Examination of Witnesses (Questions 683
- 699)
TUESDAY 21 APRIL 1998
MR GRAHAM
SMITH, CBE AND
JANE FURNISS
Chairman: Good morning, Mr Smith and Ms Furniss.
We apologise for keeping you waiting. We had some other business
to deal with first of all. This is the seventh evidence session
in our inquiry into alternatives to prison sentences, and we are
going to start with some general questions.
Mr Cranston
683. May I ask you a bit about the Inspectorate?
Can you tell me the background of the inspectors? If they are
former probation officers, do you think this is desirable, or
should you have outside people as well who are inspectors?
(Mr Smith) The complement is 10 inspectors who go
out and do the field work. Two of those are what we call lay inspectors,
the other eight are seconded, initially, from the probation service
for a period of three to five years.
684. Any particular inspection would not necessarily
have a lay inspector, then?
(Mr Smith) Not every inspection, but we have increasingly,
in our area inspections, used lay members of the area which we
are inspecting. In the Devon area inspection we used a lay inspector
to test reception facilities, which we would not normally do.
She just sat and watched how people were received in the probation
service. She came from the local community.
685. What about the policy issue? Is it desirable
to have more lay persons?
(Mr Smith) I think we have benefited and gained from
using lay inspectors. There has been an interesting issue arise
with full-time lay inspectors. After about two years they go "native".
I do not mean that is to be deplored, but they become very similar
to the secondees; they think the same way—and I suppose
you could say "they would, wouldn't they?"—because
they have lived with us then for some time. So there is a life
for a lay inspector full-time, and I do not think I appreciated
that when we first appointed them, because they were on the same
terms, they were on fixed term contracts, but they can stay for
up to five years.
686. Just a bit about the mechanics of inspection.
How often is any probation service likely to be inspected?
(Mr Smith) We would expect almost every service to
be seen by us for something every year. I guess, more accurately,
we would pick up everyone in two years, certainly, and we record
that in our annual reports. We do two sorts of inspections: one
is an inspection of the area—which, at the moment, is a
four-year cycle—and the other inspection is thematic, where
we pick up drugs, women offenders, whatever, and we go in-between
times. Overall, we would certainly see everyone within a period
of four years.
687. What about the impact? To what extent do
they follow your recommendations? To what extent do you monitor
that? To what extent do you crack the whip if they do not—or
can you?
(Mr Smith) I think we can. We have a set of recommendations
in all the reports we do, which are published. Area inspections
do not usually get much national attention, but they are of great
interest to the local shire or the local borough where they appear,
and the press run those. We follow up on our recommendations to
see whether those recommendations have been followed and pursued.
We do that between 12 and 18 months after the initial report has
been done. We keep, then, a file—which we call our Impact
File—which is one of the tests of whether we are being followed
in terms of our recommendations subsequently.
688. Let me ask you the question a different
way. To what extent do they not follow your recommendations? Just
a rough sort of percentage.
(Ms Furniss) We have recently looked at the first
eight probation services of the recent area inspection round,
looking at the number of recommendations we made, the number fully
implemented, those on which work was still being undertaken after
12 months, and those that, for whatever reason, the committee
had decided not to implement. The latter is one or two recommendations
from a potential group of about 100 recommendations. The partial
was usually about the amount of priority that had been given to
that particular recommendation rather than any decision not to.
Committees are left in no doubt that we expect them to implement
recommendations or be able to give a very good case as to why
it was not relevant and how they have tackled the problem in a
different way.
689. Apart from publicity, what sort of sanctions
do you have?
(Mr Smith) We would go to the Home Secretary or the
Minister with particular responsibilities for prison and probation
and they would write. Of course, they do have, at the end of the
day, a financial penalty, because so much of the probation service
money comes from the central exchequer. We have never had to exercise
that, although we have come close once or twice in the past. They
follow recommendations usually fairly completely.
690. You mentioned thematic reports, which we
know about, and, obviously, that is a very good way of disseminating
good practice.
(Mr Smith) Yes.
691. Are you satisfied with the dissemination
of good practice? Can it be improved? Are you giving more attention
to this area of your work?
(Mr Smith) Yes, the thematics have this national perspective,
and we have one coming up next week, which we believe will get
a lot of publicity and public attention. That is on sex offenders.
So we think that has impact in terms of policy. However, we have
picked up one element, which relates to your Committee, which
is the issue of improving effectiveness. This comes under the
term What Works in terms of community penalties. There,
the Inspectorate is leading a campaign—a programme—to
improve effectiveness across every service. That is, I think,
a radical departure, in some respects, for an Inspectorate, but
one which ties in with our terms of reference, which is to promote
good practice. That derives from a lot of thematic reports, and
that will be our significant focus over the next two to three
years—to improve effectiveness.
692. In terms of the take-up of good practice,
you obviously monitor that. Are you happy with that? Are local
probation services taking up your examples of good practice?
