Oh Look!

From Civil Service World:-

MoJ sets up new probation and reoffending directorate

Up to £100,000 on offer for director to lead work on probation policy and community and reoffending policy

The Ministry of Justice is setting up a new probation and reoffending directorate to bring policy work on the two areas closer together and respond to growing demand for the two services.

The directorate will provide “significant policy input” to deliver justice secretary Shabana Mahmood’s priority of using technology solutions to manage offenders in the community, according to a job advert for a director to lead the team.

The MoJ is offering a salary of up to £100,000 for the director, who will lead the MoJ’s work on probation policy and on community and reoffending policy.

Its early objectives will include working with HM Prison and Probation Service to develop and deliver the MoJ’s probation policy response to the independent sentencing review, led by former justice secretary David Gauke.

The final report of the review, published last month, called for greater investment in the Probation Service to boost its “capacity and resilience” in the face of proposed reforms to shorten sentences for some categories of offender and reduce the number of people behind bars. The review noted that locking up fewer criminals will “place a greater burden on a probation system that is already under great strain”.

The director will be responsible for ensuring the directorate is staffed with “high-quality colleagues”. They will report to the director general of policy – prisons, offenders and analysis and will manage three deputy directors working on probation policy, community and reoffending policy and the reducing reoffending analysis division.

Writing in the candidate pack, director general Ross Gribbin said the job on offer is an “extraordinarily varied and interesting” one.

“You will represent the lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice and resolve the most urgent policy issues within and beyond the department. You will provide strong, strategic, and inspiring leadership for your team, and secure the confidence of ministers and officials across the department and wider government,” he wrote.

“You will be joining a great team and working on some of the most complex and important issues that make lives better for the citizens we serve.”

The directorate will sit within the MoJ’s Policy Group, which is responsible for setting and advising on policy ranging from criminal, civil, family and administrative justice to the UK’s domestic human rights framework and international obligations. The group also supports the justice secretary in their constitutional relationship with the judiciary and oversees the constitutional relationship between the UK and the crown dependencies.

The successful candidate director will “play an active role” in the Policy Group’s leadership and champion diversity and inclusion and wellbeing, according to the job ad.

Applications for the director job close on 15 June.

The Voice of Reason

Good to see Napo Cymru continuing to make the case for a stand-alone probation service separated from HM Prison Service. This from Napo magazine:- 

Su pictured with her MP Catherine Fookes

“Probation is already overflowing” Su McConnel warns MPs

Veteran Napo Cymru member and staunch probation campaigner, Su McConnel, delivered a searing indictment of the state of the probation service when she gave evidence to MPs on the welsh Affairs Committee this week. Speaking with clarity and conviction, Su captured what many working in the system have long felt: probation is in deep crisis and policymakers must act before it collapses completely.

Overflowing, overlooked, and under pressure

Su was clear from the outset that probation is not just at capacity; it’s beyond it. With caseloads ballooning, staff struggling to cope, and public safety at risk, she argued that the system is dangerously close to breaking. “This panel is primarily focused on prisons. Prisons are very nearly full to capacity. Probation is already overflowing,” she said pointing out: “We have got a situation where 60 cases is the norm.”

Despite repeated promises, staffing remains inadequate, and the promised support has yet to materialise. “We are always told that the troops are coming over the hill, but they never seem to quite land and stay.”

Recruitment is tough but retention is worse

When asked why the workforce is struggling, Su pointed to a toxic mix of low pay, high stress, and disillusionment. “It is not just recruitment; it is retention. It is people staying.” Su explained: “We are burning through new staff,” and that “I have never seen so many people signed off with stress as I have done this year.”

Demoralised by a shift in culture

The profession that many joined out of a desire to make a difference is becoming unrecognisable. Rather than the previous motto of “advise, assist, befriend” Su said: “Actually, ‘Surveil ‘em, nail ‘em and jail ‘em’ does feel to a lot of new probation staff like what they are being asked to do, because there is no scope or room for the reasons they joined.”

“We have shifted so far from a model of supporting people to change to a model of enforcement that new practitioners are very quickly losing their belief that they can do anything positive,” she concluded.

The human toll

The emotional impact on staff was another key theme of Su’s evidence. “I know colleagues who are in their first year of practice and who are crying on a daily basis because they feel that they are not doing the job that they came into the profession to do.”

It’s a false economy

Su repeatedly challenged the government’s short-term thinking, from underfunded reforms to politically driven headlines that ignore the realities on the ground by saying: “Probation is largely invisible to the public, until we fail.” She called for proper investment — in people, not just systems — and demanded that MPs listen to the voices of those on the frontline.

The magic wand? A real review and independence

When asked what she would do if given a magic wand, Su was clear: “I would want a commitment to a root and branch review of probation, with a view to separating it from the Prison Service — as much as we respect our colleagues — to be a stand-alone organisation in its own right.”

The message to ministers is clear

Su McConnel’s appearance before the Committee didn’t just highlight problems, it offered a path forward. Her call for investment, professional trust, and workforce support resonated far beyond the hearing room. She didn’t ask for miracles. Just for leadership to listen.

This article is based on Su McConnel’s oral evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee on 14 May 2025. Watch here

Why We Are Where We Are

Yet again thanks go to ace sleuth 'Getafix for pointing us in direction of this article published yesterday by Yorkshire Bylines:-

Safe for all? How austerity wrecked the probation service

Austerity broke it: the probation service in England and Wales is now rated “inadequate” after years of cuts, chaos and failed privatisation 

Who would be a probation officer? Long hours, complex work and some of the most challenging clients imaginable. In spite of all that, over 20,000 full-time probation service staff work in the probation service day in, day out. And yet, with the probation service’s watchdog’s recent annual report having rated the probation service as inadequate, there is a mounting sense that it may be at crisis point.

The probation service stands at a precarious moment. With the government reducing sentences in an attempt to ease an overwhelmed prison system, more and more criminals are being managed in the community. However, the government’s chief inspector of probation services says that the public are at real risk of crime unless the probation service is overhauled and properly funded. Why is the probation service underperforming at the exact moment the system needs to be robust and properly funded?

The roots of the service’s inadequate performance go back further than 12 months to disastrous decisions made over 15 years ago which have wrecked the system designed to keep the public, staff and offenders safe for all.

Faced with a growing populist backlash and chronic underfunding, it’s worth asking what has broken the probation service. The answer is austerity.

Probation service: a deteriorating system for managing offenders

In 2010, the Conservative-led coalition government came to power and inherited a healthy, award-winning service for managing offenders leaving prison. The National Offender Management Service was managed by 35 publicly owned probation trusts. While never perfect, as no public body ever is, the overall system was a healthy one. Fast forward 15 years and the latest research into the overall health of the system makes for grim reading.

In March 2025, HM Inspectorate published its annual report, covering inspections undertaken between February 2024 and February 2025, and on 29 April, it published the results of its 2025 inspection into the general sufficiency of national probation services. The results, the inspectorate discovered, were wanting. Martin Jones, Chief Inspector of Probation, said: “Major shortfalls were found in service delivery and work to keep people safe remains a significant cause for concern”. The report highlighted that the probation service was not meeting the needs of offenders released from prison or the wider community. Staff were underfunded and overworked, and junior staff were not supported.

This is a sadly all too familiar story for those who have worked for or had contact with the probation service.

Austerity: all in this together, or a convenient lie?

How did this happen? How did the umbrella service for managing offenders either going to prison, in prison, or having left prison, go from an award-winning service in 2014 to a failing service staffed by burnt-out staff with overflowing caseloads? The answer, in a word, is austerity.

