Local v Central

In order to try and keep the discussion going, I think it helps to highlight reflective contributions, such as this from earlier this morning:-

Over the years I have seen officers struggle to communicate with those they supervise and take the upward route….once promoted they become (at least in their eyes) super officers who were promoted on the basis of their excellence and seek to disgorge their ‘experience’ to those they left behind, confident that their limited skill set is the way. This group have moved now into the higher echelons of probation and as such we have this disconnect between how they think we should work and the reality. 

The reality is that we work with a socially damaged group who seek to return to what they know and are comfortable with and breaking or even impeding that return is difficult and is only achieved incrementally and usually involves failure along the way. I’ve worked and mentored with some fantastic young recruits who have a natural compassion which I see eroded from them slowly but surely by the cold hand of central control.

Regional differences exist yet probations strength is local…not central and the constant launches and re launches are all centrally driven….OMIC [Offender Management in Custody] is an idea that has struggled from the start, One HMPpS will give control to exactly the wrong group…if we are looking at a redesign, local PDUs, loosely linked to other local areas with a local committee of volunteers providing a steer…..will it come to pass? Not a chance as it would take power and control from the top…..I once wrote a PSR on an RSO [Registered Sex Offender], supervised him throughout his sentence and managed him in the community for six years…….not reoffended to date and still sends me a Christmas card…..it worked for him and it was as local as it could have been………

Radical Rethinking Required

I notice the latest Probation Journal has a forthright editorial:-   

Probation is not a panacea for the prison crisis

The crisis in prisons in England and Wales has been brought sharply into focus. On 16 October 2023, the Justice Secretary announced measures aimed at reducing pressure on the prisons, caused in part by a record high of 88,225 people in custody (Chalk, 2023). As if this is not cause enough for concern, forecasts indicate that the population is due to rise even higher in the coming years with predictions that by March 2027 the population may rise to anywhere between 93,100 and 106,300 people (MoJ, 2023). It is clear from the Ministry's explanation of its forecasts the government's own policies (as well as the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) backlog of cases in the courts) are a central driver of prison population growth. In recent decades, almost every government policy relating to crime and justice has ratcheted up systemic pressure resulting in more people spending longer in prison. This includes longer sentences for certain offences and changes to mechanisms for prisoner release. Not to mention of course the people who remain imprisoned under the egregious Indeterminate Public Protection (IPP) sentence, which although abolished in 2012, has still left approximately 3000 people languishing in prison. While the Conservative party has been in power for over 12 years, this punitive policy direction has a longer lineage, IPPs were introduced in 2003 by a Labour Home Secretary, who has since regretted the injustice.

The government's announcement of measures to reduce pressures on prison is an exemplar of confused logic. The statement to parliament by the Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk begins by emphasising a record of increased punitiveness: Longer sentences for certain offences, proposals to expand the circumstances in which whole life sentences can be applied, and proposals that people convicted of rape and equivalent sexual offences will serve their entire sentences in custody (i.e., they will not be eligible for discretionary release). More prisons are to be built in the medium to longer term, but to address the imminent crisis in capacity more “lower level offenders” are to be released from prison early and placed under the supervision of the Probation Service. In the longer term, the government proposes to legislate to end the use of short-term prison sentences (of 12 months or less), by imposing suspended sentences that will involve community supervision (Chalk,2023). Some of the other headline-grabbing proposals include commissioning prison places overseas to reduce the imminent pressure on the prison system. While it is surely right to seek to curb the use of short prison sentences, placing further emphasis on the ‘toughness’ and enforceability of community sentences is part of the same circular logic that has led to this punitive-sum position in the first place. Moreover, this rhetoric fails to recognise the current parlous state of Probation Services in England and Wales, which are facing high levels of staff vacancies and unmanageable workloads (HMIP, 2023).

The relationship between the use of community sentences and prison is not straightforward. Various analyses including those based on data published by the Council of Europe in their SPACE statistics, which provides information on the numbers of people imprisoned and subject to community sanctions and measures (including probation) in member states, show that increasing the use of community sentences does not necessarily lead to a commensurate decline in prison populations (Aebi et al., 2022). In fact, in many contexts we see that expanding the use of community sentences can have an overall net-widening effect (Aebi et al., 2015), with more people brought under the ambit the criminal justice system. Some of the reasons for this phenomenon include the fact that expanding the use of community sentences may displace other sanctions (such as fines or discharges), or toughening enforcement policies and practices may lead to “backdoor” entry into prison even where prison was not the initial sanction imposed by a court. In England and Wales, the introduction of the post-sentence supervision requirement under the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 is a prominent recent example of net-widening (Cracknell, 2018). When this measure was introduced, it was intended to address the issue of re-offending of people sentenced to short-term prison sentences (i.e., prison sentences of less than 12 months), but as various analyses have shown the overall effects have led to a treadmill effect, propelling people further through a broken system (Cracknell, 2021).

The government's modelling predicts that one of the drivers of the potential future growth of the prison population will be an increase in the numbers of people on both determinate and indeterminate sentences being recalled to prison, precisely because of the growth of the numbers of people in prison (MoJ, 2023: 6):

The recall population is projected to increase for the duration of the projection period. The increase is partly due to the expected growth of the determinate population – this will result in a larger pool of offenders on licence after serving the custodial part of their sentence, and a proportion of this group will be recalled to custody. About 20% of the offenders currently in the recall population have been recalled to prison following an indeterminate sentence. This cohort of the recall population is also projected to increase over the projection period because more offenders will leave prison following an indeterminate sentence and therefore more people will be eligible to be recalled to custody.

Or put more simply – unless something radically changes the system will continue to perpetuate itself. What the government proposes is not radical change. As some commentators have noted shifting pressure onto a creaking probation system, which has been buffeted by years of structural reforms and with significant staffing shortfalls will not be a panacea and will place further pressures on a probation system that is in crisis (Probation Institute, 2023). All of this points to the need for more radical rethinking and reform of criminal justice, one in which the emphasis on punitiveness is decentred.

