Obfuscation Masterclass 4

Q66 Chris Evans: I want to move on to the contracts. When I first came into this place nine years ago—would you believe?—I served on the Justice Committee between 2010 and 2012. Serious issues were being raised at the time, especially within the justice system and NOMS, about payment by results. That was raised by the Justice Committee on several occasions even after I left. Why did you use payment by results in this case, even when there were concerns for the probation service? 

Sir Richard Heaton: As Mr Spurr tried to explain earlier, there was, I will not say a philosophical belief, but a belief, on some evidence, that if you incentivised providers to do the thing we cared about most, which was to reduce reoffending, they would economically be driven to do things that achieved that result, and therefore a payment-by-results mechanism would be the right mechanism to incentivise and reward them. There was some evidence for that, I think, from the early signs from the Doncaster and Peterborough trials—that actually there were innovative, amazing things that new providers could do, with fresh insights, that would improve recidivism. I think on the back of that evidence, payment by results was imposed. 

There was one aspect of payment by results that we have not mentioned, which has also caused us difficulties—in a spirit of complete candour. There is nothing wrong with payment by results to provide a top-up where something has been achieved, that you want. I think a failing in these contracts—or a flaw in these contracts—was that we failed to safeguard the core costs of delivery. What you should not do when you are designing a payment-by-results contract is allow the core costs of public service delivery to be jeopardised by failure to achieve payment by results. If you are trying to achieve a public service you need to pay for it. Payment by results as a top-up for an additional benefit is, I think, more respectable. 

Q67 Chair: I am going to ask Mr Lodge, from the National Audit Office, to give us some clarity on this point. 

Oliver Lodge: I just wanted to point out for clarity, as it has been mentioned a couple of times, that the Peterborough and Doncaster pilots were quite different from the model pursued under Transforming Rehabilitation, in the sense that they were based within prisons. My understanding is that participation in them was voluntary, as well, rather than compulsory. So there were some significant differences. 

Sir Richard Heaton: You are quite right, and the Peterborough one was a social impact one, which is absolutely not the model we have used here. I only adduced them to illustrate what was in the air, which was that there was a feeling that if you created the right financial incentives people would do interventions which would— 

Chair: We have certainly covered this in previous work we have done— that these were not piloted. We have talked today about the breakneck speed, so we know some of the challenges. 

Q68 Chris Evans: Rather than innovate, payment by results placed additional financial pressure on CRCs. 

Sir Richard Heaton: It did, indeed. 

Q69 Chris Evans: How did that come about, if you were just looking for results and innovation? 

Sir Richard Heaton: As I say, I think because the measure was not one sufficiently within their control, partly because of the time lag and partly because reoffending is really complicated and depends on factors like housing and access to benefits and so on; and partly because—I think 18% of the contract value was through payment by results—effectively it put too much at stake, and if they failed to achieve the targets not only did they not get that reward but their cost base was undermined, so it was an element of the contract, which, I think, looking back on it, we should have done differently. 

Q70 Chris Evans: Before I move on from this section, obviously lessons have to be learned. What has been learned about the payment-by-results model, and about contractors’ overcost? 

Sir Richard Heaton: For me, it would be the point I have just made: you must not put payment for core services at risk. Secondly, the reoffending rate is possibly the wrong measure, because it is too attenuated. I would go for proxy outcomes instead. Thirdly, I think, it assumes that the system is prepared to accept zero intervention. In other words, it assumes that the system is ambivalent as to whether an intervention takes place, whereas, as we have discussed, the system, including ourselves and including the inspector, actually requires interventions to be made. So payment by results, which implies you can do nothing if you think that is the best way to achieve a result, is not satisfactory. Those would be my main learnings on this point. 

Chair: So they will inform your next procurement. 

Q71 Chris Evans: I want to go on now to ICT systems, and I have to say this is like groundhog day. It seems every Government Department in front of us has problems with IT. Could you just go through the problems you have had with the gateway system, please? 

Sir Richard Heaton: I will start and Mr Spurr may wish to fill in the details, again. When the probation trusts came into the Ministry they brought with them, as you might expect, many different computer systems, none of which were compatible, and many of which were not very good. A successful effort was made to choose the best of those and to create a national system. There was then a commitment made, during the course of transfer of rehabilitation to the CRCs, that we would deliver what we called a strategic partner gateway, which was quite a complicated software gateway into our system, so people could plug into it. We were 12 months late in delivering that. We did deliver it in September 2016, but 12 months too late. That commitment was probably made at a time when things were moving very quickly. Again, in retrospect, it probably was not the right commitment. A better one would have been to say, “We’ll put our national system on to the cloud and provide modern API interfaces, and you can simply plug into them,” which is how we would do it these days. We promised a rather cumbersome, old-school way of connecting up, and it was 12 months late. We acknowledge that that was a fault. 

Q72 Chris Evans: You have paid out £23.1 million in compensation to various CRCs. Do you think that this has damaged your reputation, and the confidence that CRCs have in working with you in future? 

Sir Richard Heaton: I hope not. We have a very constructive relationship with the CRCs, both the probation officers on the ground, who are excellent, and their management. I hope that we dealt with this in the course of our long and difficult contractual relationship in a professional way. I do not think that it has undermined their overall confidence in us. It was one of those things that did not go as well as it should have done. Do you have a different perspective? 

Michael Spurr: No, I think you have summed that up right. Getting a national system for probation was difficult in itself. That took longer. We did put it in place. We were delayed in putting in the partner gateway. A lot of the providers themselves have found their own difficulties in developing their own systems to link into that gateway, which demonstrates for all of us that this is tricky. The world moves on very quickly. The cloud options were not seen then in the way that they would be today. That makes things more straightforward. Having a national system, whoever is delivering the service, so that everybody has one care system to work through is important. That is one of the things that we take from this. 

Q73 Chris Evans: Why are so few CRCs using the gateway system? Is the lack of confidence a reason? Why are they opting not to use it? 

Michael Spurr: The majority of them have chosen to continue to use the national system that we produced, nDelius, itself directly without using their own. Two are using the gateway to link into our system, and some have developed some of their own, but there are various reasons why they have done that. Forgive me for saying this again, but they have spent some money on this in terms of innovation; I suspect that they have decided to spend no more money on it, given where we have got to. 

Q74 Chris Evans: Could you clarify something in the report? Paragraph 1.11 says: “By January 2019, only two CRCs were using the gateway, seven were still working towards introducing their own systems, and 12 CRCs had decided to retain HMPPS’s systems rather than introducing their own.” Could you clarify that? 

Michael Spurr: I think that is what I was trying to say—12 of them have decided not to put their own systems in place, but to use ours. That was an option for them. The reason for the gateway was to say, “You can take the case data that we have from the central system, but if you want to use it in a different way within your own system, as long as we have the information on the central system, you can do that.” Initially, everybody thought that they wanted to do that; 12 of them are simply using our national system. They have not invested in doing other things with that. 

Q75 Chair: Presumably they pay you a fee to use the national system—do they? 

Michael Spurr: I don’t think they pay a fee. We want everything on the national database, so— 

Q76 Chair: So it is cheaper for them to use the national system. 

