Justice Affairs Select Committee

The Parliamentary Justice Affairs Select Committee decided some time ago to look into the future role of the Probation Service and the closing date for written submissions passed recently. They begin taking oral evidence tomorrow 12th October and the Revolving Doors Agency are first. Unfortunately their website does not indicate what their viewpoint will be, but I understand some service users will be giving evidence. Lets hope they might have something positive to say about the relatively newly 'choreographed' probation service. We can only hope. 

Chief Gives Game Away

I don't normally listen to Sunday on Radio 4 but I was alerted to it by a friend. I'm very glad I caught up with the piece on women and prison because I heard the Assistant Chief Executive of Cheshire Probation Trust say a couple of remarkable things. She was singing the praises of an exciting new initiative whereby her Service is providing a 'bespoke tailor-made package of community support measures' as part of a community sentence and specifically aimed at women at risk of receiving custody. In response to a cracking question from the interviewer along the lines of 'isn't that what you do in probation anyway?' she replied that most clients were male and it's a 'sort of one size fits all' approach. 

So there we have it. A Chief actually admitting that the modern probation service is no longer a client-centred service, because we ditched that sort of stuff some time ago, but now we can go public announcing a brand new initiative that's all about 'a bespoke tailor-made service'. Like the interviewer, I thought that's what probation was all about anyway. I don't wish to denigrate in any way the idea of highlighting how custody can be particularly harmful and unnecessary for women, as it most certainly can be. But having been led to believe that my practice was old-fashioned and what I needed to do was embrace change, and now to be told the latest thing is a bespoke service, I find a tad irritating to say the least. 

It was also interesting to hear John Thornhill, Chairman of the Magistrates Association, commenting that 'magistrates often don't get sufficient information prior to sentencing'. I find this alarming, but sadly not that surprising, even though common sense says there should have been a PSR in each case where custody was a possibility. So what's going wrong here? Now it may not be common knowledge, but each Probation Trust has a target to reduce the number of full Standard Delivery Reports on cost saving grounds. All Court Duty staff are instructed to try and get as many FDR's as possible and even when a full SDR is requested, there are huge pressures on PO's to convert them into FDR's. All this is monitored closely - not I hasten to add the quality of any report, just reasons why the PO felt a full report was necessary.

The reason why the Service has had to reduce the number of full reports is because since the introduction of OASys the time it takes to prepare a report has increased by at least two hours. Of course it might well be that Mr Thornhill is making reference to a reduction in the quality of PSR's due to them being OASys generated and I have commented on this at some length previously. 



         

Professional Dilemma

At some point in every probation officer's career they will be faced with a serious ethical, moral or professional dilemma. I think I've had my fair share, resolved them one way or another, but I've often wondered what other officers would have done........

I remember the situation well, a routine PSR request for Crown Court, a guilty plea involving many thousands of pounds worth of stolen HGV tractor units, a person previously well known to me, remanded in custody. An easy, routine task on someone I hadn't seen for a long time and I was naturally interested to know what the story was. Pleasantries over, my first question of 'why?' was met with the characteristically disarming answer of 'I didn't do it - I'm taking the wrap for my son'. 'Oh dear' I thought. Knowing the family as I did (at various times I had supervised mother, father and son) this was completely understandable and for them culturally normal. I told him he could be looking at about four to five years, but he said that was ok - he wanted to give his son a break and he felt this was the best way he could. His son had five young children. What was I to do?

Before we get to that I suppose I should dwell on why the guy had told me in the first place. He didn't have to, he could have spun me any old story and I'd have had to decide if I bought it or not. Now I haven't done this job for as long as I have without going home at night on occasion, reflected on the days events and in particular whether I'd been told a load of old bull or not. Doing the job we do, some economy with the truth is to be expected and I'm sure our friends in the police would say that in their view we can be more than a soft touch for fairy stories. But I'd known this guy for years, we had a good working relationship and respected each other - he had that old fashioned habit of always addressing me formally as 'Mr Brown' - a sure sign of his lengthy incarcerations in prison. He wasn't exactly a career criminal, but shall we say his cultural background and offending went hand in hand somewhat. He had paid me the huge compliment of telling me the truth because he respected me and in probation that's exactly what we aim for.