Finally, I want to conclude this editorial with a tribute to Nigel Stone. Remarkably this is the 40th year of Nigel's work on behalf of the journal in various capacities. Nigel served as the Editor of the journal from March 1983 to September 1997, before handing over the reins to Hindpal Singh Bhui. Over the years he has contributed numerous pieces to the journal and most recently he has been the ‘In Court’ stalwart, writing pithy analyses of court and sentencing matters of particular relevance to probation. This issue of the journal contains a typical example, spanning cases including the impact of delays in criminal proceedings, and cases involving sexual harm and relationship and family violence. We thank Nigel for all of his contributions.

Nicola Carr

Being a Probation Services Officer

This article from the Independent, based on an interview with a a PSO with five years experience, admirably encapsulates much of the discourse on the blog in recent time and deserves wide circulation in my view. Thanks go to regular contributor 'Getafix for drawing attention to it:-  

I joined the probation service as a job for life. But after five years, I’ve had enough

‘I never wanted it to come to this’: A probation worker tells Andy Gregory of the daily realities leaving her ‘completely overwhelmed’ as thousands leave the crisis-stricken service

When Mary joined the probation service in 2018, she believed she had found a job for life in helping offenders to rehabilitate back into society and protecting the public.
But just five years later, she has decided to follow more than 2,000 of her colleagues who quit the service in the year to March – a tenth of the full-time workforce.

Following a failed privatisation drive and several high-profile murders in which the probation service had wrongly labelled the killers “medium-risk”, the system is in crisis. Morale is low among staff, two thirds of whom say they are struggling under unmanageable workloads, as last-ditch government plans to free up space in overcrowded prisons threaten to heap an influx of new offenders into their care.

Mary, who is one of around a dozen probation services officers (PSO) in her office, told The Independent of having to personally handle 65 low and medium-risk cases – with inspectors judging that 50 is the limit at which officers can effectively deliver on rehabilitation and public protection.

“That’s 65 different individuals whose risk needs to be managed, most of them being in the community,” she said. “It’s very anxiety-provoking working in these conditions because you just don’t know what’s going to happen, and unfortunately with a lot of practitioners things do get missed.

“Even when they’re in custody, you’re still attending the panels, doing paperwork, reports ... it’s never-ending. I don’t think there’s enough hours in the day to do this job.”

When people under the supervision of probation are charged with committing serious further offences, the official reviews of these cases are circulated among all staff. There were more than 400 reviews in the year to April. When 86 of these cases were analysed by inspectors, 30 involved murder and 20 rape, and in nearly half, the ‘risk of harm’ assessments were found to be inaccurate or incomplete.

“The first thing [the reviews] will say is: ‘caseloads are too high, the practitioner couldn’t manage, this was missed because the practitioner is overworked and had to remember 101 other things’,” Mary said, adding: “It just feels like it’s falling on deaf ears.”

“We are completely overwhelmed, morale is low, and we have multiple people in our offices on long-term sick leave – so six months or more – because it is so stressful,” she continued. Across the service, more than half of sick days last year were related to mental health, which probation inspectors also say is “a reflection of the stress that many staff feel themselves under”.

“The main thing is the lack of staff,” said Mary. “People leave the service because it’s too stressful, but the fact that nobody else is there to share the load – it’s a lot harder.”

But there is strain across the system. “A lot of the work we do, we take on from other services,” said Mary, who received six weeks of training prior to starting as a PSO in 2018.

“It took me two days last week to work on a housing referral because it had 10 pages. That’s not my job, I don’t work for housing, but I know that this person cannot be on the streets of London, because that could make them susceptible to reoffending and put the public in danger.

“We don’t want that, so now I’m doing everybody else’s job plus my own. It becomes very, very frustrating and you have no work-life balance. I left the office at 10pm last night. I have a key for my office, because I stay there so late that I have to lock up. As soon as I get home I’m in my bed because I’m so tired, so drained. I wake up at 6 o’clock again to do it all again. No trainee would see that and think it’s a life they want.”

While a national recruitment drive means there were 2,600 people training to become probation officers as of 31 March, the most recent data showed nearly one in six of trainees were giving up.

“They are thrown in headfirst a lot of the time, which I think is what scares them off,” said Mary, who is in her 30s. “They’re supposed to be protected with the amount of work they have and cases they have, but what I find is that, when the office is in need, then that’s scrapped.”

Mary said she had seen trainees leave with just two months left to complete of their 21-month probation officer training, after hearing their colleagues with 20 or 30 years experience warn they have never “seen the service in the state that it’s in” – and that “it’s not sustainable”.

While Mary believes her older colleagues “are only here because they feel they can’t go anywhere else” and are “just waiting for retirement age”, younger recruits are using their experience in probation “as a stepping stone” into other government departments, companies and charities.

“A lot are moving into the charity sector to do what they had intended to do in probation,” said Mary. “It’s very hard to do the therapies and rehabilitative work when you’ve got 65 people to do risk assessments, processes, you’re constantly in meetings with other professionals.”

Warning that “we are doing a disservice to people who really need rehabilitation”, she said: “We really are their first port of call to lead a positive life and get back on track. But because we can’t dedicate that time with them and have that one-to-one rapport building kind of relationship, they don’t get what they truly need. And then what happens? They end up back in the service, and the service is again under pressure. So it’s a revolving door.

“And in the meantime we have really big crimes ... and lives are lost unfortunately – we are responsible for a lot and not being able to do what we truly want to do has an impact, it has an impact on everybody.”

Meanwhile, the service is bracing itself to deal with more offenders in the community. In eleventh-hour plans to free up space in prisons, justice secretary Alex Chalk announced last month – with immediate effect – that inmates can now be released up to 18 days early, and is also seeking to ensure that many offenders with sentences of up to 12 months are spared jail.

But Mary plans to have left the probation service by the time the latter change comes into effect.

“I have given it everything I can and I don’t have anything more left for it. I never wanted it to come to this. This was a job for life. It was a service that I definitely believed in and purposely studied to be involved with – and I’ve been in it for less than 10 years, and I’m ready to leave it.”

--oo00oo--

The article generated this comment:-

I was in the probation service for just over 20 years, retiring in the late 90's, it was never this bad despite us undergoing massive changes back then. We did not like it when all our reports had to pass the scrutiny of a colleague, then a few years later we did not like it when they didn't! Change is not welcomed. The introduction of computers was largely experienced as more work not less.

