Am grateful for the following observations:-
Mark Drakeford opened proceedings with a well informed passionate speech setting out the case for devolving probation in Wales to the Assembly. Talked about the ethics of public service, locality, professionalism, social justice. Music to the ears of all present, not least to Napo Cymru members, who it seems thank the heavens for a First Minister who not only understands the stance of a probation officer, but used to be one. As he said, there is a healthy quota of Welsh Government ministers with Probation CV's, and every development in probation is debated vigorously in the assembly. Eat your heart out England it would seem.
Also speaking at AGM for the first time, Shadow Justice Minister Richard Burgon MP had obviously digested the excellent review of probation by Lord Ramsbotham and is sounding much more up to speed with things. Obviously not in power, he did nevertheless get a standing ovation for saying under a Labour Administration probation would leave HMPPS and become an independent body.
Lots of motions, all passed unanimously, the theme being pay, training and workloads. At least two motions talked about SFOs and the need to take workloads into account
Budget in deficit again for the year reported. This can only continue for as long as the reserves match potential redundancy payouts and we are 'liquid'. Good news is an apparently steady rise in membership. There is an emergency motion re a decision to pay a grant to five schools to promote unionism. Some feel this is possibly a vanity project by Katie and Ian.
Biggest tetchy moment of the day though was in the afternoon Professional Session with Chief Inspector Justin Russell, Amy Rees and Mike Nellis. Mike challenged both Napo and Amy/MoJ to show some genuine forward visionary thinking. Amy Rees repeatedly using the phrase “The Unified Model” and very, very angry members speaking from the floor rejecting this and demanding full reunification. She won't listen of course, but it was a real stand-off. The Grayling technique of repeating the same thing in the hope it would stick just wasn’t working.
Of course everyone is claiming the modest part-reunification as their own work, from Napo to Amy. For some the MoJ approach to the TR “repairs” bring to mind:-
'As a Dog Returns to His Vomit, so a Fool Repeats His Folly'
Proverbs 26:11
Saturday, 12 October 2019
Friday, 11 October 2019
Napo AGM and Conference 2019
We all know that bringing probation back together under civil service command and control is not the answer, so lets hope Napo can get its act together in Cardiff before it's too late. It must be obvious to many that the 'campaign' to date has been lack lustre to put it mildly and it will be interesting to see if the membership are up for trying to kick some life into those on the 'top' table. In the age of new media which makes publishing so easy, I simply don't understand why there isn't a veritable blizzard of activity in evidence.
Anyway, as the AGM and conference gets under way later today, yesterday's publication of a summary report into the inspection of all probation services provides a useful backdrop for the day's discourse. This is the damning press release:-
Chief inspector: significant performance gap between public and private probation providers
Inspectors have found a significant performance gap between the public-sector National Probation Service (NPS) and private-sector Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs).
More than a quarter of a million people are under probation supervision. They are managed by 28 probation services: 21 CRCs supervise low and medium risk of harm offenders and the NPS’s seven divisions manage high risk of harm offenders.
HM Inspectorate of Probation has inspected all 28 probation services over the past 12 months. Inspectors have conducted hundreds of site visits and thousands of interviews, and have analysed nearly 6,000 cases.
In total, the Inspectorate rated:
- zero probation services as ‘Outstanding’
- six probation services as ‘Good’ (five NPS divisions and one CRC)
- 21 probation services as ‘Requires improvement’ (19 CRCs and two NPS divisions)
- one probation service as ‘Inadequate’ (one CRC).
“The flaws in the government’s Transforming Rehabilitation model for funding and organising probation services have been well documented. There has been significant under-investment in services for supervising low and medium-risk offenders, and this report lays bare the legacy of that shortfall. As a result of these failures, CRCs receive less than they need to adequately supervise what is often a highly chaotic and difficult to manage group of offenders.
“We found a clear difference in performance between the NPS and CRCs, with five of the seven NPS divisions rated ‘Good’ but only one of the 21 CRCs falling into this category.”
Average caseloads for probation officers in CRCs were far higher than for the NPS, with over two-thirds of probation staff managing more than 50 cases, compared to just one in 20 staff in NPS divisions.
Mr Russell said: “Across all inspections, less than half of responsible officers felt they had reasonable workloads. The sheer volume of work can make it difficult for probation staff to maintain high standards and can impair judgment.
“High workloads can also contribute to stress and sickness levels. In some organisations, this has led to additional pressures on the remaining workforce as they cover for absent colleagues.”
Inspectors found a particularly large gap between the NPS and CRCs in the quality of work to protect the public from serious harm. Overall scores on this aspect of performance were up to 25 percentage points lower for CRCs than for the NPS.
Mr Russell said: “High workloads may be impacting on the way that risk to the public is being managed. Probation services are not doing enough to identify and manage the potential risks that some individuals pose to others. Poor practice is particularly stark in the private sector. Probation staff in CRCs did not assess risks sufficiently in nearly half (45 per cent) of inspected cases. Public safety was not considered properly when delivering probation activity in six out of 10 cases (59 per cent).
“Where CRCs should have conducted a home visit, just a third (32 per cent) were recorded.
We also found frequent lapses in information-sharing with other agencies such as the police and children’s social services. Probation staff are missing out on opportunities to spot and mitigate risks, including to keep children and potential victims safe.”
Mr Russell confirmed inspectors had raised the alarm when they felt there were immediate risks to the public. In these rare instances, probation services took prompt action to resolve issues.
Mr Russell said: “The government is currently considering the best way to reform probation services. I hope they will re-establish the twin aims of probation on an equal footing – services must protect the public as well as reduce reoffending.”
In relation to the NPS, which supervises the highest risk cases, the Inspectorate rated five divisions as ‘Good’ and two divisions ‘Require improvement’. Overall, inspectors found NPS divisions were particularly strong at assessing and planning cases, commissioning services to meet individuals’ needs, and working with agencies to manage the risks of serious harm and to support service users to stop offending.
But NPS divisions typically scored lower marks in two areas: staffing and facilities. There is a national shortage of qualified probation officers and many divisions have found it difficult to recruit and retain staff. Consequently, every division was rated ‘Requires improvement’ on staffing. The quality of premises also fell below expectations, and did not always provide a safe and secure environment for staff and service users. The Ministry of Justice holds a national contract to maintain facilities, but inspectors found some divisions’ sites required hundreds of repairs.
Mr Russell said: “Effective probation services play a vital role in helping individuals to turn away from crime and towards more positive and productive futures. Probation staff are often dealing with people who have complex and multiple needs, and the work that they do matters not just to individuals, but also to their families, communities and society at large.
“Over the past year, we have shone a light on the quality of work in each probation service. We will be inspecting all 28 organisations again to see if and how they have addressed our recommendations.”
Thursday, 10 October 2019
Best Wishes
Today is the day many Napo members will be heading off to Cardiff for the AGM and in order to amuse themselves they might like to watch and listen to Michael Spurr's version of history delivered to the delegates in Sydney earlier this year. It might come as a surprise to many that he describes himself as a 'practitioner' who 'once worked as a probation officer in the 80's'.
As always I wish Napo well, but this year I will not be present at the AGM, my membership having lapsed earlier in the year. As regular readers will know, I joined the union on appointment as a newly-qualified probation officer in 1986, but for reasons probably well understood by many readers and Napo members, I've decided to call it a day, so there will be no conference report as usual, unless any of those attending feel a burning desire to share any thoughts or reflections with us. Have a good conference and AGM.
As always I wish Napo well, but this year I will not be present at the AGM, my membership having lapsed earlier in the year. As regular readers will know, I joined the union on appointment as a newly-qualified probation officer in 1986, but for reasons probably well understood by many readers and Napo members, I've decided to call it a day, so there will be no conference report as usual, unless any of those attending feel a burning desire to share any thoughts or reflections with us. Have a good conference and AGM.
Wednesday, 9 October 2019
MoJ and the SOTP Fiasco
Last night's BBC Radio 4 File on 4 'Can sex offenders and violent criminals be rehabilitated in prison?' made for grim listening and to me confirms all the worst aspects of the command and control HMPPS/MoJ culture that is steadily strangling the probation ideal and ethos.
