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There was a lot in yesterday's Napo C19 Bulletin 10 so I thought it a good idea to put it here:- 

Napo C19 Bulletin 10 – 09-04-2020

Advice on keeping safe in the workplace

Following extensive high level engagement between HMPPS, Napo and our sister unions, the NPS is producing new guidance on PPE and Hygiene for all NPS workplaces. We have seen early drafts of this and while there are some points still to work on we have asked that it is issued now to Divisions to give members a framework for taking the appropriate action if it is not immediately enacted. If necessary, it can be updated in future following feedback from members.

Napo have made the following basic demands.

For all workplaces Except APs:

• Social distancing in the workplace between colleagues must be possible and hand hygiene products made available (soap, hot water, paper towels, hand sanitiser) – if not the workplace must not be used and should be closed
• Arrangements for seeing clients in contact centres must include social distancing and hand hygiene as above – if this is not possible the contact centre must not be used for client visits (although if the workspace in the building meets the criteria above it can be used for non-contact work). Clients exhibiting any symptoms should not attend a contact centre.
• There is new guidance for the use of hire and pool cars for doorstep visits and where this is not possible to follow these vehicles should not be used.
• Similarly, there is guidance on the use of personal vehicles for doorstep visits and where this is not possible to follow these vehicles should not be used.
• There is guidance for the doorstep visiting process and where this is not possible to follow the visit should not take place. Doorstep visits are to establish service user residence at an address and should not be used for ongoing supervision in place of telephone contact.

For Approved Premises:

• There is specific guidance for APs as social distancing may not always be possible and PPE must be used in these circumstances.
• The guidance provides helpful information about the type of PPE to be used in different circumstances and the training regime for its use which must be followed. Where appropriate PPE cannot be provided and where social distancing is not possible as an alternative our position is that the AP should be closed.
• Concerns about APs that cannot be resolved locally should be shared with Siobhan Foreman sforeman@napo.org.uk

E3 Pay Protection Success

Trade Unions have been raising the issue of E3 pay protection for some time. Members affected will know that where staff were downgraded in the E3 job evaluation process there was a commitment from the employer to offer support and training to allow them to move to a role at the higher pay band. This has never materialised in any meaningful way, and some members will be approaching the end of their period of pay protection.

Following lengthy discussions, the employer has agreed with the Trade Unions position on this and will now issue guidance on an extension of E3 pay protection for those affected. We will of course share more advice and guidance on this once we have it, but this is a significant achievement for the unions and will benefit members who were, through no fault of their own, downgraded as a result of the E3 process.

NPS SPDR position confirmed

For the NPS there will shortly be guidance issued that will relieve the administrative burden on managers for processing SPDRs. This should not remove the usual discussions about practice and performance but the system will automatically default all SPDR scores to “Good” so managers will only need to complete paperwork where they believe a score of “outstanding” is warranted or, for those in formal poor performance processes only, where “needs improvement” is warranted. SPDR validation processes will be restricted to SPDRs where a score needs improvement or ‘outstanding’ has been given, and will be a much reduced process. We welcome this move to relieve the workloads of managers.

NPS – to restructure or not to restructure?

Last week we were assured by HMPPS Senior Leaders that, although the new Regional Directors were being welcomed into the NPS, the regional restructure was to be paused until the C-19 crisis has passed. Unfortunately this message did not land with some divisions, who have told staff already struggling to cope with unprecedented changes to their work that they will now have to adjust to being in a new region and having different management structures. In some areas this has more impact than others due to the geography and structural changes required. There are also challenges for Napo as some of the new structures don’t fit easily with our branch structure which is the frontline in terms of representation and support for members. We have made it clear that it is unacceptable to make structural changes at the moment when the relationships between frontline staff and their managers, and between Unions reps and managers, is so crucial. We continue to have discussions on this, and our position is that where such changes have been made we expect urgent action to reverse them and return stability and consistency for members and reps.

Special bonus scheme – as tricky as predicted

The Probation Trade Unions did not agree with much of the detail in the special bonus scheme or the rates of remuneration on offer so have not agreed to it. HMPPS nevertheless imposed on NPS staff a model that had been devised largely on the basis of prison and HQ grades rather than NPS grades. As predicted, the implementation has been confusing and divisive with members being told one day they were entitled to an allowance only to be told the opposite the next. After much discussion the employer produced some further guidance in the form of FAQs. Unfortunately these focussed almost solely on prison grades and terms and conditions and would be of little use to NPS staff. We have insisted that additional NPS specific guidance is produced as a matter of urgency so that we can offer advice and support to members facing confusion about their entitlements.

More HR confusion

Formal HR processes such as sickness reviews, disciplinary and grievance hearings should be suspended, apart from the most exceptional cases. This message was given to members last week and we were assured that NPS divisions were instructed to implement it. Many CRCs have also adopted this very sensible approach, only progressing those cases where there was an exceptional reason such as allowing someone to return to work or to retire on the grounds of ill health. As ever, the instruction was interpreted differently in different areas with some NPS Divisions denying all knowledge of it. We have now been assured that all Divisional Directors have been reminded of the instruction this week so if any reps or members are asked to participate in cases after today they should refer initially to the Divisional Director and escalate to us if sense does not prevail.

National Chair and GS to provide Oral Evidence to Justice Committee

Napo have been invited to provide evidence to a formal session of the Justice Select Committee (JSC) next Tuesday afternoon (see Twitter and the Napo Website for exact timings and viewing details).

The JSC are interested in understanding the range of challenges being faced by our members in the NPS and CRC’s during this unprecedented Coronavirus crisis. This is a valuable and very timely opportunity for Napo to report on the tremendous work being undertaken by our members to try and maintain vital services and protect our communities and service users from harm.

Obviously, the focus will be on the current emergency and we will gladly report on the positive progress with most Probation providers in working together to achieve the above objective. Nevertheless, we will be making it very clear as to why Napo remains opposed to the proposed contracting out of Intervention and Programme work next year. In addition, we will also want to make the JSC aware of the fact that the Government have so far failed to implement the agreement that was reached in 2018 on pay progression for NPS members.

Napo ‘meets’ with new Shadow Justice Minister

This week the new Labour Party Leader Sir Keir Starmer, appointed a new Shadow Cabinet. Their task will be to work with Government in the national interest during the current C19 crisis, but also to hold that Government to account on a number of fronts.

Today National Chair Katie Lomas and General Secretary Ian Lawrence were invited to take part in a Skype call with the Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy MP. Many members may recall David holding this position in a previous Labour Government and being highly critical of the lack of support for Probation staff from their senior leaders at the time.

We provided a comprehensive summary of the difficulties that our members are coping with right now, as well as explaining our campaigning objectives on Probation reform, pay and workloads and rebuilding the probation service following the disasters resulting from Transforming Rehabilitation.

David and Keir Starmer, have both been invited to attend the 2020 Napo AGM and whilst we await confirmation of their availability, David will monitor the outcomes from Tuesdays JSC hearing and intends to produce a personal Video message for Napo members in the near future.

Radio 5 ‘shoutout’

Every day this week Radio 5 Live is doing a shout out to key workers during the pandemic. Yesterday they chose to give a shout out to Probation and Prison staff. A number of probation staff got involved with phone ins and text messages being read out. Napo General Secretary Ian Lawrence was interviewed and highlighted just how hard Napo members are working in these difficult times. It was a real morale boost for staff, many of whom have felt a bit forgotten in this crisis despite going above and beyond the normal call of duty and coping with home working for the first time. A big thank you to all that got involved!

Further talks, If you or any member of staff you know is isolating in an abusive relationship please seek help immediately. You can call the national help line on 0808 2000 247 for advice. If you are in danger and cannot speak you can call 999 then press 55. This will alert the police and they will come to your home. Alternatively you could contact Napo via tbassett@napo.org.uk.

Finally, have a restful Easter

Just a few weeks ago, nobody would have envisaged that we would all spend one of the most important national holidays across the UK, confined to our homes save only for limited outdoor visits for essential shopping and exercise.

We can only hope that all of our members take this opportunity to get some much needed rest and relaxation over this weekend. Wherever you work across the 23 employers where Napo is recognised as the authoritative voice for its members, you can be proud of the contribution you have made during the national emergency. It speaks volumes for the values you believe in and our collective commitment to create a better and safer society.

Napo Head Office

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From Napo news online last week:-

Napo meets with Justice Minister

Napo, alongside colleagues from our sister unions, met with Justice Minister Lucy Frazer this week. The meeting was overshadowed by the terrible incident in South London last Sunday, and it became quickly evident from the flurry of activity going on in MoJ HQ that we would have less time with the Minister than is usual.

