Download or read book The Management of Staff Sickness Absence in the National Probation Service written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-04-26 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This NAO report examines sick leave in the National Probation Service, which was running at 12.3 days per person in the 2004-05 period at a cost of £31.6 million. A number of recommendations have been set out as follows. That the National Probation Directorate should agree with the Chief Probation Officer a consistent minimum standard for collecting and reporting sickness absence data in their areas. This in turn could be used to produce comparative analyses, and offer a basis to diagnose the causes of sickness absence. An upgrade in some areas of their information technology systems should occur, so that better management information can be compiled. All probation areas should implement the mandatory elements of the national policy on sickness absence. All Chief Officers should review their action plans for reducing sickness absence. Sickness absence should be managed effectively but sympathetically, by including return to work interviews, along with a means of distinguishing between avoidable and unavoidable sickness absences, and addressing the culture of absenteeism. Long term sickness absence should be reviewed as a matter of urgency. Policies relating to work/life balance should be implemented nationally.

Download or read book Protecting the Public written by House of Commons Public Accounts Committ and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Parole Board (the Board), a Non-Departmental Public Body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, is responsible for deciding whether an offender is suitable for release from custody on parole. The Board's workload of cases to assess has more than doubled in a five year period. The balance has also shifted from more straightforward paper based hearings to more resource intensive oral hearings, where the offender attends and is questioned. This increase in workload stems from the rising prison population and new sentencing regimes. The Board's administrative performance is undermined by a lack of capacity to hear cases, and it often does not receive the key information required to make their assessment on serious offenders. The Prison and probation services have been unable to provide the timely and complete information necessary for the efficient and effective running of the parole process. There are further problems with the oral hearings: two-thirds of oral hearings have not been held in their planned month and 20 per cent of hearings have been held more than 12 months late. These delays are unacceptable and costly - direct costs of £1 million in 2007-07, and nearly £2 million costs to the Prison Service in keeping offenders who should have been released or transferred to open conditions. These costs are significant when set against the Board's net expenditure in 2007-8 of £7.4 million, and the Board needs to administer hearings more effectively. The Board should also be more independent, and its membership more accurately reflect the composition of society.

Download or read book Protecting the public written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2008-03-05 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Parole Board for England and Wales is an independent body that makes decisions on the release of prisoners. The Board works alongside the HM Prison Service and the probation service when deciding on the release of offenders from custody. In the 2006-07 period the Board handled 25,000 cases, a 31 per cent increase from the 2005-06 period. This NAO report, examines the following areas in how the Board works, including: whether the members of the Board are well equipped to make decisions; whether the Board manages its workload in a timely and efficient way; whether the Board has adequate processes for reviewing its performance and learning lessons. The NAO has set out a number of recommendations, including: the Ministry of Justice should, alongside the Parole Board, examine the composition of the Board's membership to consider whether is can be more representative; that the Board should continue to monitor closely the amount of time members are making available for casework; that the Board should introduce a template to record reasons for all parole decisions; that the Ministry of Justice needs to produce more realistic workload forecasts and also introduce a target which covers the entire process of providing information and holding hearings for indeterminate sentenced prisoners (sentences given to prisoners for public protection and life sentences); that the Board should review random samples of some completed cases to assess the quality of the reasons for the decision taken.

Download or read book The Penal System written by Michael Cavadino and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its Sixth Edition, this book remains the most comprehensive and authoritative on the penal system, providing students with an incisive, critical account of the punitive, managerial and humanitarian approaches to criminal justice. Fully updated to cover the most recent changes in the Criminal Justice System, the new edition: Outlines contemporary policy debates on sentencing, staffing, youth custody and overcrowding. Explores growing inequalities in the criminal justice system including issues of race, religion, gender and sexuality, with new content on faith, and transgender prisoners. Considers the impact of privatisation on the probation service. Discusses the most recent debates around the parole process, including high-profile cases and attempts at reform. The book is supported by online resources for lecturers and students, including chapter PowerPoints, sample syllabus, summaries of key legislative acts, bills and official reports, a list of recommended further reading for each chapter, and links to important Penal Agencies and Organisations, Law Reform Organisations, and other useful academic sites. Essential reading for students of criminal justice and criminology, studying penology, punishments and the penal system.

Download or read book Sentencing and Punishment written by Emeritus Professor of Law Susan Easton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-22 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the theory behind the headlines and engaging with current debates, this new edition provides thoughtful, impartial, and unbiased coverage of sentencing and punishment in the UK. Collectively, Susan Easton and Christine Piper are highly experienced teachers and researchers in this field, making them perfectly placed to deliver this lively account of a highly dynamic subject area. The book takes a thorough and systematic approach to sentencing and punishment, examining key topics from legal, philosophical, and practical perspectives. Offering in-depth and detailed coverage, while remaining clear and succinct, the authors deliver a balanced approach to the subject. Chapter summaries, discussion questions, and case studies help students to engage with the subject, apply their knowledge, and reflect upon debates. Fully reworked and restructured, this fifth edition has been updated to include developments such as the Sentencing Act 2020 and changes following the 2019 general election. This is the essential guide for anyone studying sentencing and punishment as part of a law or criminology course.

