So, in the event of so many casual visitors wanting to know more about probation & why it's in the pickle it is, I'd like journalists or interested parties to get their heads around &/or teeth into the managed decline of the probation service & the one name that pops up every time there's a key moment in the genesis of that managed decline.
Offender Management Act 2007, which opened the door to outsourcing/privatising probation services.
- "In 2006, X became principal private secretary to the Lord Chancellor – initially Charles Falconer, then from 2007 Jack Straw."
- "In 2011, after 18 months at the Cabinet Office, X moved back to the Ministry of Justice, taking on the role of Director General, Transformation."
- "in 2013 X became Director General, Criminal Justice"
... Specifically, the *public funds* were utilized as a mechanism to cover pre-planned workforce restructuring costs, redundancy packages (which was supposed to offer up to 67.5 weeks of enhanced voluntary redundancy), and pre-planned job losses as staff transitioned to private-sector bidders, but much of it disappeared into the pockets of the multinationals, as confirmed here in Hansard:
"15 June 2015 - Andrew Selous, Written Answer: Under the enhanced voluntary redundancy scheme opened in advance of the transition of the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to new providers, probation staff were able to apply for voluntary redundancy on the basis that they would leave the service by 31 March 2016. The total cost of these redundancies was £16.4m."
Here's the tell that selous dangles before your very eyes:
"All remaining Modernisation Fund monies were awarded to CRCs. Redundancy funding was allocated pro-rata to CRCs based on their size and estimated future staffing requirements."
- Following the 2010 United Kingdom general election X transferred to the Cabinet Office as the Executive Director in the new Efficiency and Reform Group under Francis Maude."
Anon
From Napo HQ:-
ReplyDeleteIn October, just under two thousand prisoners, just under two thousand prisoners will be released early under the new progression model introduced in the Sentencing Act.
Whilst amendments have been made to the eligibility for early release, Napo is still very concerned about the impact on victims and also the impact on its members. The probation service is significantly under-staffed across all areas of delivery and this additional work has added extra pressure on staff tasked with ensuring that the release of prisoners is managed as safely as possible.
Ben Cockburn National Chair said: “There seems to be absolute denial in the leadership of HMPPS as to just how bad a state the probation service is in. We have massive staff shortages, unsustainable and dangerously high workloads and this week we will hear again that electronic monitoring is failing to deliver.
“On top of this we have uncompetitive pay, crisis workloads and a workforce preparing to ballot on industrial action. The Lord Chancellor and the Prime Minster must now commit to significant investment in the front-line services of probation so it can cope with the additional work our members are having to deal with.”
In his speech at conference, Lord Chancellor Alex Norris made reference to unpaid work being more visible and a tougher community sentence. However, unpaid work has only two thirds of the staff it requires to function effectively.
Ian Lawrence General Secretary said: “There simply aren’t the staff across the service to do the job that is being asked of them. It isn’t just about early releases, the probation service manages over 200,000 people on probation.
“If the government is serious about supporting victims better then it must take the probation crisis seriously. You cannot solve the prisons crisis unless probation is fully functioning and provides a real alternative to custody. Instead, more work is dumped on probation without providing our members with a decent salary.”
Napo is currently in a national dispute with HMPPS over workloads. It is likely to launch a formal ballot for industrial action in mid-October following a strong result from its indicative ballot over the summer. It’s also possible that this ballot will include a question on industrial action in the event that current pay negotiations fail to produce an acceptable pay offer.
Danny Shaw on Twitter:-
ReplyDeleteEARLY RELEASE is about to start.
700 prisoners freed on Thursday..650 later in October...by June 4,500 will be out.
* These are prisoners serving fixed-term (standard determinate) sentences, freed after 33% in custody, rather than 40%; or at 50% point, instead of 66%.
* After huge political row, Govt belatedly excluded a range of violent criminals & sex offenders. But domestic abusers are not excluded - and there's justifiable concern about the risks they pose on release and how victims will be protected.
* Scheme is called the 'earned progression model'. Original idea is that prisoners would 'earn' release through good behaviour. Reality is it's a scheme to free up space. Without it, projections are that jails would run out of room: prison population was forecast to rise by 3,000 a year hitting 100,000 by 2032.
* Experts say because of all the exclusions, prison capacity will remain very tight & a new early release scheme may be needed in the future.
* An added problem is that so many ex-prisoners are sent back to jail (recalled) for reoffending or breaching the terms of their release that jails fill up quickly. That's especially true for those freed without somewhere to live, a job to go to or support in the community.
