill, time and effort. You've have got to be optimistic, but not unrealistic."

Deanne says she has seen people "come out the other side" that she didn't expect to. "That's wonderful," she says. "I see the worst and I see the best, and often I see the best." She adds: "I do think probation staff do an incredible job. It's a field which is really quite skilled. It's not always visible, but they really are true public servants."

Trainee probation officers joining this coming September will earn £23,637. Once qualified, the salary increases to £35,130 plus allowances.

There were 240,674 offenders supervised by the probation service in England and Wales at the end of last September, 2% more than a year previously. All these offenders have different needs. At a team meeting early in the day at the Swansea Neath Port Talbot office, a member of staff says one man she supervises rang her 10 times before 9am.

Laura is taking the meeting and goes through a list of questions, with input from a senior probation officer. Numerous acronyms are bandied about. A more recognisable word, "pancakes", also crops up a couple of times. I'm reminded later that it is Shrove Tuesday - considered in Christianity as a day for confessing and being absolved of sins.

Richard Youle

Local Democracy Reporter

Richard is covering Swansea and Carmarthenshire as part of the BBC's Local Democracy Reporter project, which is aimed at enhancing reporting from local authorities across the UK. He previously worked as a senior reporter covering Swansea.

--oo00oo--

It is of course official Napo policy to campaign for the probation service in Wales to free itself from the stranglehold of the MoJ and HMPPS. This was recently published:-

NAPO CYMRU PRESSING THE CAMPAIGN FOR DEVOLUTION

Here at Napo News we are always pleased to receive information about particular campaign initiatives that are being undertaken by our Branch activists. This just in from Napo Cymru.

Greetings from Wales! Siwmae! Napo Cymru branch reporting in.

In 2022 Napo Cymru won the support of NAPO to campaign for the devolution of Probation in Wales, and with it the uncoupling of Probation from the prison system.

Before this, Mark Drakeford, First Minister for Wales, argued for this in his Bill McWilliams lecture. Gordon Brown in his recent report on democracy and devolution, cited Probation and Youth Justice as functions that should be devolved Report of the Commission on the UK’s Future. A torrent of painful media reports is revealing the utter failure of the Probation Service under its current management.

Napo Cymru have been busy on the campaign, as mandated by you.

• We are collaborating with the Wales Centre for Crime and Social Justice preparing a raft of evidenced based proposals for an alternative view of a future Probation Service in Wales.

• We are linked up with other Justice Unions and have recently gained commitment from Welsh government for regular Welsh Justice Unions meetings and communications.

• Napo Cymru has promoted a motion put to the Welsh Labour Conference in March: “Conference mandates the Welsh Labour Government to, as a matter of urgency, work with the UK Labour Party to progress the devolution of probation to Wales, along with other elements of the justice system including youth justice, removing it from the current unhealthy grip of the Westminster civil service and the prison service.”

• Napo Cymru Vice Chair Su McConnel is a contributor to the Fabian Society’s publication “Solidarity, Equality and Opportunity: creating strong social justice systems for women” which was launched in Westminster in January. She argues for the devolution of Probation to Wales, and also for the return of full Pre-Sentence Reports.

Our work locally

We are of course, getting on with the day job of being a stalwart Napo branch. We have an increasing number of members and to all of you, Croeso! We have many members needing support and representation, and we welcome each of you. We welcome everyone that joins Napo in the spirit of solidarity with our belief that Probation can be better for our communities, our clients, and our workers. We believe in change.

To let Napo HQ know about any meetings that members may be having with their local members of Parliament or any aspect of campaigning in the locality, please contact: Tania Bassett or Tay Burke.

In the Wake of the SFO's 2

I've just noticed that Frances Crook had something to say about things in the FT the other day:-

Probation failures have deep roots and horrific consequences

Minimal reorganisation could revive the public service and reduce such tragedies as Zara Aleena’s murder

The murder of Zara Aleena by a man just released from prison was a tragedy waiting to happen. Assessed by the probation service as not posing a high risk to the public, he killed her just days later in a gut-wrenchingly awful case raised by Keir Starmer during the last prime minister’s questions. This was the first time the dire state of the service has been brought up at PMQs for several years. It is about time. 

How did a public service dedicated to public safety get into such a state? As recently as 2013, the inspectorate assessed the service across England and Wales as delivering good or excellent provision. What happened to destroy this was three years with Chris Grayling in charge. During his time as Lord Chancellor and secretary of state for justice he was a man in a hurry. Grayling closed prisons and reduced prison officers but without reducing the population of prisoners, leaving more of them crammed into fewer spaces without adequate staffing. 

This set challenges for probation officers working in prisons and tasked with supporting the reintegration of former prisoners into the community. Some of these individuals have previously committed very serious and violent offences and could be a danger — especially after experiencing years of filthy, violent, drug-ridden prisons. 

For a hundred years, probation has benefited from local connections, autonomy and professionalism. Having someone to look after you, somewhere to live and something to do all day provides the best chance of leading a crime-free life and being able to contribute to the local community. In 2014, at a stroke, all this was destroyed by the government’s short-sighted desire to find something — anything — to privatise. 

Because the court functions could not be given to a private company that might be managing the very sentence it had recommended to the judge, this element of probation had to remain a state function. The rest was divided up and given to various private contractors with disastrous, and predictable, consequences. 

Overall, some 200,000 men and women are supervised by probation at any one time. The majority of those overseen by the service have been sentenced to a community penalty. 

This unpaid work — a success story when linked to local neighbourhood needs — has now became symbolic of the wider failures. Private companies sent men to sit in car parks all day to fulfil their hours. The profit motive took possession of a process once firmly linked to the decisions of the courts; staff struggled to find purpose with what they were supervising. In 2018 and 2019, the then chief inspector of probation, Glenys Stacey, published a series of excoriating reports. 

Eventually, even ministers had to recognise that the service was failing and it was brought back under state control in 2020. Unfortunately, instead of reinstating local links, the functions were squeezed into the civil service. The independence and ability to speak out about local issues has gone. On-the-ground contacts with voluntary organisations and essential services such as housing have gone. The very things that are proven to prevent reoffending are gone. 

We now have a service that the current chief inspector describes as “shockingly bad” in many places. Heavy workloads, high vacancy rates, newly recruited, young and inexperienced staff who lack managers to guide their complex work: all these factors lead to mistakes. Ultimately they endanger the public. This deterioration only makes more pointless deaths like Aleena’s more likely. 

Ministers repeat the familiar mantra that new staff are being recruited, but they are coming in to a service where colleagues have lost faith and direction. It doesn’t have to be like this. Minimal reorganisation could revive a service essential for public safety. We should reinstate the links to local government so that housing, health, police and voluntary organisations can play a part. Yes, strategic direction and inspection must be central but local management is the best chance for reviving the probation service. 

I have one final suggestion. We need an expert body similar to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to provide evidence-based guidance on what works and to make sure that future ministers cannot announce new punishments or big changes for their own self-aggrandisement. 

