"The only way that I can make sense of, that stands a chance of working, is by establishing a professional rapport and relationship, engaging the individual motivationally, and then, based on thorough and ongoing assessment, collaborative work toward agreed goals. That means a one-to-one relationship with time to be meaningful."
The trouble is the current model sees the practitioner/service user relationship as completely irrelevant to the process. Most supervisees have numerous outside probation officers throughout their sentence and licence which makes it virtually impossible to establish trust and rapport and a good working relationship that just might enable the service user to turn their life around.
Add in the fact that you learn very quickly as a supervisee (under the current regime) to never, ever, ever tell your PO the truth about anything because that will simply get you recalled because of perceived risk, even when there isn't actually any actual raising of risk. And even if you do need help with something, you're never going to get it, so there's no point in even asking, so your situation can get a lot worse because there's zero help and support.
If Sweden can get things right (see Erwin James' latest piece in the Guardian about the Swedish system) and other countries can do a much better job than the UK can at less cost overall even if there may be greater cost up front, one has to wonder why UK politicians are so resistant to doing the right thing that will benefit society much more in both short and long term than the current disastrous mess.
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Because it's about the career of the politician, not for the good of society. Demonising those who commit offences is easy pickings for the ambitious MP; planning a long-term strategy that is efficacious & beneficial to society as a whole, e.g. Bevan's NHS, requires a visionary, not the kwikfix of a self-serving psychopath.
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In a similar vein, i.e. justice on a hiding to nothing as a result of rank stupidity by the NOMS' self-designated 'elite': Who can remember those days of yore when Probation Areas retained experienced criminal lawyers to prepare & prosecute breaches? This was in the dark ages? Then someone decided that was shit and had the bright idea of getting untrained probation staff to prepare & present their own breaches... and as if by magic the number of contested breaches was manifold, as the number of breaches determined 'not proved' escalated from 'very few' to 'quite a lot'.
Also, remember those pre-historic days when there were Probation Officers based in prisons and they prepared the Parole Reports, and even compiled the full Prison Dossier for submission to the Parole Board? Oh, and then someone thought that was shit as well, and had another bright idea: removing the prison-based POs and introducing warm & fluffy Oral Hearings where externally-based probation staff (qualified and unqualified) - often unable to have any previous contact other than via a pisspoor videolink - were pitted against battle-hardened defence barristers & expert witnesses in an adversarial setting with (more often than not) a Judge chairing the Oral Hearing.
Q: So who is more likely to be able to impress a Judge and win a legal argument in an Oral Hearing? NB: it often didn't help that the Prison Officer at the Oral Hearing simply wanted Prisoner 1234 to be released as they were causing hell on the wing. I don't know, those bloomin' dinosaurs and their old fashioned ways. Pah!!
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Crispin Blunt has just been interviewed on Sky news and said...He's spoken to some CRCs in preparation of the interview and been assured that caseloads are pretty much the same as they were prior to the split with probation staff managing caseloads of between 30 and 50. He doesn't recognise reports of probation officers having to manage caseloads of up to 200. Someones not telling the truth.
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To be fair to Crispy Runt, he spoke to the CRCs themselves and it is not surprising that they tried to polish that particular turd. They have been trying to do so since day one.
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As a PSO my case load is currently 84 which is unworkable.
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Victim issues - here's hoping someone at MoJ, Parole Board & office of Victims Commissioner reads this blog.
1. It is simply not appropriate to use probation staff - those who supervise caseloads, cover court duties or work within offices where perpetrators attend for supervision - to act as Victim Liaison Officers.
2. The VLO role should be independent under the gaze of the Victims Commissioner & located within local Police & Crime Commissioners' offices. This would release probation staff to undertake probation duties, and removes them from the risk of conflict of interest, intentional or unintentional bias, or accidental disclosure.
3. The Parole Board should be enabled to commission truly independent professional assessments, e.g. medical reports, psychological assessments. And independent should mean wholly independent, not someone in the employ of the HMPPS or associated with a particular Chambers or law firm.
4. The definition of an eligible 'victim' needs to be clarified.
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Please get your facts right before you give advice. To be clear, Victim liaison officers DO NOT see offenders, they have a separate database which is exclusive to VLO staff, they sit in field team offices to give advice and information to Offender Managers, there are no paper files and victim details are protected. VLOs need to access offender information and prison systems so absolutely need to remain in the National Probation Service employ.
