Prisons, Probation and Rehabilitation in Wales

Executive summary

• To effectively support individuals on probation and break the cycle of reoffending, the courts' active involvement in the governance of probation services in Wales is necessary to ensure comprehensive oversight and stakeholder engagement. Furthermore, rehabilitation services must be better resourced and readily accessible to those in need at the appropriate time.
• De-professionalising probation services involves reducing reliance on specialised, trained professionals, which affects service quality and contributes to a lack of trust. This lack of trust can, in turn, perpetuate the cycle of reoffending.
• All stakeholders should have manageable caseloads and adequate resources to build trust and confidence with clients, helping them understand their offending behaviour and consider pro-social lifestyles. Manageable caseloads are essential for effective engagement and support.
• It is also crucial that voluntary and third sector organisations receive adequate funding. This will enable them to provide necessary support services. Additionally, the co-location of services is essential to enhance clarity, coordination, and cooperation among government agencies, the private sector, and third sector organisations.

About the author

Dr Adamson is an expert in prison and probation with extensive experience in the criminal justice sector. She started as a prison officer, became a probation officer, and advanced to a senior role in high-secure care. Lyn bridges academia and practice through her involvement with the Probation Institute where is the editor of the Probation Quarterly publication and the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Nottingham where is holds the post of Board development officer. She holds a PhD in Criminology, focusing on the Transforming Rehabilitation Agenda, providing critical insights into probation policy changes.

Contact email address: lyn.adamson@ntu.ac.uk -  (Lyn has now left NTU)

Nottingham Civic Exchange is Nottingham Trent University’s pioneering civic think tank with a primary focus on issues relating to the city and the region. Nottingham Civic Exchange enables discovery by creating a space where co-produced approaches are developed to tackle entrenched social issues. Nottingham Civic Exchange supports the role of NTU as an anchor institution in the city and the region. Nottingham Trent University holds engagement with communities, public institutions, civic life, business and residents at the core of its mission. www.ntu.ac.uk/nce

Evidence

How effective are offender management services - both in custody and the community - in reducing reoffending and keeping offenders and the public safe, and are Welsh perspectives sufficiently accounted for during the commissioning of such services? 

Staff shortages coupled with associated high caseloads impact negatively on the experiences of staff and high staff turnover in probation. The levels of stress routinely described by practitioners in various contemporary research articles appears intolerable, which evidently contributes to the number of practitioners who exit the service not long after qualifying or sooner. The picture is little better in prisons with year-on-year governors having to respond to a cut in budget whilst the prison population increase. The vision created through the OMiC initiative has yet to be effectively realised, and again, this is down to a high prison population, insufficient staff to implement the key working sessions effectively and the need to rota staff reactively to cover for staff shortages. Consequently, offender management services in custody and the community are nowhere near as effective in reducing reoffending and keeping offenders and the public safe as they should be. The Welsh perspectives, just like those in England are not sufficiently accounted for during the commissioning of such services.

Budgets need to be increased in order to provide the services needed to reduce reoffending. Accommodation and employment and education training, in addition to drug and alcohol treatment must be readily available to people who are trying to desist from crime. All the evidence suggests that people under probation supervision do not just stop offending unless they have something better in their lives that they want to hold on to, and this usually means somewhere safe to live and something meaningful to occupy their lives.

All stakeholders working with people on probation, in prison and released from prison need to have manageable caseloads and appropriate resources to promote engagement with clients through using their relational skills to build relationships in which trust, and confidence help offenders to increase their understanding of factors linked to their offending. These practitioner skills are also pivotal in promoting self-belief in their clients and helping them appreciate that there are possible alternative pro-social lifestyles, but unless caseloads are manageable, this is impossible.

Probation must move away from the civil service as senior managers need to be able to comment freely on probation and prison policy, publish their opinions and engage in debate about the development of proposals for change and their implementation. It is not healthy that as civil servants, probation and prison staff are not able to freely express their opinions in public. Practitioners are in the best place to explain the current problems and needed changes to drive policy and practice changes and stifling their voice is detrimental to effective rehabilitation services.

Is there sufficient clarity, co-ordination and co-operation between government agencies, the private sector and third sector organisations involved in offender management and rehabilitation in Wales? 

The relationship between government agencies, the private sector and third sector organisations was good but not ideal prior to Transforming Rehabilitation (TR). The fracturing of professional relationships within the probation service due to the impact of TR was profound, and this reverberated in and with the relationships with the private and third sector organisations. Despite the more recent unification the relationships between these stakeholders have yet to recover. Desistance literature evidences the need to support people to develop social and human capital and for this to be achieved effectively by people on probation. Both the voluntary and statutory sector need to be local; they need to work in local areas, with local people and the co-location of services can be particularly effective, as evidenced recently Swansea Bay University Health Board when they piloted an innovative sexual health cling at Swansea Neath Port Talbot Probation Delivery Unit. For services to be effective, there needs to be much more co-location of services similar to this where people on probation can access a range of provision to meet their needs and this would improve the clarity, co-ordination and co-operation between the different stakeholders in Wales.

Furthermore, links between the courts and probation need to be strengthened. Until the 1990s the courts relied on probation staff to report on the circumstances of a person before the court and the circumstances surrounding the offence. These reports would also advise the court as to the appropriateness of particular sentencing options. During the past two decades the importance of these reports has deteriorated to the extent that now, very few detailed, comprehensive reports are completed. The courts have largely lost confidence with the probation service. If sentencers were to be reengaged as stakeholders and given a role in the local governance of probation in Wales, they are more likely to understand the value of probation interventions and utilise the various option in their sentencing decisions, which in turn will positively impact prison overcrowding in Wales.

Recommendations:

1. The voluntary and third sector organisations needs to be adequately funded to be able to provide the support needed to help people on probation overcome the barriers that perpetuate a cycle of offending.
2. The need for co-location of services to help improve clarity, co-ordination and co-operation between government agencies, the private sector and third sector organisations is essential.
3. The courts need to become active stakeholders and become involved in the governance of probation services in Wales.
4. Rehabilitation services need to be better resourced and readily available to those in need at the time of need.

Dr Adamson can make herself available to the committee, clerks or AMs if required to support this inquiry.