Michael Spurr: Well, they haven’t had to develop their own system, so— 

Chair: Exactly, so it is a lot cheaper for them. That is presumably a driver. 

Q77 Chris Evans: If you are able to, and it is not commercially sensitive, could you tell us how many legal claims you have against you for delays and the impact of those delays? 

Sir Richard Heaton: I think we have settled, as part of the negotiations, so I do not know the detail. 

Michael Spurr: I think on the IT we have settled, but we can let you know. 

Chair: You can write to us. 

Q78 Chris Evans: How much was the cost? Would you be able to share that with the Committee? 

Chair: You can share it with us privately, if not publicly. We would like everything to be public. 

Sir Richard Heaton: I will do what I can in the meeting. I might have it here, but if not— 

Chair: That is a couple of things that we have asked you to write to us about. 

Q79 Chris Evans: I will just end with two last questions; I know that my colleague wants to come in. I want to talk about parent company guarantees. They froze out the voluntary sector, and did not protect the taxpayer. What have you learned from that? 

Sir Richard Heaton: You are right: it made it a difficult field to enter for the voluntary sector. Having said that, parent company guarantees serve a purpose. They mean that the taxpayer and the system are protected from the insolvency of a subsidiary. They are useful in some situations, and not in others. It is fairly standard Government contracting practice to seek one. The Government are not the only player that seeks guarantees of this sort. It is one of the obstacles to voluntary sector players being prime providers in this field, but not the only one. 

Q80 Chris Evans: Okay. Voluntary organisations obviously play a massive role in the justice system. How are you going to ensure in the future that they are involved in any procurement? 

Sir Richard Heaton: That is absolutely going to be part of the design for the next iteration of these services, when Ministers announce them. We would like there to be greater voluntary sector involvement in this field. 

Q81 Shabana Mahmood: Before we talk about the future of probation services and your re-procurement process, can we talk about Working Links? Why were the three Working Links CRCs not brought back into public ownership at the point at which it became obvious that the company was going to go into administration? 

Sir Richard Heaton: We were aware in advance that Working Links was in difficulty and we prepared a number of contingency plans. It would have been possible to bring them into public ownership. On a balance of risk and cost and operability, we decided that this outcome was the correct one in the interim. The work has been taken over by a small CRC, which is doing well, and persuaded us that it was well able to take the work on. As a pragmatic move, that seemed the right way to go for us. 

Q82 Shabana Mahmood: Are you confident that that decision will result in the best possible outcome for the taxpayer when we are picking up the tab further down the track? 

Sir Richard Heaton: By definition, it is a short-term outcome, because the contracts are now due to terminate earlier, but yes—of the various options available to us, it was the best outcome for the taxpayer. 

Q83 Shabana Mahmood: Aurelius is the German venture capital company that bought Working Links in June 2016. Can you tell us whether they are the purchasers’ guarantor for the Working Links contracts? Sorry—the parent guarantor. 

Sir Richard Heaton: No; the parent company guarantee in this situation remained with Working Links and Aurelius did not offer us an alternative parent guarantee. 

Q84 Shabana Mahmood: Will that risk transfer to the Ministry of Justice? 

Michael Spurr: Working Links are in administration. We are going through a process of administration. They hold the parent guarantee at the moment. We will have to work that through with the administrator. 

Sir Richard Heaton: We have reserved our rights under the parent guarantee vis-à-vis the defunct company. 

Q85 Shabana Mahmood: So we will have to see how the administration process unwinds. What is your assessment of the current state of probation services in Wales and the south-west, given the collapse of Working Links? 

Sir Richard Heaton: Michael might have a better operational view, but I think I would distinguish between Wales and the south-west. The southwest, as you will know from the inspector’s report, was not in a great state. Wales was in a slighter better state. We are confident that the new provider has got the bandwidth, resources and motivation to do well. 

Q86 Shabana Mahmood: What is the current operational assessment of the quality of the services in those two regions? 

Sir Richard Heaton: Poor, in Devon and Cornwall. Better in Wales. Do you have more detail than that, Michael? 

Michael Spurr: That’s it. Unacceptable provision, frankly, in the southwest. Wales is significantly better. Unacceptable, as evidenced by the inspection and by our own audits, which was why we stepped in, alongside the administration. The two went together. 

Q87 Chair: What about the continuity? I have a constituent who is trying to move from London to Wales. There have been a lot of hiccups, which I may write to you about. Do you think that is anything to do with the handover from Working Links to the new provider? 

Michael Spurr: Continuity for? 

Chair: Of case load. 

Michael Spurr: Oh, I see what you mean. 

Q88 Chair: If someone is in the system, are they guaranteed a seamless service? I only have one anecdote, but how should it be? 

Michael Spurr: I don’t think the operation was working—well, I know the operation wasn’t working well. Ms Flint asked before about staffing numbers. The staffing numbers are not sufficient to make that work properly in the south-west. 

Chair: In the south-west and Wales. 

Michael Spurr: Yes. That is one of the reasons that we needed to address that. That is something that we have said very directly that we need addressed. That will be addressed. I am sure that will have affected some of the transfers, but I don’t know the precise detail. It is less so in Wales, so I would have expected it be easier to have achieved that in Wales. 

Q89 Chair: But you are sure that the handover is being worked through. 

Michael Spurr: At the moment, we are very happy with the way that that has been going, but I am not underestimating how difficult that is going to be, given that that service provision in the south-west has been so poor. 

Q90 Chair: Did staff TUPE over? 

Michael Spurr: Yes. 

Sir Richard Heaton: If you have a constituent’s case that shows otherwise, please do let us know. 

Chair: I certainly will, if I need to. Back to Ms Mahmood. 

Q91 Shabana Mahmood: How confident are you that your contingency plans can handle the failure of bigger providers such as Interserve? 

Sir Richard Heaton: We are pretty confident that we have good contingency plans. 

Q92 Shabana Mahmood: Pretty confident? 

Chair: For the record, Ms Mahmood is looking sceptical. 

Shabana Mahmood: Can you try to bottom that out? 

Sir Richard Heaton: We have a large contractual exposure across every part of our business, and we have had to step in in all sorts of ways: after Carillion, for example, with the management of Birmingham prison, and with Working Links. So I think we have good contingency plans. 

Q93 Shabana Mahmood: Previous failures have given you some good experience to draw on, but given that no company can control more than 25% of the total market, what practically are you going to do if somebody else fails? 

Michael Spurr: As in this case, we have the option to step in directly, and we will step in— 

Q94 Chair: But that is now your only option. 

Michael Spurr: It depends on which provider we are talking about, doesn’t it? It is not the only option for all those providers. We have a range of options, which include, if we are able to do this, using other providers, and stepping in directly. 

Q95 Shabana Mahmood: Finally, on the employees of Working Links, what action have you taken in respect of pensions? 

Sir Richard Heaton: I assume the staff have been TUPE-ed over in the ordinary way, but I can write to you if there is a particular point on that. 

Q96 Shabana Mahmood: Yes, I think pension liabilities and what would happen were discussed previously, so if you could— 

Sir Richard Heaton: I will write to you on that. 

