Beware how changes can take away your rights in a Probation Trust setting....

Friday 19th of July 2013

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the impact of the newly named "rehabilitation revolution" planned by Chris Grayling, Justice Secretary - is having a negative effect on staff and managers at all levels in probation.

I regularly witness how adaptable to change staff and managers are in and across the public sector. Managing change, being adaptable and being flexible to need - are skills I see in abundance. We are all told, whether we are a small company like my own, Innovations At Work, or a large public sector Probation Trust, that we are working in a 'transformational agenda'. The priorities are similar for both:

  •  They are 'payment by results,
  •  Greater efficiency
  •  In the case of Probation - fewer offenders re-offending.

The problem is, has anyone considered the 'equity and fairness cost' - the people cost - that the inevitable restructuring will have on offenders and the 70% of current managers and staff who will lose their jobs in the transition to 21 'government-owned companies'.
It seems to me that a certain number of factors are 'taken as a given'.

  • One is that Serco, G4S and other private / voluntary partners will do a better job than Probation Trusts are currently doing;
  • The other definitive, is that large private sector companies and their voluntary sector partners, have a sophisticated analysis of how oppression impacts on projects, services and 'offenders' in the criminal justice sector. When left undetected and unchecked, oppression, which results in institutional practices, can infiltrate like a virus, into the new policies, systems, procedures and services that the new companies and their teams will apply to work with offenders categorised as medium and low risk.

So, is this merely a training need to be hurdled by new Private / Voluntary sector partners before they 'hit the ground running'? Unfortunately life is not that simple, and the knowledge accrued in some cases by staff and managers with several decades of experience will leave when they leave.

Of course I maybe wrong, in which case there is a very quick check. Ask incoming managers whose companies are successful in the outsourcing of probation to describe the three key factors which define institutional racism and sexism at work.

What does not stack up is why the government has not undertaken an equality test of its hypothesis that outsourcing of probation is the best way to go by undertaking an Equality Impact Assessment. This would ask: what is the likelihood that one or more groups of offenders or staff will have an adverse impact as a result of the outsourcing of probation? If this question is not addressed in terms of an 'equity and fairness cost', the result has the potential for two sets of people, including the all important group of offenders - to be catastrophic.

So can I urge the Justice Department to undertake an Equality Impact Assessment on the business plan supporting the rehabilitation revolution?

If it does not, can we ask why not? Before some may suspect that David Cameron's dissatisfaction with elements of the Human Rights Act and interest in creating the UK's own Bill of Rights’, might be linked to a bigger agenda to privatise the Probation Trust and in so doing move aside the Equality Act 2010 and its important Equality Impact Assessment procedures?

Innovations At Work has a vested interest to find and eradicate discrimination and harassment in the criminal justice sector. We believe our work in this area has a direct impact on staff and managers being better equipped to stop offenders re-offending. We work to support staff to develop a sophisticated analysis of how change and its impacts at work can be managed to ensure that diverse staff groups work together, to deliver outstanding services to offenders.

We would welcome an opportunity to talk further to you about the changes you plan and how people, equity and fairness and the Equality Act 2010 can assist the future you plan. Please email or phone on roland.azor@innovationsatwork.co.uk t: 07879655877.

Roland Azor, MD of Innovations At Work,