We've previously covered the appalling way researcher Kathryn Hopkins was treated by the MoJ and the saga provides yet more evidence as to why civil servants and politicians should not be influencing, let alone running, probation services or you end up with the sad sorry mess outlined by Danny Shaw in this radio documentary:-
We've previously covered the appalling way researcher Kathryn Hopkins was treated by the MoJ and the saga provides yet more evidence as to why civil servants and politicians should not be influencing, let alone running, probation services or you end up with the sad sorry mess outlined by Danny Shaw in this radio documentary:-
Sex offender: 'I've never had so many deviant thoughts'
In 2017, the government's flagship treatment scheme for people convicted in England and Wales of rape or child sexual abuse was scrapped after it was shown to raise the risk of reoffending. Two sex offenders have told BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme what it was like to take part in the rehabilitation programme.
"Everything was discussed in minute detail. They had what was called the 'hot seat' and every prisoner that was in a group had to sit in the hot seat and they were bombarded - it was like an interrogation." These are Paul's experiences of group sessions on the discredited Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP), which ran from the early 1990s until 2017.
Paul has been convicted of numerous offences, including rape, and is serving a long jail sentence. Speaking to me from a prison pay-phone, he says he started the SOTP on three occasions - it was a cognitive behaviour therapy designed to teach offenders to think and act differently. But, the 60-year-old says, each time, he was removed from the course before the end because group facilitators thought he "wasn't learning anything".
"Being in group settings, discussing serious offences and some less serious offences - because these groups were mixed - actually made prisoners worse and normalised what prisoners were doing," he says. Rapists, murderers, child sex offenders and "flashers" were all placed together, says Paul. "People were learning from their mistakes - they were learning from other group members how to perhaps be better sex offenders without being caught."
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) research showed 10% of men who had completed the SOTP reoffended, compared with 8% of those who had not done the programme. The results were published five years after analyst Kathryn Hopkins first alerted the department the scheme might not be working.
Paul also claims some inmates were told to disclose the names of their victims as part of the process of setting out their offending history in graphic detail. "It was to physically humiliate you and break you - I could see no other purpose for it," he says.
Many of Paul's observations are shared by Dr Robert Forde, a retired forensic psychologist who used to work for the Home Office and is an expert on assessing risk. Dr Forde told File on 4: "One prisoner said to me, 'I hate doing this course because I've never had so many deviant sexual thoughts as I've had since I started because we're talking about sex offending all the time and actually I want to get away from all that.'"
Another prisoner, who had himself been a victim of sex abuse as a child, told him he had been asked to give details of what had happened to him in front of paedophiles who had became aroused as a result. Dr Forde said some prisoners on the SOTP courses would "play the system" in order to convince the Parole Board they were safe to be released.
He said one prisoner had told him: "You claim to have things like deviant thoughts about victims or indulge in deviant sexual practices and then after the course is finished and you're doing the post-course assessment, you then drop all these things and you just tell the truth." The inmate claimed this would then result in the prisoner being given a lower risk score by course assessors.
Former prisoner Peter, who has served two sentences for sexual offences against children and possessing indecent images, tells me the SOTP provided a false sense of security. "You come out thinking you're fixed," he says. "There's that feeling... because it's a treatment programme and that's what treatment does, doesn't it - fixes what's wrong?"
In 2017, the government's flagship treatment scheme for people convicted in England and Wales of rape or child sexual abuse was scrapped after it was shown to raise the risk of reoffending. Two sex offenders have told BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme what it was like to take part in the rehabilitation programme.
"Everything was discussed in minute detail. They had what was called the 'hot seat' and every prisoner that was in a group had to sit in the hot seat and they were bombarded - it was like an interrogation." These are Paul's experiences of group sessions on the discredited Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP), which ran from the early 1990s until 2017.
Paul has been convicted of numerous offences, including rape, and is serving a long jail sentence. Speaking to me from a prison pay-phone, he says he started the SOTP on three occasions - it was a cognitive behaviour therapy designed to teach offenders to think and act differently. But, the 60-year-old says, each time, he was removed from the course before the end because group facilitators thought he "wasn't learning anything".
"Being in group settings, discussing serious offences and some less serious offences - because these groups were mixed - actually made prisoners worse and normalised what prisoners were doing," he says. Rapists, murderers, child sex offenders and "flashers" were all placed together, says Paul. "People were learning from their mistakes - they were learning from other group members how to perhaps be better sex offenders without being caught."
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) research showed 10% of men who had completed the SOTP reoffended, compared with 8% of those who had not done the programme. The results were published five years after analyst Kathryn Hopkins first alerted the department the scheme might not be working.
Paul also claims some inmates were told to disclose the names of their victims as part of the process of setting out their offending history in graphic detail. "It was to physically humiliate you and break you - I could see no other purpose for it," he says.
Many of Paul's observations are shared by Dr Robert Forde, a retired forensic psychologist who used to work for the Home Office and is an expert on assessing risk. Dr Forde told File on 4: "One prisoner said to me, 'I hate doing this course because I've never had so many deviant sexual thoughts as I've had since I started because we're talking about sex offending all the time and actually I want to get away from all that.'"
Another prisoner, who had himself been a victim of sex abuse as a child, told him he had been asked to give details of what had happened to him in front of paedophiles who had became aroused as a result. Dr Forde said some prisoners on the SOTP courses would "play the system" in order to convince the Parole Board they were safe to be released.
He said one prisoner had told him: "You claim to have things like deviant thoughts about victims or indulge in deviant sexual practices and then after the course is finished and you're doing the post-course assessment, you then drop all these things and you just tell the truth." The inmate claimed this would then result in the prisoner being given a lower risk score by course assessors.
Former prisoner Peter, who has served two sentences for sexual offences against children and possessing indecent images, tells me the SOTP provided a false sense of security. "You come out thinking you're fixed," he says. "There's that feeling... because it's a treatment programme and that's what treatment does, doesn't it - fixes what's wrong?"
Now in his 50s, Peter had to do a "booster" course when he was first released. "You're going back over the offences, so you keep reliving this stuff that just isn't helpful," he says. "You're not going to forget what you've done and you know you've made victims... if you're going to be a useful member of society, you need to try and move your life forward."
During his second spell in jail, Peter completed one-to-one sessions as part of the Healthy Sex Programme, which he found far more beneficial because it focused less on his offending and more on steps to overcome his problems. He is now receiving support at the Corbett Centre, a groundbreaking project in Nottingham run by the Safer Living Foundation Charity. It provides a range of emotional help and practical support for about 30 sex offenders living in the community. "You're in an environment where people know what's happened," Peter says. "So you're not having to start your life with a lie... you can put your life back on track."
Although the Corbett Centre shows some promising early signs, it will be some years before it is known whether it reduces reoffending in the long term.
A number of Ministry of Justice initiatives are also unproven - the Healthy Sex Programme is currently being evaluated, while the two sex offender rehabilitation schemes that replaced the SOTP, Horizon and Kaizen, have yet to be tested.
The MoJ says it works "closely" with the Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice Panel in the design of programmes delivered in prison and on probation. The department says the panel, which has to approve such schemes before they can be used, is made up of "independent experts from academia and practice from across the world".
But two forensic psychiatrists, Penny Brown and Callum Ross, have been so alarmed by the failings in the SOTP programme they are calling for greater oversight of new forms of treatment. This week, the Lancet Psychiatry medical journal published a paper they have written.
"We want to get reassurance that government-funded policy research is subjected to the same requirements and high academic standards that are placed on everybody else and all other scientists," says Dr Brown. "The need to show that you're doing something shouldn't override the risk of actually causing harm."
--oo00oo--
Mention of the Corbett Centre led me to the following Guardian article from February this year which I find astonishing for a number of reasons. Firstly, it doesn't mention 'probation' once! Secondly, it pretty much outlines sound probation practice that used to be part and parcel of supervision during a period of licence and echoes the in-house SOTP work undertaken by Probation Trusts before the introduction of the accredited, but now discredited, one-size-fits-all SOTP programmes.