There will always be mistakes and there may still be tragedies — human beings can be unpredictable. Sometimes professionals fail and people who are already damaged and violent may go on to do something awful. But we can limit the chances, help offenders to change and save on the costs of reoffending. 

There is a body of research that shows how to help people who have committed crimes to atone for what they have done and turn their lives around. Let’s use it.

Frances Crook
The writer is former chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform

The first of a number of published comments makes an extremely valid observation and points us in the direction of something I was unaware of from 1999 :-

"I seem to recall that the architect of the privatisation of probation services was the former Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw who back in 1999 was busy centralising the local probation services into a national organisation (NOMS) converting local probation officers into civil servants. It was reported back on 13 September 1999, in the Independent* that Straw was planning to privatise the service, though it was the Conservatives would later implement this Labour plan." *see article:

Straw plans to privatise probation

JACK STRAW, the Home Secretary, is drawing up plans to privatise the Probation Service if standards of supervising offenders are not improved, insiders have warned.

Senior Probation Service staff believe that the "very existence" of the service is threatened, with Mr Straw ready to contract out its work to private security companies such as Group 4, and to professionals such as psychologists, teachers and healthcare workers.

The alarm was sounded by probation chiefs in Avon, after "grave" warnings from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation that the service there was badly underperforming.

In a letter to staff, the Avon probation chiefs said: "We should be in no doubt that time is running out for the service nationally and if we fail to deliver the Government's agenda then it is clear that the Home Secretary will find alternative means of addressing his crime reduction policy."

The letter, signed by Roger Poynton, the acting Chief Probation Officer, Jean Findlay, the chairwoman of the Avon Probation Committee, and her two vice-chairman, states that Mr Straw may turn to private contractors rather than the modest changes to the service previously discussed. It states: "We ... would predict that his legislation will be of far greater significance, not tinkering with amalgamations, 100 per cent funding and civil servant CPOs [Chief Probation Officers], but more radically creating alternative means of supervising offenders in the community."

The Probation Service is working with the Home Office to become a nationally run service, funded entirely from central government, with chief officers employed as civil servants. But the Avon letter said: "The Home Secretary is already on record regarding his view that a range of alternative professionals (psychologists, teachers, health-care workers) should be involved with offenders and the prospect of contracting-out major sectors of work under the Government's Best Value initiative is a very real possibility."

The warning follows a visit to Avon by inspectors who "castigated" the service for its "appalling record on service delivery". The probation chiefs admitted that "vast sectors of our work are significantly below standard and to an extent that threatens our very existence".

Last night the Home Office said "nothing is ruled in or out" regarding the options for modernising the service.

Harry Fletcher, a spokesman for the National Association of Probation Officers, said the service was an easy target for politicians wanting to be seen to be hard on crime. He described the leaked letter as "an extraordinary attack on the integrity of staff".

--oo00oo--

Clearly the Independent still has probation in its sights. This from today:-

Probation crisis: one person killed every three days by offenders under supervision

More than 600 reviews in six years for alleged murders by known criminals

A person is killed every three days on average by an offender on probation in England and Wales, The Independent can reveal, as the crisis in public protection deepens. The litany of errors leading up to the murder of Zara Aleena by serial offender Jordan McSweeney has shone a spotlight on dangerous gaps in the monitoring of people leaving prison.

McSweeney had been released just nine days before brutally attacking and killing the aspiring lawyer as she walked home in east London, and a review by the probation watchdog warned that the horrific case was “symptomatic of much broader issues”.

Figures published by HM Inspectorate of Probation show that 622 reviews were triggered over alleged murders by reoffenders over the six years to 2020. Some culprits were ultimately acquitted, or convicted of lesser crimes such as manslaughter, while the Ministry of Justice recorded 415 cases of people being found guilty of a “serious further offence of murder” between 2014-15 and 2019-20.

More recent figures have not yet been published, but will include the murder of Aleena and the 2021 Killamarsh killings, which saw violent offender Damien Bendall murder three children and his pregnant partner.

Justin Russell, the chief inspector of probation, told a press conference last week: “It’s a core function of the probation service to protect the public from these risks, and they’re not getting it right at the moment.” He warned that until standards improve, it is “impossible to say that the public is being properly protected”, adding: “It could happen again.” Mr Russell said heavy workloads and high vacancy rates are making it impossible to properly monitor released prisoners, with the unit overseeing Aleena’s killer having had less than two-thirds of the required staff last year.

Many probation workers blame the chaos in staff recruitment and retention on underinvestment by the government, following the botched part-privatisation of the probation service in 2014 and the decision to renationalise it five years later. Ian Lawrence, general secretary of the Napo probation union, said staff “welcomed the return of probation back to state control but didn’t see the investment” needed.

He told The Independent that although work to recruit more staff is under way, many are “packing it in” within just weeks of arrival because of high workloads and the harrowing demands of the job. “The system needs sharpening. To say we’re giving staff training is all well and good, but [not] if they’ve got 75 cases on their books and they barely have time to go to the toilet,” Mr Lawrence added. 

“The government has failed to invest properly in the systems we need to ensure that mistakes like [that which led to Aleena’s murder] don’t happen again ... our members are working hard to protect the public.” He called for improvements in the way prisons provide information to probation workers on people coming up for release, and for police to act faster to arrest people who have broken licence conditions so they can be sent back to jail.

Napo had requested a meeting with justice secretary Dominic Raab, who is currently embroiled in allegations of bullying civil servants, but the task was passed to a junior minister. Mr Lawrence will put his demands to the prisons and probation minister, Damian Hinds, at a meeting on Monday. “The government needs to repair this service to the level it was at before it was part-privatised,” he said. “I’m not saying mistakes didn’t happen, but nothing like the scale of what’s been seen since.”

The Ministry of Justice said it had recruited 2,500 trainee probation officers over the past two years and would bring in another 500 by the end of March. A spokesperson added: “Serious further offences are incredibly rare, and the justice secretary has set out plans to overhaul the parole process and ensure prisoners who still pose a risk are kept behind bars. “We are investing £155m more into probation to deliver more robust supervision, reduce caseloads, and recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safe.”

Here We Go Again

Judging by media reports today, one has to wonder where the Labour Party is getting it's Criminal Justice System advice from as they head down the unintelligent and blinkered 'tough on crime' path again:-  

Victims choose offenders’ punishment under Labour’s anti-social behaviour review

Shadow justice secretary Steve Reed says he will update Tony Blair’s ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ mantra and focus on prevention. The victims of anti-social behaviour could choose how offenders are punished under plans being pitched by Labour.

The opposition has positioned itself as the party of law and order, with shadow justice secretary Steve Reed saying he will update Tony Blair’s “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” slogan and put prevention at the heart of their approach.

The Times said freedom of information requests showed nearly two million reports of anti-social behaviour had gone unattended over the past three years, while community sentences halved over the last decade from 185,265 in 2011 to 72,021 in 2021.

Criminal justice consultancy Crest Advisory attributed the decline to magistrates losing confidence that the sentences would be completed, the paper added.