Download or read book Probation and Politics written by Maurice Vanstone and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-30 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of essays by a unique group of authors about the political destruction of the probation service in England and Wales. All of them are probation officers turned academics, with a collective scholarly output that is both prodigious and distinguished. They address the history of probation, its underlying values and working methods, and the way it has been systematically dismantled by successive political administrations. The book offers essential reading for those interested in broadening their understanding of the probation service and its vital role in rehabilitation. In addition it makes a compelling case for the reinstatement of an evidence-based probation service as the primary criminal justice agency concerned with helping people who come before the courts to become contributing citizens. A lively and engrossing read, it is destined to be invaluable to policy makers, social science theorists and commentators, as well as scholars of criminology and the justice system, and all those who work in it.

Download or read book Rehabilitating and Resettling Offenders in the Community written by Anthony H. Goodman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-05-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rehabilitating and Resettling Offenders in the Community is a significant examination of the historical development of work with offenders and their treatment by the state and society. It offers unique perspectives and a wealth of information drawn from numerous interviews with probation staff. Highlights how the work of probation staff has changed over time and the reasons behind these changes Includes discourse with probation staff carried out over many years for a comprehensive, 'insiders' view of the situation Focuses on contemporary issues, including the changes brought in by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition Written by a leading academic with extensive experience in the probation service

Download or read book Homicide in Criminal Law written by Alan Reed and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a leading contribution to the substantive arena relating to homicide in the criminal law. In broad terms, the ambit of homicide standardisations in extant law is contestable and opaque. This book provides a logical template to focus the debate. The overall concept addresses three specific elements within this arena, embracing an overarching synergy between them. This edifice engages in an examination of UK provisions, and in contrasting these provisions against alternative domestic jurisdictions as well as comparative contributions addressing a particularised research grid for content. The comparative chapters provide a wider background of how other legal systems treat a variety of specialised issues relating to homicide in the context of the criminal law. The debate in relation to homicide continues apace for academics, practitioners and within the criminal justice system. Having expert descriptions of the wider issues surrounding the particular discussion and of other legal systems’ approaches serves to stimulate and inform that debate. This collection will be a major source of reference for future discussion.

Download or read book Facing Justice written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2005-06-16 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2002, 85 per cent of defendants attended hearings in England and Wales at the dates and times set for them, but those who do not turn up cause distress and inconvenience to victims and witnesses, and waste the time and resources of the courts and other agencies. Criminal justice agencies are not dealing with this situation effectively. For example, only 45 per cent of the 118,000 bail warrants issued in 2002, were executed by the police within three months. The Committee recommends that areas with a poor record for enforcing defendants' attendance should be "named and shamed" by the National Criminal Justice Board. The Board should determine the responsibilities of the different criminal justice agencies at each stage of the criminal justice process. The increased use of stipendiary magistrates should be re-considered by the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

Download or read book Dictionary of Probation and Offender Management written by Rob Canton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers new ideas and concepts as well as the established probation lexicon, including institutional, legal, political and theoretical terms used in the discipline and importing concepts from the disciplines of sociology, criminology and psychology.

Download or read book Configuring Value Conflicts in Markets written by Susanna Alexius and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic values shape markets, as does sustainability, safety, decency, public health and democracy. Based on micro-process studies in a dozen markets, this multi-disciplinary book presents a typology of strategic responses to value plurality in markets and helps to explain how such value work influences market reform. Value plurality may be reinforced and turned into open conflicts, but also played down in configurations that neutralize, align, balance, or hierarchize values. By highlighting the role of values in markets, this book clarifies why and how markets are organized.

Download or read book Ministry of Justice financial management written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Justice delivers its services through a wide range of arm's length bodies and agencies, including the courts, prisons and probation services. The Ministry's Spending Review settlement requires a 23% reduction to its resource budget over the next four years. The Ministry has a range of financial management processes in place but lacks a consistent approach across its business, and to date it has not integrated financial management into its policy and operational workings. The Ministry needs to implement its Spending Review settlement on the basis of a full understanding of the cost and value of its services, so that financial cuts are best targeted to minimise the impact on frontline services. The Ministry and its arm's length bodies currently lack the detailed information they would need to do this. A comprehensive understanding of the costs and value of services must be a priority. For its arm's length bodies, having a clear direction, the details of which are formally agreed by both parties, is essential as is strong leadership and a shared sense of purpose. The Ministry now needs to oversee the performance of its arm's length bodies, such as framework documents, operational reviews, and accountability meetings. Fee recovery and fines collection have to be priority areas for improvement and the need to improve recovery rates where it does not currently recover the full cost of services provided. On fines collection, there was little sign of the sustained improvement promised when the Committee last took evidence in 2006.