When the Tory-Lib Dem coalition was formed in 2010, it immediately began cutting the public sector. Britain’s finances, they claimed, were on the brink of ruin and cutting the public sector was the only remedy that would stave off complete collapse. In fact, it was a lie. A convenient lie which acted as the ideological cover for stripping back the state. In 2010, David Cameron gave a speech in which he outlined his vision for Britain, saying he wanted a “fairer, greener, safer Britain”. Ultimately, austerity delivered none of these things. Instead 14 years of Tory government left Britain an impoverished, broken down, sicker country.

The cost of austerity for the probation service

Nowhere is the failure of austerity more acutely on display than in the current failures of the probation service. In 2014, minister Chris Grayling pushed through the part-privatisation of the probation service, in which the trusts previously responsible for managing offenders in the community were scrapped.

The state was left to manage only the high-risk offenders. The rest were to be managed by private entities called Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). The result was a disaster. The number of offenders breaking the terms of their licenses went up, and central government had to bail out the failing CRCs. The total cost? Five hundred million pounds. The privatisation process was later reversed. So, the taxpayer ended up paying £500mn for a failed privatisation scheme which made offending worse.

Austerity’s legacy: the catastrophic undermining of the probation service

The disastrous Grayling reforms are very instructive. This year, 15 years on from the first ‘austerity’ budget under the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, it’s become clear that a pattern has emerged as follows:

Take a public service which may have its problems but is working well at the point of delivery. Then invent a crisis, use that crisis to starve it of public funds, then let results plummet and public confidence deteriorate. Then introduce privatisation, and when the outcome is failure, blame it on ‘woke’ policies and frittering away public money on ergonomic chairs and rainbow lanyards. It’s a recipe not for a successful society but a smoking ruin of a country.

The probation service provides a vital service. Probation service staff at all levels have immense responsibility to judge risk, provide a high-quality service and treat offenders with dignity and respect. We’ve learned from the inspectorate’s report that such a challenging job cannot be delivered when staff are overburdened, underfunded and landed with impossible expectations including unrealistic caseloads.

There are pathways to return the service towards a high-quality service. In May this year Unison recommended that the whole system be decentralised and given proper oversight again by elected mayors. But unless the catastrophic error of austerity is reversed, and the service is given proper investment, to support junior staff, reduce caseloads and provide proper oversight of offenders, it’s hard to see outcomes improving.

Alex Mair 

Alex is a writer based in West Yorkshire. Yorkshire is the place where he has spent the majority of his working life. He has written for a variety of publications for over ten years. He lives with Rosie and one child from her previous relationship.

Sentencing Review Responses

Napo press release:-

Napo welcomes Sentencing Review

Napo welcomes the Sentencing Review and in particular its focus on the critical role the probation service plays in the supervision and the rehabilitation of people in the criminal justice system. The review vindicates Napo’s long held view that radical action is needed to resolve the staffing and workload crisis probation has been struggling with for a number of years.

The review is right to look at the culture of the probation service and how it has shifted to far towards being a law enforcement agency and has lost sight of its core purpose of rehabilitation. We welcome the view that there needs to be greater balance between compliance and enforcement and that of advising and supporting people to turn their lives around.

We welcome the recommendation that Rehabilitation Requirements and Post Sentence Supervision are revoked and there is a return to greater flexibility in how an individual is supervised. A probation requirement would enable our members to tailor supervision to meet the needs of the person they supervise as opposed to the rigid approach probation has adopted over the years.

Whilst the measures outlined in the review will not give immediate relief to our members, it will offer some light at the end of the tunnel. However, Napo has reservations about HMPPS’s ability to make the necessary changes when they were the architects of many of the problems the service now faces. As we saw with the publication of the Rademaker report, our members will be sceptical as to whether or not senior leaders in HMPPS are capable of making any real change. Napo was clear in our submission that we do not believe that the probation service can survive while it is still part of the civil service.

General Secretary Ian Lawrence said: “This review offers some hope for the future, but Napo has been asking HMPPS to make many of these changes over the last 2 years to little avail. We need a commitment from the government that they will take immediate action not only to implement the recommendations, but also to put its hand in its pockets and reward our members with a decent pay rise.”

A key aspect of the review is the call for significant investment in the probation service. Napo firmly believes that after years of pay freezes, Napo members must see the benefit of this investment on the frontline. Ian Lawrence said: “Any previous investment in probation has been spent on the private sector for either IT or electronic monitoring. What we need to see now is a direct investment in staff. Without that we will see a continual rise in retention rates and continued staffing crisis. Our members cannot be expected to pick up the mess of the prisons crisis and see little in return for their efforts.”

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This from Prison Reform Trust:-

PRT comment: Independent Sentencing Review

The Prison Reform Trust welcomes the Independent Sentencing Review and its clear commitment to evidence–based reform.

Commenting, Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“This comprehensive and in-depth review represents a once in a generation opportunity to reset the sentence framework so that it is more focused on reducing reoffending and keeping the public safe. Proposals to expand the use of effective community alternatives and limit pointless short spells in custody will not only free up limited prison capacity but also lead to better outcomes for victims and wider society. We hope the government will accept and implement the majority of measures in this review and we look forward to its response."

Pia Sinha

The review rightly recognises that short prison sentences are less effective at reducing reoffending than robust community-based alternatives. Proposals to limit the use of short sentences to exceptional circumstances, and greater use of suspended and deferred sentencing, offer a practical route to reducing the number of people serving brief, ineffective custodial terms—sentences that do little to improve public safety or support rehabilitation.

The review’s focus on expanding the use of effective community alternatives is both positive and necessary. The review is right to recognise the need for this to be backed by sufficient funding and resources for probation to supervise more people in the community. We welcome proposals to provide sustainable and long-term funding for women’s centres, expand the use of intensive supervision courts and increase investment in community sentence treatment requirements and liaison and diversion services.

The review is also right to highlight the need to restructure standard determinate sentences and regularise release points. This represents a sensible, phased approach to rehabilitation—supporting people to begin their return to the community under supervision, while still serving their sentence. The introduction of an incentives model will need to be monitored carefully to ensure it does not lead to unfair or disproportionate outcomes.

The rapid rise in recall in the past few decades has been a major driver of the growth in the prison population, often trapping people in a revolving door of imprisonment and release. We welcome the review’s proposals to limit its use and to prevent people from being returned to prison for technical breaches of their licence. If implemented they would represent a more proportionate and constructive approach, helping to break the cycle and support long-term rehabilitation.

This review comes at a time of acute pressure on prison capacity—driven by years of sentence inflation and the failure of politicians to plan for the consequences of their penal populism. We welcome proposals to introduce an external advisory body on sentencing and a requirement for ministers to make an annual report to parliament on prison capacity. These measures would encourage evidence-based policy and provide an important check on kneejerk responses to crime by politicians. However, the review does not address the significant impact of longer sentences for serious offences, which have been a key driver of the rising prison population. There will be an opportunity to return to this pressing issue with the report of the Law Commission on homicide law in the coming years.

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This from Rob Allen:-

A Good Try- but can it be Converted?

I met David Gauke a few years back when our sons were on opposite sides in a rugby match. I was impressed that he recalled our touchline conversation when we talked briefly again this January at a Sentencing Council seminar. He told the seminar that whatever else it might do, there was an arithmetical imperative his Sentencing Review’s recommendations should effect a sustained reduction in demand for prison places to prevent continuing recourse to the emergency measures we’ve seen over the last couple of years.

His wide ranging and largely welcome report is more a review of the execution of sentences than it is of sentencing. It says little about addressing the rampant sentence inflation which the first part of the review identified as the cause of the capacity crisis.

But it does contain important proposals which are estimated to result in a fall in the prison population of 9,800 places. Unfortunately, the report lacks the kind of detailed cost benefit analysis that generally accompanies legislation in the form of an Impact Assessment signed off by ministers. That’s a shame, particularly as the Lord Chancellor’s rejection of some of Gauke’s proposals will undoubtedly bring the 9,800 figure down. But by how much it’s hard to say.