Q97 Chair: Of course, it depends on which pension scheme. There may be lots of issues. If you could write to us with what exactly is happening to staff who have been TUPE-ed over— 

Sir Richard Heaton: Yes, of course.

To be continued....

Wits' End

Regular readers will be aware that I'm contemptuous of the current MoJ 'consultation' on the future of probation. Grayling's devastating TR cock-up appears so complete, only a return to something like the situation pre-TR will have any chance of trying to repair any of the damage and we all know political u-turns are extremely rare and not likely for a service with such a low public profile. Why, even the redoubtable Russell Webster seems at his wits' end with it all:- 

Payment by results and all that jazz

This is the sixth and final in a series of posts exploring the Ministry of Justice’s plans to re-design its Transforming Rehabilitation project. The MoJ says it wants our views on how best to re-design probation and asks 17 key questions in its consultation document, “Strengthening probation, building confidence”.

This week’s post examines the final, and perhaps most important, question asked by the MoJ – how to drive performance improvements.

Question 17: What should our key measures of success be for probation providers, and how can we effectively encourage the right focus on those outcomes and on the quality of services?

When commentators questioned Chris Grayling’s original privatisation of the probation system, his counter-argument was that the new private providers would be subject to payment by results based contracts; in short:

“If they don’t do the job, we won’t pay them.”

However, that didn’t prove to be the case; probation performance has been poor, but on the whole CRC providers have been paid; partly in acknowledgement that the original contracts were under-funded and that CRCs did not receive the amount o f business they had been promised.

The latest PbR probation performance figures, which cover the CRCs’ first year of operation were analysed for this blog by Jack Cattell of Get the Data. He concluded:

The macro trend across all CRCs was for fewer re-offenders but those that did were likely to commit more re-offences than previously.

This meant that the CRCs recorded a small overall increase in the number of reoffences compared to the contract baseline year of 2011.

However, over the course of TR, there has been an emerging academic and practitioner consensus (with which I wholeheartedly agree) that reoffending rates (both “binary” – did someone reoffend? – and “frequency” – how many offences did they commit?) are poor indicators of probation performance. Overlying crime trends (fewer crimes, more committed online and undetected) and local police priorities and diminishing resources are likely to be more powerful influencers of official reconviction data.

In common sense terms, this is plain to see from the fact that during the large scale upheaval and crash in morale which characterised the last two years of the former probation system and the first year of TR, reoffending rates still fell.

One of the main drivers of the current re-configuration of the probation system was the MoJ’s awareness not only that the current system is drastically under-funded, but that the contract conditions in coming years (where CRCs’ income would increasingly be dependent on their reoffending outcomes) were almost inevitably going to cause several providers to fail.

Changes in the payment mechanism

The MoJ is clear that it wants to change the way CRCs are funded and to devise new performance incentives. Interestingly, it says it wants to focus on key desistance factors such as housing, jobs and drug & alcohol treatment, even though all these are beyond the influence of CRCs are have all themselves experienced large cuts in government expenditure through the years of austerity.

One of the options the MoJ is considering is setting a “Guaranteed Maximum Price with Target Cost” (already a new acronym “GMPTC”). If this option is adopted, then bidders will submit a target cost and target price (including profit) for given volume bands of different activities. The MoJ will pay actual costs up to the maximum price with profit going up and down inversely to actual costs. One of the intriguing implications of this approach is that, in direct contrast to the original TR contracts, it requires open-book accounting and reviews and justifications of costs. The MoJ provided an illustration of the GMPTC approach in its engagement events:


To my mind, the GMPTC option is a clear indication of the difficulties facing the MoJ. My first reaction is that this is an exceedingly complex system, vulnerable to gaming, and certain to use up significant resources at HMPPS and providers which could be better spent on service delivery.

Conclusion

My initial purpose in this series of posts was to raise key issues and stimulate positive ideas about how to re-design the probation service for the better. I have to say that I am disappointed at my inability to suggest positive ways forward.

I think I have a clear-headed view of the political realities which mean that a “mixed-economy” is inevitable (it’s unlikely that a Conservative Government would admit that a privatisation project has failed and Chris Grayling still sits at the Cabinet table). Nevertheless, I find it difficult to make positive, concrete suggestions to the well-acknowledged difficulties besetting the modern probation service.

For me, the root of all these problems is the design of a split service. Everyone affected by probation — courts, PCCs, partners, victims and offenders themselves — sees probation as a single service whose aim is to protect the public and help offenders desist from crime. The National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Companies don’t think like this, focusing only on their own remit and responsibilities.

This fragmentation is the root cause of many, indeed most, of the key questions raised by the MoJ be they sentencer confidence in community sentences, better through-the-gate work or common professional training.

It is for the elected government of the day to decide whether probation should be a public or private enterprise but for the life of me, I find it hard to see how the current two-tier model (which the current consultation has re-confirmed) will succeed.

Russell Webster

Of Public Services and Private Profit

I was a late and somewhat reluctant convert to Twitter, but to be honest this blog would not now be possible without recourse to it. Although I find it pretty useless for meaningful discussion, in voyeuristic fashion it provides valuable insight and information and is a brilliant recruiting sergeant for the blog. I saw this yesterday:-  

"The problem is now that probation is provided for profit, CRCs will effectively be making a sales pitch. They want – and probably need – more customers from the courts. And to the extent that they get them, so their shareholders will benefit." Frances Crook quoting Rob Allen

With the MoJ intent on forcing through another round of private sector contracting for probation services, despite a mountain of evidence that it will be an abject failure, this tweet resulted in us being pointed in the direction of an extract from Kittens are Evil : Little Heresies in Public Policy:-

Foreword 

Saying that ‘payment by results’ is fundamentally flawed is like saying kittens are evil. It’s heresy. 

The official consensus around payment by results is that it’s a no-brainer, and if there are problems with it in practice, it’s your fault: you’re not doing it right. Coercive and simplistic thinking informs a whole range of practices aimed at improving public services, so good people try hard to make bad initiatives, based on bad theory, work. Teething troubles, poor governance, bad apples and unintended consequences are cited as reasons for high-profile failures, such as disability assessments, Universal Credit and the Troubled Families initiative. 

This book argues that best efforts and poor excuses aren’t good enough. The authors describe how a bad system beats well-meaning individuals every time. They argue that no amount of tinkering, re-branding or good governance can compensate for the serious and widespread harm inflicted by a fundamentally flawed set of beliefs. George Monbiot succinctly described these beliefs and their consequences in The Guardian (April 2016): 

We respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly? 

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. 

The authors of this book challenge manifestations of neoliberal assumptions in public services – through family intervention, personalisation, numerical targets, marketisation, league tables, economies of scale, inspection and payment by results. 

At the heart of neoliberalism is a belief about people. Individuals are perfectible: anyone can (and should) be successful, to ‘make something of themselves’, if they only try hard enough. If they are unsuccessful, they should be forced to compete harder. (Try watching Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake.) If only we ate less, exercised more, stopped getting older, were more enterprising, ticked the right boxes, remembered our unique customer reference number, were digital by default and frankly were more service-shaped. Wouldn’t that make the government’s job easier? 

