A Very Cruel Game

A very cruel game begins in earnest on April Fool's day this year. I should have written about it sooner, but my excuse is a preoccupation with government plans for privatising us. In the process though I've completely neglected the impending plight for many of our charges.

If you didn't know better you might think the government had unknowingly or accidentally decided to declare war on a significant section of the population, but of course the welfare 'reforms' are entirely deliberate and ironically will do nothing but hinder any attempt at a 'rehabilitation revolution.' 

Many, if not most, clients of the probation service are in receipt of State Benefit of one kind or another and as a group have never been particularly good at managing their limited incomes, often due to chaotic lifestyles involving either drink or drugs. A significant number have either learning disabilities or mental health problems that means coping on very tight budgets is extra difficult and there is a danger that spending decisions will not always be prudent. Of course the politically-correct would say it was about 'choice' and helps to encourage 'responsibility'.  

As a consequence, much of a probation officer's time has always had to be devoted to helping clients manage crisis situations brought about by a severe lack of money. I can tell you it's draining and extremely depressing for us, let alone the poor client, and often forms an effective barrier to any work we might wish to undertake concerning offending behaviour. But it's going to get a whole lot worse from Monday and as Polly Toynbee of the Guardian says, it will be the day that defines this government. 

Interestingly, as I write this, Grant Shaps, the Conservative Party chairman cites the present system as being cruel and hence justification for 'reforms', thus flying in the face of the new Archbishop of Canterbury and other church leaders who are quite-rightly pointing out they will hit the vulnerable.

Even before the new measures take effect, we know through leaked internal memos from the Department of Work and Pensions that Job Centre staff are being required to 'sanction' as many claimants as possible and try and trip them up at 'botherability' interviews. As always, this despicable tactic will mostly catch the scared and vulnerable, rather than the undeserving malingerers. As one staff member puts it, suicides will result, indeed just as we've seen with the infamous Atos capability tests designed to throw as many people off Disability Living allowance as possible. 

The saddest bit of all in this new twist to a cruel game is that many, many claimants have no idea what's about to hit them. In effect the changes in Council Tax Benefit, which will now only be a 'contribution' towards the total, coupled with the so-called Bedroom Tax, is in many ways a reincarnation of the despised Thatcher Community Charge or Poll Tax of the 90's. In one fell swoop, hundreds of thousands of claimants will see their benefit reduce significantly over night due to 'under-occupancy' and with virtually no hope of being able to move easily to smaller accommodation and retain their rights as tenants of social landlords.

As if this wasn't bad enough, payments will be made monthly instead of fortnightly and in respect of Housing Benefit, direct to the claimant and not the landlord anymore. Everyone aware of the situation knows that arrears of rent are going to accumulate quickly as many clients find it difficult or impossible to make up the shortfall, together with the extra responsibility of managing finances on a monthly basis. This is a gift to the 'payday' and door-to-door loan sharks as many claimants will feel pushed into their arms as a misguided way of coping. 

There is no doubt that the number of evictions will increase and many clients of ours will simply be unable to cope. They will be pushed over the edge. The final twist in this cruel game of making the poorest and most vulnerable pay for the mess we've got into, is that all new claims for benefit will have to be made online FFS. Can someone tell me how homeless, vulnerable and often chaotic people trying to get back into mainstream life can get easy access to a secure e-mail account, especially with libraries closing?

I see a massive amount of extra welfare-type work for the probation service and other statutory agencies, especially as funding for Citizen Advice Bureau's and civil Legal Aid have been dramatically cut. I wonder if any of this is making those carpet baggers currently sizing up contracts for probation work think twice? These 'reforms' are hardly going to assist with their efforts at making money out of the 'rehabilitation revolution' under PbR are they?

Even after these punitive cuts and with benefit levels capped at 1% for three years, thus ensuring inflation does its bit to help make the poorest even poorer, and before the Universal Benefit changes come into effect, astonishingly I see that the government is saying that the total welfare budget is not expected to reduce, merely that any increase will be 'managed.'