So, what did I do? I colluded. I felt I had no choice, but I was very uneasy indeed in being party to misleading a Court and I made that clear to the guy. Of course I could have ended the interview there and then and reported back to the Judge what had been said; that in effect the guilty plea was not safe and that I could hardly write a report if the guy said he hadn't done it. What would have happened? A telephone call from his barrister to say that I must have misunderstood his client and a gentle reminder that there were full admission statements in the CPS bundle; at an adjournment hearing, when questioned by a very grumpy Judge, the defendant would have confirmed the barristers view that the probation officer must be getting hard of hearing. The said PO would have looked extremely stupid indeed when ordered to 'go away and interview the man again'. 

He got four years.

  

Union Matters

I joined NAPO as soon as I got my copy of Jarvis, the PO's handbook, complete with a personal letter of welcome from the Chief tucked inside. (Oh, and a name plate for the door to my own office). It never occurred to me not to join the professional association that happened to be a union as well.  I've always enjoyed the Journal and in later years it was very reassuring to have union representation when facing a disciplinary and more recently have their support through competency procedures. In relation to the former, I eventually received some 'advice' in relation to the consumption of alcohol and in the case of the latter, after a short period of 'coaching', it was no longer felt that I was completing OASys in a 'cursory' manner.

As a union I have to admit it does feel a bit odd at times. I'm not sure what a miner would make of pit management being present during union meetings. I was astonished once to be sat in a meeting with my ACO present when the main issue being discussed was oppressive management. Absolutely surreal, but then what kind of ACO feels it appropriate to be present at a union meeting anyway? I guess an inescapable consequence of the dual purposes of a professional body and trade union.

Then there's the worryingly obvious fact that holding senior positions in the Branch doesn't seem to hinder ones career prospects in terms of management progression. The aforementioned ACO is a fine example, but I think a miner might find it a bit of a joke and I'm aware that quite a few managers have joined the Unite union instead. There is also bound to be some tension with NAPO representing PO and increasingly PSO members adequately and the inevitable difficulty in reconciling role boundaries. This may well be one reason that Unison is increasingly picking up PSO and CS Supervisor staff.  

The union can sometimes appear out of touch, but that has to be down to the membership and I chastise myself for not being more active. I really do feel that trying to carry on representing our Family Court colleagues in CAFCASS is impossibly difficult and they must feel they get overlooked to some extent. But that's history for you. New recruits may not appreciate that when we joined a PO was truely a versatile all-rounder, switching effortlessly from giving evidence in the County Court about access arrangements for the children of divorcing parents, to preparing a criminal PSR and then possibly negotiating with a school about a truanting 13yr old. Oh and helping resolve the odd neighbour dispute. I would say happy days, others I know would cast doubt on our expertise over such a wide field.

Despite everything, NAPO is important as a major voice for probation and from attending Parliamentary Lobbies and seeing my MP fairly regularly, I know it is held in high esteem in many quarters. As I write this, delegates attending the AGM in Scarborough have voted unanimously for a ballot on industrial action if, as expected, the Comprehensive Spending Review leads to further job losses throughout the Probation Service. We are going to need all the friends we can muster in high places over the coming months.

If Only We Were on TV

I think I've just passed a milestone - the first month of blogging, so possibly a moment to reflect might be appropriate. As I write this, my page view rate is enjoying yet another massive boost due to some further very supportive words from Bystander of Magistrates Blog fame. I'm enormously grateful for such encouragement so early in my blogging career and I've really appreciated all the comments from magistrates. Due to the amazing power of the internet, I seem to have picked up some regular readers from all over the planet, including some colleagues, most noticeably from Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Again, I really appreciate the mention on the NAPO website as one of my aims is to try and stimulate a bit of discussion. Hopefully NAPO can soon sort out their forum pages as this is a much-missed resource. 

To a great degree the Probation Service is a secret service. In my experience public misunderstanding is quite widespread, even amongst the chattering classes. It's always been a great mystery to me why there has never been a successful tv drama series. There are some brilliant story lines, all human life is there somewhere, but the only effort in recent memory was 'Hard Cases' set in Nottingham way back in the 1980's. If I remember correctly there was only one series, possibly eight episodes in total. The SPO wore a tweed jacket with elbow patches and at least one PO drove a Morris Traveller. Even so I thought it was pretty good, but it obviously didn't inspire the public sufficiently. Maybe not enough sex, violence, pathos or comedy perhaps? Well there is on my caseload. 