A systems view has a very different starting point. This book argues that it is the system itself that is troubled, not families or individuals. As in finance, neoliberal ‘quick wins’ all too often turn into long-term disaster, and it is the same in the public sector that has internalised its thinking.

The system is where we need to intervene. Attending to systems and their consequences for people is the only sustainable route to better lives and a better society. 

This book isn’t a conscious attempt to design a new system, although in places it makes a start. It does, however, provide strong evidence for public sector professionals, academics and policy makers to see neoliberalism for what it is – not a neutral or inevitable force, but a set of intentional and man-made political beliefs. By seeing it, we can help politicians who believe in something different, to create a new orthodoxy. 

Charlotte Pell, Visiting Fellow, KITE, University of Newcastle Business School 

Simon Caulkin, Writer and editor

--oo00oo--

Here is Kathy Evans, CEO of Children England, writing in Chapter 2: Public Service Markets Aren't Working for the Public Good... or as markets:-

With business terminology and comparisons now so deeply embedded across public and charitable services, it is perhaps illustrative to look at the most basic rudimentary tenets and ‘rules’ in successful commercial business. If public service market proponents were right in their belief that all types and sectors of organisation are best run according to the disciplines and incentives of commercial business management, it should be the case that the keys to business success would apply equally to public service provision. But they don’t. 

In commercial business demand is always a good thing. Increasing the volume of customers who want to buy your product is the first and most important objective of successful business for any entrepreneur – an objective which also underpins the entire advertising and marketing industry. In public or charitable services, however, demand is not straightforwardly positive. Up to a certain point knowing that people want and appreciate the service you offer is a ‘good thing’. Given the often sensitive personal and social problems that such services are there to meet, however, their need for help is nothing to celebrate or exploit, and an increasing volume of demand may be a cause for real concern, both as a service and as a society. ChildLine, for example, has reported that the numbers of children calling them to seek help for their suicidal feelings has substantially increased, year on year. As a service, the fact that they are available to respond to such distressing demand is a testament to the value of their service and the trust children have in them; the cause and implications of that rising demand, however, are clearly something about which to be deeply alarmed. 

In commercial business repeat custom is brilliant; indeed it has become prevalent to see customer loyalty reward schemes and ‘product obsolescence’ as strategies to promote repeat custom. In charitable and public services, if the same people are returning for your help over and over again then you need to consider the possibility that you are doing something very wrong!

In commercial business demand is your source of income. If demand is higher than you can supply you can still capitalise on it, either by raising the price (and rationing over-demand) or by investing in increased capacity to meet greater demand. The feasibility and repayment of loan finance in order to capitalise on high demand can be calculated by the projected income that will automatically be generated by being able to meet it. In public and charitable services, however, the person demanding your help does not bring with them the additional income that might help you to meet it. Whether your service is funded by taxes, donations or grants the capacity you have is finite unless or until anyone agrees to contribute more funds. A loan to invest in increased service capacity cannot easily be premised on any assumption that higher demand will generate any more income with which to repay it.

In commercial business, price is a reasonable gauge for value. When a customer decides that the price asked or negotiated for a commercial product is both affordable and reflective of its value to them, the sale can take place to the mutual satisfaction of both the customer and the seller. In general, in commercial markets, customer willingness to pay higher prices compared with others can be taken as a reasonable reflection of the relative value they place on that product. In charitable and public services the client rarely if ever pays or negotiates a price to be paid from their own pocket, and they may be inherently and completely oblivious to the costs of meeting their needs (e.g. an infant child needing expensive health care). Those who do fund the service, be they public commissioners or charitable donors, are not the consumers of it. The price of a service may, therefore, be completely unrelated to the value people place on receiving it, making ‘market competition’ on the basis of price comparisons an irrelevance in determining value. This disconnection between price and value can work both ways – a very expensive service could still have low satisfaction among its service users, just as a relatively low-cost, volunteer run service may be viewed as priceless and irreplaceable by the people who rely on it.

When the fundamental tenets of good business are so different from the similarly fundamental features and dynamics of public service delivery, it should be beyond doubt that ‘market forces’ cannot work in the same way in both sectors either. American economist, Professor Edgar Cahn, in an open letter to the non-profit community (2007) powerfully expressed an even more fundamental reason for the incompatibility of market mechanisms with the delivery of social benefits and support. The ‘core economy’ to which he refers in his quote below is a term used to describe the networks of relationships within family, friendship and community, through which people support each other at no monetary charge: 

Markets driven by monetary exchanges cannot put supply and demand together to rebuild the Core Economy because of the way that market value defines value. If quantity is scarce compared to demand, then market value is high. The opposite applies: if supply is abundant, then value goes down. We say something is dirt cheap or worthless if it is abundant.

That definition of value devalues those very universal capacities that enabled our species to survive and evolve: our ability to care for each other, to come to each other’s rescue, to learn from each other, to stand up for what’s right and to oppose what is wrong. In market terms, those capacities, if abundant, are worthless. In terms of rebuilding the core economy, those values are literally price-less.”

--oo00oo--

Whilst the ever-so-smug civil servants now running NPS continue to revel in policies, procedures, acronyms and a command and control environment that takes them ever-further from the true probation ethos, it's fascinating to learn that the Kent, Surrey and Sussex CRC are reverting to pre-privatisation post titles of Chief Probation Officer and Assistant Chief Probation Officer:-

"Manjinder takes up the role of chief probation officer on 1 November 2018 and will report directly to KSS CRC chief executive officer, Suki Binning. In the coming weeks, KSS CRC will also reintroduce the roles of deputy chief probation officer, assistant chief probation officer and assistant chief officer to reflect the service’s probation identity, values and tradition."  

Responses to Demise of TR 2

Despite being a hot Friday with many people either on holiday or heading off, there was a veritable storm of media activity yesterday at the prospect of yet more changes to the probation landscape. Gauke describing TR as 'ambitious and innovative' is of course civil service speak for a complete disaster and the closest we will ever get to the government admitting as such. Nevertheless, TR is dead and I guess what is being proposed is constrained, as with everything else, by Brexit and absolutely no parliamentary time being available.        

This blog has received over 10,000 hits in two days, thus confirming its continuing place and relevance as a platform for news and discussion as we approach what will almost inevitably prove to be another sham 'consultation' and reorganisation. It will be stressful and worrying to many and do nothing for morale I fear, but for those of us who refuse to give up on ideals that we know lie at the core of the probation ethos, the fight for its future as a distinct profession and endeavour will continue. Where better to start then than with Rob Allen's take on things:-    

Back to the Future? Where Next for Probation.

What to make of today’s announcement about the future shape of probation services? Is it as Russell Webster pronounced the end of Transforming Rehabilitation? Or is the foreshortening of existing private probation contracts merely a case of reculer pour mieux sauter? All bets are off of course if Labour come to power. They have pledged a unified public-sector service with Lord Ramsbotham currently mulling the best way to organise it. But today, the Government offers the opportunity for anyone to pitch in ideas for the best way forward if they stay at the helm. Although the Consultation invites views on 17 specific questions, it will not require too much creativity for answers to propose more macro level suggestions about how to rescue probation from the mire.

