Local Awards 2008
The nominations for the local Justice Awards 2008 for Hertfordshire are:
Individual Awards Team Awards
- Robert del Toro C2 Project
- Jeffrey Spencer
- Cary McDowell
- Peter Shaw
- Lorraine Telford
- Dawn Brooks
- Patrick Fields
Chief Constable Frank Whiteley
Chief Constable Frank Whiteley opened the ceremony by saying "Once again the quality of work carried out by the individuals and teams who have been nominated is outstanding and I am delighted that the innovation and dedication of our staff in Hertfordshire is being recognised in this way.
"These awards are our chance to make sure that outstanding performers get the credit they deserve. They show how innovative approaches across the criminal justice system (CJS) and the determination to see them through are producing positive benefits for people who come into contact with the CJS in the county. I hope this will encourage other nominees in the future".
High Sheriff Paul Cherry
Chief Constable Frank Whiteley introduced the guest of honour, Paul Cherry the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire, who presented the awards on behalf of the HCJB saying, "The standard of award winners this year has been very high. This ceremony has given us the opportunity to recognise some of the committed and dedicated people that work and volunteer in our criminal justice system.
"The hard work and enthusiasm of our staff helps us bring offenders to justice, care for victims and witnesses and work to rehabilitate offenders and reduce their likihood of re-offending".
Robert Del Toro
Robert joined HPA as a Probation Service Officer and spent three years engaged in face to face work with offenders in a variety of settings. In August 2007 he became a staff development officer using his knowledge and skills to improve the professional abilities of other staff. The past three years have seen substantial changes to the role of the PSO. With the introduction of the Offender Management Model they have taken on direct responsibility for the supervision of offenders and for the preparation of court reports. This has required the development of a wide range of new skills and of the confidence to make use of them. Robert has played a major role in the induction of new PSO’s and in the delivery of skills based training such as Motivational Interviewing and Fast Delivery Report Preparation. As an NVQ assessor and mentor, he has worked closely with approximately 20 staff and, through them, has impacted on the service delivered to some 600 offenders. Through his efforts one of our staff became the first visually impaired person in the country to complete the Level 3 NVQ in Community Justice. The following comes from her feedback ' I have found it useful to receive feedback about my work e.g. employing particular techniques whilst interviewing offenders. I have, as a disabled person, also been impressed with the efforts made by my assessor to make information accessible so that I could complete my work'. In addition to the core tasks of his job description Robert has also played a major role in our EFQM assessment, taking responsibility in 2007 for co-ordination of the entire project. The following is a quote from the assistant chief officer responsible for the project 'Robert has used his enthusiasm, organisational abilities & personality to ensure all aspects ran smoothly. Robert planned the exercise, monitored its progress, helped others through difficulties and oversaw the final report. From the moment he became involved the project has been a total success'. Robert has also played an enthusiastic role in Impact Assessment, in the organisation of Diversity Week and by contributing to the work of the Regional Training Consortium to develop NVQ practice. Although no longer involved in face to face work with offenders Roberts’ quiet contribution in the background has a substantial impact on the quality of service delivery to numerous offenders.
