Prison

Prison

Thursday 4 September 2014

The Wonderful, Wacky World of OMU

If there is one prison acronym (and believe me, there are hundreds of them) that is calculated to make a prisoner’s blood run cold it is ‘OMU’. This is the Offender Management Unit inside every UK prison and it is, in essence, the department that literally holds every con by the short and curlies.

Getting a letter or note from OMU pushed under your cell door or handed over by a wing screw is often one of those heart-stopping moments. It can be positive news, or it can mean some devastating knock-back, particularly for prisoners who are serving life or indeterminate sentences for public protection (IPP).

OASys screen in action
OMU is responsible for the day-to-day management of each prisoner’s sentence. This includes monitoring behaviour and attitudes, updating OASys (the Offender Assessment System that is supposed to measure the risks and needs of people who have been convicted of criminal offences and who are under supervision), identifying appropriate courses and programmes, processing applications for Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL), preparing reports for the Parole Board (for those cons on parole sentences) and pretty much everything else.

An individual OASys assessment involves the following elements or layers:

assess how likely an offender is to be re-convicted
identify and classify offending-related needs, including basic personality characteristics and cognitive behavioural problems
assess risk of serious harm, risks to the individual and other risks
assist with management of risk of harm
links the assessment to the supervision or sentence plan
indicate the need for further specialist assessments
measure change during the period of supervision/sentence

Many prisoners who are serving very short sentences may not even get a face-to-face meeting with their OMU ‘offender supervisor’ – sometimes called ‘inside probation’, as opposed to ‘offender managers’ (outside probation officers). I’ve been informed recently that many probation officers really don’t like the term ‘offender manager’ at all, but that is how they are referred to officially across the prison system, so who am I to question the wit and wisdom of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS)? 

NOMS: heart of darkness
I know plenty of cons who are in for the proverbial ‘shit and a shave’ sentences – ranging from days to a few months – who haven’t got a clue who or what OMU is, or what it is supposed to do. In part, this is probably because prisoners serving terms of less than 12 months haven’t hitherto had to have sentence plans or supervision on release. This is changing as part of Chris Grayling’s controversial ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ (TR) agenda.

In theory, at least, prisoners should now have meetings with their ‘offender supervisor’ (OS) starting with an initial sentence planning meeting early in their time in custody, which will involve their outside probation officer, during which the all-important plan will be discussed and drawn up. Typical sentence plans include such commitments as: ‘behaving well’; getting and maintaining Enhanced status in the Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) system; finding a prison job or enrolling on an education course; participating in an offending behaviour programme; signing up for alcohol or drugs treatment and support.  

Where OMU staffers hit the buffers is when they have a prisoner who is on appeal against conviction or who is steadfastly maintaining innocence of the offence for which a jury has convicted them. Such round pegs in square OMU holes tend to cause endless problems. Inmates who have a live appeal aren’t too much of a problem, because they can be effectively put ‘on pause’ until the appeal has been heard. As long as the individual con has an appeal case number issued by the Court of Appeal, their paperwork can usually be effortlessly shunted into the pending tray while the judges reach their decision down in London. 

Billy Hayes: a 'bad machine'
However, without that all-important number, the prisoner becomes ‘a denier’ – a bad con who won’t accept responsibility for his or her crimes. Anyone who has seen Midnight Express, the 1978 film about the unsuccessful American drug smuggler Billy Hayes and his rather nasty (and now, admittedly, partially fictional) experiences in a Turkish jail, will be familiar with the famous scene in the criminally insane section of the prison where all the prisoners walk around a central pillar in the same direction. Except Billy... 

Ahmet, a fellow con who claims to be a philosopher who studied at Oxford University, explains that they are all “bad machines”. As he tells young Billy: “The bad machine doesn’t know that he’s a bad machine. You still don’t believe it. You still don’t believe you're a bad machine? To know yourself is to know God, my friend. The factory knows, that’s why they put you here. You’ll see... You’ll find out... In time, you’ll know.” 

This kind of dialogue could almost be straight out of a meeting between an OMU supervisor and a ‘denier’. The possibility that the prisoner might actually be innocent and the victim of a miscarriage of justice is never permitted to impinge on the process. The ‘factory’ always knows best, you see.

Of course, not all members of OMU staff are blind to the reality of this wicked world and I was always extremely fortunate with most of my offender supervisors while I was inside. A couple of them were incredibly supportive and helpful, so on a purely personal level I haven’t much to complain about. On the other hand, as an Insider (peer mentor) I often had to try to pick up the pieces of OMU mismanagement and under-staffing, both in closed nicks and open conditions.