It seems even more radical measures to cut 'welfare dependency' could be on the way with the government feeling increasingly confident that the public mood is behind the deliberate widening of the division between the deserving and undeserving poor. This cannot be good for the well-being of any civilised society and I see the potential for serious trouble and unrest ahead.    

Some are saying that April 1st 2013 marks the beginning of the end of the Welfare State as we know it. On this day massive changes also come into effect as to how NHS services are commissioned, thus opening the door not just to more privatisation, but appallingly plenty of scope for many of these new commissioners to feather their own nest, despite supposed conflict of interest policies. 

As expected, the No10 petition has topped 20,000. You can sign it here.            

Being Candid

The Easter Bank Holiday is nearly upon us and I seem to have 'gate fever'. I just can't find the energy or enthusiasm to write much today. Something doesn't feel right about my internet writing experience of late and I think it's because things seem to have changed, and as most of my regular readers will know by now, I don't like change. 

The more I think about it, much of the stimulus for this blog has been sparked by the work of others, but it's drying up for a variety of reasons. I'm seriously missing Gadget. Apart from his often deliberately mischievous writing, his blog provided a vibrant platform for comment and discussion on many topical matters in the field of social and criminal justice policy. I find the silence both deafening and disturbing, knowing as we do that it must have been extinguished by order. 

I hope Bystander will forgive my saying that his blog is just not quite the same as it was in terms of range, frequency and content prior to heavy pressure being applied by Higher Judicial Authority. Many probation commentators and tweeters have been outrageously scared-off on the orders of Chris Grayling and even good old reliable Ben Gunn seems to be loosing interest in blogging since discovering the seductive delights of twitter. 

Even as I'm writing this, I can hear a voice saying that by it's very nature the internet will relentlessly throw up vibrant new talent with interesting things to say and in the process ruthlessly cast aside those that may have had their time. The still relatively-new Guerilla Policy blogsite is a good example of this and it's certainly opened my eyes to interesting stuff being written by lots of people I was blissfully unaware of. 

Part of my problem is I'm finding it very hard indeed to reconcile the new wave of 'openess and transparency' being espoused by government with quite blatant bullying of people who dare to tell stories that are 'off message'. The situation is becoming somewhat surreal I feel with the recent announcement of a legal obligation of 'candour' within the NHS. WTF does that mean exactly?! 

I remember thinking it was barmy when David Cameron announced in Parliament a few months ago that energy companies were going to be forced to limit the number of confusing tariffs on offer and ensure everyone was on the best tariff for them. How is that going to work in a capitalist market economy where the need for profit dictates that some of the people have to be  misled some of the time? Isn't that what advertising and marketing is predicated on under a capitalist system?

What's supposed to happen if this astonishing concept of a 'duty of candour' spreads? Are politicians going to be required to tell the truth? Will the likes of Waitrose have to point out how much cheaper Asda is? Will the hospital consultant have to point out the very poor infection history of their operating theatre? Surely it's all so much cobblers!

Have a good Easter and sign the No10 petition here. It should top 20,000 this weekend.              

Delius Road-tested

In amongst the astounding news that Home Secretary Theresa May is going to abolish the lamentable United Kingdom Border Agency due to woefully poor performance, I spotted this interesting revelation:- 

In other changes, Home Office permanent secretary Mark Sedwill has been asked to revamp its "inadequate" IT systems

So that makes another government department with a crap IT system! There have been some monumental IT failures in recent years both at the Home Office and Ministry of Justice, including our very own aborted C-NOMIS intended as a universal case recording system. It didn't work, cost a fortune and each probation service opted for differing systems such as CRAMS, ICMS or Delius. 

With impending privatisation of probation, clearly someone at the MoJ thought a standard case recording system would be a good idea and it's intended to roll out nDelius (n for national) to all service's shortly. Clearly a reliable, universal and efficient IT system is crucial to the success of privatisation, so how's it doing? The following is one person's experience, and it doesn't look promising:-  

In a word `chaos.' No one knows what they are doing. For example, to add a contact you run a national search then when you have found the person you must not click on `add contact', No you have to click on `view' then contact log, then scroll right down to the bottom of the page and then you can click on the other `add contact' button and click click click again.

