Alternatives to Prison

The prison capacity crisis together with a new government is at last giving us the opportunity of having a grown up debate about everything, including the urgent need to look at sentencing policy. This from Rob Allen:-  

Intermediate Treatment

Not surprisingly, we’re seeing a plethora of proposals for new Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood about how to solve the prison crisis. If I was in her job, I’d be particularly attracted to the Howard League’s idea of returning responsibility for prisons and probation to the Home Office. But I think that’s unlikely and undesirable. Peter Hennessey rightly described the Home Office as the graveyard of liberal thinking since the days of Lord Sidmouth.

Most of the suggestions being floated by think tanks, charities and experts focus on reducing demand for prison places in the short term through early release. Implicit in many proposals is the notion that when the 20,000 new prison places are up and running in a few years’ time, some sort of equilibrium will be restored between supply and demand.

I’ve argued that a new way of developing policy about who should go to prison and for how long, distanced from party political competition, might reverse the sharp rises in the custodial sentencing rate and length of prison terms we’ve seen in the last 14 years.

In addition we need to diversify the range of options that can be used as alternatives to prison.

Some of these are institutional alternatives. Many people in prison should be in hospital but thresholds for transfer and waiting times are both too high. The Justice Select Committee asked then Prisons minister Ed Argar about the number of available secure hospital beds for prisoners but doesn’t seem to have received a reply. There are simply not enough.

Other prisoners could potentially be transferred to residential treatment facilities which are being expanded as part of the 10 year Drug Strategy.

Other options include hostels and other supervised accommodation. From 2019 to 2023 the Approved Premise Expansion Programme delivered 169 additional beds, including opening 4 new Independent Approved Premises (83 beds) and 51 additional beds in dedicated premises for women. But there’s a case for a much more ambitious increase in half way houses. It could be paid for by paring back the prison building plans to say 15,000.

Back in 2001, the sentencing review carried out by senior Civil Servant John Halliday recommended that the Home Office- they were responsible back then- should

“establish a review of the existing “intermediate estate” for accommodating and managing offenders in the community, with the aim of developing a strategic plan for its future use, staffing, management and development. The review should embrace all types of accommodation, whether owned by the prison or probation services, or the independent and voluntary sectors, and whether used for prisoners on temporary release; prisoners on conditional release; offenders serving community sentences; or ex-offenders receiving support voluntarily”.

I am not sure such a review was ever done – but it’s certainly needed now.

Three years after Halliday’s review, then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that “satellite tracking technology could provide the basis for a 'prison without bars', potentially cutting prison overcrowding, and expensive accommodation”.

Progress with electronic monitoring has been chequered during the intervening years. But the review should look at whether the role its currently playing is optimal or whether it can serve to manage security risks for people placed in non-secure accommodation- what Halliday called “containment in the community”.

As well as the where of alternatives to prison, there’s a need to look at the how.

Back in 1979, I started work as a volunteer in IT- not computers (there weren’t many back then) -but Intermediate Treatment. With mixed results, I spent most of the next ten years trying to keep young people out of residential care homes, detention centres, Borstals and their institutional successors.

A generous description of the approach might be “eclectic”- camping trips, sports and drama sessions as much as counselling and groupwork. One troubled young man was placed on a ship in the Caribbean for several months, and an IT officer in a neighbouring area allegedly entered a crew into the Henley Regatta.

Quirky some of it might have been, but with relatively small caseloads, we were able to fashion a wide-ranging package of therapeutic and constructive activities for each individual which would help give them the best chance of staying at home, at school or work and out of trouble.

Of course there are resonances with the best of the approach in youth justice and even parts of probation today. There's a growing recognition that relationship based practice is a key to successful supervision and desistance from crime.

Practitioners need to have the opportunity and training to put that into practice so that more offenders can serve their sentences in the community and those that leave prison don’t go back. By enabling that to happen alongside a wider range of treatment and accommodation options, Ms Mahmood may be able not only to find a solution to the immediate crisis but chart a more positive long-term course. She will need to work with her colleagues responsible for health and local government to make it happen. Let's hope she does.

Rob Allen

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This from Frances Crook 9th July:-

There has been a lot in the news about the crisis in prisons. They are full, rat infested, ridden with drugs and violence, and the most serious challenge is that they feed the crime problem thus creating more victims and mayhem in the community. This has been a problem for more than a hundred years and cannot be solved with a few quick fixes like extending early release.

There are plenty of papers from academics and voluntary organisations suggesting ways to ease the crowding in prisons that would get the issue off the front pages but I would argue that unless we want to revisit this every few years something more fundamental needs to happen.

A succession of ministers have come and gone and given speeches about making prisons work better and introducing initiatives to improve education and ‘rehabilitation’ and yet nothing has changed. Things can only get worse unless we do something radical.

It is interesting that the new government is planning to fix the front door of the NHS by diverting billions to local services. That is what needs to happen in the justice system. We should divert funding to front end services which means to probation but also to mental health, drug services and to support for housing and crime reduction. If we want to prevent crime, this is the sensible way forward. Just in the health service, the expensive use of residential services like hospitals and prisons, should be used as a last resort and the emphasis should be on the front end and prevention.

We cannot build our way out of the challenge. Building more prisons is a criminal waste of public money that embeds the problems. I have written about how new prisons simply replicate the problems of old prisons in a previous blog.

The new government has to get to grips with sentencing reform. The inflation in sentences has seen people spend many years longer in prison than before and I have never seen any research that showed that sending someone to prison for twenty instead of ten years makes them safer. Too many people are sent to prison in the first place and too many are sent to prison on remand. Big changes are required. It will take legislative bravery which is why it needs to be done in the early years of a government.

Secondly, money needs to go to probation. It deals with the majority of people convicted of a crime, either under sentence or on release from prison. It has been starved of funding and respect. Probation should be untied from the shackles of the civil service, linked to local democracy and the service given the freedom to act with professionalism.

Most importantly we need new leadership. It is depressing to hear some senior politicians repeating the tired and failed rhetoric of ‘we must build more prisons quicker (yes, I mean you Yvette Cooper) which will waste public money and embed more crime and drug addiction. New thinking, brave thinking, is needed that talks to the public as grown ups. With a massive Parliamentary majority and a crisis that is generating front page news, the new government should act with integrity and speed. It can do in the justice system what it is doing in the health system. Learn the lessons of past failures and make things better.

