Napo's Vision

We may be in the middle of the most serious constitutional crises in years, with historic votes in Parliament imminent; both main political parties about to split; a snap General Election likely; many political careers soon to be terminated and a government threatening to ignore the law, but life must go on, as the latest Napo blog demonstrates:-

Napo steps up reunification arguments in advance of TUC and Party Conference season

Napo’s campaign and negotiating teams have joined up to produce the latest ‘no holds barred’ position statement around the future of Probation. In a document that will form the basis of our contributions at the upcoming TUC and Labour Party conference fringe events, cross-party MPs, Peers and the media, the union sets out its negotiating demands on behalf of all members working in the NPS or a CRC as well as outlining Napo’s vision for the future structure of Probation under full public ownership and control.

The report focusses on:

• The restoration of all probation work back into public control and ownership
• The need to ensure that the earlier and already scheduled transfer of offender management work to the NPS in Wales becomes the benchmark for the process to follow in England
• All probation staff to be placed on NPS pay, terms and conditions in advance of the move to transfer offender management work and the letting of any new contracts to so-called Innovation Partners and sub-contractors who would form part of a Dynamic Framework.
• Continuity of employment for the appx 8,000 CRC staff transferring into the NPS

Beyond these immediate priorities, the report sets out a progressive agenda for the reform of Probation and its return to full public ownership and control. In re-designing Probation it is vital that lessons are learned from the profound failure of “Transforming Rehabilitation” (TR); yet simply re-drawing the line between public and private provision is not enough to repair the massive damage to the service. Napo’s key demands for the future Probation Service include:

• A fully integrated and unified service, with all core functions, including unpaid work and interventions, delivered from a single organisation in an integrated way;
• A Probation Services that exists outside of the Civil Service but in the public sector, as a non-departmental government body in the same way as organisations like Cafcass and many others. This would allow for a degree of consistency through a national structure but would enable the development of culture and values that support Probation Practice.
• Probation Practice to be based on evidence and ‘what works’. Changes need to be made to ways of working when indicated by research and evidence and best practice should be modelled on this research and evidence, not the convenience of the organisation or the needs of a contract.
• The link to the community to be prioritised. What works in one village, town or city might not work elsewhere. There must be a facility to respond to local needs and priorities and to shape service delivery to suit. Frontline practitioners must be empowered to work in a way that meets the needs of both their client and their community rather than to an agenda set central. There should not be a separation between Probation Services and other services and for this to work in a joined up way there needs to be local control of the system.

Then the full briefing can be read HERE

Ian Lawrence, General Secretary

--oo00oo--

Probation reunification – the next steps 
A briefing from Napo (August 2019) 

Napo warmly welcomes the government’s decision to reunify probation but is concerned that plans include the provision that vital parts of the service are still to be run for profit. We sincerely thank all supportive parliamentarians for their decisive pressure on ministers to help bring about this historic U-turn. 

The decision to return 80% of work currently managed by private-sector Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) back to the public-sector National Probation Service (NPS), when contracts expire in April 2021 is a major victory for common sense – and a clear government admission that the grandiose vanity project to privatise probation has well and truly failed. 

Alongside many others, Napo has campaigned tirelessly against the devastating Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms in 2014, led by then-justice secretary Chris Grayling. We warned that probation could not, and should never be, run for profit, and that splitting the award-winning service would undermine public safety. Unfortunately, our member’s serious misgivings have been proved right, with failing CRCs needing to be bailed out with at least an additional £280 million of taxpayers money. Meanwhile, the number of serious further offences (SFO’s) most usually involving murder and/or sexual assault have soared by a staggering 23% over the last two years and over 40% since TR was implemented. 

Going forward, Napo insists there are still serious public-protection problems within the new plans to retain a so-called “mixed market” model, with vitally important interventions and unpaid work placements remaining in private hands. The track record of the private sector in supervising a client base from which serious reoffending frequently occurs is lamentable, and it is scandalous that ministers are prepared to run that risk against all empirical evidence to the contrary. 

Scapegoating of staff is unacceptable 

Serious questions also need to be raised about the culpability and potential criminality of some of the private probation providers following a number of serious further offences that have taken place under their governance. This is especially the case within the South West and Wales areas previously run by Working Links (who entered into Administration in February this year), and who have been replaced by the CRC previously covering Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Many warnings were raised by Napo with Ministers and the employer about their reckless operational model, but these went unheeded. 

As a result of unmanageable workloads and operational systems that were (and still are) unfit for purpose, we are also seeing an alarming rise in SFO disciplinary investigations involving our hard pressed and exhausted practitioners working for the NPS. Many staff in the NPS who are supervising high-risk clients are typically facing workloads of almost twice their capacity, due to 1000 unfilled vacancies across the NPS (which are another direct result of the fragmented service created by Grayling). 

Napo is not prepared to see our members scapegoated following these investigations, (or during the increasing number of inquests that they are being asked to provide evidence to), in order for politicians to lay the blame somewhere else for their complicity in destroying a once Gold-Standard Public Service. 

We are grateful to shadow Labour minister Laura Pidcock for raising this specific issue at May’s Justice Questions, telling MPs that “Napo has called for the scapegoating of probation officers to end, especially after the reviewing of cases that have already been covered by a review,” and asking: “Does the Minister agree that the probation service should take responsibility for structural failures leading to serious further offences, rather than hanging its workers out to dry?” 

In response, Minister Robert Buckland paid tribute to probation officers, saying: “They are dedicated public servants who use their professional judgment and skill to help assess risk, which is an onerous task. I do not approve of scapegoating. I expect the service to support probation officers who are under pressure, but for cases where there needs to be an investigation, due process then has to take place.” 

Our vision for the future 

In our current negotiations with Ministers and senior MoJ and HMPPS leaders, Napo has made it clear to that we have a number of ‘red lines’, including: 

• The restoration of all probation work back into public control and ownership 
• The need to ensure that the earlier and already scheduled transfer of offender management work to the NPS in Wales becomes the benchmark for the process to follow in England 
• All probation staff to be placed on NPS pay, terms and conditions in advance of the move to transfer offender management work and the letting of any new contracts to so-called Innovation Partners and sub-contractors who would form part of a Dynamic Framework. 
• Continuity of employment for the appx 8,000 CRC staff transferring into the NPS 

Beyond these immediate priorities, Napo has a progressive agenda for the reform of Probation and its return to full public ownership and control. In re-designing Probation it is vital that lessons are learned from the profound failure of “Transforming Rehabilitation” (TR); yet simply re-drawing the line between public and private provision is not enough to repair the massive damage to the service. 

Napo have four key demands for the future of Probation: 

Fully integrated service provision 

In all of the many criticisms of TR the split in the service between the NPS and CRCs has been universally acknowledged as a cause of poor service provision, increased bureaucracy, duplication of work and communication issues. Napo want a fully integrated and unified service, with all core functions - including unpaid work and interventions delivered from a single organisation. This does not preclude the involvement of specialist provision by the third sector in a partnership arrangement but ensures that the management and delivery of core services is carried out in a co-ordinated manner. 

