This is a guest post by Dr Brian Stout who is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Western Sydney.  He previously taught on the DipPS and the PQF at De Montfort University and worked as a probation officer in Northern Ireland. You can follow @drbrianstout on Twitter.

Biometric kiosks

London Probation Trust’s initiative to use biometric technology to support its work with offenders has received a strongly negative reaction from NAPO and the Prison Reform Trust, who fear that the purple kiosks where offenders will be asked to report to will be used to replace human probation interventions, rather than complement probation officers’ face-to-face work.

Machines of this sort are used in some parts of the USA but my only personal experience of observing the operation of a biometric scheme as part of probation work was in Batumi, Georgia, when I visited as part of a CEP event last year.  Georgia is perhaps the only European country that is even keener than the UK to learn its criminal justice lessons from the USA.  Its biometric technology was located within probation offices, enabling fingerprints to be checked as probationers reported, verifying their identity.  The Georgian scheme raised the question of what quality of relationship a worker could have with a probationer if they could not even confirm their identity but again observers were assured that the scheme augmented, but did not replace, personal work.  The proposed London scheme is not exactly the same as the Georgian systems but raises similar issues.  Some offenders will report to the kiosks instead of signing in to see a probation officer and the Trust argues that this will free up probation officer time to carry out more quality work with offenders.  NAPO and the Prison Reform Trust are not convinced by this and argue that the use of machines is simply a further reduction in the human contact between workers and offenders.

Replacing humans by machines

The potential replacement of humans by machines is always an emotive issue, leading to concerns about human redundancy and visions of a fully mechanised future (both the fate of the shipbuilding industry and the film ‘Demolition Man’ were invoked by readers of the Observer article, commenting online).  In his recently published book ‘Losing the Head of Philip K. Dick’ David Dufty describes the recent advances in robot and android technology, outlining the opportunities and limitations, particularly drawing on the efforts of a University of Memphis team to develop a working android replica of the late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.  Philip K. Dick was chosen particularly as he, like NAPO, had an apprehensive view of where the introduction of robot technology might lead.  However, the work of Philip K. Dick and the insights into android technology do hold out some hope for probation officers.  In his book ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’, which inspired the film ‘Blade Runner’, Rick Deckard is required to distinguish between humans and replicants pretending to be human.  The one characteristic that he must look for is the one characteristic that androids cannot replicate – empathy.  Androids are programmed to fake empathy through the use of particular phrases but Deckard is able to distinguish between this response and genuine, human, concern for others.  As Dufty puts it ‘The androids he is hunting lack humanity, in the old fashioned sense of the word’.

Effective work requires empathy

It is right that Probation Trusts should investigate ways that technology can support probation work and it is equally right of NAPO and like-minded organisations to remind policy makers of the possible risks involved.  However, we know from our own experiences, the lessons of offender autobiographies, the NOMS offender engagement project and  the wider desistance research that it is the essential human qualities of workers, such as empathy and compassion, that offenders most value and that have most impact on their process of desistance.  As technology advances there will be an increasing number of jobs and roles throughout society that can be carried out by machines but we can be confident that effective work with vulnerable people, including offenders, will always require a human touch.

As I have said before many times in this series, the best way to build a Twitter following is to tweet about interesting things in an interesting way.

One of the ways of livening up your tweets and adding variety is by the use of multi-media – or, more simply, putting pictures or video in your tweets.

This has always been possible on Twitter but has become much more attractive since the last Twitter upgrade which means that the image or clip is available directly from within your tweet.

Your followers can click on the thumbnail and see the attachment without leaving Twitter, where previously you had to open another window to see the Twitpic or similar.

Here’s a recent example.