Frances Crook

MoJ Tagging Scandal

The suspicion has long been held that the MoJ basically feels that tagging everyone would be a really easy and cheap way of reducing crime and 'supervising' offenders. The trouble is it's not cheap; the technology isn't that good and nobody knows if it's actually effective. Of course the MoJ has quite a track record on poor contract writing and wasting public money through IT failures, but are very effective in lining the pockets of huge private sector corporations. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies are on the tagging case though:-

Whiff of scandal over electronic monitoring

The Centre for Crime and Justice today called for the use of electronic monitoring (so-called “tagging”) as part of a criminal justice sanction to be based on proper evidence and guided by clear principles.

The call came in response to today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee, which paints an alarming picture of government failure and waste.

According to the Public Accounts Committee, nearly £100 million of public funds have been wasted on the failure to deliver a new case management system. Remedial work on the current creaking system will incur extra costs. The Ministry of Justice, the Committee notes, still does not know what works, or whether tagging reduces reoffending. Yet it plans to press ahead with a £1.2 billion programme, expanding tagging to an additional 10,000 people over the next three years.

Dr Roger Grimshaw, Research Director at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said:

"Today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee paints an alarming picture of government failures in managing electronic monitoring.

At a time when there is so much for them to grapple with, it would be tempting for criminal justice practitioners and observers to assume that the failings exist in some faraway management bubble, with few implications for people under supervision, or their families.

In reality, the expansion of EM being planned is due to create a new world of electronic supervision, supplementary to the prison system, unguided by firm evidence about any positive role in rehabilitation.

The whiff of scandal over EM should be a wake-up call for a much more informed and wide-ranging discussion, developing a platform for reform which delimits a place for EM in a modest, humane and purposeful system.”

'Transforming electronic monitoring services': for what purpose?

Today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee paints an alarming picture of government failures in managing electronic monitoring (EM) services in criminal justice.

Its detailed analysis and criticisms are extensive: nearly £100 million of public funds have been wasted on the failure to deliver a new case management system. Remedial work on the current creaking system will incur extra costs. The implications of ‘real-time’ monitoring data access for police remain to be explored.

A striking finding is the weakness of the evidence base for the planned expansion of EM.

"The Ministry and HMPPS still do not know what works and for who, and whether tagging reduces reoffending… Despite the lack of evaluation, government is pressing ahead with its £1.2 billion programme to expand tagging to another 10,000 people in the next three years."

As the Committee notes, these concerns are not new: the New Generation electronic monitoring programme was beset by a similar level of ineptitude. In our evidence to the Public Accounts Committee inquiry, the only written evidence the Committee published, we highlighted the systemic failings in the EM programme. We also called for the appointment of a regulator with an ethical and practical mission of ensuring that only appropriate services are provided, in the public interest.

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From the Public Accounts Committee website:-

“Avoidable” mistakes in tagging programme “wasted £98 million of taxpayers’ money”

In a report the Public Accounts Committee says a “high-risk and over-complicated delivery model, poor oversight of suppliers, overambitious timetable and light-touch scrutiny from the Ministry of Justice” all contributed to the failure of a new case management system for electronic monitoring of offenders which has “cost taxpayers dear”.

The Committee says “avoidable mistakes” wasted £98 million of taxpayers’ money and left the tagging service “reliant on legacy systems that needed urgent remedial action, costing a further £9.8 million”.

Even after this, the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS still “do not know what works and for who, and whether tagging reduces reoffending”. Despite the lack of knowledge and evaluation, government is pressing ahead with a £1.2 billion programme to expand tagging to another 10,000 people in the next three years.

Given the “long history of poor performance in this area” the Committee is “unconvinced” that the MoJ is equipped to handle emerging problems and will continue to monitor the “serious risks” that remain for the expansion of tagging and the need to procure new contracts by early 2024.

Chair's comments

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said:

“The prison and probation service is reliant on outdated technology that is swallowing taxpayers’ money just to stand still. The existing system is at constant risk of failure – and let us be clear that in the case of tagging, “failure” can mean direct and preventable risk to the public – and attempts to transform it have failed.

The incredible scale of waste and loss in the Government’s Covid response should in no way inure us to this: that’s another hundred million pounds of taxpayers’ money for essential public services just thrown away, wasted, lost. We expect a serious explanation, and a serious plan, from the MoJ and Government more widely how they are going to stop this haemorrhaging of taxpayers’ money that they are presiding over. We need assurances up front over the further £1.2 billion they have already committed to the tagging programme – what will be achieved, by when, and, crucially, what will be recovered for the public if goals aren’t met.”

Summary

HM Prison & Probation Service’s (HMPPS) transformation programme for electronic monitoring (‘tagging’) has failed to transform the service as intended. HMPPS launched the programme to improve efficiency and increase the usefulness of tagging for police and probation services, but after significant setbacks and delays the failure has cost taxpayers dear. Its high-risk and over-complicated delivery model, poor oversight of suppliers, overambitious timetable and light-touch scrutiny from the Ministry of Justice all contributed to its failure to introduce a new case management system, which underpinned the intended benefits and transformation. These avoidable mistakes wasted £98 million of taxpayers’ money and left the tagging service reliant on legacy systems that needed urgent remedial action, costing a further £9.8 million.

It is unacceptable that, despite our previous recommendations, the Ministry and HMPPS still do not have sufficient data to understand the outcomes of tagging and that police forces and the Probation Service continue to lack timely access to the high-quality data they need to monitor offenders and keep the public safe. The Ministry and HMPPS still do not know what works and for who, and whether tagging reduces reoffending. HMPPS has committed to improving access to data and evaluating its new tagging expansion projects, but appears unambitious about the level of insight that it expects to achieve.

Despite the lack of evaluation, government is pressing ahead with its £1.2 billion programme to expand tagging to another 10,000 people in the next three years. It has harnessed innovative technology to deliver new projects—such as in its alcohol monitoring scheme and acquisitive crime pilot—where early progress has yielded some encouraging results. However, although HMPPS has identified lessons from the failure of its transformation programme, there remain serious risks associated with its expansion of tagging and the need to procure new contracts by early 2024. Given the long history of poor performance in this area, we remain unconvinced that it is sufficiently well-equipped to handle emerging problems and will continue to monitor developments for the foreseeable future.