Jeffrey Spencer
Jeffrey Spencer has worked tirelessly to arrange work for offender’s on unpaid work in Hertfordshire. Based in Watford, he has garnered compliments from the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire for work on a project promoting understanding of the local contribution to the Second World War. He has also been praised by the Ambassador of Kenya who visited a local unpaid work site on a fact-finding tour and was promptly handed a spade to join the work. More recently, Mr Spencer has been thanked publicly by Dacorum Borough Council for arranging work for the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership. He has also signed a contract for restoring some of the grounds of the Buncefield Oil Depot destroyed in the explosion of three years ago. In less visible ways, Mr Spencer has also received regular praise from local beneficiaries of unpaid work in and around Watford and Dacorum. He is highly regarded by his colleagues and managers as being an imaginative and positive influence on everyone he comes into contact with. The performance of Mr Spencer's team has consistently exceeded that required of them. He has lead them through a rapid expansion in workload which has increased by 70% in the last 3 years since he started working for the Area. The quality of the work he does remains high and he sustains credibility with the local judiciary. Mr Spencer is currently developing links with a local training organisation that will be able to take offenders on unpaid work and train them in a useful work skill that will then be put to use in the remainder of their order. This approach has a proven track record in reducing re-offending as well as making sure that the reparation done for the community by the offenders is of a high standard. It also allows the offenders the opportunity to have a realistic chance of a future life that does not turn them towards crime. Within the wider remit of the Criminal Justice Service, the work of Mr Spencer provides the local judiciary with a highly credible option that they can use with confidence. This confidence can offer the chance that an offender may be given unpaid work when in another area they would not receive a community sentence. In this way he is making a contribution to containing the burgeoning prison population.
Cary McDowell
Cary McDowell, Head of Offender Management at HMP The Mount gave hope to a large number of foreign national prisoners at a time when it looked as if none could progress to open conditions or Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL). In response to public safety concerns during 2006, sentence progression for foreign nationals to open conditions drastically reduced across the prison estate. With no progression opportunity in sight, prisoners became despondent and lost the incentive to re-habilitate themselves. With 45% of its 760 prisoners being foreign nationals, The Mount was finding it increasingly difficult to reduce offending behaviour, maintain discipline and deliver decency. In early 2007, Cary re-visited the rules that governed ROTL and D-categorisation and discovered that, in principle and provided that prescribed risk assessment targets could be achieved, foreign national prisoners could still progress. Public opinion was still very sensitive, but with the backing of the Area Manager and Prison Governor, Cary created an incremental programme which would allow successful prisoners to prove their reliability and also prove the risk assessment process. The Mount had a full-time immigration officer which allowed close working with the UK Border Agency to check prisoners’ immigration status. An initial sign of hope was given to a group of foreign national prisoners who were granted ROTL to work in the outside grounds of The Mount during the daytime. Cary then extended the process by developing a relationship with a sympathetic category D open prison. Prisoners who had proved their reliability in the prison’s grounds started to progress to open conditions. During this period, Cary kept the prisoner population informed whilst keeping their expectations at a realistic level. To date, over eighty foreign national prisoners have progressed from The Mount. Dr Mohamed El Sharkawy, (National Justice Awards Winner 2007) Imam at The Mount, has commented on the marked improvement in the morale of many of the prisoners in his pastoral care since Cary introduced his initiative which gave foreign nationals a future. Mohamed has also praised Cary for the way that he communicates with clarity and humanity when talking to prisoners. Fiona Radford, Governor of HMP Ford has said “I am very happy to endorse the work Cary has done in facilitating Foreign Nationals transfers to Ford. He researched the rules, liaised with BIA and with us in an effective and helpful manner. He fully deserves to be nominated for this award.”
Peter Shaw
Peter was the junior Advocate responsible for prosecuting Operation Tunic, a 7 handed murder trial at the Old Bailey in 2007. This was a tragic case where a lone, unarmed man (a married father to 7 children) was attacked by 5 defendants, stabbed and beaten to death. A 16yr old was the only defendant convicted of murder. Although this act had already occurred and the gang were convicted, Peter knew that other children in our local communities could still be educated about the dangers of carrying a knife and if only one young person decided to leave their knife at home in future another such tragedy could be prevented. After the conclusion of the trial in the autumn of last year Peter put together a presentation designed to discuss the impacts on individuals and their communities when knife crimes are committed. He focused on young people of secondary school age as this is the age group most likely to be carrying a knife or thinking about doing so and he explored with various schools the possibility of talking to students about the subject. He sought permission from the victim’s family and the police from the Operation Tunic trial to use actual diagrams and photographs as visual aids. The victim’s family were fully supportive of Peter tackling the issue with young people, in memory of their husband/father and trying to educate them at a young enough age to change the knife crime culture. They felt as though their husband/father’s death may not have been in vain and could help change future events and save lives. The students asked many, thought provoking, questions and feedback from the schools has been very positive. Peter has continued working to address this issue during 2008 and the local press have helped fuel interest from other schools within the county. We hope that Peter’s presentations have touched the lives of the young people that he spoke to and that they have learned to value their lives and those of others and not carry knives.