Keeping probation in the public sector and never for profit, but out of the civil service 

Our members agree that nobody should profit from crime and equally no one should profit from the delivery of Justice as a result of those crimes. The delivery of Probation Services belongs in the public sector but the move to the Civil Service as a result of TR has meant that the National Probation Service is now overly bureaucratic and follows a top down “command and control” culture. This means that the responsivity to local priorities that was once a key feature of Probation has been lost and innovation is reserved to those promoted to senior positions rather than open to all. Probation Officers are, as part of their training, encouraged to think critically about the work that they are doing and the systems in which they are doing it. This is almost impossible from within the Civil Service where criticism of the establishment is forbidden. 

For many years Probation has struggled for recognition and focus against the forced partnership with the Prison Service. Although we recognise the advantages of working closely with our colleagues in the Prison Service we are not an adjunct to that service and while there are many areas where our work and ways of working align, there are also many areas where they do not. Successive Governments have failed to understand this reality making it nigh on impossible for the Probation Service to focus on developing its own culture and values. 

Our demand is for Probation Services to exist outside of the Civil Service but in the public sector, as a non-departmental government body( in the same way as organisations like CAFCASS and many others). This would allow for a degree of consistency through a national structure but would enable the development of more effective probation practices. 

A service built on evidence based practice 

There is a wealth of evidence about how to support people to desist from offending. Research into desistance and risk assessment and management is abundant, yet little of this knowledge is being employed in redesigning Probation Services. Much of the pressure that staff leaving the service describe is about being asked to work in ways which they feel do not represent good practice and which in some cases are dangerous. There is no sign of these lessons being learned. In addition there have been attempts to silence those who raise concerns about practice and the evidence of a need for change has been suppressed, for example in the case of the report exposing serious problems about Sex Offender Treatment Programmes in prisons. 

At the same time as the feted reintegration of offender management work following TR, the other big project is the Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) project. OMiC builds in multiple changes of Offender Manager despite the fact that such changes were criticised so much in the TR model that it caused a significant change of policy and hastened the move to reintegration. 

All probation practice should be based on evidence, and changes should be made to ways of working based on this and not the convenience of the organisation or the needs of a private contract. 

Rooting Probation in the local community and partnering with local specialist providers 

Probation is about people; and people exist in communities. The link to the community is vital and must be prioritised. What works in one village, town or city might not work elsewhere. There must be a facility to respond to local needs and priorities and to shape service delivery to suit. Frontline practitioners must be empowered to work in a way that meets the needs of both their client and their community rather than to a centralised agenda. 

There are many third sector providers working in response to local needs that might be excellent future partners for the delivery of probation services, either as a contractor or in other arrangements. Sadly, many of these very local services were simply frozen out of the system due to TR but where they exist they should be involved in an appropriate way. Large contracts are not the way to deliver such innovative and responsive partnerships; as smaller third-sector organisations cannot compete with large companies who are better able to offer cash guarantees and present artificially low bids. There should never be a separation between probation services and the support mechanisms that exist, but working together in a joined up way is often impossible when there is no local control or accountability over the system. 

Suggested actions by Parliamentarians 

Supportive MPs and Peers are encouraged to consider asking one of the following questions when opportunities arise. 

• Privatising probation has proved to be a costly and dangerous failure, so why are ministers still insisting on keeping the profit motive at the heart of core probation services?  Does the Minister agree that probation officers currently working at the failed private probation companies should be placed on public-sector pay, terms and conditions in advance of transferring to the National Probation Service? 
• What assurances can the Minister give to this House that probation officers will not be scapegoated for serious further offences where they have not received the necessary support from senior management or have suffered from systemic operational failures not of their making? 
• Does the Minister agree that the failure of TR (as evidenced by numerous HMI Probation reports, the Justice Committee and NAO), along with the massive amount of additional taxpayer’s money used to shore up failing CRC contracts now warrants a Public Enquiry? 

Ian Lawrence General Secretary
Katie Lomas National Chair

A Forlorn Hope

As we all contemplate what the future holds for the probation ethos under the secretive command and control bureaucracy of the Civil Service, here's a forlorn hope from HM Probation Inspectorate:-

"a focus on practitioners’ skills suggests a shift away from managerialist top-down approaches which rely on the elaboration of guidance and procedural requirements."

The quote is from an Academic Insight paper 'Supervision Skills for Probation Practitioners' by Peter Raynor published last Friday. Here's the nub of it:- 

2.4 Skills, personal attributes and values 

When we talk about ‘using’ skills, this does not usually mean selecting a skill from a behavioural repertoire like selecting the right spanner from a toolbox. What we are really talking about is skilled interviewing and interaction, and this is related to personal attributes and aptitudes. Some people intuitively and spontaneously engage and influence with or without training, but most people can benefit from being more aware of what they are doing in their professional roles, how they impact on others, and what options they have for making their contacts more productive. Analysing recorded interviews with an experienced colleague seems to be one effective way to do this. Training makes it more likely that people will choose a helpful approach, and for some people this will become something they do without having to think about it. People show natural variations in aptitude but most people can improve. Not everyone will improve to the same extent or maintain the improvement successfully, and some people might improve from a low starting point without reaching a level at which they can be consistently effective, but the message from research is that on average, training initiatives have led to real improvements and have enabled people to exercise a positive influence leading to reduced offending. 

As well as personal attributes, people have values and personal commitments to what they want to achieve. These will not always coincide: some people have well developed skills of engagement and influence and use them for anti-social purposes, like confidence tricksters, card sharps and doorstep fraudsters. Readers will easily think of other examples in the public eye. Others have prosocial goals but lack the interpersonal awareness or skills to be as helpful as they want to be. Effective practitioners need skills as well as values and commitment, and now we know more than we used to about the relevance and impact of skills.

3. Conclusion and practical implications 

Recent and current research give us good reasons to expect that an investment in practitioner skills could, if well managed, have a significant positive effect on the effectiveness of probation services. The research shows that staff who consistently use a wider range of skills, with high levels of both relationship skills and structuring skills, usually help the people they supervise to achieve, on average, lower reconviction rates. In addition, practitioners can be trained to improve the range and level of skills they use in their individual supervision of service users. When practitioners’ views are reported they show that after initial anxieties, attention to skills is usually welcomed. The advantages are clear: improving the effectiveness of staff who are already employed and paid looks like a cost-effective strategy. 

