Post 15 - The 'Monolith' we know as NOMS

This is our last blog post as the owner and controller of Bolts & Bars before it goes under new management, so we thought we'd better lay out our alternative for the current system we have for the control and oversight of our institutions in this country which house so many vulnerable people.

I use the word vulnerable deliberately as so many are ill with various mental health conditions and so should be under the care of our National Health Service, or young children who should be under the care of Social Services, or migrants awaiting deportation or processing who either way should not be under lock and key, women and elderly who should only be there if they're violent or a public danger.

Time for some fresh eyes and some new ideas

However that said, none of those are the real reasons in my view why they are vulnerable although they are good reasons to consider. The one thing they all have in common by virtue of the fact they are effectively 'prisoners' and as such the applicable laws pertaining to their conditions and rules under which they are held come under 'prison rules' and prison law class. They do not (with the exception of the very rare case nowadays) have access to legal aid. In other words they have no protections under the law, in the sense that whilst there may be rules and laws to abide by and to protect them, they cannot defend themselves nor their rights under those protections without access to adequate and equal resources (their own money). So in effect they have no access to the law, and thus no real access to justice because we have either done away with, or capped the relevant legal aid funds for people such as the vulnerable in the given circumstances.  

It may surprise you, but that is not what I want to write about. Why you ask, well because everyone involved with the prison industrial complex including charities, prison reform campaign groups, criminal justice system workers, journalists, politicians, police officers, probation officers, court staff and the judiciary all know that aspect is not going to change. Despite all the campaigning and speech making and report writing by various bodies including Chief Inspector of Prisons, IMB groups, national newspapers and TV programmes, with all the rhetoric from well intentioned people who have seen the light because their life has been touched personally in one way or another, nothing will change. Not if we maintain our current course with our current model. Therefore I propose a fundamental sweeping change to our system, and I believe we can succeed and affect real, tangible, long lasting reform if we are brave and creative in our thinking when considering solutions. My meagre pondering has brought me to this conclusion...

Stand out and create change

The first problem to deal with is NOMS - Acronym (we do love an acronym in the UK) for the 'National Offender Management Service' which is a department of the United Kingdom Ministry of Justice and a modern day monolith. Unable or unwilling  it doesn't matter, it must go, so either we disband it completely or we re-brand it!

I am for re-branding and so I have written a proposal for the powers that be if they are at all interested (which they are probably not). After all why would they want to reduce  deaths in custody, reduce assaults on staff and inmates, reduce the numbers of suicide and self harm, reduce the incarcerated population figures, save money and be renowned worldwide for a safe, productive, progressive and humane system of incarceration...well they wouldn't would they?

The new NOMS in my vision would stand for 'National Offender Monitoring Service' and have absolutely no management or fiscal responsibilities for prisons whatsoever.  It should include the following organisations which should be merged to form the new NOMS: The National Probation Service, The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, The Prisons and Probation Inspectorates, The Independent Monitoring Board (old BOV), and The Parole Board for England and Wales.

This body would have responsibility and authority for monitoring and inspecting all institutions private and public, all probation CRCs', monitoring convicted offenders in the community or post release on licence from prison, they would also facilitate all parole board related activities and report their views. NOMS CEO would be a judicial appointment and it would have an executive board comprised of relevant personalities.  

What of the institutions you wonder - well in my view that is the easy bit. Break up the existing estate and give complete responsibility, including all fiscal and management autonomy to the Police and Crime Commissioner of whichever Police Force area they lie within and allocate all financial resources accordingly. POA member contracts can be given the same clause of re-employment/compensation given to those members who work in institutions that are subsequently privatised.  The ethos and conditions of each institution will be a direct reflection of the community in which it is housed as they vote the commissioners in.  

"Put your money where your mouth is?"...We did.

In time the role of a warder will become professionalised and the POA a thing of the past, communities can take ownership of their respective institutions and hopefully those institutions will encounter tangible reform.  One thing is for certain, it can't be any worse than what is happening right now as we speak.