Going back even further, I believe there was a black and white series imaginatively called 'Probation Officer' with a PO in trilby and trenchcoat. I've seen at least one episode and it was similar to Dixon of Dock Green, but then I can remember that's what passed as good Saturday night tv in those days and it did recruit people. So, why have all other parts of the criminal justice system had the tv treatment, but not us? They've covered CPS, Courts, Judges, Customs and Excise, Lawyers, Prison, MI5 and Police endlessly but probation is nowhere to be seen. For me this isn't just an issue of idle curiosity for discussion in the pub, it's much more fundamental because it means there is a huge gaping void in public knowledge about something quite important. But it's even worse than that as this level of ignorance sadly often includes our elected representatives, some of whom form governments, develop policy and ultimately legislate. 

I remain convinced that one reason the Probation Service has 'been done over' in recent years is because of this almost universal ignorance, which regrettably includes my own constituency MP. Both he and his adolescent researcher just glaze over when I try and get them up to speed. Now if only there was a half decent tv series...       

Does Crime Pay?

On one level clearly it does, not least because it's kept me in employment for a good few years. Taken as a whole, there is no doubt that crime and all the sophisticated efforts by society to deal with it, provides quite a good living for a lot of people. I remember that the winding down of the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland had a considerable knock-on effect for many jobs that had been connected either directly or indirectly. Prisons closing and the reduction in army presence all had a negative effect on the economy. 

As expected, the Conservative Party conference gave the green light to a whole new wave of investors to take a punt on being able to make some money out of persuading offenders to go straight. The new coalition government has really latched on to the initiative at HMP Peterborough where investors in the form of Charitable Trusts are financing a project designed to ensure that prisoners serving 12 months or less remain offence free for a specified period after release. Payment will only be based on results. It's quite a cunning scheme and had all-party support when initiated by the previous Justice Secretary Jack Straw.

Many Charitable Trusts in this field have typically been endowed with large capital sums gifted from philanthropists and only feel able, or may be legally constrained, to disperse grants generated from their invested capital funds. They can't or don't want to dip into their capital assets because most charities think and plan for the very long term and if they spent the capital, there would be no long term. But this clever 'payment by results' scheme offers the charities a possible 'win win' scenario of a return on their investment, thus opening up the option of using part of their capital for what they hope will indeed be a healthy results-linked return. Any proceeds can then be recycled. Potentially this could unlock considerably larger sums of money in order to fund this kind of rehabilitation work. No wonder then that an article in the Guardian notes that the idea is already attracting a great deal of foreign interest.

So far there is only one experimental project in one prison dealing with a group of offenders that are not the statutory responsibility of the probation service. However, there is a huge amount riding on this truly 'big idea' and there will be enormous pressure not only to demonstrate that it works, but that proof is delivered quickly. In an amazingly prescient disclosure, I notice that the Ministry of Justice feel confident that results could be available as early as next March. In which case we can expect a rapid roll-out of the idea across other core areas of probation work.

Being a cynic, obviously there is considerable scope to do some creative accounting by a bit of careful selection of the input, together with some fudging of the output. (Remember how the Training and Enterprise Councils were caught out fudging their figures?) But mark my words, this is such a clever idea, it will work and it's going to be very difficult to argue against the principle, particularly as we've had private companies making money out of running some prisons for quite a few years now. G4S, Serco and similar companies seem to be doing well from transporting prisoners, so NAPO is going to have to tread very carefully in deciding how to respond to the idea of Charitable Trusts making money from rehabilitation based on results. 

Prison and Work

So one of Ken Clarke's big ideas, as outlined in his conference speech yesterday, is for prisoners to be made to work a 40 hour week for the minimum wage. A very simple, laudable idea from a seasoned campaigner that went down well with those conference delegates who bothered to stay and listen to him. So I find it very odd that such an experienced Criminal Justice minister should suggest something that will be nigh on impossible to implement. He knows full well that all prison regimes are utterly routine and rigid, borne of the self-evident requirements of security and availability of staff. Thus the 10,000 prisoners who are lucky enough to have jobs already in the 300 prison workshops, only average about 20 hours each per week.