Finally, it serves to remind me of the situation regarding the charity Circles of Support and Accountability - an organisation that HMPPS decided to stop supporting financially. I am genuinely confused as to why the MoJ decided to withdraw such a piddling amount of money from a widely respected organisation doing very worthwhile work? I'm even more puzzled because the Safer Living Foundation runs Circles in Nottingham and Derbyshire. Can anyone shed any light on the politics of this very strange situation?
University launches scheme to rehabilitate sex offenders
Controversial project aims to cut crime rate by teaching skills like cooking and building a supportive social circle
Sex offenders will be given support to help find a job and make new friends under a pioneering scheme run by a university and backed by police. The initiative aims to integrate people back into society to prevent them committing further crimes.
Offenders will visit a centre, the first of its kind in the UK, where they will receive employment training – from management skills to writing CVs – as well as help with building a supportive social circle, finding new hobbies or learning basic skills such as cooking. The strategy’s advocates say that, while they realise it will be controversial, it will reduce reoffending rates. The aim is to work with up to 100 people in the first year.
“We want to make sure they won’t reoffend because they will have found a niche in society, a way of reintegrating,” said Professor Belinda Winder, head of the sexual offences, crime and misconduct research unit at Nottingham Trent University, which is piloting the scheme.
“It’s for people who are going to be rejected, who feel desperate, lonely, isolated, a vicious circle which can contribute to reoffending. We are going to break that vicious cycle, but it’s difficult to know if people are going to be able to stomach this.”
Although programmes already exist to help support convicted sex offenders, the Nottingham scheme, adopted by the Corbett Centre for Prisoner Reintegration, is said to be the world’s first holistic approach to fully integrating sex offenders back into society.
Last year the main sex offender treatment programme for England and Wales was scrapped by the Ministry of Justice after a report revealed it led to more reoffending. Researchers found that prisoners completing the programme – which was designed to challenge the behaviour of male sex offenders with psychological techniques to change their thinking – were more likely to commit further crimes. Reoffending rates for sex offenders are between 10 to 14%.
The centre itself will have police from the Nottinghamshire’s force on site at various times during the week so they can meet sex offenders on licence, a move that will help save time and resources tracking down their whereabouts. Nottinghamshire’s police and crime commissioner Paddy Tipping said: “This groundbreaking piece of work will hopefully set the new standard for post-sentence reintegration into the community. It’s absolutely logical.
“If we can rehabilitate offenders and support them as they return to live in the community, they will be safer and less likely to reoffend. This in turn means there will be fewer victims of sexual abuse and harm. It’s an ambitious project and I’m proud to be involved.” The centre will be housed at a university-owned building in the middle of the city. “We’re mindful of the difficulties of what we’re doing,” said Winder. “But remember that people are free to walk anywhere in the city and go, for instance, to Costa Coffee.”
The centre will be launched this week by Safer Living Foundation (SLF), a partnership between HMP Whatton in Nottinghamshire and the school of social sciences at Nottingham Trent University. Lynn Saunders, chair and co-founder of SLF and governor of HMP Whatton, said the centre was a “much needed resource”. Winder added: “We’re giving people somewhere to go to help them to build a better new life, to get the support they want rather than, for example, wandering around the train station.” She added that two other UK regions had already expressed interest in adopting the model.
During his second spell in jail, Peter completed one-to-one sessions as part of the Healthy Sex Programme, which he found far more beneficial because it focused less on his offending and more on steps to overcome his problems. He is now receiving support at the Corbett Centre, a groundbreaking project in Nottingham run by the Safer Living Foundation Charity. It provides a range of emotional help and practical support for about 30 sex offenders living in the community. "You're in an environment where people know what's happened," Peter says. "So you're not having to start your life with a lie... you can put your life back on track."
Although the Corbett Centre shows some promising early signs, it will be some years before it is known whether it reduces reoffending in the long term.
A number of Ministry of Justice initiatives are also unproven - the Healthy Sex Programme is currently being evaluated, while the two sex offender rehabilitation schemes that replaced the SOTP, Horizon and Kaizen, have yet to be tested.
The MoJ says it works "closely" with the Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice Panel in the design of programmes delivered in prison and on probation. The department says the panel, which has to approve such schemes before they can be used, is made up of "independent experts from academia and practice from across the world".
But two forensic psychiatrists, Penny Brown and Callum Ross, have been so alarmed by the failings in the SOTP programme they are calling for greater oversight of new forms of treatment. This week, the Lancet Psychiatry medical journal published a paper they have written.
"We want to get reassurance that government-funded policy research is subjected to the same requirements and high academic standards that are placed on everybody else and all other scientists," says Dr Brown. "The need to show that you're doing something shouldn't override the risk of actually causing harm."
--oo00oo--
Mention of the Corbett Centre led me to the following Guardian article from February this year which I find astonishing for a number of reasons. Firstly, it doesn't mention 'probation' once! Secondly, it pretty much outlines sound probation practice that used to be part and parcel of supervision during a period of licence and echoes the in-house SOTP work undertaken by Probation Trusts before the introduction of the accredited, but now discredited, one-size-fits-all SOTP programmes.
Finally, it serves to remind me of the situation regarding the charity Circles of Support and Accountability - an organisation that HMPPS decided to stop supporting financially. I am genuinely confused as to why the MoJ decided to withdraw such a piddling amount of money from a widely respected organisation doing very worthwhile work? I'm even more puzzled because the Safer Living Foundation runs Circles in Nottingham and Derbyshire. Can anyone shed any light on the politics of this very strange situation?
University launches scheme to rehabilitate sex offenders
Controversial project aims to cut crime rate by teaching skills like cooking and building a supportive social circle
Sex offenders will be given support to help find a job and make new friends under a pioneering scheme run by a university and backed by police. The initiative aims to integrate people back into society to prevent them committing further crimes.
Offenders will visit a centre, the first of its kind in the UK, where they will receive employment training – from management skills to writing CVs – as well as help with building a supportive social circle, finding new hobbies or learning basic skills such as cooking. The strategy’s advocates say that, while they realise it will be controversial, it will reduce reoffending rates. The aim is to work with up to 100 people in the first year.
“We want to make sure they won’t reoffend because they will have found a niche in society, a way of reintegrating,” said Professor Belinda Winder, head of the sexual offences, crime and misconduct research unit at Nottingham Trent University, which is piloting the scheme.
“It’s for people who are going to be rejected, who feel desperate, lonely, isolated, a vicious circle which can contribute to reoffending. We are going to break that vicious cycle, but it’s difficult to know if people are going to be able to stomach this.”
Although programmes already exist to help support convicted sex offenders, the Nottingham scheme, adopted by the Corbett Centre for Prisoner Reintegration, is said to be the world’s first holistic approach to fully integrating sex offenders back into society.
Last year the main sex offender treatment programme for England and Wales was scrapped by the Ministry of Justice after a report revealed it led to more reoffending. Researchers found that prisoners completing the programme – which was designed to challenge the behaviour of male sex offenders with psychological techniques to change their thinking – were more likely to commit further crimes. Reoffending rates for sex offenders are between 10 to 14%.
The centre itself will have police from the Nottinghamshire’s force on site at various times during the week so they can meet sex offenders on licence, a move that will help save time and resources tracking down their whereabouts. Nottinghamshire’s police and crime commissioner Paddy Tipping said: “This groundbreaking piece of work will hopefully set the new standard for post-sentence reintegration into the community. It’s absolutely logical.
“If we can rehabilitate offenders and support them as they return to live in the community, they will be safer and less likely to reoffend. This in turn means there will be fewer victims of sexual abuse and harm. It’s an ambitious project and I’m proud to be involved.” The centre will be housed at a university-owned building in the middle of the city. “We’re mindful of the difficulties of what we’re doing,” said Winder. “But remember that people are free to walk anywhere in the city and go, for instance, to Costa Coffee.”
The centre will be launched this week by Safer Living Foundation (SLF), a partnership between HMP Whatton in Nottinghamshire and the school of social sciences at Nottingham Trent University. Lynn Saunders, chair and co-founder of SLF and governor of HMP Whatton, said the centre was a “much needed resource”. Winder added: “We’re giving people somewhere to go to help them to build a better new life, to get the support they want rather than, for example, wandering around the train station.” She added that two other UK regions had already expressed interest in adopting the model.