Mr Reed said increasing and strengthening the use of such sentences would tackle reoffending rates and give “a voice directly to victims.” He told The Times: “Victims will be able to select the unpaid work that offenders carry out, so victims will be seeing justice done.”

Labour wants to widen the scope of community sentences work beyond tasks such as clearing wasteland, decorating community centres, repairing churches and removing graffiti. It also proposes victims sit on new community payback boards overseeing sentences and ensuring they are completed.

Mr Reed said he wants to update Mr Blair’s 1990s slogan about being “tough on the causes of crime” by reviewing how to put prevention at the heart of the criminal justice system. The review will look at how countries including New Zealand have adopted an approach of providing specialist treatment to prevent reoffending by those living with domestic violence or parents with serious mental health problems.

Mr Reed said: “Rather than just giving up on those people or letting them get out there and offend, I want to keep people safe and keep our community safe. “You can do that by tackling the effects of the trauma that leads them to offending. By doing it, you make them much less likely to offend again. “So if you really want to keep people safe, we’ve got to update Labour’s old slogan: ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ and make it fit for the future. “This whole science around trauma in early years didn’t exist in the early 1990s when Tony Blair came up with that phrase. So I want to update it for today.”

The party branded as “disgraceful” recent figures showing more than one million thefts went unsolved last year. An analysis by Labour of crime statistics found that 1,145,254 cases of theft were dropped last year because the police failed to find a suspect. It said that on average a domestic burglary costs victims £1,400, with the party warning that families were losing millions due to unsolved crimes.

Labour said that if it was in government, it would put 13,000 more police on the streets in a move funded by merging procurement for forces in England and Wales. Earlier this year police chiefs in England and Wales promised that forces will attend all residential thefts.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper on Tuesday called the figures “disgraceful”. “Theft and burglary are awful crimes and should be properly investigated, not just left for the victims to make an insurance claim. “The Home Secretary has no plan to turn this around and is instead obsessed with gimmicks rather than a serious plan to catch more criminals. “Labour has a fully costed plan to put 13,000 extra neighbourhood police on our streets, fighting crime at its source and supporting communities.”

The party also found that the overall charge rate, which is the proportion of crimes that result in a suspect being arrested and charged, has fallen to a low of just 5.4%, down from over 15% seven years ago.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “As the Home Secretary has made clear, we welcome the commitment for police attendance at home burglaries. “We continue to support the police, including through record investment and the recruitment of 20,000 additional officers by March 2023.”

A Dystopian Nightmare

Seeing as it's been referenced, ('more wanky shyte') we might as well cover the latest Probation Service Change Bulletin. I have to say I find it paints a particularly depressing and emotionless picture of bureaucratic-speak, utterly devoid of any soul and in somewhat stark contrast to all the fluffy bullshit associated with 'Probation Day' at the other end of the spectrum.

Of course, as we know, the centre of the practice spectrum is characterised by widespread low morale, departures and crisis, but hey ho, this is what happens when you have the vast civil service bureaucracy running things and, as has been highlighted, the perfect recipe for more breaches; more offences; more imprisonment. But then HM Prison Service is increasingly driving things. What a dystopian nightmare we are steadily creating.  

1. Foreword

Welcome to the bi-monthly Probation Service Change Bulletin – keeping you updated on what is happening across the Probation Service. I’m Ian Barrow and I’ll be hosting this month’s bulletin. I’m the Executive Director of the Probation Workforce Programme.

A lot has happened since the last bulletin in July. We have seen significant changes in Government and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). We welcome back Dominic Raab as the Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

There have also been changes within our own leadership team. Amy Rees was appointed Director General CEO for HMPPS and Phil Copple appointed Director General Operations, further information on these changes can been see in our recent update.

Amy and Phil are leading our plans to reshape the agency, with their joint focus being a continuing and greater focus on the operational front line. Their aim is to make sure the frontline has the right support and that we remove any obstacles that stop us being more efficient and effective, ensuring that Prison, Probation and the Youth Custody Service are support to enhance the vital services they provide.

Jo Farrar continues to have oversight for HMPPS alongside her wider Second Permanent Secretary responsibilities overseeing the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), Legal Aid Agency, Office of the Public Guardian, and leadership of the service delivery transformation portfolios. Amy and Phil’s appointments signal the start of an exciting journey for HMPPS.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Sonia Flynn, Chief Probation Officer, who after 35 years of working in Probation will be making a change of career direction and taking up a part time role within the Probation Workforce Programme as of February 2023. Sonia will be leading on the development and setting up of the new professional register, an area of work I know she is particularly passionate about. It will be great to still have her wealth of experience and knowledge within probation.

2. Reform Programme Closure

The probation reform programme will close as planned at the end of the year. We have delivered a big, very complex Government programme on time, to budget, much of it in a global pandemic. In June 2021 we welcomed over 7,000 probation professionals, either directly into probation services or employed by one of the organisations delivering commissioned rehabilitative services. We have completed 47 delivery priorities out of 69 based on the target operating model. Highlights this month include the launch of the new resettlement framework and enhancements to the Victims Contact Management System.

Since unification, our focus has been on ensuring a smooth transition phase and embedding some of the changes we have made. Once the programme does close, we will continue to implement the reforms set out in our Target Operating Model. In the December issue we will be updating further on all that has been achieved since the programme commenced.

3. Reducing Reoffending

This summer (July) we marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of our prison leaver accommodation service (Community Accommodation Service – Tier 3, or CAS3), a temporary accommodation service which aims to ensure no individual subject to probation supervision is released from prison into homelessness.

CAS3 provides up to 84 nights of temporary accommodation and support for all adult offenders released from prison or leaving an Approved Premises or BASS (Bail Accommodation and Support Service) residence who would otherwise have nowhere to go upon release. Hear from Probation Officer Lindsay as she explains how CAS3 supports safe reintegration back into society.

3.1 Stable Accommodation

Prison leavers who do not have access to stable accommodation on release are almost 50% more likely to reoffend. In creating a stable environment through accommodation, CAS3 gives people on probation the opportunity to address aspects of their behaviour linked to their risk of reoffending, including substance misuse issues and unemployment. CAS3 also supports pathways into settled accommodation, working with local authorities to increase access to private rental properties for prison leavers at risk of becoming homeless.

3.2 One Year On

CAS3 was launched in July 2021, initially in the North West, Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and the Humber, East of England, and Kent, Surrey, and Sussex probation regions. Since then, 2,396 individuals have been successfully placed into temporary accommodation. Roll out in Wales has now begun, and the programme team are in the process of competing contracts for the remaining probation regions.

3.3 Mandatory Drug Testing

People on probation recently released from custody residing within Approved Premises will now be randomly tested for 14 different types of drugs as part of a £1.2 million initiative to reduce reoffending. Read more about how this will help to reduce drug-fuelled crime.

4. Electronic Monitoring

We highlighted in the last bulletin the publication of the electronic monitoring strategy, setting out our clear vision for electronic monitoring. One of the key aspects of the strategy is the integration of electronic monitoring into Offender Management.

