Research & reports
| Author | Sharon Brereton |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550516666745b |
| Subject Matter | Research & reports |
of drops in volume, neither they nor the Ministry expected the reduction in the
volume and rate of new cases allocated.
The final section of Part Four discusses embedding the NPS and comments that
when the NPS was created in June 2014, the new organization focused initially on
stabilizing operations. In November 2015 the NPS launched internally a blueprint
for how it plans to become a more standardized, ‘effective, efficient and excellent’
service. This covers six areas of core service, including court delivery and commu-
nity supervision. NPS has surveyed staff views on the blueprint and only 17%of
4626 staff survey responses to the blueprint were positive, while 65%were neutral
or offered suggestions for improvement. The risk is that the ‘staff change fatigue’ we
observed during the NAO fieldwork may continue.
For busy practitioners, there is a good summary (pp. 5–11), but the whole report
is well worth reading.
National Audit Office (NAO) Transforming Rehabilitation, a report by the Comp-
troller and Auditor General, NAO (28 April 2016), is available at: https://
www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Transforming-rehabilitation.pdf
Steve Collett
Liverpool University and University of Manchester
Unlocking Potential: A Review of Education in Prison
This research was requested by the Justice Secretary to carry out a review on the
education provision in prisons and to make recommendations for change, which is
to be part of a wider reform agenda. Reference is made to previous reports which
have offered relatively poor results of education with one pointing to a worrying
decline of performance over the last two years. In providing direction for the
research, questions were asked such as how is success of prison education mea-
sured and who is responsible for prison education?
To facilitate the research, public sector prisons were principally selected
although the author was able to visit privately run prisons. With the data collected in
prisons, it was found that it did notprovide qualitative evidenceof the value of specific
interventions. The reflections of this research have therefore been predominantly col-
lated by talking to over 500 prisoners, practitioners and prison staff. The research
highlightsthat prison staff are aware of the high proportionof learning difficulties and
disabilities present with prisoners. However, to offer a background to the current
education system, the report refers to available key data that identifies 24%of adult
prisonershave been in care at somestage, compared with2%(estimate) of the general
population;42%of adult prisoners have reportedlybeen excluded from school;and a
large proportionof prisoners assessedon reception into prison are foundas having the
equivalent of expected primary school levels of attainment. Further collated evidence
found thatout of 101,600 learners underthe present system for prisoneducation, only
100 prisonersengaged in a full level three course in 2014/15,which is equivalent to
374 Probation Journal 63(3)
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