@SirIanBlair made a video in advance of last week’s police rally against the cuts:

@russwebt youtu.be/f-k0mpd3sdY #antiwinsornetwork needs your support

— IanBlair (@SirIanBlair) May 8, 2012

  Using multimedia in Twitter has become so popular that earlier this month Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) launched her new single exclusively on Twitter:

When I say GO When I say VIVA click youtu.be/Xmap94TcDNs to see #FollowTheLeader RT — Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) May 4, 2012

Ideas for use

A number of Probation tweeters, such as @SalfordCPayback, @daveupw & @CPaybackASPT,  routinely tweet photos of the work undertaken by offenders supervised on Community Payback orders – which has much more impact than a 140 character description of the work undertaken. Before and after photos are particularly impactful and tweeters are careful not to show offenders’ faces.

Continued progress being made at #SAYF in #Salford. Community Payback making planters & trellis. twitter.com/SalfordCPaybac…

— SalfordCPayback (@SalfordCPayback) May 1, 2012

Police tweeters have an even greater choice of subjects. To give you an idea of the range of possibilities, check out the West Midlands Force’s daily photo diary on Flickr which depicts a different aspect of police work every day. Corporate Police tweeters could easily do something similar and tweet their pic of the day.

@londonprobation have recently tweeted with links to a series of audio clips with probation staff talking about their jobs:

#London #Probation has produced 5 audio-casts, where employees discuss their roles.Listen to them here: bit.ly/JtxUmM.

— LondonProbationTrust (@LondonProbation) May 8, 2012

Posting a picture

Type your Tweet. In Twitter or Tweetdeck, click on the camera icon. In Hootsuite, click on the paper clip.

Find the image on your computer and select it.

You will then get a preview of the image in your Tweet box and you will lose about 20 characters from your 140 (this is the link to your image).

Tweet in the normal way.

If you take a photo on your phone, click on share image and you should have an option to share via Twitter, Tweetdeck, Hootsuite etc.

Taking photos with your phone and sharing them immediately on Twitter is a great way of engaging your followers in aspects of your everyday work.

If you need to, you can look at Twitter’s help article for posting photos.

Posting a video

This is almost as straightforward.

The main difference is that Twitter doesn’t host videos, so you must upload your movie to YouTube or Vimeo first. (You can also use: Ustream, Justin.Tv, Twitlens or Twitvid).

You then just write your Tweet and add the link of the video to it.

Once again, the link will use up about 20 characters of your 140.

If you need to, you can look at Twitter’s help article for posting videos.

Again, many smartphones will let you upload videos taken on them to YouTube with minimum fuss.

A 10 second clip of a blizzard-affected Motorway is much more likely to deter drivers than a normal tweet.

Next Wednesday marks the last in this series: Measuring your Twitter impact.

I will then put all ten posts into one document which will be made available for free on the Blog.

The following Wednesday kicks off a ten-week series of “Why I tweet” from a variety of police and probation Tweeters.

Have a good week till next week.

There was an interesting article in Saturday’s Guardian which explored the issue of whether the police should get involved in cases of abuse on Twitter.

This whole issue has received a lot of attention and discussion in the wake of the case of Liam Stacey who was jailed for 56 days after he posted racist tweets about Fabrice Muamba, following the footballer’s collapse from heart failure at Bolton’s Premier league game against Tottenham.

@CC_StuartHyde and @DCCTayside were both quoted and put forward what was, for me, a very reasonable case that the police should not invest resources in monitoring social networking sites with two exceptions:

1. In the case of pursuing investigations into ”real world” crimes
2. To target proactively individuals involved in the sexual grooming of children

The police officers agreed with @_millymoo, a legal Tweeter, Blogger and newspaper columnist, that there was no need for new legislation.

Twitter should police itself

The article brought to my attention a recent interesting phenomenon whereby Tweeters take responsibility themselves for searching out abusive messages and take direct action – by re-tweeting the comments and holding them the authors up to public humiliation.

This approach is used by both @homophobes and @alittleracist to no little effect.

Both accounts re-tweet offensive messages and ask the original Tweeters to defend their views.

Messages are often deleted and people are reminded that Twitter is a public platform.

It’s a similar method to that used by Kick Racism out of Football where fellow spectators have refused to tolerate racist chants and, by and large, driven public racism out of the British game.