Take the proposal that short custodial sentences are used only in exceptional circumstances. Gauke reckons this will save 2,000 places. But a similar measure proposed by the last government in 2023 was estimated to save between only 200 and 1,000 places. The Lord Chancellor has described the Gauke scheme as “a presumption against custodial sentences of less than a year – in favour of tough community sentences.” The 2023 version involved a duty to suspend a prison sentence- a subtle but important distinction which may account for the difference in the assessments. But without the detailed workings it’s impossible to say.

A larger reduction in prison places is expected from Gauke’s early release proposals. Unfortunately, the Lord Chancellor hasn’t accepted them in their entirety. For those serving Standard Determinate Sentences (SDS), Government plans to ditch an upper limit to the proportion of the sentence they serve in prison will eat into the 4,100 places that would be saved. Gauke wanted the more dangerous prisoners serving Extended Sentences to be able to earn a Parole hearing at the halfway point of their sentence. MoJ says no and they’ll have to continue to wait until two thirds has passed. So the 600 places that would have been saved presumably won’t be.

The government say they’ll “introduce a tougher adjudication regime so that bad behaviour in prisons is properly punished”. Under the earned release scheme, offences against discipline, such as engaging in any threatening, abusive or violent behaviour, or possessing unauthorised articles would result in the offender’s release point being pushed back. It’s not clear that the Review team took a tougher disciplinary regime into account when assessing the numbers of SDS prisoners who’ll qualify for release at the earliest point.

The Lord Chancellor told Parliament today that as things stand, they’ll be short of 9,500 places by 2028. Gauke’s certainly had a try at bridging the gap. But can it be converted?

Rob Allen

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This from the Howard League:-

The Howard League for Penal Reform has responded to the final report of the Independent Sentencing Review, published today (Thursday 22 May).

The review, led by David Gauke, a former Secretary of State for Justice, calls for a series of measures to address the prison capacity crisis through reducing reoffending and ending an overreliance on custody.

Andrea Coomber KC (Hon.), Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said:

 “This is a vital review that makes the case for change by focusing on the evidence on what will reduce reoffending and prevent more people becoming victims of crime.

“The ball is now in the government’s court. Solving the prison capacity crisis will require major intervention and, as the review recognises, this will only succeed if reform and investment deliver an effective and responsive probation service that works to cut crime in the community.

“And more must be done. The proposals unveiled today are a good start, and if enacted they will buy ministers more time and some headroom in an overstretched system. Ultimately, however, they are insufficient because the terms of reference for the review excluded consideration of more serious offences.

“If the government really wants to ensure that the country never runs out of prison places again, it must be bolder and address the longest and indeterminate sentences that have driven the criminal justice system to the brink of collapse.”

The Howard League submitted evidence to the review in January 2025, calling on the government to abolish sentences of 12 months or less and expand the use of suspended sentences, and emphasising the need for a well-resourced and effective probation service.

The charity’s submission, which drew on feedback received from members in prison, also called for custodial sentences to be reconceived, with focus on rehabilitation and incentivising progression.

Crime and Punishment

There's going to be a lot of talk about criminal justice today and this from the Guardian sets the scene:-

Shabana Mahmood considers chemical castration for serious sex offenders

Shabana Mahmood, the lord chancellor, is considering mandatory chemical castration for the most serious sex offenders, according to government sources.

The minister’s department is planning to expand a pilot to 20 regions as part of a package of “radical” measures to free thousands of prisoners and ease prison overcrowding in England and Wales.

As well as releasing and tagging killers and rapists after they have served half of their sentence, she is considering the findings of an independent sentencing review that has also called for the government to build an evidence base on drugs that “suppress libido” or reduce “sexual thoughts”.

They are among 48 recommendations put forward by David Gauke, the chair of the review.

Mahmood is expected to address the Commons on Thursday to outline which measures she will accept in a major overhaul of criminal justice. Government sources said she is expected to accept the review’s key measures including that well-behaved prisoners should be released on tag after serving a third of their sentences.

She has also accepted that those who have committed serious sexual or violent crimes could be freed to serve their sentence in the community after they have served half of their sentence.

One of Gauke’s suggestions – that the most dangerous offenders should be allowed to apply for parole earlier if they earn “credits” – has been dismissed by sources close to the justice secretary.

The report has urged ministers to build a comprehensive evidence base around the use of chemical suppression for sex offenders and examine the findings of similar programmes in Germany, Denmark and Poland.

“Problematic sexual arousal and preoccupation can be reduced via chemical suppressants and other medications, which can be prescribed for individuals who have committed a sexual offence under certain circumstances,” the report notes.

It points out that a 2022 pilot programme at prisons in south-west England which uses libido-suppressing drugs is due to end next year and recommends “continued funding of services in this area”. The government plans to expand the pilot using these as a staging post to a full, nationwide rollout, a source close to Mahmood said.

The approach is delivered through two drugs. Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) limit invasive sexual thoughts. Anti-androgens reduce the production of testosterone and limit libido. The drugs are taken alongside psychiatric work that targets other causes of sexual offending, such as a desire for power and control.

Mahmood is exploring whether chemical castration could be made mandatory, instead of voluntary, for the most serious offenders, the source said. Sexual offences accounted for 21% of adults serving immediate custodial sentences at the end of March 2025. The report notes that participation in any such programme would be voluntary in England and Wales.

Among the main recommendations, Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, said the government should:

• Ensure custodial sentences under 12 months are only used in exceptional circumstances.
• Extend suspended sentences to up to three years and encourage greater use of deferred sentences for low-risk offenders.
• Give courts greater flexibility to use fines and ancillary orders like travel, driving and football bans.
• Allow probation officers to adjust the level of supervision based on risk and compliance with licence conditions.
• Expand specialist domestic abuse courts to improve support for victims.
• Expand tagging for all perpetrators of violence against women and girls.
• Improve training for practitioners and the judiciary on violence against women and girls.
• Change the statutory purposes of sentencing so judges and magistrates must consider protecting victims as much as they consider punishment and rehabilitation when passing sentences.

Gauke has called for the need to increase funding and resources for the probation service, including expanding the availability of electronic monitoring equipment like tags, and warned that there will be a “public backlash” if money is not found.

“If probation are left without additional resources then the risk is that we won’t make progress on rehabilitation and there will be a public backlash,” he said.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council echoed Gauke’s calls for more resources.

Chief constable Sacha Hatchett, national policing lead for criminal justice, said: “Out of prison should not mean out of control. If we are going to have fewer people in prison, we need to ensure that we collectively have the resources and powers to manage the risk offenders pose outside prison.

“Adequate funding to support these measures must be reflected in the upcoming spending review, as well as investment in probation services and technology, including electronic monitoring.”

Penal reform group the Howard League welcomed the recommendations.

Andrea Coomber, the chief executive, said: “The ball is now in the government’s court. Solving the prison capacity crisis will require major intervention and, as the review recognises, this will only succeed if reform and investment deliver an effective and responsive probation service that works to cut crime in the community.”

The Conservatives have condemned Gauke’s review. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “By scrapping short prison sentences Starmer is effectively decriminalising crimes like burglary, theft and assault. This is a gift to criminals who will be free to offend with impunity.”

Justice Secretary Nonsense

I'm afraid my patience has run out entirely in respect of the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and her latest 'unpaid work is too lenient' nonsense, thus further stoking up right wing rhetoric in response to Reform. With a heavy heart I now feel I have no option but to admit this Labour government hasn't got a clue as far as probation is concerned. There's clearly not going to be any enlightened probation reforms and astonishingly the Gauke Sentencing Report is likely to be rejected as too enlightened! 

As far as I can see, Lord Timpson is going to have a hard time convincing the probation establishment gathering for the 2025 Bill McWilliams lecture in Cambridge on July 11th that probation has any meaningful future at all.  

