Consolation Prizes

Whilst we await confirmation from the government that the privateers will no longer have a role in the delivery of probation services, here we have an article in the FT yesterday confirming that the decision is definitely not for 'ideological' reasons! So if that's the case it must be financial and either the bids were too high or no one was interested. Apparently the commercial sector is pretty pissed-off having been led up the garden path by the MoJ and will have to settle on a couple of new prisons instead:-   

Outsourcers to manage two new prisons in England

Boris Johnson’s government is expected to press ahead with outsourcing the management of two new prisons, even as it confirms this week that it has reversed plans to give the private sector a role in managing rehabilitation programmes for offenders. 

Serco, G4S, MTC Novo and Sodexo are all understood to be contenders to manage the new Wellingborough and Glen Parva prisons, which will provide an additional 3,360 places by 2023. The prisons are due to be completed next year with contracts to run them each worth around £300m over 10 years. The winning bidder for Wellingborough is expected to be announced this week, while Glen Parva’s will follow later. 

The decision comes despite a series of troubles with privatised prisons, with the government in 2018 forced to take over the management of HMP Birmingham from security contractor G4S after an inspector’s report found it “exceptionally violent”, with inmates high on drugs wandering around like zombies in a “war zone”. Last year the government decided to return HMP Birmingham permanently to state management. 

This week the government is also expected to confirm plans to end private sector involvement in probation services — bringing to an end one of the country’s more disastrous attempts at privatisation. Although most of the probation service is due to be brought in-house in June 2021, around £1.3bn of contracts to provide services, including unpaid work, training, and alcohol and housing advice for offenders, were put out to tender to private sector suppliers in December. 

The contracts were due to be awarded in August but the government abruptly aborted the tendering process last week. A government official said the decision to cancel the tenders was “not ideological” but admitted that no one could call the privatisation of probation a success.

The U-turn is the latest twist in a long running saga that has demoralised and splintered the probation service. Former justice secretary Chris Grayling in 2017 made the decision, against expert advice, to outsource the management of low-and medium-risk offenders to private providers such as Sodexo and Interserve. The government-run National Probation Service continued to manage high-risk individuals.

The result was a fractured, underfunded system that Dame Glenys Stacey, chief inspector of probation, said was “irredeemably flawed”. Parliament’s spending watchdog criticised the outsourced probation service as presenting “significant risks” to both offenders and the wider public. The government agreed to end the privatisation of the sector in May last year, with probation officers working for private companies due to be switched to public sector contracts by the end of 2021. 

But one of the companies bidding for the new probation support contracts said the government’s late U-turn was a “watershed” moment that would dent the industry’s trust. “Why would we invest in prisons if we and others have been treated like this?” he said. “Investing millions in a competition that has been pulled.” 

Almost half of prisoners reoffend within a year of release, with the proportion rising to nearly two-thirds for petty offenders serving sentences of less than 12 months, according to the Prison Reform Trust, which estimates that reoffending costs the state about £18bn a year. 

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson confirmed there would be an announcement on the prison programme within weeks. They added: “reforming probation to improve public protection and reduce reoffending remains one of our top priorities and we are assessing whether any changes to our current plans are required in light of the coronavirus pandemic.”