Howard League for Reform
What if we rethought parole? press on the word podcast in Yellow to listen
Dear Katherine Gleeson
Thank you for supporting our event at the LSE. I am pleased to say that the podcast of the event is now available. Nicola Padfield, the proponent of the idea that we should re-think parole, is now writing a pamphlet taking into account the discussion at the event, which is due to be published by the end of the year. I will be in touch with you again when we publish it.
Would you join the Howard League, so that we can carry on being an independent voice, being successful at achieving change and being a friend to critical thinking? Please sign up and add your voice today.
With best wishes
Anita Dockley
Research Director
Research Director
The Howard League for Penal Reform
1 Ardleigh Road
LONDON
N1 4HS
1 Ardleigh Road
LONDON
N1 4HS
Tel: 020 7249 7373 Ext. 109
Fax: 020 7249 7788
anita.dockley@howardleague.org
www.howardleague.org
Fax: 020 7249 7788
anita.dockley@howardleague.org
www.howardleague.org
Press release
The Parole Board faces up to new challenges
Parole Board CEO Martin Jones blogs about the challenges the Parole Board face going forward
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Prison reform impossible until jails become safer
By Russell Webster on Jul 18, 2017 12:40 pm
Prison reform will not succeed unless the violence and prevalence of drugs in jail are addressed and prisoners are unlocked for more of the working day.
That is the main conclusion of the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke as he published his annual report today (18 July 2017) based on 86 individual inspection reports on prisons, police custody suites, immigration removal centres and other custodial establishments.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data showed that:
- in the 12 months to December 2016, there were more than 26,000 assaults, an increase of 27%;
- during the same period, assaults on staff rose by 38% to 6,844 incidents;
- of these assaults on staff, 789 were serious, an increase of 26%; and
- the number of self-inflicted deaths has more than doubled since 2013 and in the 12 months to March 2017, 113 prisoners took their own lives.
Three quarters of inspected prisons sub-standard
Of the 29 local and training prisons inspected during the year, inspectors judged 21 of them to be ‘poor’ or ‘not sufficiently good’ in the area of safety.
Peter Clarke said:
Why have so many of our jails become unsafe? Many of the reasons have been well documented. The prevalence of drugs inside prisons and the seeming inability to keep them out has been a major factor. Debt, bullying and self-segregation by prisoners looking to escape the violence generated by the drugs trade are commonplace. This has all been compounded by staffing levels in many jails that are simply too low to keep order and run a decent regime that allows prisoners to be let out of their cells to get to training and education and have access to basic facilities.What is it like for prisoners on a day-to-day basis? I have often been appalled by the conditions in which we hold many prisoners. Far too often I have seen men sharing a cell in which they are locked up for as much as 23 hours a day, in which they are required to eat all their meals, and in which there is an unscreened lavatory. On several occasions prisoners have pointed out insect and vermin infestations to me. In many prisons I have seen shower and lavatory facilities that are filthy and dilapidated but with no credible or affordable plans for refurbishment. I have seen many prisoners who are obviously under the influence of drugs.
Particular concerns for young people and children
Some of the most concerning findings during the year came from inspections of the custodial estate for children and young people. In the light of revelations last year about apparent mistreatment of children at Medway Secure Training Centre (STC), the Inspectorate maintained the momentum of inspections at STCs and young offender institutions (YOIs). At that time there were around 609 children held in YOIs and 155 in STCs.
- Youth Justice Board Annual Statistics for 2015-16 showed self-harm rates at 8.9 incidents per 100 children compared with 4.1 in 2011;
- assault rates were 18.9 per 100 children compared with 9.7 in 2011;
- HMI Prisons’ own surveys showed that 46% of boys felt unsafe at their establishment; and
- the proportion of boys engaged in a job (16%), vocational training (11%) and offending behaviour programmes (16%) across the YOIs was lower in 2015-16 than at any point since 2010-11.