Both  @homophobes and @alittleracist agreed in the article that their approach was much more appropriate and effective than involving the police.

Social media for social change

Twitter’s ability to mobilise thousands in a short space of time can be used for all sorts or reasons, good and bad – to organise riots, overthrow governments and confront racism and homophobia.

I have a sense that we are only just beginning to appreciate the power of collective action on social networks.

Please contribute your own examples below.

This is the fourth in a series of posts about the five principles of PbR commissioning set out in a recent Audit Commission report.

Principle 4: Sound Financing

As I have commented several times in this series of posts, perhaps the chief value of the Audit Commission’s report on PbR is its willingness to approach the subject from first principles, setting out a range of options, rather than making assumptions that the approaches garnering the most media attention at the moment are always the right ones.

So, in discussing ways of financing PbR schemes, the Commission considers a whole range of options, only one of which is the Social Impact Bond:

• mainstream funding;
• traditional loans;
• pooled (including community) budgets;
• charitable or social investment (such as SIBs);
• private investment; and
• providers funding themselves until they get reward payments.

The Commission notes that the type of funding affects financial planning and particularly the timing of payments.

Of course, it also affects the total cost of the scheme with Social Impact Bonds, for instance, both paying out a return on investment (if the scheme is successful) and, often, involving considerable time and expense to establish in the first place.

However, a SIB funding mechanism can be a way of ensuring that small voluntary and community sector organisations can at least be partners in PbR schemes. Maintaining a flourishing local voluntary sector should be a high priority in the current financial climate where charitable organisations are key to help local communities survive the cutback in public sector services.

By their very nature, PbR schemes which require providers to fund the initial service delivery themselves until outcomes can be produced and measured, are limited to large (mainly private) organisations.

I understand that one of the Drug and Alcohol Recovery Pilots was not contested by existing local providers because none of them had sufficiently high levels of turnover to cope with the cashflow demands.

Covering contingencies

The Audit Commission also provides a very helpful checklist for commissioners to help their financial planning across a range of possible situations:

• The PbR scheme fails (and therefore needs to be decommissioned and another service commissioned to address unmet needs)
• The scheme performs at very high levels (in which case there either needs to be a cap on payments for success, or a clear idea of where consequential savings can be “cashed” within a relatively rapid time frame. It’s important that incentives are set at a sufficiently high level to attract enough interest from potential providers, so getting this balance right is a critical aspect of effective PbR schemes.
• The scheme creates more demand on existing publicly funded services. Conversely, demand is reduced on other services making them no longer viable.

It is also important that commissioners ensure that the full costs of establishing and administering robust outcome monitoring systems are covered at the financial planning stage.

Critically, it should be stipulated in the contract who is responsible for paying for the outcome monitoring system (the key features of which are covered in next week’s final post in this series).

Conclusion

Perhaps the critical success factor for PbR schemes is the high quality of financial planning which needs to be undertaken before the tendering stage.

I think we need a different approach to commissioning for PbR schemes with a wide range of potential providers being consulted openly about the key decision of which financing options are most appropriate.

Commissioners need to develop a detailed understanding of the risks and benefits of the main different funding mechanisms, acknowledging that no approach is without its downside.

This is @ZoeStaffsGMPT follow up post to Being on Probation in what I hope is going to be an ongoing series.

As said in my last blog, being a probation officer has taught me a lot, and has it’s perks. But there has to be a flip side, and I feel I now have to mention some more ‘irksome’ (#poshwordalert) things which have, on occasion, ‘irked’ me in my work. Now I am not one to moan, but just for once, I’m going Make-Like-An-American-Talk-Show-Guest, and “Share”……

Mrs Motivator

Probation differs from other agencies, like alcohol or drug ones, who work with people for as long (or as little) as they are needed (or wanted). Probation is a bit more like a non-access ISA  – once you’re in it; you ain’t getting out of it, no matter HOW much interest you do or don’t have, for at least a year. What that essentially means is we see people through highs and lows, which I think is better. I mean; imagine if your boyfriend only wanted to see you when you had puffy eyes and hairy legs – but not when you were feeling and looking stunning. That’s just weird.

