This paper was written by Stephanie Potts, Bournemouth University and Jody Audley, Catch22.

Abstract

Offender Management Units (OMUs) play a crucial role in the management and rehabilitation of an offenders’ time in prison, as well as promoting public safety, by helping to reduce recidivism through facilitating the successful reintegration of offenders into society. Of the 123 prisons and Youth Offender Institutes (YOIs) in England and Wales, most OMUs are run by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Services (HMPPS) in public prisons. Only one OMU (private prison HMP Thameside, Southeast London) is led by third sector organisation Catch22.

The objective of this review is to understand how Catch22 operates within HMP Thameside, comparing the work they do to their HMPPS counterparts. This review will use reports by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP), and the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) to demonstrate the effectiveness and abilities of Catch22’s OMU, compared to HMPPS-led OMUs. This review will introduce the current practices in both HMPPS and Catch22-led OMUs, followed by ways in which they differ, evidencing how both the practices and styles of offender management at HMP Thameside is more effective.

Offender management models

In April 2018, HMPPS implemented a new offender management model called Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) (HM Prison and Probation Service, 2019). OMiC attempts to reduce reoffending and promote better integration when re-joining communities by focusing more on rehabilitation in custody and pre-release.  In public prisons, OMUs are managed and led by both the current prison manager, in a new role of Head of Offender Management Services, they are responsible for managing HMPPS staff, and Senior Probation Officer(s) in the role of Head of Offender Management Delivery, who are responsible for managing probation Prison Offender Managers (POMs).  A main feature of the model was to change the responsibility of offender management to move from the community team, who before the Probation Unification were called the National Probation Service (NPS), and into custody for individuals serving longer term sentences so that their rehabilitation begins whilst they are in prison, and they are more prepared to live a rehabilitated life once they are released.  This also meant that the responsibility of offender management is instead held by POMs during the main part of the custodial period of each individual and is only handed over to a Community Offender Manager (COM) when they are closer to pre-release or in the first phase of being on probation within the community.  The idea was to be able to provide a service that is tailored to each individual depending on the complexity of their case and their needs.  This also introduced one-to-one supervision for those who presented as higher risk. This model is the fourth major policy attempt to address resettlement in England and Wales prisons in thirty years (Cracknell, 2023).

Within HMP Thameside all sentenced and recalled prisoners are allocated a POM, though whether an individual is allocated a Catch22 or Probation POM in HMP Thameside depends on their risk and time left to serve.  A Catch22 POM is allocated if an individual is recalled, and will work in a supporting role with the COM of said individual, regardless of sentence length or offence and they are a Low or Medium risk (Tier D or C) or can accept High or Very High risk (Tier B or A) if the prisoner has less than 10 months on their sentence.

The prisoner’s tier will also determine if they are allocated a senior Catch22 POM or a regular Catch22 POM.  A senior Catch22 POM works with those recalled and categorised as Tier A or B, while a regular POM works with tiers A-D but only those that are not on recall. Senior POMs have more experience so are more suitable to deal with complex and higher risk cases.

The only time an individual will be allocated a Probation POM is when they have more than 10 months left to serve of their sentence and are also High or Very High risk.  For the majority, sentenced prisoners in HMP Thameside stay for less than 6 months (Justice Inspectorates, 2022), meaning that Catch22 POMs handle most cases in HMP Thameside.

Reception and induction process

Through the Door

When a prisoner is sentenced or recalled to prison, both Catch22 and HMPPS follow similar steps in the processes they take to risk assess and categorise prisoners.

Basic Custody Screening

The first step for both Catch22 and HMPPS OMUs is a Basic Custody Screening (BCS).  A BCS is used to help identify any immediate needs and risks the individual has and looks at the following:

• Accommodation
• Education, Training and Employment
• Finances
• Relationships
• Substance misuse
• Health and wellbeing
• Thinking and behaviour
• Communication skills

Within the OMiC model used in HMPPS-run OMUs, it is not a POM that will conduct this first step, but other prison staff.  While both HMPPS and Catch22 must complete the BCS within 72 hours of arrival, at HMP Thameside the BCS is always completed by the Catch22 POM allocated to a new arrival into custody, whether they are sentenced or recalled. In HMPPS prisons under the OMiC model, it will not always be a POM that completes the BCS but instead other available prison staff, this is often due to staff shortages.  One of the main benefits of the allocated POM doing the BCS is that trust starts to build as soon as the individual is inducted in the prison. This provides the individual with a more positive experience as soon as they enter the prison as they can immediately build a rapport.

