GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

going on and there has been a lot of press interest on that. Currently this

Government are in the process of introducing different ways of working with a

number of documents relating to offender management in custody, on licence,

in the community and again little in terms of evidence base about why they are

doing what they are doing. Despite NAPO’s best efforts to raise concerns,

plans are progressing, yet the goal posts keep moving, because actually I do

not think anybody knows what is happening and at the moment because of the

election they are put on hold again.

The motion also mentions the help of academics into the subject, but we would

like to make clear, General Secretary and for the rest of the Exec, that we are

not asking the GFTU to write an open cheque here. What is happening out

there is of real concern. We are more hopeful that we might have friendly

academics that might actually look into some of our concerns for us and do a

little bit of work for us, so we are not asking for a lot of money and I thought it

was worth making that clear.

It is simple really. Inadequate supervision equals an increase in reoffending

rates and more victims, something which we all want to avoid. What we do

know is many of the 21 private contract package areas have unsafe operating

models and a lot of them are failing. There is even talk about not being able to

pay the staff. They have cut staffing numbers to the absolute bone, workloads

have gone through the roof, everybody is under extreme pressure doing the job

and mistakes are going to be made. It cannot go on. The Government’s

sticking plaster approach to sorting this out is really not on, so a new

Government needs to take urgent action to review these contracts and take

control of them and bring them back into the public sector where they belong.

Thank you for listening, everybody, and I hope you will support the motion.

Thank you. (Applause)

The motion was formally seconded

Motion 6 was CARRIED unanimously

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