As we continue to expand electronic monitoring capabilities and its use, we will continue to ensure that our electronic monitoring structures are more closely integrated to offender management, building on the advantages of the Probation Reform Programme, ensuring electronic monitoring can provide the greatest effect for both those on probation in terms of rehabilitation and from a safety perspective for wider society.

The latest electronic monitoring statistics were recently published, with figures showing that the number of individuals actively monitored has increased in the last year, with 14,996 individuals actively monitored at 30 September 2022.

This is the first quarterly publication that has been produced and contains details of the number of individuals in England and Wales with an active electronic tag fitted, the number of new notification orders and the number of completed orders. It also contains details of the number of individuals with an alcohol monitoring tag and the number monitored under the acquisitive crime pilot.

We continue to expand electronic monitoring capabilities and Wednesday 26 October saw the expansion of the eligibility criteria for the compulsory GPS tagging of people on probation convicted of specific acquisitive crimes.

The project will now see the eligibility cohort expanded to those who are serving standard determinate sentences of 90 days and over – previously only those serving 12 months or over were eligible – who are released or re-released to reside within one of the 19 in-scope police force areas: Avon & Somerset, Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Gwent, Humberside, West Midlands, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Metropolitan, North Wales, Nottinghamshire and Sussex.

5. Grant Scheme

A grant scheme launched by the Probation Service is encouraging applications from charities and not-for-profit organisations. The scheme is to assist people with shared characteristics or shared experiences, and to provide support for people on probation with their desistance and rehabilitation. Grants are being funded through the Probation Service’s Regional Outcomes and Innovation Fund and aim to cover most activities regions would wish to grant fund.

Organisations interested in applying for a grant from this scheme should register through the Probation Grants Application Portal.

Once registered on the Ministry of Justice Sourcing Portal, organisations should go to PQQ open to all suppliers and click on Probation grants Application Process to complete their registration. The first round of grants will be for people from ethnic minority groups. Organisations successful registered on the Portal can submit a funding application for the first round until 2pm on 2 November.

6. Unpaid Work

People on probation on Community Payback are cleaning up the coastline in South Wales as part of the Marine Conservation Society’s annual Great British Beach Clean. The groups will be bagging up broken glass, plastic, and litter from beaches in Ogmore and Aberavon to support the green drive and pay back to the communities they have harmed. The rubbish they recover will be logged and the data then used by the charity to pinpoint the main pollutants and campaign for change.

The coastline clean-up marks the beginning of a new partnership between the Probation Service and Marine Conservation Society that will eventually see hundreds of people on probation on Community Payback cleaning beaches across England and Wales.

It follows a similar partnership with the Canal & River Trust with offenders on Community Payback helping to maintain the country’s waterways and is part of the government’s £93 million investment to increase unpaid work carried out by offenders up to eight million hours a year. The public can nominate Community Payback projects in their local area via the nominations page.

An Opportunity

For those either living and/or working in London, here's an opportunity to have your say on what you think of the 'new look' probation service:- 

Probation in London

The London Assembly Police and Crime Committee has launched an investigation into the London Probation Service.

We will consider how the London Probation Service is working in partnership with statutory agencies and voluntary sector organisations since reunification, to support people under probation supervision and reduce their risk of reoffending.

Background

In June 2021, the London Probation Service was established, signalling a major change in how probation services are delivered across London. The creation of the London Probation Service was part of wider reforms to the delivery of probation services across England and Wales.

These reforms brought to an end the previous Transforming Rehabilitation model, which split the delivery of probation between privately-operated Community Rehabilitation Companies and the state-run National Probation Service. In its place, the Probation Service was established, with London as one of its 12 regional units across England and Wales.

The reunified service is responsible for the delivery of all sentence management, Unpaid Work, structured interventions and the commissioning of rehabilitative and resettlement services from third-party providers.

One-year on from these reforms, the Police and Crime Committee will consider how well the reunified model is operating and whether it is working as effectively as it can with partner agencies such as the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), the Metropolitan Police, London Boroughs, voluntary organisations and community sector organisations, to reduce reoffending.

Key questions

1. What, if any, improvements have there been in the delivery of probation services in London one-year on from reunification? Please refer to any aspect of probation delivery you have knowledge of, i.e. 

• advice provided to court
• pre-release planning
• resettlement support
• access to accommodation
• sentence management
• delivery of Unpaid Work, accredited programmes and structured interventions.

2. How have changes to probation services affected partnership working between the London Probation Service, MOPAC and the Met?

3. Has the experience of those bidding for contracts or applying for grants to deliver services under the new model improved, either through the London Probation Service or MOPAC?

4. What further action could MOPAC and the London Probation Service take to access voluntary sector expertise in the design and delivery of services aimed at reducing reoffending?

5. Are the specific needs of women being met under the reunified probation service?

6. Are there particular challenges facing Black, Asian and/or minority ethnic people under probation supervision in London?

7. Are the specific needs of other groups of Londoners being met under the reunified probation service? For example, disabled people, people who are LGBTIQA+, older people etc.

8. Do you have any other thoughts in relation to probation services in London not covered by the questions above?

How to get involved

Submissions should aim to address any of the questions outlined above, and other issues that are relevant to the investigation.

We are keen to hear from probation practitioners, campaigners, voluntary sector organisations, London boroughs and anyone else with an interest in this topic. We also particularly welcome evidence from service users and those with lived experience of probation services in London and are open to receiving evidence in different formats, such as videos or voice recordings if that makes it easier for someone to respond.

To contribute, please send submissions to the committee by the deadline of Monday 18 July 2022 by emailing scrutiny@london.gov.uk using 'PCC - probation investigation’ as the subject title. 

Latest From HMI

On 17th May the House of Commons Justice Committee took oral evidence from four HMI's and this is what Justin Russell had to say about probation:-  

Q79 Chair: Thank you for that, Mr Cayley. Mr Russell, what about probation? 

Justin Russell: Thank you, Chair. As you know, we inspect both probation and youth justice services. We have done that through the pandemic, and we have seen a very different picture between those two services. 

To start with probation, they have had a very tough year. They have had the twin challenges of implementing the unification structural reform, at the same time as recovering from covid and having to go in and out of the exceptional delivery arrangements that were required by covid lockdown. In spite of some very dedicated staff—like Andy, I pay tribute to the commitment of probation staff—they are still a long way from performing at pre-covid levels. Four out of the six of our recent local probation inspections have been rated inadequate and the quality of the work we are seeing in individual cases is down against all our quality standards. 

Although the proportion of cases being seen face to face by probation officers has significantly increased over the past year, which is positive, we are finding on our inspections that those face-to-face interactions are often little more than a brief check-in, with not enough real work being done around offending behaviour. We are finding that 70% to 80% of accredited programme requirements still have not started. Almost a third of unpaid work orders are not being completed within the first 12 months. 