Nevertheless, the delegation which included Napo General Secretary Ian Lawrence and National Vice-Chair Ikki Bhogal, was able to effectively engage with the Minister on a range of important issues on behalf of our members working in the NPS and CRC’s. Here we left Ms Frazer in no doubt that if Probation was already in need of a serious increase in funding to allow it to reach the standards expected of it, the Manifesto commitments of this Government in respect of the criminal justice system and the well documented events over recent weeks, made that even more of an imperative.

The discussions focussed on three key areas namely: Pay and the problems around the non-delivery of the pay protection agreements on E3, the ramifications of the latest report by the Chief Inspector for Probation and the Governments policy on privatisation. Here, the unions again urged a rethink on the re-marketisation of Interventions and Programmes and demanded the cessation of the failing contracts for the provision of double waking night cover in Approved Premises.

On pay, we made strong representations to the Minister and Amy Rees Director General of Probation, that unless serious action was taken to improve funding then there was no chance that it would be possible to re-stabilise the service which is still in recovery mode from the disasters of the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme, or incentivise new recruits to see Probation as a worthy career that paid its staff a decent wage.

The Minister responded positively, in that it was clear that serious dialogue is going on inside HMPPS and with the Treasury on a number of priorities and it was acknowledged that the Governments plans for more police officers, more prison places and longer sentencing would need an increase in probation practitioners as well as the resources to support them.

Ms Frazer agreed to formally respond to the unions joint letter that had been sent in advance of the meeting and welcomed the publication of the correspondence. It is hoped to meet again once decisions have been made around the Governments ongoing Comprehensive Spending Review.

Latest From Napo 199

Thanks to the reader for sharing the following:-

Feedback to members from last week's NPS meetings

Attendance Management Policy (AMP) and manager discretion

Following much work by Napo reps nationally and across the divisions it has now been clarified that panels (or other similar formats) will not be used to consider issuing warnings. If this is happening (from 2020 onwards) we need to know. It is acceptable for a manager to discuss with their own line manager or HRBP a tricky case or one where they need additional advice. Napo have made it clear that in these circumstances we would expect the Manager to adjourn the AMP meeting and go away to seek advice then resume the meeting (with Napo rep present) to carry on with decision making process. We are clear that the decision must be made in the context of the meeting on the basis of information available to all present not outside of it. The HR team are working on an improvement plan for the AMP and sickness issues and is seeking to promote a coaching approach where managers are supported to improve their practice in this area. We will be having a further separate dialogue on this so that we can feed in our views.

E3 Review

The new target operating model (TOM) for Probation will effectively replace the E3 operating model so we need to ensure we feed into the discussions on the TOM (which we do via national meetings). The Court workstream is already in place reviewing the varying practice around Courts and other workstreams are being set up which will all feed into PPCF (Probation Programme Consultative Forum) apart from OMiC which we have separate consultation on. There will be a process map for all strands to help us understand how it all fits together and where we can direct our feedback most usefully.

We have been assured that the Job Evaluation reviews we have requested will happen and we will shortly be receiving a plan with timescales for this work. Sonia Flynn has responded to our joint TU letter regarding pay protection so say that some work will now happen to explore this and we will receive more feedback in coming weeks.

HR/Coordination hubs for HR support to SPOs

Some concerns raised about the handling of sensitive employee information by people who are not necessarily as focussed on the discretion needed when working in an open plan office alongside colleagues. This will be followed up on in the roll out to other divisions to make sure that the training captures these aspects.

Staff vacancies

Entrance to PQUIP has been widened which has expanded the pool and there is a steady decrease in the number of vacancies. Recruitment is planned to fill future vacancies anticipated as a result of recent policy announcements and the probation change programme. Cohort 7 started in January and the numbers for Cohort 8 starting in July have been increased. It is thought that NE, NW and Midlands staffing will be about right in terms of numbers by spring this year but London, Thames Valley and SE&E will continue to struggle.

Workloads and safe working practices

There is more work to do on the WMT (workload management tool) and SBC (Specification, Benchmarking and Costing) review and we will be consulted on this. We discussed the workload management strategy and the fact that although lots of work went into developing it there is little proper use of it and many staff and managers are not aware of it.

HMIP recommendations

HMPPS will respond to the report with an action plan and we will be involved in a discussion around this and be able to contribute to it via our TU Engagement meetings.

Probation Change Programme

The transfer in Wales went ahead in December. There are no known pay issues which was the major concern but everyone accepts that this was a much smaller scale than the next stage in 2021. There are lessons to learn from other aspects of the transfer such as training and this is under review to inform the future transfer in England.

The first stage of competition for Probation Delivery Partners (PDPs) started in December, the invitation to tender (ITT) will be issued at the end of January.

New Regional Directors will be in post no later than April and the transition to regions will start in April and end in October.

We discussed the confused / absent messaging around the extension of CRC contracts to 25 June 2021 and the programme team accept there are lessons to learn from this. They will provide to us a simple explanation and make sure this is shared. We noted that some CRCs have shared information helpfully, some less so and NPS not at all, it is important for all staff in the system to receive the same information.

Workforce Programme

There is a wider workforce programme review which goes further than just the reintegration of offender management and letting new contracts.

We specifically discussed the issues of a few groups of staff who don’t have the appropriate qualification for their current/future role. Some of these are a few POs in post since the “Howard gap” in the late 90’s who were recruited by Trusts under very localised arrangements, some of which saw them doing the Probation placements as they would have done previously. Others are staff recruited by CRCs to work as POs who have a recent Social Work qualification that is not appropriate. The other group are those working in management roles which don’t currently require a qualification but who may in future need to move into roles which do or into an organisation which requires a qualification for the same role. The programme team are working on a solution for these groups of staff (there may be more than one solution dependant on circumstances) and will consult with us via PPCF meetings on this. The drive will be to support staff to get the right qualification for the role and retain their skills and experience.

Digital, Data and Technology

The most concrete part of this was the news that after the end of the current CRC contracts in June 2021 all providers of Probation Services will have to use HMPPS systems. This will be useful in some ways (preventing constant outages as systems struggle to communicate with each other) but not in others (some CRCs have case management systems much better than Delius). The spark of hope is that the digital team are now scoping what needs to happen to make HMPPS systems better. This will be a long term and we are not likely to see any change immediately. They are starting from the end user needs (end user being frontline staff) and working from there. They will retain Delius and OASys as background databases (effectively containers for information) but they will design new “user interfaces” to allow staff to do the things they need to do without duplication and double-handling. The team have offered to give more input to us on this and I will liaise with them to arrange some sessions with a key group of members. Importantly they made a big deal of the fact that AT (assistive technology) accessibility has to be built into all system design for HMPPS systems (sadly this doesn’t stretch to contractor systems like SOP) and they are working with DAWN and a group of AT users on this.

Probation Delivery Unit (PDU) Proposal

LDU clusters are transforming to PDUs. We are being consulted on how this will happen however the change includes processes to select PDU Heads which cut across separate discussions we’ve been having about transfers. This means we will reconvene the separate negotiating meeting under the Staff Transfer Agreement heading to discuss the proposals. Siobhan Foreman, Napo’s Manager Member lead, has attended a consultation event with ACO staff and there will be another this week so all feedback from these and from members who’ve contacted us directly will be considered.

We had a presentation on Rehabilitative Culture. This is a new concept for HMPPS but one we were more than happy to welcome. It seeks to embed a rehabilitative culture in all that we do. Policies will be written with this in mind and we will all be encouraged to move away from labelling – the order to use the term “offender” is gone! A two page guide will be issued to staff encouraging us all to consider how we embed rehabilitation in all that we do. I am certain the vast majority of members will not need this but it’s great that the rest of HMPPS is catching up with Probation.

Information Security

There are two elements to this, the first are the issues we raised with the information security team relating to protection of staff information as well as client information. Lucy Demaine attended the meeting to feed back that her team are putting on workshops and designing posters and leaflets to get the message out about this. We have already had the feedback that attendance management panels will no longer be used and now they are looking at the SPDR validation process to assess the information security issues in it. Site visits done by the Information Security Team will now focus on staff awareness to make local action plans.

Information Assurance Officers were recruited on a temporary basis to put in place information sharing agreements. They are now considering recruiting one for each region on a permanent basis to support the work in this area. We have asked that information sharing agreements be stored in a way that is easily accessible across the organisation. Most are stored locally for the LDU or division but we often need to share information across these borders.

In one division a member of staff had their laptop and phone stolen along with their work notebook over a weekend. All of the information they needed to report this to the information security team was not available to them so nothing could be done until Monday. The information security team have 24/7 coverage so that they can deactivate lost or stolen laptops and phones to prevent data breach. The division are now issuing cards like a business card with the relevant numbers to call on one side and space on the other to record asset numbers to make reporting easier. These will need to be kept separately to the equipment obviously. This will be rolled out across NPS.

