In this month's edition...
This month, Clinks has been working with the Long-term Estate Strategy team at His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), within the Prison Supply Directorate, on plans to re-design the physical spaces and facilities within the prison estate that support the work of the voluntary sector and its staff.
We also attended the first meeting of the stakeholder advisory group with HMPPS’s National Contract Management team, made up of a group of umbrella organisations, focused on influencing the shape of the next generation of commissioned rehabilitative services (CRS) contracts. This group will form one part of our continued work on the future direction of the CRS’s, with additional focus being applied through the Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group’s (RR3) Special Interest Group (SIG) on commissioning. This group will ensure that the voices of smaller, specialist organisations are represented throughout the process.
In addition to the SIG on commissioning, additional RR3 SIGs will be constituted over the course of the next two months, focused on employment, accommodation and staffing. The employment SIG will look at the standard of workshops in prison, the regime day and the quality of work and education, how to increase the range of employers engaging with prisons, supporting people in prison further away from the labour market, and the voluntary sector’s role in bringing together the support that is available. The accommodation SIG will focus on mitigating the barriers to either temporary or settled accommodation faced by people leaving prison or people with criminal records. The staffing focus will be on both recruitment and retention of staff, the development of viable career pathways within the criminal justice system, and the incentivisation of staff.
Our Head of Influence & Communications, Sam Julius, has been invited to sit on His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation’s Expert Reference Group, ahead of HMI Probation and HMI Prisons’ joint inspection into the quality of work undertaken with women.
Reforms to sentence hearing attendance | The Ministry of Justice announced a plan to legislate to introduce powers for judges to order people convicted of offences to attend sentencing hearings. This will also include measures for people who refuse to attend their sentencing receiving a further two years in prison. The plans will make it clear that force can be used to ensure people appear in court, and the new penalty will apply in cases where the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. As part of the changes, it will remain for judges to decide whether it is in the interests of justice to order someone to attend court, and for prison staff and custody officers to decide whether the use of force is reasonable and proportionate in each case. The Lord Chancellor previously wrote to the Chair of the Justice Committee to inform them of this announcement.
Whole Life Orders | The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has announced new plans to place legal expectations on judges to hand down Whole Life Orders (WLOs) for those who commit offences of serious violence. For the first time, WLOs will also be the default sentence for any sexually motivated murders. In a legal context, this will allow judges to hand out WLOs without a risk of challenge in the Courts of Appeal. In a letter addressed to Sir Robert Neil, Chair of the Justice Select Committee, the Secretary for Justice Alice Chalk, informed of the intention to legislate to provide that WLOs should be mandatory in circumstances which currently attract a WLO as a starting point, unless there are exceptional circumstances.
New prison to be built on former Rainsbrook Site | The Prisons Minister Damian Hinds, has announced the reopening of Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre as a Category C men’s prison as part of measures to boost prison capacity. The refurbishment of the site will create up to 131 new prison places and will operate as an annexe of HMP Onley. This is the latest step in the government’s pledge to boost prison capacity, which includes creating 20,000 modern prison places, delivered through the construction of six new prisons, alongside expansions and refurbishments at existing jails and the delivery of 1,000 Rapid Deployment Cells.
Domestic abuse electronic monitoring | The Ministry of Justice has issued a press release announcing the introduction of a new scheme to require people leaving prison at risk of abusing their partners to be subject to electronic monitoring (EM). The scheme will launch in the East and West Midlands, which will mean anyone who poses a threat to their former partner or children could be required to wear an electronic tag to enforce bans against going within a certain distance of their former partner's home or enforcing 'strict curfews'. The pilot will see up to 500 people subject to EM which is expected to be rolled out across England and Wales next year.
The National Lottery Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund | This new grant funding programme from the National Lottery Community Fund is for small-medium sized organisations supporting low-income households and individuals. Funds are aimed at those already providing critical services around at least one of the following: food and emergency supplies, emergency shelter/homeless services, safe spaces (including domestic abuse services), warmth services and financial and housing advice. Your organisation must be facing both increased demand for these services and increased costs of delivering them. If you have an annual turnover of between £10,000 and around £1 million you can apply for between £10,000 and £75,000. Funding will take place from October 2023 and grants must be spent by the end of March 2024. The deadline for applications is 16 October 2023 at 12 noon.
Electric Monitoring
Electronic Monitoring |His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service has published a report setting out the development of its Target Operating Model for electronic monitoring (EM). This publication fulfils one of the recommendations by the Public Accounts Committee in its September 2022 report. It sets out steps the department have taken to improve data collection and analysis in tagging services, monitor the delivery of benefits, and build the evidence based to the impact of tagging on reoffending and diversion from prison. The report outlines progress to date including the development of the methodology to link EM data to probation and other data sets, enabling analysis of specific cohorts.
Probation
Links between quality of probation supervision and positive outcomes | His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation has published new research analysing thousands of probation cases, concluding that higher-quality probation supervision leads to significantly better sentence competition rates and reduced reoffending. The three reports examined the role of engagement between practitioners and people on probation for positive outcomes, the links between supervision and early progress, and links to completion and proven reoffending. Analysis revealed that where supervision engaged the person on probation and supported their desistance, the sentence completion rate was 24 percentage points higher, and the reoffending rate was 14 percentage points lower compared with cases where supervision was judged to be inadequate. The results show the needs for adequate resourcing to help support higher quality probation work.