I am sure as normal in this field there will be much sniping and ridicule of my thoughts on this, but it has to be better than decades of report writing, expenditure in excess of trillions of pounds and consistent death rates without any accountability to anyone whatsoever. At some point as a proud and decent country in which we live we have to reflect our values into our institutions and ensure we create less victims by ensuring people come out of those places as better people than when they went in, with a good, pro-social, positive outlook determined to atone and give back. Asking them to change their ways is one thing, effecting change is another, and that is our responsibility as a society as much as it is theirs as the offender.  It is not rocket science, all it takes is a cohesive determination to see it through and an application of decent human values without concern to political or personal advantage.

Post 14 - Devious In & Devious Out - How Does Society Measure the Real Cost?

What a year this has been, so much has occurred in such a short time.  Twelve months since I launched my website (see post 2) at the Law Society for England & Wales with two prominent figures in their respective area of the law as speakers I felt that day would turn out to be a turning point for all those people who are incarcerated and therefore disenfranchised and vulnerable to those who wield power and control over them in their daily existence within UK institutions.  

Peter Cadman and Flo Krause two people I am proud to know personally and call my friends, (who humbled me with the fact that they were prepared to stand on a podium and endorse my vision) gave wonderful and passionate speeches. They talked of the need for 'Transparency' by those agencies tasked with managing UK institutions where human beings are incarcerated, 'Acessibility' to those insitutions via public comment and media, 'Accountability' of those who hold power and influence over the lives of those incarcerated and that such power and influence is wielded with 'Humility'. Peter pointed out it is cheaper to pay for private education at Eton College for a year than send someone to prison, a bizarre and disturbing fact about where our priorities lie as a society. 

Many significant personalities related to the lives of those incarcerated have encountered major life changes, Michael Gove has rightly been sacked as in my view he was simply a devious opportunist and not favoured by the 22 committee who I as with many others believe are the real power within UK conservative politics. A barrister of great integrity Flo Krause 'hung up her wig' and ended her career and her life passion in Law, as has Juliet Lyons who resigned from the Prison Reform Trust. Also Erwin James someone I have known personally for many decades and someone I consider a friend has published his wonderfully brave and moving book "Redeemable - A Memoir of Darkness and Hope" all about his life journey from a horrendous start in life to the integrated, happy and respected man I lunched with in London recently who in addition to his many achievements and being an author of several books and Guardian newspaper columnist he is also now the editor in chief of Inside Time.

What of us? Well one of our staff attempted to blackmail our company director with deleting the website content unless he paid him a significant amount of money, as he thought he was the only one with access to the content management system (clearly the sharpest tool in the box) so no surprise the guy was sacked, thereafter we discovered he actually had not done the amount of work he had been billing or claiming for anyway, we chose not to prosecute him as he was on a probation licence and his girlfriend had recently had a newborn baby.  We were subjected to a campaign of abusive and threatening text messages and involved the police who identified the parties involved and subsequently interviewed one of them and are monitoring events (this saga resulted in the installation of 24hr cctv). We have had meetings and discussions with serveral parties who are commentators or interested parties to Criminal Justice Reform who wanted to involve themselves with us in joint ventures utilising us and we have met many people this past year.  Many of those were well intentioned characters such as Alex Cavendish who is amongst many things a very bright man.

Another, a prominent academic in his field (who yes actually lectures at a university) invited me to a meeting at his campus, and as the day progressed he degenerated into a paranoid, aggressive, dysfunctional excessive drinker (who I hope has sought help) confronting people in the street for looking at him! There was the one who it transpired was a solicitor of meagre integrity and moral values who appears to collude with his client in covering up their crimes. Another was introduced to me as a recently released fraudster (nothing against that if reformed, but I fear he may not be) who was still peddling the same fictitious life history/story that was part of his presentation to victims of his crimes! Needless to say left him swiftly in the dust as little he said was actually true, and now he is gradually grooming identified parties within the Association of Prison Lawyers, barrister bloggers and others he has since identified that he feels may contribute something to his prison refom plans (that others will fund I am sure as he won't/can't as potless), apparently now he is a reformer (as oppose to reformed). He actually stated he was charging people to give them advice regarding what to expect if they were sentenced to a term of imprisonment (charlatan) talk about exploitation! Sadly there are many who see prisons and the plight of people incarcerated as an opportunity to make money by fleecing grants and donors or to create an existence which feeds their pathological need to be perceived as an authority or a prominent personality within the field. Blatantly achieved by grooming and ingratiating themselves with those they perceive as the current acceptable critics who have the ears of the decision makers, or in fact anyone they think may be of use to their devious strategy. 