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The VLO remit is professionally delivered under a national job description the same as PO or any other NPS post. The job is evaluated and graded. The job is specific and does not merge into other roles, the boundaries are not flexible. VLOs never supervise offenders. Conflict of interest is not possible. It is a demanding, professional role which is sometimes dismissed by the arrogant or uninformed. There is a piece of legislation called The Victims Charter and it clearly defines the role of the Victim Liaison Officer in the judicial process.
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Falconer refers to the 'relentlessly unfair incarceration under IPP', asserting that many of those safe to release are still in prison, but when an IPP is released, he attacks the Worboy's one as unsafe. I trust the Parole Board more than any politician to reach dispassionate release decisions, a power that once belonged to politicians. Falconer has enough legitimate targets to hit without undermining the Parole Board and jumping on a populist bandwagon about the release of a notorious prisoner.
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Yesterday after watching the 9am lead story on sky about probation I thought it would be pretty informative to the public. It was superceded by the justice committee and the Parole Board, Worboys and then Venables in the afternoon. The media, which is really the vehicle that informs public opinion decisions decides what's important. But shouldn't we be more open minded? More challenging of our own opinions? Realise that we are being fed vote winning dogma?
I think Nick Hardwick gave a really good performance yesterday. The worst cases are not always the cases that attract the media's attention. People go to university and dedicate their lives to a cause to serve society. Get your votes somewhere else politicians, preferably from areas that you know something about.
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I think you have hit the nail on the head. When I started in Probation, it was essentially left alone by politicians but Michael Howard approached it as would a Daily Mail reader and stared interfering with the approaches being taken. Then Boateng came on board with his Community Rehabilitation and Punishment Orders (CRAPOs - remember them? (actually they never existed)) and it was downhill from there. Since then, the HO, NOMS, MoJ, HMPPS have continued to fool around using ill-informed 'experts', dodgy research, amateurs and 'people who have hunches'. Of course, you are right in saying that the politicians can never admit that they are wrong even if it is blatantly obvious that this is the case. This can be opened up to include the NHS, Armed Forces, Housing etc etc. Add Brexit and Trump and I remain convinced that we are looking at the collapse of the West. In 100 years, the UK will be a tiny outpost of civilisation, much liked the Maldives.
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Like Carillon before their demise, Interserve have issued two profit warnings they however have been given till March by the banks to see if they will breach their covenants - I've got to say it's been very quiet on the Interserve need front! Some would say no news is good news however call me cynical! It will be interesting for those of us who are unfortunate enough to work within an Interserve owned CRC to see what further savings they are going to make as part of their "fit for growth" model.
They are making massive changes to UPW, come April we will no longer have stand alone unpaid work officers in offices as all of this will be done remotely (I think 56 staff have been turned into 14) that will be based in one of intended performance service centres (Cunard in Liverpool) - not sure how this staff are going to cope with court appearances for contested breaches along with the massive amount of cases they will be dealing with - apparently this approach is going to improve unpaid work targets?
Unpaid work staff are now expected to become generic case mangers, a few have been given "office manager " type roles (previously made redundant so they've changed the job title!). 4 unpaid work mangers are being reduced to 2 - what's next who knows watch this space - oh we also had an agreement with NPS that we take back to court all those orders with outstanding Unpaid work hours or those that were approaching 9/12 mths - they set aside specific cost for us - I think there was around 500 cases - unpaid work or should I say SL10 is a massive target as it means money!
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I feel for the inspectors. They have to walk a fine line between telling it as it is, appeasing the tabloids and ministers. Trouble is this leads to the situation being drastically watered down. Probation simply isn't fit for purpose at present which is doing everyone - supervisee, PO and the public a huge disservice. Everyone I know who has been on licence or is still on licence has had multiple probation officers over the course of their sentence and licence. There is no way anyone can build a good working relationship with a service user if they are here today and someone else is there tomorrow. Consistency and trust are key.