Other than assessing risks, another benefit of a BCS is allowing Catch22 POMs to determine if an individual requires additional immediate support and refer the individual to other organisations operating within the prison. Examples include Turning Point for drug and alcohol misuse, or Catch22’s gangs and violence reduction unit for gang affiliation which works alongside the OMU, running both 1-1 and group interventions.

Categorisation

Most convicted and sentenced prisoners must be categorised within 10 working days of all essential documents being received. Prisoners are then recategorised bi-yearly or yearly, depending on their remaining sentence.

Sentence Planning – OASys

OASys is a risk and needs assessment tool used by HMPPS in England and Wales to assess the likelihood of reoffending and risk of harm to self and others.  The OASys report is used to create a sentence plan based on why a prisoner offends, how likely it is they will re-offend and what can be done to stop them reoffending.

The structure of a sentence plan typically involves enrolling the prisoner in activities, courses, and lessons that an individual should complete while in prison and on license to support them during their time in the prison and aid them to rehabilitate.  The aim is to reduce the risk of reoffending and serious harm and will influence most decisions about the management of a prisoner. The sentence plan is reviewed both during and after their incarceration.

If an individual has more than 10 months left to serve from their sentencing day, a full OASys and sentence plan should be completed with annual reviews taking place where applicable.  Both HMPPS and Catch22 follow the time frames set out in the OMiC model, meaning the OASys is completed within 6 weeks if the remaining sentence is 10 to 11 months, or 10 weeks if the remaining sentence is more than 12 months, and for those spending life in custody, it can take up to 16 weeks for an OASys completion.  Information on the OASys will then be considered for decisions such as Home Detention Curfews (HDC), Release on Temporary License (ROTL) and re-categorisation.

Intervention Offer

Using rehabilitation to develop life skills is equally as important as using it to develop employment skills (Jolley, 2018).  The World Health Organisation lists 10 core life skills, such as effective communication, interpersonal relationships, self-awareness, coping with stress and emotions (Prajapati et al., 2017).  Knowing how important life skills are in the journey to desistance, Catch22 has created and developed in-cell workbooks that service users can work through in their own time. These in-cell workbooks support individuals in prison to address the objectives of their sentence plan. The types of interventions that are used for the in-cell workbooks include:

• Decision Making
• Effective Relationships
• Emotional Management
• Communication skills
• Social Identity and Stereotypes
• Impact on your victim and taking responsibility
• Self-awareness
• Goal Setting
• Gambling
• Impulsivity

In addition to the in-cell workbooks, Catch22 also offers 1-1 short courses, that can be delivered in a group or 1-1 format.  Each course can be broken down into 20–30-minute sessions or can be delivered all in one day.  A full course takes approximately 2-3 hours.  Catch22 offers 6 short courses, which are as follows:

• The Boss of You – 6 sessions designed to introduce the principles of self-management, self-regulation and self-actualisation and provide simple tools to promote active and positive behaviours in each area.
• Play to you Strengths – 4 sessions designed for understanding and exploring strengths and weaknesses, and to develop techniques and strategies to ensure they all apply their strengths to their daily lives.
• Solve It – over 4 sessions, a brief scenario-focused exploration of problem solving, introducing problem solving techniques to equip SUs to positively navigate problems arising across all or any areas of their life.
• Take Care – 3 sessions, helping SUs develop a focus on positive self-care by identifying the importance of positive self-care in being able to perform well in all areas of life.
• Time Out – 4 sessions. Explores time management principles so SUs have the tools and knowledge to develop effective time management strategies across all areas of their life.
• Uncovering Meaning in Your Life – 5 sessions. Helping SUs understand and identify values and the importance of living in alignment with values for achieving a lifestyle that is purposeful and offending free.

Catch22, with consultancy from Big Life Solutions, has also developed 13 single sessions that can be delivered as a 1-1 or a group session, and lasts 60-90 minutes. These cover subjects such as anxiety, communication, confidence, motivation, sleep, stress, and relationships. The topics focus on how to positively affect change in your life, by understanding what each subject is, how it works, how it affects you and how to build and use appropriate tools to improve this aspect.

While HMPPS also offers in-cell workbooks, the inspection from HMIP said they would like to have seen greater use of those workbooks within the prisons they visited. While some prisons effectively provide in-cell workbooks, there were not many examples of in-cell worksheets and other educational materials being properly reviewed by keyworkers. In some prisons, no programmes were being delivered due to a lack of staff, meaning that some sentence plans were not achievable.  This differs to how Catch22 POMs operate as they have capacity to ensure in-cell workbooks are being engaged with.  The use of in-cell workbooks are also more effective for both individuals and Catch22 POMs as firstly, it allows individuals to work to their own pace. Secondly, it frees up valuable time for Catch22 POMs to attend to more vulnerable individuals on their caseload.  HMPPS’ prisons tend to focus on delivering interventions and programmes in groups as this is less time consuming, but groups still run the risk of being cancelled if staff are drafted or the wing is understaffed.