Tuesday, 8 October 2019
Probation Death Knell 4
I think it would be fair to say there is growing evidence of low morale and concerns regarding the impending NPS takeover:-
Just dipping in to the Blog having left the world of Probation recently. I neither miss the sick and abusive management created out of the so called rehabilitation revolution or the politics that go on regurgitating the same old crap. It's amazing that the higher echelons can find so many ways to describe how Probation should be designed and managed. How can anyone have any faith when no-one is prepared to say we got it wrong.
*****
The write up has been published and well read, the problem is those managers in NPS, The lot of them bought their own smoke of elitism an superiority. They are a nasty school head teacher doctrine of the 50s. They destroyed the structures, ate the Grayling line and wrote staff off in CRCs. They now need them back only won't take all just cherry pick. Then they will claim to put the new model into shape. They will never succeed as they are the most spiteful leaders ever, only ever having been moderated in the trusts. Once free in NPS they went berserk and as we now know what they are about, that generation could never deliver. They know who they are, power money greed and cronies.
The write up has been published and well read, the problem is those managers in NPS, The lot of them bought their own smoke of elitism an superiority. They are a nasty school head teacher doctrine of the 50s. They destroyed the structures, ate the Grayling line and wrote staff off in CRCs. They now need them back only won't take all just cherry pick. Then they will claim to put the new model into shape. They will never succeed as they are the most spiteful leaders ever, only ever having been moderated in the trusts. Once free in NPS they went berserk and as we now know what they are about, that generation could never deliver. They know who they are, power money greed and cronies.
*****
Bravo/Brava! I think you have identified & dared to speak of some key traits exhibited by those who have achieved the greatest benefit from TR & all that followed: Nastiness, nursery-school exclusivity, self-deception, spite, professional incompetence, greed. And sad-to-say I suspect you are right in saying the incumbent fuckwits will persist in post under the TR2 regime, continuing to be paid handsomely for abject failure whilst others carry the can.
Bravo/Brava! I think you have identified & dared to speak of some key traits exhibited by those who have achieved the greatest benefit from TR & all that followed: Nastiness, nursery-school exclusivity, self-deception, spite, professional incompetence, greed. And sad-to-say I suspect you are right in saying the incumbent fuckwits will persist in post under the TR2 regime, continuing to be paid handsomely for abject failure whilst others carry the can.
Monday, 7 October 2019
Death Knell of Probation 3
Thanks go to the reader for pointing us in the direction of the latest Probation Change Bulletin which sets out where we are with the MoJ plans to gobble up probation under the dead hand of civil service control:-
1. Introduction
An update from the senior team
Welcome to the September update on the probation reform programme. The common theme that runs through this update is that we are moving from design into delivery - from talking about the future of probation to making it happen.
We have begun the process of moving to the 12 new probation regions (11 in England, plus Wales) and have started recruitment for the six regional director vacancies. We hope that all regional directors will be in post from April 2020, allowing a phased transition to the new structures.
Consultation with staff in Wales is well underway and we aim to transfer offender management from the CRC to the NPS later this year. To support this process we’ve finalised guidance on how we will fairly and transparently assign CRC staff to either the NPS or to new contracted providers.
We have also reflected on the language we use to describe contracts. We have replaced Innovation Partner with Probation Delivery Partner. We think this is a clearer description of the purpose of those organisations and, importantly, it anchors them to the probation service of which they will be a key part.
We plan to launch the competition to appoint a probation delivery partner for each region later this year.
Update from Wales
Seetec in Wales is currently engaged with staff and trade union consultation. This consultation process will formally end on 19 October 2019.
More information on the detail of the proposed Wales transition will be available after this consultation process. Our priority is to make sure that staff are fully informed at all stages.
Services will be commissioned in Wales at the same time as in England. We are working closely with HMPPS Wales to make sure that unpaid work, accredited programmes, resettlement and rehabilitation services are designed and commissioned in a way that meets the specific circumstances and needs in Wales. If you want to contact the programme team in Wales or have any questions please email futurepsw@justice.gov.uk
2. Service design
The design of future probation services
We have been sharing and refining our design with key stakeholders to build the first version of our Target Operating Model (TOM) for future probation services and we plan to publish it later this year. We will publish multiple versions of this TOM as the design work progresses.
2.1 Key features of the new system
3. Transition and mobilisation
How we are changing from current to future services
We are looking very carefully at transition - taking care to manage the pace of change and work closely with local partners to deliver the transition. No area or region is the same so our approach to transition and the speed of transition will be different across England and Wales. To support this work we have established transition boards across England and Wales - one for each new probation region.
These transition boards have representation from both the NPS and CRCs. In addition, we are establishing sub-boards for people and estates across the country. A growing transitions team in the probation programme will support these boards. Once these boards are fully established they will be a critical part of our plans to transition to future services.
Key activities of the transition team in September have been: * Establishing the regional transition boards and sub groups * Recruiting NPS and CRC transition leads * Requesting more workforce data from CRCs (and their supply chain partners) to inform the accuracy of our workforce planning.
Key activities planned for October are: * Establishing a central transition plan and regional draft action plans * A meeting with all key transition leads to affirm roles, responsibilities and activities in the transition space.
4. Workforce
What we doing to support the probation workforce and related professionals
We are working closely with local HR partners in the NPS and CRCs to support probation staff and the employees of supply chain partners. The regional transition boards will enable effective communication to a wide range of practitioners in their local area.
These HR partners will also ensure that planning is localised and detailed enough to inform both our national direction and what we need to do regionally. They will report to their regional transition board. There will be local operational staff as well as HR specialists on the transition boards. Work will include planning the training needs across regions for all staff prior to future changes.
We are also looking at workforce needs for the probation delivery partners. This is the competition for unpaid work, accredited programmes and non-accredited red interventions.
5. Probation structures
The design and development of new probation structures
We are finalising the new regional senior management structure. As a milestone in that work we have recently launched the external recruitment process for the new regional probation director roles. The job adverts have been posted on Civil Service Jobs. (Please open this link in Firefox).
A crucial part of future structures is the work needed to ensure that the NPS operates seamlessly with contracted providers. We have been working with colleagues across the programme to run workshops with staff so that we understand the referral, commissioning, contract and performance management processes that support the delivery of interventions. We will build on these workshops so that we have the right processes in place for the new commissioning frameworks under the unified model.
Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are vital local stakeholders and we will continue to work with them closely. We are organising a national event for PCCs on 21 October in London. At this event we will update on our work with them on a national level and, facilitated by the Association for Police and Crime Commissioners, we will define the role of PCCs in the future model. This includes how the NPS and PCCs will work together at both local and regional levels and how key enablers, such as data, will support this work.
6.1 Probation delivery partners (unpaid work, accredited programmes and structured non-accredited interventions)
Following feedback from the market we have decided to amend the title ‘innovation partner’ to ‘probation delivery partner’. This better reflects the services that future providers will deliver while including our aim to work in partnership with future providers.
The competition for probation delivery partners has entered the market-warming phase prior to the launch of competition in November 2019. You can read the first set of draft documents published on the Government website on the probation reform consultation events and materials page.
6.2 Dynamic framework (rehabilitation and resettlement services)
We will make the dynamic framework available to other public sector commissioners and we are engaging with other Government departments and commissioners to seek feedback on: * Proposed categories of need areas and cohorts * Key principles of the framework and how other commissioners will be able to use the dynamic framework.
We are also engaging with the market by holding smaller scale workshops. At these events we will seek detailed feedback on our approach to ensure that we are proportionate and reduce barriers to entry wherever possible. We expect that the qualification phase for the dynamic framework will open in December 2019. Dynamic framework bidders will be able to qualify at any time during the life of the framework. But please note that call-off competitions for day one services will start in early 2020 so bidders are encouraged to participate from December 2019.
7. Links and further information
Response to the consultation on future probation services Draft blueprint on future probation services Event materials If you have any questions or would like to contact the programme team please email strengthening.probation@justice.gov.uk
Seetec in Wales is currently engaged with staff and trade union consultation. This consultation process will formally end on 19 October 2019.
More information on the detail of the proposed Wales transition will be available after this consultation process. Our priority is to make sure that staff are fully informed at all stages.