Lorraine Telford
As a PYO coordinator and youth specialist Lorraine has been at the forefront of the efforts to tackle Youth crime on a daily basis, and as such she has provided an enormous amount of support to the Criminal Justice system as a whole in Hertfordshire. And working with the many partner agencies ensured that Hertfordshire has regained its status of meeting the Governments pledge.In addition to this lengthy and difficult task Lorraine also volunteered to take on the role of ASBO coordinator. It was felt that this was an area for improvement across all of the criminal justice agencies in Hertfordshire and that more could be done to successfully utilise ASBO's in tackling Youth offending. Through her own efforts Lorraine has raised the profile of ASBO's in the youth court from conducting meetings with the court police and Youth Offending Team to community engagement, where she handed out information sheets to members of the public in Stevenage. She has personally overseen the restructuring of police files to ensure ASBO’s are obtained, and campaigned for the use of better trained specialist ASBO police officers. As a result she has raised the profile and morale of police officers engaged in this work. It is now seen as a highly motivated and proactive unit. The work provided by this unit through Lorraine’s supervision of the files has dramatically improved in its quality. By ensuring that the police have focussed on appropriate cases and provided the correct levels of evidence to assist the court these applications are now performed smoothly, efficiently and with little argument. This has led to an increase in the overall efficiency of listing in the Youth court as there are no long protracted applications clogging up the court listings. This has had an overall increase in public confidence in the Youth Court and has had a clearly positive impact on the community in helping them deal with nuisance youth's. Our research shows that since Lorraine has taken up this role she has had a 100% success in applications for ASBO’s made for PYO's from North and East Herts
Dawn Brooks
Dawn Brooks has specialised in delivering and promoting effective practice in regard to Domestic Violence and the provision for Women offenders throughout her sixteen year career working for Hertfordshire Probation Service. Dawn trains local Police Officers in the theories relating to Domestic Violence. Her knowledge of Domestic Violence practice resulted in Dawn contributing to Hertfordshire Probation Area’s most recent risk management policy. Locally, Dawn promotes the work of Probation, mainly the delivery of the IDAP, (Integrated Domestic Violence Programme) to both Magistrates and Judges. Dawn works as a Treatment Manager, managing the quality of programmes including IDAP. She was central to the implementation of IDAP in this area in 2005. Currently she manages the organisation and the quality of delivery, as well as frequently delivering sessions (usually during unsocial hours) of the programme to offenders. Dawn is also a National IDAP trainer and in that role she has trained practitioners and promoted the programme throughout England and Wales. Currently Hertfordshire Area runs eight separate IDAP’s with 91 offenders in the core programme. Dawn has also played a leading role in our provision of evidence based interventions to women offenders in Hertfordshire. Last year three separate Women’s Programmes were run in Hertfordshire. Dawn was lead treatment Manager in the implementation of the accredited Women’s Programme in Hertfordshire in 2004. She manages the delivery of the programme and ensures quality control of the sessions. As with IDAP, Dawn is one of a limited number of National Trainers for the Women’s programme and has enthusiastically trained practitioners in England and Wales for four years. The Women’s programme is a specialist programme that addresses the criminogenic needs of women offenders and thereby reduces offending behaviour amongst this group. Women offenders and women tutors work together to address offending behaviour. Nationally the success of accredited programmes has been demonstrated in reconviction analysis (RDS report Dec 2007). Locally Dawn’s hard work has played a significant role in the protection of women victims and the rehabilitation of women who have previously committed offences.