A lot of alcohol/drug agencies don’t take people who don’t want to be there, and I understand why. Ultimately; it’s treatment, and I feel it’s fundamentally someone’s right to decide if they want treatment. When someone asks for help, I love referring them on, and will often swap time with me for time there. But, equally, you can refer a lad stinking of skunk to a drug worker seventeen times, but if they don’t want it they won’t go, and the drug agency can’t generally make them.

So what happens to those people in the cracks, blind to their problems, or just plain confused? Those who need to somehow magic up some motivation before anyone will take them on?

Probation see them. Every week. Forcibly. Like a big old fat year-long school detention.

But you know what. In those weeks, something happens. You talk, chat, point out little things, work with humour and without pressure. And bit by bit, people GET the motivation they need to GO to that drug agency after all. I guess my gripe is this; we see the unmotivated, and once they find their mojo, they fly away to others, who get to do all the fun bits. I suppose it’s just a good job I like the journey as much as the destination.

Panic Stations

I probably shouldn’t say this, but I DON’T really like a good crisis. When a lad comes in at 4:45pm on a Friday evening homeless and soaked to the skin, I don’t launch over my desk like a 1970s cop, purse my lips against a cigar and say “c’mon guys, lets do us some BIG TIME housing applications!”. I just feel sad for the lad, worried about whether anything I’ll do in the next 15 minutes is likely to make any difference at all, and a bit angry that the normal safety-nets for homelessness, are just NOT going to work for this young man. He’s so far down the housing priority list, he’s like a Z-list 1999 Big Brother contestant trying to blag their way into the Royal Wedding.

And I always find it difficult to leave. The old 9 to 5 doesn’t really work in probation. YOU try looking a person in the face and saying “nah…sorry…I can’t help you with your suicidal thoughts at the moment, because I’ve got two tickets to the Opera and a bottle of Blue Nun waiting for me in the fridge”.  It’s not quite the same as if you were, say, working at a paper-clip manufacturing factory. I’m not dissing you guys: I LOVE what you do: I am a stationery-addict. But if that paper clip doesn’t make it to Staples on time (and this is the important bit) “NO ONE IS GOING TO DIE”. That’s the line most people say to themselves when there’s something at work that hasn’t been done or can’t be fixed. It’s there to passify, to let you off, to make us feel better. Unfortunately, as a probation officer, you can rarely use it.

Sack the Stylist

I shall now make a sweeping un-PC statement and say that “clothes” are generally the domain of the ladies. And trying to figure out what togs one should wear as a female probation officer has been a bit of a ‘mare for me. Before this, I was a jobbing office temp and barmaid. In THOSE workplaces, a chiffon blouse, pencil skirt, tights and heels were nothing special. Hell; in one bar I worked at they actively encouraged wearing fishnets and stilettos (ugh). But you just try walking through a probation waiting room like that and see what happens. I remember in my early days (when I still crammed my size 7s into bear-trap heels) calling out a client’s name in a waiting room (who incidentally I’d read the Riot Act to a week before). The lad sitting next to him saw me, nudged him and said “raaaarse; I wish SHE was MY probation officer”. To my relative delight, my client turned round with a long face and said “oh no you DON’T” before skulking in. But on a serious note; you wanna look smart, but not start setting off some secretary-fantasy. You wanna look approachable, but not like you just rocked up at the corner shop in your Uggs for a pint of milk (especially as on those days you will always get called into Court. It’s the LAW).

My current ‘guise has settled on “Geek Chic”. Hopefully this says “Hi: I’m easy to talk to, relatively intelligent, often get dressed in the dark, and don’t mind making a complete fool out of myself in public” which I think is as good a first impression as any. For this job you need something friendly, non-sexual and cosy (as those probation offices get awful chilly). See the dilemma? There’s only so many options one can choose and the gravitational pull to wool is alarmingly strong…

So….the next time someone starts harping on about “those Cardigan-Wearing, Social-Working Hippy Probation lot” just ignore them and remember: The Cardigan Is Our Saviour.

