Probation 'Now An Embarrassment'

I see the plight probation finds itself in has once more attracted the attention of the FT no less:- 

Probation ‘mess’ casts shadow over government outsourcing

Bailouts of £500m to private sector, with some offenders only monitored electronically

• £3.7bn privatisation of probation services seen as ‘mess’ and ‘disaster’ 
• Private providers complained contracts were lossmaking and ‘unsustainable’ 
• Questions remain about government plans for new private-sector contracts 

James Alderson joined the National Probation Service a decade ago to help offenders stay out of prison. But when a large part of the service was privatised in 2015, he found that staff cutbacks and piles of paperwork meant he had less contact with the people he wanted to help. 

Privatisation was meant to bring innovation and cost discipline to the service, and cut stubbornly high re-offending rates in England and Wales — where more than half of people with previous convictions go on to commit another crime within a year of being released. But Mr Alderson, whose name has been changed, said “the entire process has been a disaster”. MPs on the Commons justice select committee have reached a similar conclusion, saying in June that privatisation had been a “mess”, with private companies making “little difference” to offenders’ future prospects. 

Last month, justice secretary David Gauke agreed to end the private sector contracts in 2020, two years earlier than originally planned. The government has not disclosed the cost of the experiment, but the Ministry of Justice has been forced to agree bailouts totalling at least £500m to the private sector. The fallout has revived questions about private-sector involvement in delivering key government services, especially after the government contractor Carillion collapsed earlier this year.

“It’s another example of the doctrinaire assumption by politicians that the private sector will always deliver better results,” said Julian Le Vay, a former finance director of HM Prison Service. “Probation wasn’t broken,” he said. “There was room for improvement but we could just have had a more efficient public-sector organisation, without affecting the quality of service.” 

‘It was a big bang’ 

The grounds for privatisation were laid in the 2007 Offender Management Act, which was brought in by a Labour government. But it was Conservative Chris Grayling who, as justice secretary, launched the “rehabilitation revolution” in 2014. He cancelled his predecessor Ken Clarke’s pilot programmes for privatisation, pushing through a more ambitious set of reforms in just over a year.

“It was a big bang that completely reorganised the world, and if it didn’t work there was no easy route back,” said Mr Le Vay. Before Mr Grayling’s reforms, public-sector trusts supervised around 200,000 ex-offenders each year. But Mr Grayling broke up the system, giving eight private firms, including Sodexo, MTCnovo, and Ingeus, £3.7bn worth of contracts to run 21 “community rehabilitation companies” providing supervision and support to “low-to-medium-risk” offenders. 

The community rehabilitation companies were also given the job of working with 45,000 prisoners who had been in jail for less than 12 months, who had previously received no support after release but had a high reoffending rate, with nearly two-thirds committing another crime within a year. Cases involving “high-risk” offenders remained within the National Probation Service, which is now part of the civil service. 

Lossmaking contracts were ‘unsustainable’ 

But after the overhaul, private-sector companies were not getting the level of referrals expected, in part because of errors in Ministry of Justice forecasting. The MoJ had projected that private sector providers would handle 70 per cent of the cases. But in reality, the private providers only handled about 40 per cent of cases. The courts who assigned probation cases had little faith in the private providers, none of whom had any previous experience in the field. 

It also proved difficult to classify ex-offenders, because a change in circumstances, such as eviction, an alcohol problem or family conflict, could easily change their risk category from “low” to “high”. Probation staff were also divided arbitrarily between the public and private providers, even though in some cases they continued to share offices. 

By 2016, the private providers were complaining that the contracts were lossmaking and “unsustainable”. As a result, they axed jobs and closed offices, making it more difficult for offenders to attend appointments. Some contractors, such as Sodexo, monitored offenders using unmanned electronic kiosks. Two out of five offenders monitored by the private providers are now supervised by telephone, with calls every six weeks, rather than in person, according to the chief inspector of probation. 

‘Now we are an embarrassment’ 

The government is now consulting for a new round of contracts, with different financial terms and minimum requirements for the number of face-to-face meetings held with ex-offenders among other changes. The new contracts would also align the community rehabilitation companies with the National Probation Service’s regional operations. MTCnovo has said it is committed to the service and would bid for future contracts.

But few believe that privatisation of the probation system can work, even with the changes. The Welsh government has already decided to use devolved regional powers to take its own probation service back in-house, giving control to the National Probation Service. 

Robert Neill, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons justice select committee, has questioned whether a privatised system “will ever deliver the kind of probation service we need”. Mr Alderson said: “Other criminal justice systems used to look at us as a model for offender intervention,” he says. “Now we are an embarrassment.”

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I notice the article generated a couple of responses on Facebook:-

The FT is still a relatively influential newspaper despite its comparatively small circulation. It has an excellent international reputation for well sourced and evidenced financial journalism that is mainly aimed at looking after business interests rather than having an overtly political axe to grind. Those with power money and influence read it and form their opinions as a result. In other words those who can make a difference read it, including overseas investors in the so called UK 'justice market', and will undoubtedly now be more cautious particularly if they do some research and find a number of articles across the media warning of a mess. This article takes up the best part of page 3 along with a smaller article regarding Grayling failing to take advice regarding Heathrow. The final three paragraphs are particularly telling 'But few believe that privatisation of the probation system can work, even with the changes'.

The Welsh government has already decided to use devolved regional powers to take its own probation service back in-house, giving control to the National Probation Service. Robert Neill, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons justice select committee, has questioned whether a privatised system “will ever deliver the kind of probation service we need”.' I detect a groundswell of opinion that runs counter to the MoJs proposals that are clearly not brave enough given the scale of the problems faced. Yes to end of CRC contracts. Yes to reunification of core probation services. Yes to both English and Welsh probation services returning to public ownership.

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Hats off Mr Alderson, whoever you are. I have a feeling that there is all to play for now, and the biggest hurdle and risk in the path of serious positive progress is the devastating effect of TR on probation people. There used to be a fashion in management theory for drawing analogies between organisations and individual psychology/pathology. Any psychology/psychiatry/etc practitioner would have a their hands full with Probation as a client. If you were to diagnose Probation as a group collective, what would it be? PTSD? Stockholm Syndrome?