Services will be commissioned in Wales at the same time as in England. We are working closely with HMPPS Wales to make sure that unpaid work, accredited programmes, resettlement and rehabilitation services are designed and commissioned in a way that meets the specific circumstances and needs in Wales. If you want to contact the programme team in Wales or have any questions please email futurepsw@justice.gov.uk
2. Service design
The design of future probation services
We have been sharing and refining our design with key stakeholders to build the first version of our Target Operating Model (TOM) for future probation services and we plan to publish it later this year. We will publish multiple versions of this TOM as the design work progresses.
2.1 Key features of the new system
- A high-quality service to protect the public - reducing reoffending and improving outcomes for offenders
- More support for our workforce to secure the skills needed to deliver effective probation services
- Delivery that is responsive to local needs, creates the right conditions for a diverse range of providers and ensures a clearer role for voluntary and private sectors
- Stronger engagement with stakeholders so that we can better influence levels of demand across the Criminal Justice System and improve sentencer confidence in probation delivery.
2.2 The role of the probation practitioner and the intervention providers
We are carefully designing a system based on a known evidence base, both for probation practitioners and specialist services, so that we can address specific needs and behaviors. We are using this information to more clearly define the roles and interfaces in the system, especially between the NPS and contracted providers. Here are some key facts:
We are carefully designing a system based on a known evidence base, both for probation practitioners and specialist services, so that we can address specific needs and behaviors. We are using this information to more clearly define the roles and interfaces in the system, especially between the NPS and contracted providers. Here are some key facts:
- The relationship between probation practitioners and those serving a sentence is key and the evidence base confirms their central role as an agent of change
- Probation practitioners are likely to be more effective as agents of change if they can access specialist services to address specific needs - attempting to address practical needs can detract from building positive relationships
- Interventions that build social capital are likely to be better delivered by specialist local providers
- Our aim is to support probation practitioners by making sure interventions are available that meet frequently occurring needs
- The focus will be on interventions that build skills and secure appropriate outcomes for the individual
- Our approach should ensure we make best use of the opportunities and permissions that delivering a sentence can provide
- Our new regional leadership will champion and enable a whole system response to desistance
- The service will respond to the needs of those with protected characteristics, especially for groups where there is convincing evidence, such as women and young adults.
3. Transition and mobilisation
How we are changing from current to future services
We are looking very carefully at transition - taking care to manage the pace of change and work closely with local partners to deliver the transition. No area or region is the same so our approach to transition and the speed of transition will be different across England and Wales. To support this work we have established transition boards across England and Wales - one for each new probation region.
These transition boards have representation from both the NPS and CRCs. In addition, we are establishing sub-boards for people and estates across the country. A growing transitions team in the probation programme will support these boards. Once these boards are fully established they will be a critical part of our plans to transition to future services.
Key activities of the transition team in September have been: * Establishing the regional transition boards and sub groups * Recruiting NPS and CRC transition leads * Requesting more workforce data from CRCs (and their supply chain partners) to inform the accuracy of our workforce planning.
Key activities planned for October are: * Establishing a central transition plan and regional draft action plans * A meeting with all key transition leads to affirm roles, responsibilities and activities in the transition space.
4. Workforce
What we doing to support the probation workforce and related professionals
We are working closely with local HR partners in the NPS and CRCs to support probation staff and the employees of supply chain partners. The regional transition boards will enable effective communication to a wide range of practitioners in their local area.
These HR partners will also ensure that planning is localised and detailed enough to inform both our national direction and what we need to do regionally. They will report to their regional transition board. There will be local operational staff as well as HR specialists on the transition boards. Work will include planning the training needs across regions for all staff prior to future changes.
We are also looking at workforce needs for the probation delivery partners. This is the competition for unpaid work, accredited programmes and non-accredited red interventions.
5. Probation structures
The design and development of new probation structures
We are finalising the new regional senior management structure. As a milestone in that work we have recently launched the external recruitment process for the new regional probation director roles. The job adverts have been posted on Civil Service Jobs. (Please open this link in Firefox).
A crucial part of future structures is the work needed to ensure that the NPS operates seamlessly with contracted providers. We have been working with colleagues across the programme to run workshops with staff so that we understand the referral, commissioning, contract and performance management processes that support the delivery of interventions. We will build on these workshops so that we have the right processes in place for the new commissioning frameworks under the unified model.
Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are vital local stakeholders and we will continue to work with them closely. We are organising a national event for PCCs on 21 October in London. At this event we will update on our work with them on a national level and, facilitated by the Association for Police and Crime Commissioners, we will define the role of PCCs in the future model. This includes how the NPS and PCCs will work together at both local and regional levels and how key enablers, such as data, will support this work.
6. Commissioning updates
How we are planning to purchase and manage commissioned or grant funded services
The commercial team have been working alongside service design leads to develop the right approach to buying services in the following areas: * Unpaid work * Accredited programmes and non-accredited structured interventions * Rehabilitation services * Resettlement services.
We have continued to work closely with the market and stakeholders to develop our approach across all these areas.
How we are planning to purchase and manage commissioned or grant funded services
The commercial team have been working alongside service design leads to develop the right approach to buying services in the following areas: * Unpaid work * Accredited programmes and non-accredited structured interventions * Rehabilitation services * Resettlement services.
We have continued to work closely with the market and stakeholders to develop our approach across all these areas.
6.1 Probation delivery partners (unpaid work, accredited programmes and structured non-accredited interventions)
Following feedback from the market we have decided to amend the title ‘innovation partner’ to ‘probation delivery partner’. This better reflects the services that future providers will deliver while including our aim to work in partnership with future providers.
The competition for probation delivery partners has entered the market-warming phase prior to the launch of competition in November 2019. You can read the first set of draft documents published on the Government website on the probation reform consultation events and materials page.
6.2 Dynamic framework (rehabilitation and resettlement services)
We will make the dynamic framework available to other public sector commissioners and we are engaging with other Government departments and commissioners to seek feedback on: * Proposed categories of need areas and cohorts * Key principles of the framework and how other commissioners will be able to use the dynamic framework.
We are also engaging with the market by holding smaller scale workshops. At these events we will seek detailed feedback on our approach to ensure that we are proportionate and reduce barriers to entry wherever possible. We expect that the qualification phase for the dynamic framework will open in December 2019. Dynamic framework bidders will be able to qualify at any time during the life of the framework. But please note that call-off competitions for day one services will start in early 2020 so bidders are encouraged to participate from December 2019.
7. Links and further information
Response to the consultation on future probation services Draft blueprint on future probation services Event materials If you have any questions or would like to contact the programme team please email strengthening.probation@justice.gov.uk
Thursday, 3 October 2019
A Return to 'Proper' Punishment?
Having already comprehensively screwed the system up, we once again have the spectacle of politicians using crime and punishment as a political football in order to win popularity at the polls. The Secret Barrister writing in the Guardian puts the position rather well I think:-
The Tories' tough talk on crime is shameless and cynical
In the spirit of the party conference season, let me start with a platitude: everybody wants dangerous criminals to be dealt with properly.
But what “properly” actually means depends heavily on someone’s political perspective. The law sets out five purposes of criminal sentencing: rehabilitation; crime reduction (including by deterrence); reparation; protection of the public; and punishment. The problem with our current system, in the eyes of Boris Johnson’s government, is that there isn’t enough emphasis on punishment. So it was that justice secretary Robert Buckland QC trailed his conference speech by announcing in an interview with the Daily Mail that he was introducing “proper punishment” for “the most serious violent and sexual offenders”.
This will apparently be achieved by “stopping the release of the most serious violent and sexual offenders at the halfway point of their sentence”. The statutory regime that has been in place since 2005, under which any prisoner serving a standard determinate sentence is automatically released on licence upon serving half of their sentence, is a popular bugbear, not only among the general public but as featured in Johnson’s un-fact-checked columns in the Daily Telegraph, which took aim at “our cock-eyed, crook-coddling criminal justice system”.
The reasons in favour of early release on licence are mixed. Some are noble and based on evidence, including the government’s own research that early reintegration into society reduces reoffending; some are cynical and attributable to the political desire to generate tabloid headlines of long prison sentences without having to actually fund those prison places in full. And I have every sympathy with public anger at feeling misled by 10-year sentences that translate to five years minus time served on remand awaiting trial or sentence.