Every prison I've ever visited is typically not 'unlocked' and open for business until about 9.30am. Only the very foolish official visitor doesn't make it to the Main Gate by about 11.45am in order to avoid the lunchtime 'lockdown'. Failure to do so will almost invariably result in a very long wait until the prison is 'unlocked' following roll calls. For administrative convenience I believe the evening meal is about 4.45pm, when inmates are served with the following day's breakfast as well. There are no hot breakfasts anymore and as a result porridge went off the menu many years ago.

Now Ken know's all this, so I'm not at all sure what he's up to. He says he wants the Prison Service to invite more companies to consider providing additional work opportunities with each prisoner being paid the minimum wage. Most of the money would go to victims, with some being saved for the prisoner, as long as they don't re-offend for two years. As now, a serving prisoner would only get 'tobacco' money of about £8 per week. Interestingly, Ken hasn't ruled out the possibility of the prison charging for 'board and lodging'.

As for 'making' prisoners work - this is rubbish and clearly aimed at impressing the public and the conservative faithfull. A job in prison is very much a priviledge and highly sought after. Virtually every sentenced prisoner I've ever visited were either very happy working, desperately hoping they would be offered work, or on the waiting list for education. Most prisoners hate boredom and want the opportunity to earn their tobacco. Prison is really one of the last bastions for smokers and apart from 'phone cards, tobacco is of course the main currency inside. Those minority of prisoners who refuse work will still be able to, as compulsion would not only be illegal, it would be most unwise and unenforceable.

I am assuming that when Ken Clarke made his speech, he was referring to the closed estate, such as the so-called Cat 'B' training prisons, because many prisoners in 'open' conditions already routinely work outside the prison for a variety of employers and put in a full day.  

Historically prisons have always had some work available, such as cleaning or in the kitchens. In addition many had farms attached and there was the historical business of sewing mailbags. In more recent times prisoners have been making prison clothing or traffic signs and printing forms. I was aware that commercial contracts had been entered into for things like packing, but had not appreciated that the Prison Service has been very shy about revealing full details. Apparently two investigative journalists have spent the last couple of years battering the Prison Service with the Freedom of Information Act in order to find out just how many commercial employment contracts there are. If I had realised it was such a secret  I would have paid more attention to cross examining inmates as to exactly what sort of work they were doing. I was aware of some imaginative work such as at a Yorkshire jail, Wealstun I think, where prisoners were inputting data for the 1901 census, but not the variety that has been uncovered.

Now I personally have no problem with work being available for any prisoner who wants it. In fact I think Ken's right to remind us of its ability to assist in rehabilitation. I also have no particular problem if the work is for public sector bodies, but I am aware that some penal reform charities feel the practice of using prisoners in this way is somehow morally suspect. On the contrary, I think it has the possibility of becoming a 'virtuous circle' and the idea of paying the minimum wage and splitting the proceeds has great merit, if being something of an administrative nightmare. As to a 40 hour week though - I don't think so!

      

Probation Retreats

I was introduced to the notion of blogging as a result of two brilliant and well-established blogs by a Magistrate and a Police Inspector. Both are extremely well written and touch on many of the same issues that get me vexed. Until I started blogging, I hadn't realised how much I've been bottling up over the years. Just how helpless and angry I'd become as changes happened all around me, invariably for the worst, but felt powerless to do anything about. It eventually made me ill and after 22 years in the field I had to take sick leave for stress and undergo counselling. When I was training, there was much talk of 'burnout' but it's something you don't hear mentioned nowadays. The 'counselling' was pretty useless, but I endured it to keep my GP happy and because I didn't want anti-depressants. 

The thing that's always struck me about being a probation officer is that as a profession we have an absolutely unique window on our society. We are in an unrivalled position to be able to identify when things are going wrong in social policy terms, assess possible remedies and in the days when we had autonomy and freedom to innovate, develop and implement solutions. I've always felt that as an agency we were there to apply 'sticking plaster' and help patch people up who'd either fallen through the net or been harmed in some way by society; be an agent of the state providing a humane way of dealing with society's deviant citizens.  There was a time when I felt that a wise government would pay regard to such an agency that was so well informed and experienced and use that knowledge to both inform and improve social and penal policy. I guess it shows just how naive I've been when the opposite proved to be the case and the tables were turned against us - it was us that got changed.