Chain Gangs?

Just like a child being naughty, our Prime Minister does it deliberately of course just to get a reaction and in the hope he can recover some of his former popularity. It's probably partly to distract our attention as well because Rob Allen mentions in passing here that another Tory favourite, tagging, is in trouble:- 

Pulling the Chain Gang

Boris Johnson can’t see any reason why lawbreakers “shouldn't be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society”. If that isn’t a nod to Britain First whose policies include the introduction of chain gangs to provide labour for public works- it’s at least an evidence free appeal to the public’s baser instincts to punish and humiliate people in conflict with the law.

The Prime Minister is probably unaware of Recommendations made by the Council of Europe about prison and probation services, but if he is serious about this chain gang proposal – which I doubt- they provide a number of important grounds for avoiding it.

The 2010 European Probation Rules, developed by leading international experts and approved by the 47 CoE member states including the UK, make clear that probation agencies must respect the human rights of offenders, with all their interventions having due regard to their dignity, health, safety, and well-being. Community service, in particular, “shall not be of a stigmatising nature.” The Commentary to the Rules say that “uniforms that identify community service workers as offenders at work are unlikely to support reintegration”.

In 2017, the CoE adopted Rules which require community-based sanctions to be implemented in a way that does not aggravate their “afflictive nature”, because to do so would be unjust. Gratuitously punitive measures “can also be expected to create resistance and unwillingness to co-operate in any attempt to secure the individual’s law-abiding adjustment in the community”.

The 2017 Rules also require adequate safeguards to protect offenders from “insult and improper curiosity or publicity”, because community-based penalties may expose them to the risk of public opprobrium or social stigmatisation.

In fact, many people doing unpaid work already wear bibs- Jack Straw introduced the idea in 2008 in one of its many rebrandings as “Community Payback (CP) ”.



A 2016 inspection of unpaid work found that “a small number of offenders expressed concern at having to wear the high visibility tabards as they felt it was stigmatizing” . One told inspectors that “some members of the public see the CP vests and look down on you. I bet they think ‘what’s he done’ or ‘is he a sex offender’. I have said good morning to people and been ignored. But others appreciate what we are doing so that’s good.”

While the Beating Crime Plan may amount to less than the sum of its parts, it actually contains one or two good ideas. The best unpaid work is already delivered in consultation with local partners so requiring schemes to support community objectives and meet identified needs should bolster public confidence. As the CoE say, “work should have purpose and wherever possible should be of genuine benefit to the community.”

More problematic is the pledge to increase the use of electronic monitoring. Expanding EM has been promised countless times since then Home Secretary David Blunkett launched the pilot “Prisons without Bars “ in 2004. Will this finally be the time for satellite technology to take off?

In their latest assessments of confidence in various government programmes, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) rated the MoJ’s EM project as amber/red. That means it’s in doubt, with major risks in key areas. Urgent action is needed to address problems and/or assess whether resolution is feasible.

The IPA mention specific concerns about delays & the quality of case management being provided by suppliers. Apparently “the Project is working collaboratively with suppliers to identify contingency options”. This does not sound like the strongest basis for the promised expansion.

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Comment piece from Guardian:-

Crime always pays for the Tories – that’s why they turn to it again and again

The government’s law and order crackdown displays the performative cruelty that Priti Patel has made her own

It is not difficult to see why Boris Johnson’s first post-isolation photo op was to appear alongside the home secretary, Priti Patel, and talk tough about crime. Ministers are keen to wrench the political argument towards a post-Covid domestic agenda. Yet there are fierce internal arguments in government about public spending, taxes, health and social care. What better way, meanwhile, to signal a return to supposed political normality than to reprise that old Conservative favourite, a dose of law and order?

There is also an immediate reason for that choice. July’s opinion polls have not been as good for the Tories as those of the spring. The lead over Labour, which was often double-digit in June, is mostly in single figures now, and was down from 13 points to four in YouGov’s survey last weekend. The decline of the earlier vaccine bounce seems to coincide with the messy ending of England’s Covid restrictions. A crime crackdown is a way of reassuring the voters that, whatever the appearance otherwise, the government really is in control.

Except that actually the government is not exercising control over crime. This week’s package is for show. To dignify it as a real anti-crime strategy is to miss the point of it, which is rhetorical. The object of the exercise was to create headlines and to frame public debate. Johnson duly obliged with his racially freighted remark that antisocial offenders should be “out there in one of those fluorescent chain gangs visibly paying [their] debt to society”. The headlines and the argument duly followed.

In reality, the so-called “beating crime plan” that Johnson and Patel announced on Tuesday is not about doing anything innovative, difficult or expensive to address the problems of crime. It is about looking as if they are doing so. The plan is a rehash of old and existing ideas, such as more hi-vis clothing for community service offenders, electronic tagging on prison leavers and the relaxation of restrictions on stop-and-search powers, and very little else. It will not work because it has not been designed to work. It has been designed to be noticed.

The plan hasn’t even been discussed with the police, which is a giveaway about its lack of seriousness or content. On Tuesday, chief constables queued up to give the Guardian’s Vikram Dodd some scathing private judgments. “It is like there has been an explosion in a strategy factory,” said one. The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers and which last week expressed no confidence in Patel over the latest police pay freeze, dismissed the whole thing as a gimmick.

You would never guess this from the way Johnson and Patel talk about crime and the police. “This government is utterly dedicated to fighting and beating crime,” Johnson announced. This is not actually true. What is true, however, is that British governments have long become addicted to doing what the American criminologist Jonathan Simon calls “governing through crime”, in which the sorts of measures that Johnson and Patel announced this week – often modest and even pantomimic by some American comparisons – are accepted as necessary responses to unacceptable public risks.

There are particular crime crises in Britain. These range from rape prosecution failures and child abuse scandals to the pandemic explosion of fly-tipping. Policing reform has also been allowed to wither on the vine. But if the Johnson government was as engaged with crime and policing as it claims, it would never have snubbed the police so conspicuously as it has done over pay, or made such deep cuts to the police and the criminal justice system more generally. Patel’s claim in the Daily Mail this week that “From day one as home secretary, I’ve made clear that I will back the police” does not withstand scrutiny in policy terms. But it makes total sense in terms of political theatre.