But the fundamental flaw in Buckland’s new policy is that the “most serious violent and sexual offenders” are, under the current law, not automatically released at the halfway point of their sentences. The most serious offenders, those deemed to present a significant risk of serious harm to the public, will usually receive either a life sentence or an extended determinate sentence (EDS). With a life sentence, a prisoner will serve a minimum term set by the court before being eligible for parole, and will remain in prison indefinitely until they can convince the parole board that they no longer pose a risk to the public.
With an EDS, a prisoner is given a notional determinate term – say nine years – and has to serve two-thirds before being eligible to apply to the parole board for release. If they are not safe for release, they may have to serve the full term. Those convicted of sexual offences against children and terrorism offences who do not receive a life sentence or EDS are deemed an “offender of particular concern”, and must satisfy the parole board they are not a risk to the public before they are released at the halfway point of their sentence.
So who is this policy actually targeting? The answer is a tiny percentage of defendants in the criminal justice system who are convicted of (as yet unspecified) serious violent or sexual offences, but who don’t receive a life sentence or an EDS. So people who are, by definition, not “the most serious offenders”. They will now have to serve two-thirds, rather than half, of their sentence before being automatically released.
The government has offered no evidence that this will in any way make the public any safer. The purpose is purely punitive; red meat tossed on the Conservative party’s buffet table for the salivating hang-’em-and-flog-’em brigade, with a beady eye on a nakedly populist election campaign and an increasingly authoritarian tabloid press. It’s cynicism bordering on nihilism; shamelessly undermining public confidence in sentencing by spreading misinformation about how the justice system actually works.
Meanwhile, as the home secretary, Priti Patel, stands at her podium and smirks: “To the criminals, I simply say this: we are coming after you,” our criminal justice system is in meltdown. It is taking years to investigate and charge offences, as the under-resourced police and Crown Prosecution Service drown in digital data. Cases I have been briefed on this week involve incidents that happened in 2018 and are listed for trial in the summer of 2020. This is because the government has taken what the senior presiding judge, Lady Justice Macur, described as a “political decision” to slash even further the number of crown court sitting days to save on the costs of running courts. This falsest of economies means that perfectly usable courtrooms sit locked and empty and judges twiddle their thumbs at home, on full pay, while the backlog of crown court cases rises to more than 32,000.
The courts themselves are literally crumbling: burst pipes and leaking sewage are par for the course. And we haven’t even started on legal aid: the injustice of innocent people of modest means who are forced to pay for their own defence, and being refused their reasonable legal costs when they are acquitted, forcing them to sell their homes.
As for victims of serious crime, rape crisis centres are in desperate need of funding, and the government has only offered £5m of the £195m needed to properly support victims of sexual violence. Meanwhile, the government estimates that our already grossly overcrowded and understaffed prisons – hellholes of death, violence and self-harm – will have to find another 3,000 places a year, at an annual cost of £110m.
It bears repetition: the government can find £110m for an ineffective, macho prison policy, but only £5m for victims of rape. Any government that is serious about criminal justice would make the real problems in the criminal justice system a priority. But this announcement confirms that we do not have a serious government, just a gaggle of cheap opportunists charting policy based not on evidence, but on the fact-free demagoguery of Boris Johnson’s Telegraph columns.
In the spirit of the party conference season, let me start with a platitude: everybody wants dangerous criminals to be dealt with properly.
But what “properly” actually means depends heavily on someone’s political perspective. The law sets out five purposes of criminal sentencing: rehabilitation; crime reduction (including by deterrence); reparation; protection of the public; and punishment. The problem with our current system, in the eyes of Boris Johnson’s government, is that there isn’t enough emphasis on punishment. So it was that justice secretary Robert Buckland QC trailed his conference speech by announcing in an interview with the Daily Mail that he was introducing “proper punishment” for “the most serious violent and sexual offenders”.
This will apparently be achieved by “stopping the release of the most serious violent and sexual offenders at the halfway point of their sentence”. The statutory regime that has been in place since 2005, under which any prisoner serving a standard determinate sentence is automatically released on licence upon serving half of their sentence, is a popular bugbear, not only among the general public but as featured in Johnson’s un-fact-checked columns in the Daily Telegraph, which took aim at “our cock-eyed, crook-coddling criminal justice system”.
The reasons in favour of early release on licence are mixed. Some are noble and based on evidence, including the government’s own research that early reintegration into society reduces reoffending; some are cynical and attributable to the political desire to generate tabloid headlines of long prison sentences without having to actually fund those prison places in full. And I have every sympathy with public anger at feeling misled by 10-year sentences that translate to five years minus time served on remand awaiting trial or sentence.
But the fundamental flaw in Buckland’s new policy is that the “most serious violent and sexual offenders” are, under the current law, not automatically released at the halfway point of their sentences. The most serious offenders, those deemed to present a significant risk of serious harm to the public, will usually receive either a life sentence or an extended determinate sentence (EDS). With a life sentence, a prisoner will serve a minimum term set by the court before being eligible for parole, and will remain in prison indefinitely until they can convince the parole board that they no longer pose a risk to the public.
With an EDS, a prisoner is given a notional determinate term – say nine years – and has to serve two-thirds before being eligible to apply to the parole board for release. If they are not safe for release, they may have to serve the full term. Those convicted of sexual offences against children and terrorism offences who do not receive a life sentence or EDS are deemed an “offender of particular concern”, and must satisfy the parole board they are not a risk to the public before they are released at the halfway point of their sentence.
So who is this policy actually targeting? The answer is a tiny percentage of defendants in the criminal justice system who are convicted of (as yet unspecified) serious violent or sexual offences, but who don’t receive a life sentence or an EDS. So people who are, by definition, not “the most serious offenders”. They will now have to serve two-thirds, rather than half, of their sentence before being automatically released.
The government has offered no evidence that this will in any way make the public any safer. The purpose is purely punitive; red meat tossed on the Conservative party’s buffet table for the salivating hang-’em-and-flog-’em brigade, with a beady eye on a nakedly populist election campaign and an increasingly authoritarian tabloid press. It’s cynicism bordering on nihilism; shamelessly undermining public confidence in sentencing by spreading misinformation about how the justice system actually works.
Meanwhile, as the home secretary, Priti Patel, stands at her podium and smirks: “To the criminals, I simply say this: we are coming after you,” our criminal justice system is in meltdown. It is taking years to investigate and charge offences, as the under-resourced police and Crown Prosecution Service drown in digital data. Cases I have been briefed on this week involve incidents that happened in 2018 and are listed for trial in the summer of 2020. This is because the government has taken what the senior presiding judge, Lady Justice Macur, described as a “political decision” to slash even further the number of crown court sitting days to save on the costs of running courts. This falsest of economies means that perfectly usable courtrooms sit locked and empty and judges twiddle their thumbs at home, on full pay, while the backlog of crown court cases rises to more than 32,000.
The courts themselves are literally crumbling: burst pipes and leaking sewage are par for the course. And we haven’t even started on legal aid: the injustice of innocent people of modest means who are forced to pay for their own defence, and being refused their reasonable legal costs when they are acquitted, forcing them to sell their homes.
As for victims of serious crime, rape crisis centres are in desperate need of funding, and the government has only offered £5m of the £195m needed to properly support victims of sexual violence. Meanwhile, the government estimates that our already grossly overcrowded and understaffed prisons – hellholes of death, violence and self-harm – will have to find another 3,000 places a year, at an annual cost of £110m.
It bears repetition: the government can find £110m for an ineffective, macho prison policy, but only £5m for victims of rape. Any government that is serious about criminal justice would make the real problems in the criminal justice system a priority. But this announcement confirms that we do not have a serious government, just a gaggle of cheap opportunists charting policy based not on evidence, but on the fact-free demagoguery of Boris Johnson’s Telegraph columns.