Peter Clarke said:
In early 2017 I felt compelled to bring to the attention of ministers my serious concern about our findings in the youth estate. By February 2017, we concluded that there was not a single establishment that we inspected in England and Wales in which it was safe to hold children and young people.The speed of decline has been staggering. In 2013-14 we found that nine out of 12 institutions were graded as good or reasonably good for safety. The reasons for this slump in standards are no doubt complex, but need to be understood and addressed as a matter of urgency.There seems to be something of a vicious circle. Violence leads to a restrictive regime and security measures which in turn frustrate those being held there. We have seen regimes were boys take every meal alone in their cell, where they are locked up for excessive amounts of time, where they do not get enough exercise, education or training, and where there do not appear to be any credible plans to break the cycle of violence.
Other findings
Other key findings from the report include:
- outcomes for prisoners in the five women’s prisons inspected in 2016-17 were better, with strong outcomes for safety, respect and resettlement, although the incidence of self-inflicted death and self-harm among women has risen dramatically;
- new psychoactive substances were beginning to have an impact within immigration detention as well as the custodial estate;
- there had been some improvements in the Rule 35 process, designed to protect those with serious health problems or who had been victims of torture;
- despite police custody being considerably professionalised in recent years, there needs to be a continuing focus on safety, with still too many deficiencies in the governance of the use of force.
Conclusion
Inspectors found – for the first time – that the number of recommendations that had been fully achieved was lower than the number not achieved. The Chief Inspector expressed his dismay in strong terms:
In many cases the response to previous recommendations has been unforgivably poor.
Given the predictably shocking findings of this annual report, it is perhaps no wonder that the government has abandoned the Prisons and Courts Bill which would have given prison inspectors new powers and required the Justice Secretary to respond to an “urgent notification” of concerns about a particular prison within 28 days setting out:
the actions that the Secretary of State has taken, or proposes to take, in response to the concerns described in the notification.
All prison posts are kindly sponsored by Prison Consultants Limited who offer a complete service from arrest to release for anyone facing prison and their family. Prison Consultants have no editorial influence on the contents of this site.
.
But the new HM Inspectorate of Probation corporate plan for 2017-2020
has proved an exception.Mercifully short and surprisingly jargon-free and easy to read, it sets out an important new direction for HMI Probation.
Rating probation services
As regular readers know, HMI Probation has become an increasingly important institution in the aftermath of the government’s partial privatisation of the probation service via its Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) project. The inspectorate has conducted a dozen inspections of public and private probation (National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Company) based on Police/Police and Crime Commissioner areas — almost all of which have found the CRCs in particular to be performing poorly. Many in the probation world have been pleased that the Chief Inspector, Dame Glenys Stacey, has been prepared to be blunt in her criticisms; stating that supervision by telephone is not acceptable and that new through-the-gate arrangements are having “no impact”.
The greater prominence of the Inspectorate has led to some criticism of its approach; the main ones being:
- The inspection process is too slow — there is too long a gap between inspections of the same area, especially at a time when the pace of change post-TR is rapid.
- The number of cases on which inspections are based is rather low allowing questions to be raised about the robustness and reliability of inspectors’ judgments.
- The process of inspection can be draining on NPS and CRC resources, particularly the latter where the same CRC may be inspected several times since it can comprise as many as four PCC areas.
The corporate plan addresses all of these issues and maps out a clear forward direction:
- HMIP is developing a national framework for probation standards and will work with commissioners, providers,
probation professionals, service users to agree quality indicators that will flesh out what good probation practice looks like. - HMIP will inspect all probation services annually and inspect CRCs and NPS divisions separately.
- Critically, HMIP will introducing a rating system and grade probation areas to make them more directly comparable (in the same way as the CQC grades care homes and Ofsted assesses schools). Expect a rating system of the Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, Inadequate type.
- HMIP will include probation work done in prison as part of its area inspections.
- HMIP will reduce the burden on providers by using data and information available from providers and HMPPS, so
that as far as possible, providers are only asked for information once.