Despite many calls for the public National Probation service to be reunited with the Community Rehabilitation Companies, this seems to be happening only in Wales. In England, 10 new CRC’s will be contracted to replace the current 20. The MoJ say they’ll explore with the market how to establish a more effective commercial framework which better takes account of changes in demand for probation and ensures providers are adequately paid to deliver core services. It’s possible that such exploration will find no workable framework other than reunification. But I doubt it.

For one thing, big beasts G4S and SERCO may be allowed back on the scene. Although still under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging on tagging contracts, both companies seem to be back in the contracting fold, relieved perhaps to have missed out on the embarrassment of TR1 and eager to show how they can learn from its mistakes.

More significantly, privatisation is now hardwired into conservative thinking. The party’s new vice chairman for policy, Chris Skidmore, was among those who has in the past argued that all prisons should be contracted out on a payment by results (PBR) basis. So too was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, who’ll have to sign the new probation arrangements off. Before doing so, she will surely want to reflect not only on private sector underperformance but on how little risk the businesses have taken on. We are told today that long-term trends in re-offending are substantially affecting providers’ payment-by results income, threatening to undermine the delivery of core services. Setting aside the fact that declining clear up rates should make it easier to reduce recorded reoffending, the limited impact on persistent and prolific offenders is one of the many disappointments of the TR scheme. If today may not mark the end of TR, it may be the demise of PBR, in this field at least.

What comes next? The Howard League are pushing a Scottish type arrangement which has a lot going for it - although they’ll need to re think their proposed 21 service delivery areas. Maybe because I used to be on the Youth Justice Board, I’ve always favoured an Adult Offending Team model along the lines of Youth Offending Teams (YOT’s). These local authority based multi-agency teams, developed in Tony Blair’s first term, partly in response to a damning critique from the Audit Commission, have by and large proved an effective model for diverting young people from crime, from prosecution and from custody.

This is surely the sort of approach we now need for adults. There’s scope for discussion about the role Police and Crime Commissioners might play in any new system and whether Adult Offending Teams should form part of a broader devolution of justice responsibilities and budgets to a more local, and locally accountable, level. This is just the kind of discussion we need to have now.

Rob Allen

An Expert View of TR

As we await to hear our fate post theTR omnishambles, it's worth considering what an expert in the field of contracting is saying. A recent blog post by Richard Johnson on his Buying Quality Performance website provides both insight and food for thought in our present predicament:- 

RIGHT GRAYLING, WRONG CRIME

The UK parliament’s Justice Select Committee has finally confirmed what we predicted in our blogs and advised the Committee as early as 2013. The so-called ‘rehabilitation revolution’, or contracting out of probation services, by the then Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, has been a complete failure. There has been a reduction in quality of service, “disappointing” impact on re-offending, chronic morale amongst staff, and no involvement of third sector specialists. The Committee’s findings echo the Chief Inspector of Probation who revealed last December that up to 40% of offenders are now supervised by telephone, with calls every six weeks, rather than in person. However, the reasons for this failure are not as people assume, and this widespread misunderstanding will only harm future public services further.

Opponents have been quick to jump on this as further evidence of the failure of evil, big private sector providers and of privatisation in general. They are wrong. It is not the use of contracting that is to blame, but the way that the contracting was conceived and managed.

Giving evidence to the Committee in July 2013, I said: “………as the contracts are currently designed, this is not a rehabilitation revolution. You must be clear about that. This is about the outsourcing of probation services for the delivery of court orders at the cheapest possible price………. the Ministry has made it clear that it is looking for a cost saving of around 30% through this procurement.”

Grayling was quick to promote his outsourcing of probation as provision of a “through the gate service designed to help prisoners resettle in their communities”. He said this would be “payment by results”, with the results being fewer instances of recidivism.

Indeed, there were few people working in and around probation before this ‘revolution’ who did not admit to waste and inefficiency in the system. As far as results go, nearly 45% of all adults are reconvicted within one year of release from prison.

Unfortunately, Grayling’s promotion of the new approach was misguided at best.

Outsourcing can be a way to introduce a stronger link between spend and delivery – a commercial rigour – to increase performance within a budgetary envelope. But when you compete on price, this actually shatters any such link. It goes against the logic of why you outsourced in the first place. It just comes down to who bids cheapest.

As I explained to the Committee in 2013: “The Ministry has made it clear that it is looking for a cost saving of around 30% through this procurement. If we take, for example, a typical probation area that is being outsourced in this way, they currently spend about £30 million on their services as defined by the court orders. The Ministry is looking for somebody to bid at around £20 million for delivery of those services – including the addition of the under-12-month supervision orders – still within the £20 million window. The organisation that is successful in securing the contract will be the one that bids cheapest. Whether they are then able to continue to deliver the service is a moot point.”

There is, it is true, an element of ‘payment by results’ in these contracts. Some of the money paid to the contractors is linked to reoffending numbers. But this only represents 20% of their potential contract value. 80% of their funding is paid as a ‘fee for service’ on a monthly basis.

The successful contractors had to bid cheaper than anyone else. Then pare back the service as close to the bone as possible (e.g. switching from face-to-face contact to telephone calls) in order to cover their basic running costs and (hopefully, they thought) derive a bit of profit, from this very cheap monthly service fee. This fee that had been arrived at with no consideration at all for what should have been the fundamental questions underpinning the commissioning process:

• What does good probation look like?
• What does this cost, when it is run efficiently and focused on performance?
• How do we attach that cost to service inputs and outcomes?

In my previous blog I described how I am assisting the Ministry of Labour & Social Affairs in Kabul to buy employment outcomes in precisely this way. We have built a shadow ‘costed operating model’. This helps us to fix the pricing and reinforce the link between cost and delivery, using the payments to drive performance not shackle it.

This is, of course, not the first time Grayling has aggressively applied price competition and destroyed services as a result. In the world of employment services, he pushed through a similar model. As a result, whereas over £1 billion a year was spent on outsourced assistance to long-term unemployed and other at-risk groups a decade ago. Now, post Grayling’s Work Programme, annual spend is only around £150 million. There simply is no support in place for hundreds of thousands of workless people. Because contractors were thrown into a competitive battle, where cost and delivery were disconnected, and they fought to reach the bottom.

Maybe we should not blame Grayling alone. It seems a widely held belief that outsourcing equals privatisation, which simply equals buying the cheapest thing possible. This is certainly the model that procurement professionals are most familiar with, and procurement all started with the purchase of products (like desks) where value-for-money is a much easier equation. Getting stuck in this view is a huge missed opportunity, and means the maintenance of inefficient services that fail people that need them.

The design of the commissioning process for public services has the power to transform their efficiency and their impact. But services like these are not products. You cannot buy a service in the same way you buy paperclips.

Richard Johnson

--oo00oo--

It's also worth reading his sobering take on Grenfell from 2017:-

INCENDIARY PROCUREMENT

Whatever the enquiry finds, it is without doubt that Grenfell Tower went up like a dry stick because its refurbishment was procured at least in part on the basis of price.