However, it also presents challenges to organisations: this type of staff development, which requires staff to take what often feels like a risk by exposing their practice to scrutiny, needs an environment in which staff feel safe, valued and supported by trusted management. It is likely to work best in organisations which are well informed about effective practice and committed to its development, and with practitioners who are resourceful, well informed and creative. There is also evidence that improved skills are more likely to be maintained and used when staff have access to regular supervision by experienced colleagues who have a good understanding of practice skills. 

Initiatives and experiments need to be set up in a way which lends itself to evaluation (for example, with appropriate comparison groups and adequate recording of data) so that impacts can be identified and measured. Unfortunately, attention to evaluability has sometimes been missing in probation initiatives in England and Wales, and this means that learning opportunities are lost. In addition, a focus on practitioners’ skills suggests a shift away from managerialist top-down approaches which rely on the elaboration of guidance and procedural requirements. Instead, a full implementation of what we now know about skills would put the trained, skilled and resourceful front-line practitioner where she/he belongs, at the centre of evidence-based effective practice.

So, Who Is Running Things?

Here we are in the middle of a very British constitutional crisis with the normal democratic process shortly to be suspended, so it seems appropriate to go off piste with this comment piece from Civil Service World:-

Dominic Cummings might be box office, but the prime minister runs the country

I was invited to a BBQ on bank holiday Saturday. I didn’t know many people there but I thought – give it a go, free beer and there’s an extra day to recover from food poisoning.

Anyway, as the awkward conversation petered out, someone tried to start one of those games that adults weirdly like to play: “Who would you get to play you in a movie?”

I was a few “gratis bierres” down, so immediately jumped in with Clooney. It’s the obvious choice I know, not only due to the passing resemblance but also because I’d get him to direct. It would be shot in black and white like Good Night and Good Luck – which would work great for the gritty early life scenes set in Glasgow’s East End.

Unfortunately for Dominic Cummings, he didn’t get to choose who played him in Channel 4’s Brexit biopic The Uncivil War. I’m not sure if he does awkward BBQs but if he did, I’m sure “Benedict Cumberbatch in a wig last used by Gregor Fisher in The Baldy Man” is not what he would have shouted out.

It may not have been an aesthetically flattering portrayal but it did cement his reputation somewhat. A rather mixed career previously – from implausible Russian airline start-up to special adviser at DfE – was all good and well, but it don’t get “the Batch” auditioning for the role. Brexit has been the graveyard for prime ministers and assorted politicos, but it was the making of CummingsBatch.

Now, if reports are to be believed, he’s running the country. Prorogation is his “war gamed” strategy (among many others) and every paper seems to refer to him as “de facto chief of staff” to the prime minister and, by all accounts, he’s running a command and control operation with the government’s special advisers (spads). Tales are regularly emerging of weekly meetings with the spads where they’re hauled over the coals for leaks or off-grid messaging, expected to dib on wayward ministers and then receive their instructions for the coming week. This is apparently followed by lashings of beer and wine because, “hell yeah, we work hard and we play hard!”. All very 1980s Wall St if you ask me and if his reported summary dismissal of the chancellor’s spad is true, CummingsBatch is sending a clear signal of who’s the boss and how he plans to operate.

CummingBatch may be de facto many things but, ultimately, he’s a spad to the prime minister and, as such, has no real power. Everything he does is in the name of the prime minister. Now, the PM can abdicate or delegate that authority as he sees fit but CummingsBatch doesn’t act alone: he is for all intents and purposes the voice of the PM.

But just as CummingsBatch only speaks with the PM’s authority, spads only speak with the authority of the minister who appointed them.

The ministerial code is clear: “The responsibility for the management and conduct of special advisers, including discipline, rests with the minister who made the appointment. Individual ministers will be accountable to the prime minister, Parliament and the public for their actions and decisions in respect of their special advisers.”

This is not some notional accountability. They are appointed directly by ministers as exceptions to the civil service code of open and fair selection, and the person who appoints them is directly accountable for their actions. In theory, should it all go Pete Tong, the minister should carry the can.

So whilst it may suit the PM to let CummingsBatch off the leash, as the IfG’s Jill Rutter puts it, “the image of hardman Cummings whipping Whitehall into shape, while a beaming Johnson is on a splash and selfie tour on a virtual battle bus, suits both parties – but no one should fall for it. There is only one person in charge, and that is emphatically not Dominic Cummings”.

That may be a risk the PM believes he’s politically impervious to, but what of his ministers? The relationship between spads and their ministers is one of the closest and well – special – in Whitehall. Ministers rely on their trusted appointees to have their back, provide political advice and work closely with the departmental team. Whilst they’ve always had to serve the government as a whole, why would a minister accept divided loyalties in this relationship, never mind the risk of carrying the can for actions they did not authorise?

Under Theresa May, cabinet government had all but broken down, as any lobby journalist’s WhatsApp would tell you from 11am on a Tuesday. Indiscipline and self-interest appeared to be the watchwords back then, but a cabinet being run through a centrally controlled Spad structure is equally dysfunctional.

Cabinet government works best when ministers are departmental champions, with authority and confidence to debate what’s in the public interest, then abide by cabinet responsibility or resign to speak out. That’s true at any time but essential as we approach our “do or die” moment over Brexit.

Dave Penman 

General Secretary FDA union.

Devil in the Detail

As the following news reaches me:-

"I have heard on the grapevine that the date to move us back to NPS has slipped to June 2021"

thanks go to the reader for forwarding the following:- 

NAPO Cymru
SUMMER NEWSLETTER 2 2019

“Goodwill is a reciprocal thing”

As we approach the reunification of Offender Management, planned for 2nd December 2019, there is still much to be clarified and finalised. Your national and branch officers are working flat out to protect both your interests and your profession.

What follows is pertinent to CRC staff transferring to NPS, NPS staff, and staff in interventions and unpaid work.

The recently completed office briefings for CRC and NPS staff have given you a general picture of the future shape of probation both in the reunified OM functions, and in Interventions and Unpaid Work, also moving to the KSS operating model.

We continue to campaign for the full reunification of Probation. Unpaid work and programmes are core probation business, and in the wake of the abject failure of Grayling’s “reforms”, we have yet to hear any cogent argument for, instead of reunifying probation, moving the dividing line between public and private sector keeping unpaid work and interventions in the for-profit sector. This is not over yet, and it won’t be over in December.

We are however where we are, so Napo is on the case to protect the interests of our members and our profession as we go through the planned changes in December.

From our negotiations and from the briefings you have attended, we get a picture of the headlines, the broad shape of the proposed operating model, and that the devil is in the detail and there is much yet to be finalised.

Given how near these changes are, thoughts naturally turn to the basics, namely how much will I get paid, when will I get paid, where will I be based? Suffice to say that we are still negotiating.

All staff have been invited to send questions regarding the changes to these two addresses

For NPS staff futurepsw@justice.gov.uk

For CRC staff comms@ksscrc.probationservices.co.uk

And we strongly urge you to do so.