My heart goes out to all the dedicated folk like Mary, who have had their working lives ruined by political leaders who have no real idea how the criminal justice system works and have largely destroyed it rather like they have many other social services and the health service.

But 6 weeks training!!!????? (presumably on the back of a relevant degree or is that followed by the 21 months?) I had 2 years training on the then 1+1 Home office course, the first as a student in studies and on placements and the second, doing the job with a protected case load. Interestingly my pay in my second year of training was higher than it had previously been as a Surgical Ward Sister. Nurses have never been well paid!

If you do not have knowledge of the 'coal face delivery' you should not be able to 'experiment' with new managerial ideas. You need to introduce new ideas that acknowledge real experience and accommodate new learning. Yes change has to be pushed but not by people who have no real understanding of what the job entails.

In particular this government's policies have adversely affected far too many people starting, with those that could be rehabilitated and more seriously the public who have not been adequately protected.

Matters Coming to a Head

The Independent caries a powerful piece outlining the probation crisis and how it cannot pick up any extra work to try and alleviate the prison crisis:-

Criminals released from prison ‘left free to kill’ as overstretched probation service in crisis

Exclusive: 59 offenders being monitored after leaving prison went on to be convicted of murder in just one year – with at least five cases blamed on failings in an overstretched probation service

Mistakes which led to dangerous criminals released from prison going on to kill could be repeated as new government plans heap further pressure on a probation service already in crisis, The Independent has been told.

Officials are dealing with “appallingly” high workloads due to an exodus of both staff and experience, union leaders warn – prompting fears that convicts will be free to strike again. There are also concerns that the system will not be able to cope with plans to send fewer convicted criminals to jail – part of the government’s scramble to free up space in overcrowded prisons – without radical change. The unions are holding a crisis meeting this week with justice secretary Alex Chalk to discuss plans for low-level offenders to be spared jail and to demand more funding.

The aunt of Zara Aleena, a young lawyer murdered last year by a man wrongly freed from prison despite his violent background, warned that other families could suffer a similar tragedy to hers without government action.

Warnings about the perilous state of the probation service came as:

• Ministry of Justice figures for 2022 show 59 people have been convicted of murder committed while either in the care of probation or by those who had recently left supervision
• Mistakes within probation have been directly blamed in the murders of at least five people in the past two years
• One union said orders to release prisoners up to 18 days early – which have recently come into effect – are already increasing pressure on probation staff
• Figures show there were 2,390 fewer full-time probation officers than the required 6,780 as of June – a shortfall of 35 per cent
• Nearly 1,650 probation officers have quit their jobs over the past two years – a sharp rise since 2021. Two-thirds of those who quit in the last year had five or more years’ experience

Speaking to The Independent, Aleena’s aunt Farah Naz said: “The compromised and overstretched probation service, coupled with officers experiencing low morale, heightens the risk of additional errors, potentially leading to grave consequences and – at its worst – a tragic recurrence akin to the murder of our Zara.”

Tory MP Elliot Colburn, who chairs a cross-party parliamentary group on restorative justice, added: “While we’re waiting for investment and trainees to come through the system, how do we make sure that we are still able to deliver a good and safe level of service? We don’t want to end up with another Zara Aleena case, and absolutely that will be going through people’s heads at this time.”

But Ian Lawrence, head of the probation union Napo, warned that this risk remains “until we see politicians take steps to offer better support for the service, work with us to find ways to reduce workloads and motivate experienced staff”.

He described hearing “harrowing” accounts from newly trained employees – some handling twice the number of cases they should be – suffering “nervous meltdowns” and fearful of going to work.

While Napo backs plans for prison sentences of less than a year to be scrapped for some criminals, Mr Lawrence warned there is “no way” to suddenly increase capacity in probation without sacrificing existing aspects of the job, which sees officers supervise and rehabilitate offenders both in prison and in the community and assess their risk to the public.

He added: “If senior politicians – who have now woken up to the fact that probation matters – want staff to help them out of the hole that they’ve dug for themselves on prison overcrowding, then they need to engage with us in a way that motivates staff to undertake this work. That includes seriously talking to us about the need for a paid remuneration package to help us through this crisis.”

Sir Bob Neill, Tory chair of the MPs’ justice committee, said that while Mr Chalk’s plans are “the right thing to be doing”, there must be “a proper awareness of the resourcing implications” for the already “very hard-pushed” probation service.

Ms Naz said ministers’ plans to reduce prison numbers and reoffending rates “require a comprehensive, sustainable approach that won’t further demoralise an already beleaguered service. If staff morale remains low, as it seems to be the case, mistakes are likely to persist,” Ms Naz said, raising concerns over the impact that further overburdening a service “already in crisis” could have on morale.

In the year to April, more than 400 charges for serious further offences were brought against offenders either in the care of probation officers, or within 28 days of leaving supervision. Out of 86 cases analysed by inspectors, 30 involved murders and 20 related to rape. “Risk of harm” assessments were found to have been inaccurate or incomplete in 44 per cent of these cases, and 42 per cent of perpetrators had previously been assessed as medium-risk.

Mr Lawrence said: “Our members have to work under that shadow of ‘have we looked at the case properly when I’ve got twice the workload I should have?’ People are under so much pressure that they cannot always guarantee they do the necessary checks and balance. Now if we get an influx of early release prisoners back into the community we’ve got to be sure that the supervision leaves no doubts about them risk-wise. So we can only do that if some of the other work we do drops off the edge.”

At this week’s meeting, unions are trying to determine which parts of probation work can be cut back, said Mr Lawrence: “Unless the government does something to retain staff, the haemorrhage is going to get worse.”

Just one of the 31 Probation Delivery Units (PDUs) inspected between June 2021 and July 2023 was rated as “good”, with 15 given the lowest rating of “inadequate”, then-chief probation inspector Justin Russell said last month. On average, each was scored just five out of a possible 27.

Two-thirds of probation officers described their caseload as “unmanageable”, up from 50 per cent two years ago, said Mr Lawrence. In what inspectors say is “a reflection of the stress” many employees are under, 55 per cent of working days lost to staff sickness in the past year were due to mental health issues – up from 43 per cent five years earlier.

