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Clinks Members' Policy Briefing | November 2018
In this month's edition...
After 12 years Clinks is sorry to say goodbye to Nathan Dick who takes up a post at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Nathan has written a blog reflecting on his time at Clinks. Jess Mullen has been appointed and taken over as Head of Policy and Communications and Nicola Drinkwater appointed as Policy Manager.
We have continued to meet with Ministry of Justice (MoJ) officials as they develop their plans for a new model of probation in 2020. Clinks Chief Executive, Anne Fox, chaired a roundtable meeting with current through the gate providers to discuss the enhanced specification and how the sector can be engaged in its delivery. We have also written to Rory Stewart MP, Minister of State and Edward Argar MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice), to highlight the need to ensure that the additional £22 million announced for through the gate services reach the voluntary sector (particularly small and specialist organisations, including in the women’s sector).
Clinks' Head of Policy and Communications, Jess Mullen, attended a roundtable with black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME)-led organisations and Edward Argar MP to discuss trust and the criminal justice system. Edward Argar is continuing to meet with organisations working with BAME people on a quarterly basis in order to inform the implementation of the Lammy Review recommendations and Ministry of Justice's response to the Race Disparity Audit.
Kate Aldous, Head of Strategic Development has attended her first meeting of the refreshed Advisory Board on Female Offenders (ABFO), focussing on the implementation of the Female Offender Strategy, including the Residential Women's Centres pilot roll-out. The ABFO meets four times a year and brings together government departments, criminal justice agencies and stakeholders to provide expert advice and to oversee, scrutinise and challenge government policy.
Revised National Standards for Children in the Youth Justice System 2019 The Youth Justice Board (YJB) is consulting on an updated set of national standards for youth justice services in England and Wales. These standards set out the minimum requirements of what youth justice services should deliver and are built around the YJB’s ethos of “child first, offender second”. The YJB is a non-departmental government body responsible for overseeing the youth justice system in England and Wales, including providing advice to the Secretary of State for Justice. The consultation ends on 26th November.
Secure schools applications Following the announcement that Medway Secure Training Centre will be repurposed to form the first Secure School, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has released guidance for applicants interested in running the site. Applicants must be a not-for-profit company, set up as a secure academy trust and with a licence to run a secure children’s home. Applications close in February 2019, with the school due to open in autumn 2020. In October, responding to the announcement that Medway would be the first school, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice questioned whether the decision truly reflects a move towards a child-first approach to secure care, given the site is an existing large custodial institution, far from London where most children are likely to come from.
Synthetic pepper spray rolled out Rory Stewart MP, Minister of State for Prisons, has announced that all prison officers in the adult male estate will be given PAVA- a synthetic pepper spray. This follows a pilot conducted by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service at four prisons, but also follows demands made by the Prison Officer’s Association (POA) after their recent action over the safety of their members. In a statement on the PoliticsHome website, David Isaac, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, raised concerns that PAVA could be used inappropriately and had the potential to cause serious injury. Nick Hardwick, former Chief Inspector of Prisons, also recently criticised the measure at the annual conference of the Prison Governors’ Association.
Clinks publications
Clinks’ response to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence We have published our response to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on the future of probation services. Our response was informed both by four consultation events held across England and Wales (attended by over 150 voluntary organisations) and our TrackTR research- into charities’ experiences of Transforming Rehabilitation over three years. We made a number of recommendations and also call for further time for consultation, and for processes to be put in place to facilitate ongoing involvement of voluntary organisations in the design of services beyond the consultation stage, and into the delivery stage.
Briefing on the Ministry of Justice Female Offender Strategy We have published our briefing of the Ministry of Justice’s Female Offender Strategy. Released over the summer, the strategy commits government to a ‘direction of travel’ for working with women in contact with the criminal justice system, organised around three central priorities: earlier intervention; community-based solutions; and better custody. The strategy also commits government to implementation that is locally led, partnership focused and evidence-based. More specific policy priorities include a women’s residential centres pilot and the establishment of a National Concordat on Female Offenders, to act as a joint statement of intent for partnership working.
Criminal justice system
Ministry of Justice departmental overview 2018 The National Audit Office have published a departmental overview of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) which shows the department pushing to implement challenging reforms in the context of significant financial pressures and strains on existing services. It shows that despite making significant cuts to legal aid and the courts, it is still not meeting its targets to reduce costs as set out in the last spending review. The report also provides clear and useful information on the MoJ’s structure, its priorities, a breakdown on where the ministry spends its money, and how its major programmes are currently progressing.