You have been told in briefings that “nobody will be disadvantaged”. You have also been repeatedly urged to extend goodwill and tolerance through the change process. You may wish to probe these generalisations a bit in your questions to the email addresses above:

• Goodwill is a reciprocal thing: staff moving from CRC to NPS should not under any circumstances have a six-week gap between pay-checks. A modicum of goodwill by your employers (and it will be in the season of goodwill to all that this will occur) would see measures being put in place to smooth this pay disruption. Napo is pressing for interim payments

• Training: There is a planned three-month period during which staff transferred from CRC to NPS will receive induction training in Civil Service processes and policies. The inference is that cover will be provided from those already in situ. Those already in situ look to have full workloads already, so in the spirit of goodwill we are being exhorted to extend, staff shouldering extra work should expect suitable rewards (overtime, TOIL for example). Napo is pressing for this.

• On the subject of caseloads, the very high caseloads carried by (“heroic” according to HMIP) CRC staff will eventually be dispersed across the newly reunified NPS offender management staff under the mixed caseload plans. From the briefings to date we hear that there is “a bigger pool” of staff, and of a new WMT. Napo is seeking clarification of the new WMT calculation

Direct Debit: make sure you stay in: FOR YOUR PROTECTION AND YOUR PROFESSION

Staff transferring from the CRC need to ensure that their Napo subs are paid by direct debit. There is no facility for NPS members to have their subs paid from payroll: this cancellation of the “check-off” agreement was made by Chris Grayling as a move designed to weaken the position of Unions. Don’t let him get away with this. It is easy to arrange: click on the button on this link https://www.napo.org.uk/SWITCH

Policy Dictated by Politics Not Evidence

Thanks go to regular reader and contributor 'Getafix for spotting this article on the LSE website:-

Boris Johnson’s ‘crime week’ and the Conservative politics of law and order

The American physicist Richard Feynman once said that, ‘if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics…’. He could just as easily have been talking about British penal policy. In the space of just 24 days during the summer of 2019, the government’s approach to crime and criminal justice has been turned on its head.

On 16 July 2019, David Gauke delivered what would prove to be his final speech as Justice Secretary. Returning to the themes that defined his tenure at the Ministry of Justice, Gauke set out his vision for a “smarter” justice system:

I believe the public therefore expect the justice system to focus on rehabilitation to reduce the risk of subsequent offending – and the likelihood of them becoming a victim of crime…. We need to punish for a purpose.

Gauke cast doubt on the effectiveness of short-prison sentences and drew attention to recent analysis by the Ministry of Justice which demonstrated that individuals serving custodial sentences of under 12 months demonstrate considerably higher levels of reoffending than those serving community sentences. With reoffending estimated to cost the taxpayer £18bn per year, Gauke expressed his hope that a future Conservative government would follow the Scottish example and introduce a statutory presumption against immediate custodial sentences of six months or less. These choices were outlined more in hope than expectation. Boris Johnson was announced as Prime Minister on the 24 July 2019 and Gauke subsequently resigned from the government.

During the Conservative Party leadership campaign Johnson had used his regular column in the Daily Telegraph to advocate for longer sentences for violent and sexual offenders. This overtly populist rhetoric was quickly translated into government policy. Launching what Downing Street would describe internally as ‘crime week’, Johnson set out his law and order credentials in The Mail on Sunday. His government would come down hard on crime and, with an eye to a possible Autumn election, pledged additional funding for crime control:

• The recruitment of 20,000 new police officers.
• The removal of restrictions on the use of stop and search and the launch of a new pilot programmethat will enable 8,000 police officers to authorise enhanced procedures.
• A sentencing review of the most dangerous and prolific offenders.
• A £2.5bn investment in the construction of 10,000 new prison places.
• A £100m investment in prison security; including the installation of ‘airport-style ‘scanners throughout the prison estate.

Conservativism in conflict?

While it is tempting to view this volte-face through the narrow lens of personality politics, these events are jut as interesting for what they reveal about contemporary conservativism and the fluid balance of power within the Conservative Party. From Leon Brittan’s reforms of the parole system in 1983 to Chris Grayling’s much criticised privatization of the probation service in 2013, the shifting constellations of power between the One-Nation and Thatcherite voices within Cabinet have often gone hand-in-hand with periods of performative penal populism.

Crime may be a quintessentially conservative issue, but it cuts across several major fault lines within conservative thought and new right politics more generally; pragmatism and authoritarian populism; neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism; the local and the global, a fear of moral decline and an embrace of the free-market. These ideological traditions yield very different perspectives on penal policy-making, but it is impossible to understand how and why these ideas come to find expression in official policy without some reference to the competing demands of political statecraft. As the political scientist Jim Bulpitt noted:

What is statecraft? The crude answer is that it is the art of winning elections and achieving some necessary degree of governing competence in office… It is concerned primarily to resolve the electoral and governing problems facing a party at any particular time.

Commentators have rightly drawn attention to the highly questionable effectiveness, fairness and penological basis of these measures, but this is somewhat to miss the point.

‘Crime week’ decoded

Viewed through the lens of political statecraft, the current revival of law and order politics has less to do with crime and rather more to do with current parliamentary arithmetic and the Conservative Party’s future electoral prospects:

First, Johnson’s advisors have borrowed from the Thatcher play-book in seeking to position crime as a ‘wedge issue’ that puts clear blue water between the current government, the Labour Party, and Thresa May’s tenure as Prime Minister. This may prove altogether more difficult to pull off in the current climate.

Law and order has barely featured in British general elections since 2001 and it is far from clear that public concern over knife crime and the release of high-profile offenders – such as John Worboys – will break through as a big-ticket electoral issue. As Figure 1 reveals, concern over crime has increased significantly in the past year, but still lags behind Europe and the NHS in the public’s priorities.

Figure 1

Ipsos Mori Issues Index, 2018-2019

Second, in the eyes of many voters Johnson suffers from a credibility gap that was exposed during the leadership contest. His record in government was decidedly mixed and many have questioned whether he possess the temperament to be an effective Prime Minister. In recognition of this, Johnson’s team have repeatedly turned to criminal justice in order to present a counter-narrative based upon his experience as the Mayor of London and the successes (real or perceived) that he had in reducing knife crime across the capital.

Third, Johnson’s government has extremely limited room for policy manoeuvre. The Conservatives have a working majority in Parliament of just one, the civil service is consumed by Brexit planning, and the latitude for additional spending is severely constrained by the current budget settlement. Within such a restrictive operating environment, rhetorical shifts on emotive issues such as crime and immigration can deliver marginal gains despite the fact the underlying legislative or policy framework has remained largely unchanged; a process Steve Farrell et al have characterised as ‘communicative dissonance’.

Fourth, it is increasingly apparent that ten-years of austerity has become an electoral liability for the Conservative Party and a firm point of difference for Labour.