Political campaigns like this are best described as performative cruelty, a policy-light approach whose central purpose is to savour the potential anguish of those it defines as threats. Donald Trump was a master of it; for him, the cruelty was all. Among all current British politicians, performative cruelty is also Patel’s particular stock in trade. It is to be found everywhere in her politics: in her approach to asylum seekers in the Channel, to the penal system and to crime. It is there in her approach to officials – a charge of bullying against her was shamelessly overridden by Johnson. It was there when she was international development secretary – a department whose role she made little secret of despising.

It is a reasonable bet that a framed copy of Tuesday’s Mail front page will soon be on display somewhere in her office. The headline – “Priti: I’ll make yobs clean the streets” – incarnates what she aims to achieve. It shows not just that the government machine mounted an effective bid for the public’s attention this week. It also shows that Patel has been granted the rare press accolade of being identified by her first name not her family name. It will certainly bolster her belief in the political rewards of performative cruelty. Where Maggie first trod, and Boris more recently followed, there now arrives, if she has anything to do with it, Priti.

Patel is not the sharpest pencil in the drawer. But she has the huge advantage of being focused on becoming Conservative leader. This singlemindedness would give her a considerable advantage if, over the coming months, the party becomes consumed with the possibility that Johnson may quit before the next general election. This is far from a certainty, and it is important not to believe every piece of gossip and to avoid wishful thinking. Nevertheless, the coming year may see the start of a leadership battle. And, in that battle, Patel will be a contender.

Patel would at present be an outsider in that contest. Her ratings among activists have declined this year compared with last. She would struggle to win as many nominations from MPs as Rishi Sunak, Sajid Javid, Michael Gove and Liz Truss. Some prejudice is also probable. But her popularity at the grassroots level is high. This week it will have got a little higher, not least because of her press support. If she has a big party conference success in the autumn, on which she will now be focused, it will rise again. Her chosen route to the leadership owes much to Johnson’s own. The question is whether the Tory party of the 2020s is willing to be defined by another ambitious populist and by the performative cruelty that Patel is making her own.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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Extract from another Guardian opinion piece:- 

But the Oxford Street pile of mud did its job. It got people talking. In that respect, Boris Johnson’s Tuesday crime strategy announcement was also a pile of mud. Expect to see “fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs” of offenders, the prime minister declared, the words immediately ringing my woke alarm bells. I consulted humanity’s hive mind. As I thought. About 65% of the Google image search results for the words “chain gang” were shackled black men, while 4% were of a convict Mickey Mouse, and of some chained babies, doing time for cheese theft and milk concealment offences respectively.

Boris Johnson may of course have invoked the hot potato of race here deliberately, under instructions from his culture war guru, the former sex party fixer Dougie Smith (though it’s understood Smith may have been reined in now the government are being blamed for the football racism they actively encouraged). Was the chain gang idea announced to appeal to horrible Tory voters knowing that it would have to be quietly withdrawn later, a classic strategy of the Boris Johnson government?

In the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, an unnamed spokesperson swiftly clarified that “chain gang” was just “a turn of phrase”, like “piccaninnies”, “watermelon smiles”, and “bum boys”. But one could be forgiven for thinking there were plans to shackle litter-pickers, given that the home secretary floated stashing child migrants on Ascension Island and is in the process of criminalising lifeboat volunteers if they assist drowning foreigners. If Priti Patel announced she was personally going to tar and feather shoplifters it would seem plausible.

The shoe repair millionaire James Timpson took to Twitter to say he employs lots of ex-offenders and makes them wear not shackles and luminous waistcoats but a shirt and tie – “same people, different approach, a much better outcome”. Come the revolution Timpson will be home secretary while Priti Patel will be in a booth at Oxford Circus tube station reheeling a pair of Topshop sling heels and burping.

Next we learned that a Boris Johnson crackdown on drugs will focus on London, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle and Wakefield. But surely this must include Westminster itself where, in 2019, Vice magazine found cocaine in four out of nine parliamentary nooks – toilets mainly – that could only be accessed by passholders, or their guests. That can’t all have been Michael Gove in the 1990s, or the young Boris Johnson, sneezing his way through his single ineffectual snort.

Black Lives Matter want to defund the police and invest instead in community resources to keep people out of crime. Doing the Marxists’ work for them, the Conservatives have been defunding the police generally since 2010 (officer numbers still have not recovered), and personally in 2021 by refusing them the pay rise given to other public service workers. But dumping the mud of these unworkable new law and order pronouncements has worked. A prime minister who as London mayor allowed £126,000 of public money (£11,500 of which came from a City Hall-funded agency) to go to a pole-dancing businesswoman he was having sex with, and whose ministers routinely appear to have awarded without due process contracts worth millions to cronies, continually escapes imprisonment, while petty offenders will be paraded in fluorescent jackets, like Chinese thought criminals in the Cultural Revolution.

But it’s always edifying to hear a lecture on criminal behaviour from a prime minister who, after a simple YouTube search, can be heard agreeing to conspire with a convicted fraudster to have a journalist beaten up on the understanding that he remains anonymous. Done. Now, maybe I will go up that mud after all.

Stewart Lee

Tag 'Em All!

I noticed the following on Twitter from Rob Allen:-

The Compulsory Electronic Monitoring Licence Condition Order 2021 is published https://legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/330/made…plus an impact assessment https://legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2021/14/pdfs/ukia_20210014_en.pdf…

This requires prisoners released on licence to wear a GPS tag if sentenced for >12 months for theft burglary or robbery. It comes into force in 6 areas on 12 April though MPs can object until 12 May. Call me old fashioned but IMO this deserves more scrutiny but v small beer compared to COVID regs I suppose. But important questions about what exactly is being monitored and why. And consent. 

The IA says that GPS tagging unlikely to be possible for 30% of acquisitive offenders who are unsettled on release from custody. Just an idea but maybe use the funds to settle them instead? Govt has no idea if it will work. It may improve compliance & reduce recall to prison, but "it is also plausible that the increased ability to detect poor behaviour & the need for the offender to keep the tag charged may increase the likelihood of recall for tag wearers". 

Apparently police forces will be able to access a crime mapping service which could help to rule suspects in and out of investigations, improve crime outcomes and potentially increase the conviction rate for acquisitive crimes. This is still being procured. The IA says there is no significant impact on families although claims that tagging may improve family relationships . Maybe if it keeps people out of prison but that doesn't seem the main idea here. I am not sure what is though.