We also discussed the SSCL data breach. The MoJ have now contacted personally those individuals whose data security was breached if they were assessed as medium risk due to the nature of the information (for example records of some specific training like counter terrorism was viewed to be more risky). Staff have all been given an email box to contact if they are concerned and many are getting in touch to check if their own data has been compromised. Napo’s position on this is clear. The MoJ should be contacting each individual regardless of their risk assessment and informing them of the data security breach and how they will be supported. Napo members are vulnerable because they work in the community and although thankfully rare there have been examples of staff being targeted because of their job in the past. Kate Stock will take this up with the MoJ team and come back to us.

Staff wellbeing

As part of the wider MoJ work on wellbeing they have agreed to set up a Trade Union Wellbeing Stakeholder Group. There will therefore be an initial focus on staff wellbeing and supporting people. We discussed the need for this to move away from the individualised resilience model that tells people made ill by their work that they must “toughen up” or “look after themselves” rather than acknowledging systemic problems and addressing them.

As part of this discussion we also mentioned Structured Professional Support which until the last two months has been underused in NPS. There has been a recent spike in usage however which is unsurprising given the context of several high profile SFO cases and the impact that has on staff both involved and not involved in them. Matt Wilson has commissioned some analysis of the effectiveness of the service and will share this with us. Any feedback from members is welcomed to inform further discussion on this.

We also had a useful discussion about the need to promote a more positive management style at all levels of the organisation and how this can be done especially in the context of the use of policies such as attendance management and the heavily target driven culture mixed with impossible workloads. We will continue to discuss this further.

All So Very Predictable

Preparing and writing pre sentence reports for court used to be an absolutely key part of a probation officers job, but it's been steadily down-graded. Here we have an article from the Probation Institute magazine on the subject and to be frank it makes for depressing reading because it was all so very predictable:-

How are pre-sentence reports working today?

The relationship between courts and probation holds the key to tackling the over-use of harmful short-term custody and reducing reoffending. In June 2018, Justice Secretary David Gauke MP called for short-term custody to be used only as “last resort.” But if we are to make this aspiration a reality, we need to ensure that judges and magistrates have confidence in probation’s delivery of community sentences as they represent the only realistic alternative in many cases. 

The Centre for Justice Innovation works to promote community sentences as an alternative to custody, and to understand the reason why their use has fallen by 24% since the start of the decade, exploring the way that presentence reports inform sentencers’ perceptions of probation. Pre-sentence reports (PSRs) are a key point of contact between sentencers and probation. They provide judges and magistrates with expert assessments of the risks posed by an offender and the needs driving their offending, and recommend a sentence option which protects the public and supports rehabilitation.

By reviewing the available data and conducting interviews and workshops with practitioners, we have built up a complex picture: one of a system that has been buffeted by a range of policy decisions, but also one where creative and innovative thinking on the ground is finding workarounds to some of the structural challenges. 

In policy terms, clearly the headline issue is the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms which erected a divide between courts and the organisations responsible for delivering the majority of the community sentences they impose. But alongside this radical shift, we have seen an increased emphasis on timeliness in the management of courts. While this is, in many ways, a laudable goal it has had its own impact on the work of probation in courts. And all of this change is occurring at a time when austerity is forcing every part of the justice system to struggle to maintain basic services with limited resources. Taken together, these factors have formed the backdrop for a substantial shift in how pre-sentence reports are delivered. 

The changing delivery of presentence reports 

In our analysis of data on pre-sentence reports, we found two key trends: a significant reduction in the use of pre-sentence reports, and a change in the way they are delivered. The fall in the number of pre-sentence reports is stark. We have gone from 185,000 in 2012/13 to only 124,000 last year: a fall of almost a third over a period when the number of convictions has remained relatively stable. This fall has been seen in both magistrates and crown courts (though the drop in the former is a little steeper). It’s worth noting, however, that these statistics don’t count cases where previous PSRs are re-used, which may exaggerate the size of the change, but nonetheless it seems significant.

Perhaps more striking, though, is the change in the way that reports are delivered. The National Probation Service’s E3 model set ambitious targets for increasing the proportion of PSRs delivered orally, reducing the use of written fast delivery reports (FDRs) and, in particular, the most comprehensive Standard Delivery Reports (SDRs). In the three years since the targets were introduced the use of oral reports has doubled – going from 27% of all reports to 59%, while SDRs have fallen dramatically from 22% to only 3%. In magistrates’ courts, in particular, the SDR is almost unheard of, representing less than 1% of all PSRs.

In investigating the impact of these changes with probation officers, we found some interesting messages. Firstly, and perhaps most surprisingly, the majority of practitioners we spoke to felt that the oral format was working well for the majority of cases. New arrangements with partner agencies such as police and social work departments to obtain background information and the “safer sentencing” focus on the issues pertinent to sentencing decisions were seen as working well, and both officers and sentencers valued the opportunity to discuss the report in the courtroom. However some long-standing officers did note that the limited recording of oral advice was undermining the traditional value of the PSR as a starting point for sentence planning.

Probation officers were more concerned about the reduction in SDRs and, in particular, whether FDRs were being used inappropriately in some complex or traumatic cases. They noted that the guidance around when to use an SDR was restrictive and reported that they felt discouraged from using their professional discretion to go against that guidance. The key challenge was seen as workload: while FDRs and SDRs were often delivered in a similar number of calendar days, courts staff were expected to complete an SDR with only a half day of work. Probation officers told us that working on this volume of difficult cases was leading to burnout in members of court teams and potentially undermining the quality of advice.

The content of pre-sentence reports 

The probation officers we spoke to offered a mixed set of views on the content of PSRs since the reforms. In terms of offender assessments, the consensus was that the system was working well – or at least as well as it ever had, given long-standing complaints around the suite of assessment tools in use. However, some did stress the difficulties of establishing a rapport with an offender in the short interval allowed for an oral report. 

There was more concern about the quality of recommendations of community sentences. Many of the officers we spoke to expressed real concern that they lacked the information about CRC services that they needed to be able to make detailed and robust proposals which can command the confidence of sentencers. This picture varied significantly across different CRCs however: some CRCs had provided expanded rate cards that offered detailed service specifications, while in other areas courts staff had never seen any rate card at all. Some officers also noted that the design of the Rehabilitative Activity Requirement (RAR) placed further limits on how far they could be specific about the way that an offender would be supported on a community sentence – a concern shared by many sentencers. 

Sentencers, in particular, also noted a fall in the use of treatment requirements in community orders. This is backed up by the statistics: the proportion of orders containing drug rehabilitation requirements and mental health treatment requirements has fallen by half since their peaks earlier this decade. In part, this is likely to be caused by the well-documented cuts to treatment budgets6. However, some practitioners also suggested that treatment requirements were being displaced by the RAR, either because it requires less pre-sentence assessment, or (less cynically) because it allows a better integration between treatment and other forms of support.

How can we improve pre-sentence reports? 

Our research suggests that while some areas are working well, recent policy changes have had some negative impacts on the delivery of pre-sentence reports which may be undermining sentencers’ trust in community sentences. Probation officers and sentencers who took part in our research have highlighted particular issues around the assessments of complex cases, the production of detailed recommendations for community sentences and the use of treatment requirements which all seem to have suffered. 

However, participants also highlighted innovations which they saw as having the potential to address these issues. Some of these focus directly on improving sentencing such as the Embedded CRC model in use at Teeside magistrates court where a CRC Probation Service Officer (PSO) is housed with the NPS court team to provide information on CRC service provision. Another promising example is the five-site Community Sentence Treatment Requirement Pilot which seeks to increase the use of those requirements via new resources for on-the-day assessment and enhanced provision in the community. 

Other strategies focus on improving sentencers’ broader knowledge of community sentences such as in Lincolnshire where the NPS and CRC have collaborated to provide magistrates with high quality training including opportunities to meet with a range of probation staff including former service users. Participants were also supportive of models of problem-solving courts where sentencers conduct regular reviews of offenders under probation supervision, which they felt could reduce reoffending as well as increase sentencer trust.

However, while we believe that these innovations can improve pre-sentence reports, we must observe two caveats. Firstly, many of these will require some investment. While the cost is likely to be less than the savings we could achieve through meaningful reductions in custody, we cannot pretend that improvement can be delivered for free. Secondly, many of these ideas are work-arounds to problems created by TR’s break-up of probation trusts. Repairing the damage to sentencer trust will be much easier if we use the opportunity of the end of the current round of CRC contracts to heal the rift in our probation service. 