Decoupling the Conservative brand from its cornerstone economic policy, while maintaining a reputation for fiscal prudence, has proved extremely difficult. In this context investment in ‘frontline services’, such as the police, presents an attractive option for policy-makers seeking to square the circle of post-austerity politics.

Brexit: The ‘elephant in the room’….

Ordinarily these measures – in conjunction with recent announcements on public sector pay and the NHS – might be expected to appeal to the Conservative base and some swing voters. But these are very far from ordinary times. The fate of the current government is inexorably linked to Brexit and this single issue will continue to dominate the political agenda to the exclusion of all else. Europe has accentuated longstanding ideological differences within the Conservative Party (as it has within the Labour movement) and this promoted diametrically opposed positions on how best to respond to the challenges of contemporary statecraft.

The sudden change of direction on penal policy this summer may be the latest manifestation of this conflict, but it is unlikely to be the last.

Thomas Guiney 

Lecturer in Criminology at Oxford Brookes.

More Strong Leadership

Just to keep things ticking over whilst we await something significant, here's the Press Release on the latest inspection of London CRC:-

London probation service continues to improve performance

A London probation service has made “considerable efforts” to improve the quality of its work over the past year, according to inspectors.

HM Inspectorate of Probation conducted a routine inspection of London Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC), which supervises nearly 29,000 low and medium-risk offenders across the capital.

The Inspectorate looked at 10 aspects of the CRC’s work and rated performance against half of these as ‘good’ and half as ‘requiring improvement’. Based on these findings, the Inspectorate has given the organisation an overall rating of ‘Requires improvement’.

Chief Inspector of Probation Justin Russell said: “London CRC continues to improve and has taken on board many of the recommendations from last year’s inspection. Now, the CRC offers good support for people leaving prison and better supervision for people who complete unpaid work in the community. The CRC has also developed effective relationships with partners and stakeholders.

“There is a strong leadership team, and staff are empowered to deliver services that will bring about lasting changes in the lives of vulnerable people. The staff we interviewed were well motivated and positive about their work and the organisation.

“However, London CRC needs to better support individuals to rehabilitate and to move away from further offending. We found a good range of services available to support people with basic needs and to tackle their offending behaviour, but it is disappointing to find that these services are not being delivered consistently in the inspected cases.

“Probation staff also need to assess and manage the risks that every offender poses to the community; we found the quality of this work needs to improve.”

Probation staff had not adequately assessed the risk of harm posed to actual and potential victims in nearly half (48 per cent) of inspected cases. Staff were also not paying enough attention to information from partners, such as the police or children’s social care services, or of past aggressive behaviour.

The Inspectorate found recruiting and retaining good-quality staff continues to be an issue in the capital. Workloads are high – more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of interviewed staff said they managed more than 55 cases.

Inspectors found leaders had put an “impressive” HR strategy in place and fewer staff had left the organisation over the past nine months. Around one in four probation staff are agency workers, and the CRC is in the process of converting some of these roles into permanent positions.

The Inspectorate is calling for further action to improve office accommodation and ensure staff stay safe while carrying out their duties.

Mr Russell said: “London CRC shares 19 of its 22 offices with the London National Probation Service, which is responsible for supervising high-risk offenders. The Ministry of Justice is responsible for managing these premises but, at the time of inspection, we found some urgent problems with the building and a long list of less-urgent repairs that required attention.

“Systems and processes that are supposed to protect staff require improvement. Staff often work on a one-to-one basis with people under supervision and have been given safety devices for their protection. Inspectors found some devices did not work; staff also reported that some offices had a very limited number of devices, which could prevent them from carrying out home visits as and when needed.”

The Inspectorate has made six recommendations with the aim of improving London CRC’s performance.

Class War

Just to keep things ticking over, here's a reminder from the Guardian of how the criminal justice system is unashamedly used for political ends:- 

Boris Johnson’s crackdown on crime is just the latest ruse in the Tories’ class war

Our so-called justice system exists to crack down on the misdemeanours of the poor, while ignoring the crimes committed by the rich. When Boris Johnson proposes a law-and-order clampdown – driven by cynical electioneering, rather than actual evidence – he’s talking about locking up the “people you step over in the street”, as Frances Crook, the CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform, puts it, not reckless bankers or white-collar fraudsters.

Lock ’em up, throw away the key: such demagoguery always has an innate emotional appeal, not least among a public enraged by increased violent crime, which is itself fuelled by a decade of slash-and-burn Tory economic policies. But further brutalising those already roughed up by a social order rigged in favour of yacht owners, financiers and the residents of Mayfair will satisfy the bloodlust of the Daily Mail and achieve little else.

The justice system has long been an instrument of class power. Under the “Bloody Code” of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, death sentences for property crimes proliferated: stealing sheep, thieving from a shipwreck, or pickpocketing could all lead to the gallows. Today, we tend to lock up mentally ill poor people, disproportionately from minority backgrounds, for non-violent offences.

According to the Prison Reform Trust, more than seven in 10 prisoners report mental health issues, a quarter of inmates are from a minority ethnic group, and more than one in five with sentences of less than six months are homeless. Nearly seven out of 10 languishing behind bars are there for non-violent offences.

If the government truly wanted less crime, it would reverse the cuts to youth services – slashed in real terms by 40% in the last three years alone – which a recent parliamentary report found had led to increased knife crime. It would clamp down on school exclusions: these have surged by 50% since 2016, partly to enable schools to climb league tables, driving some of the abandoned children into crime. It would entirely reverse the real-terms cuts to schools and the gutting of sixth forms. It would properly support a mental health service which turns away more than 100,000 children every year. It would confront a housing crisis which has left a generation without security or roots, and deal decisively with a squeeze in living standards that has particularly hurt younger people.

But the Tory party has spent a near-decade forcing the majority to pay the bill for the economic wreckage caused by its City of London donors: it is the custodian of a social order that robs humans of security and dignity.

If prison is a deterrent, why are nearly half of adults convicted of another offence within a year of release? There are already more people in Britain serving a life sentence than in Germany, France and Italy combined – but has it left us safer? Why has a report by the National Audit Office found no link between prison population numbers and the level of crime in different countries?

We leave prisoners locked up in squalid conditions for up to 23 hours a day, instead of focusing on education, training, exercise, and other means of rehabilitation – as called for by the Howard League – so why are we surprised that prison becomes a school of crime? There are few places worse for someone with mental health issues than prisons, rife as they are with violence and drug abuse, and shocking rates of suicide and self-injury.

Chris Grayling’s part-privatisation of probation has had a disastrous impact – and Johnson’s plans will undoubtedly prove a boon to profiteers such as Serco, which was fined millions for using taxpayers’ money to fraudulently tag non-existent people, and a calamity for the rest of us.