Confronted over the huge staff vacancies and “unmanageable” caseloads by a House of Lords committee last month, Mr Chalk was asked whether the probation service could cope with any more work. Mr Chalk replied: “We’re completely onto it, lots of resources are going into this area, and I think you will see a recovering and improving probation service over the coming months and years.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Our hard-working probation officers do incredibly important work protecting the public and helping offenders turn their backs on crime. That is why alongside our long-term reforms to prisons to keep the public safe from crime, we are ensuring the Probation Service is well resourced by investing £155m extra a year compared to 2019 to recruit more staff and reduce workloads."

Sign The Petition!

I don't usually post at this time of night, but there's always the exception such as a change.org petition just launched and wouldn't it be great to give it a boost asap. I'm assuming there is the option not to have personal details published:- 

The Impending Collapse Of The Probation Service - Enough Is Enough

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Probation Service is well over its maximum capacity to manage dangerous offenders. It is in absolute meltdown, at a point of total chaotic internal destruction, the likes of which have never been seen before.

Following the Damien Bendall inquest probation officers are voicing their fears that more and more serious further offences will occur, resulting in either life changing damage to the victims, or indeed death.

Officers live in constant daily fear that one or more of their cases may be the next Damien Bendall. They are dangerously overworked with most officers being well over the 110% accepted caseload of the Workload Management Tool. Many are holding caseloads close to 200% or more. This means that the offenders they supervise, both in the community and on licence from prison do not complete the rehabilitation work they need. Many complete their entire community orders and prison licences without ever receiving any rehabilitation at all.

A high level of offenders have multiple probation officers during their supervision, as officers are being signed off on long term sickness or are leaving the Probation Service in a state debilitating trauma, mental and emotional breakdown.

It is well known and accepted fact that if an offender retains the same probation officer for their entire sentence then they are more likely to build trust with their officer, leading them to being willing to complete the necessary rehabilitation work they need. With multiple probation officers coming in and out of their supervision there is no continuity. The rehabilitation simply doesn’t get done and officers miss vital risk warnings because communication between staff breaks down.

Victims and their families want justice through staff having the capacity to actually do the job. They aren’t getting justice when probation officers have high numbers of offenders coming in each day, and only have time to spend 10 minutes with each of them. The reality is officers spend more time doing administrative data input tasks than they do with the offenders.

Probation officers spend the majority of their time writing up case notes, making referrals to housing, mental health and substance misuse and other agencies, typing OASys documents that each take hours each to complete, making and taking phone calls to social services, housing agencies, courts, police etc, completing safeguarding checks, doing MAPPA and MARAC updates, breaches, parole reports and attending parole hearings, answering emails, attending teams calls and staff supervision, and much much more.

Everyone would agree this is all very important work, but there are not enough staff to do it. Somewhere in there they are also expected to complete home visits to offenders to ensure they are living where they say they are, and check for potential the risks that may be present at those accommodations. Staff use their own cars to complete home visits, which leave many feeling vulnerable, as offenders then have their personal licence plates. Staff also face daily abuse and threat of physical assault from offenders they are working with. Offenders often attend their appointments under the influence of drugs and alcohol or in a state of unmanaged, poor mental health. This serves to further erode the already very low morale of remaining staff, and heightens their fears for their own physical, mental and emotional safety.

The stark reality of all of this is that the rehabilitation work that officers trained and specialised in does not get completed. Most officers do not even have time to get away from their computers to take their lunch breaks. Most work late into the evening and on weekends without extra pay, trying to stay on top of the endless flow of work.

A high number of probation staff end up on medication for depression and anxiety, in therapy, signed off sick with stress and trauma related illness such as PTSD and in a state of utter breakdown and burnout.

The Probation Service is unable to retain staff for all of the above reasons, and experienced staff are leaving in very high numbers. A large proportion of trainees either leave before the end of their training or as soon as they qualify because of the overwhelming levels of stress.

Probation staff are professionally trained. They joined to make positive change within the wider communities of society and to protect the public from the risks of serious harm. Currently they do not even have the ability to protect their own well-being. The traumatised are supervising the traumatised. Staff are being placed on capability procedures by managers for not being able to complete impossible levels of work. There are not enough hours in the day, and so officers are having to prioritise one high risk case over another, even though both cases have the potential to commit serious further offences, creating more victims and resulting in potential death.

New cases are allocated daily to staff who have reached maximum capacity and have nothing left to give. It impacts on their own well-being and that of their families.

Why would any probation officer stay and continue working in such a toxic environment? Their pay is low, the impact on them personally is high, and their desperate cries for support are ignored.

When the Probation Service was run as local Trusts they had more control over how work was managed, and were able to give offenders the time needed to complete the vital work integral to changing their offending behaviours. The move to privatise the Probation Service marked a devastating spiral into chaos, with vast numbers of experienced staff leaving the Service and going elsewhere. The reunification did not improve the situation. The decision to make the Probation Service part of the civil service, and a part of One HMPPS has led to even more experienced staff leaving. The Probation Service is in a very real state of collapse.

The profession is no longer a vocational career. Those that remain are struggling and broken, often unfit for employment elsewhere when they leave due to the high levels of trauma they suffer. Those with offenders who do commit serious further offences are left to live with debilitating guilt for the rest of their lives, even though they were beyond capacity and suffering stress related harm themselves, and could not have done anything more to prevent the incident from occurring.

Unless something drastically changes, the Probation Service will be run by a majority number of trainees and inexperienced newly qualified officers. Public protection will become a thing of the past. Members of the public will die as a result of more serious further offences being committed because staff do not have time to complete essential work.

Staff at every level are under extreme pressure leading to long term ill health and the development of new medical conditions.

Senior Probation Officers are under obligation to continue allocating cases to probation officers who are already being harmed by their overwhelming and excessive caseloads. Probation Delivery Unit heads MUST be held to account for their failures to protect their staff from serious harm within the context of their employment, and action MUST BE TAKEN NOW.

Enough is enough. The Probation Service is in critical state of breakdown. It is understaffed, overwhelmed and in dire need of greater resources.

To protect the remaining staff, and the public alike, things needs to drastically change and IT NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW.