Underlying all the impacts of covid are some deeper structural issues that we were finding before the pandemic. We see acute shortages of staff at all grades in some areas, in particular the south-east. For example, in Essex north, in a report we published this morning, we were told that the vacancy rate for senior probation officers and more junior probation service officers was 60% at the beginning of this year. In Kent, Surrey and Sussex— 

Q80 Chair: Perhaps we can explore that in a bit more detail: a big issue with staffing and vacancy rates. Anything else on probation? 

Justin Russell: In the Kent, Surrey, Sussex region, the overall vacancy rate for probation officers is a quarter. There are significant numbers of new recruits coming, and they have set some ambitious targets for recruitment, but it can take up to three years to recruit, train and settle in a new probation officer. We have to acknowledge that the number of people leaving the service is also going up, so the attrition rate is high. 

Q81 Chair: Can we move on to the youth justice side? We will come back to probation. 

Justin Russell: Youth justice has again had a challenging year but, interestingly, performance has held up. Two thirds of the YOTs we inspected we rated good or outstanding in the past year, and we have not found any inadequate. Their scores on leadership and management of out-of-court disposals are going up. They have been able to respond much more flexibly. The key issue is that they already had quite small caseloads and the caseloads have got even smaller. That has helped them to keep the standard of service going. 

Q82 Chair: That is very helpful, thanks. Mr Taylor, over to you.

--oo00oo--

Q123 Rob Butler: Fine, okay. Mr Russell, you touched on the fact that the probation service was unified in 2021, at the time of the pandemic. You expressed some reservations about how things have gone so far. How well do you think the probation service is operating as a unified model? 

Justin Russell: At the point of unification at the end of June last year, I said unification by itself was not a magic bullet for all the underlying problems we found with the service, and that has certainly proved to be the case since. The staff we are talking to do not feel all the problems have been solved. They say that the service seems to be operating in survival mode. 

There are three crucial things we are still finding as issues. First, in relation to the assessment and management of risk of harm to the public, potentially posed by people on probation, performance is at an unacceptable level. We are finding 60% of the cases we are looking at are unsatisfactory on that key aspect of practice; 40% of domestic abuse checks are not being done where they think they should. There is an issue around risk of harm that has not gone away and, if anything, is getting worse. 

The second issue is around delivery of practical support and interventions to people on probation, where we see courses not started, even by the end of a sentence. Domestic abuse perpetrators with requirements to start a course are still not completing that. At 30% to 40%, commencement is well down on that. The externally commissioned services to provide support around accommodation or education, training or employment activities, are again heavily over-subscribed, so we are starting to see some backlogs around that. 

The third issue, which I have referred to already, is around the acute staff shortages. The great majority of staff we are speaking to are saying that staff levels are simply not sufficient, and they feel their case loads are unmanageable. That problem has definitely not gone away and, if anything, is getting worse. 

Q124 Rob Butler: Have you seen any decrease in staff from the old CRCs, who did not want to join the newly unified service? 

Justin Russell: We can’t make a direct comparison of total staff numbers now with before unification, because we had no idea of CRC staff numbers. What has become evident, as we have seen the unification of the services, is that there were some big gaps in staffing at all grades. I certainly hear anecdotal evidence that some CRC staff are leaving. Published attrition rates have gone up in the last quarter of last year, and are particularly high in the south-east. 

Q125 Rob Butler: When I spoke to CRCs prior to unification, concerns were raised about whether, in the newly unified model, they would have the freedom that they had enjoyed in the CRCs. Examples were about types of flexible working. That was pre-covid times, so that was flexible working that suited where they needed to be for their clients. 

There were also things as simple as having an iPad, or similar tablet device, that they could work on while travelling, rather than have to go back to the office to get on a desktop monitor, as they had had to do previously with the former structure of the probation service. There were also concerns that some CRCs had more up-to-date software systems that gave real-time information about offenders, which were not going to migrate into the new unified model because the national probation service didn’t have one. Have you been able to assess whether there has been any impact of that move to unification? Have some of the advances that were made in CRCs been lost? 

Justin Russell: There are two issues. In terms of the autonomy that service leaders in particular have, because of covid there has been quite rigid control from the centre of what the delivery model should be under these exceptional delivery arrangements. When we have talked to service leaders, they have said that they have found that quite constraining, and that they are looking to acquire more freedoms as things return to normal. 

In terms of the systems that the CRCs developed, I have said to this Committee before that there were some rather good case management systems in London, the Thames valley and the KSS regions that have been lost as those staff have had to migrate on to OASys and then Delius, the public sector systems. Some of the CRC staff are struggling to cope with that, as they didn’t have long to get to know those systems and that learning still needs to be consolidated. 

Q126 Rob Butler: What is the impact of that on the service they can provide and on keeping people safe? One of the aspects that I was particularly worried about in the inspectorate review that we were sent is that there were real concerns about public safety. 

Justin Russell: Certainly, the scores in relation to the quality of assessments being undertaken by probation staff in some areas of Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and in the east of England, were worrying. In an inspection we published this morning on North Essex, we felt that only a quarter of the cases we looked at were satisfactory, in relation to the assessment and management of the risk of harm. That is a big concern for us. Misallocation of cases can result if you get that risk assessment wrong at the beginning of the process. If you don’t do the necessary domestic abuse checks, the public can be at risk. That is still our biggest area of concern in the inspections we are doing. 

Q127 Rob Butler: The number of people who have not completed their unpaid work requirements remains incredibly high. Why do you think that is, given that community restrictions have been lifted? 

Justin Russell: You are right: there are about 14,000 people who have been given an unpaid work order but have still not completed it within 12 months of the order. That is clearly an impact of the pandemic. In the period between March 2020 and the end of last year, there were eight months when it was literally impossible to deliver unpaid work because of lockdown restrictions on the use of minivans or social distancing requirements around placements. They have removed those restrictions since the beginning of April, but there is a huge backlog of work to get through, and that will take quite a bit of time. They have set a target of increasing delivery to 155% of pre-covid levels by September, but that is already pushing back the original trajectory, and they are quite a long way off that level at the moment. 

Q128 Rob Butler: How confident are you that they will reach that target? 

Justin Russell: I think more needs to be done. If you look at what they have got in hand, they are recruiting 500 more unpaid work staff. As I said, they have suspended all the restrictions and a wider range of placements has come on stream. Those new staff don’t really come on stream until June or July, but from that point you would hope to see quite a significant improvement in productivity and performance. The other thing they need to get right is compliance with unpaid work orders. They have seen a big drop-off in the proportion of people actually attending the sessions they are supposed to be doing. Merely by improving that rate of compliance, you would significantly increase the delivery of unpaid work. 

Q129 Rob Butler: On that note, I read, I think only today or yesterday, that in some areas they have invented something that is essentially unpaid working a box. People were sent almost a project that they could complete at home, so they could complete their hours that way. Is that really what the courts intend? 

Justin Russell: I think this was an innovation at the time of total lockdown, when it was literally impossible to run outdoor placements for unpaid work. Rather than not have any unpaid work happening, the alternative was, as you say, to provide projects that people could do at home. I think the focus now has to be on those outdoor placements— agreements with people like the Forestry Commission or the Canal & River Trust—to get people out and about doing visible community payback. 