Over and Out

It’s raining tweets

Once you’ve been on Twitter for a few months and are following a few hundred people (and, I hope, have a few hundred people following you), most people feel the need to get organised.

During peak times in working hours, the tweets rain down my timeline at the rate of about one every five seconds.

How can I possibly keep up with all these nuggets of wit and wisdom, read all the links to the latest development in the worlds of crime, drug treatment (and social media)?

Well of course I can’t, nor do I try to.

I quite often work from home, sat in front of a computer all day. But even I can’t afford more than half an hour a day on social media.

So how can you make effective use of Twitter and make sure you don’t neglect your day job?

By getting organised.

I have three golden rules for getting organised on Twitter:

1. Maximise your downtime
2. Set yourself goals
3. Get a Twitter utility that lets you filter and schedule

Maximising your downtime

Now that you are a practised Tweeter, you know it only takes 20 seconds to fire off a Tweet.

Five to ten minutes of browsing your timeline 2-5 times per day can help you keep up with the news, engage in interesting debates and contribute your thoughts and ideas.

There are many such gaps in the average working day:

• Anyone who commutes by public transport has an ideal opportunity, especially if you are tweeting by mobile phone which you can use in even the most crowded carriage. I frequently travel to London by tube for work, which takes an hour. The first 25 minutes are above ground with a good signal, so I browse and tweet to my heart’s content, leaving me 35 minutes to plan for a meeting or do some work on my netbook.
• If you are in the passenger seat on the way to a call or meeting, that is prime tweeting time.
• If you are waiting for other people to turn up to your meeting.
• In a two hour meeting of which only one agenda item relates to you. (Be Discreet.)
• Some people tweet over their morning coffee.
• Others when they go outside for a cigarette break.
• Some people set aside 15 minutes of their lunch break for social media.

If you look at your day, you are almost bound to find these dead spots.

Twitter addicts like myself can even use social media breaks as a reward for good behaviour. Every time I finish a chapter of a report, I allow myself a 5 minute Twitter-break.

Set yourself goals

Yes, I know that sounds like the dullest form of management speak possible.

And I know that a large part of the fun of Twitter is just to surf along and be surprised, intrigued, infuriated, amused or appalled by whatever pops up.

However, if you are Tweeting as part of your job, you need to be clear why you are doing it.

I try to give myself a different goal every week and make sure that at least one of my Twitter-breaks each day is dedicated to it.

I try to vary my goals, here are some of my recent ones:

• Follow journalists who write about drug and crime issues and add them to a Twitter list.
• Advertise the fact that I am looking for good quality guest posters. (This is a current goal. @Zoestaffsgmpt set the bar high with her post on being a probation officer (2nd post out this Friday) and @drbrianstout has written a great post about biometric monitoring of offenders in the probation service, out next week).
• Seek out online responses to the probation review and tweet links about them.

Choosing a Twitter utility

Choosing a Twitter utility or application lets you organise yourself. The most common ones are:

Hootsuite (available as standalone,  browser and mobile versions for windows, Mac, Android, iPhone and Blackberry)

Tweetdeck (ditto, now owned by Twitter itself)

Seesmic (ditto)

There are lots of others, but these are the big three and I have personal experience of Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.

The best thing for me about Hootsuite and Tweetdeck is that you can organise your Twitter into as many “streams” or columns as you want.

The best thing about these columns is that you can do anything you want with a Tweet directly from the column: re-tweet, reply, send a direct message. Best of all, you can re-tweet and add comments – which the main Twitter client doesn’t allow.

I generally run about ten columns which include my Timeline, mentions of my twitter name, Direct Messages, any tweets I have scheduled, my favourite tweets, and then, most importantly, a mix of:

My lists

For example, I have all the tweets from everyone on my list of probation Tweeters in one column so that I can catch up with key issues, topics and debates of the day by just scanning down the list. Not only is this much easier than scrolling through a lengthy timeline, but I can see debates and conversations and join in if the topic interests me.