It would be an interesting study to correlate and monitor how many 'prison commentators/reformers' were inside for fraud, an offence which has NO offending behaviour programmes to address the devious thinking involved in calculated crimes such as aquisitive fraud yet they are among the highest repeat offenders, whereas those sentenced to life and are on licence for their natural lives post release are the lowest.  It is also often the case in prison that it is the fraudsters who have worked their way into 'key' positions within establishments, usually by grooming and desensitising staff, it is also interesting to see that behaviour continue post release as they are invariably not on licence for long, and where they are on it at all they are quickly perceived by a probation officer under pressure of work as a low priority.  Yet in reality how much do they cost overall, what is the true cost if they are now outside involved in the Prison Industrial Complex which is awash with money (13bn is the cost of the CJS alone at the last count)?

There were some old school rules inside whilst doing your bird which applied in almost all cases. Rules such as a northener in a southern jail AVOID, a southerner in a northern jail AVOID, someone who has been in lots of jails in a short period AVOID, drug user/dealer AVOID, those who gossip AVOID, those who seek influencial positions in the nick AVOID, Sexual groomers AVOID, there are many more but those listed were the mainstay of a peaceful life inside for most people. Either way I have a serious illness to deal with and as such am no longer able to continue in the vein that I once could (not for the time being anyway) and so I will observe from afar the machinations, floundering and manouverings of those devious characters and see if in fact I am sadly once again proved right in my judgment of their motives. I hope not...

Post 13 - Does Corruption & Collusion Really Equal Crime?

To follow on from Posts 11 and 12 the theme of corruption/collusion was very much the topical thread running through most of the media streams globally as a result of the expose regarding Panama and the leaking of 11.4m (2.6 terabytes of data) files regarding the activities of clients from the Law firm Mossack Fonseca, the stabbing in the back of Boris Johnston by Michael Gove and then the Labour Party in complete disarray and rebellion all in my view evidence of the corrupt and collusive world of the powerful where many simply seek to further their own ambitions at whatever cost to their integrity and character. 

The root of all evil?

What struck me about the furore those events created is that generally we can be quite a vindictive and unpleasant bunch when we choose to be, and especially when it comes to criticising the rich and powerful.  Yet which of us would not employ lawyers and accountants to exploit legal loopholes in tax law if we were in a position to have so much money that we needed to protect it from economic factors influenced by others, who may or may not be as astute as us?

So we get all hot and bothered about the tax obligations that may or may not be deliberately avoided, yet at the same time in my view we can appear indifferent to the plight of anyone who in our twisted thinking "deserves all he gets". Consider for a moment someone who is disenfranchised, ostracised or stigmatised such as an ex-offender or someone suffering a mental health illness, or even worse some poor soul who is marked out with both, who then becomes a 'victim'. Do you think you would be inclined to highlight a wrong done against them, to pursue it, or even beyond and actually go to any lengths within the law to right that wrong on their behalf, regardless of the personal cost to you?  The answer if you are totally honest with yourself is likely to be no. Why?

Well for many reasons not withstanding the fact that depending on your standing/vocation it may be professional suicide (hence very few high profile people or politicians take up any cause which is unpalatable to the general public) as it is a high risk/low reward scenario, a thankless task with no reward or recognition for helping someone within that sector of society and certainly not from the establishment. If anything you would probably end up on a watch list of some sort or another. Have we come to the point where in fact not that many people in power seek to know of wrongdoings against those perceived to be outside society, even if temporarily, do we prefer out of sight out of mind, if we don't know then we can't be roped in?