Promoting quality
Hearteningly, the purpose of this overhaul is to encourage the delivery of good quality services and the Inspectorate has been talking to the Ministry of Justice to work out how gaining a decent rating from HMI Probation can be incentivised. Presumably these discussions were part of the probation review which I understood to have been more or less ready for publication when the general election got in the way (as it did quite fundamentally for prison reform).The corporate plan makes it clear that HMIP has secured the extra resources needed for this expansion of its role and that it will be developing standards and new inspection methodologies this year, ready to implement its new approach in Spring 2018.
Conclusion
I have to declare that I am slightly more than an interested bystander as I am a member of the HMI Probation Advisory Group, but I am very heartened by the new approach which, in my opinion, will hold up local probation services to a more rigorous scrutiny and, hopefully, drive many of them to improve current poor practice.As the corporate plan says, the goal of the new approach is that probation services improve as a result of HMIP inspections:
The need for trauma-focused care in prison
14th July 2017a new article just published on Prison mental health in-reach teams, serious mental illness and the Care Programme Approach in England in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine.
History and context
All prison posts are kindly sponsored by Prison Consultants Limited who offer a complete service from arrest to release for anyone facing prison and their family. Prison Consultants have no editorial influence on the contents of this site.
We look back at the delivery of prison mental health services in England over the last 12 years. We found that resources for services grew significantly during this period and improved organisational models for the delivery of services were put in place.
Prison mental health in-reach teams, on average, now have eight team members on average. In one service this figure rose to 20 team members. The average caseload, per in-reach team member is 17.6. NHS England, who commission such services, now expect that all those with a Serious Mental Illness (SMI) should be placed under the Care Programme Approach (CPA).
What is the Care Programme Approach?
The four main components of the original CPA were:
- Systematic arrangements for assessing the health and social needs of people accepted into specialist mental health services;
- The formation of a care plan which identifies the health and social care required from a variety of providers;
- The appointment of a key worker to keep in close touch with the service user and to monitor and co-ordinate care; and
- Regular review and, where necessary, agreed changes to the care plan.
The emphasis on the ‘care co-ordination’ element of the original CPA was originally thought to be crucial for prisoners who on release from prison were reported to often lose contact with mental health services. However it is also important to note that the CPA embraced all
those referred to specialist mental health services, or, those with a serious mental illness. The CPA was revised in 2008 and amended to focus on only those with the most severe mental illness. The new guidance in 2008 also stated the following for the first time:
those referred to specialist mental health services, or, those with a serious mental illness. The CPA was revised in 2008 and amended to focus on only those with the most severe mental illness. The new guidance in 2008 also stated the following for the first time:
It is now DH policy that, following appropriate training for staff, exploration of violence and abuse is routinely undertaken in all mental health assessments.
The notion of Routine Enquiry is a critical concept for CPA in general and prisoners in particular, many of whom will have had a history of sexual abuse or violence.
CPA is extremely important for prisoners with a serious mental illness to ensure that they are released with a care plan so that their care can be picked up immediately by mainstream community mental health services.
Findings
Our survey – via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent to all 53 English Mental Health Trusts (to which 49 = 92% responded) provided the following results:- 24% of the responding Mental Health Trusts declared themselves to be providers of mental health in-reach teams in prisons (n=12). These Trusts provided mental health inreach services to 68% of existing prisons in England (n=81).
- The number of prisons served by these in-reach teams varied from 1-10 prisons (One Trust served 10 prisons with a staff complement of 63 full-time multidisciplinary team workers).
- The average number of prison mental health in-reach team members per prison across England was 8.0. This ranged from 2.2 staff members to 20 staff members.
- The average prison mental health in-reach caseload was 17.6. Thus, there were 7,462 prisoners on in-reach caseloads if this figure is extrapolated to all prisons it can be estimated that there are 9,850 prisoners on prison mental health in-reach caseloads in England. Caseload size ranged from 13-25.
- The proportion of prisoners with a SMI on caseloads averaged 38% (range 12-92%). The proportion of those with a SMI subject to the CPA averaged 72% (range 0-100%). It can therefore be estimated that the proportion of the total mental health in-reach caseload subject to the CPA was 27% (or an estimated 2,660 prisoners).