You can sign up to receive a free copy of the report when it’s released at http://justiceinnovation.org/mailing-list/

Stephen Whitehead 

Head of Evidence and Data Centre for Justice Innovation

PSR At Last Lamented

Whilst we await the MoJ announcement as to how the TR omnishambles is going to be fixed - and note it's to be made as Parliament goes on its summer holidays next week until September - here we have the Centre for Justice Innovation getting worried about the demise of the PSR.

Clearly they don't read this blog because we've been discussing the topic for years and  predicted what would happen as a direct result of:-

• OASys and the infamous 'generate PSR' button 
• the refusal to allow proper adjournments for a professional piece of work 
• the downgrading of the task by allowing PSO's to prepare 'on the day reports' 
• allowing HMCTS, MoJ and NPS to view PSR preparation as 'delaying speedy justice' 
• the dead hand of civil service culture
• a fundamental failure by all to appreciate what a vitally important sentencing tool a full PSR is if prepared by qualified and experienced staff 

I suggest the author of this report would do well to peruse the archives including:-

Death of the PSR
Folly of PSR Demise
When Is a PSR Not a PSR?

--oo00oo--

The full report can be found here. I've not copied the graphs and have removed references:-    

The changing use of pre-sentence reports

Summary

As part of our work to understand why the number of community sentences – community orders, suspended sentence orders and other similar disposals - has fallen by 24% over the past ten years in England and Wales, we are examining the relationship between the courts and probationary services, with a particular focus on the National Probation Service’s work in courts.

In this interim analysis, we present emerging findings from the national data on the use of pre-sentence reports (PSRs) to see whether changes in their use have impacted on the use of community sentences. Sentencers are expected to obtain a PSR before passing any community sentence (other than a stand-alone unpaid work requirement) or any custodial sentence (except one where custody is the only option).

We have found that between 2012-13 and 2016-17:

• There has been a 22% fall in the number of new PSRs produced. This fall means that there has been an increase in the number of sentences passed (both community sentences and custody) where no new PSR has informed sentencing; 
• There has been a significant change in how PSRs are delivered to court, with an increasing proportion of PSRs delivered orally rather than in writing; 
• While the number of PSRs has fallen, where they are used, the likelihood that sentencers follow the recommendations in the report has increased slightly (by 4% since 2012/13); 
• Because cases with PSRs are more than ten times more likely to receive a community sentence, falling numbers of PSRs is strongly linked to the decline in community sentences; 

Our modelling suggests that if the number of PSRs had remained stable that there could have been 33,000 more community sentences a year.

These emerging findings open up a range of further questions: What is driving the fall in new PSRs? How is advice being provided in cases which don’t have them? And ultimately, what is making sentencers less likely to use community sentences when they don’t have pre-sentence advice?

We are exploring these issues with practitioners, in advance of our final report, due in the September 2018, but we invite practitioners and experts to get in touch and help us explore these questions.

Background to this briefing

The Centre for Justice Innovation is working to identify ways to improve the use of community sentences – community orders, suspended sentence orders and other similar sentences. Community sentences have been shown to be significantly more effective than short term custodial sentences in reducing reoffending. We are therefore concerned to note that there has been a 24% decrease in the number of community sentences in England and Wales over the past ten years, with much of the decline occurring since 2011, while other UK jurisdictions have maintained or increased their use. While it is difficult to say exactly what is causing this trend, our previous work on this issue suggests that it does not seem to be the result of falling case volumes nor is the decline a result of a changing offence mix. Whilst clearly, community sentences will not be right for every offender, we are concerned that there are some offenders currently receiving either fines or custodial sentences who would benefit from the combination of support and accountability offered by a community sentence.

Based on our research to date, we believe that there are a range of policy and practice choices, some recent and others long-standing, which have impacted on the relationship between courts and probation and that these are a more likely explanation of the falls in the use of community sentences. This paper, therefore, examines the relationship between the courts and probation, with a particular focus on pre-sentence advice provided to sentencers by the National Probation Service (NPS). It uses national data from a range of sources to examine how the provision of this advice has changed since 2012-132.

Pre-sentence reports

Pre-sentence reports (PSRs), give judges and magistrates an expert assessment of the risk posed by an offender, the factors which lie behind their offending and the strengths that they can draw on to move away from crime. They also provide an opportunity for the NPS report writers who produce them to make a sentence recommendation. This expert assessment is vital in effective sentencing: evidence shows that finding the right intervention can help a person move away from crime while the wrong one can actually increasing the chance of reoffending. Sentencers are expected to obtain a PSR before passing any community sentence (other than a stand-alone unpaid work requirement) or any custodial sentence (except one where custody is the only option).

Finding 1: The total number of pre-sentence reports produced has fallen by 22% over the last five years. 

As figure 1 demonstrates, only 144,000 PSRs were delivered in 2016-17, compared to 184,000 in 2012-13, a fall of 22%. 

This decline has been broadly consistent across all offence groups. This decline in the number of PSRs used is striking given that overall numbers of sentences passed remained stable over this period. It is not clear what the reason is for this, though one possible contributor may be the new NPS policy of reusing existing PSRs for subsequent convictions up to a year after the report was first submitted. However, the trend predates the introduction of this guidance.

Finding 2: More custodial and community sentences are being made without the advice of a pre-sentence report. 

Sentencing Council guidance provides sentencers with some flexibility about when they need a PSR but sentencers are generally expected to use a PSR before passing any community sentence (other than a stand-alone unpaid work requirement) or any custodial sentence (except one where custody is the only option). Yet, with the numbers of pre-sentence reports falling, a greater proportion of community and custodial sentences are now being passed without the benefit of a new pre-sentence report.

Finding 3: Oral pre-sentence reports have nearly doubled in the last two years, while both forms written reports have fallen sharply over the same period. 

As well as providing a new definition of PSRs, the 2003 Criminal Justice Act also removed the requirement for them to be delivered to courts in writing, opening the door for the development of a format for the oral delivery of reports. Today, the NPS uses three different report formats: oral and written FDRs (both of which are usually delivered on the day) and standard delivery reports (SDRs) (delivered after an adjournment which is used to obtain additional information). 

As figure 3 illustrates, the use of oral FDRs has nearly doubled, from 29% of all reports in 14-15 to 57% last year. Written FDRs have fallen by a quarter, from 53% to 39% and SDRs have fallen from 19% to only 4%.

Finding 4: These changes in how reports are delivered to court are the result of intention policy and practice changes, most importantly the NPS’ E3 National Operating model and its targets. 

These changes in report formats have driven by the introduction of targets for the use of PSR formats. New operating guidance on the use of different PSR formats was set out in the NPS’s 2016 E3 National Operating model and an accompanying probation instruction. The model introduced new national targets for the use of different PSR formats. Oral FDRs were to be increased to 60% of all reports, while written FDRs and the most time-consuming SDRs were to be reduced to 30% and 10% respectively.

It should not be assumed that the growing use of oral FDRs is, in itself a cause for concern. The E3 model includes a range of innovations which seek to ensure that report writers can access all the relevant information in time to produce on the day reports and a recent inspectorate review found that more than 90% of the Oral FDRs in their study were of sufficient quality to inform sentencing. 

However, the very low use of SDRs, which is currently less than half of the 10% target, does imply that more comprehensive assessments are being used only in a very limited number of cases. This does at least beg the question of whether all the information which would be relevant to sentencing is being presented in every case.

Finding 5: The likelihood that sentencers follow probation recommendations (the concordance rate) has increased slightly (by 4% points). 

Unlike their counterparts in other UK jurisdictions, pre-sentence report writers in England and Wales include a recommendation of what, in their view, is the most appropriate sentence option. As figure 7 shows, the past five years have seen a slight increase in the proportion of PSRs recommending community sentences, from 89% in 2012-13 to 91% in 2016-17. 

Whether the sentence passed by the court is concordant with recommendation of the PSR recommendation is a key metric of a PSRs’ effectiveness. Figure 4 shows that there has been a slight increase in concordance rates, which have risen from 68% to 72%. 

This has been accompanied by a fall in rates of “uptariffing” (sentencers imposing a more punitive form of sentence than the one recommended by probation) which has fallen from 26% to 19%. Rates of “downtariffing” (sentencers imposing a less punitive form of sentence than the one recommended by probation) have increased slightly, from 68% to 72%.

Finding 6: Oral fast delivery reports have consistently had the highest concordance rates of all PSR formats over the period. 

Figure 6 sets out concordance rates for the different PSR formats. It shows that concordance with Oral FDRs has been consistently higher than with other formats over the past five years. This difference is likely accounted for by the tendency for longer-format reports to be used in more serious cases as concordance rates are consistently lower for more serious offence groups.

Finding 7: There has been a small increase in the proportion of PSRs recommending community sentences. 

