Transforming Lives Unlocking Potential
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UNLOCKING POTENTIAL SCOTTISH PRISON SERVICE REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH PRISON SERVICE ORGANISATIONAL REVIEW TRANSFORMING LIVES UNLOCKING POTENTIAL SCOTTISH PRISON SERVICE REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH PRISON SERVICE ORGANISATIONAL REVIEW TRANSFORMING LIVES © Crown copyright 2013 ISBN: 978-0-85759-014-5 Scottish Prison Service Headquarters Calton House 5 Redheughs Rigg South Gyle Edinburgh EH12 9HW This document is also available from our website www.sps.gov.uk Published on behalf of the Scottish Prison Service by APS Group, December 2013 THE National FRAMeworK AND JUstice StrategY: AN OUtcoMes Approach PURPOSE To focus government and public services on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth. VISION Our vision is of a justice system that contributes positively to a flourishing Scotland, helping to create an inclusive and respectful society in which all people and communities live in safety and security, individual and collective rights are supported and disputes are resolved fairly and swiftly NATIONAL OUTCOMES We have strong, resilient and supportive Our public services are communities where people high quality, continually We live our lives safe from take responsibility for their own improving, efficient and crime, disorder and danger actions and how they affect others responsive to local people’s needs JUSTICE OUTCOMES Our people and communities support and respect each We experience other, exercising We experience low levels of fear, We are at a low risk both their rights low levels of crime alarm and distress of unintentional harm and responsibilities We have high levels Our public of confidence in Our institutions services respect justice institutions Our public services and processes are the rights and and processes are fair and accessible effective and efficient voices of users PRIORITIES Widening Reducing crime, access particularly violent Tackling hate Supporting to justice and and serious Reducing crime and Enhancing victims and advancing organised crime reoffending sectarianism efficiency witnesses law reform Increasing Reducing the Reducing the public Strengthening Transforming damaging impacts Preventing harm from confidence community civil and of drug and offending by fires and other and reducing engagement administrative alcohol problems young people emergencies fear of crime and resilience justice APPROACH Getting it right Victims and Building safer for every Whole system Making witnesses Reducing communities child approach justice work legislation reoffending II Road to Early years Achieving Reassuring Police and recovery Equally well framework our potential the public fire reform 01 SCOTTISH PRISON SERVICE UNLOCKING POTENTIAL TRANSFORMING LIVES International Covenant ON CIVIL AND Political Rights, Article 10 (3) “The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.” KENNY MacASKILL, IntroDUction to ‘THE StrategY for JUstice IN Scotland’, SEPT 2012 “While all crime should be duly punished, I believe that people can turn their lives around. But to do so they often need help and opportunities, support and compassion. Our justice system must therefore enable rehabilitation as well as punishment…this requires a holistic, joined-up approach that reaches out from justice into areas such as health, housing and education.” THE StrategY for JUstice IN ScotlanD [EDitorial for JUstice CHANGE NEWS: Nov 12] “Our efforts must focus now on embracing the strategy across our organisations ensuring that our collective activities are always outcome focused, evidence based, innovative and with clear and ambitious priorities for the people of Scotland.” Kenneth Hogg Bridget Campbell (formerly) Director of Safer Communities Director of Justice COLIN McCONNELL, ANNUAL LectURE – SACRO, Nov 2012 “Think how much more could be achieved if we truly all work together with a common purpose of creating real, practical opportunities for change for those who truly want to take them, backed-up by their desire to make their lives better. Add that desire, matched by a transformed community-custody-community integrated service, working to feed that desire and to help to make that wish to desist from offending a real and sustainable goal. That would not only be a huge achievement for the Scottish criminal justice system, but for Scotland as a whole.” 02 ForeworD: UnlocKING Potential, TransforMING Lives IntroDUction froM COLIN McCONNELL, CHIEF EXecUTIVE This report is a robust and intelligent appraisal of where we are now and where we need to get to in future. It is long overdue. The authors persuasively make the case for SPS becoming an ambitious organisation that has at its core skilled and professionalised people who are highly trained and continually developed. Through our people I am convinced that we will achieve and honour the ambitions to which the report convincingly encourages us to aspire: Unlocking Potential, Transforming Lives. Our exciting future is set out in the pages of this report and, as I anticipated in the 2012 annual SACRO lecture, it heralds what I believe will be a golden age for the Scottish Prison Service. The Scottish Prison Service has a strong record of service delivery, achievement and sound operational management. We need to build on these past successes and on our heritage, whilst having the courage to reflect and then decide what needs to change to meet future expectations. We need to demonstrate our effective contribution towards National Outcomes and the Strategy for Justice in Scotland. To be truly effective in this we cannot work alone. It is only by working together with other providers that we will make Scotland safer and stronger. We must focus on what we know works in reducing reoffending and provide sound evidence of our progress. We need to transform our approach to offender management and our efforts to improve wellbeing. In particular, we need to reduce reoffending amongst those 9,000 - 10,000 short-term offenders leaving our care each year. Our future Vision will focus on each individual in our care throughout their time in custody and beyond. By taking an individualised asset-based approach we will continue to address risks and needs but also build on an individual’s strengths and potential. By doing this, we will empower those in our care to unlock their potential and transform their lives. This is a demanding agenda that should engage, challenge and motivate staff and offenders alike. It means we must develop our staff to be even better at what they do now and to take on the new things that they will need to do tomorrow as we operate in new and different ways, changing how we work both within and beyond the prison walls. Some of you may still be questioning why we need to change. Now, not only as an organisation but as a nation, we have high and legitimate aspirations for our generation and for those who follow. If we are going to achieve these, we have to address the seemingly intractable issue of recidivism, a burden that is a millstone around our economy’s neck. To be clear, this is not a soft-touch liberal agenda; it makes hard-nosed economic sense to do so. Audit Scotland reported that the cost of crime in our country is about £3 billion every year. How many schools, hospitals, roads or houses does that represent? Moreover, for the victims of crime there can be no more powerful justification for tackling reoffending and supporting reintegration than doing so in their name to try, as best we can, to ensure that there are far fewer victims of crime in future. The recommendations set out in the report change our aspirations as a national service. Much can be done immediately, as many of the recommendations are both practical and feasible. Some are so fundamental that we need to take time to consider them, seeking agreement on how we move forward. We will also need to consider affordability and cost in prioritising the order in which we take things forward. The 03 SCOTTISH PRISON SERVICE UNLOCKING POTENTIAL TRANSFORMING LIVES Organisational Review Report provides the basis of our future Road Map for change, change which will be both incremental and transformational. This change will enable our organisation to help to create a justice system in Scotland that is a model of excellence. I have accepted in principle the broad direction of the recommendations in the Report. This is a unique opportunity to deliver a singular Vision that we can all work together to achieve. I look forward to taking the journey with you. COLIN McCONNELL Chief Executive, Scottish Prison Service. 04 REFRESH: OUR NEW VISION The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has a Vision of: Helping to build a safer Scotland - Unlocking Potential - Transforming Lives. RECONNECT: OUR NEW Mission The Mission of SPS is: Providing services that help to transform the lives of people in our care so they can fulfil their potential and become responsible citizens. In delivering our Vision and Mission our Operating Task is: Helping to protect the public and reduce reoffending through the delivery of safe and secure custodial services that empower offenders to take responsibility and to fulfil their potential. We deliver this through: Custody – Managing safe and secure custodial environments; Order – Providing stability and order that helps offenders to transform their lives; Care – Supporting wellbeing and treating with respect and humanity all in our care; and Opportunity