One of the sadness's of the present situation is the difficulty we have in being able to adequately convey to new recruits the shear breadth and scope of innovations pioneered by the probation service in the past and during my career span. Supported housing, day centres, sheltered employment, youth projects, clothing stores, groups for drug users, problem drinkers, prisoners wives, family therapy, motor bike projects, intermediate treatment etc etc. etc. All this and much, much more has been stripped away from the probation service at a time when we have witnessed an unprecedented decline in the quality of some of our communities. A recent post by Inspector Gadget all too graphically illustrates the sort of world that will be familiar to many probation officers.  

Of course the police are in a similar position to know what is and is not working in society 24/7. Whilst it might possibly be naive to think that we would agree entirely on possible solutions, the funny thing is that successive governments have been pushing them further into the territory that we used to inhabit. I'm sure I heard the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester fairly recently complaining that he employed 'thousands of social workers' rather than police officers. Some weeks ago I was speaking to a police officer on the phone and he was describing to me his role with something called 'Integrated Offender Management'. After a while I felt compelled to tell him that in my view I felt he was doing my bloody job! There are lots of other examples where I'm sure police are being used in ways that would at one time have been our purview or possibly that of a properly resourced youth service, social service or NHS even. While all this has been going on, many of our communities have been descending further into the state Inspector Gadget describes.  

Do we remember when probation offices used to be small and located on or near estates and in communities? When we used to have volunteers and day centres? When probation was local, visible, responsive and adaptable? We allowed our management to convince us that the future lay in mega-sized probation 'factories' on the edge of town, a good few bus rides away from our clients so that we could breach them if they were late for appointments. I think it was all done in the name of 'economies of scale' and becoming more 'focussed' but in the process we've abandoned these failing communities and started speaking the language of 'businesses' instead. Home visits are now officially discouraged and we can't carry clients in our cars for health and safety reasons, FFS. We have become distant and process-driven, rather than local and person-centred. I have a great deal of sympathy for the police, who alone have been left to deal with the resulting obvious failure of so much social policy in recent years. 

What's Ken Up To?

The next few weeks are going to be quite significant for the Criminal Justice System for all sorts of reasons. No doubt Ken Clarke, the new Justice Secretary, will not want to disappoint his many fans when he makes a keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday. Now I quite like Ken. He strikes me as a decent, honest politician not particularly prone to bullshit and not always 'on message'. His Daily Mail interview some weeks ago signalled his direction of travel in terms of trying to get prison numbers down but somewhat alarmingly I think I'm right in saying that, since taking office, he's not mentioned the probation service once. As a prelude to his speech and in an interview with the Guardian on Saturday 2nd October it's reported that:-

'Backed up by sympathetic allies among the Lib Dems, Clarke has been talking about a "rehabilitation revolution" in the justice system. Plans include widespread restorative justice, diverting drug addicts and the mentally ill out of jail, and a sentencing overhaul. The result could be thousands of people convicted of minor crimes being given community alternatives to prison.' 

Now that all sounds very promising to me, but of course begs lots of questions. Funnily enough it's 'rehabilitation' that has been so effectively hampered in the 'new style' bureaucratised probation service and in fact is last in the list of NOMS priorities. For political reasons the emphasis was shifted to protecting the public and enforcing court orders ages ago. Do I hear a wheel turning?

The mention of plans for 'widespread restorative justice' is very good news and long overdue in my view. Of course probation have been pioneers in this field for years with early experiments in mediation schemes, but it won't please everyone because it's not about punishment or coercion. It has to be a process not lightly entered into and very carefully orchestrated by well trained and skilled facilitators. It won't be cheap to fund, but has real potential for changing behaviour, helping victims and saving society much money and heartache in the future. 

Diverting drug addicts and the mentally ill from prison has to be a very laudable aim, but as we all know is nothing but that if the community facilities are simply not available to deal with these two groups adequately. As a PO on the front line, I can tell you they are not. That's why they're in prison Ken.