Mental health trusts were also asked an open question that concerned the practical difficulties of implementing the CPA in prisons. Many issues were identified that related to: the nature of the prison environment; geography; and communication with mainstream services. It was rare for services to be fully integrated with mainstream mental health services and the host CPA system and electronic data collection system but this did occur occasionally.
Conclusions
We argue in the paper that a history of sexual abuse or violence are common amongst prisoners and the Care Programme Approach (CPA) provides the vehicle to assess these histories through the use of routine enquiry.
We conclude that commissioners of prison mental health services now need to ensure that teams are delivering cogent trauma-based interventions where relevant and that the outcomes are measured. At the very least NHS England should be ensuring, through audit, that Routine Enquiry takes place for all prisoners with a SMI on the CPA.
All prison posts are kindly sponsored by Prison Consultants Limited who offer a complete service from arrest to release for anyone facing prison and their family. Prison Consultants have no editorial influence on the contents of this site.
Mental health in prisons: no strategy; insufficient funds
Government does not know how many people in prison have a mental illness, how much it is spending on mental health in prisons or whether it is achieving its objectives.
That’s the headline conclusion from National Audit Office report on Mental Health in Prisons.
The NAO press release accompanying the report goes on to say:
It is therefore hard to see how Government can be achieving value for money in its efforts to improve the mental health and well being of prisoners. Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS), NHS England and Public Health England have set ambitious objectives for providing mental health services but do not collect enough or good enough data to understand whether they are meeting them.
Key facts
Background
Rates of self-inflicted deaths and self-harm in prison have risen significantly in the last five years, suggesting that mental health and well-being in prison has declined. Self-harm rose by 73% between 2012 and 2016. In 2016 there were 40,161 incidents of self-harm in prisons, the equivalent of one incident for every two prisoners. While in 2016 there were 120 self-inflicted deaths in prison, almost twice the number in 2012, and the highest year on record. Government needs to address the rising rates of suicide and self harm in prisons as a matter of urgency.
In 2016, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman found that 70% of prisoners who had committed suicide between 2012 and 2014 had mental health needs. The Ministry of Justice and its partners have undertaken work to identify interventions to reduce suicide and self-harm in prisons, though these have not yet been implemented.
While NHS England uses health needs assessments to understand need these are often based on what was provided in previous years, and do not take account of unmet need. The NAO estimate that the total spend on healthcare in adult prisons, in 2016-17 was around £400 million. HMPPS does not monitor the quality of healthcare it pays for in the six privately-managed prisons it oversees.
Resources
The prison system is under considerable pressure, making it more difficult to manage prisoners’ mental well-being, though government has set out an ambitious reform programme to address this. NOMS’ (National Offender Management Service) funding reduced by 13% between 2009-10 and 2016-17, and staff numbers in public prisons reduced by 30% over the same period. When prisons are short-staffed, governors may run restricted regimes where prisoners spend more of the day in their cells, making it more challenging for prisoners to access mental health services. Staffing pressures can make it difficult for prison officers to detect changes in a prisoner’s mental health and officers have not received regular training to understand mental health conditions, though the Ministry plans to provide more training in future.
Structural problems
In addition, NOMS did not always give NHS England enough notice when it has made changes to the prison estate. For example at Downview Prison NHS England was in the process of commissioning health services for a male prison, when NOMS decide to open it as a female prison instead. When NAO visited six months after it opened, the prison was still in the process of developing a healthcare service that could meet the needs of the female population. The challenges of delivering healthcare are compounded by the ageing prison estate, over a quarter of which was built before 1900 and without modern healthcare in mind. The Ministry has a programme to replace the ageing estate with modern buildings.
Clinical care is good – if you can get it
While clinical care is broadly judged to be good, there are weaknesses in the system for identifying prisoners who need mental health services. Prisoners are screened when they arrive in prison, but this does not always identify mental health problems and staff do not have access to GP records, which means they do not always know if a prisoner has been diagnosed with a mental illness. NHS England is in the process of linking prison health records to GP records to address this.