If the government had sense, it would learn from Norway, which has shorter sentences, fewer prisoners, humane prisons and an emphasis on rehabilitation: there, just 20% of convicts reoffend within two years, among the world’s lowest rates. It would learn from Portugal in decriminalising drugs and treating them as a public health issue: the country has the lowest drug mortality rate in western Europe, drug use is below Europe’s average, and the number of those incarcerated for drug offences has more than halved. But in the UK, no such sense is to be found.

While the justice system is a stick for the poor, it offers an abundance of carrots for Britain’s rich. Iceland managed to lock up dozens of bankers and CEOs for crimes committed in the run-up to the 2008 financial crash – but not one senior banking executive has been jailed in Britain or the US for their roles in unleashing misery that millions continue to suffer from.

The tax system is riddled with loopholes available only to the rich and big corporations, depriving the exchequer of billions of pounds at a time when we’re constantly told there isn’t enough money for basic services. Meanwhile, benefit fraudsters are sentenced for appropriating far smaller sums. Since 2011, UK prosecutions for financial crimes – supposed “white collar crime” – have collapsed by 26%, even though the number of offences has quadrupled. Nearly a decade ago, one leading judge declared that the justice system has an inbuilt bias favouring the wealthy; since then, the decimation of legal aid has left it rigged even more in favour of the rich.

The law continues to crash down on the backs of the poor – while pandering to the rich.

Johnson is seeking to turn a national crisis that has been stoked by his own party’s actions into an electoral problem for his opponents – and he will be aided and abetted by the rightwing press. But he is merely upholding a centuries-old tradition of protecting a social order rigged in favour of his own class.

If you are rich and destroy the economy, engage in white collar fraud, snort cocaine – you’re still likely to live unimpeded in affluence, continuing to be invited to mingle with the not-so-great-and-good of society. But if you are a black teenager in Hackney found in possession of cannabis by the police, your whole life could crash down around you. Whatever this is – it’s certainly not justice.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist.

PM Issues Orders!

We now know the criminal justice system will be part of the election campaign and the MoJ statement on Monday has set the ball rolling:-

Sentencing review to look at most dangerous and prolific offenders

The Ministry of Justice will conduct an urgent review ordered by the Prime Minister, to ensure the public are properly protected from the most dangerous criminals.

The work, which begins immediately, will focus on whether violent and sexual offenders are serving sentences that truly reflect the severity of their crimes.

It will consider whether changes in legislation are needed to lock criminals up for longer – by not letting them out automatically part-way through a sentence. It will also look at how to break the cycle of repeat offending.

It forms part of a government overhaul of the criminal justice system to further protect the public – by cracking down on crime, raising prison standards, rehabilitating offenders and cutting the vicious cycle of re-offending.

The government review team will report back directly to the Prime Minister with recommendations this autumn.

Specifically, the review will look at:

• Sentencing for the most serious violent and sexual offenders;
• The rules governing when and how these offenders are released; and
• Sentencing of the most prolific offenders.

Today (12 August 2019) also sees a further £85 million awarded to the Crown Prosecution Service to build capacity and manage caseloads over the next 2 years.

Justice Secretary, Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC MP, said:

"Too often the public and victims feel that violent and sexual offenders are being released early and without a proper deterrent to stop their offending. We must ensure that there is confidence in the system, which is why my department will undertake an urgent review of how and when these offenders are released – to better protect the public and end the cycle of reoffending. This work is a priority for the Government and will report back to the Prime Minister with recommendations to ensure punishments properly reflect the severity of their crimes."

In addition, today the Prime Minister and Justice Secretary are meeting leaders from the police, probation and prison sectors to discuss how to cut crime and improve the criminal justice system.

It comes as an extra £2.5 billion investment has been announced to create 10,000 extra prison places, starting with the new Full Sutton prison.

This follows announcements to recruit 20,000 new police officers over the next three years and the Home Secretary’s confirmation that all 43 police forces in England and Wales can use enhanced stop and search powers.

--oo00oo--

This response from Napo:-

PM orders urgent review of Sentencing Policy

Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s, call today for an urgent review of prison sentencing policy – which would see 10,000 extra prison places - has been all over the news today. Napo General Secretary, Ian Lawrence, spoke to Sky News’ lunchtime programme about the proposals.

Ian told Sky News that there were already too many people in prison; people who should not be there like those with mental health issues. What was really needed in terms of sentencing policy, he said, was a return to ‘what works’, and proper rehabilitative work from more, skilled, probation officers in the community.

Grayling’s TR reforms were an acknowledged disaster, he told the programme. The part-privatisation of the probation service had failed on all counts and resulted in the government U-turn and the return of ‘offender supervision’ into the National Probation Service. Napo welcomed this and was committed to working with the MoJ to deliver but, he told Sky, the proposed changes were not enough: we need all probation work brought back into under public accountability. He also said that we needed more resources and more skilled probation staff. There were currently over 1,000 vacancies across the country – HMPPS needed to motivate and recruit staff as a matter of urgency and the current, two-tier pay system that was the result of the TR system was not the way.

Was Boris Johnson listening? Ian said he hoped so. Napo had a good working relationship with Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, and we believe he understands the situation. But, Ian stressed, the way forward is properly resourced supervision in the community, to deliver rehabilitation and to keep communities safe: and this was only possible if probation was in the hands of skilled professional practitioners not private companies interested only in profit.

--oo00oo--

Here we have what the Secret Barrister thinks, and they're angry! 

Don’t fall for Boris Johnson’s criminal justice con tricks

Starting with the “new money”. Mr Johnson has announced that 20,000 new police officers will be recruited over the next three years. This is vital, certainly, but falls far short of what is required, given that that figure barely replaces the number of officers cut since 2010. Meanwhile, not only is crime increasing, but investigations are becoming ever-more complex, with digital evidence sucking resources and quadrupling the effort that would have been required a decade ago.

There’s £85m for the Crown Prosecution Service, which sounds like a healthy sum, until you realise that it’s a fixed payment over two years, and that the CPS budget for 2018/19 was a quarter of a billion pounds less in real terms than in 2009/10. The CPS has lost a quarter of its staff and a third of its lawyers since 2010. Two tranches of £42.5m will not begin to fix the problems that plague prosecutions up and down the country.

There’s a promise of 10,000 new prison places, when the previous promise of 10,000 places in 2015 fell short by 6,000, and another 9,000 places alone are required simply to address the present, longstanding overcrowding. There is £100m for technology to aid prison security, but no mention at all of the extra prison staff needed to safely manage the new offenders, given that even after a recruitment drive in 2017, numbers are 15 per cent down since 2010. There has been a huge drain of experience since 2010, as the most experienced officers were among the first to go when the government decided to slash prison staff by over a quarter, at a time when the prison population has climbed.

But the problem extends far beyond inadequate promises to redress chronic underfunding. The propaganda accompanying these announcements betrays not only the Prime Minister’s trademark opportunism and dearth of intellectual rigour but the sticky, putrid tar clogging the heart of the Johnson Crime Agenda.