Q130 Rob Butler: Ultimately, do you think the unified model of probation is going to be an improvement? 

Justin Russell: Yes, I think it was the right thing to do. I think people working in the service thought it was the right thing to do, but it will take at least two or three years to get to a steady state and see performance really improve. You need to fill these great staff vacancies, you need to improve the IT systems that they have, and you need to work on a credible set of programmes as well, so it is certainly some way off before we get to that point. 

Q131 Rob Butler: You touched briefly earlier also on youth offending teams. I think you described two thirds of them as doing well—not least because the case loads are smaller—which is a great tribute to all the people who work in those youth offending teams up and down the country. Are you concerned that case loads might increase with the move away from lockdowns and restrictions, and also with the increase in police numbers? It is certainly a concern that I have had expressed to me locally, in my own constituency, by the police. 

Justin Russell: As crime rates go up, you would expect case loads to increase as well. The interesting thing is the changing balance within case loads. We are seeing fewer and fewer court order cases, and more and more out-of-court diversion work. If police numbers do go up, the likelihood is that it will lead to more out-of-court diversions and community resolution work, which is actually now the majority of the case loads in many of the youth offending services that we are visiting. 

Q132 Rob Butler: Are you content that the funding model for those youth offending services properly reflects that shift in emphasis? 

Justin Russell: I think you have a combination of Youth Justice Board grants to the YOTs plus local funding coming in. They are actually reasonably well resourced at the moment. As you said, we are seeing very small case loads. It is not unusual to see a case manager with only six or seven cases on their books. If you compare that to a probation officer with 40 or 50, there is a huge gap, so I think there is an issue with where those resources are best targeted. They are quite rich in things such as adolescent mental health services, speech and language facilities, and specialist education workers. Could those workers be made available slightly further up the age range? I would like to see YOTs looking at maybe working with 18 or 19-year-olds, for example. That is something that would be worth exploring. 

Rob Butler: You’d be knocking at an open door with me, but I am not the person who makes the decision. I suspect Mr Taylor would like it as well. 

Chair: Many thanks, Mr Butler. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. That has been very comprehensive, and we are grateful to you. The session is concluded.

Newcastle Napo AGM 2021 Addresses

I notice the AGM addresses by the General Secretary and Chair have been published on the Napo website and I've selected what I feel are the most relevant parts:-.  

Good morning Conference, I’m Ian Lawrence General Secretary. Proud and privileged to be here with you all in person and to welcome those joining us remotely.

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Lastly, what about the crises being faced by Napo members right now, and that includes the relentless workloads being faced by our members in Cafcass and Probation NI who have common purpose in terms of their pay lagging behind comparable professions and who also need urgent action to redress that imbalance. I will report further to members about the progress in negotiations at the earliest opportunity.

Meanwhile, today I need to address the Broken Promises on Probation Pay. You all heard the comments by new Minister Malthouse yesterday, and I could see that you were overwhelmingly underwhelmed. Sadly, it was full of promises but short on commitment; much about the 4 pillars required to help rebuild the Probation service and the money being made available for that, but no mention of the fifth pillar, namely paying staff a decent wage.

I listened carefully to the debate yesterday and I look forward to taking note of the questions that you could not put to the Minister yesterday. I can assure you that Katie Lomas and I will deliver these in person at our meeting with him in a couple of weeks. I can hardly wait!

Because its time for us to make that stand that speakers in the debates spoke of yesterday. To stand against low pay across all employers obviously, but to build on the confidence that has been generated by way of our recent indicative ballot to reject the pay freeze and to reject the Probation Pay offer that I will be telling Minister Malthouse is an abject disgrace And we will also ask the Minister why, if other departments can agree multi year pay deals such as the MoJ, HMRC and Crown Prosecution Service, why can’t probation?

And we will also ask why it is that the Treasury has such a downer on Probation Pay. There are many potential answers of course, but here is one in my opinion; and its that they don’t believe that Probation staff will stand up for themselves, they don’t think that you have the the stomach for that struggle if it should come to it. Well, for those in high places I have a big message, that for the first time in recent history all 3 probation unions have returned indicative ballot results of between 86% and 99%, all 3 unions pointing in the right direction for further direct action if push comes to shove. Because its pretty straightforward:

Probation workers have had it with low pay, Have had it being taken for granted And are not prepared to see workloads and attrition rates remain at unsustainable levels And who cannot stand to see promising young PQIPS fold after a week in the job, mentally scarred by their experience and cannot tolerate vacancy rates in probation delivery units reach an all time high, and we will ask the Minister - how can you let this happen and what are you going to do to redress years of hollow promises to address low pay in the profession?

But I have an obligation to point out that we have more work to do to prepare for this new frontier that’s ahead of us; more work in tightening up our contact details for members likely to be involved in a trade dispute if it comes, and more work with our sister unions to build on the indicative ballot results, but Napo’s turnout in the consultative process gives me every confidence that we can meet the challenges set by the pernicious Trade Union Act, for that result was the highest turnout in Napo’s recent history and you can be be proud of where we have got to.

I expect that we will talk more about pay before this AGM is done, but for now lets send a very clear message to this Government. Probation staff need a decent pay rise and they need it now; no ifs, no buts, not next year,….. but now! For If you fail to pay people who do so much to protect our communities and try to help people turn their lives around, they may decide to vote with their feet because they simply cannot take anymore. We want to avoid that, so - reach a deal with us, show us some good faith and stop taking your loyal, highly committed staff for granted.

This AGM has again demonstrates why this union has such a proud heritage, and again its given you the opportunity to showcase the value of the work done by our members, and why those members need to be afforded the respect and dignity that they deserve.

I will be led by your judgement and your decisions, and in return I pledge to offer every ounce of my energy to this new, urgent campaign on Probation Pay. It’s a struggle that has sadly become necessary but one that you and your leadership group will embrace and pursue to the best of our ability.

Thank you conference,

Ian Lawrence

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Good afternoon to you all, whether you are in glorious 3D here in Newcastle or joining virtually from the comfort of your home or the relative discomfort of your office. I am so pleased that we are, yet again, trying a new way of delivering our AGM to make it as accessible as possible. The decision to run a fully virtual event last year was brave and while it wasn’t a complete success it certainly taught us something about how our AGM could become more inclusive. As you know it has been our practice for some time to move the AGM venue each year to share the burden of lengthy and costly travel around. This does mean that some people only attend an AGM when it is close by and some don’t attend at all, those with school age children or adult care responsibilities can particularly struggle. One of the things that struck me most after last year’s event was that some members said they were attending because the event was virtual and therefore accessible in a way AGM had not been before but another member said they felt more confident to speak at AGM when it was virtual. This told me something about the barriers to AGM attendance not being solely about the distance and staying away from home.

