In this month's edition...
The Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3) is convening a Special Interest Group on Future Regime Design. The Special Interest Group will run alongside the HM Prison and Probation Service Future Regime Design programme to develop a new National Regime Model, expected to run until February 2023. The group is comprised of permanent RR3 members and co-opted voluntary sector leaders, who were recruited to join following an expressions of interest process. The group’s first meeting will take place in due course and will discuss the design of the programme, with future meetings to discuss testing and findings, and implementation. Meeting notes and other relevant documents will be published on the Clinks website.
The deadline to complete our State of the sector survey has now passed, following an extension to enable as many organisations as possible to complete it. Thank you to all of those who completed the survey. Clinks will now be looking at the findings, which will result in publishing a report in the near future.
We have an exciting opportunity for a new Policy Officer to join us. Responsibilities include: identifying new government initiatives and policy relating to criminal justice and the voluntary sector in England and Wales; conducting desk-based research; supporting the development and operation of the policy focussed groups, networks and structures which Clinks facilitates; and producing documents and briefings as part of a team. Click here to read more and apply
Probation grants portal | The Ministry of Justice have launched their probation grants portal. This follows independent reports by both Richard Oldfield and Clinks, where we recommended the use of grants to fund voluntary organisations that deliver rehabilitative services. In April 2022 HM Prison and Probation Service published a draft process for awarding grants and invited feedback. Clinks responded to the draft proposal, providing feedback from voluntary sector organisations and feedback from Clinks based on knowledge drawn from ongoing engagement with the voluntary sector about their experience of commissioning.
White Paper on drug use and possession | The Home Office has published a new White Paper looking at one element of the recent drugs strategy: reducing the demand for drugs by introducing new consequences for the possession of recreational drugs. The White Paper sets out a new three-tier framework which will apply to all individuals with substance misuse issues, except where individuals have a drug dependence and treatment is the most relevant intervention. Under tier three, where a person would likely be charged, a new civil court order could be applied for which would enable the court to impose the following conditions: an exclusion order for up to 12 months; drug tagging for up to four months, or passport confiscation or driving licence disqualification from 3-24 months.
Allocated funding for substance misuse | The government have announced a number of substance misuse measures under a funding boost of £120 million. They will be opening specialised wings in prisons across England and Wales which will treat drug addiction, including through abstinence, with the aim of keeping prisons substance-free. This includes the opening of eight abstinence-led “drug recovery wings” and 100 “incentivised substance-free living units” (ISFL units) by 2025. Within this funding, 50 health and justice partnership co-ordinators will also be recruited to work between prisons, probation and treatment providers, to ensure treatment plans transfer smoothly from prison to the community. Additionally, the funding includes the piloting of substance misuse problem-solving courts and up to 50 drug strategy leads in all male Category C and women’s prisons.
Changes to parole | From 21 July 2022, a number of amendments to the Parole Board rules came into effect. Parole updates can now be heard in public for the first time, in an attempt to boost transparency and increase public confidence. The Secretary of State for Justice will also get extra powers to challenge Parole Board decisions – including where new, violent behaviour by people with convictions comes to light – and give their view earlier in the process. Other amendments to Parole Board rules include that the Secretary of State will now make an automatic referral to the Board for consideration of terminating an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) licence, rather than the individual on licence making an application direct to the Board.
Youth Justice Board Business Plan 2022-23 | The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has published its business plan for 2022 to 2023. The plan outlines how the YJB's resources will be used, the programme of work towards its vision of a Child First youth justice system, and the activity they aim to complete during 2022-23. The report specifies four areas of concern within the system: early intervention and prevention, over-representation of racially minoritised children, child exploitation and vulnerability, and issues related to custody, resettlement and transitions. The report sets out several commitments, including to support the Ministry of Justice to deliver the Turnaround programme, an additional investment for services targeted at early intervention, and to work with services on improvement activity, working with the sector to drive standards and performance.
Power to detain dangerous standard determinate sentence prisoners: Policy Framework | The Ministry of Justice have published guidance for HM Prison and Probation Service on the power to detain people in prison serving a standard determinate sentence. This policy framework sets out duties, rules and general guidance on the new provision set out in Section 132 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This provision enables the Secretary of State for Justice to refer certain people in prison on standard determinate sentences to the Parole Board instead of automatically releasing them at their conditional release date. They must meet both the legal and the policy thresholds to be eligible for consideration under this policy, which includes a dangerousness test and a public interest test.
