Probation reforms were ‘disastrous’

Mismanaged reforms have left probation services ‘underfunded, fragile and lacking the confidence of courts’, MPs have said in a devastating critique.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned Ministry of Justice reforms to probation services in 2013 had been rushed through ‘at breakneck speed’, in a report published last week, ‘Transforming rehabilitation: progress review’,

In some cases, offenders leaving prison with no fixed address were issued with tents. Support offered to offenders had not improved and reoffending rates had actually increased, the report found. Small charities were excluded as private-sector suppliers found it easier to work with large organisations.

Community Rehabilitation Companies, which were created in 2015 to manage low- and medium-risk offenders, were ‘too dependent on volumes of work which did not materialise and their exposure to payment by results worsened the subsequent financial pressure’. Subsequent attempts by ministers to stabilise the contracts and then to terminate them early cost the public purse an extra £467m.

‘Inexcusably, probation services have been left in a worse position than they were in before’ the reforms, the report concluded.

Bob Neill MP, chair of the Justice Committee, said the report ‘backs up the findings of our own inquiry that it is doubtful the government’s disastrous reforms can ever deliver an effective or viable probation service.

‘As well as laying bare the eyewatering cost of terminating contracts which should never have been entered into in the first place, the report also highlights the failure to improve support or reduce reoffending. This has a real human impact: more victims of crime and more wasted lives as offenders ricochet in and out of custody.

‘We are also seriously concerned about the decline in judge and magistrate confidence in community sentences―even though these sentences generally lead to better outcomes.’

O’Neill urged the government to review how probation services are delivered and set out ‘a new, clear strategy for the future’.