The Secret Barrister
The writer is a junior barrister who writes anonymously about the English and Welsh legal system, and is the author of The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken
The writer is a junior barrister who writes anonymously about the English and Welsh legal system, and is the author of The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken
Tuesday, 1 October 2019
A Message to the Tory Faithfull
I never intended to watch last night's episode of Ch4's fly-on-the-wall documentary series Crime and Punishment because it's just so depressing, focusing as it does mostly on the state of our prisons, through the eyes of HMP Winchester. But the tivo box recorded it anyway and I felt it necessary to see it through and have all my prejudices and pre-conceptions confirmed.
I've never worked in a prison for a number of reasons, but as a probation officer mostly I've always been concerned regarding the risk of being professionally compromised by the very different culture of a uniformed service operating in a closed and secretive environment. Of course when I started out this was a recognised danger and officially enshrined in the rule that you could only do a maximum three year secondment before returning to community probation duties.
Nevertheless I took the view that being part of an external organisation working within a prison establishment was very definitely a good thing, not least so as to bring a different perspective and influence upon institutions that had little external oversight or challenge. I always felt we could be a breath of fresh air and force for good both in terms of rehabilitation and welfare. But of course probation is now completely neutered having been subsumed within HMPPS and now completely subject to civil service bureaucracy, secrecy, command and control.
In all honesty, who could watch this disaster unfolding in our prisons and happily sign up to OMiC or indeed any other NPS/MoJ/HMPPS bullshit idea supposedly to get us out of the bloody mess created by our Tory politicians and 10 years of austerity? HMP Winchester and this documentary series demonstrates beyond question how hopeless the situation has become as a direct result of culling 7,000 experienced prison officers. I would argue that prison is no longer a safe or appropriate environment for probation officers to operate in until such time as our divorce from the forced marriage called HMPPS.
We need to be independent in order to help ensure our safety and call out the disgraceful way our politicians continue to treat prisoners giving them shit clothing to wear, shit food to eat and appalling conditions in which to live. How can you expect prisoners to behave when treated with so little respect and dignity?
So my message to the Tory faithfull in Manchester, as they loudly-applaud ever-longer prison terms for more prisoners is, you are merely fuelling a fire that cannot be put out by such populist sound bite policies - which got us into this mess by the way - and the probation service wants no part of it. We demand to be split from HMPPS.
I've never worked in a prison for a number of reasons, but as a probation officer mostly I've always been concerned regarding the risk of being professionally compromised by the very different culture of a uniformed service operating in a closed and secretive environment. Of course when I started out this was a recognised danger and officially enshrined in the rule that you could only do a maximum three year secondment before returning to community probation duties.
Nevertheless I took the view that being part of an external organisation working within a prison establishment was very definitely a good thing, not least so as to bring a different perspective and influence upon institutions that had little external oversight or challenge. I always felt we could be a breath of fresh air and force for good both in terms of rehabilitation and welfare. But of course probation is now completely neutered having been subsumed within HMPPS and now completely subject to civil service bureaucracy, secrecy, command and control.
In all honesty, who could watch this disaster unfolding in our prisons and happily sign up to OMiC or indeed any other NPS/MoJ/HMPPS bullshit idea supposedly to get us out of the bloody mess created by our Tory politicians and 10 years of austerity? HMP Winchester and this documentary series demonstrates beyond question how hopeless the situation has become as a direct result of culling 7,000 experienced prison officers. I would argue that prison is no longer a safe or appropriate environment for probation officers to operate in until such time as our divorce from the forced marriage called HMPPS.
We need to be independent in order to help ensure our safety and call out the disgraceful way our politicians continue to treat prisoners giving them shit clothing to wear, shit food to eat and appalling conditions in which to live. How can you expect prisoners to behave when treated with so little respect and dignity?
So my message to the Tory faithfull in Manchester, as they loudly-applaud ever-longer prison terms for more prisoners is, you are merely fuelling a fire that cannot be put out by such populist sound bite policies - which got us into this mess by the way - and the probation service wants no part of it. We demand to be split from HMPPS.
Latest From Napo 194
I, together with Katie Lomas National Chair, was among the Union delegation who met with Lucy Frazer last week in the Palace of Westminster.
The meeting came during a critical point in the current negotiations between the unions and senior MoJ and HMPPS leaders on the terms of the planned transfer of Offender Management work to the NPS from the Wales Region of KSS CRC in December, and the remainder scheduled to move across in 2021.
Ms Frazer is the fifth incumbent of the Justice Minister position in the five years since the Transforming Rehabilitation programme was implemented. But at least it quickly became clear that the new Minister was acquainted with the trade unions long running concerns and aspirations to see the full reunification of Probation to full public control and ownership.
The unions made it clear that whilst we obviously welcomed the Government U-turn to transfer OM work, we did not believe that there was any justification to the marketisation of Intervention and Programmes, thus stigmatising this work and the staff undertaking it, as somehow being of lesser value in the range of vital services that are provided to clients.
Moreover, the unions said that we still had serious concerns as evidenced in numerous HMI Probation reports about the community safety aspects of leaving this work to the vagaries of the market and urged the Minister to reflect on the plans to issue new contracts.
In terms of the scheduled transfer of OM work in Wales, we reported that while the national negotiations on the overall national staff transfer scheme were in the right direction, we needed to be sure that it would be safe to transfer staff across to NPS Wales on December 1st.
Next on our agenda was the issue of Professional recognition where we spelt out the pressing need to introduce high quality over-arching standards across the service irrespective of its future structure, together with supporting training and a Licence to Practice to re-establish confidence in Probation among staff and the judiciary.
Time as always was limited, especially in light of the political dramas that were unfolding just a few yards away in the House of Commons, but Napo were able to raise some other very important issues. These included calling for the suspension (and a review of) the NPS Attendance Management policy, the curtailment of the Double Waking Night Cover contracts which the unions believe are unsafe and a waste of taxpayers money.
Bring back collective bargaining!
The discussion on Pay allowed the unions the opportunity to again raise our concerns about the capacity of the Pay and Pensions Administrators (Shared Services Division) to cope with their requirement to pay staff accurately, or even at all in some cases. We said that this hardly provided confidence about the ability of the current payroll provider to accommodate the eventual transfer of several thousand staff to the NPS.
Notwithstanding the unions opposition to what we see as a flawed concept of a ‘mixed market’ in service provision, we urged the Minister to restore collective bargaining in the event that new contracts are awarded to probation providers post April 2021.
Before the Minister was called away to another meeting, we finished by saying that urgent remedial action was needed to stabilise the service following the catastrophe of TR. The Minister undertook to reinstate quarterly meetings with the unions going forward.
The joint union letter that formed the basis of our representations on the day can be found below.
Ian Lawrence
--oo00oo--
Lucy Frazer MP
Secretary of State for Prisons and Probation
Ministry of Justice
102, Petty France
London SW1
25 September 2019
Dear Minister
Briefing for Probation Trade Unions Meeting: 26 September 2019
In advance of our meeting with you on 26 September we set out below the key issues which we would like to discuss with you:
1. Probation Programme
The unions have welcomed the government decision earlier this year to bring back all offender management work from the CRCs to the NPS. However, we do not support the government’s intention to continue with the privatisation of unpaid work and accredited programmes for the following main reasons:
- The biggest mistake in Transforming Rehabilitation was the artificial split in the Probation Service.
- The proposed procurement of unpaid work and accredited programmes, (both core probation services) in 2021 simply perpetuates the split, only in a different place, so all the problems of service fragmentation, lack of continuity in offender management and poor communication will continue.
- The unions remain unconvinced that the MOJ can identify a market for unpaid work or accredited programmes
- Unpaid work has been one of the most criticised areas of CRC delivery, so privatising this work has a poor chance of success going forward
- The unions referred the UK government to the International Labour Organisation in 2013 over our contention that the privatisation of unpaid work was a breach of the ILO Forced Labour Convention. Our representation to the ILO remains live.
We therefore urge you to review the decision to continue to outsource unpaid work and accredited programmes.
2. Wales CRC to NPS Wales Staff Transfer
We are currently in negotiation with HMPPS officials over the transfer arrangements for members moving from the Wales CRC to NPS Wales. This transfer process has been complicated by the decision of the NPS to stage the transfers between Wales and England and also in respect of the fact that we have to negotiate in respect of a three-way transfer from the CRCs, either to the NPS, or to an Innovation Partner, or to a Dynamic Framework provider. The complexity of the industrial relations environment which the Probation Programme has created is only just being acknowledged in this respect.