Within that group, there has been a significant trend towards the recommendation of suspended sentences and away from community orders. Suspended sentences have increased from 15% to 31% of all recommendations, while community orders have fallen by almost exactly the same amount, from 76% to 61%. In other words, suspended sentences have displaced community orders in PSR recommendations on almost one-for-one basis.

Finding 8: Rates of community sentences use in cases without new PSRs have fallen.

Cases where there is a PSR have always been far more likely than cases without one to result in a community sentence. This is to be expected: as a group these cases represent an offence mix and offender profile that are seen as appropriate for a community sentence. In many cases, the request by the court for a PSR is to determine what type of community sentence is passed, rather than whether one is passed. 

Figure 8 shows the proportion of PSR and non-PSR cases that receive community sentences. Community sentence usage in PSR cases has risen slightly from 75% to 79%. However community sentences usage in non-PSR has fallen by more than a quarter, from 5.6% to 4.3%. This fall is striking. Over the past five years, as we have seen a reduction in the number of PSRs requested by the courts, we should expect to see more sentencing cases where a community sentence is appropriate fall into in the non-PSR group and, therefore, see a greater proportion of non-PSR sentencing cases result in a community sentence. The fact that there has been a decline in the use of community sentences in the non-PSR group suggests the possibility that not having new PSRs is associated with a reduction in these cases’ likelihood to receive a community sentence. 

Finding 9: The reduced use of pre-sentence reports seems to be a significant driver of the declining use of community sentences. 

Figure 9 shows how the make-up of the community sentence population has changed since 2012-13. It shows that, the majority of the decline in community sentences (a little over three quarters) has occurred within the cases which have new PSRs. Given that, as noted above the proportion of this group getting pre-sentence reports has not changed, the key factor here is the shrinking size of this group. 

Our modelling suggests that, if new PSRs were still being used as commonly as they were in 2012-13, and if community sentence rates within those two groups were unchanged, then we would see an extra 33,000 community sentences a year, reversing around 85% of the decline since 2012-13.

However, we would urge caution when interpreting these findings. The data alone does not speak to the causes in falls in PSRs or the causal relationship between PSRs and the use of community sentences. It could very well be that PSR use has declined because sentencers are less likely to consider a community sentence, rather than the other way around. It should not be assumed that increasing the number of PSRs will necessarily result in an increase in community sentences. Nonetheless, we can infer a relationship between these two factors.

Conclusions and questions

The statistics presented above tell a complex story about the relationship between changing use of PSRs and the declining use of community sentences. However, we can draw a number of tentative conclusions.

First, we can see that PSRs continue to recommend community sentences, and that those recommendations continue to carry weight with sentencers. In cases with new PSRs, reports are actually slightly more likely to recommend community sentences and sentencers are slightly more likely to follow those recommendations meaning that the use of community sentences in these cases is actually up.

Second, we can see that the way that pre-sentence advice is delivered has changed significantly. There are fewer new PSRs being produced each year, and far fewer of those are written. While the NPS has put significant effort into procedures to ensure the quality of pre-sentence advice under the new regime, such as the effective proposal framework to support more robust recommendations, the development of new procedures to facilitate timely access to information and new approaches to updating older PSRs, this nonetheless amounts to a significant reduction in the volume of pre-sentence advice produced.

Third, we can see that the falling use of community sentences seems to be related to two factors: the increasing proportion of cases receiving no new pre-sentence report and the declining use of community sentences in those cases.

However, as always, the statistics only tells part of the story. We find ourselves with many questions to answer before we can have a full picture of the causes of declining community sentences – or the approaches which can reverse that decline. In particular, we wonder:

• Why is the use of pre-sentence reports declining? Is it driving the reduced use of community sentences, or being driven by it? 
• How prevalent is the re-use of existing PSRs? How far is it contributing to declining numbers of new PSRs? Where it occurs, how are recommendations made? How is advice in these cases being recorded? 
• What factors are driving sentencers’ reduced use of community sentences in cases where there is no new PSR? There is much discussion of declining sentencer confidence, but what does this mean and what is driving it? How does sentencers’ interaction with probation, and in particular their reliance on breach hearings to obtain a picture of offenders’ post-sentence progress impact their perceptions? 

Answering these questions will require the expertise of those closer to the sentencing process. Therefore we invite all those with insights – whether probation officers, sentencers, researchers or policymakers – to help us find the answer.

Spurr In Line For Bonus

Another year of unbridled failure at HMPPS will no doubt mean Michael Spurr will be in line for another bonus. This from Civil Service World:-

Prisons chief outlines ‘significant operational issues’ in annual report

HMPPS delayed roll out of programme to reduce suicide, self-harm and violence levels because of ‘unanticipated’ spike in inmate numbers

HM Prison and Probation Service was forced to press pause on the implementation of a new staffing model designed to help reduce rates of suicide, self-harm and violence because of an unexpected hike in inmate numbers last summer, its annual report has conceded.

Chief executive Michael Spurr said it was regrettable that progress on implementing the service’s new Offender Management in Custody model, which increases staffing on residential units and allocates a “key worker” to every prisoner had to be delayed “due to a sharp, unanticipated rise in the prison population”.

In HMPPS’ annual report, Spurr conceded that the last few years had been “particularly challenging” for the prison and probation services, and that the last 12 months had brought “significant operational issues, particularly around safety and living conditions in prisons and in the quality of community supervision for many low and medium risk offenders”.

The report said that in addition to the rise in prisoner numbers, rising levels of vandalism had “further compounded” pressure on the prisons system, increasingly forcing HMPPS to “delay planned maintenance works, re-open accommodation and delay closures”.

HMP Bedford was one prison brought back into use to deal with the increase in need for secure accommodation, while HMP Rochester and HMP Hindley saw their closures deferred. “Although demand has decreased so far during 2018, the underlying trend remains upwards,” the report said.

It said projected prisoner levels were due to hit 88,000 in 2021-22, around 5,000 higher than the current level, according to statistics published last week.

In addition to overcrowding and rising violence levels – attacks on prison officers were up 23% in the year to December, HMPPS had to deal with January’s collapse of construction and outsourcing giant Carillion, which provided facilities management services for 52 prisons, and the failure of most Community Rehabilitation Companies to meet their reoffending-reduction targets.

The report also detailed a £35m underspend – which it described as representing 1% on its annual resource budget “attributable to delays in recruitment and contractual settlements with CRCs”. However it said the underspend was offset by increased expenditure across the facilities management contract and incremental recruitment costs for delivering Prison Officer Entry Level Training programme.

Positive news in the report included “significant inroads” in prison officer recruitment, which saw HMPPS hit its target of hiring 2,500 additional staff more than nine months ahead of a target set by then-justice secretary Liz Truss in 2015. However it admitted that the retention of staff was “still an issue in a number of locations … for reasons which are complex and vary from prison to prison”.

The report said: “We are taking action to support those prisons with the highest attrition and have developed a toolkit and targeted resources to support sites where there are particular challenges.” It gave Spurr’s salary range as £145,000-£150,000, some £10,000 ahead of the bracket attributed to executive director of prisons Phil Copple.

--oo00oo--

Managing Offenders in the Community 

In the 2017-18 HMPPS Business Plan, we committed to deliver a more efficient probation service that integrated community services better with those in the custodial setting while continuing to provide effective advice to the courts, manage offenders safely in the community and provide a service to victims. This is delivered through the NPS and CRCs. One of the major tools in managing offenders in the community is Electronic Monitoring (EM). 

The National Probation Service 

The highest-risk offenders are managed by the NPS. This is a critical public service and it is essential that we ensure services are delivered effectively. 

Over the last year we have met the commitments set out in our Business Plan primarily by completing a significant change programme that has standardised and made more efficient the core processes of the NPS. The E3 Change Programme sought to identify the best practice from across England and Wales and embed it in all business areas. As a result of this work, we now deliver more reports to courts on the day of request (supporting the work of our partners in the criminal justice system to deliver speedy justice). 

We are committed to integrating our services better with those provided in custody. We have spent the last year working closely with our prison colleagues to help design a new OMiC model of delivery and this year we begin the process of full implementation. This will ensure there is a more effective transition for offenders who are released on licence and that the risk-management and offender sentence-planning skills of probation officers are embedded within the prison setting. 

To further improve the service we provide to the courts, we have developed a new Smart Proposals tool that ensures all our court report writers have access to the full list of available and suitable interventions provided by the NPS and by the CRCs. This tool will ensure we deliver consistent sentence recommendations in all courts. 

We also provide a service for victims of serious sexual or violent offences, to enable them to receive information about the progress of the offender’s sentence and any significant milestones, such as a Parole Board review. We have developed our service to enhance the functionality of the Victim Contact Scheme: this enables Victim Liaison Officers to have access to more comprehensive data to support the assistance we give to victims. 