Criminals could fill potholes and clean bins under government plans

Convicted criminals could be told to fill potholes and clean bins under plans the government is understood to be developing.

As first reported by the Sun on Sunday, the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is said to want to expand unpaid work, which she believes to be too lenient. She is understood to want probation teams to work with councils, so that local authorities are able to assign jobs to offenders. Private companies would also be able to employ those who are on community sentences. Offenders would not be paid wages, but the money earned would be paid into a fund for victim's groups.

It comes as prisons across the country are struggling to deal with overcrowding after the number of offenders behind bars hit a new high. A government source said: "With prisons so close to collapse, we are going to have to punish more offenders outside of prison. "We need punishment to be more than just a soft option or a slap on the wrist. If we want to prove that crime doesn't pay, we need to get offenders working for free - with the salary they would have been paid going back to their victims." They added this meant doing the jobs the public "really want them to do - not just scrubbing graffiti, but filling up potholes and cleaning the bins".

Writing for the Telegraph, external, Ms Mahmood, who describes herself as a "card-carrying member" of her party's "law and order wing", said that "tough community orders work." An independent review of sentencing carried out by the former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke is expected to be published this week. It was commissioned last year after overcrowding led to the early release of thousands of prisoners. 

Gauke is understood to be considering recommending the idea of scrapping short prison terms as part of the sentencing review, and is likely to recommend more community-based sentencing to reduce the reliance on imprisonment. In an interim report, Gauke warned that unless radical changes were made, prisons in England and Wales could run out of cells by early next year.

Ms Mahmood warned that he would "have to recommend bold, and sometimes difficult, measures". In her article, she pointed to examples such as the system in Texas, where she said "offenders who comply with prison rules earn an earlier release, while those who don't are locked up for longer". On Wednesday, she announced more than a thousand inmates will be released early to free up spaces in prisons in England and Wales, and that a £4.7bn investment will be used to fund more prisons.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the announcement was "failing to protect the public" - adding "to govern is to choose, and today she's chosen to release early criminals who've reoffended or breached their licences".

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Postscript

My Twitter account has either been hacked, deactivated, lost or deleted which is very annoying, but then Elon Musk has completely rubbished it anyway, so seeing as Virgin have lost my email account as well, I'll just accept it all as confirmation that trying to save Probation is fast becoming a lost cause and I'll just shout into an empty ether....

Probation Gets a Mention!

This from BBC website today:- 

Bold spending needed to halt prison crisis - union

The government's efforts to fix the prison crisis may not work without "bold investment decisions", the leading union for the probation service has said.

Ian Lawrence, general secretary of Napo, said a review of sentencing policy by former Conservative Justice Secretary David Gauke "may come to little effect" if the probation service was underfunded. 

The union boss said he supported proposals to scrap short sentences for some offenders and toughen up community orders supervised by probation officers. But he said probation staff were already "overworked" and suggested any "cost cutting" could increase pressure on the service. "I'm struggling to see how a package of sentencing reform can work without the necessary support," Lawrence told the BBC.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said a "crisis" in the justice system had "put a huge strain on the probation service". "We are hiring 1,300 new probation officers, investing in technology to cut back on admin, and increasing focus on those offenders who pose the greatest risk to the public," the spokesperson said. "This will ease pressure on the service, help cut reoffending and keep our streets safe."

Gauke is understood to be considering recommending the idea of scrapping short prison terms as part of the sentencing review.

The review comes as prisons across the country are struggling to deal with overcrowding after the number of offenders behind bars hit a new high. In an interim report, Gauke warned that unless radical changes were made, prisons in England and Wales could run out of cells by early next year. Gauke's sentencing review is expected to be published this month, before the government sets out its spending plans for departments in June.

"Napo would welcome any initiatives to reduce the numbers of people in our prison estate," Lawrence said. "But that can't come without the lord chancellor absolutely recognising the pressures that the probation service is now facing and will in the future. "And that's why we need brave, bold investment decisions by this government and not more of the same."

Tight budget

The prisons and probation budget fell by 12% when inflation was accounted for between 2007–08 and 2023–24, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, external.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has outlined plans for efficiency savings and in her spring statement, said day-to-day government spending would fall by £6.1bn per year by 2030. But the chancellor has not yet stated which departments will have less money to spend, meaning it's not clear how the probation service will be affected. The money allocated to government departments for the three years beyond 2025-26 will be set out in the spending review in June.

Lawrence said a reduction in funding for the Ministry of Justice, which oversees the probation service, could mean less funding to support offenders in the community and worse outcomes.

"In other words, they go out of prison and they've got no option but to commit crime because they have no means of supporting themselves," he said. "They're back in prison within weeks. And so it goes on and that costs the taxpayer millions."

A source at the Prison Reform Trust, a charity, said the probation service would need to be resourced properly if there was more community sentencing. They said the government may have to divert funding from prisons towards probation and community solutions. "It needs to make a strong economic case for why this would be a spend-to-save policy," they said.

Pay dispute

In a national inspection report, the probation watchdog said there was a high shortfall of officers in some regions and workloads were a problem. Lawrence said Napo was in dispute with the prison and probation service over pay progression and workloads. He said the union had submitted a claim for a 12% pay rise for probation staff this year. That's way above the increases independent pay review bodies have advised the government to give teachers (4%) and NHS workers (3%). 

Lawrence said probation workers going on strike was a possibility if the pay offer was too low. "We think senior leaders in [the service] have a responsibility to let ministers know the gravity of the situation," he said. "And that worries me as to whether ministers are truly sighted on the operational crisis that exists in probation right now."

In a speech in February, external, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood set out her vision for reforming the probation service. She said probation officers were "responsible for caseloads and workloads that exceed what they should be expected to handle".

The changes she announced included 1,300 new trainee probation officers by next March, and an £8m investment in new technology to reduce the administrative burden on staff.

Usual Populist Political Stuff

Probation continues to be side-lined and ignored whilst we get the usual populist political stuff. This from the BBC website today:-

More offenders could be tagged, as minister insists he's 'not soft on crime'

Prisons minister James Timpson has told the BBC more criminals could be tagged in future instead of being sent to prison - but insists he's not "soft on crime".

More than 30 companies, including Microsoft and Google, will meet the government today to explore how technology could help monitor offenders in the community more effectively and tackle violence in prison.

Lord Timpson says tagging more people instead of sending them to prison is a potential alternative punishment. But critics have questioned his previous comments about the UK being "addicted" to sentencing and punishment, and how "only a third" of inmates should be in prison.

"I don't think I'm soft on crime at all," Lord Timpson says in the wide-ranging BBC interview. "I think I'm pretty tough in my style. In business, I'm tough but I use the evidence - and in this job I'm using the evidence."

He says he is passionate about rehabilitating offenders in prison so they don't commit further crimes when released. However, more than 26% of adult criminals in England and Wales go on to reoffend within a year of being let out of prison.

"How do we reduce re-offending? How do we deal with people's drug addiction, mental health problems, the fact that people leave prison they don't know where to live, people don't have a job? That is also a really important part of my job," he says.

The former CEO of the Timpson Group, which provides key cutting and shoe repair services, is known for hiring ex-offenders and is a former chairman of the Prison Reform Trust.

Lord Timpson took up his role at the Ministry of Justice in July last year, when the penal system in England and Wales was close to breaking point. Prisons were full, and months later thousands of inmates were released early as part of an emergency plan to ease overcrowding and free up space.

He says prisons are still in a state of "crisis", with fewer than 1,000 spare places and more than 88,000 people in custody in England and Wales.

"We recently opened HMP Millsike," he says, describing the new category C prison which opened in East Yorkshire in March, with capacity for up to 1,500 inmates. "We've got more cells opening across the country. We need to keep building prison places because the population is going up."