If the same fire had started in one of the gleaming new blocks in London’s docklands, it would not have spread. The people buying those flats have the money to secure their safety.

The residents of Grenfell Tower are poor. They are dependent on public money to pay for their accommodation. That public money is not limitless. When we choose how to spend it, we attempt to get ‘value for money’. In this case, that had the appalling consequence of meaning the use of lethal, cheap materials and the decision not to install sprinklers.

The loss of so many wonderful lives rubs our noses in the harsh reality of our penny pinching and we don’t like it. The whole nation reeled with the shock of the tragedy. Almost without exception, we collectively agree that this is wrong and should not be allowed to happen again.

But this is no different to the way we routinely purchase public services targeted in the main at the poorest in society. And buying what seems cheapest over and over again destroys lives and ultimately costs more.

Our justice system, for example, is predominantly shaped by cost considerations. Our probation services were outsourced on the basis of price. Our prisons, whether public or private, are built and run as cheaply as possible. The direct consequence of this is that 75% of young men who go to prison once, will end up back there again within 12 months of release. Our cost-cutting exacerbates a cycle of crime that is criminally expensive on so many levels.

With the silent complicity of the ‘industry’, DWP have reduced spending on outsourced welfare to work from over £1 billion a year, to around £150 million. This tiny new budget is also to subsume assistance to people with disabilities or illnesses who are unemployed. The Work and Health Programme is, in fact, the last line of support for all unemployed people. This is the final hand of back-to-work assistance for those the Jobcentres cannot help.

The most socially excluded people are the ones who cost society most because they are most likely to have poor health, housing needs, underachieving children, family breakdown and some involvement in crime (as victim or perpetrator). They are also, of course, most likely to be long-term unemployed. I have been chairing a Social Impact Bond in Liverpool, delivered on the ground by Local Solutions. We deploy Intensive Mentors to work with young homeless people with particularly chaotic lives. These young people are probably the most expensive group of citizens in the city, even if they live on the streets.

Helping someone who is socially excluded and living in a mess of the causes and consequences of long-term unemployment is expensive. Our Intensive Mentors in Liverpool have caseloads of around 15 young people. Over the twelve-month programme, we spend up to £10,000 per participant.

If the socially excluded person can be turned into an included one, the cost savings are huge. The more excluded they were, the higher the savings. Local Solutions are helping over 90% of the young homeless people to move into accommodation, and nearly 50% are starting work.

The Work and Health Programme will not target the people who are furthest from work. It cannot afford to. As we saw under the current Work Programme, the contractors who secure the contracts do so because they offer to do it the cheapest. They then use diagnostic tools to identify those who are easiest to help. Jobseekers are RAG rated, with the ‘red’ being parked/ignored. With £150 million spread thinly across the country, the ‘amber’ must be written off too, including anyone in a rural area. Caseloads will grow even larger. There is no incentive, only risk, in any proactive engagement with the ‘hard to help’.

Procuring the cheapest possible welfare-to-work programme ignores the basic relationship between what you put into a service, and what you get out. It condemns the poorest in our society to crippling exclusion, which ultimately costs us all more. It also significantly reduces their life expectancy. In what way is this decision different to the one that puts cheap cladding on the tower block?

Richard Johnson

TR Can Never Work - Shock!

So here we have the results of Bob Neill's forensic Select Committee inquiry into the probation omnishambles called 'Transforming Rehahabilitation', created upon a hunch by the hapless and charmless Chris Grayling and that has all-but destroyed a former gold standard public service and profession. 

The report is utterly damning and more than justifies every ounce of scorn and criticism heaped upon TR both by this blog and every probation professional since inception. Given the findings, which have been patently obvious to all with eyes willing to see, what I find particularly galling is the continued collective willingness of current senior management in both NPS and the CRCs to apply lipstick to what is plainly a pig - last nights grotesque HMPPS award ceremony being a particularly nauseating example.    

Summary

In 2014 and 2015 the Government introduced major structural reforms to the probation system, which included changes to who delivered probation services and what was delivered as part of probation. These reforms were known as Transforming Rehabilitation (TR). The TR reforms sought to:

• Extend statutory rehabilitation to offenders serving custodial sentences of less than 12 months;
• Introduce nationwide ‘Through the Gate’ resettlement services for those leaving prison;
• Open up the market to new rehabilitation providers to get the best out of the public, voluntary and private sectors;
• Introduce new payment incentives for market providers to focus relentlessly on reforming offenders;
• Split the delivery of probation services between the National Probation Service (offenders at high risk of harm) and Community Rehabilitation Companies (low and medium risk offenders); and
• Reduce reoffending.

In this Report we examine the many serious issues that have arisen as part of those reforms and propose some short and medium-term solutions. The scale of the issues facing the sector is of great concern to us given that evidence suggests that if probation services are delivered well they can have a positive impact on the prospects of someone receiving probation support and wider society.

Set out below are some of our main conclusions and recommendations.

Contracts

The National Audit Office identified in a Report in December 2017 that the Ministry of Justice had had to change the fixed-cost assumptions in their contracts with CRCs from 20% to 77%. In this Report we conclude that this raises serious questions about the Ministry of Justice’s reluctance to challenge overoptimistic bids and its ability to let contracts. We also call for there to be more transparency on the changes made to the Ministry’s contracts with CRCs and what the Ministry expects to get in return for additional funding negotiated by providers.

In this Report we criticise the Ministry’s constant renegotiation of CRC contracts but we welcome the Ministry being open to the idea of terminating contracts due to poor performance with CRCs before they are due to expire in 2022. If any contracts are terminated prior to 2022 we caution that transition plans must be in place which make sure that: offenders receive the support they require to be rehabilitated, and their risk of reoffending does not increase. The Ministry should undertake a public consultation on any further changes to ensure a wide range of views on contractual arrangements. This public consultation should consider the number of CRCs and the bodies eligible to bid for CRC contracts.

Provider performance

CRC performance in reducing reoffending, particularly the number of times an offender reoffends, has been disappointing. We conclude that we do not think that the payment by results mechanism provides sufficient incentives to providers to reduce reoffending, but we also do not believe that CRCs should carry full responsibility for poor performance in reducing reoffending. We recommend that the Ministry of Justice review the payment by results mechanism and set out where it should be amended.

The Ministry of Justice has not been applying the financial penalties (service credits) as envisaged in the contracts with CRCs and it remains unclear to us how the Ministry of Justice is tackling underperformance on a day-to-day basis. We call on the Ministry to set out what other steps it is taking to address underperformance.

NPS-CRC split

Under the TR reforms, offenders were split between the NPS and CRCs according to their risk of harm. This has complicated the delivery of probation services and created a “two-tier” system. There are co-ordination challenges and despite work going on at a local and national level to try and resolve these issues, problem remain. A swift resolution to these problems is needed. The Rate Card (the list of available specialist services and programmes that CRCs offer and which the NPS can purchase from the CRC) processes are cumbersome and create barriers for the NPS to use these services.