The interventions used are like those used by Catch22; encouraging pro-social attitudes and goal setting for the future, while helping them to develop new skills.

They are also similar in terms of focusing on problem solving, managing relationships and self-management, and in implementing CBT techniques.

Probation

There are a lot of similarities between the roles that HMPPS and Catch22 led OMUs cover in terms of probation.  Both HMPPS and Catch22 attend probation oral hearings to contribute their recommendations.

If an individual is deemed suitable to be moved to either open conditions or back into the community, a handover will then occur with a COM. As previously stated by the HMIP report, the handovers by HMPPS OMUs were often of poor quality- little work was completed to prepare individuals to work with COMs when it came to their resettlement, with effective handovers taking place in only 40% of cases that were inspected.

A positive of Catch22’s OMU is that when service users are released into the community, they can prompt the Probation Officer to refer the service user to Catch22’s community services, such as Personal Wellbeing (PWB), Finance, Benefit & Debt (FBD), or Dependency & Recovery (D&R). This enables the service user to continue to receive support from an organisation they have already worked with, further promoting continuity of care and preventing re-traumatisation. Catch22’s PWB Services have dedicated practitioners who can work with a service user at any point when they are on probation. Catch22’s PWB service also has prison lead practitioners, who can work with a service user up to three months before their release from prison providing support around social inclusion, helping the service user to prepare for release, and simplify release by offering a meet-at-the-gate service.

The benefit of working with prison leads from the same third-sector organisation as OMU staff enables consistency in an individual’s transition between custody and release. The work undertaken by Catch22’s OMU and the prisoners can also be continued post-release, as the service user can continue to engage in a community service that provides the same intervention offer, evidencing more sequenced care for the individual.

Working Practices

Catch22 POMs make appointments with those on their caseload, allowing for a structured approach to their own working practices as the sessions are planned. During those sessions the Catch22 POMs will check in, identify if the service user has any needs, discuss the in-cell workbooks, and identify any new areas of support the service user would like to incorporate into their service plan. If the service user is approaching release, Catch22 POMs may use this time to prepare the individual.  Regular, pre-organised sessions are beneficial for the prisoner as it gives them some structure as well as deadlines to complete in-cell workbooks, which are all relevant skills to obtain for post-release.

The attention and encouragement given by Catch22 POMs is beneficial for individuals as it allows them to feel like they are being invested in and motivates them to improve.  Increased benefit of self-improvement has been shown to relieve the monotony of one’s time in custody, with research showing that participating in studying and intervention work whilst incarcerated helped 81% of individuals to reduce their risk by developing more critical thinking skills. (Farley & Pike, 2016).

While keywork and keyworkers are not a part of the OMU, the keywork that prison officers do with prisoners plays a role in supporting the work that the POMs carry out.  Due to there being shortages in staffing of keyworkers, this causes a disconnect between keywork and offender management by the POMs, with there also not being enough communication between keyworkers and POMs.  Compared to the work carried out by Catch22 POMs, the lack of communication and the disconnect between keywork and offender management has resulted in a lack of focus on a prisoners’ progress throughout their sentence (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022).

It is not just the shortages in keyworkers that have affected how well HMPPS POMs are able to carry out their work.  In some prisons, POMs had to be moved to operational duties to cover shortages in other departments, which affected their ability to have regular visits with their caseload, including what work could be carried out with each prisoner.  Reports have found that only 79% of probation officers and 82% of POMs are filling the OMiC staffing targets (HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2022).  In comparison, Catch22 only has non-operational staff meaning they are not at risk of being deployed to another area of the prison, therefore providing more reliable and sequenced care.

Meanwhile, HMPPS POMs reported that, while they wanted to be able to carry out structured work with individuals, they didn’t have the capacity and were instead restricted to time-bound tasks, rather than being able to undertake either proactive work needed to identify and address offender- related needs, complete offense-focused work, or referring them to the correct interventions (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022).

This same report found that at a national level, that 6,000 prison officers, 1,500 operational support grades and 1,500 probation staff needed to be recruited to meet future staffing requirements.  Staffing issues have also been aggravated by staff retention and the competition with other employers in a buoyant marketplace.  Of the prisons inspected in this report only three of the eight OMUs were fully staffed with probation POMs with vacancy rates ranging from 17-56%.  When it came to prison POMs, staffing levels varied between operating at above their target, which was to counteract the shortage of probation POMs, to operating with an 18% vacancy rate.