Rob Allen

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Impact Assessment

What is the problem under consideration? Why is government action or intervention necessary? 

Acquisitive offenders (offenders which derive material gain from a crime, such as burglary, theft and robbery) have amongst the highest levels of reoffending across all offence types: 51% of those convicted of theft (including burglary) and 29% of those convicted of robbery reoffend within a year of release compared to 23% in all other cases. In addition, these offenders are often not detected: 79% of theft (including burglary) cases and 62% of robbery cases resulted in no suspect being identified compared to 24% in all other cases. 

At present, there is limited robust evidence on the effectiveness of electronic monitoring internationally. In England and Wales, evidence on electronic monitoring on licence (following release from custody) is particularly limited given low levels of usage currently. Introducing a project that will test the compulsory satellite enabled (GPS) tagging of acquisitive offenders, in a limited number of areas, will allow the government to understand whether this technology could 1) have a deterrent effect, reducing reoffending and protecting neighbourhoods from further acquisitive crime and 2) support the detection and prosecution of these offences through data sharing arrangements with the police. Government intervention is needed because this project requires secondary legislation. Initial legislation will restrict the power to 6 of 43 Police Force Areas (PFAs) and will only apply to offences listed where the offender has been sentenced to a standard determinate sentence (SDS) of 12 months or more. Further legislation is planned to be laid in future to expand the measure to further PFAs, at which point this Impact Assessment (IA) will be updated accordingly.

What are the policy objectives of the action or intervention and the intended effects? 

The objective is to test the effects of GPS tagging of acquisitive offenders on release from custody. The increased use of this technology could support police detection of further offences and/or act as a deterrent, therefore reducing acquisitive crimes, reducing reoffending, providing greater public protection and improving public confidence. The project will be evaluated and findings will be published. As a result, introducing this intervention in a limited number of areas will help inform the ongoing use of this measure and future policy decisions regarding further roll-out. It will also help refine effective and efficient partnership working, and provide information on the impact of GPS tagging on proven reoffending rates and crime detection.

What policy options have been considered, including any alternatives to regulation? 

Please justify preferred option (further details in Evidence Base) 

• Option 0: Do nothing. 

• Option 1: Legislate to enable the compulsory GPS tagging of certain acquisitive offenders as a licence condition, on release from prison in specific geographical areas. 

The Government’s preferred option is option 1 as this best meets the policy objectives.

Evidence Base 

A. Background 

1. Acquisitive crime refers to offending where the offender derives material gain from the crime (i.e. burglary, theft, and robbery). Acquisitive offenders have one of the highest reoffending rates amongst all offence types: 51% of all adults convicted of theft (including burglary) and 29% of all adults convicted of robbery are proven to reoffended within a year of release; this compares to a proven reoffending rate of 23% for all other offences. In addition, these offenders are often not detected: 79% of theft (including burglary) cases and 62% of robbery cases resulted in no suspect being identified in the year ending June 2020, compared to 24% in all other cases. 

2. Currently, if an acquisitive offender is sentenced to custody they are likely to receive a Standard Determinate Sentence (SDS) and the majority will be released from custody at the half-way point or earlier if they are eligible for Home Detention Curfew (HDC). They then serve the remainder of their sentence in the community under probation supervision and are subject to licence conditions which can place restrictions on their movements, associations or activities, or prescribe activities. The offender must comply with their licence conditions to avoid facing a return to custody. 

3. Electronic monitoring (EM) has long been used as a criminal justice tool. HDC has been running since 1999 with offenders released early from prison subject to an electronically monitored curfew. EM has been used to assure compliance with curfews for community orders, suspended sentence orders and Court imposed bail for many years. Since 2019, satellite enabled location monitoring (GPS tagging) has also been available for assuring compliance with exclusion zones; ‘standalone location monitoring’ – trail monitoring – which does not assure compliance with another condition but tracks the movements of the offender, is also available. Many police forces also use GPS tags with known offenders on a voluntary basis to support their efforts to prevent and detect crime. 

4. There is, however, currently still limited evidence from England and Wales on the effectiveness of EM in relation to reoffending. An impact evaluation conducted by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in 2011 on the effectiveness of HDC revealed no significant differences in reoffending between offenders released early with an electronically-monitored curfew and offenders not eligible for early release on HDC and thus remaining in custody.

5 However, this issue has not been evaluated again in more recent years. The MoJ has also published two process evaluation reports on the use of GPS tagging with various cohorts of offenders.

6 The findings revealed that GPS location monitoring was felt to support the effective management of offenders through supporting offender rehabilitation, facilitating risk management, informing decisions about whether a wearer should be recalled to custody or court, and providing evidence to either exonerate a wearer or link them to a crime. The levels of compliance amongst wearers were generally thought to be good. However, no impact evaluation was conducted on levels of reoffending due to small sample sizes within groups and difficulties in obtaining a robust comparison group.

5. International evidence on the impact of EM on reoffending and other outcomes is also limited and can be inconsistent. There are relatively few studies that reliably measure impact, and those that follow robust analytical methods suggest that the impact of EM is heavily context-dependent. There is some evidence to indicate that EM is an effective tool for improving compliance in acquisitive offenders on community sentences, however, there is limited evidence on the impacts of GPS tagging for those on licence. 

6. The existing evidence on EM can, however, be contextualised in a wider body of ‘deterrence’ research. Whilst evidence on the impact of severity-based deterrence strategies is mixed, increases in the certainty of apprehension and punishment have consistently been found to have a deterrent effect. Therefore, EM may deter future offending by increasing the likelihood of being caught. 

7. Against this background, there is clearly scope for the increased use of EM whilst also increasing the evidence base associated with its use. This Impact Assessment (IA) therefore assesses the option of introducing compulsory GPS tagging of acquisitive offenders serving a custodial sentence of 12 months or more on release from custody in a limited number of police force areas. 

B. Rationale and Policy Objectives 

Rationale 

8. The conventional economic approaches to Government intervention are based on efficiency or equity arguments. Governments may consider intervening if there are strong enough failures in the way markets operate (e.g., monopolies overcharging consumers) or there are strong enough failures in existing Government interventions (e.g. waste generated by misdirected rules) where the proposed new interventions avoid creating a further set of disproportionate costs and distortions. The Government may also intervene for equity (fairness) and distributional reasons (e.g., to reallocate goods and services to more vulnerable groups in society). 