Is it in fact that we are all criminals?

President Obama is now openly talking about the prison industrial complex, he is discussing prison reform and laying out his plans for the future of incarceration within America to the extent that it is now something to be found in most daily papers in the United States and some brave souls promote change on a daily basis. Will it have time to be implemented before either Donald Trump dumps it as he seems likely to do, or before Hillary Clinton screws it up as she has done with so many other initiatives she has been tasked with, who knows? One thing I think we can pretty much count on is as I predicted in my blog of 11th February 2016, UK Prison Reform is one trend where we appear to be completely reluctant to follow our American cousins from across the big pond.

I genuinely fear for those who live and work inside all institutions within our governments control, because they are now crime zones as bad as any inner city in this country. I know it, you know it, the media know it, and those working there know it, but the worst thing is those responsible for managing and reporting on the management of it, they also know it and yet nothing changes.

My greatest fear is it never will and hundreds of men women and children will continue to die either because they see no other choice but kill themselves through suicide, or they have diminished access to adequate health care.  It appears to be because many of those in the sector are ego driven, making money from it at various levels and in the end they simply talk or write about it. Apart from myself and Mark Johnson the founder of User Voice I am unaware of anyone who has put their own money into a reform initiative on any meaningful scale, very few actually do anything tangible which may truly change it for the better.  They do not have an original viable idea between them, they squabble and plagiarise each other claiming Kudos here and credit there, and in fact if someone does actually take action, then the acceptable critics join ranks in fear and outrage, with campaigns of instrumental poison and aggression against the entity or person who dared to stand apart, lest they be exposed for what they are...parasites who simply feed of the misery and suffering of others and the conscious neglect of those with the power to influence real tangible positive reform.

Post 12 - 'Risk' Reduction or Not?

The word 'risk' has now become such a regular feature in everything we read, hear and see on the various forms of media which now influence almost every area of modern life. Constantly phrases are used such as "We have to weigh up the risks"..."What are the risks involved?"..."How risky is it?"..."What's our exposure?"..."Can we stand the heat?"..."What are the consequences?"..."What are the outcomes?"..."Have we done a costs benefit analysis?..."What's the ROI?"...etc etc. Risk, something which is pre-eminent throughout so many areas of life today the world over.  Depending where you were fortunate enough (or not as the case may be) to be born or to live, the generic everyday risks you face on a daily basis are or course different. In Europe even a school trip = risk assessment, the relevant HSE are now integrated into every area of European life and we are safeguarded by this statutory factor to the extent that now we probably never give it a second thought.  But 'risk' comes in many forms and not all are tangible or overt, visible therefore manageable, some risks are subtle and engage with us without us even being aware of it as 'risk' takes on many guises which on the surface appear socially acceptable and in fact expected and normal.

It seems so many people and organisations have a view, they readily voice their views and in some cases they are strong influencers of others and their perception and understanding of risks to the point that decisions are made which effect the lives of many and yet most attach the decision to the front line 'Face Person' of the decision.  However the differential in the ability to think critically before influencing is not necessarily something given much weight when these people are put in a position of influence.  So who are the true 'influencers'?  Apart from the obvious Marketing, Media, Religion, Schools and Parenting influences, there are other groups which until recently in my view have been overlooked because if you think about it, it may not be that they are in fact individuals either.

An example on the most serious scale of an individual influencer is perhaps whoever is President of the United States at any given time?  Perhaps even a Prime Minister voted in with a landslide, loved by everyone at the time, who all prospered under his government, but then a decision is made which later appears in hindsight to have been flawed or motivated by other factors than those promoted at the time, if the press and pressure groups are to be believed.  In my personal view only a moron could think such decisions are made alone or with a personal motive in mind, surely they are made on the basis of multiple full and complete risk assessments of the situation and information available and current at the time. A risk assessment is almost never carried out by the decision maker, almost never carried out by the 'Face Person', it is usually done by 'experts' in their respective fields, experts who when the shit hits the fan do not have to stand up and explain their thinking process or their rationale for the decision, as the perception perpetuated by the mass media is of course the 'Face Person'' is the person responsible, ergo they are culpable.  In many spheres of operation such as Politics, the Military or a PLC such an outcome can be fatal as the ingredients of the outcome are obvious to the general public.