To make it more complicated the Delius page is designed for a wider screen so it does not fit on a square computer screen so you have to keep moving the page around to see what is in the corners. 

When making a contact you can only see 4 lines of what you are typing. Then when you have made a contact there is no button to add the next appointment, Oh no, you have to do the whole search again and programme the next appointment in, around 20 clicks of the mouse, it gives you repetitive strain injury.

If you want to send a letter, god help you, you might as well write it by hand as that would be quicker, I have been shown how to build a letter 4 times but still loose the letter every time. And if you dare to want to see a letter that has migrated over that is nearly impossible as all migrated documents are named, wait for it as `migrated documents', so unless you know the date you sent it you cannot find it. 

Then if you want to breach some one it is such a complicated process that only those with a PHD in computing science are able to do it. The OGRS score is hidden deep in the recess of events, and the actual order is not clearly shown. 

Flags are not clear and some DV perpetrators migrated over as DV victims! Caseloads are not accurate ie I had 40 cases pre Delius, but now appear to have 22, the 18 others have just migrated to random people who have had something to do with them at some time in the past. 

Delerius -  it is not fit for purpose and feels like we have been given a case record system from the eighties, Remember when you had to press all the function buttons? Beaumont Colson have a lot of work to do to get it more user-friendly. Lets hope they are paid lots for all their effort. 

The problems will be highlighted when there is an SFO and then the managers will have to try and decipher what has been going on with the case. Can't wait until you get it and see what you have to say.

Beaumont Colson are the designers of nDelius and this is what they say about it:-

In 2009 a new, national Delius system, was commissioned by the MoJ and BCL's development of this system was completed in late 2012.

The National Delius application is a browser based, national probation service case management system, designed to include the required probation business logic and appropriate security, and will be rolled-out across England and Wales during 2013.

A large part of the work in delivering National Delius has involved the preparation of migration tools - required to move existing legacy data from a number of different types of case management system. Current migration successes demonstrate our capacity to manage this activity through a standard, repeatable process. There is clear potential for these techniques to be applied in any project concerned with the mapping and movement of data between systems. 

No hint of any problems there. In the end history tells us that it's crap IT systems that often frustrate the aspirations of government, so it's as well all those prospective bidders for our work know what they are in for. Yes you guessed it guys, the IT really is crap. The system often 'crashes.' The servers can't cope. It's regularly on a 'go slow' and you regularly lose your work.

Sign the No10 petition here..  

Mission Impossible

I do admire Russell Webster in his efforts at trying to keep the prospect of Payment by Results alive as a means of delivering Chris Grayling's Rehabilitation Revolution. In his recent piece on the subject he recites the received wisdom that 'it's a simple concept' but equally that 'the devil is in the detail'.

Like Russell, I've attended meetings full of assorted aspiring privateers and carpet baggers anxious to get a slice of the probation action. But inexorably most soon begin to show signs of losing the will to live as the problems with the 'detail' begin to sink in. In true understated style, Russell himself identifies the following problems for the Ministry of Justice as they attempt to draw up contracts. He also concedes it's not an exhaustive list by any means:- 
  

• The contracts must be long enough to encourage a wide range of providers to bid while still providing break clauses for those that under-perform.
• The proportion of the contract paid on a successful outcome/PbR basis must be big enough to drive innovation and improved performance but small enough to be a realistic financial model that medium and smaller providers can bid for.
• While it is reasonable enough for price to be part of the awarding criteria of any public contract, it will be hard to assess likely quality, especially since most providers won’t have a track record in reducing reoffending.
• The contracts should promote innovation with the intention of sharing best practice, but at the same time may have to allow providers to keep at least some of their intellectual property rights.
• There is also a substantial challenge in designing an outcome metric which includes both binary and frequency measures of reoffending.
• The contracts must be large enough to have substantial cohorts so that outcome metrics can be valid, but flexible enough to reflect local needs and existing effective partnerships.