9. The primary rationale for intervention in this instance is efficiency: Government intervention through this legislation could increase our knowledge of the effectiveness of EM for acquisitive offenders on licence. Legislation would allow for the testing of GPS tagging to improve our understanding of potential impacts on deterrence from future offending, crime detection, compliance with other licence conditions and reoffending, as well as being able to assess the potential of trail monitoring data to support offender management of risk and rehabilitation. 

Policy Objectives 

10. The introduction of mandatory GPS tagging for acquisitive offenders aims to: 

a. Act as a deterrent to future reoffending: acquisitive offenders have high rates of reoffending; the use of this technology could ensure greater compliance with licence conditions and inform offender management, also because the associated trail monitoring data can be shared with the police to assist investigations, this may also have a deterrent effect. 

b. Assist police investigations into acquisitive crimes through targeted data sharing: the police will be able to request previously unavailable trail monitoring data as a result of this project – this could help to rule suspects in and out of investigations, potentially increasing the conviction rate for acquisitive crimes and potentially saving police resources. 

c. Further develop the evidence base on the effectiveness of EM: there are significant limitations with the current evidence base for EM, particularly for the use of EM on licence; this project will allow for a robust evaluation to be undertaken.

Criminal Justice and the March of Technology

Facebook continues to develop as a lively place for probation staff to discuss matters of interest and occasionally the airing of more wide-ranging, discursive pieces. I think the following deserves a wider audience and is published with the author's agreement:- 

IT firm that tracks offenders for the National Probation Service is sold

A Newcastle IT company whose software is used by 18,000 members of staff at the National Probation Services (NPS) has been sold. Beaumont Colson’s (BCL) nDelious software is used by the NPS to manage offenders through the entire probationary system. It tracks their case from the moment of arrest, while they are in prision, as well as during their time in the community.

The company, based on Newbridge Street, has been acquired by national player The Unilink Group. Unilink said the tie-up would fuel its international expansion and allow it to create integrated systems from justice departments overseas.

Francis Toye, CEO and founder of The Unilink Group, said: “From the very first we have found enthusiasm and energy from the team in BCL that matches our own. The fit between these two innovative organisations and the logic of the tie-up is irrefutable. I am delighted that BCL is joining The Unilink Group today.”

Along with providing software for the NPS, Beaumont also carries out work for MTC-Novo, which runs the London and Thames Valley Community Rehabilitation Company. Its other clients include the Home Office, and the States of Jersey and Guernsey. The company employs 45 members of staff at its Newcastle office, which Unilink has pledged to keep open.

Paul Ryder, Beaumont Colson’s technical director, said: “The combination of Unilink’s and BCL’s skill sets will support the evolution of a generation of new products, extend our reach and allow us to provide enhanced service to existing customers and to new ones.”

Following the acquisition The Unilink Group now employs around 120 members of staff and has a turnover of between £12-£13m across the UK, EU and Australia. The company also has a base in North America. Over the last four years Unilink has trebled in size. It now consists of four companies: Unilink Software, BCL, Unilink Technology Services, and Acante. Unilink’s software applications are used by more than 80 organisations with almost 70,000 prisoners across the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Austria.

--oo00oo-- 

Just a little snippet of news that cropped up in some other research I’ve been doing on the tech side of probation that now seems to be the missing piece connecting several threads on my cork board neatly (I like red cord and pins). I have somehow previously not been able to find a common link like the unknown actor in a crime drama, although it makes sense to me that this exists. Now some things are starting to make a little more sense. With probation IT on both sides of the bridge driving every hardworking probation frontline worker nuts recently, I was interested to see that the company that developed nDELIUS (Beaumont Colson or BCL) has been sold to fast growing multinational company that I am already familiar with called UNILINK.

So just a few random thoughts here and nothing fully worked through evidenced or particularly well argued - which might irritate some. Make of it what you will as I will continue having a go at trying to unravel strands of this in the next few weeks and months to come and as with all tangled webs, it may be something or nothing much and may lead to a slightly different place that I had not anticipated. We shall see.

It seems though that BCL investors will have been convinced that the buy out was a very smart move. What interests me is what may have convinced them? It is no secret in the IT world that BCL have been doing some work for CRC owners, including as the article says, in London and Thames Valley MTC of late. They are proud of that and I think is now starting to be rolled out and my guesstimate of the value of this work (if it is what I think it is) is that it is likely to have been worth enough to attract the attention of competitors, especially with other work on apps and even bigger stuff in the pipeline. I guess that there will also be some work being done or considered at HMP Rainsbrook and it won’t hurt to have some coders onboard to iron out the glitches that will inevitably arise.

‘Unilink Software are a supplier of prisoner self-service technology and their systems are currently used in 28 prisons’. They have been mopping up on the technology front in prisons probably only slowed by those who run prisons not fully wishing for them to be modernised and for prison numbers to be reduced at a slower rate than is probably possible were the system to be fully digitised and integrated. I wouldn’t say that all this is necessarily bad or good news as such but rather that it is interesting news (maybe not only to me) as we could soon see some of the technical innovations that are currently unevenly distributed across a number of jurisdictions - that have in some cases been around a while - including greater technology enhanced linkage between custody and community, being increasingly rolled out and demonstrated by private companies (rather than public sector actors) and presented to be effective in reducing numbers and meeting elusive targets. 

Indeed these innovations if successful might well be seized upon by ministers - starved of potentially positive news - as some sort of ‘easy win’ vindication of the policies that they inherited and are now struggling to admit publicly were actually risky and are increasingly regarded across the sector as having failed and roundly discredited even by the hang ‘em and flog ‘em right of centre corporate media. 

Let us not also forget the timing of recent announcements regarding sentencing and the considerable investment that the government has already made in developing digital justice systems. It is logical to me at least to assume that all parts of the system need to be at the same level of technological development in order to work. It is obvious that change has not been universally welcomed across the system - to say the least - by key actors and players. 

Perhaps also consider how our European neighbours are effectively reducing prison numbers by increasing the use of technologies such as electronic monitoring and electronic self management systems but perhaps importantly and perhaps most tellingly are working towards combining measured use of technologies with the provision of more and more resources aimed at delivering community sentences by well trained highly motivated staff not with less demoralised staff and with fewer resources as seems to be the case with probation over here. 