Keywords

I have a column which gathers all mentions of certain #hashtags – Hootsuites lets you put three terms in one column, so I have a column which picks up #paymentbyresults, #socialimpactbonds and #probationreview

The columns only take a minute to set up or edit. When the BBC Public Enemies series was broadcast in January this year, I had a column dedicated to #PublicEnemies so that I could keep up with what the Twitterverse thought of this depiction of the modern probation service.

Obviously, the lists and columns that you choose will reflect your goals. If you are seeking to make local politicians aware of particular work your police or probation service does; seek them out on Twitter and put them into a list (see last week’s post on building a Twitter following) and then put the list in a hootsuite/Tweetdeck column so that you can get a sense of them, engage with them and push your messages out when appropriate.

The other main way that these utilities help you organise your Tweeting is their scheduling facility. They allow you to schedule Tweets, simply by composing your tweet and then selecting a day and time for it to be broadcast – see post six in this series for why you might want to schedule.

In terms of which utility to choose, Tweetdeck is tied more tightly into Twitter (since they are owned by the same company), Hootsuite has one or two added features like allowing you to save drafts of Tweets, and analysing how popular your tweets are. It also enables you to integrate your social media platforms – you can post to Facebook, LinkedIn and mailchimp mailing lists from the same utility while Tweetdeck only lets you do this with Facebook.

Get organised

If you are spending more than 5 -10 minutes on Twitter a day, I really encourage you to get organised.

It only takes about 10 minutes to set up either Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, and best of all – they are both free.

Next Wednesday: Livening up your Tweets: Twitter and multi-media

Have a good week till next week.

Russell is running a series of half day courses for people who wish to tweet on behalf of their organisation or business.

Full details of Twitter for Beginners.

Full details of Taking your tweeting to the next level.

This is the third in a series of posts about the five principles of PbR commissioning set out in a recent Audit Commission report.

Principle 3: A well-designed payment and reward structure

The Audit Commission helpfully encourages commissioners to consider a wide range of PbR reward structures with an emphasis on schemes where only some of the funding is dependent on results.

It points out that many small providers are unlikely to be to carry the financial risk of failure if they are to be paid solely on a PbR basis.

However, the Commission also explores the opposite point of view. It states that small financial incentives can have large positive effects with as little as 1.5% of the total contract dependent on performance, but cautions that such an approach may not focus enough on outcomes or achieve sufficient transfer of risk and reward to achieve the underlying objectives.

The Work Programme approach

To illustrate this point, the report takes a detailed look at the payments and reward structure of the Work Programme.

The Work Programme is often described as the largest PbR scheme in the world and it does fit some of the classic PbR criteria in not being prescriptive about how providers work with unemployed people to get them back into work.

It has quite a sophisticated payment and reward design which varies payments according to how difficult it is likely to be to place different groups into employment – it’s obviously much harder to find work for the long-term unemployed, or those with disabilities or drug and alcohol problems.

Therefore, the Department of Work and Pensions has designed a pricing model which incentivises providers to work with all groups and not to just “cherry pick” the easiest cases.

The programme has three main payments:

1. An attachment fee – to assist with initial service delivery costs.
2. A job outcome fee – to encourage getting as many individuals as possible into work.
3. Sustainment payments – paid for individuals who remain in work; this is to discourage providers just placing unemployed people into “Mcjobs”.

Types of payment

Usually, when we discussed PbR payment structures, we think about bonuses for achieving positive outcomes.

However, the Audit Commission also explores the “repayments” approach when the provider must either pay back or not receive funding when it has failed to achieve the agreed results.

Although the repayment approach is much less common, it can have a strong motivational effect on providers.

The commission also recommends that whether a scheme favours bonus payments for good performance or repayment penalties for poor, it is good practice to include respectively a payment cap (to ensure that a very successful scheme does not become too expensive) or a guaranteed payment floor (to reduce the risk for providers).