He draws a handy Venn diagram, but a magnifying glass is required in order to find the 'sweet spot' that would get hearts racing amongst prospective bidders. 

Sometimes you just have to admit that the brilliant idea you had is basically crap. It ain't going to work and the sooner you face up to the fact and change direction, the better for us all!

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Big Ideas

Chris Grayling, the Minister of Justice, has two big ideas. The first is Payment by Results and we all know what a roaring success that's proved to be over at his last job with the Department for Work and Pensions. The other big idea concerns old lags. He keeps talking about them and how he sees them as being absolutely key in being able to deliver his Rehabilitation Revolution. Here he is talking to the Justice Affairs Select Committee last month and quoted on the aged member speaks blog:- 

“I’m a great believer that the best mentor for a young offender is an old lag gone straight or a former gang member who’s left the gang and tries to encourage the young gang member to do the same. Now what I don’t want to do is to have a situation where in order to start delivering mentoring support, offender management support in the kind of lower risk groups that you have to have a kind of a three year degree course because that rather kind of removes the ability of the old lag to do the job. But at the same time we need to make sure that that those people do get training in how to spot problems so what we will be looking for in the contracting process is an understanding of how you ensure that you equip your people to spot the problems that when you need to call up the corridor to the public protection guy, say that this one you need to take a look at for me. How we continue to develop a very high quality specialist profession in the public protection roles and we will be looking for ideas in the development of people and how that will happen in the bidding process…”

Now first off many people find the term old lag unhelpful and insulting, conjuring up as it does ancient images of Fletch out of the BBC1 comedy series Porridge. In fact here's an open letter to Chris Grayling from an old lag and making their displeasure clear. It begins:-  

Dear Mr Grayling, 

I read with great interest your speech on Tuesday. As someone who has been to prison, and now recruits and trains mentors, I am doing the work you want to encourage. But I find your description of me as an ‘old lag’ offensive and ignorant, adding as it does to the prejudice and discrimination that people who have served a sentence have to endure.

It's unfortunate to say the least that the Justice Minister is so ill-informed and ill-considered in his use of such terminology that disrepute is likely to be attracted to both himself and his department, but he does of course have the germ of a good idea. This was picked up recently by Professor Senior writing on his Yorkhull Blog on the topic of peer mentoring. Like most things, it's not a new idea and had been pioneered within probation many years ago:-

Mentoring of course is not a new idea even if this nomenclature has been coined more recently. I go back to 1975 when I first started as a probation volunteer and befriended young clients on behalf of the probation officer. The role of ‘advice, assist and befriend’ is at the heart of the traditions of the probation service and until relatively recently probation volunteers were a significant part of the supervision armoury. In the late 70s I initiated a programme funded through the Manpower Services Commission called ‘Octopus’. This meant we employed two ex-offenders as assistant supervisors in a voluntary day/drop-in centre. It was a challenging experiment not only for the individuals concerned but the probation officers too who, though used to finding clients employment elsewhere, were somewhat disconcerted to find that that employment was in their own agency. Indeed to some officers attending a case conference for their client when the supervisors were present was often a bridge too far.

The piece goes on to explain in some detail how peer mentors and volunteers can indeed play an important role in rehabilitation, but it has to be undertaken properly and cannot be the 'quick fix' Mr Grayling seems to imply. It concludes by saying:-

I am totally in favour of the use of both mentors and peer mentors in the criminal justice system. I think they have a valuable role to play which compliments and enhances the case management undertaken by the public services. There is a real danger however that in a rush to make such assistance available across the whole of the criminal justice system within a short period of time it will lose the careful and incremental way in which peer mentoring systems have been nurtured so far. I think we must be very careful not to make the system untenable before it has had a reasonable chance to succeed. Whilst Grayling has hit upon a germ of an idea in executing that thought he is in real danger of damaging its very prospect of success.

Yet another example of how ill-thought-out the plans to privatise probation are.

