Steve Brine discussed managing the risk of offenders within the probation system as he spoke during an evidence session on Transforming Rehabilitation in the Justice Select Committee on Wednesday 27th February.
The Winchester & Chandler's Ford MP was questioning Justice Secretary Chris Grayling MP, and explained that a lot of the evidence he had heard focussed on who manages the risk of reoffending, and that risk is 'dynamic', it can escalate and de-escalate, and is not a 'static entity'.
He went on to ask that where external agencies, such as 'lifestyle movement providers', come into the service, are they sitting around the same table as part of the probation team and engaging, or is there a disconnect?
Mr Grayling said that while the responsibility for managing risk must stay in the public sector, and that transfer of cases between officers was not an issue, an environment has been created where the support mentioned can provide a genuine difference to people's lives. He said that it was equally important that in these sessions there are trained public protection officers to keep in touch with all those support providers around the table, with a full requirement on them to highlight breaches and serious developments which may lead to the need to bring someone back into multi-agency supervision.
He mentioned that having looked at case studies and discussed this with probation officers, the thing that triggers a risk alert is often something serious such as an arrest or a serious relationship breakdown, and at that point a trained Probation Officer carries out a risk assessment.
However, any assumption, he said, that an agency would not have a material interest in spotting a change in risk and heading off a problem 'at the pass' would be incorrect, as in a system of payment by results it is clearly their job to prevent re-offending.
He went onto say that half of those in prisons go on to reoffend, and many have already been through community punishments and probation already. Over the past 5-7 years, reoffending rates have risen, and adding in new services which have an interest in keeping reoffending rates down doesn't mean there will be a collapse in management. Mr Brine agreed with him that this is true so long as the authority of the Probation Officer is clearly maintained.
Later on in the session, Mr Brine called for a strategy for women offenders explaining that the committee was looking at women offenders, and in particular Transforming Women Offending. It was widely recognised, as the Justice Secretary has said on the record, that there are 'very different challenges' for adult males and young people, and also for women in prisons.
Mr Brine highlighted that this strategy remains in the 'still to be delivered box', and the concern is that the community-based options, which are an alternative to custody, are coming to the end of their life. Services may 'fall between the cracks' and as the options come to an end existing services may just be reinvented. "Surely," he said, "it is better to save them before they fall."
He said that a Minister in the Justice Department, Helen Grant MP, would be visiting the committee in April, and surely it would be right that the strategy was before the committee prior to the meeting.
Mr Grayling said he was well aware of this issue, and unfortunately the department could not do everything at once, no matter how hard they tried. He had consciously separated the Ministerial responsibility for men and women in prisons, He said that he didn't want to have quickly produced a 'banal and bland document which didn't add up to very much', that they are genuinely looking at women's issues but are just in an earlier stage of doing so.
More information...
Watch the session back here.