The lack of cross deployment with the rest of the prison evidences that Catch22’s OMU is more effective as their POMs achieve targets by not falling below their minimum of 90% of eligible prisoners having a current OASys assessment, all while only being able to offer limited advice to prisoners since the reunification of the probation service (Independent Monitoring Board, 2022).  In 2023 the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) noted that Catch22 POMs had continued to work tirelessly, receiving few complaints that were mainly due to delays from outside agencies, e.g. probation, police or the courts, and these complaints were resolved quickly by Catch22 staff (Independent Monitoring Board, 2023).

In comparison, HMP Wormwood Scrubs staff reported to the board that they were short staffed and running a duty system focusing on priority cases with other cases being deferred, as well as prisoners and staff complaining about delays in being able to access probation services and obtain information, causing considerable stress for prisoners (Independent Monitoring Board, 2024).

It was found that HMPPS prisons are striving to staff their OMUs with dedicated POMs and are moving more towards the prison officers in these roles that are non-operational, so that they cannot be deployed to other duties around the prison and will instead focus solely on keywork and interventions with their caseload. If this were implemented in practice in all prisons, this should mean that POMs will have the time needed to spend with those on their caseload, delivering interventions and focusing on what the individuals need.

A joint inspection by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and HM Inspectorate of Probation (2022) found that the HMPPS probation POM role did not always add value in custody in the way that the model intended it to.  The inspection from HMIP found there were significant difficulties with the handover process, as both POMs and managers were not always clear about the pre-handover requirements and the POMs did not always fully prepare an individual on their caseload for working with COMs, disrupting the continuity of care from prison to community and thus negatively influencing one’s journey to desistance.

The 2022 HMIP report also stated that when interviewed, over half of all COMs and POMs said that their workload was not manageable. However, Catch22 POMs hold on average more cases than the POMS in the HMIP report. Though, the level of cases within Catch22 depends on their level of training and how new they are to the OMU, with newer POMs taking on between 5-10 cases initially.  The benefit of starting with a lower caseload gives newer Catch22 POMs the time to find their bearings in both a new environment and with the differences and challenges of working with individuals in prison, especially if they are new to the custody environment.  It also gives the newer POMs time to complete training before they carry a caseload, ensuring they are prepared and equipped to support the prisoners effectively.

Less than three quarters of the POMs interviewed in HMPPS OMUs felt that they had received enough input or training to feel sufficiently knowledgeable about the OMiC model, because they had not received sufficient input or training.  This was further supported by both staff and managers stating that the most effective aspects of their work were attributed to additional training rather than to the OMiC model itself (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022).

Compared to Catch22, who offers comprehensive compulsory and optional training which must be completed within a certain period of commencing employment. Yet, this training can be delivered in areas and styles that best suit their needs. Senior Case Managers in HMP Thameside stated they run workshops or training sessions requested by newer members of staff which is additional to the training provided by Catch22 themselves.

During an unannounced inspection of HMP Thameside in November 2021, HM Chief Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), Charlie Taylor commented that Catch22 were “doing some excellent work in the prison – they proactively contacted prisoners, were a visible presence on the wings and provided good support.  This was the best provision I had seen during the last year and, because the prison had outsourced offender management work to Catch22, staff were not cross deployed to other duties as we often see in jails”.  HMIP also speaks about the appreciation prisoners had for the time Catch22 staff spent with them- being visible on the wings and having in-depth conversations with those on their caseload.  The OMU was described as well resourced, due to outsourcing to Catch22, with 12 Catch22 POMs who fully dedicated to their role due to never being cross deployed to other areas of the prison. HMPPS’s current practices of staff working in the OMU also being deployed across other areas on their prisons often means they are overstretched and cannot spend the necessary time with individuals on their caseload. There is a caseload of roughly 42 prisoners per POM, with a further four senior prison offender managers, who deal with more complex cases and have an approximate caseload of eight prisoners. A senior probation officer then helps with case supervision and public protection work.

In summary, while the reports and inspections have shown that the OMiC model is somewhat working, overall, it seems that there are a lot of teething problems and issues with how it is operating within different prisons, with far more training necessary for OMUs due to a lack of understanding about several areas and practices within the model.  Compared to these, the reports by HMIP and IMB of the Catch22-led OMU have been extremely positive, stating that staff are able to provide high-end care to all their service users and are dependable to the service users, which is the main difference between them and other OMUs.