Probation
Deaths of Offenders in the Community, England and Wales, 2017/18 The Ministry of Justice has published figures showing that 955 people under probation supervision died in the financial year 2016/2017- the highest number on record. At least 285 of these people killed themselves. The majority of people (69%) who died were under the supervision of Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) at the time of their deaths, and deaths under CRC supervision has increased 24% from the previous year. These figures will be an important consideration in the Ministry of Justice’s work on a successor to Transforming Rehabilitation programme and new model for probation delivery from 2020.
The quality of public protection work (probation services) In their second research and analysis bulletin of the year, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation has found that the quality of public protection work by probation services has declined. The decline is particularly pronounced for services delivered by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC). The findings were based on Quality & Impact (Q&I) inspections, completed between March 2016 and December 2017, covering all CRC owners (though seven CRC areas were not covered).
Payment by results statistics: October 2015 to December 2017 This Ministry of Justice bulletin provides data on Community Rehabilitation Companies’ (CRCs) success in meeting targets of reduced reoffending under payment by results contracts. It provides the final results from October 2015 to December 2016, which show a steady decline in performance, so that by the end of 2016, less than half of the CRCs were meeting their targets on reoffending. The interim results for 2016/2017 suggest only three of 21 CRCs are meeting their targets for reduction in the frequency of reoffending. Existing CRC contracts are ending early, in 2020, where they will be replaced by a new probation system.
Multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) annual report Latest Ministry of Justice figures show that as of March 2018, there are now 80,983 people being managed under the MAPPA framework in the community in England and Wales, an annual increase of 5%. MAPPA are a set of statutory arrangements that bring together the police, probation and prison services, as well as a range of local agencies and services, to manage people that are deemed to pose a risk to the public. People under MAPPA may be registered sexual offenders, or people convicted of violent offences, though the level of management people receive will depend on the perceived risk they pose.
Prisons
Safety in custody quarterly An increase in deaths and incidents of self-harm in prisons has been reported in Ministry of Justice figures. There were 325 deaths in prison in the 12 months to September 2018, up 8% from the previous year. In the 12 months to June 2018, there were 49,565 incidents of self-harm, up 20% from the previous year. The number of self-harming individuals also increased by 10% to 12,142. These figures are quarterly and prone to short term fluctuation, so should be approached with an element of caution, but they are extremely high and suggest little progress has been made in tackling the record numbers of deaths that have been recorded in recent years.
A Review of Self-inflicted Deaths in Prison Custody in 2016 In the 12 months to December 2016, there were 122 self-inflicted deaths in prison, the highest number since records began. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) launched an internal review into these deaths, which has now been published. The review focuses on the need to better identify and manage mental health in prison. Since these deaths, a number of measures have been taken to improve services, including the newly established National Partnership Agreement for Prison Healthcare in England; the roll-out of suicide and self-harm prevention training to all staff with prisoner-facing roles; and working with NHS England to roll-out a new healthcare screening template for prison reception.
Prison and Probation Ombudsman annual report In her final annual report as the Prison and Probation Ombudsman, Elizabeth Moody expresses frustration that she has again identified the same lessons and made many of the same recommendations as recent years. The report finds much of continued concern, including failures of management, procedures, and information-sharing in preventing self-inflicted deaths, as well as the provision of mental health care and support. The Prison and Probation Ombudsman runs independent investigations of all deaths in custody and investigates complaints made by people in prison and on probation, including detained migrants and young people in detention. Sue McAllister has now been appointed the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman on a permanent basis.
Proven Reoffending Statistics Quarterly Bulletin The Ministry of Justice has released latest reoffending figures, showing that of 114,000 people who were cautioned, received a non-custodial conviction at court or were released from custody between October and December 2016, around 34,000 (29.4%) reoffended within a year. This is virtually the same rate as the year before. Within these averages, men (30.7%) were more likely to reoffend than women (23.4%), and the reoffending rate amongst young people was much higher (40.4%) than the adult average (28.6%). Those that reoffended committed, on average, four offences each, continuing a steady increase over a number of years.
Health and social care
Prison health report The Health and Social Care Committee has released a new report in which they state that “the Government is failing in its duty of care towards people detained in England’s prisons”. It argues too many people are being held in “unsafe, unsanitary and outdated establishments”, compounded by overcrowding and understaffing which fuels record incidents of violence, self-harm and deaths. It calls on government to consider health care in prison as a public health issue and for people in prison to be provided with the care and services they need to achieve equivalent health outcomes to the population as a whole. Our written evidence was referred to in the report, as was the oral evidence given to the committee by Hazel Alcraft, former Development Officer at Clinks.
Social care in prisons in England and Wales Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission have published a report which found wide variation in the quality of social care services in prison, including in the initial screening of social care needs, in the quality of care itself, and the continuation of social care after transfers to other prisons or release into the community. The headline recommendation is that David Gauke MP, Secretary of State for Justice, should lead coordination of cross-governmental work to develop a strategy for delivering social care in prisons in England and Wales. The thematic report draws on recent inspection reports of all prisons, and additional data collection conducted in eight prisons, including interviews with staff and people in prison.