Timing of payments

It is clear that although many commissioners would like to pay only on the successful completion of outcomes, this is not always realistic as many schemes may take years to deliver and even longer for outcomes to be validated. This sort of approach only really works for very large private sector businesses or where schemes are funded via Social Impact Bonds or the like (covered in next week’s post).

The Commission makes a helpful suggestion that the public reporting of results can be used to encourage providers to perform well and suggests that commissioners make this a contractual requirement and specify exactly what information should be published within a set time scale.

Conclusion

I think one of the best aspects of this Audit Commission report is the way that it explores PbR schemes from a first principle point of view and opens the debate back up so that a variety of models can be considered.

It has been my opinion for some time that a “horses for courses” approach is by far the best one for the payment by results approach.

Facewatch is the latest online development in the law-enforcement v criminals high-tech arms race with cops and robbers adapting new digital techniques to outwit each other.

New technologies present new opportunities for law enforcement agencies to catch and prosecute criminals – from Smartphones that can report themselves stolen to the increasingly sophisticated police use of social media for gathering intelligence, investigating crimes and establishing evidence.

Of course, the same technologies present new opportunities for criminals too who have used a number of online tools to try to avoid detection or target victims.

Facewatch is a  privately operated “National low level crime reporting and image sharing system for businesses”.

It operates as a website and an app, Facewatch id, with versions available for Android, Apple and Blackberry phones.

How it works

Once a business registers with Facewatch, it can upload details of any crimes straight on to the website with details, witness statements and, critically, CCTV evidence and images of any suspects.

There are a number of key components to the scheme:

• Police have full access to all the crime report details.
• Businesses can share images of suspects with either other branches of their company or other local businesses which have joined the same Facewatch group.
• Members of the public can log on to the website or use the app to look at photos of local criminals and see if they recognise anyone.
• Businesses can provide a full package of evidence in a convenient way.

Does it work?

Facewatch is endorsed by the Association of Chief Probation Officers and has testimonials from the Met Police Commissioner, @ngargan_npia and others on its website. It currently works with the Met and Cheshire Police Forces with other forces showing interest.

The main test of its effectiveness will be whether members of the public use the site and app and identify local criminals who they then report to the police.

According to the @Facewatch twitter account, the early signs are promising:

The run rate for positive idents on Facewatch is close to 10 a day

— Facewatch (@Facewatch) April 22, 2012

 

My one area of concern is that it will be important that Facewatch does not duplicate the work of individual forces who are already routinely post similar photos and videos on their websites and Facebook pages.

It will be important to integrate Facewatch and Facewatch Id into local police sites where members of the public are more likely to be browsing.

When I looked at the Cheshire and Met Facebook pages there were still links to CCTV footage and stills on these, rather than a link to the  Facewatch system.

Let’s hope that if Facewatch becomes the national system for sharing images of suspects,  the two systems are integrated.

“If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

This famous philosophical conundrum can be applied to tweeting too.

There is limited point in crafting a series of pithy, intriguing tweets if you have only a few dozen followers to read and share them.

This series of posts has followed a logical structure starting with getting your Twitter name, bio picture and profile right, and going on to advice about best tweeting and re-tweeting practice.

However, it would have been just as useful to have started with this post first.

As soon as you set up a Twitter account, you want to start building your following.

The main point of tweeting as a police or probation officer (or for anyone else for that matter) is to get your message out there.

It is true to say that police work is perhaps more immediately interesting to most people.

We all tend to follow crime stories and there are dozens of reality shows along the lines of “Police, Camera, Action”.

People are also particularly interested in crimes that happen locally where they might know the perpetrator or victim, or at least the location.

But probation trusts have thousands of redemption stories – examples of people turning their lives around – the staple of many a Hollywood movie.

These can generate just as much online interest, but probation tweeters may have to work a bit harder to build a following in the first place.

How to get followers

There is a whole host of tips and techniques to building a following but before we look at them, remember people will only follow you, and keep following you, if you have something interesting to say.

