In this month's edition...
Clinks has published a briefing to summarise the government’s latest announcements on probation reform and what it means for voluntary organisations and their service users. Drawing from information in the government’s consultation response and draft operating blueprint, the briefing looks at the future structure of probation, the commissioning of resettlement and rehabilitative services and timelines for implementation. As the plans for probation reform develop, Clinks will keep the voluntary sector informed in a way that is timely and accessible. We will be publishing regular blogs and briefings (you can access all of these from our probation webpage), as well as sending regular updates on twitter and in our weekly Light Lunch email updates.
Anne Fox, Chief Executive Officer at Clinks, attended a roundtable on developing cross-departmental working on health and justice policy. The event was chaired by Edward Argar MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice and Jackie Doyle-Price MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Mental Health, Inequalities and Suicide Prevention and was attended by a number of Clinks’ members.
The Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3) held its second meeting of 2019. Dr Jo Farrar, recently appointed CEO of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), shared her priorities and answered questions from the group. The group also advised senior officials from the Ministry of Justice, HMPPS and NHS England on probation reform and health and justice.
Clinks and Agenda hosted a women’s networking forum in London. Delegates were consulted by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) on its expectations of women’s prisons, which are currently under review. Clinks will be supporting HMIP to consult with the voluntary sector further. The next women’s networking forum takes place on 17th September in Cardiff.
The Farmer Review for women - supporting and facilitating relationships The Ministry of Justice has published Lord Farmer’s review, which finds that supporting women to build and maintain healthy relationships in custody and the community is key to rehabilitation and reducing intergenerational crime. Clinks is pleased to see that the essential services provided by voluntary organisations are strongly recognised in the review, and a specific recommendation calling for sustainable funding for women’s centres. Clinks sat on the expert panel informing the review and led its call for evidence. We heard from approximately 10% of the female prison population along with their families, voluntary organisations and academics. We are grateful to our members for facilitating this engagement, and that these voices were able to inform the final report.
Community Sentence Treatment Requirements Protocol - Process Evaluation Report The Ministry of Justice has published the evaluation from a pilot to increase the use of Community Sentence Treatment Requirements (CSTRs) across five areas in England. CSTRs are a requirement of the court for people to engage with health services to address mental health, alcohol dependence or substance misuse conditions, as an alternative to custody. The evaluation found an uptake in the use of CSTRs, and garnered positive feedback from people working across the criminal justice system and health services. Clinks engaged with service users and voluntary organisations to inform the evaluation, and found conditional support for CSTRs, which must be flexible enough to avoid unnecessary breaches. The government has announced an expansion of the CSTR programme across London and Greater Manchester.
Charity to run UK’s first secure school The Ministry of Justice has announced that Oasis Charitable Trust will be the operator of the country’s first secure school on the site of Medway Secure Training Centre in Kent. Medway will temporarily close for a £5 million refurbishment, before opening as a secure school in late 2020. Oasis currently run 52 Academies across England and will be given complete autonomy to set the curriculum and timetable. It will decide how it recruits, trains and pays staff.
Clinks publications
Capability Framework: Working effectively with people with co-occurring mental health and alcohol/drug use conditions Clinks, in partnership with Revolving Doors Agency, has published a capability framework to better equip services to meet the needs of people with co-occurring mental health and alcohol/drug use conditions. The framework outlines the following capabilities that workers should demonstrate when working with service users: values; effective engagement; working with multiple agencies; physical heath; right care, right time; working with families/significant others. The framework is published alongside an e-learning toolkit to support staff to understand and develop the skills outlined in the framework and to put them into practice. Both the capability framework and the e-learning toolkit have been informed by people with lived experience of co-occurring mental health and alcohol/drug use conditions.
Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into the mental health of men and boys Clinks has published the evidence we submitted to the Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into the mental health of men and boys. Our response focused on the experience of men and boys in the criminal justice system (CJS), highlighting the way in which poor mental health is both a social factor that can drive people into the CJS, and something that can be exacerbated by a CJS ill-suited to provide people with appropriate support. We made a number of recommendations, including the need for the government to work with the voluntary sector as a strategic partner in the delivery of commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan and the National Partnership Agreement for Prison Healthcare in England 2018-2021.