Supervising people by telephone, unless you're 100% sure that they aren't going to slip back into bad habits or as is clearly widespread as has been revealed recently - innocent of what they were imprisoned for so are extremely unlikely to commit a crime, is asking for trouble. At the very least the PO/supervisee relationship needs to be built on trust that both sides are going to behave themselves and abide by the law (and yes there are an awful lot of PO's playing fast and loose with their legal obligations under the law or who simply don't understand their legal obligations and can't be bothered to educate themselves on them. You can't seriously expect a supervisee to abide by the law if you're setting a bad example by not adhering to the law).
Instead of a sticking plaster which is probably what will happen, if anything, this is an excellent opportunity to redesign the service from the ground up to make it fit for purpose now and in the long run.
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The problem is that you last sentence was the rhetoric that surrounded TR. Look where that got us. For me, the problems are simple. An overemphasis on punishment not rehabilitation. An over reliance on IT and recording. Excessive caseloads and few opportunities to build relationships with offenders and to offer the practical and emotional assistance required. The value of Probation is and always has been the relationship between the practitioner and the offender. Until that relationship is put at the centre of the operating model, it will be all hot air.
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"in many CRCs, the case management itself is insufficient to enable good enforcement decisions. Instead, poor supervision is more likely to lead to reoffending and, for some, another round of imprisonment." This can only be read as "people are going to prison because of crap supervision by CRCs"? A powerful statement.
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"People on licence are more likely to be supervised by higher grade staff" - Really!! Not in my experience, it really doesn't work like that unless there is child protection. Those licence cases would sit with any member of staff regardless of experience - recalls have to be endorsed by a line manager and the manager above them. However, all of that said, you have to know when to go to a manager to discuss a potential recall and as most of us know, some case managers are being left inexperienced to handle high case loads.
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Privatising probation was only one part of Graylings Rehabilitation Revolution. He said it would work because it came in conjunction with engagement with the third sector, resettlement prisons, and TTG. None of that has happened, and without the whole package there is no Rehabilitation Revolution, and CRCs remain as the only part of a botched and broken ideologically driven system.
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Well, well what a surprise, pretty meaningless of course. I see this as tokenist fodder to make it look like there is some sort of monitoring going on when you and I know its not the case. The only outcome will be to waste more money on even more poor service. How the hell can you have a proper insight if you are not talking to the very people who use the service? Yeah lets ignore them that's a good idea. The very people who know whats going on.
If you come from the standpoint that everyone who has committed an offence must be totally untrustworthy and not to be believed at all under any circumstances, then you will learn sweet FA. Finding excuses to breach someone or winding them up until they break is NOT proper enforcement. 'Dame' Stacey needs to talk to the service users to find out what the real issues are, one of which is very poor, low quality POs in CRCs. They can cause quite a lot of damage with their mishandling and more contact with them only serves to allow them to cause even more. They are especially a waste of time (and space). Add into that very poor courses with very poor presenters where people are lumped in to make a larger invoice, spells tick boxing roller-coaster. Yep just keep on ignoring the service users, that's the solution!
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Why are the CRCs 'overstretched'? This judgement lets them off the hook. I don't recall thematics on probation pre-TR ever highlighting lack of resources – even during the austerity years - as being a fundamental issue – yet the first recommendation in the report tells the government to ensure that probation is sufficiently resourced.
Did the CRCs overstretch themselves in cutting staff numbers and dispensing with many experienced practitioners? Are they overstretched because their operating models are not fit for purpose? 'Poor performance' is becoming synonymous with CRC operations. Two of the recommendations tell the NPS and CRCs to 'jointly develop' partnerships and services - this points to the necessity of integration.
As any child will tell you, you cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together. A public-private partnership will never work in probation. As it seems doubtful that any government would ever trust the private sector to run the NPS, the only way out of this mess is to return the CRCs to public ownership. It's been tried before and whilst not always perfect, probation was one of the best performing public services that enjoyed the trust and confidence of the judiciary.
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"I don't want to pay for a service, I want to pay for results". When asked about the evidence base for the TR revolution, preferred to rely on "Common sense." Stated that the Private sector was best placed to shape the necessary changes to bring about the revolution. Claimed he had achieved what various Justice Ministers had been trying to achieve over the last 30 years, namely support for people on release from short term custodial sentences. Claimed the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors would revitalise through innovation, creativity and efficient use of taxpayers money the hitherto unacceptable and stale performance on rates of reoffending. The only box I am ticking, several years later, is that a revolution has been enacted.
