Public and private organisations running probation services in
West Mercia need to improve the quality of their work, according
to a report published today by Dame Glenys Stacey, HM Chief
Inspector of Probation.
Inspectors found that the private Warwickshire & West Mercia
Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC), which supervises medium
and lower risk offenders, compared well against other CRCs in
England and Wales in terms of national performance targets.
Despite this, the CRC was assessed as poor in key areas of work,
including protecting potential victims from the risk posed by
people under supervision. This work required improvement,
particularly, in cases of domestic abuse and those involving the
safeguarding of children.
The report, based on an inspection in July 2017, noted: “The
organisation was being driven by performance targets, as one
might expect, and there was a strong central drive to discern how
to meet targets and then do so. Managers and practitioners both
recognised that this had little to do with delivering positive
outcomes for individual offenders. Success in managing
performance targets was not matched by efforts to maintain and
raise the quality of offender management and to achieve positive
outcomes with offenders.”
Dame Glenys noted that the CRC did some things well – including
delivering effective unpaid work and providing services to women.
Staff had manageable workloads, but staff supervision and
oversight were inadequate.
Like other CRCs, the Warwickshire & West Mercia CRC “has had
to make compromises in the way it operates, for financial and
other reasons” but better overall performance should be within
its grasp, Dame Glenys added.
“Substantial cuts in CRC funding to partners supplying effective
interventions are on the cards. That is particularly regrettable,
given that interventions delivered by this CRC’s providers appear
to be generally well regarded, and as other aspects of the CRC’s
offender management are so wanting.”
The inspection also covered the work in West Mercia of the
Midlands division of the public National Probation Service (NPS),
which supervises higher-risk offenders. Dame Glenys said the NPS
had experienced staff who managed offenders well and delivered
good-quality interventions overall. However, she added that
despite NPS leaders’ clear intentions, NPS staff were not using
the wide range of interventions – programmes to support offenders
– that were on offer from the CRC to the extent expected.
“Offenders may be denied the best help as a result, and the
interventions themselves will be less viable over time, if they
are not used enough. This is not the first time we have found
this situation, and I urge the NPS to review the position
nationally.”