This complexity makes the 1 December date for Wales CRC offender management to transfer into NPS Wales in our opinion unsafe. We are not confident that we will have completed the necessary negotiations to protect our members’ interests in time for this transfer date. As far as we are aware, the 1 December date is not fixed in stone.
We urge you not to proceed with the Wales CRC to NPS Wales staff transfer on 1 December if the relevant negotiations have not been satisfactorily concluded.
3. Double-Waking Night Cover (DWNC) Privatisation
The unions opposed the privatisation last year of double waking night cover in approved premises (APs). Since the two private contracts went live, our members have had to deal with a catalogue of poor contractor performance (one of the contractors is now in contract enforcement measures we understand), failure to provide the necessary cover, the use of agency workers instead of the directly employed staff, failure to deliver hot food to approved premises, the threat to remove our members’ right to a cooked meal if supervising residents at meal times, and the failure of the contractors to recognise UNISON or Napo, as we were promised by HMPPS during the transfer measures consultation prior to the transfer.
We ask you to review the DWNC contracts and come to your own decision about the quality and appropriateness of handing over this skilled and challenging work to private companies which so far have failed to deliver. Privatised provision in APs does not fit the ambitions elsewhere in HMPPS to deliver professional recognition in the probation service.
Our AP members are fearful that the private contracts will lead to a serious service failure. We need to make you aware of this as the Minister responsible for the safety of our members, AP residents and the community at large.
4. Two Tier Pay and Pensions in Probation
NPS union members voted overwhelmingly to accept the 2018 two year pay modernisation offer for NPS staff, which has undoubtedly improved the pay prospects of members in the NPS.
However, with limited exceptions, this has not been matched by the CRC providers who now find they are lagging seriously behind the pay and pensions offer from the NPS. This of course has had predictable negative consequences for the delivery of probation services.
Transforming Rehabilitation broke the unified employment market which had existed prior to 2014 and has replaced this stability with a chaotic and underfunded model where providers compete with each other for staff rather than taking a more collaborative approach. It is feasible that this outcome may have been the intention of the architects of Transforming Rehabilitation in order to save money via a race to the bottom on probation pay. If that was the intention, it has worked, but it hardly provides a baseline from which to launch a professional development strategy for probation.
To remedy this we want HMPPS to re-establish parity of pay and conditions across the NPS and the CRCs. This includes pensions, as the CRCs cannot currently compete with the NPS on pensions.
5. SSCL
The private provider of the NPS pay roll function has failed to deliver an acceptable service to NPS staff from the outset. It has consistently failed to pay our members accurately, or on time, coupled with some spectacular disasters over the last five years. For both NPS staff and managers, payroll problems have been a consistent threat to operational delivery ever since the organisation was created.
Many of these problems appear to have arisen from the fact that NPS pay and conditions differ markedly from prison pay and conditions, and SSCL were either not given appropriate payroll data by HMPPS, or SSCL simply did not have the systems in place to pay the probation allowances etc. This may in turn relate to the standard of service which the MOJ has contracted to receive from SSCL. Here is just a flavour of some of the problems:
- SSCL failed to understand that all elements of pay under the Local Government Pension scheme are superannuable and failed to make the necessary deductions.
- The Greater Manchester Pension Fund referred the National Probation Service to the Pensions Regulator for the NPS failure to deduct the correct employee contributions on a range of earnings for 8 months in 2017
- Staff are regularly overpaid by mistake by SSCL who then have to recover monies in a way that is disruptive
- Failure to pay staff increments Failure to pay premium payments, particularly in approved premises
- Failure of SSCL to provide staff with itemised pay slips as required by the Employment Rights Act 1996 (Itemised Pay Statement) (Amendment) (No.2) Order 2018
6. Professional Recognition
The unions support the intention to roll out a professional recognition strategy as part of the Probation Programme. The creation of a Probation Professional Register is a key part of these proposals.
However, this ambitious strategy will only be delivered if the MOJ is able to secure the necessary funding from Treasury to support it. It will not happen on the basis of mere ambition.
We look forward to hearing of your plans to secure the necessary funding. Staff will want to hear from you, not only that you are committed to professional recognition, but also that you have secured the necessary funding to deliver it.
7. Workforce Planning
The Prime Ministers commitment to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers over the next three years will have major implications for the workload of HMPPS.
Please could you let us know what staffing increase you are planning for the probation service to ensure that our members in the NPS and in the CRCs are not overwhelmed with the anticipated increase in service users coming through the courts as a result of the major increase in Home Office funding for policing? We assume that there is joined up thinking in government on this issue.
We look forward to meeting you tomorrow.
Yours sincerely,
Ian Lawrence General Secretary Napo
Ben Priestley National Officer UNISON
George Georgiou National Officer GMB/SCOOP
Monday, 30 September 2019
Probation Death Knell 2
Our profession once more finds itself at a crossroads and with no effective voice. It should be noted that probation is of such little national interest that neither the Secretary of State nor Prison and Probation Minister are due to make an appearance at the Napo AGM, or the Tory Party conference in Manchester this week.
But with the rapidly approaching demise of the failed CRCs, most of their work and staff will shortly be disappearing behind an impenetrable wall of civil service bureaucracy and command and control management. Whilst NPS continues to struggle with both recruitment and retention of frontline staff and fails to understand the reasons, it doesn't stop management and the bureaucracy from churning out endless 'alphabet soup' initiatives such as this highlighted by a concerned reader:-
"NPS is also committed to ensuring that NPS court staff adequately consider mental health needs when supporting court sentencing, which includes recommending community sentences and/or MHTRs. NPS will also support the work of the MoJ, Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHSE and Public Health England (PHE) who have developed a Community Sentence Treatment Requirement (CSTR) ‘protocol’ to increase the use of Community Sentences with treatment requirements, which includes increasing the use of MHTRs. The NHS has also committed to set aside increased funding for CSTRs through the Long Term Plan, and it is critical that NPS engage with partners as this process develops. Moreover, it is imperative that NPS works more closely with NHSE Liaison and Diversion providers to ensure that health staff may contribute information to support court sentencing and proposals for treatment requirements where possible."
But the Protocols describe the following procedure:
"At Court
- Defendant pleads or is found guilty.
- Pre-Sentence Report is requested by the court and undertaken by the National Probation Service. Court will ordinarily require completion of report within four weeks.
- Report author, acting either at the explicit request of the court and/or, on the basis of professional judgement, assesses that the offender may benefit from the imposition of a MHTR and requests an assessment.
- Report author obtains consent of defendant to assessment and treatment; completes Referral Form outlining presenting issues and/or symptoms and forwards this by secure email to Community Mental Health Assessment and Recovery Team"
--oo00oo--
I think your post is representative of something more endemic, and worthy of another post. From the perspective of working in London NPS, there is a litany of "centralised" tools that, collectively, are leaving the staff in a sense of disarray. Nobody objects to getting feedback, encouragement, steers about their work, reflective discussion, or pointing out where things might be better - in fact most staff positively encourage this. However, when layer upon layer upon layer of initiatives are introduced without really questioning if the previous one added any value, problems occur.
Here are a few examples of what staff now do or are subjected to, which didn't exist some years ago, and yet the senior management say "Oh, but your workload measurement tool says you are on 100%"
- Data quality days
- Updating "HETE data", "risk registers", "MAPPA flags"
- Whole days spent auditing one case using a tool bizarrely named the "LIPAD"
- OASYS reviews every 4 months whether the case needs a review or not
- "lifer panels", "IPP panels"
- PD case discussions; PD case consultations
- Not only entering Delius contacts, but doing so using the CRISSA Format which takes double the amount of time per contact
- OASYS QA tools which go into a plethora of details of what needs to be in a "current situation", "offender comments box", "sources of information", "what will increase the motivation" boxes, upon boxes, upon boxes.
- Going to "risk is everybody's business" training which is like going to an induction on day 1 of your job
- Going to "safeguarding" training which is pitched at the level of a primary school child
- Entering NSI's which nobody quite understands and hopes we have done correctly - the latest now being for "maps for change"
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