The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners is the latest body to publish its response to Justice Minister Chris Grayling’s consultation paper Transforming Rehabilitation.
The APCC has consulted widely with PCCs to canvas their views about what the paper means from their perspective.
In general, they are supportive of the efforts to provide services for those offenders given sentences of less than 12 months, as they have a high risk of re-offending. But the PCCs do have concerns – and many of these concerns revolve around the need for maintaining localism.
As you would expect, the PCCs are very much in favour of having as much say as possible about offender management at the local level. The PCCs will be judged on their delivery of the Police and Crime Plan – and this is closely interwoven with the success, or otherwise, of rehabilitating released offenders.
And this is certainly an area where Transforming Rehabilitation may well be at odds with the PCCs. The Justice Minister is certainly pushing co-commissioning at the very least, contrary to the localism the PCCs feel they need.
The report says: “The vast majority of PCCs feel strongly that they should have more responsibility and autonomy in commissioning offender management services. They do not feel the current proposals go far enough in this direction.”
And these worries certainly chime with those of the Probation Service itself.
The APCC report welcomes the fact that the Ministry of Justice has offered to “continue discussion and engagement with PCCs to work out the detail of these proposals and begin building a long-term relationship as co-commissioners…”
And it is certainly true that a collaborative approach to implementing any or all of Transforming Rehabilitation will be essential.
The APCC also writes: “PCCs would want to work with the MoJ to design local commissioning arrangements, and agree the outcomes framework to ensure it meets the needs of their Police and Crime Plans.”
Within that neat sentence, the need for new ways of working and a collaborative approach to managing offenders is neatly laid out – as is a proposed system which is very ‘pamable’.
A need that closely mirrors the one written about in our recent blog about Smarter Working and the Criminal Justice System.
The APCC also points out that the risk of fragmentation of services, and providers, may hamper the “robust flows of information [which] will be critical to ensuring the new arrangements work effectively”.
Another clarion call for collaborative working.
The PCCs and MOJ really have an opportunity to embed better ways of working in offender management and, here at Alliantist, we would argue that those PCCs that embrace these new ways will have the best chance of achieving their goals.