Secure Settings for Young People: A National Scoping Exercise NHS England has carried out an extensive scoping exercise of secure settings for young people in England, and their access to healthcare. The exercise comes in the form of three papers: the first maps out the provision of secure units for young people; the second focusses on the young people referred to these units; and the third paper reflects on interviews with professionals and parents. Issues with an uneven geographical spread of units are identified, forcing some young people to be placed long distances from their families or homes. Findings are also highly critical of waiting times (over a month in half of all cases) to transfer young people to low and medium secure hospital placements.
Children and young people
A report on the use of segregation in youth custody in England The Children’s Commissioner has reported a disturbing increase in the use of segregation in youth custody. The average length of periods of detention has doubled (it is now 16 days), with seven out of 10 episodes of segregation in Young Offender Institutions lasting over a week. Conditions of segregation varies widely across settings, but most recorded incidents refer to when the child has been formally removed to a segregation unit, which resembles those in adult prisons. Access to stimuli such as books and radio are often restricted and some children are locked in cells for up to 23.5 hours a day. This troubling report points to potentially disastrous impacts of this practice on the lives of children and their mental and physical health.
Guidance on how to deal with children on referral orders The Ministry of Justice and the Youth Justice Board have published updated statutory guidance on Referral Orders, aimed at youth offending teams and youth offender panel members. The stated aims of the changes is to focus on principles of restoration, reparation and reintegration. Content has been changed to reflect a child first, offender second approach and less prescription, and greater freedom is given to youth offender teams and youth offender panels to respond to the needs of each child and victim on a case by case basis. The guidance came into effect on the 9th October.
Women
Making Places Work for Women: Gender and Systems Change Both national policy change and local, place-based systems change are required to ensure better outcomes for women with multiple and complex needs, a report from Agenda has found. The report states that too often, services are configured in silos, creating gaps for women to fall through and services, where they do exist, are rarely gender-informed in their design, commissioning and delivery. The report highlights existing examples of good practice in voluntary sector women’s services, particularly highlighting the work of Clinks member Anawim Women’s Centre in supporting women with multiple and complex needs in touch with the criminal justice system. We welcome this report, as a founding member of the Make Every Adult Matter coalition which supports local areas to establish multi-agency ways of supporting people with multiple and complex needs.
Employment
A question of fairness Unlock has surveyed 80 national employers across eight sectors and found almost three quarters of them continue to ask about criminal records at job application stage. It also found that 80% of employers who asked about criminal records provided no guidance to applicants on when a conviction becomes spent and 22% of employers had phrased the question about criminal records in potentially unlawful or misleading way. Unlock has recommended that the government implement financial incentives for employers to recruit people with convictions and want all employers to remove the tick-box about criminal records and ask only for information they are legally entitled to.
Lord Farmer’s work on supporting family ties in criminal justice In this blog, Nicola Drinkwater gives an update on her role as a member of the expert group to the follow-on Farmer Review- a government-commissioned investigation into the importance of family ties for women in contact with the criminal justice system. Clinks has led the review’s call for evidence, getting the views of those with lived experience and voluntary organisations working in the field. The call for evidence closed on 7th November, and the review is due to report back to the Ministry of Justice in December.
Talking about small charities In this guest blog Emma Wells, National Secretary at Community Chaplaincy Association and freelance Safeguarding and Equality and Diversity trainer, talks about her reasons for recently joining the Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3) and what she hopes it can achieve. The RR3 is a platform for leaders from the voluntary sector to engage with the Ministry of Justice, chaired by Clinks. Emma has experience and expertise in working with small voluntary organisations, having worked both in prisons and in the community with prisoners and their families, and brings this to her role on the RR3.
In other words A new podcast series by Revolving Doors Agency brings together academics, practitioners and those with lived experience to discuss how people in touch with the criminal justice system are also likely to experience (or have previously experienced) poverty, trauma or crisis. The episodes will be of particular interest to those working with people with multiple and complex needs and raise lots of questions as to how both the state, and services that operate in and around the state, can operate in a way that better accounts for the structural disadvantage that so often drives a person’s contact with the criminal justice system. The series coincides with Revolving Doors 25th Anniversary celebrations and are hosted by Mary-Ann Ochota.
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© Clinks, 2018
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Get involved Become a Member | Follow Clinks | Join Mailing List
Contact Us www.clinks.org | info@clinks.org | 020 7383 0966
Written monthly by...
Will Downs
Clinks
© Clinks, 2018
Registered office: Clinks, Tavis House, 1-6 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9NA
Registered charity: 1074546 | Company limited by guarantee in England & Wales: 3562176