* Govt says: don't worry we'll tag prisoners on release & track movements of some of the most serious through GPS. But National Audit Office report said 9,000 offenders who should have had tags fitted didn't & recent inspection report laid bare shocking tagging failings - delays and poor monitoring.
* Probation Service will have to pick up the slack -they are horrendously overstretched and almost 2,000 short of their 'target' staffing level. Police will also have much more to do with so many extra offenders in the community.
* True: the Govt is building new prisons & houseblocks - 14,000 extra places by 2031 are promised, but planning permission issues have already held up work at two sites in Lancashire & Buckinghamshire. I'd be surprised if they get to 14,000 in 5 years.
* What Govt should be doing is getting some of the 4,000 unused prison places back online. Why didn't they prioritise maintenance & safety work before devising an early release scheme?
* Prison staff shortages mean some jails, like Milsike, Norwich & Swaleside, operate at below capacity. Recruit more prison officers, increase their pay and you may avoid another early release scheme.
From InsideTime:-
ReplyDeleteSpeed up probation recruitment and let regions innovate, say inspectors
Delays in the vetting of job applicants are creating staff shortages in the Probation Service and undermining its efforts to keep the public safe, inspectors have warned.
HM Inspectorate of Probation last week published its national findings following a review of public protection measures delivered by all 12 regions of the Probation Service across England and Wales. The report says the vetting delays are a major headache for the areas and mean staff are kept under unreasonable pressure.
Martin Jones, HM Chief Inspector of Probation, said: “Frontline probation staff are working hard to keep communities safe, often in very difficult circumstances. However, public protection work was not being delivered consistently well enough to provide the assurance that victims, communities and partner agencies were entitled to expect.
“Persistent staffing shortages and workforce instability, combined with inconsistent information-sharing with the police and children’s services, meant that practitioners did not always have what they needed to identify, understand and manage risk effectively. As a result, opportunities to recognise patterns of harmful behaviour, safeguard children, protect victims and respond to escalating concerns were too often missed.”
The report also said that information received from the police about domestic abuse was of insufficient quality to be meaningful in assessing risk in almost one-fifth of cases.
This report was written after inspecting 858 cases, and conducting 711 case inspection interviews with practitioners, examining assessment, planning, implementation and delivery, and reviewing, all through the lens of public protection work.
The Inspectorate found that vetting delays remain a significant barrier to recruitment, hindering the timely filling of vacancies and, in some cases, causing successful candidates to withdraw before appointment. Also, increased workforce instability, and decreased resilience across probation staffing, was directly impacting the quality and consistency of risk management practice. Mr Jones says these longstanding problems do not simply mean a busier workforce, but also contribute to a heightened risk to public protection.
Mr Jones added: “Our findings show that regions cannot resolve these issues alone. National action is needed to stabilise the workforce, strengthen information-sharing with the police and children’s services, and support practitioners to make full and confident use of the information available to them. We also need the right responsibilities sitting in the right place: clear national consistency where it matters most, alongside room for regions to use their initiative, where our evidence shows the best outcomes are delivered. If our recommendations are adopted, the foundations for sustained improvement will be in place.”
This report comes out at a time when probation is under increased scrutiny as some prisoners are awaiting early release under the Government’s new scheme that was delayed whilst the new Justice Secretary reviewed the proposals from the Sentencing Act.
John Podmore on Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"In Jan–Mar 2026, 13,193 people were recalled to prison while just 12,977 were released. That’s 216 more recalls than releases."
X has been involved in multifarious schemes which have resulted in handing over £many-hundreds-of-millions of public funds to multinational privateers for no benefit whatsoever to the UK taxpayer.
ReplyDeleteSo where is X now? Sacked? In jail? In disgrace?
"Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
Delete(Sorry, couldn't resist it)
Damn! Wish I'd have thought of that.
DeleteFrom Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"Staff in MoJ HQ have long held the view that a never ending stream of arse-covering processes are in some mysterious way equivalent to actual outcomes."
What really gets my goat is there is always a constant barrage of statements from the political echelons that Civil Service is too cumbersome, bureaucratic and needs to be more efficient. And it is always implied that it is the civil servants that are to blame and that they must do more with less and create efficiencies. However the reality is further entrenched bureaucracy with more top driven processes to solve problems that are inputs into a system that creates greater entrenched bureaucracy and inefficiency and ineptitude . These inputs do not result in effective and efficient outputs and outcomes. The irony is these dictates come from clueless and stupid senior managers at the highest strata driving out of control and rusty shit bucket T-34 tank called Probation. They have no clue about business process reengineering. The staff at the coalface know what is wrong and the solutions. But will management consider that? No. Their egos and delusional sense of superiority over the mere plebs doing the work is the obstacle.