--oo00oo--

Postscript 10/11/2023

"There is a new petition which supersedes this one. The new one, if it gains enough signatures will then be discussed by parliament. Please be patient as the new petition is currently undergoing clearance checks. As soon as it is given the all clear, it will go live and can be signed and shared far and wide. Hopefully it will have a positive impact for the well-being of everyone. The link to the new petition will be available in the same places you found this one." 

Sally Day

Update 03:55

It now reads thus "Petitions UK Government and Parliament

We’re checking this petition 19 people have already supported this petition.
We need to check it meets the petition standards before we publish it. Please try again in a few days."

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/651215/moderation-info

It Needs To Go Higher

Feelings continue to run high on the subject of unmanageable caseloads with a war of words breaking out between PO and SPO:-

Outrageous? Or truthful? Keep clapping. There IS a very distinct divide. Let’s not gaslight and pretend there isn’t. The divide is frontline POs / PSOs are drowning and SPOs just keep dumping more work on them instead of taking it higher and finding a solution. SPOs seem to be completely confused over their exit into management from casework. They don’t manage cases anymore. They manage staff who manage caseloads. They don’t have to do the level of work POs are literally sinking in. Because SPOs just add more on a daily basis.

If you don’t like the divide, go back to being a PO. See how long you last before you run off back to a non-caseload role, and continue to damage your colleagues. You are part of the problem. SPOs need to grow a backbone and take the problem higher. Stop punishing your teams for being humans. We’re not robots. We don’t have endless mental, emotional and professional capacity. SPOs aren’t ‘one of us.’ You're managers. We’re just the lowly frontline fools keeping you in a job. Your sense of entitlement that you can command how your broken staff - staff you helped to break - should feel is outrageous.

*****

On the basis of Probation Service Instructions Vs health and safety, duty of care, employment tribunals and general morality, I do not think SPOs should be overly confident that asking crumbling POs over 110% WMT “Where do you suggest the cases go instead” is a defensible position. My response would be, go ask your Head of PDU and RPD “Where do you suggest the cases go” and stop giving them to me!

--oo00oo--

But I don't understand why the issue isn't very firmly being passed up the food chain to PDU heads, Regional Probation Directors and now Area Executive Directors. I think we need to see some evidence they are doing something useful to justify their £100,000 plus salaries because a shedload more work is coming down the line for an already severely stretched probation service. 

Postscript

Thanks go to a reader for pointing me in the direction of an article from the European Journal of Probation published in November 2022 ‘Pushed from above and pushed from below’: Emotional labour and dual identities amongst senior probation officers in England and Wales. 

I'm tempted to say something heretical, such as I'm not at all sure what the purpose and relevance of this kind of endeavour is, not least because the language is often impenetrable, its readership I suspect is tiny and one must wonder how it might benefit practice. However, having thoroughly irritated academics, I'll restrict myself to quoting a couple of passages from the conclusion:-  

Our analysis sheds light not only on the role of the SPO in England and Wales but also on the PS itself. The probation service has become increasingly managerial in recent decades (along with myriad other public sector institutions) and the experiences of SPOs serves to underline how this is manifesting on the ground. That SPOs are responsible for performance management as well as developing practice and supporting staff, demonstrating the influence of 30 years of new public management and the challenges this brings to a staff group which is and remains value driven (Grant, 2016).

Ultimately, our analysis points to the demands of high workloads which are currently endemic across probation in England and Wales for both practitioners and SPOs. Whilst the impact of this on the quality of probation practice is recognised by HMI Probation (2020), it is clear from our research that high workloads present similar issues for frontline managers. There are – it would seem – significant risks to SPO well-being that have their roots in the tensions that exist in the SPO role and the emotional labour that is demanded from them. One solution here would be to introduce a clearer definition of the SPO role and reduce the amount of work they do. Another solution may be the introduction of a senior practitioner role which is often seen in the context of social work. This would have the effect of improving the amount and quality of support they can provide to frontline practitioners and, in turn, improve the quality of work done with people on probation.

SPOs find themselves stuck in the middle of an organisation which itself is dealing with high workloads, difficulties in recruitment and retention and questions over its legitimacy amongst the media and general public. However, SPOs play a crucial role in holding the two ends of the organisation together by being the link between what the organisation is trying to do, and the frontline workers who are responsible for putting policy into practice. Our research highlights the need for the probation service to do more to support SPOs as they navigate the ‘intrepid path’ between being held to account by senior managers, protecting the public, supporting staff and helping people on probation to desist from offending.

--oo00oo--

The mention of 'Senior Practitioners' made me smile as I recall the last time this idea was mooted. I well recall a conversation in the pub with a trusted colleague "hey, this sounds like you and me seeing as we're top of the pay scale and have no interest in being SPO's". Little did we know it just created an extra layer of managers that were eventually culled when spending cuts hit the old Probation Trusts.  

A Quart Does Not Fit a Pint Pot

Ok this has been going on for some time now and the argument has distilled into a war of words between POs and SPOs - the latter effectively wringing their hands and saying 'we care, BUT basically have to carry on following orders and allocate more work'. This is a fucking disgrace and what compounds it is the silence from unions; HMPPS Permanent Secretary; Chief Probation Officer; Justice Select Committee etc etc etc:-

“But then you allocate “your staff” more work the very next morning. How caring!” Where do you suggest the cases go instead? Cases continue to get sentenced, are they meant to stay unallocated, how would you feel as a victim of crime if that was the case?

******
What magical solution do you suggest for when there are no staff left to do the job? Victims and their families want justice through staff having the capacity to actually do the job. They aren’t getting justice when we have 15 people coming in a day, and only have time to spend 10 minutes with each of them because then we have their case notes to write up, referrals to do, oasys to update, phone calls to make to social services, housing, courts, police, safeguarding checks, MAPPA and MARAC updates, breaches, parole reports and hearings, emails, teams calls, staff supervision and the bloody list just keeps on going. All the while being micromanaged by incompetent SPOs that have no idea what they’re doing, to within an inch of our lives. We see cases for long enough to ask if they’ve been arrested and check they’re still living where they should be, and to give them another appointment. We don’t do any meaningful work with them anymore. There isn’t time. 