Download or read book National Audit Office Ministry of Justice and National Offender Management Service HC 735 written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current strategy for the prison estate in England and Wales has provided good quality accommodation, suitable for decades to come for prisoners with a wide range of security categorizations. The strategy is also a significant improvement in value for money over the short-term and reactive approaches of the early and middle 2000s. However, the strategy has resulted in the closure of several prisons that were performing well, and their performance has not yet been matched by new establishments. Some prisoners still routinely share cells, some of them in overcrowded conditions. The strategy understandably focuses on cost reduction and, by 2015-16, it will have resulted in total savings of £211 million, with further savings accruing at a rate of £70 million a year thereafter. However, decision-making has sometimes traded good quality and performance for greater savings. The Ministry of Justice and NOMS use good forecasts of prisoner numbers and have good contingency plans to help them implement changes to the estate, for example responding effectively to an unexpected spike in prisoner numbers after the riots in 2011. NOMS could free up more spare capacity if prisoners serving indeterminate sentences had more access to accredited courses the completion of which might reduce their risk of causing harm sufficiently to allow the Parole Board to release them. The report also points out that the Home Office removes over 1,000 foreign national offenders from the UK every quarter but, for a number of reasons, is currently removing fewer than in 2009

Download or read book The New Politics of Numbers written by Andrea Mennicken and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book offers unique insight into how and where ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted, and how they have come to matter. Rather than asking what quantification is, New Politics of Numbers explores what quantification does, its manifold consequences in multiple domains. It scrutinizes the power of numbers in terms of the changing relations between numbers and democracy, the politics of evidence, and dreams and schemes of bettering society. The book engages Foucault inspired studies of quantification and the economics of convention in a critical dialogue. In so doing, it provides a rich account of the plurality of possible ways in which numbers have come to govern, highlighting not only their disciplinary effects, but also the collective mobilization capacities quantification can offer. This book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines, as well as policymakers interested in the opportunities and pitfalls of governance by numbers.

Download or read book Meeting Needs written by House of Commons and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2008-10-30 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giving offenders opportunities to improve their basic and vocational skills can enhance their prospects of getting a job and is a major part of the Government's policy for reducing re-offending. In 2003, Ministers decided that the Learning and Skills Council (the LSC) should take over responsibility for a new Offenders' Learning and Skills Service which, after piloting, the LSC rolled out across England in July 2006. Delivering learning and skills to offenders is challenging, because the operational requirements of the Criminal Justice System takes priority, and because offenders often have other problems such as mental health difficulties and dependence on alcohol or drugs. Nevertheless, the new Service set out to overcome many of these longstanding problems. In practice it has not succeeded. The National Audit Office's examination of prisoners' learning records showed that there was not record of assessment for a quarter of prisoners. Learning plans are frequently deficient and not recording progress. Also, although enrolment is voluntary, more could be done to motivate offenders to take up opportunities. There is currently no core curriculum and inconsistencies make continuation difficult when prisoners transfer between prisons or into probation. The prison service and education providers are not working adequately together and there is insufficient research to allow informed changes. On the basis of the NAO report the Committee took evidence from the LSC, National Offender Management Service & the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills

Download or read book National Offender Management Service written by Great Britain. National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maintaining prisons at a safe and acceptable standard is an expensive and complex undertaking. This National Audit Office investigation of maintenance and upkeep of the UK prisons finds that the National Offender Management Service Executive Agency (NOMS) has obtained good value for money from its expenditure on prison maintenance. In spite of an increasing prisoner population - over 73,000 people held in custody in public sector prisons in England and Wales in 2007-08 - spending has been kept at around £320 million in recent years. Nevertheless, the Agency Service could improve its plans for maintaining assets over their economic life and how it manages risks to the effective utilisation of its assets.

Download or read book Bingo Capitalism written by Kate Bedford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Casinos are often used by political economists, and popular commentators, to think critically about capitalism. Bingo - an equal chance numbers game played in many parts of the world - is overlooked in these conversations about gambling and political economy. Bingo Capitalism challenges that omission by asking what bingo in England and Wales can teach us about capitalism and the regulation of everyday gambling economies. The book draws on official records of parliamentary debate, case law, regulations and in-depth interviews with both bingo players and workers to offer the first socio-legal account of this globally significant and immensely popular pastime. It explores the legal and political history of bingo and how gender shapes, and is shaped by, diverse state rules on gambling. It also sheds light on the regulation of workers, players, products, places, and technologies. In so doing it adds a vital new dimension to accounts of UK gambling law and regulation. Through Bingo Capitalism, Bedford makes a key theoretical contribution to our understanding of the relationship between gambling and political economy, showing the role of the state in supporting and then eclipsing environments where gambling played a key role as mutual aid. In centring the regulatory entanglement between vernacular play forms, self-organised membership activity, and corporate leisure experiences, she offers a fresh vision of gambling law from the everyday perspective of bingo.