We have continued to recruit additional probation professionals into the NPS to enable us to further develop the services we provide. In 2017-18, we recruited almost 1,000 trainee probation officers and probation service officers. 

Community Rehabilitation Companies 

In 2017-18, we conducted a comprehensive review of the CRC performance framework to remove duplication and avoid potential for perverse incentives.

It was accepted that the CRCs fixed costs were not adequate to ensure the delivery of services to the required quality, as stipulated within the contract. In June 2017, we made a contractual change, varying the payment mechanism to reflect more accurately the level of CRCs’ fixed costs. We anticipate that this change will enable CRCs to be better able to operate effectively. 

There has been a general improvement in service level performance across CRCs for 2017-18. These changes have made a positive impact, but with further pressure resulting from the payment by results metrics, the financial pressures on CRCs will continue to present risks which require managing in the years ahead. 

Our contract management teams robustly manage compliance with contracts. Where a provider is not performing satisfactorily, we may impose a contractually binding ‘Improvement Plan’ setting out the actions to be taken, apply a ‘Service Credit’ to compensate us for our losses or, ultimately, terminate a contract for material breach. To date 67 ‘Improvement Plans’ have been put in place, 38 of which have been completed and removed, with 29 remaining in place. 

In April 2017, we initiated a Whole System Improvement Programme. Phase one of the programme ran until December 2017. During this time we have confirmed case allocation was operating as intended, refreshed best practice guidance and collected and analysed CRC workforce data so we better understand our fixed cost base. 

Phase two of the programme is now underway with 10 workstreams looking to improve areas such as: how we share risk information more effectively; better collection and use of feedback from service users; and identifying and dissemination of good practice. 

In August 2017, we introduced the Home Detention Curfew Taskforce to respond to concerns about the rising prison population. We have worked with CRCs to improve the timeliness and quality of their response to prison requests for Home Circumstance Reports; significant progress has been made. This was achieved during a substantial increase in volumes. Learning has been incorporated into a revised Probation Instruction issued in March 2018. 

Electronic Monitoring (EM) 

One of the tools used to manage offenders in the community is EM. There were 63,400 new EM notifications in 2016-17. (The figure for 2017-18 will be published in the Annual HMPPS Digest 2017-18 on 26 July 2018). On an average day there are around 11,000 individuals being electronically monitored. 

In 2017-18 the EM provider reported undertaking over 280,000 visits to the home of subjects to install equipment, ensure appropriate monitoring and decommission the equipment at the end of the order. This is in addition to the telephone contacts that are made to individuals to encourage compliance and provide support.

During the year there have been improvements in the accuracy, speed and nature of information provided to stakeholders to ensure enforcement of orders is swift and effective. Joint work with colleagues in HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has ensured any vulnerabilities between agency interfaces are understood and managed. 

Work has also continued on the next generation of EM. Our EM Programme is responsible for developing a new national service, which will allow us to monitor offenders more effectively and innovatively to support wider justice system reform. The new service will continue to offer the ability to monitor and enforce curfew conditions while also providing a new location monitoring capability learning from a MoJ GPS pilot. 

The MoJ GPS pilot to test how the availability and use of GPS tags may affect the behaviour of decision makers and offenders, finished on schedule on 31 March 2018. During the pilot more than 600 tags were imposed, demonstrating a clear demand for GPS tags as a location monitoring tool for subjects on court bail, home detention curfew and those managed on licence. The pilot also demonstrated the demand for a tag that can monitor both location and curfew in parallel, as around half of the tags imposed had both requirements. 

Our programme team is working with our suppliers to agree a plan and it is anticipated that the new EM service will be in place in 2019. The contract to provide the EM hardware services was successfully awarded to G4S in June 2017 and signed in November 2017. This followed a negotiated procurement competition in line with EU Public Procurement regulations. Work is underway to incorporate the integration of G4S as the EM hardware provider.

General Secretary Election 22

In the absence of any engagement in discussion or debate, I think we must take yesterday's extraordinarily wide-ranging blog post from the General Secretary and emailed to all Napo members as evidence of some campaigning:-
 
OMiC - What’s the real story?

A number of members have been in touch to ask about progress on the OMiC Review, expressing concerns about safety and the impact on work in the community. We have recently put together a comprehensive update following on from our analysis in March, and the full document can be seen here.

OMiC - Napo's View

Napo has been in consultation with the OMiC project team for several months. Consultation, where the employer shares their plans and the trade unions have an opportunity to make comments, is not one of my favourite communication forums, largely because my experience of such exchanges shows that no matter what the issue is the unions often warn against the gaps in planning in advance of implementation. It’s also the case that some divisional management teams then present matters as having been “agreed with the trade unions”, thus compounding the confusion.

So far our consultation has primarily been with the National Design Team, which is responsible for issuing instructions to Divisional Implementation Boards (DIBs) which are comprised of both prison and NPS staff. All of the information we have up to now relates to public sector prisons and while we are aware that discussions are ongoing with contracted out prisons we have not received the detail on this.

Is it safe?

There are still real concerns for members about safety following some well-publicised issues about prisons. The OMiC plans lack sufficient detail, leading members to the belief that this key issue it is not being considered by the employer. Assurances are being offered about the presence of alarm bells and radios but not a sophisticated understanding of the complexity of the individual work that is required with clients. In addition to the general considerations there are some members from BAME backgrounds who are currently not placed in certain offices due to concerns about their physical and emotional wellbeing. The employer must be able to demonstrate that they can meet their duty of care to staff when placing them in a custodial environment. This duty of care extends to emotional wellbeing and protection from abuse and discrimination as well as physical wellbeing.

What POA members tell me

If Ministers had any doubts about the so called Prison Reform Revolution they could well spend some time listening to prison officer practitioners who have told me of their worries, (despite the propaganda being issued by HMPPS high command fuelled by some over optimistic reporting by their Governors).

First up is the lack of “feet on the landings” as described to me in terms of insufficient numbers of staff. For despite the almost weekly claims by Ministers and their MoJ apparatchiks, meeting a prison officer recruitment target counts for diddly if the attrition rate remains high (be it from natural wastage, staff who simply cannot cope, or new trainees seeing the realities of the environment and deciding this is not going to be a very good idea).

Protecting themselves comes next, and as Steve Gillan, POA General Secretary, confirms, protecting their families as its becoming normal for prison officers to be the subject of intimidation by way of threats implied or actual against their loved ones. Throw in the elements of preventing self-harm of clients, keeping a keen eye on gang violence, the effects of radicalisation and the huge influx of Spice and other drugs or illicit material and it’s hard to see exactly how the initial rehabilitation process expected of them is actually going to work.

The paper from our officer practitioners sets out some serious issues beyond this summary and I highly commend it as source material for discussion in your workplace. Do let me have any views or questions, which I will ensure get to the right quarter without revealing identities.

AP members concerns over rotas and outsourcing

I am just returning to London having visited Napo members from Approved Premises in Merseyside today along with Napo Vice-Chair Katie Lomas. We covered a range of issues including concerns about the impact of the shift rotas on individuals and how the recently outsourced DWNC outsourcing is working out, against the expectations of the National Project leads in NPS.

Yet again, and just like the recent visit that Katie and I made to Sheffield to share members concerns about VISOR, I was hugely impressed with our members depth knowledge and total commitment to their important work. It was also clear that the issues from members, that we went there to listen to, included appreciation by them of the pressures that their managers often find themselves in when trying to respond to the demands of the new E3 driven duty rotas, and the impact of this government’s decision to press on regardless with their ridiculous decision to outsource Double Waking Night Cover to Sodexo (and OCS) - who seem to be still struggling to deliver what we were told they would.

We have given advice about how members (and that’s members everywhere by the way) should ensure that they comply with HSE Directives around shift work and how we want them to be involved in finding and disseminating best practice across the region. As always Napo stands ready to work with Divisional management towards a smooth transition to the new rota arrangements - but it takes two to tango.

Ian Lawrence 

Pick Of The Week 26

This government systematically and swiftly wreck a proud and effective public service. We who fought it, are told to "get over it and move on", as we are clearly not coping with change and progress. Think of it as a bereavement process, they say, Yup, got that thank you, you patronising bastards. Denial, anger, depression, coping, recovery. Trouble is, on an almost daily basis the Government, the MoJ, the CRC owners, rarely miss an opportunity to insult their staff at every level, and pour salt in the wound. This takes the biscuit. It is not good for our health. 

Under the headline: overpaid suit gets paid bonus despite poor results (hardly news really) is the little issue of decision-making, leadership, choices. The inference is made that because Spurr had hit an efficiency target, there was little choice but pay him a bonus. Lower down there is an account of the MoJ making payments to staff against the rules, and this remaining in place. Despite my daily experience in NPS of there being apparently no scope for anyone at any level to make any choices or decisions, somebody somewhere chose to increase payments to prison staff. Someone, Richard Heaton?, chose to reward Spurr, and Spurr chose to accept it.