So what do you suggest? Allocating to overwhelmed staff until they collapse under the caseload isn’t working. A lunch break that doesn’t involve cramming food in our faces while we continue typing would be nice once a week but it doesn’t happen. There. Is. No. More. Capacity.

******
I would suggest the minimal work that is being delivered [to] such over- allocated cases is not justice for the victims, not delivering what the Court intended at sentencing, letting down those we supervise and causing harm to staff. I suggest our senior managers/ excellent leaders do what the prisons do, say very publicly Probation is at capacity and the plans we had to fix this have not worked. If the glass is full any intelligent person would stop pouring!

******

Under the Health and Safety act 1974, the employer has a duty of care to its staff, and we have a duty of care to ourselves, to ensure that we have a safe working environment. To protect ourselves we need to call in sick and report stress on the portal, and request stress risk assessments to be recorded and reviewed. If managers do not follow this process then the Foreseeability Notice that NAPO created, should be used more frequently as a preventative measure. My understanding is that the organisation / employer is data driven, and we need to provide this evidence to NAPO for them to present and and challenge at meetings, so they can address the workloads, trauma and stress within the organisation.

--oo00oo--

As far as I can see, in order to protect the health and well-being of staff, according to law drastic action of some sort is the inevitable direction of travel here. Staff are leaving in droves; going off sick; suffering PTSD; prospective new recruits being dissuaded; staff increasingly confiding in me or contributing anonymous accounts on the blog, all in direct contravention of civil service directives and code of practice. This is going to continue until there's a bloody big public row because any sane person knows things can't go on like this. You cannot get a quart into a pint pot.   

In Case You Miss It

Because this blog marches on at an alarming rate sometimes, it's quite likely significant contributions get missed, either because they are left on earlier posts, or the agenda changes and the discussion has moved on. For example, the following came in last night on an earlier post:- 

I’m an SPO and I always defend my team. I find the OM v SPO divide to be so unhelpful, and unfair. Huge workloads impact us all and I’m tirelessly trying to keep my team (and myself) afloat. We all need to unite to tackle the wider HMPPS issues, NOT divide. 

The comment about WMT- there is often nobody else to allocate to (unless you can magic some POs up) and cases have to be give an OM, which is difficult to do when people are at breaking point. I’ve been doing 50 + hours weeks for a prolonged period, to help manage the continued increased demand for PSRs. I will always chip in to see cases and do tasks. Just because you can’t see the work, doesn’t mean SPOs aren’t under huge stress too. The amount of unrealistic and unreasonable task put on middle managers is only increasing. My well-being is dwindling and efforts to keep staff well mostly go unmarked.

As for attendance warnings, we have to discuss all our decisions with an HR BP and often our reviews can be disregarded, unless we use our professional discretion/have a very good argument to not issue warnings. It’s a bit like the tick box a comment for OM judgement for risk assessments and enforcement, our skills as managers are being limited by Civil Service HR drivel. Over and out, from an exhausted SPO.

******

Mention of HR brought the following to mind from a week ago:-

I was looking at the sickness issues and found this reference of the SSCL health provider Optima. Pretty awful read and company we fund:-

Absolutely hideous job, started working and was never given any training, when I didn’t know how to do something, I would ask managers and then they would write me up a meeting with them saying that I should just know. Only reason I know anything about my job is because I’ve figured it out for myself! Management are awful, over work you for minimum wage. Management very unprofessional, saying things out of pocket and making you feel uncomfortable. Intimidation they love to use on you here, they will bully you!

Also say goodbye to annual leave because they will take it away when it’s already been approved last minute because they need you in! Awful working environment, offices grim and don’t think have been cleaned since 1973. Often no hand soap or loo roll, and say goodbye to tea and coffee! No staffroom. Incredibly understaffed no wonder! So will work you like a dog with no consideration having you do a thousand things at once! Be prepared to be micromanaged and treated like a child, constantly analysing everything you do and why you did it! 

Expect you to answer 50 emails a day whilst running a clinic, booking appointments, answering the phone that will never stop , running to grab bloods and vacs, having employees come in all day and a hundred other things! Also be prepared to be a personal secretary for the nurses and a IT technician.

Will also expect you to do all of this whilst management do nothing apart from badger you on why you haven’t started the million other things they need you do! Also, when you are looking for another job to leave optima HR will make a direct call to your manager to tell them you are actively looking to leave, and yes this actually happened! No sick days here! They will give you a formal meeting and warning for having a chest infection for 2 days off and expect doctors notes!

Ladies and gentleman welcome to the modern day work house! If you like the sound of all this then apply they would love the opportunity to run you into the ground and spit you out!

Date of experience: 05 October 2023

A Worthwhile Career?

Once again, lets highlight what contributors are saying:-

Probation is no longer a good career choice. There is a marked disconnect between what we say we do, or rather what HMPPS states in the published values, and what any practitioner, however skilled and motivated can deliver under HMPPS and the Civil Service. So the altruism at the heart of many of us can’t drive our work anymore it simply is something to be cynically exploited both in recruitment and by our excellent leaders demanding we deliver the impossible in allocating work far over our agreed workloads. 

Next there are our salaries which have been cynically eroded both by net negative ‘increases’ over time which mean we earn less now in real terms (I saw a figure of 15k below where we should be for a PO). Remember we are a graduate profession. Followed by our pensions, something we really never should have accepted is that we are not allowed the Civil Service Pension Fund, yet prison are ….. one HMPPS in name only. Most of us don’t even consider this until too late and retirement looms. 

Finally, there is the disrespect shown to front line practitioners who after all deliver the day job, and in return the utter breakdown in trust with senior leaders (disguised compliance here me thinks, as most staff are afraid, yes afraid, to disclose their true thoughts). Do not join the Probation Service it is not what you are led to believe by HMPPS, who want to lay claim when it suits them to our former values at recruitment but have done everything to trash and negate them until we have the current sorry state of Probation. Shameful…….

