The latest inspection report on adult offending work in England and Wales was published today.

Sally Lester, Assistant Chief Inspector of Probation, said: “This inspection of offender management work in London took place as part of our second programme of Offender Management Inspections. We have examined a representative sample of probation (adult offending) cases from the trust, and have judged how often the work with each case was done to a sufficiently high level of quality.

“Over the trust as a whole, we judged that the work to keep to a minimum each individual’s Risk of Harm to others – i.e. the ‘Control’ purpose’ – was done well enough 70% of the time. The work to make each individual less likely to reoffend – the ‘Help’ and ‘Change’ purposes – was done well enough 69% of the time. Work to maximise compliance and enforcement was done well enough 75% of the time. A more detailed analysis of our findings is provided in the main body of this report, and summarised in a table in Appendix 1. These figures can be viewed in the context of our findings from the areas and Trusts where we have inspected so far – see the Table below.

“The findings in relation to many aspects of practice in London were approaching the national average – and this represents a marked improvement on previous inspections of London Probation. However, the average figures mask a wide range in the quality of work; some was of a very high quality, but some was not yet good enough. The Trust had processes in place to address deficits in practice and managers were aware of the importance of targeting their efforts. Staff were well engaged in the London-wide audit and improvement programme, and we saw clear evidence that this was starting to impact on the quality of practice. Overall, we consider this an encouraging set of findings.”

As a result of some changes to questions in Section 3, results for inspections since April 2011 are not strictly comparable with previous scores	Scores for the English regions that have been inspected to date			Scores for London
	Lowest	Highest	Average
‘Control’ -‘Risk of Harm to others’ work (action to protect the public)	64%	81%	77%	70%
‘Help’ and ‘Change’ -‘Likelihood of Reoffending’ work (individual less likely to reoffend)	62%	78%	76%	69%
‘Punish’ – Compliance and Enforcement work (individual serves his/her sentence)	69%	85%	79%	75%

 

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Notes to editors

1. The report is available at inspection reports

2. This Offender Management Inspection 2 programme started in September 2009. Adult offending work is being inspected by visits to all NOMS areas and trusts over a three-year period from September 2009.

3. The purpose of offender management has been usefully characterised as to ‘Punish, Help, Change and Control’ each individual offender, in accordance with the need of the individual case. Although our detailed inspection findings can seem rather technical for the general reader, our headline findings can be related to those ‘plain language’ purposes. We have given particular attention to the ‘Control’ purpose – the Public Protection aspect of the work – since this is where independent inspection can add the most value. Our ‘Risk of Harm to others score’ measures how well this has been done.

4. Sally Lester can be contacted by 07917084763 or by email sally.lester@hmiprobation.gsi.gov.uk (E-mail address)