Had a note from OMU?
When I was working as an Insider, I once had an IPP prisoner - who was years over tariff - in my pad ranting and raving about OMU and its perceived iniquities. Crucial reports hadn’t been written, important phone calls not made, letters from his solicitor not answered. He was not a happy bunny. In fact, he was so worked up that his plan was to get shipped out to another nick - any other nick - by going out onto the wing landing and “twatting” the first screw he saw regardless of whether they’d ever upset him or not. He was a gentleman who, shall we say, lacked an understanding of the finer points of anger management.

Having tried to calm him down for half an hour, mainly by letting him rant and rave using some very colourful language that would have made an army trooper blush, he remained resolutely committed to doing someone a mischief, preferably a wing screw, perhaps even an unsuspecting custodial manager (what they now call a senior officer in HMPS-speak) who might by chance be waddling down the wing on some fool’s errand.

Despite all this, I actually quite liked the lad and felt that he was a victim of staff shortages in OMU. No doubt his offender supervisor was on leave and no-one had picked up his dossier for weeks. 

I really didn’t feel that he would help himself by carrying out his planned act of violence. In fact, the likely outcome would have probably been several years more inside on what had become an elastic band of a sentence. Nevertheless he was so wound-up that something bad was definitely going to happen very shortly. So I told him to hit me instead. Silly, I know, but at that moment I really couldn’t think of anything else that might just calm him down.

Slippery showers, honest, Guv!
He was so shocked by this suggestion that he just sat down on my bunk and went very quiet for a couple of minutes. Then he spoke. “Why would you do that to help me?” This opened the door to a much calmer discussion over a cup of prison tea about why “twatting” a screw would definitely be a very poor life choice, especially for someone on an IPP stretch. Fortunately, he did calm down and I didn’t get thumped. 

Perhaps it was a high-risk strategy and one that certainly didn’t feature in the counselling course I’d taken many years before I went to prison. Of course, had he accepted the invitation and walloped me, I’d not have complained or reported him (“grassed him up”). I’d have only had myself to blame. “I slipped in the showers, honest, Guv. Very slippery this morning, they were...” 

On this occasion my tactic worked. Perhaps it was the element of surprise. Who knows?

I give this example to illustrate just how frustrating many cons can find their dealings with OMU. I’ve also been in nicks where the unit is so sparsely staffed that nothing seems to go according to plan. I know for a fact that at one D-cat (open prison) a member of the OMU staff was absent on medical leave for the entire year I was at the establishment and there was chaos for any prisoner assigned to his supervision caseload. I lost count of the number of COMP1 forms (official complaints) I assisted fellow inmates to write about the lack of contact they were having with their absent supervisor and the many problems that they were experiencing in consequence. And answers came there none.

Another key problem is some OMU staff really do lack the education and professional training to do the complex assessment and reporting work that is required of them. One genial OMU supervisor, who admitted that he used to be a night shelf-stacker at Asda, couldn’t write to save his life. He was semi-literate at best, as his scrawled and misspelt hand-written notes revealed all too painfully. I knew that he was way out of his depth when he started to turn to me for advice on how the ROTL system actually worked, mainly because he knew I’d been asked to participate in a recent NOMS fact-finding mission on the subject, even though I was only a con.

Just too complex to work
Serious problems with the quality of OMU management have emerged during recent inspections. The HM Inspectorates of Prisons and Probation aggregate report issued in December 2013 makes for pretty grim reading. As the report observed: “We have come to the reluctant conclusion that the Offender Management Model, however laudable its aspirations, is not working in prisons. The majority of prison staff do not understand it and the community based offender managers, who largely do, have neither the involvement in the process nor the internal knowledge of the institutions, to make it work. It is more complex than many prisoners need and more costly to run than most prisons can afford.” Amen, brother. You can read the whole damning report here.

Of course, I can only imagine that the staffing crisis inside prison OMUs has become even worse in recent months owing to further budget and personnel cuts imposed by the MOJ. Staff morale, which was already rock bottom anyway, is unlikely to have been improved by Chris Grayling’s incompetent, ideologically-motivated tinkering with the system as the MOJ Titanic sails on towards disaster and probable further loss of life. 

So there you have it: the wonderful, wacky world that is OMU. Enjoy!

10 comments:

  1. Hi can u do a post on cat b. Are they 23 hour lock up. And the damage it does being in cell all day. Keep posting. Something needs doing about jails in uk. My mates are ex offenders and have different views to each other but all agree prison is waste of time and boring

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    1. Thanks for your suggestion. Sure. I'll put B-cats on my list for new posts.

      Plenty of nicks do have 22 to 23 hour bang-up for cons who don't have jobs (and there aren't many jobs to go round) or education courses. Some B-cats only have one or two evening association periods per week now owing to staff shortages and this has come in over the past year or so.

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  2. If you're taking requests I'd like a post about prison officers and what offenders really think of them, etc.

