Today Her Majesties Inspectorate for Probation published
the third Inspection report this week, this time looking at
probation work in courts. Compared to earlier reports this is
relatively positive in that it shows there has been some
improvement in probation court work in the last year. However, it
still raises concerns about how the probation service is
functioning post-privatisation and that pre-sentence reports are
not providing adequate risk assessments in many cases.
Whilst Napo welcomes a more positive outcome from this
inspection, it does not truly reflect the reality that our
members are facing on a day-to-day basis. Napo members report
that they are having to complete up to six reports a day at court
in order to meet the Ministry of Justice target of 80% of reports
being written in a short format, or delivered verbally to the
court. They say they have no time to do safeguarding checks for
domestic violence or child protection before an individual is
sentenced, thus increasing the risk to potential victims.
Napo welcomes the recognition by the Inspector that
probation ICT systems are woefully inadequate with many laptops
not having the functionality to complete the tasks in hand. This
is despite the government’s aspirations to digitalise the court
system. Napo is concerned that probation is being left behind in
technology which makes the workload even greater for our
members.
It is deeply concerning that the Inspector found that
Community Rehabilitation Companies (private providers) are
allowing offenders to miss too many appointments before they take
legal action via the enforcement courts. Napo members echo this
concern with reports that some CRCs encourage staff not to
enforce court orders in order to show offenders as complying and
increase the organisations performance targets.
Ian Lawrence General Secretary said: "Whilst it is welcomed
that there have been some improvements in court work, we still
believe we are long way off from the quality of service being
delivered before TR in 2015. Our members feel that they do not
have the time to do adequate risk assessments prior to sentencing
due to the arbitrary targets set by the Ministry of Justice. This
situation must be reviewed urgently by Ministers as professional
practitioners should be able to decide which sort of report they
provide to the court on an individual basis. It is also deeply
worrying that CRCs are not breaching offenders who fail to comply
with court orders and this must also be investigated
immediately."
