Episode 2 - Sentence Planning & Security

Sentence Planning
Between Snowball's dramatic escape, the demise of poor Bobby Hollamby who has braised his last meatball, and the inevitable problems in Di and Neil's marriage you may have noticed a couple of references to sentence planning in episode 2.

Sentence planning is the process designed to help prisoners prepare for a safer release and make the best use of the prisoner's time in custody. All adult prisoners with more than six months to serve and all young prisoners with at least one month to serve have a sentence plan drawn up. The personal officer (a prison officer who takes particular responsibility for a small group of prisoners) and the prisoner work on the sentence plan, and other professionals opinions may also be included.

The sentence plan focuses on the risk of the prisoner committing similar crimes in the future, and highlights issues which need to be dealt with to reduce the possibility of reoffending and improve the prisoner's chances of resettling into the community to lead a crime-free life. Calculations of risk are made on the basis information about the sort of crime, any previous offences and the factors in the prisoner's life which may have led to the crime being committed including the obvious stuff like drug or alcohol abuse. More detailed information about the prisoner's lifestyle, ability to think things through (we'd lose a lot of BG storylines if the Larkhall prisoners were good at that!), reading and writing skills etc. are also included to give a good overall picture of the prisoner's individual needs as well as the risk factors.

The sentence plan is then made according to the risks and needs identified. It includes targets for the prisoner to meet, offending behaviour programmes she needs to complete, and plans for education, work or training she might need.

The prisoner is involved in giving her view of what she needs to do and she is also able to see and comment on her sentence plan. The plan is reviewed regularly. It is an important document because decisions about work allocation the prison, release on temporary licence, early release on parole or on the electronic tag are all made in light of progress on the sentence plan. All prisoners who are in prison long enough to have a sentence plan are supervised by the probation service after their release, and the sentence plan is also used to let the probation officer know of remaining risks of reoffending, and about work, education and offending behaviour programmes the prisoner has been involved in while in prison.

Security
Snowball's audacious escape was the sort of thing that happens very rarely. She planned it over the phone and had a bit of luck there because prisoners' phone calls are listened in to by prison staff on a random basis. It was pretty clear she was up to something, but they were obviously too busy to notice. Prisoners all used to use special phone cards they could buy in prison to make calls, and as you can imagine there was a roaring trade in phone cards which, in the absence of money, are a currency in prison. Cards phones are now being replaced with PIN phones which should reduce the problem and also allow the prison to have more control over who each prisoner phones. Each prisoner has a PIN and can credit their phone account, but they have to enter their PIN when they use the phone and their PIN can only be used to phone their numbers. That means that even if a prisoner bullies another into telling her PIN the bully will only be able to use it to ring the PIN owner's mum, auntie Ethel etc. The prison keeps a record of the numbers linked to each PIN, so Richie would easily be identified as Snowball's link on the outside for anyone in the prison who was in any doubt.

Snowball grabbed Karen and marched her to the gate with a gun in her ribs. They got there quite easily because Karen was able to open the inner gate, but in real prisons a gate keeper has the keys to both the inner and outer gates and might well have noticed the rather strange way Karen and Snowball were walking. Karen was also able to sign Snowball out, but again in a real prison the gatekeeper would do that and would enter something in the 'Time Out' column opposite where the visitor had been entered as arriving, making it harder for a 'visitor' who has been there rather longer to slip out.