Even those of you in charge of corporate accounts will have realised that just broadcasting repetitive PR messages doesn’t work on Twitter. You need to link to real-life, human interest stories, engage with followers and discuss ideas and issues.

You need to write in plain English, inject some tabloid style, humour, whimsy – in a word, character – into your tweets.

Here are a few ways to get you started.

1. Get introduced to Twitter society

Tweeters are a friendly bunch, if you are just starting out on Twitter, ask anyone you know on Twitter to introduce you via a Tweet. Lots of people will say hello and follow you as a way of welcoming you to the world of Twitter.

I always follow new probation tweeters and am happy to announce your arrival online.

2. Follow other Tweeters

Most Tweeters will follow people who follow them (unless they are only trying to sell something they don’t want). So start off by following lots of people. Think who you want to get your message out to and follow Tweeters in your area of interest, your partners, local politicians, Think Tanks, local media and community groups etc. You can search for local organisations by putting a hashtag before your location, e.g. #Coventry,  in the Twitter search bar (top right of the Twitter page).

3. Follow the followers

If you follow someone who is popular  in your area of interest, click on their Twitter home page (Just click on their name) and look at who they are following. Follow these people too.

4. Use lists

Many Tweeters organise the people they follow in lists. Click on these and peruse them and follow people you like the look of. I keep lists of probation people on Twitter and influential criminal justice tweeters you might like to have a look at.

@ngargan_npia keeps a series of lists of police people who tweet.

@Tweetminster is the best source for the more than half of MPs who tweet.

But remember who you are trying to get your message out to. It might be fun to follow lots of other iPlods and probation tweeps, but you want to focus on getting your message out to your local commissioners, community groups, politicians etc.

5. Follow Back

It’s obvious, but don’t forget to follow back people who follow you. Have a look at their profile and who they follow too. Then follow anyone who looks interesting or part of your target audience.

6. Advertise the fact that you are on Twitter

Put your Twitter name in your email signature. If possible, hyperlink it to your Twitter account, so that people can follow you by just two clicks. Your twitter home page address is in the form: https://twitter.com/russwebt @russwebt is my Twitter name, just substitute yours.

Put a twitter feed on your website, blog or Facebook page. People will then know you are on Twitter. Twitter can help you do this via a simple widget. Mine looks like this:

Remember, Tweeting is like throwing a rock into a pool, the more followers you have to re-Tweet you, the heavier the rock and the further the ripples spread.

Next week. Getting organised – managing your busy twitter account.

Have a good week till next week.

Russell is running a series of half day courses for people who wish to tweet on behalf of their organisation or business.

Full details of Twitter for Beginners.

Full details of Taking your tweeting to the next level.

This is the second in a series of posts about the five principles of PbR commissioning set out in a recent Audit Commission report.

Principle 2: Understanding risks and accountability

One of the principal reasons that the Government (particularly the Treasury) is so keen on the PbR approach is because of the transfer of financial risk away from the public purse.

The Audit Commission report helpfully makes it clear that it is not possible to transfer away all risk, by posing some key questions:

• What happens if a scheme fails?
• Or succeeds so well, a council/government department can’t afford the payments?
• Will elected members still be held accountable for performance.
• What about the impact on (the usually vulnerable) client group?
• What about the commissioners’ reputation?

Expert commissioning

The commission then goes on to highlight the technical nature of PbR commissioning, stating that it requires technical, financial and legal expertise.

This is one of the hidden costs of PbR.

Organisations keen to explore the potential of PbR should be aware that this level of expertise is not easily available. Much of it resides the with financial intermediaries such as Social Finance who have pioneered the development of social impact bonds (of which more in week 4 of this series).

It is likely that councils and others who wish to commission PbR schemes will need to assemble a commissioning team with expertise in a number of key areas:

• Understanding the service users/target population and in particular what the key outcomes (which will determine the payments) should be.
• A knowledge of the provider market – is there sufficient expertise and appetite for PbR to encourage healthy competition and different approaches?
• Technical skills to construct a fair, accessible and legally and financially sound procurement process.

Creating a level playing field

Commissioning across departments