A 'sentencing overhaul' sounds ominous to me and I can already sense our magistrate friends taking a deep breath. It's sort of code for basically restricting the sentencing powers of predominately Magistrates Courts. Previous governments have been down this path before and ended up not just irritating a lot of magistrates, but also invoking the Law of Unintended Consequences. Ken has already stated that he wants thousands of people currently remanded in custody pending plea or sentence, to be bailed instead. That is an interesting aim. How is he going to do that, given the current Bail Act already clearly states that there is a presumption of bail being granted, unless certain exceptions apply?

Since probation hostels were prevented from taking all but the riskiest bailees some time ago, we've had three years mixed experience of the national Bail Accommodation and Support Scheme (BASS), since April run by a 'third sector' contractor. Additionally, there's been the option of Electronic Tagging for some considerable time, run by private sector contractors. Of course magistrates already have wide scope to add any number of other conditions to bail, such as residence, non contact, exclusion zones, police reporting etc etc, so what else has he got up his sleeve? A new Bail Act that seeks to further reduce the scope for magistrates to remand in custody? Surely not? 

Like many others, I'm very concerned about Ken Clarke's plans for the future of summary justice and in particular the court closures to save a measly £30million a year. Then there's the back door move towards reducing the Lay Bench in favour of professional District Judges. I really do not see how the cause of justice is going to be better served in this way, or indeed provided at lower cost by replacing volunteers with expensive Judges.  We await with interest to hear what Ken has to say.  

A Valuable Lesson

It was a routine PSR appointment booked for 3.30pm. I had it all planned - I've been doing this for years and have a well-established routine - about an hour for the interview and if it's really complicated or issues crop up there might be time to arrange another interview before its due in court. By 4.50pm I need to be on my way to an important 5.30pm meeting - it's 30 minutes by road. It's not a meeting about work, but a regular fortnightly commitment.

By 4.15pm I begin to give a sigh of relief - he's not showed up so it looks like a 'nil' report. In the old days, when we had control over PSR allocations, diaries and interviews, I'd have offered him at least one, possibly two more appointments in the four weeks we had. Now it's only three weeks and all centrally bureaucratised. Appointments are given at court from each officers fixed appointment slots, not only is little goodwill engendered, there's also little flexibility in our increasingly management arranged diaries. I've got used to living with this irritation, but management decided some time ago that as punishment 'nil' reports come back to the PO and are simply added to new allocations. I never quite grasped the logic of that, but that's the policy. While I'm on the subject of PSR allocations, another madness of this inflexible system is that you routinely get reports to do on people you don't know, as the colleague next to you gets your old and well known client. The appointment might only be a week from the court date because all your other slots have been filled, but management knows best.

At 4.30pm a phone call signals that my 3.30pm appointment has duly arrived. Now anyone with time under their belt will not be surprised by this at all - in fact we used to reflect 'how brilliant - he got the right day'. But that was then - this is now. I've heard of people getting breached for being 10 minutes late. This is the new 'law enforcement' probation service and I'm being ever so slowly inculcated by this new tough philosophy. I've got a private life, things to do, a meeting to get to. 

I bring the man into the interview room. He sits down and I let my irritation show - I start giving him a lecture about the importance of keeping appointments and how I've got to be somewhere else. As I am in mid flow, I can sense the atmosphere changing in this small  claustrophobic room. I can feel the tension rising and the body language changing. I eventually start to think to myself  'if I continue in this vein the situation is going to deteriorate rapidly and I'm going to be assaulted'. I have never thought that before. Why is this happening? What am I doing? I've interviewed hundreds of difficult, argumentative, threatening people in all sorts of places, but I've always been focused on them, picking up what they and their body language are saying. The real consequence of this damned cultural shift in the probation service is that I think we are losing sight of people as individuals and are just 'processing' them. To my deep regret I had succumbed that day. 

As soon as the penny dropped, I instantly stopped talking, picked up the phone, cancelled the meeting, moved my chair and said 'ok lets start again'. I'm so glad I did as that man had an incredibly sad reason for being late and he had a complicated and moving story to tell. He ended up apologising to me, but I was grateful to him for teaching me a very valuable lesson.