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Privatisation Roundup 2

It's been gratifying to see widespread condemnation of Chris Grayling's recent gagging instruction to all probation staff and if anything it's served to re-energise the campaign to keep the Service public. When you are so obviously losing the argument for a policy, it's outrageous and completely counter-productive in a democracy to attempt to silence critics and I'm pleased to say it's helped restore NAPO's mojo. 

Regular readers might recall that a week or two back I highlighted what appeared to be a sneaky government plan to begin privatising the Fire Service by means of encouraging some Service's like Cleveland to mutualise.

Probation staff will be very familiar with this concept as it's being continually talked about in relation to probation privatisation. In some quarters it's being seen as a more preferable alternative, but as we all know, at some point mutuals can de-mutualise, especially if they prove successful and the beneficial owners are seduced by private sector loot and are persuaded to cash-in. It leads to privatisation, but via a more circumlocutory route.

Anyway, 38 Degrees mounted a massive petition against privatisation of the Fire Service and interestingly it's had the desired effect. Recently Eric Pickles, the minister responsible, was forced to categorically rule out any privatisation of the Fire Service in response to widespread public concern. He even went as far as confirming that he would ensure that regulations did not make it possible for any Service to become a mutual, thus scuppering Cleveland's plans.

So, what do we learn from this? First off, that campaigning and public awareness does affect government policy. Secondly, that u-turns happen all the time in government policy - another recent example is the back-tracking on minimum unit-pricing of alcohol - and thirdly that the public has absolutely no appetite for privatising public services. 

Here's hoping that the ham-fisted attempted gagging of probation staff will continue to bring well-deserved reputational damage upon the Ministry of Justice and its Ministers for many more weeks to come and that the campaign to save probation continues to gain momentum!   

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Some Observations 13

We have to remember that it is only a story and not real life, so reality need not get too much in the way. But it did tickle me to see that probation officer Steve Lowe in Enders 'dropped' Bianca's case so he could be 'ethical' about cosying up to Carol, her mum. Never mind that he decided to chat her up in the Vic (it is only a story) and was on orange juice (what a wuss), it was that bit about 'dropping a case!' Oh, if only it were that simple to go to the boss and negotiate a transfer of any case, for any reason, let alone 'I think I fancy her mum!'   

I notice Russell Webster is continuing his crusade to get everyone in the Criminal Justice System tweeting, ironically just as NOMS is putting the screws on probation staff to stop them. Well ok that's going a bit far. Stop them tweeting anything remotely useful or of interest and that might interfere with the government's plans for privatising the Service. 

Mindful of David Cameron's infamous remark that 'too many tweets might make a twat', I've been content remaining what might be termed a 'twitter voyeur' and just eavesdrop on others conversations. I admit I've picked up some useful tidbits, but boy is most of it just inane rubbish or officially-sanctioned newspeak. 

As for the medium stimulating debate or exchanges of ideas, well I think even Ben Gunn feels that the novelty of being able to stir up a hornets nest at the drop of a tweet has worn off a bit. To an extent continuing in his self-styled role of victimhood, I love the bit about him having 'wandered' into two ferocious twitter-wars, as if they were somehow unexpected or not invited! I wonder what Marshall Mcluhan would make of it, the 'medium being the massage' and all.

Finally, I couldn't help but produce a wry smile at the news that the Attorney General Dominc Grieve has come up with a cracking wheeze to take the pressure off a hard-pressed Crown Prosecution Service. In another stroke of genius he suggests getting the police to be more involved in prosecutions, thus effectively taking us most of the way back to where I started in 1985, sat in court behind a police inspector as he prosecuted all the ordinary mundane and mostly uncontested stuff.   

There's still time to sign the No10 petition here.         

More on Gagging

As probation chiefs begin their two-day conference in Birmingham, they have much to mull over, not least whether collectively they can agree on anything in the light of impending privatisation. Dare I suggest that the gallows humour saying, the gist of which goes something like, 'it's preferable to hang together, rather than hang seperately' has never been more appropriate?