Last month, three prison officers were seriously injured at HMP Frankland, in Durham, after they were attacked with makeshift weapons and hot oil by one of the men responsible for the Manchester Arena bombing. Hashem Abedi was being held in a separation centre - used to house a small number of the most dangerous and extremist inmates - at the category A, maximum security jail.

"What happened in Franklin is absolutely shocking," Lord Timpson says. "The level of violence in prisons is far too high - and it is increasing. "Our prison staff did an incredible job. I don't want them to turn up to work thinking that there's going to be violence. I want them to turn up to work helping people turn their lives around."

However, the number of assaults on staff in prison is the highest in a decade, with 10,605 recorded in 2024.

Lord Timpson refutes claims that gangs are in charge of some of Britain's biggest jails, but acknowledges that serious organised crime is the one thing that "keeps me awake at night".

"Serious organised crime brings drugs in and creates violence and intimidation in prisons," he says. "This has been a long-term problem in prisons, but it is even more of a problem when the capacity is as full as it is.

"If we had people who went to prison who didn't get drugs and weren't intimidated by serious organised criminals, they'd be far more likely to engage with a sentence and get well enough so that when they leave they don't commit further crime."

The government has commissioned an independent sentencing review to explore alternatives to prison in an attempt to ease overcrowding. The review will provide long-term solutions for the justice system and examine the use and composition of non-custodial sentences, including community alternatives to prison and the use of fines. Increased tagging will also be considered.

There are three types of ankle tags currently used to monitor offenders: alcohol, GPS, and curfew tags. A new study suggests tags that monitor curfews cut reoffending by 20%.

"We want them to have a one-way ticket - not a return back into prison or back into non-custodial sentences," Lord Timpson says. "What's really important is we embrace technology and look at the evidence - tagging can have some very important benefits."

But the use of electronic tagging to monitor offenders has been problematic. In recent months several probation staff have told the BBC offenders who should be tagged, have not been. The security company Serco has been contracted by the government to manage tagging since October 2023.

"We inherited a contract with Serco and it's been far from perfect," Lord Timpson says. "We're putting a lot of pressure still on them to perform, but we need to work together to make sure that people are tagged on time in the right way. Things are getting better, but we're not there yet."

Anthony Kirby, Serco Group CEO, told the BBC he is pleased the prisons minister has recognised the progress Serco has made since taking over the electronic monitoring service: "We are proud of the role we have supporting the Criminal Justice System, monitoring record numbers of people in the community and protecting public safety in partnership with HMPPS."

The Forgotten Service

Thanks go to regular contributor 'Getafix for pointing me in the direction of this report  from think tank Demos:-

To fix the justice system, the government must first grapple with the forgotten service: Probation

Policing and prisons have been a mainstay of the news cycle for the Labour government, with the Southport riots, early prison releases, and (more recently) neighbourhood policing all making the headlines. While discussions around police and prisons continue to hit the headlines, pundits and policymakers too often neglect a crucial part of our justice system – probation services.

Maybe there is an understandable reason why. Five year (though often shorter) election cycles full of combative rhetoric, coupled with a public that remains fearful and paranoid of rising crime (despite actual falling levels) gives politicians the incentives they need to make big, public promises; promises of more police, more prisons and harsher sentences to assure voters that they will be ‘tough on crime’. In contrast, probation operates in the shadows. Investing into services that support prison-leavers may expose policymakers to criticisms such as being ‘soft on crime’. Part 1 of the Independent Sentencing Review confirms that this approach is not only the wrong answer but also exacerbating the problem.

However, now is the chance to do something different. Coming into office, the new government promised an end to such ‘sticking plaster politics’ and there have been some promising signs since the start of this Labour government. From the widely lauded speedy appointment of James Timpson as Minister of Prisons, to Shabna Mahmood’s early release scheme and commissioned sentencing review, the government has taken important and sometimes difficult steps towards resolving the justice crisis. However, these steps are not enough. Without giving attention to probation, the government will miss the opportunity to truly improve the outcomes of our justice system.

Probationary reform is both a moral and economic imperative.

Over the past few decades, successive attempts at top-down restructuring have veered probation away from its founding mission to support people back into society, to instead managing and avoiding risk. Combined with a strikingly low workforce of under 21,000 practitioners that manages triple the number of people currently in prison, the service is crumbling under pressure. This is clear in the massive increase of the recall population in prison from just 100 in 1993 to 12,920 in 2024. Judges and magistrates have also seemingly lost faith in the probation system to offer a better alternative to incarceration, resulting in a greater use of custodial sentencing. Now England and Wales incarcerate more than any other country in Western Europe. It is clear that probation is failing to support sustainable re-entry into mainstream society, hindering the ability of prison-leavers to live lawful, happy and productive lives.

This shortfall in probationary support is having dire consequences.

Most people leave prison only to find that they felt more stable when inside, with research by Birmingham City University finding 41% of prison-leavers were unsure where they would live on release. From 2023 to 2024, 13% of prison leavers were released into homelessness making them 50% more likely to reoffend. And whilst half of the people in prison deal with drug addiction, only one-third of those who left in 2022 received any treatment or support leaving them to look towards crime to continue funding these habits. When people feel they have no choice but to return to crime, we fail them, their victims and the public. But it does not stop there. The impact of this is also felt intergenerationally with children of offenders being more likely to commit crime themselves. A 2007 study found that two-thirds of those with a convicted father were convicted themselves by age 32 compared to a third without. Until we support those who leave prison to find safety and stability outside, we leave everyone at risk to fall back into crisis.

The failures of our current probation system also carry significant economic costs. In the detecting, sentencing and imprisoning of reoffenders, the government spends £18.1 billion per year. The government’s new ‘Plan for Change’ allocates £2.3 billion of the Budget to build four new prisons. In addition, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service estimates it would cost more than double the current maintenance expenditure to bring the whole estate into fair condition. If probation worked effectively, intervening and supporting in the right way, the government would be able to invest that money into the public services that matter to us most, such as the NHS. Not only do we bear the massive cost of resentencing, but also the lost economic potential of those in prison rather than in employment. Spending more upfront to support prison-leavers to change their lives will lower their odds of returning to the crisis points that led them to prison in the first place. Rather than the tens of thousands of pounds needed to keep someone in prison, we must help them achieve their economic potential outside, giving them the support and resources they need to end the cycle of crime they are stuck in.

The government has taken difficult decisions to prove its commitment to resolving the justice crisis, the early release scheme being one of these. However, without attending to probation, we fear these efforts will be in vein as can be seen in the scheme’s overwhelming recall rates. Likewise, more prisons without the tools to keep people out of them will inevitably lead to further capacity issues.

Since its inception, Demos has been a thought-leader on public service reform. Over the past year, our Future Public Services Taskforce has been developing a new cross-cutting public service reform strategy. Based on this work, we believe a new delivery of probation – one founded on prevention, strong relationships and professional autonomy – will renew its direction. For the government to make real and lasting change in the justice system, it must first grapple with the forgotten service: Probation.

‘A life in the day of’ - the video

A Life in the Day Of’ - Simon Armitage’s ode to the Probation Service

A Life in the Day Of

A Life in the Day Of: Simon Armitage's ode to probation officers

Listen on BBC Sounds.

This from the Big Issue:-

Poet laureate Simon Armitage on his years as a probation officer – and the redemptive power of poetry

When now-poet laureate Simon Armitage retired from the Probation Service, his dad was “a bit miffed”.

“I went into probation because my dad was a probation officer,” Armitage tells Big Issue. “He was always a bit miffed with me that I’d retired from the Probation Service before he did. I think he was a bit worried about me, because I was giving up my profession for this thing called poetry.”

The ‘thing called poetry’ worked out – Armitage was named the UK’s poet laureate in 2019, is a fellow of the Royal Society for Literature, a CBE, and a former professor of poetry at the University of Oxford.