Mentally ill prisoners should wait no more than 14 days to be admitted to a secure hospital, but only 34% of prisoners were transferred within 14 days in 2016-17 while 7% (76) waited for more than 140 days. The process for transferring prisoners is complex and delays can have a negative impact on prisoners’ mental health and they may be kept in unsuitable conditions such as segregation units.
Conclusion
NAO reports are, to my mind, deserving of very careful consideration for the simple reason that the NAO has no political or policy agenda; it simply wants to find out whether the public are getting value for money. They approach each issue without preconceptions and simply set out the economic facts which, in this case, add up to the fact that neither the MoJ, the NHS nor HMPPS have anything like a coherent strategy to tackle the widely acknowledged mental health crisis in our prisons.
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, summarised the situation in a direct and uncompromising style:
Improving the mental health of those in prison will require a step change in effort and resources. The quality of clinical care is generally good for those who can access it, but the rise in prisoner suicide and self-harm suggests a decline in mental health and well-being overall. The data on how many people in prison have mental health problems and how much government is spending to address this is poor. Consequently government do not know the base they are starting from, what they need to improve, or how realistic it is for them to meet their objectives. Without this understanding it is hard to see how government can be achieving value for money.
COMMENTS
Zing Ipp is Kafkaesque (we never know where we stand, no idea what release test actually is, the very idea of judgement on risk is wrong, we are being judged based on recidivism as related to key areas based on data from all prisoners who have a much higher rate of reoffending, basically we are judged as a statistic in risk assessments and the risk is generalised to a group that is much more likely to reoffend, we are being judged as if we are a small sentence prisoner with high defending rates, and the most important factor in recidivism is not even counted that is length of time served as opposed to sentence length I got a 2 after 3 years, no change in risk no new courses (all courses since then were repetitions of the same courses renamed or bits moved around) but the average person incarcerated for 3 years has a higher risk of recidivism than a 7 year no risk change) I don't know what the he'll they mean by risk, why are their predictions so wrong? Why don't they take account of the most important factor (lifers long term prisoners have a recording rate of 2% where as the majority of those that account for risk statistics we are grouped with are short sentence and they have a very high rate of reoffending 30-40%) the risk is inflated and doesn't change when over rate of it should be the biggest factor in reduction in risk?
No idea what the mean by risk! No idea what they mean by release test (there is no release test their maths is completely false and based on the notion that they can tell me what I will do based on their judgement of how I used to be outside, when you don't use drugs for 5 years and your drug score is high there is a problem) the parole boards are the release test and they are handed massively inflated risk data, I could write a c++ program that accounts for all changed its not even much work, I bet oasys cost 100 million it's good for nothing because over tarrif risk stays the same, I was released high risk no nickings, 150 negative voluntary drug tests, many many negative mandatory drug tests, I did a degree, I worked as slave labour in prison labour camps for private profits, I say down and listened to some psychologists note a on Descartes (break things down into pieces or steps to understand better ETS problem solving) Epictetus said "you become what u give attention to"
"Man is troubled not by events but by the meanings he gives to them"
(Calme course is just that) with some categories of irrational thoughts (things you can say to yourself to wind yourself up, "always, never, all of them" generalisations, cursing at people rarther than what's happened or what they've done.
"Man is troubled not by events but by the meanings he gives to them"
(Calme course is just that) with some categories of irrational thoughts (things you can say to yourself to wind yourself up, "always, never, all of them" generalisations, cursing at people rarther than what's happened or what they've done.
I could write a better course but it's meaningless the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,
In the end of the day of u r stressed ur more likely to have thoughts that wind u up, one persons stressed is not anothers, if I'm on a level 10 stress i can't move my heart is beating hard in sweating without moving in having a ptsd attack, 10 means something very different to others. In the end of the day once someone is highly stressed it depends on who is around what area they are in, what they do to show many negative encounters they have its highly stressed states with negative encounters that are everyone's risky situation for reoffending whether it's react then or let the air there and manifest in another way, if it not stressed it doesn't sit there.
You can't change human nature, all we are doing is spending a lot of money on teaching offenders basic things to fund friends of governments "programs", the cause is stress which is the same as fear, frustration and anger chemically and only sufferers in attribution, (blame person? hopeless situation?).
