Pure Fiction: An Infallible Guide To Meeting National Standards 3
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455050004700409 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
REFLECTIONS
Pure Fiction: An
Infallible
Guide To Meeting
National Standards 3
In the final installment of his satirical tale, David Bale recalls how the
Spoton team went from strength to strength following his departure,
establishing new performance norms for the Service and setting
increasingly elevated standards.
Episode Three: Re-Norming
I resorted to sarcasm:
Before I left, I remonstrated with George
&dquo;I suppose you could install a sound-
about the team’ s newfound enthusiasm for
proofed circular one-way entrance system
taking breach proceedings even when
so you could commence your confidential
compliance rates
interview the moment
were high. I even hke to
you collected an
think that I caused him momentarily to
offender from the waiting area. But even
waver
when I pointed out that, had we been
your most advanced version of EBSST
required to enforce strictly when we first
practice is incapable of achieving results in
moved into Spoton (when the
less than 30 seconds. And
non-
even if you’d
attendance rate
relaxed
was a full 50%), we would
your standards and allowed us to
have had to
double
prosecute nearly
our usual number of
a thousand
acceptable
breaches per year. To achieve this, we
absences, so at least we could have
would have had
interviews
to prepare 23 breaches
lasting 4 minutes 52 seconds, I
each week. This would have meant that
still refuse to believe that there is any way
each of
that
us would have had to spend more
you can effect genuine change in an
than 9 hours
offender in less than 5 minutes
every working week simply
per session!
breaching people. And since this time
But then, perhaps I’m set in my ways.&dquo;
would have had to have come out of the
Even George couldn’t think of a quick
9 hours 22 minutes allocated to us each
reply to my outburst - though of course
week for face-to-face contact with
he’d already done all the calculations for
offenders, this would have left us with less
himself. He simply said:...
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