DeleteThere’s an enormous part of today’s story that seems to be getting lost in all the coverage about early release.
ReplyDeleteThe headlines are understandably focused on how many prisoners are being released and whether probation has sufficient capacity to manage them. But 1 October isn’t simply an early-release date. A whole series of operational changes are landing in probation at the same time: OFPS, new tiering arrangements, Supervision Packages, the Progression Model, changes to licence supervision and all the processes sitting underneath them.
And some of those changes create work before they create any of the capacity they are supposed to release.
Take Supervision Packages. Existing cases can now have a package tier identified, but during this transition period an OASys review is required to actually move a case into its Supervision Package and allocate the appointments. Regions are apparently being asked to prioritise particular reviews until a future digital change automatically transitions cases that haven’t already moved across.
I’m not convinced every PP yet appreciates the potential significance of that. It is very easy to hear “new tiering” and “Supervision Packages” and assume the system simply calculates something in the background. But if reviews are required during this interim period, that represents potentially significant additional practitioner activity across an already enormous existing caseload.
And an OASys review isn’t just pressing a button. If it is going to mean anything, somebody has to look properly at the case, consider what has changed, review risk and needs and make sure the assessment actually reflects the person being supervised. Otherwise we are simply generating another administratively compliant document to make the new system work.
That work lands alongside everything that was already there. Existing appointments still happen. New court orders still arrive. People continue to be released from prison. Risk changes. Safeguarding concerns emerge. Recalls happen. Enforcement happens. Assessments and reviews already due still need completing. And now practitioners have to understand and implement an entirely new architecture for supervision while doing all of it.
This is why I don’t think we’ll understand the impact of 1 October by counting how many people walk through the prison gate today.
Watch what happens over the days, weeks and months that follow.
Watch caseloads as courts continue sentencing and prisons continue releasing. Watch the number of assessments and reviews practitioners are carrying. Watch how much additional work is generated simply by transitioning the existing caseload into the new arrangements. Watch what happens to appointment lengths, recording, risk work and the time available for actual supervision.
Because there is a rather extraordinary contradiction here. We are introducing changes partly on the promise that they will create probation capacity, while relying upon an already overstretched workforce to provide the additional capacity required to implement them.
And once again, the question nobody seems particularly interested in answering is the most basic one:
Where are the practitioner hours supposed to come from?
That, rather than the number released on day one, may turn out to be the real story of 1 October.
Brilliant assessment
DeleteUnimaginable really and thank you for giving this perspective. 9.48 I’ll no doubt share it with those who follow on X. I do note the new Chair of the Justice Select Committee has also expressed her concerns about today on the home office website. I realise these thoughts are unlikely to reach those to whom they are addressed but, you ALL have been in my thoughts and prayers today. I’m sure that we will get other views/perspectives over the forthcoming days and whilst it’s no consolation they are being read, acknowledged and shared to a wider audience. I guess, Im a little confused about why NAPO are waiting till mid Oct to identify staff views about Industrial Action and what form that might take. Im sure Im missing something. Take Care iangould5
DeleteI wonder whether the timing may actually prove significant. Napo already has an overwhelming indicative mandate on workloads, but by the time a formal industrial-action ballot takes place practitioners will have experienced the reality of these changes rather than simply being warned about them.
DeleteToday is day one. Give it a fortnight and people may have a much clearer idea of what the Progression Model, Supervision Packages, reviews, new tiering and additional releases actually mean for their workload.
If the additional work lands in the way many practitioners fear, I suspect that could strengthen rather than weaken the appetite for action — and perhaps encourage some non-members to join too.
Whether that timing is deliberate on Napo’s part I have absolutely no idea, and there are obviously formal processes that have to be followed before lawful industrial action can take place. But politically, the difference between asking staff to vote on what might happen and asking them after they’ve spent two weeks actually living it could be considerable.
Perhaps mid-October won’t look quite so late by mid-October.
And no WMT to log the extra work. All deliberate.
DeleteThank you 13.19 for those thoughts which if already part of NAPO’s thinking would make a great deal of sense. Iangould5
DeleteThey are not bothered as to the levels of stress this will cause or care…..this is operation protect the government by all means possible…..
