Weeknotes 8:2019
HMPPS
Been a great couple of weeks on the Receptions pre-discovery.
We had a big meeting with two other product teams last week:
- Digital Prison Systems — a case management system for prison staff to use to identify, update and monitor prisoners
- Moving People Safely — Managing the transport for offenders from police-court-prison-hospitals-other prisons — a behemoth task
As the Receptions work represents a ‘join’ between these two products, it was essential to get them on board and see the potential in how our services link together.
HMPPS are in the business of a) managing risk and b) rehabilitating people. But at the moment our systems don’t talk to each other — making it hard for us to make interventions that might help change someone’s behaviour for the better, or more seriously — stop someone from harming themselves or others.
At the moment, Reception staff may not have a clear idea of who is arriving and when — provision for this varies widely across prison sites, their relationship with local courts and transport providers. They don’t know if the offender they are expecting is violent or in withdrawal from a serious drug addiction. They may not know if that offender is deemed a vulnerable person (at higher risk of assault from other offenders on the basis of the crime committed), and as such if they need to be separated from the general prison population to protect them from danger.
(Almost) worse, as a new or even existing offender being transferred, a prisoner may be asked the same question 3–5 times when they first arrive in a prison — after having travelled in the back of a van for up to six hours — before they can be allocated a cell and given the opportunity to gather their thoughts.
Our current system is intended to meet business needs fairly well — a series of steps undertaken by staff to assess risks of incoming prisoners to the general prison population and staff. But given that staff generally don’t have the information they need (it has not been passed on from police, probation or even the transport provider), they are unable to do so. All of this increases the waiting time for prisoners waiting to be processed (this conception in itself needs work) and compounds their frustration. How might we help assess and manage these risks ahead of their arrival?
We got the buy-in we needed to convert this work into a full discovery, and have secured design and tech arch time from both teams to build out our proposition. I think what helped clinch it was showing how other teams from further upstream in the journey are managing similar challenges (for example — of the reams and reams of information we could surface to a Probation Officer preparing an assessment of an offender before they are seen in court, what the right information could be). It goes back to the purpose of HMPPS — managing risk and rehabilitating people — and how ultimately we are all trying to do the same thing.
I’m pretty delighted as this project has been a bit of a slog. And because I’m me — still have some doubts as to the question of meeting user needs in this space. We’re pretty sure that the user needs of someone arriving in prison (for the first or fifth time) are quite consistent: contacting family or friends to let them know where they are, getting something to eat, being able to access essentials (food and toiletries). But surely the key user need is not to be in prison? I’m wary of promising to meet the needs of this nature through digital products, particularly when it’s much easier to ignore the more fundamental aspects of removing someone’s liberty. I’m not convinced we are looking at this as clearly as we could, yet.
Anyway I bought my first ever pair of Doc Martens to celebrate.
Festival of Maintenance 2019
Was great! Super people, great chat and nice feedback. I was a bit overwhelmed on the day doing introductions for speakers so I didn’t take in much detail, but happily, it has well been captured by Laura James in her blog for our sponsors Maker Assembly, by Calen Cole in his piece for Stripe Partners, and in an open google doc of notes here.
Shannon Mattern has also published her talk at Lapsus Lima, here.
Laura’s been at the Maintainers conference in Washington this week (I’m sad I didn’t go but with work/life events probably best I didn’t), and the whole team will have a Retro next week.
It’s likely that FoM 2020 will happen, and I’ll be lobbying for investment in a really sharp proposition for the festival — what we’re about and what we want to achieve — and think about doing more one-off events like speaking at the V&A earlier this year, or the joint talk I’ll be doing with Lauren Hutchinson at STEAMhouse in Birmingham on 13th November.
It’s hard but super rewarding building something from the ground up — you’ll hear more from us soon.
