Revised National Standards, has it made a difference?

I’ve been speaking with staff that have significantly lower rates of reoffending with the cases that they work with.  One similarity in the work has been the individual approaches tailored to the offender needs.  Previously there has been frustration in the prescriptive nature
of the timeframes in which Probation staff have been required to undertake assessments or the lack of flexibility in making decisions regarding breach procedures.  However there appears to be a change with the implementation of the revised National Standards for the Management of Offenders (2011). 

Colleagues are telling me that the return of Professional Judgement means that you aren’t tied to completing the Offender Assessment System (OASys) reviews at a fixed point (unless high/very high risk of serious harm).  There has been a consensus, with those I’ve spoken with that this has generally reduced the amount of time spent on desk based work for each case.  There is also more capacity for an individual officer to make decisions to support engagement and compliance in terms of using professional judgement in cases, for instance of non-attendance of appointments.

It appears that the changes are consistent with the principles of desistance.  I would suggest that the revised National Standards encourage the supervising officer to make more individualised assessments and sentence planning.  As a practitioner I’ve experienced increasing periods of time spent at the desk rather than in the contact with the people that I work with.  Potentially the changes to National Standards could help to redress the balance and allow for more face to face contact.  However, this can only happen if we are allowed to use this time as it was intended, on quality contact with offenders and creatively working with them to address their difficulties and offending, rather than a means to increase caseload numbers.