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    1. Thanks for the suggestion. Funnily enough that topic is already on the to do list! Not sure if it will be today or early next week, but watch this space.

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  3. I've yet to come across an OMU where the staff were fit for purpose. Mind you I've also not come across a probation officer on the outside who is fit for purpose either. None of them have a clue about PSI's, PSO's, PI's (probation instructions which are the probation equivalent of PSI's) or what their legal obligations are (upholding the law, not breaching a prisoner's legal rights just for starters). Virtually all of them have issues they've not dealt with and use their position to make prisoner's life a misery. Risk assessments that are completely meaningless because they haven't even bothered to actually meet the individual in question let alone get to know them as a human being, fabricating concerns with no evidence whatsoever or even any actual intelligence to support these fictional and blatantly ridiculous concerns. I've seen the governor in charge of an OMU drunk on the job which raises serious questions about the decisions they make about people's lives. I know people who have had their OS offer them positive reports for parole boards or recommendations for tag or open conditions in return for payment. The list goes on and on. Probation on the outside is just as useless. They provide zero help to help you reintegrate into the community and go out of their way as mine has cheerfully admitted to me to "make you life as difficult as possible" in trying to go straight which is beyond stupid. If you make it easy for people to go straight then they more than likely will. Make it difficult and they will more than likely go back to crime because its easier than going straight. If you want people to give up crime you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do so not as difficult as possible because most humans will always take the easiest path in life. Probation both inside and out has moved away from its original purpose of helping offenders lead decent lives by befrieding them and supporting them into a box ticking exercise designed to cover the collective and individual asses of probation. I'm saddled with two bespoke licence conditions neither of which meet the tests for necessity or proportionality but are simply imposed to cover the ass of my OM on the vague possibility that I might, potentially go and do something that someone might criticize probation for. We can hope that things might get better with charities and not for profits taking over probation on the outside but somehow I doubt it as they are still employing the same idiots that currently work for them.

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    1. Thanks for sharing your experiences of OMUs and Probation with us. Although there are some exceptions to the general rule, I've also met Senior Officers who admit to not having bothered to read PSOs or PSIs and even OMU staff who are verging on the functionally illiterate. I also recall a Safer Custody officer (a PO) who regularly stank of alcohol during the working day and she made some life and death decisions regarding vulnerable or mentally ill prisoners that might well have been affected by her drinking.

      As readers of this blog will be aware, I am very critical of the ongoing failure of the Prison Service to deliver on its own mission statement and policy objectives - particularly in respect of facilitating and supporting rehabilitation of offenders. Unfortunately, given the severe budget and staffing cuts made the the political leadership of the Ministry of Justice, the situation can only get worse while the taxpayer is basically funding vastly overpriced human warehousing for a rising number of prisoners, many of whom are not violent or a danger to the public, while a further 10-15 percent are unconvicted remands awaiting trial or immigration detainees held as prisoners. As a taxpayer myself, I find that truly shocking.

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  4. Autistic man serving life w/o parole, blogs about his experiences in prison: paulmodrowski.blogspot.com

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    1. Thanks for the link. I've had Paul's blog in my recommended list for quite some time, but it's always good to have it flagged up for readers.

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  5. My husband was in a c cat and he was due a 6 month review in April 16. He had his review at the end of June 2016 not by his OMG supervisor and was denied d cat and told he needed a victims awareness course even though he wasn't inside for hurting anyone. His supervisor came back and said that he didn't need that on his sentencing plan and said it will be re reviwed after he finishes his course. He finished and he was granted his d cat he has been moved and his tag eligibility date is next week no process has been started and it should have been started 6/8 weeks previously which was discussed by his omu he is now in a d cat tried to speak to the supervisor there he booked an appointment for when my husband was at work no one told my husband and he missed the meeting and now the officer is on annual leave. Probation services that are supposedly meant to help haven't I have been calling and calling for 8 weeks nobody calls me back. His probation office only works Monday and Tuesday is always on annual leave finding this very frustrating......

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  6. My husband was in a c cat and he was due a 6 month review in April 16. He had his review at the end of June 2016 not by his OMG supervisor and was denied d cat and told he needed a victims awareness course even though he wasn't inside for hurting anyone. His supervisor came back and said that he didn't need that on his sentencing plan and said it will be re reviwed after he finishes his course. He finished and he was granted his d cat he has been moved and his tag eligibility date is next week no process has been started and it should have been started 6/8 weeks previously which was discussed by his omu he is now in a d cat tried to speak to the supervisor there he booked an appointment for when my husband was at work no one told my husband and he missed the meeting and now the officer is on annual leave. Probation services that are supposedly meant to help haven't I have been calling and calling for 8 weeks nobody calls me back. His probation office only works Monday and Tuesday is always on annual leave finding this very frustrating......

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