*****
Frances Crook is right. Everyone else is held to account for failure, why aren't ministers? Indeed, that's actually where the buck should stop. Grayling was put in charge of the Justice system with a record of creating chaos whilst employment minister. After creating the total destruction of the CJS, not just Prison and Probation, but courts, legal aid, judicial review, employment tribunals, and many many other areas, he's moved on to Transport. Predictably, he's causing chaos there. Dodgy deals, requesting to address Parliament at 10pm on HS2, and again in the news today with the whole of the North of England disgusted and outraged with his decision to cancel electrification of railways, but plough ahead with his vanity projects for London.

He has the most appalling record and the most skewed moral compass of any minister to ever sit in office. And I've deliberately not mentioned his expenses. But that said, the disastrous changes he inflicted on the Justice system were voted in by the rest of the Tories, and some collective responsibility should be shouldered by them all. I am continually amazed and outraged that government are not being held to account for what I believe is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis in our prisons. 

HMP Hewell and Aylesbury have hit the headlines this week, but the MoJ are getting very good at suppressing news. Askham Grange, a woman's open prison also saw a major disturbance last week. Today HMP Bristol, and Holme House are headlined with staff poisoned by spice and dozens having to go off sick or hospital. That 5 1/2k of drugs were found in one place within the prison is almost anecdotal. 

Probation has also been destroyed, and I think it may be helpful to revisit Hansard and remind everyone of the retrofit that was being peddled at the time, and compare it with the actuality of the current state of the service. "it's not good enough to release prisoners with only £46 in their pocket" they argued, but that's really all you do get now, except your liability for court costs which puts you further in debt then your £46 starting point. No mentors? No housing? No assistance with addiction services because they don't want to touch you if you're on licence, and a merry go round of useless appointments so everyone can skim a few quid off whatever particular pot they happen to be feeding from. 

And salt in the wounds! The same private company that's managing your supervision and resettlement needs, are dealing with your benefit claim with a totally different remit and focus to what's wanted from the other side of the company. It's all f***ed, and the architects need to be made more accountable, and Grayling should be the first in the dock!

*****
It's only a question of time before a prison officer is killed. What will be the governments response? Lessons learned, more to do, difficult times and we take these instances very seriously.

*****
Leaves a lump in my throat when I read of the MoJ's concern for 'hard-working staff'. ('Hard-working' is such a favoured political phrase to describe those who are under-rewarded). The MoJ will be tough on rioters as if these outbreaks of disorder can be deterred without dealing with the well-established underlying causes. Pity that bonuses are not linked to good order and discipline.

*****
The story will also out that Working Links are going under. When even their employability staff and of course previous director are abandoning ship that is a clue to what is coming. It cannot go on. Napo know it and CRC managers know it. There is nothing left. The MOJ have failed miserably and too ashamed to admit it. We are leaderless in the Working Links Wales and SW empire, have been for some time now. Only a few cockroaches scuttling about and eating the last remaining detritus. 

Our service users are similarly afflicted. Benefits pulled, mental health services down the drain, GP's refuse to see them, housing non existent, dead end exploitation for jobs...what a wonderful society this government have created when men choose to re-offend and go to prison rather than try to cope, homeless and destitute on the outside. No wonder crime rates are escalating when corrupt companies like Working Links are left holding some of the most vulnerable yet also risky individuals in the country. I don't know what the alternative is if we cannot re-unite as Napo have pointed out, but one day those of us at Working Links will arrive at work to find that Working Links have basically either folded completely or run off and left us to our fate. So we better get our heads together and figure out how the hell we are going to manage and who is going to oversee the mess and try to put it right.

*****
I'm always cheered up by the term "leaderless", it makes me think we can now finally get down to business. No one standing in our way trying to trip us up with their irrelevant distractions . But yes, we do want to get paid.

*****
That article made me laugh. Sadly if the Swindon Advertiser swallow their crap it is because they are not exactly investigative journalists! Working Links basically speak with forked tongue. They have zero integrity and remind me of those sad little vermin sales people who repeat their stock phrases and actually think we are fooled. They are repulsive hook-worms feeding on a starved intestine. When the last bit of food disappears out of the CRC arsehole they will shed away and be expelled and look for another host to parasitise! Vile, the lot of them.

*****
I'm just worn out with it all. I surely cannot be the only one left in this boat can I? I have invested into this career path for 15 years now and have never seen it so bad. I am sick to the back teeth of political spin when all I want to do is help those that have offended in my community move on to better things - that is it. Somewhere this has all been lost in the corporate world we live in now where money means more. I'm desperate to leave, but I don't even have the energy to apply for new jobs as am so worn out dealing with politics, negativity with offenders and managers towing the party line. It's not what I joined for.

*****
The Troubled Families Programme was we are told 100% successful. With no Troubled Families anymore and a record number of people in good stable employment, then crime must surely be falling, meaning fewer people being processed through the courts, a falling prison population, and fewer being made subject to probation orders and supervision. With record numbers of affordable housing being built, the number of homeless people are also far fewer. 

Where did it all go wrong? It all goes wrong when the politicians can't be truthful about the reality and spin everything for political advantage or ideological gain. It all goes wrong when the wealth of the nation is only measured in fiscal terms, and your ability to have a voice is more dependent on your bank balance then your right to free speech. Even last night Tornado Squads were sent to HMP Hewel to quell a disturbance. The prison service say that 'a small number of inmates were involved in causing trouble and the situation is now resolved'. But how serious was the disturbance really? It warranted the use of distraction grenades to bring it to an end! It all goes wrong when you cannot only not believe the rhetoric but you can't even believe the official data anymore.

*****
Recent media and social media has a nostalgic edge, as posts and articles from three odd years ago, saying TR consequences would be crap, pop up between articles and inspection reports showing that they really are. Justice Select Committee have done hand-wringing but failed to publish an even superficial review. Unions - depleted in membership and clout - are working hard on damage limitation with staff pay and conditions. There isn't a real debate yet about what to propose next. I doubt that there would ever be much by way of acknowledgement of the catastrophe, or a willingness to change direction, from the current government, although there is room for manoeuvre now given their lack of majority. So I am interested in where we could go from here, what we should be proposing, and who we should be pressing the argument with.

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When I joined this organisation over 10 years ago, I didn't sign up to being a political pawn. I genuinely wanted to steer vulnerable people away from offending behaviour for the good and benefit of my local community. Since joining this shower, I have continuously been pawned off the back of what is now more than ever political spin. I have been witness to offenders now being subjected to nothing more then the fat cats that is the private sector. I'm off from this shower, not what I signed up for and when I am gone, I will make it a life goal to expose this Government for what it is. Absolutely disgusted with how money and capitalisation / corporate greed comes before meeting the needs of vulnerable offenders who 9 times out of 10 have been dealt a bad hand in life. Shocking. Absolutely shocking that it has all come to this.

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The question is not "where did it go wrong" but "what do we need to do to make it right".
It's all gone so drastically wrong that's it's insulting to all to even try and put spin on it.
Forget the blame game and trying to point the finger at who's responsible for the mess. That's just a matter of opinion in the end. What can't be argued is that everything really is a mess, and urgent action to clean up the mess is needed. The condition of the CJS is not just a crisis, it's become a national disaster. It's disgraceful and dangerous. No argument, no blame, just urgent action.

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"The decision to announce the closure was taken in the context of prison population projections which indicated a fall this year. But instead of the decrease the population has increased significantly within the last two months, at the beginning of May the population was 85,129 but by the middle of this month, that number had increased to 85,994."

It's been said that CRCs have been reluctant to breach people because of fear of losing money because of the way they are paid. If that payment mechanism is altered (and I think it may have recently been changed), would that make CRCs more comfortable in instigating breach because they won't lose money? I'm just very curious as to why a predicted decline in prison population should actually turn out to be a significant increase. Could a change in payment mechanism for CRCs increase the pressure on the prison service?

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You ask a good question that no-one seems to want to answer. The original blog post ended with three conflicting arguments about breach, i.e. the CRCs are deliberately refusing to breach, the NPS is frustrating their efforts, and the CRCs are not doing anything to prevent breaches:

"...there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that breaches are less likely to be enforced as a result of TR. It has been suggested to us that the way in which the contracts for CRCs have been designed has created perverse incentives to disengage with an offender if the breach process is triggered. Once an offender breaches their conditions, the MoJ issues a financial penalty on the CRC, as an offender is only eligible for PbR the first time they commence an eligible sentence, meaning that those who breach their sentence are no longer eligible for payment, regardless of the support the CRC may have already provided.