"So we'll blame you if that's OK?"

But what of situations where that is not the case, where there is such a myriad of obstacles to establishing who was behind the analysis which gave rise to the final decision, where does that responsibility lie?  What of the Life Sentenced Prisoners who are released (a Killer who is released from Prison and Kills again, or the Multiple Rapist who is released and Rapes again) surely it is inadequate to suggest these are calculated risk decisions taken by an "independent" Parole Board, which was the explanation given on every occasion when there is a failing, who were the 'influencers' and what is their culpability?  In response people suggest we need to leave the EU and abandon the ECHR as it is misused to defend the rights of prisoners and after all they have forgone their "rights" when they broke the law haven't they?  

But the examples above are not representative of people who truly encountered change within themselves, they did not integrate any learning, they did not encounter true remorse, shame or guilt for their actions previously, they simply learnt what they needed to say at any given moment, they manipulated those they had contact with on a daily basis. Inadequately trained and educated in the necessary skills to identify and recognise traits, to the extent that by the time they appeared before the Parole Board reports had been written suggesting these people had changed. In fact they were clearly extremely dangerous men, and in the case of one of those men the authorities were warned years in advance, I know this because I warned them about him and what the future would bring were he progressed, but at the time I was ignored.

The fact is the American and UK prison systems are broken, and no amount of building new prisons to house ever increasing numbers or internal reconstruction is going to change that, because reducing offending rates whatever country we are talking about, is all about people, it's about people engaging with people.  So locking people up for extended periods with others who are all 'doing time' warehoused with little or no intellectual stimulation is simply the blind leading the blind.  You can worry about drug problems in prisons, or lack of education or even the levels of violence, but unless you connect the right people with the 'right' people, you will only effect superficial change and certainly not make any impact on serious crime rates (unless of course that is your intention). No one is born bad. With the exception of the criminally insane or those who 'retire' having made their fortune with their ill gotten gains, criminals change because they want to change. They change because they choose to change, they reach a point where they register the consequences of their actions and decisions. They encounter realisation of the impact they have had on others, they feel the pain they have caused through their actions, they understand and comprehend they have brought hurt and chaos into the lives of many and as a result they are on a road to nowhere.

The Choice to Change is Open to All

They encounter genuine remorse and guilt, shame combined with resolve to never create victims again. Sometimes that realisation is brought about through introspection and self analyses, sometimes through an event, a powerful experience or the guidance and support of another with greater insight and  knowledge of the issues at hand. One thing is absolute, and it is that the decision to truly change their lives is NEVER chosen by a criminal because they have been broken or coerced through an institutional attitude or a political policy.

In my view cutting front line Probation Officer staffing levels is a mistake. Cutting Prison Officer staffing levels is a mistake. Building huge prisons to house greater numbers of criminals is a mistake. Surely it is apparent a refined recruitment process needs to be implemented, and pay a decent salary for educated staff with the right skill sets. Obviously you will not get certain invested parties saying that because if the staff inside have the skills then those parties become redundant. However surely if you are going to have hidden parties "influencing" decision makers then you have to ensure they are the right people with the right tools equipped to do so and not simply doing so because that's how we do it. The world penal community of 'experts' agree that Norway is the world leader in rehabilitation, so why are we ignoring them, are we so arrogant or corrupt that we believe only we know better in everything? Whilst in the meantime recidivism just is, and will remain a facet of broken Criminal Justice Systems the world over while their communities suffer and the invested parties become wealthier as the industry of prisons and incarceration continues to grow and expand? So really we are confronted with unknown risks daily by the mere fact that we do not invest in a proven theory, we prefer to keep gambling and experimenting because we know better?

That is corruption in it's purest form.