I am fairly optimistic that the development and application of some techno solutions in our sector of the industry (we are after all part of a global criminal justice industry) do look promising as tools to deliver services effectively and efficiently (expect increased automation and more terminals and robots) but less optimistic when I look at the state of the people institutions organisations and systems that will need to lead and deliver what is required and address the increasingly yawning gap between where we are now and where we need to be in probation as key players in a new modernised joined up justice system that is fit for purpose after being decimated, put into reverse, repeatedly hammered and impeded by the cloddishness of the TR1 debacle.

Then after thinking about all this a bit more I began to realise that companies buying other smart companies up might actually be a more significant development just now than it might first appear. It is after all the expertise to develop stuff and technologies in Probation such as software applications that work that are being bought - presumably in anticipation and with high level assurances - and that some fairly major movements are about to take place and that there is a real prospect that more well paid work will be generated soon for those who have positioned themselves well (expanding markets) and that this will allow investors in those companies that have done so and are doing so to potentially make much bigger profits from either an enlarged existing contract or more lucrative future contracts.

A company like UNILINK with expanding global reach now takes fewer risks and is growing rapidly and steadily increasing its influence exponentially (count the knighthoods). It is also potentially disruptive in a volatile artificially created UK justice market and is capable of game shaping/changing moves should it choose to make them. The MoJ is looking for solutions that are publicly acceptable and face saving and technology may be a get out of jail card that might be more palatable than others.

Unilink is a company I have been following closely for some time. They first cropped up on my radar in relation to the now abandoned London biometric reporting kiosks https://www.unilink.com/ some years ago now - perhaps testing the market. They did get the kiosks to talk to DELIUS but not much else as systems weren’t really up to the technical demands required. They are however a forward looking tech company and certainly have some experience expertise and reach in several related sectors now and interestingly they have some fairly radical ideas for instance about how digital prisons should be run using self service kiosks and in cell terminals for starters etc. That interests me as it is an example of a technologically mediated sentence provision and after a few false starts quite probably the shape of things to come in prisons, courts, police stations and in probation - not everyone’s idea of the direction of travel. No technology is neutral and how something is designed and conceived to be used is quite important to me. The Australian connection will also interest many who will know that MTC also run prisons there - an interesting and not unsurprising association evidencing the bigger picture.

Bidders for new contracts of course always want to offer something that their competitors may not be able to offer - or indeed want to offer - to the commissioners/bid assessors as something they might want to roll out more widely (usually because it might reduce costs and help meet targets). Could this be the point of origin of the promised revolution? UNILINK could potentially make interesting things happen for CRC owners faster technically than the more cumbersome and less agile MoJ (Digital by default?) and has some experience of the technical and political challenges faced having been there before. They have certainly shown that they are adept at penetrating justice markets elsewhere but the MoJ may feel that they need to move more slowly given past failures and problems and their own processes might not be helping them to be agile in a fast paced market. 

But is it really a techno corrections/solutions heavy approach ‘the approach’ that the UK government will want to adopt over others? The UK is already the biggest user of electronic monitoring in Europe - a position that is unlikely to change - but it has been slower to use this technology more effectively, as others have done, and has been beset by scandal and controversy arguably due to poor commissioning and governance - once bitten twice shy. I would argue that we should be cautious to engage but not dismissive of technological potential and developments even though we in probation have often been let down or found ourselves at the sharp end of previous poor technological implementations and plans.

Some very telling quotes in the article attached to be unpacked and certainly a lot to consider in the round. I think it is worth keeping a watchful eye on such things and keep trying our best to map out the connections that together might give us a clearer idea of the shape of things to come or what things are eventually going to look like even if such developments such as a single takeover may at first glance seem relatively irrelevant or uninteresting. 

But if you want to get to the bottom of something you could do worse than to follow the money. The sums of money involved are certainly eye watering (£1bn on Court services and millions on software development including applications to better interface with the MoJs own clunky and now ageing systems) and as this is taxpayers money we should perhaps all pay some attention to how it is being spent in our name in the public interest, especially as it is potentially the future of our work and our industry that is at stake.

David Raho

Time Up for Spurr and Stewart?

Whilst we are otherwise engaged in Christmas-associated matters, the blog will keep ticking-over in the background with nothing much new to report or discuss. But I notice the soon-to-be-departed Michael Spurr gave his winding-up thoughts to the Justice Committee recently, and Rory Stewart might not be far behind. This on Converse Prison News:-    

Michael Spurr: Reflecting on 35 years in the Prison Service

Women jail staff are as likely to be attacked as their male colleagues after long-standing “norms” disappeared from life behind bars, the head of the prison service has warned.

Reflecting on changes during his 35-year career in the system, Michael Spurr noted that for a long time, male inmates would not hit female officers. But, giving evidence at the Commons Justice Committee, he said: “Over the last 10 years, that has changed – there’s pure equality. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you get hit, for things that are quite trivial today compared to previously, which would have been dealt with potentially by an expletive rather than a punch. Those are norms that are changing.”

Mr Spurr also flagged up the influence of technology and social media as he outlined how changes in society have filtered through to prisons. He said: “Social interaction isn’t as it was. People are so used to engaging in media. When you allow people out of cell, unstructured time with adults engaging with one another was the norm. Younger prisoners find that much more difficult.”

Issues relating to mental health and drug use in the community have a bearing on what goes on behind bars, added Mr Spurr, who will leave his role as chief executive of HM Prisons & Probation Service next year.

At the same evidence session, Prisons Minister Rory Stewart admitted he faces a battle to keep his job after he pledged to resign unless a drive to tackle violence and drugs at struggling jails succeeds. Mr Stewart declared in August that he would quit if there was no improvement in safety standards at 10 establishments hit by “acute” problems within a year.

Describing the latest estate-wide violence statistics as “very, very worrying”, he said: “I have promised to resign unless we turn that graph round on violence in those 10 key prisons. At the moment, that graph is going in the wrong direction for me.”

Latest prison safety figures for England and Wales show there were a record 32,559 assault incidents in total in the 12 months to June, up 20% from the previous year. Assaults against staff increased by over a quarter (27%) to 9,485 incidents.