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On the face if it, if the government, to celebrate the end of austerity, gave everyone in the UK a chocolate cream cake, it would be seen as a really great goodwill gesture. But for those with diabetes, gluten intolerance or nut allergies, it could be very harmful if not fatal. But that's exactly what they've done by bringing those sentenced to 12mths and under into probation supervision.
I'd like to ask those who shout about how great it is that 40,000 short term sentencees are now subject to supervision do you really think it's done more good then harm? I suggest that those 40,000 are mostly problematic offenders and their offending behaviour is rooted in alcohol and drug addictions and mental health and social problems. With the best will in the world, probation services are not the agency best suited to deal with those problems. With redundancies, short staffing and a high dependency on agency staff in CRCs it's unlikely that offenders with particular offending patterns will be matched with the supervisor best suited to offer help and support.
Add to that the fear of sanction and recall is a barrier for people seeking help. Even if the offender knows recall is unlikely, the fact that it's possible creates a significant barrier. It also forms a barrier seeking help from other agencies because you can never be sure what, when or with who your information may be shared. For many of those 40,000 that the MoJ boast about 'bringing into the fold', they've just created a revolving door with no exit. The question is, does TR do more harm then good?
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This may seem an unusual question to ask as a long serving PO, but, what is the point of OASys? When OASys was first rolled out, we were instructed to write short but relevant notes in 1-13 sections, document a short yet clear risk management plan and a short sentence plan; a document being instructed to be shared with partnership agencies. Even managing a high case load, producing meaningful (as far as was possible) OASys did not prevent me from doing my job as an Offender Manager.
Roll forward to this week. Now, on average, completing a new ISP to meet the newly developed Quality Assurance Standards takes 10+ hours. A colleague said one recently took them over 12 hours. We both have many years service and know how to do an OASys. This is proving to be the norm not the exception.
Reviews to this new standard, Terminations to this new standard, all take our time away from seeing offenders (ex). Many OASys are being rolled back, rejected, no longer meeting this new super duper standard, with requests to do a better job again being the norm rather than the exception. No longer can we share them with partnership agencies. Just who the hell reads them? Add to the fact that each offender needs an ISP, numerous reviews, and a Termination review, all to meet this new Quality Assurance Standard, and it begs the question, what are Oasys about?
Sure, as Officers, we can spend all out days data inputting. But what about the offenders we supervise? How can it make sense that I have to allocate 10+ hours for an ISP, perhaps half that or more for a detailed review etc, and when you multiply these numbers by the 30-40 case loads, cases changing hands time and time again, then I and my colleagues have little or no time for anything else, let alone supporting, supervising and assisting those with are changed with managing.
Am I alone in questioning the validity of Oasys, or any computer task that means Officers have to spend 7.5 hours of an 8 hour day data inputting? How can we help offenders turn their lives around if we don't have time to spend with them? I do know this, 10 hours spent with an offender will have more results in helping that person turn their life around than the same amount of time spent on a computer. Anyone else agree with this, and if so, what can we do about it?
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Agree totally as it’s not good for anybody’s health to be sat at a computer for this length of time. Cut backs and procedures without adequate training ie learn as you go results in mistakes which could leave the public at risk. Frustrating times for service users and staff alike. Pro social modelling is hard to deliver when you are treated in such way. Transparency doesn’t exist. As an employer you have a duty of health and safety to your employees. You are not only letting the public and service user down but your staff who are hard dedicated workers who want to do a good job and help service users turn their life around.
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Not just PSS, also Community and Suspended sentences not being supervised for months on end by CRC. Pre TR the Mags used to scrutinise engagement with community penalties - not any more. Have they too been told they cannot hinder in court the commercial practice of CRCs?
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In London CRC all PSS are assessed as low risk and supervised by Penrose. A “light touch” we’re told to call it. http://www.penrose.org.uk Say no more!
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Are they serious! Assessing all PSS as low risk is a criminal act in itself! Ludicrous. Whoever made this decision needs to be hauled before the courts to explain their decision making process and risk management. Ok, some or many could be low risk but definitely not all. What about the DV cases..?