Positive action to recruit people with criminal records into the arts, media and cultural sectors The National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (NCJAA) has published a new resource to support arts, media and cultural organisations to review their recruitment approaches and take positive action to develop opportunities for people with experience of the criminal justice system. The NCJAA, with the support of Unlock, launched the resource with a breakfast briefing at Universal Music UK. Robert Buckland QC MP, Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, and Darren Henley OBE, Chief Executive of Arts Council England, attended the briefing and urged delegates to consider positive action to improve diversity, inclusion and skills gaps and to not let a tick box stop them from harnessing talent.
Prisons
Bromley Briefings Summer 2019 The Prison Reform Trust has published its latest edition of the Bromley Briefings, a summary of the most important facts related to UK prisons. Largely drawn from the government’s own data, the briefing outlines prison numbers, changes to sentencing, prison conditions and details of who is being sent to prison. The briefing shows the prison population has risen by 69% in 30 years, and that sentences are growing in length. It highlights the crisis of safety, as staff are less safe than they have been at any point since records began, with assaults on staff more than tripling in five years. Rates of self-harm are at the highest level ever recorded and there were 87 self-inflicted deaths in the 12 months before March 2019.
Exploring the Nature of Muslim Groups and Related Gang Activity in Three High Security Prisons The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has published a paper into Muslim groups and gangs in prisons, based on interviews conducted with staff and prisoners at three high-security prisons. The paper warns that while Muslim gangs exist in prisons, there is little evidence as to their prominence and there is risk that groups of Muslim men with shared interests and in pursuit of companionship and support are misunderstood as being gang members. The paper supports measures to help break down the ‘them and us’ divide amongst staff and prisoners, including the introduction of a keyworker scheme in prison, improving the diversity of staff and involving mentors from similar backgrounds to prisoners.
Violence reduction in prison Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has published a summary of evidence on what works and doesn’t work to reduce violence in prison. HMPPS says violence is caused by multiple related factors, including a poor environment, cultural norms that accept violence as a solution to certain difficulties and a lack of activity so people feel bored and frustrated. Evidence suggests that to reduce violence in prisons, there should be a better physical environment, more activities and intervention programmes and better administrative and procedural justice. Evidence also shows increasing punishment will not decrease violence, instead creating further grievance and a divisive sense of ’them and us’ that makes violence feel justified.
Report on an independent review of progress at HMP Birmingham Last year, Peter Clarke, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, invoked the Urgent Notification protocol at HMP Birmingham after a concerning inspection report. Then run by G4S, the operation of HMP Birmingham has since been brought back under public control. Clarke conducted an Independent Review of Progress (IRP) in May 2019, and has now published his report. He praised the governors’ leadership and vision to improve the conditions in the prison. He reports that relationships between staff and prisoners have improved, and the prison felt more ordered and controlled. However, violence remains considerably higher than the average for similar prisons and progress across areas of education, skills and work, assessed by Ofsted inspectors, was still deemed insufficient.
HMP Bristol Urgent Notification Peter Clarke, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, has invoked the Urgent Notification Protocol for HMP Bristol, which requires David Gauke MP, Secretary of State for Justice, to respond with a plan to improve the prison. Despite being placed in special measures in 2017, prison inspectors found no improvements in two further inspections this year, and reported increasing violence, squalid living conditions and poor training and education. The rate of self-harm has also increased and remains higher than most local prisons: there had been two self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection. Recommendations from the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman had not been implemented, and there were continued examples of very poor care for people at risk of suicide and self-harm.
IMB National Annual Report 2017/18 Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) has published its annual report. IMBs exist in every prison, immigration removal centres and some short term holding facilities at airports. Consisting of volunteers, they monitor the day-to-day life in prisons to ensure that standards of care and decency are maintained. This report summarises IMBs' findings over the year and it finds staffing issues in prison affecting security and safety, access to healthcare, and the provision of activities and rehabilitation. While the arrival of new staff has led to some alleviation of restricted regimes, it was reported restricted regimes remained long into 2018 at HMP Winchester, with the majority of prisoners spending up to 23 hours a day in their cells. The report sets out areas of interest for future monitoring.