The best thing to do is to offer supplementation to diet to reduce stress, magnesium, selenium, potasium, lower sodium, lower sugar, higher good oils omega 3, polyphenols, some routine some goals, and stop pretending they can tell me my risk based on a generalisation from data on mostly people with a much higher defending rate then similar sentences to me.
Release all ipps now the defending rate will go up to 4% stop harassing and trying to entrap and stress people using probation officers, there is no real help there is just more stress, when I see probation best thing to do is have no further interactions with anyone that day.
like they literally grouped recalled ipp's (who've been recalled for little all most of them got life recall for missing an appointment) and ipp's who have never been released are grouped with them to show us that they are releasing more IPP's.
JezI would write to your local MP and ask him to justify the continued detention of ipp prisoners that have past their tariff expiry. Also ask them how they can justify the trauma caused by this sentence after the subject repeatedly has their hopes dashed at parole. I would also write to the Deputy Director of probation for their area. Link below. Ask them why ipp prisoners are being treated in a way that causes so much trauma. They will not be able to comment directly on how your friend is being treated without the persons consent but you can explain their situation and ask general questions. Also write the the prison minister regarding the poor environment in prison and why ipp's are getting such a bad deal. Never be put off by a dismissive reply, write back if they haven't answered your questions or you don't agree with them and why. Use reports by the Howard League for penal reform or the Prison reform Trust to strengthen your argument and always chase letters after six weeks if you haven't had a reply. https://www.gov.uk/.../548347/Probation_directory_250816.pdf
In parliament the issue was raised by a labour mp who asked for an emergency depate because the report was so damning and the prison was clearly unsafe for prisoners and staff alike. The speaker said he didn't think an emergency depate was needed. I couldn't believe my ears. How bad does a report need to be.
Ullah. James will be considered for release in May 2018 by the parole board who are the only authority able to grant James his freedom. However they are reliant on the reports of both the prison and probation services. James is currently managed by Selly Oak probation who have overall responsibility of his case and whom have a significant influence on the parole boards decision to release. Even after release James will receive a 10 year minimum license, how is this right? Still controlled by the authorities, still punished for a crime committed when he was 18, that he has well and truly served his time for. My brother is 30 in September. He has lost enough of his life to this IPP. This needs to end now.James has now done 11 years in prison therefore 7 years pass the recommendation of the sentencing judge.yet he remains in prison even though he has been assessed vigorously by prison authorities as a low risk of committing offences. He needs to be rehabilitated back into the community, and by the they mean fobbing him off to a hostel. NO, why he should he be distanced from his loved ones who are there to support him. Surely it would be better for him to come home to his family.
TonerJust herd that my son has been granted his D Cat. He,s on his 13th year as an IPP. Finaly light at the end of the tunnel.
Pullman Well done to him my parner up for parole soon and everyone's recommending d cat I'm just hoping he gets it he's in his 10th year of 10 month ipp
Sandra
Abbott The very best of luck to your partner and I hope the outcome is
positive. xx
Toner
Keeping my fingers crossed for you . My son was only recommended C Cat
by his OMU. External probation & psychologist were both against downgrading
his Cat even though he hasn't been in any trouble for over 7 years. Parole
board went against both & downgraded him straight to Cat D. Hopefully the
parole board are finally realising that our IPPs need to be released sooner
rather than later.
Jude Brilliant result good news xx
Katherine
Gleeson That’s brilliant news im delighted for him X
Staunton Fantastic news x
Jez
Glad to hear some good news, has he been given any idea how long he will
have to wait before he's transferred to a D cat
Rakeeb
Congratulations x
Thompson
Omg this is brilliant news and about bloody time too. A fantastic step in the
right direction xxx
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/free-the-remaining-ipp-prisoners?source=facebook-share-button&time=1457618246
http://www.russellwebster.com/naomhprison/
Offender voluntary sector 2017: more work, less money
http://www.russellwebster.com/clinks-sots2017/
https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-gb/basic# http://www.russellwebster.com/trauma-care-prison/
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