Announcing his plans in a series of weekend puffs in tame newspapers, Boris Johnson declared, “Left wingers will howl. But it’s time to make criminals afraid – not the public.” Declaring his mission to ensure that criminals “get the sentence they deserve,” Johnson continued a theme begun in his Telegraph columns on the campaign trail, when he railed against “early release” from prison and inadequate prison sentences being passed. The solution to our criminal woes, the subtext screams, is to lock up more people for longer.

And let’s make no mistake, punishment is a legitimate and important part of criminal sentencing. It is one of the five purposes of sentencing listed in statute, alongside the reduction of crime (including by deterrence), reform and rehabilitation, protection of the public and making reparations to victims. Few if anybody involved in criminal justice would disagree with the notion that people who commit crime should be punished in a way that reflects their culpability and the harm they have caused, and that for some people, notably the most serious violent offenders, lengthy prison sentences are inevitable.

However, the notion that longer prison sentences by themselves make any of us any safer is a fantasy. The notion in particular that knife crime will be solved if we simply lock up young men for years on end is a hoax. The public may well be protected from that particular individual for the duration of their incarceration, but the idea underpinning this rotten philosophy – that longer sentences have a deterrent effect on crime – has been shown to be bogus. What does act as a deterrent is not severity of sentence, but certainty. The likelihood of being caught and dealt with swiftly, in other words.

But crime reduction and prevention is not achieved solely by deterrence. Rehabilitation is a vital part of protecting the public. This is why, when dealing with complex, multi-causal offending intractably rooted in social and cultural problems, the courts may take the view that more can be done to protect the public by keeping a young man on the cusp of custody out of the prison warehouse estate, and offering focussed intervention in the community. Sending someone to prison usually means ripping them away from all and any stabilising factors they may have. They lose their job, their social housing and their relationship, and exit prison with no support network other than the new friends they’ve made inside. This is why the evidence suggests that reoffending rates are lower when offenders are kept in the community.

But the evidence is of no concern to the Prime Minister. This is why he is forced into infantile ad hominems as a pre-emptive rebuttal against the people who have read and studied the evidence, and might be minded to offer some as a counter to his claims that our system is soft.

We already have the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe. Prison sentences have on average got longer year-on-year. We have more prisoners detained on indefinite and life sentences than all the other countries in the Council of Europe.

The notion that our courts routinely hand out “soft sentences” is simply not true. When we do see “soft justice” stories in the headlines, they will either be an aberration, usually corrected on appeal, or they will be the product of inaccurate or dishonest reporting, removing context or omitting facts.

Which brings us to Johnson’s public statements. Because at the centre of his musings on criminal justice is a rich stuffing of bullshit. He has lied and lied and lied. He lied when he claimed that “a convicted rapist out on early release” had raped again (the man in question was neither a convicted rapist nor out on early release). He lied when he suggested that the notion of allowing some prisoners to be released on temporary licence was “criminally stupid” (the government’s own evidence shows that reintegrating prisoners into the community in this way cuts reoffending). When he told the Mail this weekend that there are “thousands of “super prolifics” – criminals with more than 50 convictions to their name – who are being spared jail altogether”, he did not tell you that one of the reasons they were spared jail might be that they were being sentenced for non-imprisonable offences. He is lying to you when he tells you that the solution to crime is More Police, More Prisons.

He is lying so that he can turn the volume up to 11 on his remix of “Prison Works” to ensure the oldies at the back of the conference hall can hear in the run-up to the inevitable autumn general election.

And while Mr Johnson is lying to you, the rest of the criminal justice system rots.

Courts are being closed down and sold off all over the country. Half of all magistrates’ courts have been closed, meaning that defendants, victims and witnesses are forced to travel for hours on ineffective public transport to their “local” court.

Of those courts remaining standing, many are unfit for purpose. Decaying, crumbling buildings with no working lifts, holes in the roofs, sewage leaking into public areas, no air conditioning in summer and no heating in winter. In some, the public cannot even get a glass of water.

Of the courts that remain unsold, all are now run at artificially low capacity due to Ministry of Justice restrictions on “court sitting days”. We have, in many large city Crown Courts, the farce of full-time, salaried judges being forced to sit at home taking “reading days” – their perfectly serviceable courtrooms sitting locked and empty – while trials are fixed for Summer 2020 due to an alleged “lack of court time”.

We still have the abominable system of “floating trials” and “warned lists” – where defendants, witnesses and lawyers are expected to give up days or weeks of their lives just sitting around at court on the off-chance that a courtroom suddenly becomes free to take their trial. When, inevitably, no courtroom becomes free (because the MoJ won’t pay for the sitting day, ibid), their case is adjourned for months, and the cycle begins again.

The one thing that does act as a deterrent to criminals – certainty – is being eroded by ensuring that justice is doled out literally years after the event, because the government will not pay for the courts to process cases clogging the pipeline.

Meanwhile legal aid is being stripped away from citizens, forcing them to self-represent in cases in which their liberty is on the line.

This is why I am angry. Not because I’m a “lefty” inherently resistant to Boris Johnson’s white hot public service reforms. I’m angry because as a prosecutor I am still having to sit down with crying witnesses week after week and explain that their torment is being prolonged for another six months because the government refuses to pay to keep courtrooms open. I’m angry because the Innocence Tax – the policy that forces the wrongly accused to pay privately for their legal representation and then denies them their costs, bankrupting them, when they are acquitted – is not even in the political peripheral vision. I’m angry because our Prime Minister is a man who looks at the record rates of death, violence, suicide, overcrowding and self-harm in our prisons and whose first question is, “How do we get more people in there?” I’m angry because the notion that you “crack down on crime” by chucking a few more police officers onto the streets and shoving more and more people into our death-riven prisons is a con. It is a con to victims of crime, and it is a con to you, the public. I’m angry because we have the indignity of a dishonest, cowardly and exploitative Prime Minister fiddling with his Party’s g-spot while the criminal justice system burns.

Don’t fall for his con trick.

Secret Barrister

Latest From Napo 193

For quite some time readers have been suggesting that Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) was another disaster in the making and this latest news from Napo would tend to confirm that view:-  

Napo and POA in dispute over OMiC as Johnson announces 10,000 more prison places

Today’s big story on sentencing reform, and the return of the Tories favourite old pre-election mantra of ‘lock em up and throw away the key,’ is symptomatic of the failure by successive Governments to properly understand the need for a balanced approach to prisons and rehabilitation.

I have just returned to HQ from the interview with Sky News earlier today where I tried to introduce a different perspective, and highlight a number of Napo’s campaigning priorities. Depressingly today’s debate has been dominated by the headline of 10,000 new prison places (and at least one new prison) to be financed by another huge windfall from that Magic Money Tree.