This year the threat of COVID has not disappeared and there will be members who aren’t advised to travel or mix with others, especially as we go into the winter season when many experts predict other viruses will delight in the depletion of our immune response due to lockdowns. So we decided to try something new – a hybrid AGM that would be more accessible and inclusive, that would allow more and different members to attend. Luckily our chosen venue for 2021 is pretty big and that allowed us to remove the restrictions on in person attendance allowing as many people as wished to attend in person. There are bound to be some hiccups with the hybrid format but we are absolutely determined to do as we did last year and learn all of the lessons we can to make future hybrid AGMs ever better.

For me personally nothing can beat the feeling of solidarity, camaraderie and joy that an in person event brings but I am not naïve and I know that this experience and viewpoint is not universal, for some being face to face is far more challenging, or the price that they pay for those good feelings is too high. So we will continue to try to make our events hybrid, and therefore more inclusive. As ever please give as much feedback as possible to help us develop and improve, we really value it. You may notice that we have focussed this year more on participation than fanci-ness and that is deliberate and as a direct result of feedback from last year.

It falls to me to open our AGM and conference and in doing so reflect on the forgoing year. I genuinely feel that each year I say “what a year it has been” and this year will be no different. I stood here last year and spoke about the unification process and how tough it would be. How foolish I was, how naïve! I thought it would be tough but in fact it has been far worse. The confusion and frustration around assignment and alignment processes were awful for members who faced uncertainty in the transfer process. That was bad enough but the weeks after transfer have shown just how bad things were in CRCs and the NPS. The coming together has exposed the weaknesses across all employers. Workloads have sky-rocketed to ever more dangerous levels and staff struggling to adapt to a new employer and new ways of working are bombarded with tick-box spreadsheets and demands to complete mandatory online training. Confusion and chaos reign in Probation right now, with pay problems that elicit at least 17 different responses depending who you ask, continuing confusion about the consultations on major changes involved in moving to the Target Operating Model and workloads so high that newly qualified officers leave rather than suffer the way they’ve seen their colleagues suffer during training. The whole system is in disarray but I just wanted to highlight a few areas that we are working on at present.

SPO Workloads are out of control. They have been a concern since 2014 but in the last year they have reached crisis point. SPOs managing a team of people with excessive workloads find themselves at the mercy of a resourcing model which says they can manage 10 people. That would be challenge enough but consider the number of staff working part time, the calculations use FTE (full time equivalent) so if the team has several people working part time in it the number climbs but the staff require managing whether they work full or part time. Then PQUIP trainees only count for a fraction of a full timer even though they arguably need more support and closer management than more experienced staff. So an SPO can have 15 or 20 staff to manage, all needing supervision, all needing input on their work around risk, all struggling with excessive workloads and all needing support to navigate massive organisational change. On top of this SPOs are the first port of call for pay problems which, we have discovered, can be so intractable that it takes teams of people months to resolve them. Every time a new process is introduced, every time an audit or case review suggests the need for practice improvement, more work is heaped onto SPOs. Our SPO Forum relaunched this year and Vice Chair Carole Doherty has created a space for SPO members to come together to offer and seek support and to make sur their concerns are raised. Sonia Flynn attended the last meeting to hear first hand the views of members and Carole is now working with the team who are carrying out the management review that we secured commitment for in our 2018 pay deal. It takes time to effect change but we are proudly making sure that the voices of our members are heard when decisions are being made.

ViSOR use and the police vetting required for it continues to be a huge concern. We now know that vetting failure rates are low but the impact on those who fail this vetting is huge. Movement to a different area of work has an impact on morale and potentially your career but more insidious is the impact on diversity of our workforce. Police vetting for ViSOR use is now part of the recruitment process and anyone who fails will not be employed in Probation. To understand why this impacts on diversity we must consider the known reasons for failure. You will automatically fail if you have live County Court Judgements against you, this is a situation that many people who have experienced financial hardship will face. If you are a Black or Asian man you are more likely to be stopped by Police, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be charged and at Court more likely to receive a custodial sentence than if you are a white man. Police vetting looks at any convictions you have but also convictions of your closest contacts and any intelligence about criminal networks. It surely follows therefore that people in our society who are more likely to be convicted and who have families also more likely to be convicted will be less likely to be able to work in Probation. Next we consider another reason for failure of vetting – those who have been a victim of domestic abuse but remain connected to their abuser in some way, perhaps because they have a child or children together. This can be considered an ongoing link by Police and vetting would fail.

So, those who have experienced financial hardship and had no cushion to help them – poor and working class people are less likely to be able to work in probation, black and Asian men face far higher likelihood of failing police vetting and therefore ever more barriers to employment in probation, and victims who struggle to fully disconnect from their abuser, either because of the nature of the abuse or because of some other link between them are also less likely to work in probation.

At a time when HMPPS are proudly announcing the employment of 1,000 people with lived experience of the criminal justice system in the Probation P of HMPPS people with lived experience who already work in the system are being sidelined and recruiting new staff with such experience will be ever harder. Make no mistake, there are now, and have been for decades, people working in Probation at all levels with lived experience of the justice system, and probation practice is all the richer for their presence. Now however we face people with this invaluable experience being recruited only to special roles separate from ordinary probation practice.

Napo’s position is that people with lived experience of the justice system should be able to work in any and all roles in Probation. We know that careful consideration must be given and assessments will need to be made to enable this but external vetting by the Police for the sole purpose of using a computer system should not be a barrier to creating a diverse workforce. We have consistently taken a solution focussed approach to this, first suggesting that ViSOR is not the best way to share information given the complexities of processes – instead we suggested allowing other agencies restricted access to Delius instead. This was not pursued, then we suggested that those who fail vetting could be given a protected caseload that didn’t require ViSOR use – this was seen as not possible for NPS. When unification was on the table we tried again, a mixed caseload in the PS would surely allow for staff without ViSOR vetting to have a caseload that didn’t need ViSOR. Again our reasonable suggestions were politely ignored. We will continue to raise this and to carefully monitor the impact of vetting on staff who transferred from CRCs. We have raised the issue with Justin Russell, after the HMiP report on race in probation and are now working hard to raise the issue more widely.

Another ongoing and very tricky issue is OMiC, the movement of the supervision of clients during the custodial part of their sentence into the prison where a team of Probation and Prison staff work together to carry out all of the tasks formerly performed by an Offender Manager in the community and an Offender Supervisor in custody. We are told this is being done because “end to end offender management” didn’t work. But it wasn’t really given much chance, with community staff not being resourced to travel to prisons, bans on travel claims due to cuts and excessive workloads meaning custody cases were deprioritised. Despite the obvious solution being to fix these issues OMiC was apparently the answer. So now instead of the community practitioner being the consistent thread throughout the sentence, from custody into the community someone serving a custodial sentence will have a new offender manager every time they move prisons and only meet their community officer close to their release. OMiC moves the work formerly done in the community and adds it to the work formerly done in the prison. It therefore moves staff into prisons. There is at present no workload measurement tool for OMiC and so inevitably workloads are high, staffing too low and because the administrative support comes from the prison team it is taking a long time for them to adjust to tasks they have no experience of.