Health and justice
In ten years time Revolving Doors Agency and Centre for Mental Health have published a report to mark the 10th anniversary of Lord Bradley’s review on improving outcomes for people with mental ill-health and learning disabilities in the criminal justice system. The report makes ten recommendations across the criminal justice pathway, including for the use of short sentences to be restricted and for greater investment in community alternatives to custody, including Community Sentence Treatment Requirements. The report also calls for the government to legislate for a requirement that an up-to-date pre-sentence report (PSR) must be presented before a court can imprison someone, to counter the significant decline in PSRs being completed in recent years. Prison Reform Trust, The Disabilities Trust and Transform Justice have also supported this recommendation.
Custody-Community Transitions The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (AMCD) has published advice on how to reduce drug-related harms when people move between custody and community. Death rates among people on post-release supervision are much higher than the general population, and the weeks immediately after release is particularly high-risk for drug-related death. The report recommends the Department of Work and Pensions improves how people can access Universal Credit on release, and for services to provide better individualised support to prisoners in the run-up to release and through community transition. Clinks responded to the call for evidence. We are pleased the issues we raised were reflected in the recommendations, and will look to work with ACMD to ensure our recommendation to improve engagement between statutory and voluntary services is taken forward.
The NHS Long Term Plan and multiple disadvantage The Making Every Adult Matter coalition (MEAM) has published a briefing on how the NHS Long Term Plan may impact people facing multiple disadvantage, and how voluntary organisations can influence its implementation locally. The briefing highlights a number of commitments, including the national roll-out of integrated care systems and how an increased budget on mental health care will be spent. This is the first in a series of briefings to explore national policy developments and what they mean for local people with multiple disadvantage and the local services they access. Clinks is part of MEAM, alongside Homeless Link and Mind. Working together, we support 35 local areas across England to develop a coordinated approach to support people facing multiple disadvantage.
Civil society
UK Civil Society Almanac The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) has published the 2019 edition of the UK Civil Society Almanac, which offers a comprehensive overview of the voluntary sector largely gathered form financial data from 2016/2017 that has been submitted to the Charity Commission. It finds the majority of voluntary organisations continue to be very small, with 82% having an income below £10,000. Those with an income over £1m are fewer in number but account for more than four-fifths of the sector’s total income. In 2016/17, the voluntary sector’s total income went up by 2% to £50.6bn, while spending and assets also increased.
Procedural justice
Procedural justice guidance Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has published guidance on how prisons and probation can promote procedural justice. Procedural justice is the degree to which those in authority apply processes or make decisions about people in a fair and just way. International evidence has shown that when people have more positive perceptions of procedural justice they are likely to have better emotional well-being and mental health outcomes, and are less likely to reoffend. Suggestions on how practitioners can promote procedural justice include explaining to people how processes work and how decisions are made before a procedure starts, and consulting with staff and people with lived experience how their treatment by authority figures could be developed.
Women
Bringing the experience of women with learning disabilities out of the shadows A new report by Prison Reform Trust and KeyRing has found that women with learning disabilities are at risk of becoming drawn into the criminal justice system (CJS) due to failures by services to identify and address their needs. The report draws on the experiences of 24 women with learning disabilities in contact with (or on the edges of) the CJS and practitioners who support them. The majority of women reported difficulties in accessing support when they needed it most, that their needs had rarely been recognised or acted upon and that abuse by men lay behind their offending behaviour. The report makes ten recommendations, aimed at national government, local authorities and local commissioners.
Women still locked up for shoplifting Russell Webster summarises a report by Crest Advisory, which sets out how to improve outcomes for vulnerable women within the criminal justice system. The report highlights the overuse of custody: 36% of all prison sentences given to women in 2017 were for shoplifting and only 15% of women sentenced to prison committed serious offences (compared to 27% for men). It also points to the lack of services in the community, with only 39 women’s centres across England, with just three in Greater London and none at all in many areas. The report makes 12 recommendations to address a system they describe as being heavily centralised, fragmented and criminal-justice-centric, including for a multi-agency vulnerable women’s strategy to be developed in every local area.
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Written monthly by...
Clinks' policy officers, Will Downs and Lauren Nickolls
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