But the Yorkshireman has never forgotten the eight years he spent working on a probation team in Manchester, monitoring offenders and attempting to reintegrate them into society. Today (20 March), he’s published a new ode to this work – A Life in the Day Of.

The poem details the day-to-day of those who choose this difficult profession, from finding housing for former offenders to dealing with those who breach of bail conditions. Armitage hopes his dad would like it.

“My dad died four years ago, and you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to get involved is because I was thinking a lot about him,” the poet laureate said. “I think he would have definitely recognised line for line, the things that I was talking about.”

“I like to think that if he’d still been a probation officer, he might have pinned it up in his in his office.”

England and Wales have the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe, at 141 people per 100,000. The prison population has risen by 80% in the last 30 years.

Reoffending rates are stubbornly high. Some 29% of former prisoners are back in custody within 18 months of their release – a proportion that surges to 63% of inmates who serve less than 12 months in custody.

Successive governments have claimed to be “tough on crime”, but harsh sentencing doesn’t tackle the root of antisocial behaviour. A lack of re-integration support is the single biggest contributor to this vicious cycle – which is where a good probation officer comes in.

“It is about making life tolerable for people, it’s about rehabilitation, aiming towards an effective release – with the idea that, you know, if people come out of prison, they won’t go straight back in,” Simon Armitage says.

“I think of being a probation officer as sort of like an intermediary role, or almost like a translator between then criminal justice system and the general world outside.”

Officers “make a plan. Rip it up. Boil the kettle” the poem tells us – and walk the “high wire between care and control.” They need a “Big heart, thick skin, the patience of Job,” Armitage writes – it’s not an “easy job.”

On his own time in the service, the poet is blunt: “It was very trying.” Officers deal with high caseloads, managing individuals who may be resistant to change or struggle with addiction and mental health issues.

“it’s not a frequent situation that you will you will see immediate progress,” ARmitage said. “But you will see slow progress.”

Unfortunately, too few people sign up to this vital role, a low rate that Armitage attributes partly to common misperceptions about probation. More than a third (35%) of adults know nothing about what it’s like to work within the Probation Service, new HMPPS research shows – compared to life working in teaching (15%), policing (22%), the ambulance service (22%), social services (22%) and the fire service (24%).

“If you’re trying to recruit people to a profession and it’s something that you believe in, it’s a little bit difficult if the general public don’t really understand what that job is,” Armitage says. “It’s a long time since I was a probation officer, but I would tell people what I did, and they would slightly glaze over, or they’d seen American [film and TV] about the probation service, you know, the sort of gun carrying thing.”

“it’s a much more complex and varied role.”

It’s been some years since Simon Armitage himself worked in the service. His poetry career took off shortly after he resigned, and he hasn’t really looked back. But poetry and probation have more in common than you might initially think, he says.

“One of the ways that the poetry does help is that it reminds us that the world is made up of individuals. However much that poem might be describing the general situation, it’s come from me, and it’s my take on that situation. And I think poetry humanises for that reason, it reminds us that, you know, we all have slightly different views of the world. We all walk in a slightly different way.

“And I guess that was one of my motivating factors for going into probation, just to, you know, recognise people as people, even if they have a different angle to the universe than me.”

Editor's Nightmare

It must be every editor's nightmare to publish, only to find you've missed the big story of the day. Well, today's the day because I discover late in the day that the BIG story is this:  

In an environment where the government are actively preparing to do battle with the top tier of the civil service over performance, how does Antonia Romeo walk away with plaudits to the top Home Office job, 

Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, said:

"I am delighted to announce Antonia Romeo’s appointment as Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Antonia has huge experience delivering transformation across a range of Government departments, as well as a track record of delivery and strong systems leadership, both of which will be vital to lead the Home Office to deliver its mission on safer streets and border security."

whilst the day after a crock of shite is 'discovered' at the MoJ? Joint statement from the three probation trade unions, including Napo yesterday:-

This Changes Everything

HMPPS has finally admitted that there is a deep and serious crisis in the Probation Service that bears out everything we have been saying in our Operation Protect campaign, launched back in June 2023.

On the basis of information provided to the unions under confidential cover, and which we are not able to disclose at present, HMPPS now accepts that it is thousands of staff short of the workforce it needs to meet existing sentence management demand.

This public acknowledgment of the depth and seriousness of the crisis only relates to sentence management, we expect to receive more information soon about other areas of probation delivery. Until we receive this further information, we don’t know whether the situation is going to be very different outside of sentence management. What we do know is that our members in other areas of probation delivery are struggling with their own workload pressures.

TOTALLY UNMANAGEABLE WORKLOADS

So now it’s official - sentence management staff have been expected to work for years to deliver totally unmanageable workloads. This obviously did not start yesterday.

It is no wonder that staff are suffering burn-out, work related stress and ill-health. And no surprise that successive HMIP reports have identified weakness in the Probation Service’s ability to provide its statutory services.

We note that HMPPS has listened to our Operation Protect Campaign and now accepts what our members and the unions have been saying for years – that there is a workload crisis in Probation and something needs to be done about it!

WHAT WE ARE CALLING FOR

Given just how extreme the workload crisis really is, the unions are now calling for the following:

• An immediate and complete end of Post Sentence Supervision, via emergency legislation if necessary
• A preview of the business case being made by HMPPS to the Spending Review to reassure our members that serious new money is being sought as part of a probation rescue package
• That employer acknowledges that the WMT is no longer an accurate reflection of workloads as it does not count the full extent of work undertaken and should not be used as such.
• Agreement on the total number of cases that can be held at any given time by a practitioner - to be jointly reviewed on a quarterly basis
• The suspension of capability proceedings against staff where excessive workload is a factor
• The suspension of all Sickness Absence Management proceedings against staff and the application of total management discretion
• An immediate review of the current nationally agreed overtime arrangements with a view to an indefinite extension.
• An immediate review of the Prioritisation Framework with all Probation Regions moving to ‘Red’ status
• Urgent agreement between HMPPS and the trade unions on a new Demand Management Strategy to support all staff in making decisions on prioritising work on individual caseloads.
• A moratorium on the introduction of any new work anywhere in the Probation Service pending agreement to a rescue package for the service
• Performance targets to take second place to staff welfare
• Negotiation on the role of AI in contributing to the easement of the capacity crisis and the need for a collective agreement to cover the same

PROBATION SAFE IN HMPPS HANDS?

HMPPS, and before it NOMS, has been responsible for running probation ever since Chris Grayling first centralised delivery with the creation of the National Probation Service in 2014. Nearly 11 years on, and the probation workloads crisis is the worst that it has ever been. We therefore call on the Government to deliver on its manifesto promise to review the governance of probation as a matter of urgency.

MEMBER BRIEFINGS

As part of the joint unions’ on-going Operation Protect Campaign we are planning urgent on-line meetings for members to come together to discuss the deepening workloads crisis and what we want doing about it. Please look out for details of these meetings.

Napo/UNISO/GMB/SCOOP 

Reviving Probation

Whilst we continue to await the promised Probation Review, my attention has been drawn to the following article from the latest Probation Institute Journal by academic Peter Raynor:- 

Reviving Probation : Ten Evidence-Driven Strategies  

Now that the Government has launched the review of sentencing which should have happened years ago, much of the evidence submitted will likely suggest that the key to reducing prison numbers is to revitalise and prioritise the use of community sentences. The natural vehicle for such developments is seen as the Probation Service, as it was in 1991 when an Act of Parliament tried to achieve much the same shift in the assumptions and practice of sentencing (Home Office 1991). However, a major obstacle might prove to be the current state of the Probation Service. In 1991 it was locally run and clearly linked with the courts, having sentencers closely involved in governance through local committees and able to have a voice in the development of community sentences, in which they demonstrably had greater confidence than they do today. Now the voices raised on behalf of probation tend to be those of concerned academics (often exprobation) and of the staff themselves through their trade union NAPO. In addition, the Probation Institute is perhaps the nearest thing we currently have to a body which speaks for probation. The Service itself is unable to take part in policy debates because it no longer exists as a separate and distinct body but instead looks more like the community arm of the Prison Service within the Ministry of Justice. Managers who control the direction of development in probation no longer need to have had any experience of supervising people on probation in the community, and Civil Service rules prevent the open participation of voices from within the Probation Service. The Probation Order itself, once the long-lived and flexible paradigm of community sentences, no longer exists.