HM Inspectorate of Probation has found variability in enforcement processes across the CRCs, with some experiencing high rejection rates from the NPS for their breach recommendations. HMIP found that many recommendations were returned because of minor spelling and grammatical errors, and the NAO also identified an “inherent risk that offender managers may avoid ‘breaching’ offenders where this would affect CRC performance against targets for successful completion of orders if the court order is subsequently revoked”. A recent Justice Inspectorate report followed these earlier warnings, and stated “we were disappointed to find, in a third of cases where the individual was breached, insufficient effort was made by the CRC responsible officer to re-engage them and encourage their commitment to continued engagement”.

Then there's 12 months' post-sentence supervision, a ticket to ride the magic roundabout of eternal custody. That alone will have increased prison numbers significantly, making it easy for folks to nip in & out of prison on short sentences - couriers for drugs, weapons, 'phones; respite from loneliness, homelessness & hunger; or simply shelter for those with "untreatable" mental illnesses (e.g. personality disorders that community mental health teams won't touch).

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There have been reports of staff being ordered to put entries on ndelius to indicate OASys assessments completed when they are not to 'meet targets' and avoid loss of capital. Please think carefully before you collude with this. All your assessments and records are classed as legal documents and can be scrutinised by inspectors or MoJ as well as in the case of an SFO. If you lie about the date you could be held to account, disciplined or even charged! Please report any such requests immediately to your union rep and include any written request. It appears that some such requests are coming from ACO level which is truly shocking as they are putting their staffs integrity and character at risk.

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A blog of shame for the Ministry of Whateveritscalledthisweek. I, too, left and am having a decent enough time despite losing about £6K and 10 annual leave days a year. What I find distressing is that the conversations I have with colleagues still in Probation are generally taking the form of: 'it's really s***. I only have two years to go until I can retire so I think I can stick it out until then'.

During the 25 years I was with Probation, I was motivated and enthused by what we were doing and fully engaged in the industry surrounding community sentencing, offenders, courts etc etc. Now all I hear about is dissatisfaction, anger, frustration, lies, deception, corporate bullying, threats, misdirection, offenders being fobbed off with dumb initiatives like phone or SKYPE interviews, unqualified staff working with high risk offenders with poor supervision (I know of one sex offender specialist who has had ONE supervision session in nearly two YEARS). Unqualified people are now working with offenders who I was not allowed anywhere near until I had been qualified for a year. It's just a sad, sad thing to watch the ship I cruised the world in being run onto the rocks and left to rust and decay. Grayling's shame.

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I left around ten years ago. Done a few jobs since in police, local authorities now work for a regulator (I enjoy doing different things). I have to say though when I worked in Probation there were some incredible practitioners who were absolutely inspirational (mean that genuinely). Something I have not found anywhere else so would agree about missing the colleagues. The service did not realise the quality of some of the people it had. Was a tragedy and should never have been allowed to happen.

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Bob Neill chair of the justice select committee wrote in the Times the other day that urgent work is need to be done on legal aid, prison and probation. He expressed concern that the select committee was not yet operational, and with only 2 weeks between Parliament reforming and the conference season beginning it was unlikely that the issues needing addressing were unlikely to get the urgent attention required. It seems that the government are putting so much resources into suppressing information about the chaos in the criminal justice system, it hasn't the time to actually deal with the problems.

In today's Independent, there's a long article which claims Michael Gove was right, we need to stop sending people to prison that don't really pose a risk to society, and more community based sentences should be imposed, particularly for non violent offenders. I agree with that approach. Prison is the cause, and not the solution to many of problems within the world of criminal justice.

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Think about your working day. Of all the actions you take or tasks you complete, haw many can you truly say were rehabilitative? What proportion of your day did those actions and tasks take up? WTF are we actually doing every day?

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This must have the hallmarks of corruption written all over it. It is so obvious now, surely evidence presented which is what we have all said from the very beginning of this shambles is happening. What makes it worse is that more money is being thrown the privateers way. Surely, living in a democracy, this can be pursued.

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If the MoJ are prepared to throw more money at the CRCs when they're not delivering things like TTG, I'm wondering what will be demanded when the TR contracts come up for renewal?

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Similar to this scandal is the farce that is E3 agenda which is trying to shoehorn 60% of POs into the currently unsafe and dangerous prison estate. The stated aim is to make things better for prisoners, yet prison officers see us as a bunch of well paid admin designed to free up uniformed staff to get back on the wings. Despite the empty promises that no one is going to be directed into a prison, one ACE in the North has already suggested that 'operational need', will see a % of POs directed.....what's the betting Napo reps are amongst the first tranche....the CRCs have been royally shafted and the NPS is next...why else the fever pitch recruitment of PSOs? Keep a look for a regrading exercise in the near future so that previously High risk cases magically become medium risk overnight and so on...not sure what the answer is but would like to see Napo push a unification agenda as a starting point.

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The emphasis on High ROSH being only cases POs should work with has long been a bug-bear of mine; complexity of need/concerns is more often what characterises most of my NPS caseload which does not always correlate with imminence of sig risk to others because of the safeguards established - one of which is PO supervision.I have concerns too re hoisting of staff into prison.

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Has anyone benefited from the TR debacle?

- Antonia Romeo is a British civil servant. She is currently the Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Trade. She was recently British Consul-General in New York at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

- Dame Ursula Brennan - In 2012 she moved to run the Ministry of Justice, with responsibility for running the courts, tribunals and prisons in England and Wales, the administration of legal aid, probation and youth justice, and policy on human rights and data protection. Ursula retired from the Civil Service in 2015 and is a trustee of the National Theatre. She has an Honorary Doctorate from Kent and was made a DCB in the New Year’s Honours 2013.

The McDowells (ex-Probation Inspector & his Sodexo wife), the Bennetts (ex-CEO of KSS CRC & his CRC-monitor wife); & the Numb Grayling himself who appears to be made of magic teflon which doesn't allow ANY shit to stick, regardless of how much he generates. Also...

- The boss of private security firm G4S (Ashley Almanza) received a record £4.8m in pay and bonuses over the last year despite the firm being embroiled a string of scandals.

- Senior managers at a privately run children’s jail received bonuses this year despite the prison being taken out of their hands following allegations of abuse. The managers received performance-related pay awards in April, weeks after the chief inspector of prisons said that “managerial oversight failed to protect young people from harm at the jail”.

Meanwhile Spurr, Allars & friends continue to enjoy the fruits of corrupt self-serving government policy. The bonuses have been a feature during times of austerity. This from 2011:

- "I just thought you would all like to know that in the NOMS Report/Accounts 2010/2011 while we were all getting a pay freeze and effective pay cut. The NOMS Board were getting bonuses of £5000-15000"

And from Jan 2016:
- "a higher percentage of Ministry of Justice staff received bonuses last year compared with the year before – and the average size of bonuses was also up, according to figures released today."

So it looks like the Noms brigade have been pocketing large bonuses - potentially 6x £20k for Spurr alone - throughout the TR shitstorm whilst refusing pay reform for main grade staff.

Welcome to Tory Britain.

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354 deaths in prison, up 38%
119 self-inflicted deaths up 32%
37,784 incidents of self harm, up 23%
18,510 recorded prisoner on prisoner assaults, up 28%
6,430 assaults on staff, up 40%.

Should be prosecution not bonuses.

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The smoking ban worries me a lot as I don't think the unforeseen consequences that it will bring have really been considered if at all. Tobacco is the main currency in every prison in the land. What happens to the economy when the currency is removed? There will still be drugs, there will still be prisoners that want drugs. But no tobacco means alternative ways of payment will have to be found. More pressure on family, friends and visitors? 

There's always been ways of finding a bit of tobacco to make yourself self sufficient in prison, a bit of extra kit from the stores, a bit of extra snap from the kitchens etc etc. The removal of the standard currency hands the drug barons significantly more power, if not all the power, and that can't be a good thing. 

80% of prisoners smoke. I'm a long term smoker myself, and as anyone who's ever quit the habit, or taken a break from the evil weed will know, you feel more lively and energetic. Why would the authorities want to energise 80% more of the prison population when there's nowhere for that new found energy to be channelled into? I'd predict a significant raise in violence in the near future. 

And punishment will also be significantly changed. A couple of days in the 'block' always a deterrent for bad behaviour. Loss of gym, loss of association, and no smoking. But if you're not getting the gym and association anyway, and now smoking loss won't be a deterrent, I'd argue that being in the block is the most desirable place to be. No queueing in volatile locations such as dinner queues and kit exchange queues, doctor and governor at your door every day checking you're OK? The block has become the new penthouse within the prison system. It's not just the flash violence the introduction of the smoking ban will inevitably bring the MoJ need to worry about, there will also be much more longer term consequences attached that they should consider.