It's now clear that the NOMS gagging order effectively extends to all staff and Trust Board members, many of whom have been merrily tweeting away for a few weeks now. The recent instruction relating to social media issued by Caroline Corby the London Probation Trust chair is typical:- 

For the avoidance of doubt, the following are non exhaustive examples of unacceptable postings, endorsements tweets or retweets:-

• Derogatory statements.
• Comments that might be perceived as humiliating, offensive, abusive, insulting or degrading. 
• Use of language or phrases demonstrating a lack of respect.
• Comments that are made in criticism or designed to undermine the Justice Secretary’s policy or actions.
• Political campaigning under the banner of LPT.
• Inciting or approving any of the above e.g retweets.

Understandably people are now running scared of being the subject of disciplinary action and there has been an appreciable reduction in probation-related twitter traffic as a result. But it's one thing to be bullying the small fry into shutting up and trying to include the chiefs as well. Come on guys, we need a bit of leadership here! 

In my view there couldn't be a better time for a display of unity in the face of these daft privatisation plans, all in the new spirit of 'openness and transparency' of course. This is official government policy now because Jeremy Hunt the Health Secretary has said so. No more atmosphere of secrecy or gagging orders are going to be allowed in the NHS in the wake of the Staffordshire hospital scandal:-

"There has been a culture where people felt if you speak up about problems in the NHS you didn't love the NHS. Actually it's exactly the opposite," Mr Hunt told the Mail.

So we can hardly have different policies in different government departments, can we? 

I wrote yesterday about the demise of the extremely popular police blog written anonymously of course by Inspector Gadget. As I suspected, there has been much speculation on several websites concerning the possible reasons and whether or not he had been 'nobbled'. Did he retire, run out of stuff to say, or was he got at?

For what it's worth I think the latter, not least because the site has disappeared from the ether completely and I find that not just very sad, but very worrying as well. Like all bloggers, he would have been extremely proud of his writing, but it's all 'gone' and I simply refuse to believe that any committed blogger would agree to such a thing voluntarily. I hope Cockney Copper will not mind me quoting his words left on the Magistrates Blog, and we know all Judicial Office holders have been put under pressure to stop blogging too:-

As an aside, I now find myself casting around to try and find another Police related blog to help pass the time between dog walking and work, but trawling through the 30 or so blogs that I had in my 'favourites' list, it would appear that 99% have been deleted or shut down over the last couple of years. A sad indictment of the Orwellian stranglehold that ACPO and PSD have over officers making comments publically , where criticism is universally interpreted as 'bringing the service into disrepute'.

Not only deeply disturbing, it's robbed us all of the opportunity of looking up our favourite posts and prevented future social historians having access to a very important social commentary. 

This was always going to be an issue as we entered the digital age and as a consequence institutions such as the British Library have had to install vast data storage facilities to make sure we do not lose internet-published material. It might not be uppermost in most people's minds, but what we are collectively writing is of course history and no civilisation worth anything ever throws that away consciously does it? 

Lets hope that, despite the best efforts of government, all the material will be safely stored on a secure server somewhere so as to enlighten future generations and that they don't just have the self-serving efforts of Sir Stephen Bubb to pore over. 

Sign the No10 petition here.      

Rattling Cages

I suspect like a lot of people, I'm still coming to terms with the news that Inspector Gadget has called it a day on his blog. His incisive and skillful writing was one of the reasons why I took the plunge and started this blog in September 2010.

I certainly didn't always agree with his views, but his colourful description of life on The Swamp, the characters and situations he encountered on a daily basis and the obvious care and concern with which he went about the business of 'coppering', I found utterly riveting. 

To us probation officers, it was also all too familiar. No great surprise there I suppose because essentially we see the same people, but for different purposes and at different times. Much of his writing was as sensitive as it was provocative. Undoubtedly as moving or annoying in equal measure on occasion, but always a good read as the nearly 13 million hits bear testament to.