Many jurisdictions in Europe are developing and building up their community sentencing offers: the Confederation of European Probation draws together research and experience from across the continent and further afield, for example in an important recent report on how to develop and embed probation services in criminal justice systems (Pitts and Tigges 2023). Where is the comparable thinking in British probation? Controlled by civil servants, dangerously understaffed and looking to forensic psychologists for its thinking about methods rather than to its own more-than-a-century of developing probation in the community, is no surprise that the Service now does more work supervising released prisoners than delivering non-custodial options for the courts. What is more worrying is that post-custodial supervision leads to substantial numbers of recalls to custody which themselves help to inflate prison numbers. The Probation Service seems to have become the main overseer of the post-custodial revolving door.

A dispassionate observer might conclude that the Probation Service, named as it is after a noncustodial alternative to punishment, no longer really exists. Certainly, it is no longer the innovative service at the cutting edge of social work that I joined in the 1970s, and I wonder whether I would now be so attracted as I was then to what seemed to be a clear mission of decarceration and social rehabilitation in the community. Despite many important developments since the 1990s, including risk and need assessment, cognitive-behavioural methods, accredited programmes and many technological advances, nothing has stopped the rise in custodial sentencing which was triggered by a Conservative Home Secretary in 1993. There has been no clear political commitment to reducing or even stabilising the use of incarceration, or to empowering the Probation Service to deliver a decisive shift towards community sentences. However, the Service clearly retains great potential, including many excellent hardworking and creative staff. They deserve a better future than simply serving the mass incarceration machine as another brick in the wall of social exclusion.

What then is the alternative? There is in fact much more international research evidence available to guide the development of probation services than there was in the past. What follows is a summary list of promising initiatives which research suggests could and should make a positive difference, helping to deliver a Probation Service that can develop and succeed:

1. Develop the interpersonal skills used by staff in supervising people on probation. Several studies now show that staff who use high levels of personal communication skills are more effective in reducing reoffending, and that appropriate training improves skills and outcomes (Chadwick et al. 2015). Results in these studies are typically better than those reported for programmes. This can be a particularly cost-effective approach since it improves the impact of staff who are already in post and being paid.

2. Move urgently towards appropriate caseloads. Evidence suggests caseloads should be less than 50 and in many circumstances around 30, or even less where particularly high risks and needs involved. Research by HM Inspectorate of Probation shows that both better supervision and sensible caseloads produce better results (HM Inspectorate of Probation 2021, 2023). This was also the conclusion of research carried out as long ago as the 1960s by Bill McWilliams in London (McWilliams 1966). Youth justice workers have much lower caseloads than probation officers and achieve much better results in inspections. In addition, efforts to promote more continuity of contact in supervision are more likely to produce good results than continual changes of supervisor. There is limited research on this, but a Home Office study of 2004 (Partridge 2004) showed that both probation officers and people on probation welcomed continuity. People do not want to tell their story again and again to a series of strangers in pass-the-parcel supervision. A few years ago it was not unusual for probationers to be in contact with the same probation officer from initial pre-sentence or social inquiry report through to the end of an Order, or even through further offending, maybe a prison sentence and subsequent post-release supervision.

3. Ensure appropriate supervision of frontline staff by experienced colleagues, managers or peers to sustain and develop skills. This has been shown to provide effective support for training and implementation in skill development (Bourgon et al. 2010). The need for this kind of supervision has implications for Senior Probation Officers, whose contribution is likely to be particularly important here, and also strengthens the case for probation to be managed by people who have experience in the Service.

4. Reset post-custodial supervision for short-sentence prisoners. A year of supervision following a short sentence is often disproportionate and in some cases simply serves to increase the risk of recall for non-compliance, which now makes a substantial contribution to prison numbers (Raynor 2020; Jones 2024). Supervision should reflect risk and needs, and when it serves no useful purpose and is unwanted it can be terminated early in lower-risk cases. At the same time, practical support for resettlement needs to improve: people released from prison without basic resources such as accommodation are being set up to fail. Giving people a tent as they leave the prison is no substitute for proper pre-release planning.

5. Work locally. The services which people under supervision need, both statutory and voluntary, are more effectively accessed through local contact, particularly when supported by personal relationships. Colocation of services can be particularly effective, as in the Newham Hub for young adults (Phillips et al. 2024; see also Schofield 2024). Different localities need different approaches and probation staff on the ground need the freedom to develop local strategies, rather than arrangements being handled through top-down central tendering and contracting over large areas. The need to work locally, and to free professionals to develop local services, is one of the main drivers of the widespread view among practitioners that locating probation in the Civil Service as an appendage of the Prison Service impedes the development of distinctive probation strategies and practices. It is now widely believed that probation services require more local governance outside the Civil Service, and the Welsh Government's desire to see control of probation devolved to Wales is driven by similar concerns, with the support of the staff unions.

6. Renew engagement with sentencers in the criminal courts. It is often forgotten that probation services used to be run by local committees consisting mainly of sentencers, who were also the employers of probation staff. This connection was weakened when probation became a London-based and centralised service, and since then the judiciary has largely lost confidence in community sentences and makes far fewer of them. Research on presentence reports in the 1990s (Gelsthorpe and Raynor 1995) showed clearly that well-written, thorough and individualised reports were more persuasive and resulted in more community sentences. Judges interviewed as part of this research said that they wanted reports which helped them to understand the person they were sentencing. In those days reports were written by qualified probation officers, seen as professionals in their own right and often well known to their local courts. It is at least questionable whether today's algorithm-driven reports, recently described as ‘formulaic’ by one very senior magistrate (Ponsonby 2024), can command similar confidence. Sentencers can also be reengaged as stakeholders and play a role in the local governance of probation; this could help to ensure that they understand and influence the community options available in their area.

7. Renew probation's mission by aligning the service with government-led decarceration policies. The Probation Service is the obvious agency to drive the development of new community sentences (and maybe even old ones, such as the Probation Order itself). If the Probation Service is given this task it needs to be free to deliver it, and to devise strategies and approaches independently of a Prison Service which has a different role and culture. Liaison between services remains essential and could be managed better, but this does not require probation to be a branch of the prisons. Cooperation between probation and prisons was an established feature of practice long before the two services were joined together.

8. Introduce separate management and governance for probation. To carry out a distinctive policy, probation needs its own distinctive governance and management structures. It is to be regretted that the Ministry of Justice has tended to move in the opposite direction through the project known as ‘One HMPPS’. Senior managers need to be able to discuss and debate policy openly, publish their views and engage in the development of proposals and their implementation. All of this used to happen before the Probation Service was centralised under Home Office control at the beginning of this century. As civil servants, probation officers of all levels and grades are not currently encouraged to express opinions in public. To drive the policy and practice changes that are needed, probation services need to tell a clear story about what they are for and tell it repeatedly (Pitts and Tigges 2023).

9. Embrace appropriate technology. Developments in remote supervision and different types of electronic tagging can help to keep supervisors informed and in some cases can help to keep potential victims safer, for example by prohibiting access by perpetrators of domestic violence to their former victims. Cases, where victims are re-attacked by released perpetrators, have rightly led to public concern about early release and parole. There will be little public support for reductions in imprisonment unless public safety can be shown to be a very high priority. Technological solutions can help increase compliance by supervised people where the motivation to cooperate is limited or variable. The Confederation of European Probation has recently produced a report summarising developments and making recommendations about principles (Confederation of European Probation 2024). These issues cannot be ignored, or left to private sector suppliers who provide little personal supervision. Technology is there to strengthen personal supervision and needs to be part of a package of supervision and help which will improve the chances of willing cooperation. We can also hope that improvements in technology might eventually reduce the need for probation staff to spend so much of their time in front of computers instead of dealing with people.