(Mr Smith) I think if I give you some figures you
will get a better idea. We asked every probation service to submit
their most effective programmes, based on the principles that
have been established through research. We were initially given
some 250 programmes—actually a few more—which was
very impressive, so we thought, across the country. We then subjected
them to very rigorous scrutiny and appraisal—and it was
rigorous, we followed the principles as tightly as anyone has
ever done—and we ended up with a handful that met that criteria.
That is not to say that other programmes were not being effective,
but mostly they could not prove it, or demonstrate it.
Mr Cranston: I think that leads on to the next
question.
Chairman
693. Before we do, can I ask you a little bit
about the background of the inspectors, just taking up from where
Mr Cranston left off? What is your background, Mr Smith?
(Mr Smith) Before I became Chief Inspector I was the
Chief Probation Officer for the Inner London Probation Service.
694. So you are a career probation person?
(Mr Smith) I am a career probation person.
Mr Winnick
695. You have been in the service all your working
life?
(Mr Smith) Not all my working life. I joined the service
as what is called a late entry—in my late 20s. I was in
insurance and I have been in the Army.
(Ms Furniss) Working in the probation service is the
only job I have ever done until I was seconded to the Inspectorate,
and then became Assistant Chief a year ago.
Chairman
696. One of the things all the witnesses we
have had before us have agreed about is that at some time in the
past (there is probably some disagreement about how long ago in
the past) the probation service lost its way slightly and started
to think of the offender as the "client". Who challenged
that? When it was challenged did it come from the Inspectorate
or did it come from those who were not connected with the probation
service at all?
(Mr Smith) I regret that I think that that complaint,
or claim, is true, but I think that the attack on it came from
both within the probation service and from without, and I would
like to think that the Inspectorate played a significant part
in that. You will not, for example, see any management using the
word "client" any more but "client" is an
interesting symbol of some of the thinking on that. The reason
for what I considered to be a rather pessimistic over-identification
with offenders was due to what preceded What Works. This was the
"nothing works" view of criminal justice which said
that it did not matter what you did—what sentence you passed
or what you offered an individual—you would not change them.
Research seemed to indicate that it was all hopeless. If that
was so, what you had to do was to look at issues in society which
caused offending and then attack those. So the offender became
your "client" and your approach often was an approach
towards poverty and employment, etc. It was, essentially, a pessimistic
attitude and it was not just in criminal justice; this was the
same in education and, indeed, in the professions. It was characterised
by "the lay individual knew better than the professional",
"don't put yourself in the hands of a doctor or a dentist
if you want to stay healthy"—it went right across the
spectrum. It was the philosophy of the 60s and 70s, which we all
were infected by.
697. When would you suggest that period came
to an end in the probation service?
(Mr Smith) To some extent it still exists as a remnant
in the probation service. I really do believe that it is a remnant
and the demonstration of that, I think, is in this very disciplined,
tough What Works model of effectiveness which goes against some
of the cultural inheritance of the recent probation service. In
other words, probation officers and staff have to unlearn things
that in their training in universities they were taught to believe.
The willingness with which the service, at this stage, is accepting
What Works and these disciplines gives room for encouragement.
We know that the best programmes produce remarkable results in
reducing offending. That is why we are doing it, because we can
point to some of those programmes.
698. Could you point to a particular report
or moment when the Inspectorate identified and challenged this
prevailing ideology that we have just discussed?
(Mr Smith) I think the seminal report for us, although
it came after we had all accepted it, was a thematic report on
dangerousness (which we can send to you), because what that did
was make quite clear that the first and last duty of the probation
service was public protection, and that that was the thing that
mattered most. Secondly, that the probation service, if it followed
a public protection model, could actually deal safely with offenders
in the community. I think that had a most radical effect on government
and on services. It was followed by government with the support
of the Association of Chief Officers of Probation and Central
Council with a handbook about good practice which went across
the whole country and we have seen adopted. In the government's
figures on KPIs it is well-hidden, we think, but there the best
results that the probation service got last year, in terms of
reducing offending, was with high-risk, dangerous offenders. These
are statistical figures which are significant improvements. I
think that was, for the Inspectorate, a seminal document, and
we are already pushing at an open door.
Mr Corbett
699. Mr Smith, you have been describing changes
in attitudes and practice, and all the rest of it. How far are
you consulted by universities in providing training to reflect
this?
(Mr Smith) I will ask Jane, because she has specialised
in training, but I will come back at the end.
(Ms Furniss) I think in the past I would say the answer
was "insufficiently", although the Inspectorate has
had a role in relation to probation officer training for many
years. In fact it was part of delivering probation officer training
in the dim and distant past. In the recent review of training
the Inspectorate has been more centrally involved, particularly
in relation to using inspection findings to inform the kind of
training needs that we see the probation service as having, and
using the kind of information from our review of national standards—the
standards that are set for probation service performance—to
inform the kind of approach and skills that new probation officers
need. I think that is certainly central to the review that is
happening at the moment. In fact, later this week I am meeting
with people who are designing the new probation officer training
to talk very much from an Inspectorate viewpoint about the content
of any future curriculum.
(Mr Smith) The training element is critical. If they
do not pick up on this new material then it is going to be slow.
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