Patrick Fields
Patrick Fields has worked for the Crown Prosecution Service since October 1986 when he transferred from Cambridgeshire Prosecuting Solicitors. Since then he has worked with CPS Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, CPS Anglia, having being promoted to Special Casework Lawyer in 1990. Within this time he has handled a significant number of high profile, sensitive and difficult cases. Examples include the Herbert & Sumner CPS corruption case in which he was chosen to deal with a CPS HQ corruption matter from all the other lawyers in the country. Numerous homicide cases in Hertfordshire and the rest of CPS Anglia, including Tucker (Suffolk), the murder of David Levy in Hertfordshire, and the murder of David King in Hoddesdon. He has consistently received praise and credit from the Courts and Police, including Chief Constable Commendations in 2003 and 2006. In July 2008 he had an article on procedural issues in Criminal Court cases published in the Criminal Law Review, another “first” for a CPS lawyer.
Particular strengths are:
Training and mentoring of others.
- He has acted as a trainer within the CPS (e.g. training on appellate cases), to the Police (interviewing techniques and bad character evidence), for which he has been commended by the Police on numerous occasions.
- He has acted as a mentor and trainer for others including legal trainees, one of whom is now a Chief Crown Prosecutor elsewhere in the country.
- He always finds time to be available to colleagues and is held in high regard by them.
- His qualities and abilities recently featured in an article in CPS News.
Advocacy.
- Patrick qualified as a Solicitor Higher Court Advocate in 1997, and made very good progress culminating in his taking of the first homicide trial as a Lead Solicitor Advocate for the CPS in 2007.
- He was commended by the Trial Judge after successfully prosecuting an offender for murder.
- He is undertaking another homicide trial as Lead Advocate very shortly.
- Furthermore, he has regularly undertaken appeals in the Administrative Court involving CPS Hertfordshire cases with a number of successes, especially in the area of Magistrates Court procedures and drink driving cases.
Choices & Consequences (C2) Project
The Choices & Consequences (C2) project team have devised and implemented a working partnership to help prolific non-violent offenders change their lifestyle away from crime, (mainly burglaries), and deliver long-term crime reduction. An individually tailored intensive programme of treatment, training and education is delivered within a community sentence as an alternative to custody, supported with strict enforcement. Success will benefit individual offenders, the Criminal Justice System and the public. Broad agreement across many agencies and the judiciary was initially obtained, funding obtained from statutory and charitable organisations and the programme was begun. Identifying offenders in police custody that have a desire to change, assessing their suitability and making recommendations as to sentencing and rehabilitation, has been no simple matter. Fairness and trust has had to be developed. To do so, agencies that have previously worked in isolation, have worked together. This has included training events, joint decision making, joint meetings with offenders and establishment of protocols which together are breaking down barriers caused by differing targets, priorities and working methods. New partnership methods are constantly being developed, for example:
- Probation Officers visit offenders in police custody, the early engagement improving assessments, planning and pre-sentence reports whilst giving confidence to the offenders that they will be supported.
- HMP Woodhill enables offenders to be remanded in custody there, despite prison overcrowding, allowing this period to be used productively as part of the programme.
Informing victims of both the sentence and progress of offenders has shown that the vast majority are supportive of rehabilitative sentences and take a genuine interest in the offender, different to many expectations. Information being gathered will improve public confidence more widely that just these victims. So far 17 offenders have sought help to change, they have admitted to over 850 crimes. National best practice has been developed for managing this efficiently and ethically. It is however the testimony and actions of the offenders that is most important:
- Three have surrendered themselves to police in order to change, even though this places them at risk of a custodial sentence.
- Others have ‘referred’ other offenders.
- Others have created an unofficial ‘support network’ within prison.
- Some want to ‘sell’ the benefit of the concept to offenders
Overall, C2 is seen by them as a real ‘last chance’ of changing their lives.
The team includes those who had the concept and those that deliver it practically.