Separation Centres Policy Framework | HM Prison and Probation Service have published guidance for their staff on the use of separation centres. The guidance covers how to refer, assess, select, manage and deselect prisoners into and out of separation centres. The Secretary of State for Justice may direct that a prisoner be placed in a separation centre on one of four grounds, including: the interests of national security, to prevent the undermining of “good order and discipline in a prison”, to prevent the dissemination of views that might encourage terrorist offences, or to prevent the commission, preparation, or instigation of terrorist offences. This Separation Centre Policy Framework replaces PSI 05/2017 Separation Centre Referral Manual and the Separation Centre Operating Manual 2017.
Regional Reducing Reoffending Plans | Regional Probation Directors and Prison Group Directors have produced Regional Reducing Reoffending Plans for their regions. The Regional Reducing Reoffending Plans demonstrate the most important and public-facing activities that HM Prison and Probation Service is prioritising. The plans set out how Regional Probation Directors and Prison Group Directors will work together with partner organisations and local services over the next three years.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics | The MoJ published statistics covering people in the criminal justice system, safety in custody and the children and young people’s secure estate (CYPSE), and proven reoffending. There were 80,659 people in prison on 30 June 2022, and 240,922 people on probation. There were 288 deaths in custody in the year to June 2022, a 27% decrease on last year. The number of self-harm incidents in prison rose 4% in the year to March 2022, with the rate of self-harm incidents per 1,000 people increasing 7% in female establishments, and 3% in male establishments. The annualised rate of self-harm per 100 children in the CYPSE rose 53% in the quarter to March 2022, compared to the same quarter last year. The proven reoffending rate for the July to September 2020 cohort was 24.4%.
Youth Justice
Crises and crossroads for the children’s secure estate | The Alliance for Youth Justice has published the third of three policy briefings for their ‘Impact of Covid-19 on Youth Justice’ research project. The briefing outlines the significant challenges that lie ahead for the children’s secure estate in the wake of the pandemic. It examines existing failures pre-pandemic, the significant risk of harm to children in custody as a result of experiences during the pandemic, failures in strategy for the children’s secure estate, and the government projection that the number of children in custody will rise steeply in coming years. The briefing finds that the pandemic response raises questions about leadership, oversight, and structure of the estate, and calls for urgent action to repair the harms of the pandemic for children in custody.
Inspectorates
HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMI Prisons) annual report | HMI Prisons has published its annual report, covering 63 inspections, scrutiny visits, and thematic reports published between April 2021 and the end of March 2022. The report points to long lock-up times and a lack of purposeful activity to show that prisons have barely changed, and in some cases deteriorated, since the Inspectorate’s first annual report in 1982. Other key findings include issues with staff recruitment and retention, concerns for the well-being of women, children let down by poor provision, haphazard arrangements for immigration detainees, and a mixed picture in court custody. Chief Inspector, Charlie Taylor, calls for a return to regimes at least as open as they were before the pandemic.
Joint thematic inspection of Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) | The criminal justice inspectorates have published a report looking at MAPPA, finding it to be under-used and inconsistent, despite a 70% increase in caseloads in the last decade. The report concludes that although success is seen in Level 2 and 3 MAPPA cases, this comprises only 2% of the total caseload. Despite the positive potential of MAPPA, inspectors found gaps, especially at Level 1. Too often, late pre-release planning for individuals being released from custody means that important arrangements, such as accommodation, are not in place sufficiently early. The report makes a series of recommendations which mainly focus on trying to standardise the quality of MAPPA supervision and encouraging key partners to engage in regular quality assurance practices.
Prisons
Bromley Briefing – Summer 2022 | The prison service is facing an exodus of staff ahead of a projected increase in the prison population of nearly 25% in the next four years, according to a new report published by the Prison Reform Trust. The latest edition of the Bromley Briefings reveals that more than one in seven (15%) prison officers left the service last year. Of those, half had been in the role for less than three years; more than a quarter left within the first year. These latest figures have sparked fears that with too few staff and too many people in prison, the service faces significant competing challenges on the horizon which are already hampering efforts to provide safe and purposeful prisons following the disruption of the pandemic.