Anon

Some Saturday Reflections

It's Saturday and I'm up very early again because we seem to keep returning to a regular and alarming theme. This from yesterday:- 

You are right @ 18:13 and last night at 9.25pm I fired up the computer, and sent the email resigning with immediate effect. It has been a long time coming. I awoke this morning, not feeling a sense of jubilation or a desire to turn cartwheels of joy as one would expect but a profound sense of rage and sadness at the whole sorry state of affairs and the disgraceful way staff are treated. More surprising was the reaction of friends and family who were rejoicing that at last I had got rid. You are worth more than your situation which sounds unsustainable and your health and family cannot replace you or you them or gain back precious time. This machine will roll relentlessly on without us. A fact. sad but true. I think I was actually bereaved and grieving for a while there, but where one door shuts......and I send you every good wish.

The above was in response to this:-

I thought last week was bad but this week was even more punishing. I literally don't stop, don't have time for even a quick lunch most days and often come home dehydrated and completely exhausted physically and emotionally. It feels inhuman at times. It reminds me of the photos of firefighters or NHS workers during pandemic, hunkered down exhausted and having a rest, except there is no rest and no recognition of how hard pushed we are. No one seems to notice or care. It has become normalised.

And the Minister comes out with the normal guff. This from HoC Justice Committee session 23rd October 2023:-

Edward Timpson: Minister, can I take you back to one of the announcements made last week by the Lord Chancellor that we have referred to—the presumption against short sentences? The measures of success are, from the Government’s point of view, a reduction in the demand on the prison estate, but also, I hope, a reduction in reoffending rates by the use of effective community sentences and orders. Taking that as one of those measures, clearly there will be more potential workload for the probation service.

Damian Hinds: Yes.

Edward Timpson: What assessment have you made as to the impact these changes will have on the probation service and its ability to provide sufficiently resourced, high-quality opportunities for rehabilitation around education, housing, sobriety and a job—all the key areas that we know make a difference and help to reduce reoffending rates?

Damian Hinds: You are absolutely right about the central role of probation and the huge difference that probation officers make in the lives of those individuals. As you know, we have put more money into the probation service—£155 million a year—and we have recruited quite heavily. There had been—and, as you will know, in some parts of the country there still are—significant staffing challenges. Because we have recruited a lot of people in the last two to three years, there are quite a lot of people who are, effectively, going through their training and development. They will of course become experienced probation officers in time, but right now, as we speak today, there is on average a relatively shorter time in post.

Your question was about what assessment we have made. We have absolutely made an assessment of the impact of these changes. The probation service is looking very carefully at how to make the most effective use of the time of its professional resource.

Q31 Edward Timpson: Can you help us in understanding the workload of an individual probation officer, accepting that every case is different, so an absolute number does not necessarily tell the whole story? Is there an accepted level of case load for a probation officer? Is the assessment that that will still be met with these changes?

Damian Hinds: There is such a view. You are absolutely right that situations vary by the exact type of case, by risk level and so on. Because of what I was saying about staffing challenges and how they have been different in different parts of the country, there have been a number of places where workloads have been too high and need to be made more manageable. What I was saying about the service—and the service itself is looking at this—is that we need to make sure that resource is being most effectively directed to where it makes most difference.

--oo00oo--

I was particularly struck by this observation from a few days ago:-

Operation Protect: we are now often in the situation where we have more in common with our clients than our employers. The machinery grinds on requiring us to fulfil often meaningless tasks and expectations beyond our capacity to do them, and to require us to require that of our clients. So two humans in the face of the relentless machine work out together as best they can, how to navigate through the process unscathed.

This came in a few weeks ago, (edited to remove identifiers) but gained little notice having been left on an earlier blog post:- 

I am just about to complete my training as a PQiP. 50 year old with lots of experience, motivation and compassion for those in crisis. Absolutely love the exchanges and change I strive for with the offenders. To be honest, I receive more respect, honesty and civility from the offenders than I do from management. Been belittled, set up to fail, bullied, demoralised and intimidated by management. I am extremely good and conscientious in my job. Counts for nothing. Probation full of people desperate to climb the grading ladder. Any complaints and they all close ranks. The most incredibly corrupt and failing service I have ever worked for.

Tasks and admin jobs impossible to complete without working way beyond hours. Pushed me to the brink. Personal issues and eventually pushed to an emotional breakdown. Cue to manager dishing out an unacceptable absence improvement plan. 

Impeccable work record from me but it counts for nothing. I stood up to bullying and illogical and impossible management requests and now I am out. Pushed me to the edge and now can barely manage a day without breaking down emotionally. Breaks my heart as I love the job, as in I strive to make a difference for those on probation and the wider public in general. But that’s not what probation service want. They want scapegoats, yes people, subservient robots who will pander and pant to their every whim while those in management just keep standing on their backs to line their pockets and polish their egos! It stinks.

Napo doesn't exactly inspire confidence:-

Operation Protect Fringe at AGM – writing to Jim Barton at HMPPS

As part of Operation Protect, we held a fringe meeting with Jim Barton of HMPPS, regarding members’ extreme workloads. Jim was happy for those present to follow up from this fringe and email him further questions. If you were there and have more questions to raise as a result of the discussion and as part of further meetings and our campaign Operation Protect, please also email us at info@napo.org.uk and we can continue to follow up on important queries.

Then I notice a recent academic paper confirms what has long been suspected, namely top Whitehall mandarins haven't really got a clue about probation and what its for:-

Abstract

This paper provides insights into the predominant styles of political reasoning in England and Wales that inform penal policy reform. It does so in relation to a particular development that constitutes a dramatic, perhaps even unique, wholesale reversal of a previously introduced market-based criminal justice delivery model. This is the ‘unification’ of probation services in England and Wales, which unwound the consequential privatization reforms introduced less than a decade earlier. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with senior policy makers to present a narrative reconstruction of the unification of probation services in England and Wales. Analogies with desistance literature are drawn upon in order to encapsulate the tensions posed for policy makers as they sought to enact this penal policy reform.