Staffing
Prison and probation staffing dangerously low | BBC News ran a story highlighting the government mistakenly publishing a document online as part of a contract awarded to a London company. The comments warned that 15% of prisons are expected to have fewer than 80% of the prison staff they need. The mistakenly published document blamed "government commitments on prison expansion and high staff attrition levels" for the shortages. Within probation, a third of regions in England and Wales have fewer than 80% of the necessary probation officers. The comments have since been removed from the government website.
The decline of prison lawyers | The Association for Prison Lawyers (APL) published a new report examining the decline of the prison lawyers profession. Drawing on a survey of 98 prison lawyers, the report concludes that prison law legal aid work is no longer sustainable, given that there was an 85% decrease in providers between 2008 and 2022. Prison law was excluded from the government’s 15% increase to criminal law legal aid rates in 2022, contrary to the advice of Lord Bellamy. The report points to several contributing factors including an increase in the complexity of work, the prevalence of unfunded work, emotional exhaustion, and poor renumeration. To prevent further decline, the APL urges the government to implement the uplift recommended by Lord Bellamy immediately and review the viability of prison law legal aid with a view to considering long term investment in prison law and infrastructure.
Youth Justice
Consultation on youth remand funding arrangements | The Ministry of Justice have published a consultation on youth remand funding arrangements for local authorities in England and Wales. It asks for views about how funding can be used to meet the youth justice system’s aims of preventing offending and reoffending by children and young people, and is aimed at Local Authorities, Youth Offending Teams and others working with children and young people in contact with the youth justice system. This consultation closes at 11.59pm on 8 November 2023, and you can respond here.
“Be patient, be cool” | The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has published an article from Keith Fraser, Chair of the YJB, reflecting on what young leaders have taught him. He asked several young people their advice around crucial guidance for adults working with children in and around the youth justice system. This included the importance of patience to build rapport and trust, consistency, and being authentic, to create a positive and supportive relationship with the young people they support. Offering an alternative pathway from crime and can help address a child’s needs, by directing their energy onto a positive path. Involvement in sport and physical activity has been a big part of how many young leaders he spoke to built new skills, confidence and purpose. The YJB is part of the Going Forward into Employment Scheme which recruits people with lived experience, giving children relatable role models which can be vital to inspiring change.
Know your rights: An animation on license and recall | The Howard League for Penal Reform has published a short animated video giving people more information about licence and recall. The organisation run a free, confidential legal advice line for children and young people aged 21 and under in prison, and recall remains the most common issue callers want information on. The lack of understanding of the recall process can have significant consequences, so to help address this they have created a resource which will be accessible to young people in prisons on in-cell laptops, and to practitioners and the public, who may be unfamiliar with much of the recall process.
Understanding and supporting care experienced girls in Youth Justice | The Journal, Youth Justice, has published an article setting out findings from interviews with 17 girls and young women and eight members of Youth Offending Team (YOT) staff, highlighting how being in care can affect offending behaviour and how YOTs might provide support to care-experienced girls. Whilst care-experienced children are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, there is a lack of research incorporating a gendered lens, and a lack of understanding of care-experienced girl’s needs. The findings show that inappropriate criminalisation was a recurrent theme in reasons for some girls in care encountering the system, as well as problematic police interactions, leading to girls being labelled and unfairly targeted. A key message to support care-experienced girls, was the importance of prioritising wellbeing before addressing offending behaviour.
Heath
My Story, My Words, My Mouth | A team of researchers at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Dundee created a short film exploring the oral health experiences of people with convictions and their experiences of accessing healthcare on release. The film’s storyline and script were written by those with lived experience of the criminal justice system. Inspired by the stories of people with lived experience of the criminal justice system and their struggles in accessing dental care, the film features professional actors Ric Renton and Megan Samuels, hired through the Synergy Theatre Project. The project received funding from the BASCD-Borrow Foundation Early Career Research award. It aims to stimulate conversation, change perceptions, and inform oral health policies for this underserved group.
Prison population crisis | Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor has written a blog reflecting on his concerns over the growing prison population, and how the consequences will be far-reaching. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons recently issued a second Urgent Notification for HMP Bristol, citing overcrowding as a key issue as almost half of prisoners were living in double cells designed for one person. Mr Taylor expressed his repeated concerns around the lack of purposeful activity for people in prison, however this cannot be sufficiently explained by governors’ lack of ambition for more productive regimes, if estates are being asked to take on more people with the same number of staff. He cited His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Services’ own safety in custody statistics which show prisons are becoming less safe, with the number of deaths, individuals self-harming and assault incidents on the rise.
Why are so many people recalled to prison? | Russell Webster has published a blog exploring prison recalls, following the publication of the latest Offender Management statistics by the Ministry of Justice. These revealed that the number of people recalled to prison rose 23% to 6,824 in just the first quarter of this year compared to 2022. Changes to the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014, which mandated post-custody supervision for all sentences of more than a day, mean more people are at risk of recall. Similarly, the increased use of longer sentences has also had an impact; given that the longer a person is on license, the greater chance they have of breaching it. Over the most recent 12-month period, 409 people serving Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs) were released having spent an average further 26 months in prison on recall.
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This month's edition was written by...
Clinks Policy Officer Bronte Jack
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