Same old, same old

There are a few reasons why the policy shift should be subject to major scrutiny. Firstly, because it represents a brutal ‘pitchforking’ of the reformist shoots previously planted by Messrs Gauke and Stewart on the need to abolish short term prison sentences which would have made a decent start in freeing up space across the HMP estate. Although by now we should know better than to expect a few facts to get in the way of the populist soundbites resurrected by Boris and his chums as they move inexorably towards a November general election.

Secondly, and in fairness to Secretary of State Robert Buckland, who at least acknowledged the need to take a holistic view of penal and rehabilitative policy on the early bulletins, it's yet again been all about Prison being the place where society’s ‘problems’ can be sent and sorted. Anyone with even half an idea about the justice system can tell you that this is a patently absurd mind-set, both from a financial and political standpoint. It's been tried tested and failed more times than many of us can remember and has seen the Prison population rise to bursting point across several decades.

OMiC dispute

Today, and perhaps very well-timed, your National Chair Katie Lomas and I have served notice on Sonia Crozier that Napo are now in dispute over the Offender Management in Custody strategy for a number of reasons as articulated in our letter. Our serious doubts about the practicalities of OMiC were raised a long time ago and have been again in light of the Governments U-turn on Probation, but it’s been an awfully long slog trying to get someone to take our concerns seriously. Today’s announcements should at least ring some more bells in this regard.

Fortunately it's not just us who are somewhat miffed at developments, and last week we met with our colleagues from the POA who also have serious issues in common cause around grading, qualification and workloads. We agreed to exchange notes going forward, maintain contact and seek joint meetings with senior HMPPS leaders and Ministers.

We will also be raising this subject as a matter of urgency at this weeks’ meeting of the NPS JNC and we will report further to members as soon as we can.

Ian Lawrence, General Secretary

--oo00oo--

Sonia Crozier, Chief Probation Officer and Executive Director Women 

HM Prison and Probation Service 

12th August 2019 

Dear Sonia, 

Dispute re OMiC 

During recent engagement with your Officials about OMiC, we have received information that causes such significant concern to our members that we have no option but to formally register a dispute. Our concerns are summarised here. 

Lack of Consultation 

At the last meeting on July 24th we were presented with (after around a year of asking) a Powerpoint presentation titled “OMiC Staffing Model”. The document was dated March 2019. This document includes changes to agreed workload timings and changes to work practices such as completion dates for OASys and the OASys review frequency that we have not been properly consulted about. These constitute a significant change for members as well as establishing a lower level of assessment and review than is currently in place for clients in custody. 

Broken assurances on staffing levels 

At the start of OMiC, we were assured that the Offender Management part of the project would not be rolled out until staffing levels are safe. It is now clear that this is not the case and many members are reporting that their division is pressing ahead despite the significant vacancy levels and unacceptably high workloads that exist. 

We have been informed that, in five prisons, there are serious staffing issues that are not likely to be resolved by the “go live” date. Our understanding was that in such a situation the “go live” would not proceed, but instead we have been informed that the Case Management Support model will be used instead. This will force Probation staff to take on dangerously high caseloads of high risk clients and will see prison staff who have not had the requisite training or acquired the qualification to carry out offender management tasks with those clients. Taking aside the reality that the Case Management Support model rarely affords the workload relief it promises in the custody part of the sentence, there is little work that can be usefully given to someone else in this way. Our members who are being forced to work in this way are at real risk from such excessive workloads and we know from tragic experience that working so far beyond capacity also prevents members from delivering the standard of work required from them. 

SPO workloads 

We have raised our concerns for some time about the prison SPO role after it was announced that the ratio of SPO: reportee would be 1:14 FTE rather than the 1:10 FTE in the community. The SPOs working in prisons will be supervising both probation and prison staff who are on different sets of terms and conditions. We already see SPOs in the community struggling with workloads, especially where there are a number of part time staff (far more likely in a predominantly female workforce) which often means there are far more than 10 staff to supervise. In Prisons, these difficulties will be exacerbated, as the SPO is expected to drive the rehabilitation culture in the OMU while referencing multiple management and support structures for the two sets of staff. Our representations on this issue up to now have been ignored. 

Change to agreement on the contracted out estate 

During the meeting on the 24th July, we were also informed that, contrary to the previous assurance that high-risk clients in the contracted-out estate would have an OM with a Probation Qualification, there was a plan to use the Case Management Support model here too. This again forces members to work with dangerously high caseloads and way beyond their safe capacity thus risking their health and safety as well as making it impossible for them to deliver the standard of work expected. 

Concerns about the model 

You are of course aware that right from the start, Napo have questioned the OMiC model because it builds in working practices that are not supportive of desistance including inconsistency of worker through the sentence. The change of Offender Manager during the preparation for a client’s release is particularly concerning; as the period immediately prior to and just after release are especially vulnerable points in the sentence. The blueprint for the change to Probation Services discusses how problematic these “handoffs” are, and this forms part of the basis for one of the most significant U-turns in policy we have seen in Probation. It is therefore astounding that the OMiC model is being forced through with the same flaws embedded. 

The announcements by the Prime Minister over the weekend of the intention to create 10,000 new Prison places, in itself means that urgent dialogue (and surely a further review) is now necessary on the whole OMiC strategy and the resourcing requirements that are going to be needed in Prisons and Probation. 

In addition, the OMiC model has been altered for the Women’s Estate to remove the Keyworker role for those women described in the documentation as “high complexity women”. We have made representations about the degrading language being used and suggested that “women with complex needs” would be more appropriate. We question the decision to remove the Keyworker role which has been described as providing more consistency. Using consistency of worker as a reasoning for any decision in this model is bizarre, given the representations we have made about the model overall, but in this case it doesn’t fit at all. The Keyworker role is one of the positive aspects of OMiC, providing an additional supportive member of the “team” in the prison. This should be used to enhance, not supplant the interaction with the Offender Manager. Instead of removing the Keyworker role we believe that the Keyworker should remain, but the Offender Manager should be allocated additional time to ensure that positive working relationships can be built. 

No consultation on job losses 

In addition to the practice concerns we have illustrated above, it is very clear that the OMiC model is simply seeking to resolve the acute and chronic staffing issues in the NPS by giving staff unacceptably high workloads and by giving 30% of the custody caseload to Prison staff to manage. Although no NPS staff will lose their employment (because of the high vacancy rate in the NPS and our ‘no redundancy’ agreement) this nevertheless represents a net loss of jobs which has also not been the subject of prior consultation with the unions. 

In view of the urgency of this issue, we are seeking its inclusion as an additional item at this weeks’ meeting of the NPS JNC. Meanwhile, Napo will be taking steps to consult with our sister trade unions and our members about how we should progress this dispute. 

Yours sincerely 

IAN LAWRENCE 

General Secretary

KATIE LOMAS 

National Chair