Human Rights
Bill of Rights Bill | The Joint Committee on Human Rights has launched an inquiry on the Bill of Rights Bill, including a call for written evidence. Areas on which the Committee want to receive evidence include: the proposals requiring courts to give the “greatest possible weight” to the importance of reducing the risk to the public of people given custodial sentences, when considering certain human rights of people in prison; taking the conduct of the claimant into account when considering damages; and the introduction of a permissions stage for human rights claims, amongst others. Alongside the call for evidence, the Committee is also running an online survey to hear a wider range of views on the Bill. The deadline for submissions is 26 August 2022.
Women
Justice Committee inquiry into Women in Prison | The Justice Committee has published the first report of its inquiry into women in prison, raising concerns over the government’s implementation of the Female Offender Strategy (2018), particularly its aim to see fewer women in contact with the criminal justice system. The report questions the government’s prediction of an increase in the female prison population of more than a third over present levels in the next three years. The report makes several recommendations for government, including setting a breakdown of how the planned extra 500 prison places for women will be used. For example, how many places will be allocated as open prison places, how many old prison places in the female estate have been decommissioned since the announcement of the 500 new places, and how many will be entirely new places in the closed estate.
Healthcare for women in prison | The Nuffield Trust has published a new report titled: Inequality on the inside, which uses hospital data to understand the key health care issues for women in prison. They find that women in prison face a series of challenges and risks due to barriers to accessing health and care services. Key findings include that pregnant women in prison are more likely to experience preterm labour than women in the general population, there is no official data on the number of women in prison who have children, and hospital data highlights the complex needs of women in prison, particularly around trauma and substance misuse. The report makes four key recommendations, one of which is to ensure women have access to good-quality, understandable and targeted healthcare information.
Parole changes | The Prison Reform Trust have been updating their webpage about the additional changes to parole recently announced by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Their recent articles, titled: Parole changes keep coming and Parole changes – some questions answered, but many not raise the point that the changes have been issued with no consultation, no parliamentary debate, and nothing to explain what they mean in practice. The articles link to an exchange of letters between the Director of the Prison Reform Trust, Peter Dawson - who expressed concerns amongst the sector - and the MoJ’s ministerial team. Find these letters and the articles in the “News” section of the Prison Reform Trust’s website.
Can the courts deter children from crime? | Russell Webster summarises a recent article in the Youth Justice journal titled: Deterring Children from Crime Through Sentencing: Can It Be Justified?, exploring whether deterrent sentencing is justified from legal, criminological and neuroscientific perspectives. The article finds that the deterrent impact of sentencing appears to have a very weak evidence base as it conflicts with growing international awareness of children’s rights and understanding of the neuroscience behind maturation. Russell adds, “It is important to remember that this is not just a theoretical matter but one which is played out in our courts (particularly in connection with the contentious issue of joint enterprise) with children and young people on an almost daily basis”.
The experience of neurodivergent children in custody | Russell Webster summarises research by Anne-Marie Day looking at the experiences and challenges facing imprisoned, neurodivergent children in the education and youth justice systems in England. The research estimates that one in three people in contact with the criminal justice system may be neurodivergent, and that this rate is even higher for children in custody. The research revealed several themes from interviews with 19 children either in custody or recently released, including labelling and disabling; isolation and segregation; and surviving custody. The research concludes that neurodivergent children are often disproportionately labelled and disabled by the systems that are supposed to help them. The research author advocates for the proper implementation of the Child First approach; the official Youth Justice Board policy.
What worked at HMYOI Parc? | Angus Jones, team leader for inspection of children’s custody, explains how “Her Majesty’s Youth Offender Institution (HMYOI) Parc has created a different narrative”. He outlines how its achievements set the standard for the care of children in all YOIs. Since 2018, HM Inspectorate of Prisons have judged outcomes for children held at Parc to be reasonably good or good at every inspection. Angus describes how a positive culture among staff and children, providing purposeful activity including a focus on children being out of their cells, and developing relationships with the children and providing support, are all elements that have helped to “set the standard for the care of children in all YOIs”.
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Written monthly by...
Clinks' Policy Officers Franklin Barrington and Noorjehan Piperdy
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