That is an incredible achievement and yet again underlines the sheer power of the internet as a platform for discussion and informing, free of political or other interference. But there has to be meaningful content and Gadget supplied that in shed loads. It's time-consuming, tiring and feeding the monster can be quite a challenge. Not surprisingly he says he ran out of different things to say, but it took seven years!     

While it lasted and for all intents and purposes, Gadget's blog was the unofficial voice of British policing. The place you went to first when something was 'kicking-off' or tragedy had struck. The vast numbers of comments that flooded in after each new post gave us all an insight into what might sometimes be unkindly termed the 'canteen-culture' of British bobbies, but I'd rather that than sanitised press releases or platitudinous management pronouncements.

Inspector Gadget, you rattled cages and made me laugh. You helped remind me about the power of words and the telling of a good story. You confirmed that we are still very lucky to have policing by general consent in this country. I bet the Home Secretary won't miss you, but I have already. 

Best wishes for the future Inspector!        

Gagged!

I'ts becoming increasingly clear that the government has lost the argument in relation to privatising most of the probation service by means of a Payment by Results method. Even though the civil servants at both the Cabinet Office and Treasury have very serious concerns and most of the 580 written submissions during the consultation period are highly critical, Chris Grayling does not quite feel ready to announce a change of direction. 

What does an organisation or individual do when it knows it's plans are going seriously awry and begins to get rattled by voices of objection and criticism? When it's competency is being questioned and some reputational damage is looming on the horizon? Well, if you're a famous footballer or tv personality, you reach for a 'super' injunction. If you're an NHS Hospital Trust you arrange comprehensive secrecy clauses. Or if you're the government, you gag troublesome probation Chief Executives.

There is now clear evidence that CEO's of all probation trusts in England and Wales have been threatened with disciplinary action should they have the temerity to continue with public questioning or criticism of the government's privatisation plans for the service. Twitter accounts are being assiduously monitored for any dissent by NOMS officials in actions that must seem reminiscent of the People's Republic of China. 

None of this should be that surprising though because politics is basically a dirty game where pretty much the ends justify the means. Where spin and dissembling might fail, threats and bullying might work. 

We all know that NOMS control of the probation service is pretty much dysfunctional anyway and if confirmation was required, look no further than Liz Calderbank HM Chief Inspector of Probation giving evidence to a Commons Select Committee in November 2012:- 

"The National Audit Office (NAO) rightly identifies tensions in the relationship between NOMS and probation trusts. In my view, these result as much from the history of NOMS’ development and the different organisational structures of the prison and probation services as any failings in its management. The restructure of NOMS HQ was, as the report states, well received and both the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NOMS and the Director responsible for the probation service are spoken of positively by probation trusts.

Nevertheless, there is, I believe, an inherent dissonance in the NOMS model, which essentially incorporates two organisations with different functions and governance arrangements. Unlike the prison service, which is a national organisation, the probation trust CEOs report to a locally managed Board but are accountable to NOMS for their achievement of targets. When these arrangements are considered in the historical context of a probation service that has gone through four major reorganisations over the past 15 years, and is currently awaiting the response to the probation review which will herald yet another one, it’s not surprising that relations are a little tense.

What this means is, given that the line management arrangements of the probation service is different from those of the prison service, as is its history and its focus on the community, so the dialogue NOMS has with probation trusts also has to be different. And this isn’t achieved with sufficient consistency. As a result, the work of the probation service is not fully understood at the centre and as a consequence not properly valued and too easily dismissed."

In a situation where things look like they're rapidly going 'pear-shaped' the last thing Chris Grayling wants is probation CEO's just rubbing it in how crap the whole idea is beginning to sound. The mood could get a lot nastier of course with reports of campaign posters being removed in London and dark rumours as to how the Serco Community Payback contract is being operated there.

This is very important for the government's privatisation agenda and clearly there is a keen desire to make sure a tight lid is kept on any bad news. You will recall that Heather Munro, London CEO, recently questioned via twitter Chris Grayling's assertion that 'the contract was delivering savings of 40%.' She described it as 'pure fantasy' with savings 'nearer 20%.'  

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