10. Finally, evaluate everything and build the evidence base. Many of the suggested strategies lend themselves to pilot projects. Accredited programmes need full evaluation, not relying simply on accreditation as a guarantor of effectiveness, which it is not. The three-legged model of evaluation based on understanding, measurement and comparison (Raynor 2019) can be applied to most of the proposals in this paper. Evaluation is not cheap but needs to be understood as an investment: services shaped by sound evidence will be more likely to achieve the intentions of policy

Taken together, it is suggested that these evidence-driven strategies can provide a route to a revitalised the Probation Service. Most of them are not new but would benefit from being revived. Some caveats are in order: the focus here is on work with people who have committed offences, so victims are not mentioned, and in any case, there is little clear evidence so far on how successful the Probation Service’s work with victims has been, or whether it should be the focus of a specialist victim-centred agency or branch. Family work was similarly separated out into CAFCASS some decades ago. Another omission is a detailed estimation of costs: clearly, expenditure would be needed and investment is a political decision which would hopefully result eventually in reductions in prison costs. However, the Prison Service itself faces serious problems and needs investment and development, not just criticism. Close collaborative working with prisons should continue to be a feature of probation practice. Finally, readers will have noticed that many of these suggested strategies are informed by experience of past probation practice. It is important to avoid rose-tinted or nostalgic hindsight: there was no Golden Age. On the other hand, recalling the past is useful and arguably a vital guide to informing achievement and potential, although not in itself a sufficient guide. Evidence-based approaches need to be informed by evaluation and pay close attention to implementation. We often see a marked decrease in effectiveness when pilot projects are rolled out more widely. This gap in implementation presents a challenge, particularly to middle management such as Senior Probation Officers, and their role requires investment, development and support as much as main grade staff. Policy, leadership, evaluation, inspection and staff development need to work together to address this problem. The criminal justice system is in crisis and the Probation Service should be an essential part of the solution.

Peter Raynor 

Swansea University & University of South Wales 

For Wales Probation Development Group
(see full article for references)

Set Probation Free!

Guardian :-

Pat McFadden has vowed to bring about “radical” civil service changes including digitisation and stricter performance targets for officials to mirror private sector practices. Under the plans expected to be announced this week, under-performing officials could be incentivised to leave their jobs and senior officials will have their pay linked to performance.

This blog:-

"Dame Antonia Romeo will be leaving the Ministry of Justice as Permanent Secretary to become new Home Office Permanent Secretary. We would like to thank Antonia for her outstanding leadership over 4 years at the MoJ. Amy Rees, currently Director General, Chief Executive HMPPS, will be interim Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, while a permanent replacement is recruited.”

This from Civil Service World:-

Think tank calls for ‘clear-out’ of MoJ and HMPPS leadership

Current bosses ‘not up to task’ of delivering transformation required, Policy Exchange claims

Think tank Policy Exchange has called for the senior leadership of the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison and Probation Service to be removed as part of proposals for a reboot of the criminal justice system.

The right-leaning organisation is calling for a £5bn-a-year boost in spending on prisons, courts and policing as part of a whole-system crime reduction drive. Its proposals include the delivery of an additional 53,000 prison places – more than double the planned increase to deal with the current prisons capacity crisis.

However, the report argues that the current leadership of MoJ and HMPPS are “simply inadequate to the task” of overseeing the implementation of its plans and “should be dismissed entirely” from the civil service.

Policy Exchange says MoJ and HMPPS need “a cadre of leaders who will focus on empowering governors to run their establishments effectively” and on holding them to account alongside publicly-available performance measures.

Report authors Roger Bootle, David Spencer, Ben Sweetman, and James Vitali said there was a need to “entrench greater accountability” among civil servants in the criminal justice system.

“There are undoubtedly large numbers of individuals who work hard, demonstrate remarkable courage and deliver to the highest standards for the public," they said. “For too long, however, there has been a culture of impunity for failure, a lack of strategic prioritisation, a degree of mission creep, and a corresponding decline in the ability of the police, prisons and probation services to discharge their core duties effectively."

The report authors said the current leadership of MoJ and HMPPS had “overseen a culture of micro-management and bureaucratic expansion which has done little to improve the condition of prisons or the safety of the public”.

“This can be particularly observed in the dramatic expansion in the size of the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS bureaucracies – where huge increases in those working in non-operational roles in the five years between 2018 and 2023 have been the norm,” they said. “This trend contrasts with pitiful increases in the number of operational staff actually working and leading people on the prison and probation frontline.”

Policy Exchange estimates the impact of crime on UK society to be £250bn a year – made up of £170bn in “tangible costs”, such as losses to individuals, business and the public sector, plus an additional £80bn in “intangible effects” resulting from the fear of crime.

It said police-recorded shoplifting was up 51% relative to 2015 and police-recorded robberies and knife crime offences were up 64% and 89% respectively over the same period, while the cost of fraud in the benefits system has increased “almost eightfold” since 2006.

Policy Exchange said such areas of “acute growth” were “obscured by the aggregate downtrend in crime since 1995 that the Crime Survey of England and Wales reports.

The think tank praised the new Labour government’s inclusion of halving serious violent crime and raising confidence in the police among its five core “missions”. But it said prime minister Keir Starmer should go further by “explicitly rejecting the permissive approach to crime that successive governments have allowed to develop”.

In addition to calling for a change of leadership at MoJ and HMPPS, and a dramatic expansion of the prison estate, Policy Exchange is also proposing sentencing and courts reforms, and “smarter” policing.

The recommendations include minimum two-year custodial sentences for what the think tank describes as “hyper prolific offenders” and for those criminals to be the subject of mandatory individual intervention plans for the duration of their time in prison. It said the plans could cover treatment for drug addition, education or skills tuition, depending on their needs.

Policy Exchange is also calling for the amendment of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the UK Borders Act 2007 to allow foreign nationals convicted of criminal offences to be deported immediately at the end of their sentence.

In an introduction to the report, former home secretary Sir Sajid Javid described Policy Exchange’s work as “excellent”.

Robert Eagleton, national officer for the FDA union, took a different tack. He said the think tank's suggestion that senior leadership at MoJ and HMPPS should be sacked was “not credible”. “Policy Exchange is championing an unserious proposal to address a serious problem,” he said.

“Crime has a detrimental impact on the British public as well as the economy, and we need a serious conversation about law enforcement and the funding it receives. Successive governments have failed to invest in the prison estate and the issues we see today are a direct result of years of underfunding. These are political decisions which require political will to resolve.

“The government would be better served drawing on the experience and expertise of staff working in MoJ and HMPPS, who have first-hand experience of the huge challenges facing the justice system.”

Home Office minister Dame Diana Johnson listed a range of current initiatives aimed at reducing crime.

“In the next decade, this government plans to halve violence against women and girls and knife crime, and restore public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system, as part of the Safer Streets Mission,” she said.

“Through the Plan for Change, we will also bring visible policing back to communities, with 13,000 extra neighbourhood police officers, PCSOs and specials. Alongside this, the government will build 14,000 more prison places by 2031 to lock up dangerous offenders.”

The Home Office added that a £5m investment will fund the deployment of specialist staff to speed up the removal of foreign national offenders. The programme, which is creating 82 roles to oversee removals from jails, is due to be fully operational by the start of next month.

Civil Service World sought a response from the MoJ on Policy Exchange's proposals. It had not provided one at the time of publication. This story was updated at 15:10 on 4 March 2025 to include a Home Office response