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UNIFICATION, POLITICAL REASONING AND THE ‘BATTLE FOR PROBATION’S SOUL’

[A story is interesting] not because of what truths it can tell us about a person’s past but rather what it might say about the person’s future. (Maruna and Liem, 2021: 128)

We have seen, in the preceding analysis, that the unification of probation was widely recognized as being a success (in the context of attenuated expectations for government reform projects). That said, such efforts could not overcome the brute fact of prior history:

We’ve pretty much lost seven years for the probation service as a result of all the effort, investment going into that structural reform and then having to come back out of it the other side. (PP2)

Additionally, the service and staff bore the scars, the ‘organisational trauma’ from TR (Robinson 2023; Millings et al, 2019). At a public event reflecting on the unification programme, the Director of the Reform Programme stated that he was ‘under no illusions about the scale of the challenges that lie ahead’ (Institute for Government 2022). These challenges include recruitment and retention of staff, workload, improving, and ensuring consistency of practice, building stakeholder confidence, and resolving longstanding IT and infrastructure issues. But more fundamentally, unification was recognized to have brought to the surface foundational questions about what probation is and what it is for. A number of respondents reported actively thinking about probation’s future identity, with one respondent describing it as bringing to the surface the need for a ‘fight for the soul of probation, what is probation?’ (PP1).

In thinking about this, we can reflect on our analysis of the constructed narrative for the probation unification reforms, the core justifications for policy participants, and how these align (or do not) with wider possible narratives about probation. We saw above that the consistent government justification for probation renationalization was that unification would provide ‘a sustainable long-term model for probation services that provides public protection, visible and credible options for sentencers, deals effectively with individuals who have offended repeatedly and gives the right rehabilitative support to address offending behaviour’ (HMPPS 2020: 10). Within the Target Operating Model, the strapline ‘Assess, Protect, Change’ (APC) was proffered as a distillation of probation’s aims (HMPPS 2021: 6–7):

Assess: Undertaking accurate, timely assessments of an individual’s risks and needs that take into account protected characteristics and specific considerations arising from these.

Protect: Managing an individual’s risks and needs in conjunction with other relevant agencies. Taking effective action…and safeguarding victims.

Change: Empowering supervised individuals to make lasting changes to their lives through building good and trusting relationships with them that help motivate them through any rehabilitative activities and support them in integrating into the community. Working closely with other agencies and community services to facilitate this.

The internal processes of policy development, the ‘puzzling’ through to satisfactory policy solutions (Weller et al. 2021: Chapter 8), thus reflected the multi-faceted roles and expectations placed upon probation. It is notable, in August 2022, that senior leaders felt able to remind all staff that the ‘mission’ to which probation (and prisons) were working was ‘public protection’ (HMPPS 2022). This suggests an envisaged dominance of the ‘assess’ and ‘protect’ aspects of APC. One which connects with the longer history of probation’s increasing alignment with a public protection agenda that elevated functions of ‘surveillance, control, and exclusion’ (Nash 2000: 211), treating people on probation primarily as ‘risk bearing subjects’ (Robinson 2008: 440).

At the same time, the APC points to probation’s envisaged role in supporting rehabilitation. The notion of rehabilitation as the central ethos for probation has deep roots, emerging in the post-war period as a secular incarnation of the original mission to ‘save the souls’ of the sinful (McWilliams 1983; Mair and Burke 2011). One must recognize, however, the extent to which rehabilitative policy, and its underlying justification, has shifted across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Garland 1985), being capable of eliding into public protection (Robinson 2008) or standing as its distinct other (Burke et al. 2019).

This speaks to the widespread sense that probation’s purpose is far from settled (at time of research interviews, and at time of writing). This is due in part to the focus on organizational restructuring in recent years, which has led to a relative neglect of questions relating to what probation is and what it is for. It also speaks to probation’s history, which has been marked by debates about its values and its nature, its essence much contested.

In discussions about probation’s future trajectory, respondents found succour in different strands of its self-identity. One explicitly drew connections back to probation’s social work past in discussing what good probation work looked like, and the challenges in achieving it:

[Probation officers] want to try to change behaviours and achieve better outcomes. It is very specialist, complex type of social work. But [there is] the expectation on them to also provide those protection duties. (PP4)

This connects with the historical emergence of the ‘scientific’ iteration of probation’s self-identity (McWilliams 1985, 1986), casting probation as ‘a social work service with a long and proud tradition’ (Mair and Burke 2011: 115).

Reflecting the historical notion of probation as being rooted in its locality (e.g. McWilliams 1985), some respondents recognized the force in the view that probation practitioners are (or should be) ‘local people, rooted in local communities, and local services’ (PP8). One senior civil servant considered, 1-year post-unification, that ‘I think we’re still trying to find that sweet spot now’ (PP2), between regional empowerment and centralized control, but fundamentally ‘the only way to get brilliant delivery is for those [probation] regions to be driving it’ (PP16).

Similarly, many respondents recognized that there was force behind concerns that unification was pulling probation into civil service structures, processes and cultures that ‘can feel very disempowering to people’ (PP10). Some respondents, contemplating the Probation Service’s structural alignment as part of the centralized state, could not predict how this would develop:

I can’t, still, work out whether this operating environment will allow us to settle in in two or three years’ time, or whether this is just a square peg in a round hole. I can’t tell you, yet, which one it is. (PP17)

During the period in which our research interviews were conducted, near-uniformly negative inspection reports by HM Inspectorate of Probation grew in number (HM Chief Inspector of Probation 2023), which while anticipated (given the time that would be required for reforms to bed down), were not easy reading. More recently, a number of Serious Further Offence (SFO) investigations were published (see HM Chief Inspector of Probation 2023), which, coupled with high profile media coverage and challenge from the opposition Labour party, put the Probation Service under sustained critical focus.

Recognition of concerns were reported in more coded terms during our research period, with many policy participants speaking to the need for the service to focus much more on ‘the basics of probation practice’ (PP8), ‘quality of practice’ (PP10), ‘good probation practice’ (PP4): ‘we have had at least 7 years where it’s all been about structure… We’ve got to move on and make the next few years about practice’ (PP2). However, the ongoing reforming impulses did not cease. One respondent remarked that ‘the pressure of change in probation…One HMPPS being a great example, it just hasn’t stopped’ (PP9). Another respondent described it as ‘another change in an already change-saturated area’ (PP17).

I'll leave the final word to something a reader reminded me of:-

Probation is very much like the poorly understood ligament in the body. It joins muscle and bone, has a bad blood supply, is difficult to see with x-rays or ultra-sound and, if ruptured, takes years to repair, about 7 to be exact. A final total rupture can still be avoided." Joe Kuipers in 2014