This split causes problems in the delivery of probation services as the risk of an offender can change throughout their time on probation. We call on the Government to ask HMI Probation to conduct a review of how offenders should be distributed between the NPS and CRCs, and to investigate the impact of changing offender risk and how the NPS and CRCs manage this matter.

The voluntary sector

We find in this Report that the Government have failed to open up the probation market, a key aim of the then Government when they introduced the TR reforms. The voluntary sector is less involved in probation than they were before the TR reforms were implemented. This is of deep concern to us given the real benefits that the voluntary sector, especially smaller organisations, can bring to probation. There is a lack of transparency on which voluntary sector organisations are involved in probation contracts. We recommend that the Ministry of Justice publishes more information on probation supply chains and considers what benefits might be gained from reintroducing targets for voluntary sector involvement. We also recommend that the Government should consider whether involving some of the smaller, more specialised voluntary sector organisations could be incentivised.

We also call on the Ministry of Justice to look at the contractual barriers to greater voluntary sector involvement, including those relating to sub-contracts.

Staff

Staff morale is at an “all-time low” and staff have high caseloads, in some instances they are handling cases for which they do not have adequate training, and they feel de-professionalised. This is the concerning evidence that we heard. We call on the Ministry of Justice to publish a probation workforce strategy, which covers staff in the NPS and CRCs, setting out the basics with regard to professional standards, training and maximum caseloads/workloads.

Short custodial sentences

We find it extremely worrying that sentencer confidence in community alternatives to short custodial sentences is so low, particularly as the latter have worse outcomes in terms of reoffending. We recommend that the Government should introduce a presumption against short custodial sentences, as the Scottish Government have indicated they will do.

Under the TR reforms compulsory 12-month post-sentence supervision was extended to short custodial offenders. We find that this one-size fits all approach lacks the flexibility to meet the varying needs of offenders. We call on the Government to consider getting rid of this requirement.

Through the Gate (TTG)

One of the key components of the TR reforms was that all offenders would receive an element of continuous support from custody into the community. The current TTG provision merely signposts offenders to other organisations and is wholly inadequate. We recommend that the Ministry of Justice reviews the purpose of TTG and the support it provides to offenders (including whether it should introduce a prisoner discharge pack, based on need). We also recommend that real consideration should be given to whether it is appropriate to release prisoners, with few family ties, from custody on a Friday because access to Government services can be difficult.

The TR reforms introduced a 12-week intervention point: 12 weeks prior to release, pre-release resettlement activity (such as arranging accommodation, dealing with finance, benefits and debts and support related to education, training and employment) commences. We find that this approach is too inflexible and does not reflect the varying, and often complex, needs of offenders. We propose that offenders should begin receiving pre-release resettlement activity no later than 12 weeks prior to release.

Types of activities and frequency of contact

There has been evidence following the TR reforms that some CRC providers supervise their offenders remotely, over the telephone. We conclude that kiosk meetings are never likely to be appropriate and that telephone supervision should only be used in exceptional circumstances and not in isolation. Further, delivery of probation services must be supported by credible evidence. The Ministry of Justice should set out its minimum expectations to providers on the balance between remote and face-to-face supervision and on where providers meet those they are supervising.

We were concerned that only one in two individuals are supervised by the same officer throughout their case given the strong evidence that continuity of support allows a trusting relationship to be developed. National guidance should be introduced.

We heard in our inquiry that some of the work offenders were required to do under unpaid work orders was meaningless. We recommend that, where possible, unpaid work should contribute to the local community and be linked to education and training.

Specific needs of offenders

The issues facing offenders on probation are not all within the gift of probation services to resolve, and therefore a cross-Government approach is needed and organisations need to work together.

There are strong links between homelessness and reoffending, therefore we find that it is unacceptable that any local council has been able to deem an individual who has served a custodial sentence as making themselves intentionally homeless. We call on the Government to amend its guidance for Local Authorities to make it explicit that an individual who is homeless because of having served a custodial sentence should be deemed vulnerable for the purposes of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. We further recommend that the UK Government should work with the Welsh Government to ensure that their homelessness legislation takes due account of the risks of reoffending.

Currently offenders cannot apply for Universal Credit until they are released from custody. For many this can mean that they have the £46 discharge grant to live on for a number of weeks. We call on the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions to enable offenders serving custodial sentences to apply for Universal Credit (UC) prior to their release from custody so that they receive UC on the day of release. In the interim we recommend that the Ministry of Justice set up a transitional credit fund for those offenders who have insufficient funds to provide for the basics.

Longer-term future of Transforming Rehabilitation

On the longer-term future of the TR reforms we conclude that we are unconvinced that the TR model can ever deliver an effective or viable probation service. We recommend that the Ministry of Justice initiate a review into the long-term future and sustainability of delivering probation services under the models introduced by the TR reforms, including how performance under the TR system might compare to an alternative system for delivering probation.

--oo00oo--

Is the current system salvageable?

193. We did not receive any evidence which took the view that the current system was without fault and did not require any changes in the short to medium-term. There was however no overall agreement over whether TR had a long-term future: several submissions indicated that the system was salvageable but a large number of witnesses also thought that it was not. In oral evidence Switchback, a London-based rehabilitation charity, acknowledged that there were problems with the current system but believed these could be fixed: some of the principles at the heart of TR “were good ones, which could be revisited”. Some witnesses, including Shelter, took the view that TR was still suffering from “implementation issues”.

194. HM Chief Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, agreed in evidence to a question from the Committee that “the system [was] fundamentally flawed”. Unison told us that to date there had been a series of “stop-gap, sticking-plaster approaches” to the problems facing the sector, and “nothing other than a fundamental root and branch review and the reestablishment of a unified service will sort the problem out”. Other witnesses also agreed that returning to public ownership was the only option.

195. The Minister of State, Rory Stewart OBE MP, in oral evidence was more optimistic about the long-term future of the current system. He explained that the current probation system was “salvageable”. He also cautioned against another transformation:

Some of the problems that we are facing are problems of managing radical change. I can understand why people think that the current system has serious flaws, but I emphasise that there would be considerable costs in trying to reinvent the system yet again.

When should a review take place?

196. As we expressed earlier in this Report there has been a lack of transparency regarding previous reviews. The Ministry of Justice’s written submission appeared to indicate a preference for a piecemeal approach, rather than a wholesale review of the system. It explained that the Ministry was keeping the probation system under review and lessons learned would inform “the next generation of services”.

197. A number of witnesses, including Police and Crime Commissioners, a police officer, trade unions, academics and charities, called for an “immediate review” or for a review to start as soon as possible of the TR reforms. Unison surveyed its members to inform its submission: 78% of respondents supported a review taking place immediately. Several witnesses also called for a review within six to 12 months.

198. While some witnesses, including HMI Probation, stressed the importance of such a review taking place they also emphasised that the current contracts “cannot just be brought to a sudden halt”. Some witnesses, including David Chantler, a former Chief Probation Officer of West Mercia Probation, and Clinks, explained that commencing a review immediately would mean that a replacement to TR could be in place in time for the current contracts end date (expected to be 31 January 2022 although The Times reported on 14 June that the Government intended to terminate the contracts in 2020 and reduce the number of CRCs to 14 (from 21)). Others, particularly CRCs, called for “a period of calm” and “for sufficient time [to] pass so that [CRC] innovation and impact [could] be measured”. These providers varied in their views on when they thought a review of probation should take place, with some calling for a review now, others in two years’ time and other CRCs calling for a contract extension and a review after the seven-year contract.