Most concerning is the plan to move prison based SPOs into the line management of the prison governor. This is due to happen soon. We are utterly opposed to this and have been since the start. Probation Service staff have different terms and conditions and different ways of working than prison staff, the experience of COVID showed us that these differences can cause tensions and we had to intervene in several regions where prison governors, even before line managing the SPOs were insisting that despite the PS policy being to work at home where possible they wanted all probation staff to be in the prison every day. SPO members working in prisons tell us they are looking to move roles to avoid the inevitable issues that will make their positions very tough indeed. We have yet to see the full guidance for the line management arrangements but we remain vigilant to the risks to our members.

Unification has meant that programmes work now all resides in the probation service. This is cause for celebration however there are many concerns about moves to alter programmes and delivery requirements and the potential for “dumbing down” skilled work. We await the promised consultation on the detailed plans for programmes, but we anticipate having to fight the move away from quality and towards economy as driver for the changes.

COVID has brought many challenges and it’s impact will resonate throughout the system for years. One of the challenges we face now is the backlogs of cases waiting to go through the Courts, we all know that the Court system was struggling anyway and closures of Courts, low staffing and lack of resources meant there were already delays but some now face a wait of years for their case to be heard, and members working in Courts face ever more pressure to produce their advice to the Court in the quickest way possible. Despite many reports reinforcing what we already knew – that a quality pre-sentence report cannot be produced quickly – the direction of travel is towards speedy justice, seemingly at any cost. Rather than reopening closed courts, or investing in the staff who make the system work, the focus now seems to be on extending Court sitting hours and pushing through cases, ignoring the warnings that speedy justice sometimes simply isn’t justice at all.

In Unpaid Work there are also backlogs due to the pandemic and Napo’s ‘safety first’ approach to recovery is being pushed past it’s limit by the fervour to ramp up delivery despite concerns about virus transmission. Alongside this we have the challenge of unification, with the chaos that has brought. Unpaid Work staff face uncertainty and the planned work with trade unions on the new operating model, which could have helped to deal with some of the backlog issues, have been forgotten about as senior leaders just try to deal with the immediate chaos facing them.

There are so many other problems in the system, too many to list – even though we have three days!

Does this all sound a little bleak? At a recent branch meeting we acknowledged it is all quite bleak and that much work is needed to get us to a point where practitioners feel that Probation is functioning again. The damage that has been done to the system is both broad and deep and will take many years to repair. Amidst this bleakness however there is a spark of hope. The hope is Napo, us, the members, the reps, the staff, working together not just to represent the interests of members in their employment rights but also to represent the profession, the idea and ideals of Probation.

Our reps, activists and members have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to keep themselves, their colleagues, their clients and the communities they serve as safe as possible. The haste to “recover” has been resisted at all levels and while we struggle to hold the line on this we must always remember that safety comes first. Keeping us safe in our work is a legal duty on our employer and whether the risk be COVID or work related stress the same duty of care is owed to us. If you feel unsafe at work, due to COVID or due to work related stress, please contact your branch reps, follow the advice we’ve issued, escalate concerns to the Link Officer and Official for your branch and make sure we all work together to fight these significant threats to our safety.

In many ways it may seem that we have lost some of our power since TR, the Civil Service approach is not always conducive to problem solving and the solution focussed approach we took when we were in smaller probation trusts. But we do have power – in our union. We have collective power, far greater than the sum of it’s parts. I am looking forward to spending these three days discussing and debating how we use that power, and how we channel and focus our efforts to effect real change.

If the situation for Probation members in England and Wales sounds a little bleak, our colleagues in Cafcass and Probation Northern Ireland aren’t faring much better. The organisational change issues aren’t there in the same way but workloads and pay are. In Cafcass our reps have been working tirelessly to protect members from the threats of COVID and work related stress. Dialogue with the employer has been established but there is much work to do and I know that will be discussed more tomorrow. There is, just like in Probation, no easy or quick solution to the workload issues. The work is there, and is increasing as a result of the pandemic. The funding provided to meet the need was a one off – so won’t continue and hasn’t appreciably made a difference. Cafcass needs serious investment, long term funding to increase staffing and reduce workloads to manageable levels.

In Northern Ireland workloads continue to be an issue and we are working hard to try to put in place processes to address workloads and to ensure that staff have a route to address them.

With all of this going on it can be difficult to take notice of what is happening around us, and to make space for things that we, as a professional association, should be involved in. That’s why I want to pay tribute to Emma Cluley as she steps down as Managing Editor of the Probation Journal. Emma has made an incredible contribution to Napo in this role and will be greatly missed. I know the recent Editorial Board meeting was her last, and the report to this AGM will also be her last, please show your appreciation for her dedication and commitment to Napo and to Probation.

Yesterday I was pleased to chair the women in napo fringe meeting where we launched a research partnership with long term member Becky Shepherd. Becky is looking at vicarious trauma in women who work with women and we hope that her findings will help us to secure better support for staff working with women on probation and women victims. This is a really important topic and I am looking forward to working with Becky on it. Women members will be receiving an invitation to participate and we hope you will share it with women colleagues who work with women to increase the responses.

I’ve been reflecting lots in recent weeks on the issues that women face in their daily lives. The sentencing of a Police Officer for the murder of Sarah Everard has sent a shockwave through society but the misogyny that enabled that heinous crime has always existed and we have always known about it. Even after the media was filled with people saying what must be done about the problem of institutionalised misogyny in my home area of North Yorkshire our Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, in interview, made comments that were textbook – worthy examples of victim blaming. He is still in post, for now, although widely criticised. He has apologised but the problem is not that he said the comments in public, where we could hear them, the problem is that he held those beliefs. The problem is that women are being told to use tracking apps, to avoid walking alone at night, to modify their clothing, to change their behaviour to keep safe. No one is telling the perpetrators to modify their behaviour. No one is intervening to remove people from positions of power and influence when they say or do things that demonstrate misogyny. We must - all of us - make ourselves free to do this, to call out misogyny, to demand better from those in positions of power.

Tomorrow at our AGM we will launch our race action plan, and dedicate ourselves to being anti-racist. Not just to say we will avoid being racist, but that we must ever strive to be anti-racist, actively and using all of the power and influence we have. We must do this collectively and individually, in our work, in our union and in whatever we do when we are not working or coming together in Napo. We must become the champions of anti-racism in our workplaces and our communities. I will be proudly signing my pledge and I hope each of you will too.

Together in Napo we can do great things, and there are great things to do. I hope you will leave here, after 3 days of being inspired by other activists, and spread the word to workmates who aren’t members. That they can and should join Napo, and share in the joy, the antidote to despair that is our solidarity. As I enter my last year as Chair I will hold those feelings close and use them as fuel – to fight the good fight and share as much of the antidote to despair as I can with others.

As I now finish I would like to read the message of solidarity from Unison, who are holding their own conference this week:

UNISON sends this message of solidarity to our sisters and brothers in Napo with best wishes for a successful AGM. We look forward to working with you on the many challenges which lie ahead. Together we can prevail.

Katie Lomas