Mr Stewart said he believed there are some “green shoots”, but he told the committee: “It’s going to be a tough fight because we are having to work with a situation that is not just violence in our prisons – assaults on police officers are going up, assaults on ambulance workers are going up.”

He re-stated his belief that very short custodial sentences can be counter-productive. He said: “The wrong kind of short sentence may feel good in the short term because you feel you are banging someone up. But just putting someone in prison for a few days, a couple of weeks – it’s long enough to damage them, it’s not long enough to change them.”

In other comments, Mr Stewart disclosed that an electronic tag which allows GPS monitoring of offenders in the community has now “gone live”, and floated the idea of setting up charitable foundations through which local residents, particularly those in “quite wealthy communities”, could contribute “philanthropically” to their local prison.

Reflections on the Spurr Era

It's been a couple of weeks since we heard that Michael Spurr would be departing from the MoJ and I didn't want to miss this bit of historical analysis from Rob Allen:-   

Spurr's Relegated

A few years ago, I attended a leaving do for a NOMS official with whom I’d worked closely. Michael Spurr paused his generous speech a couple of times as he wanted to be kept updated about a hostage taking incident. His warm words and care about realities on the ground- in this case thankfully resolved peacefully- show why he has been such a well-liked leader in the prison service. Having worked his way up from the wings at Armley Jail, few know or care more about prisons in this country. But there’s no getting away from the fact that his period in charge has coincided with their catastrophic decline. The probation service has all but been destroyed and the oft and much heralded development of electronic monitoring something of a fiasco.

How much responsibility should Michael bear for these failings? Not much is the emerging consensus. I agree that the lion’s share of the blame for the deterioration of prisons lies with the first three Justice Secretaries Spurr served as NOMS CEO. Kenneth Clarke offered enormous Departmental savings to the Treasury predicated on prison population falls that he could never deliver. Chris Grayling made a Faustian pact with Unions resulting in much lower levels of staffing as an alternative to privatisation as well as signing unsustainable maintenance contracts for prisons. Michael Gove’s lofty rhetoric of redemption merely acted as a distraction from the growing problems of safety and control in many jails. (Unsurprisingly an evaluation of Gove’s six Reform Prisons due this summer has not materialised)

Michael fared slightly better with his second trio of Lord Chancellors, particularly the underrated Liz Truss who managed to obtain much needed funds to recruit more staff. Davids Lidington and Gauke have continued a pragmatic approach to repairing the enormous damage inflicted by their predecessors. But Gauke has now decided that the uncomplaining Spurr should be relieved of his duties. Maybe last week’s POA action has prompted the move.

I have no doubt that Spurr will have spoken truth to power when giving advice about policy options, but as Julian LeVay has argued, his job was then to implement whatever Ministers decided. Could he have done more to blow the whistle about the likely consequences?

As accounting officer, Spurr might have sought ministerial direction about the feasibility of some of the measures he was asked to implement- particularly the probation reforms whose risks were so widely voiced in and outside government. It’s worth recalling that it was warnings about the consequences of overcrowding made by Spurr’s predecessor Phil Wheatley which forced Labour ministers to introduce a temporary early release scheme in 2007. I hope Spurr and the Permanent Secretary gave clear and explicit warnings about the impact of staffing cuts on violence, self-harm and disorder in prisons. If ministers ignored them, shame on them. But maybe that advice was not given with sufficient force.

In 2016 the National Audit Office found that Permanent Secretaries appear to lack confidence to challenge Ministers where they have concerns about the feasibility or value for money of new policies or decisions, not least because standing up to Ministers is seen as damaging to a civil servant’s career prospects. That’s nothing new. I remember when Kenneth Clarke dreamt up the absurd idea of Secure Training Centres for 12 year old persistent offenders, we officials hoped the Permanent Secretary might intervene, joking that he was “keeping his powder dry”. When he reluctantly attended a meeting with Clarke, the PS said virtually nothing other than berating me afterwards that my submission was too long.

So what are the lessons for Spurr’s successor? Prisons need a Whitehall heavy hitter able to stand up to ministers more than they do a knowledgeable and experienced practitioner. Someone like Simon Stevens who has carved out some freedom of manoeuvre as head of the NHS . And whether Probation should stay linked with Prisons should be carefully considered. Probation has not gone well in NOMS or HMPPS. I'd devolve it but lets see what the consultation brings.

Rob Allen

*****

Comments:-

"And whether Probation should stay linked with Prisons should be carefully considered. Probation has not gone well in NOMS or HMPPS"

It is an unequal and damaging coupling. That the CEO of HMPPS will never come from Probation ranks is an oft quoted given, and demonstrates the problem. I wonder if the D word might actually be Divorce. It's an unequal partnership where one is suffering at the hands of the other, and whose identity is being swallowed by the dominant other.

Leave! I want to cry, you are brilliant and strong and have so much to offer the world: you just need a bit of support to get back onto your feet again. The point of leaving is risky, so you need a good plan and some strong support, but you would be so much greater and happier and safer without him.

I am stretching this analogy because there is a more direct gender issue going on here too. Gauke under pressure from a resisting public servant threatened to "get macho"... an extraordinary and revealing thing to say. If we ascribed gender to Prisons and Probation, (and I suspect you could do this also by looking at the gender ratio of staff)… could we say that Probation is the departments feminine side?

*****
What?! I hadn't the honour to hear any of Mr Spurr's 'generous speeches', but do remember his formulaic responses to disturbances, including terrible suicides in prison. They would go something like this: to be regretted - complex prison - we are now setting up some measures for the future- here are some good things done - confidence in the governor and staff. And the suffering, with same responses, would go on and on elsewhere. Of course he had to support those working in prisons, but never any sense of the primacy of the need to fundamentally change - the politicians' responsibility I know, but they could go to bed comfortable after Mr Spurr's musings.

Grayling is doing enough to confirm his incompetence without further comment needed, but as for Ms Truss, a know-nothing do-nothing stop-gap, completely out of her depth, she has the residual function of making her successors look competent if not overly bothered by much, while a moment could have been taken to note Ken Clarke's description of the continuing iniquity of the IPP sentence, a preventive measure to keep people inside just in case they might do something in future, a measure against all notions of justice, as a 'stain on the justice system', a stain all of the above, & Gauke, are obviously perfectly at ease in letting continue. The prison service is a disgrace and starved of money by politicians who don't care is not the only issue.

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.