199. Other witnesses, such as Business in the Community, a charity, stressed the importance of a review looking at the wider picture, including other areas of the criminal justice system and changes and challenges that they were facing. Shelter explained that the review also needed to ensure that lessons were learned from providers’ experience.

200. The Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms are not meeting the then Government’s aims. We are unconvinced that as things stand the TR model can ever deliver an effective or viable probation service. We recommend that the Ministry of Justice should initiate a review into the long-term future and sustainability of delivering probation services under the models introduced by the TR reforms, including how performance under the TR system might compare to an alternative system for delivering probation. The Government should publish its review, in full, by 1 February 2019. Given the issues which have arisen due to the speedy implementation of the TR reforms and lack of piloting, any new model must be thoroughly planned and tested.

CRC Winners and Losers

April 26th saw the MoJ publish the reoffending rates relating to CRCs and 11 out of 21 of them hit PbR targets. It looks like the MoJ are going to have to find another way of cooking the books in order to bail them out:-

Final and Interim Proven Reoffending statistics for the Community Rehabilitation Companies and the National Probation Service

1. Introduction 

This publication provides the final results for the third offender cohort, April to June 2016. Final results for October to December 2015 and January to March 2016 were published in October 2017 and January 2018 respectively. The results are based on a one-year proven reoffending measure for adult offenders being managed in the community in England and Wales by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) under Payment by Results (PbR) arrangements, and by the National Probation Service (NPS). This is the measure against which CRCs will be assessed for the PbR element of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. 

The following two reoffending measures will be used to assess CRC and NPS performance:

• the binary rate (proportion of offenders who reoffend) 
• the frequency rate (the average number of reoffences per reoffender) 

The performance of each CRC in reducing reoffending, on both the binary and frequency measures, will be assessed against the baseline year 20112 . Furthermore, the binary rate for each CRC is subject to adjustment for changes in the case mix of offenders being supervised, using the Offender Group Reconviction Scale (OGRS), version 4/G3, to allow performance to be assessed against the baseline. 

In addition to the final results, the publication also includes interim proven reoffending statistics for the July to September 2016, October to December 2016, January to March 2017 and April to June 2017 offender cohorts. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) included proposals in its July 2015 consultation, to provide early insights into CRC and NPS performance in reducing reoffending. These have been produced since October 2016 and are based on a reoffending-to-date measure. 

This bulletin was developed in response to the consultation and will provide final results and interim proven reoffending statistics for the following offender cohorts: 

• PbR eligible offenders managed by CRCs 
• Offenders managed by the NPS who meet the same eligibility criteria as those in the CRC PbR cohorts 

It is important to note that, while interim results provide useful and timely information, they will only give a broad indication of progress and, therefore, care should be taken when interpreting them. The measure against which CRCs will be assessed for PbR will be based on the final results, compared against a 2011 baseline. 

Final results for the July to September 2016, October to December 2016, January to March 2017 and April to June 2017 CRC offender cohorts will be published in July 2018, October 2018, January 2019 and April 2019 respectively. 

2. Final reoffending rates for CRC and NPS – April to June 2016 quarterly cohort 

Final results for the October to December 2015 offender cohort and the January to March 2016 offender cohort were published in October 2017 and January 2018 respectively. This publication contains the third set of final results, for the April to June 2016 quarterly offender cohort. They are based on a cohort of offenders being managed in the community under Payment by Results arrangements by CRCs following probation reforms. All offenders have been subject to the full one-year follow-up period and the additional six-month waiting period as detailed in the guide to proven reoffending statistics. Comparisons of performance between different CRCs and previous cohorts can now be made by comparing the adjusted binary rates. 

Key results: 

1. There have been statistically significant reductions in the adjusted binary reoffending rate for 11 of the 21 CRCs in the April to June 2016 cohort when compared to the 2011 baseline reoffending rates. 

2. For one CRC, Warwickshire & West Mercia, there has been a statistically significant increase in the binary reoffending rate. 

Main limitations: 

1. We cannot say which CRCs are meeting their frequency targets from a single quarterly cohort, as frequency targets are based on annual cohorts. The next annual cohort will be the 2016/17 annual cohort, due to be published in January 2019. It will include eligible offenders that began their probation between April 2016 and March 2017. 

2. This is the second publication to feature interim results for all the quarterly cohorts that will make up the 2016/17 annual cohort but it is too early to assess the progress of CRCs against their frequency targets. 

3. It remains the case that comparisons cannot be made between CRCs and NPS due to the difference in the nature of offenders being managed. 

Comparison to previous final results: 

The final results for April to June 2016 are the third set of final results to be published. Figure 1 compares this most recent set of final results to the previous sets of final results. 

1. Five CRCs have been in the non-payment region in all three final cohorts; seven have been in the payment region in all three final cohorts. 

2. Warwickshire & West Mercia CRC are in the deduction region for a second time after the October to December 2015 cohort. 

3. South Yorkshire CRC were in the deduction region in October to December 2015 but moved into the non-payment region for the January to March 2016 and April to June 2016 cohorts.


3. Interim results 

The interim results provide a broad indication of progress. They should be more reliable for earlier cohorts, where the follow-up and waiting periods are closer to having fully elapsed. The figures presented in the tables should be interpreted with caution for two main reasons:

1. They are interim estimates which are based on provisional data and a reoffending-to-date measure, rather than a measure with defined follow-up and waiting periods. 

2. The binary results have not been adjusted for the mix of offenders in the cohort. Before performance is assessed against the 2011 baseline, the final set of binary results for each cohort will be adjusted for changes in the case mix of offenders being supervised using the OGRS4/G. 

Furthermore, the number of offenders identified in the measurable cohort may still change and, hence, change the characteristics of the cohort. This could impact both the binary rate and the frequency rate. It, therefore, remains the case that no conclusions can be drawn until final results are published. 

Key results: 

1. With the exception of the Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire & Hertfordshire October to December 2016 quarterly offender cohort, the average OGRS4/G scores for all four offender cohorts show all CRCs are managing offenders that are less likely to reoffend compared to the baseline year of 2011. It should, therefore, be expected that the OGRS adjusted binary rates will be higher than the unadjusted binary rates for most CRCs. 

2. No CRC in any cohort is currently in the deduction region based on their current interim figures, although it is possible this will change when the binary reoffending rates are OGRS adjusted. 

3. South Yorkshire; Staffordshire & West Midlands and Warwickshire & West Mercia CRCs are currently in the non-payment region based on their respective unadjusted binary rates for the July to September 2016 offender cohort. 

4. Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire & Hertfordshire; Durham Tees Valley; South Yorkshire; Staffordshire & West Midlands and West Yorkshire CRCs are currently in the nonpayment region based on their respective unadjusted binary rates for the October to December 2016 offender cohort.