ReplyDeleteEven with the early release scheme there is over 80 000 people in prison. The crown Court backlog stands at over 80,000 cases too. Probation is supervising over 240,000 people. That is the equivalent of all the number of Crown Court backlog cases and the total prison population combined plus another 80,000, and there is more people going to prison through reall then are being sent there by the courts!
ReplyDeleteSurely the answer is not how many can be released early from custody, but how can we get people to exit the CJS as early as possible? I think the universal imposition of post sentence supervision is one of the major contributors to the state of the CJS today.
The capacity crisis is not just about prisons, it's the whole of the CJS thats bursting at the seems.
'Getafix
Getafix raises what may be the bigger question underneath all of this.
DeleteWe keep talking about the prison capacity crisis as though probation exists somewhere outside it, waiting to receive whatever solution is devised. It doesn’t. Probation is part of the same system and is carrying an extraordinary volume of people in its own right.
The latest published figure is actually over 258,000 people under probation supervision. Put that alongside a prison population of more than 85,000 and a Crown Court open caseload of more than 80,000 and perhaps we need to stop talking about a prison capacity crisis and start talking about a criminal justice system capacity crisis.
And recall surely has to be part of that conversation. In January–March this year there were 13,193 licence recalls and 12,977 releases from custodial sentences. Those figures aren’t directly opposite sides of the same equation, but they illustrate the extraordinary churn now taking place between prison and the community.
So what exactly are we trying to achieve? If somebody leaves prison, enters an overstretched Probation Service, receives increasingly rationed contact, struggles with housing, drugs, mental health, relationships or whatever else brought them repeatedly into the system, breaches or deteriorates, is recalled, occupies a prison place, is released again and comes back to probation — where exactly is the saving?
We seem obsessed with finding ways of moving people around an overloaded criminal justice system rather than reducing the number of people who need to remain in it.
That is why the prevention argument matters so much. Success surely isn’t getting somebody out of prison slightly earlier so another person can occupy the bed. Nor is it keeping somebody technically compliant with probation for as long as possible. The real success is helping somebody reach the point where they no longer require prison, probation, police, courts or endless commissioned interventions at all.
And Getafix’s point about post-sentence supervision deserves proper examination in that context. If supervision is genuinely reducing reoffending and protecting the public, demonstrate it. If particular forms or lengths of supervision are instead increasing the opportunities for breach and recall without producing a corresponding rehabilitative benefit, we ought to be prepared to examine that too.
Because there is something fundamentally circular about responding to prison overcrowding by releasing people earlier into an overloaded probation system, then recalling large numbers of people back into the prisons we’re desperately trying to empty.
Perhaps the measure we should become genuinely obsessed with isn’t how quickly we can move people through the criminal justice system, but how successfully we can help them leave it.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/01/prisoners-early-release-england-wales-probation-officers
DeleteNews channels seem to want to deflect, speaking with anyone & everyone but chief of probation ... Including jess Philips & nick Hardwick.
ReplyDeleteNo napo, no chief of probation .... it's all a scam
Anyone else noticed the complete bait and switch they've done with OASys reviews? Everyone is now being expected to review their entire caseload.
ReplyDeleteThat comment about OASys reviews has just made my blood boil.
DeleteWhether reviewing an entire caseload is the national expectation or something being interpreted differently locally almost misses the point. Why, after the endless communications, briefings, guidance, presentations, cascades and mandatory learning we have been bombarded with, are practitioners apparently still discovering the scale of what is actually expected of them on the day it goes live?
We have been absolutely drowning in information. Emails about emails. Guidance explaining guidance. PowerPoints. FAQs. E-learning. Briefings. Cascades. Yet somehow something as fundamental as the amount of reviewing required to get existing cases correctly tiered and onto the appropriate Supervision Package has not landed clearly with the people who actually have to do it.
And if significant numbers of existing cases now require reviews, when exactly are we supposed to do them?
Seriously. When?
The appointments are still in the diary. People still need seeing. New cases are still being allocated. Courts haven’t stopped sentencing. Prisons haven’t stopped releasing. Recalls, safeguarding, MAPPA, enforcement, risk management, home visits, referrals, recording, assessments and everything else haven’t conveniently disappeared while we implement the new model.
So where are these extra hours coming from?
I am becoming genuinely furious with this constant assumption that practitioner capacity is infinitely elastic. Another requirement arrives and somehow we are simply expected to absorb it. Then another. Then another. Nothing meaningful comes off the other side. Apparently there is always another little bit of us available to squeeze.
What are they trying to do, break us?
Because I genuinely don’t know how much more people are expected to absorb before somebody at the top accepts that there are only so many hours in a working day and only so much pressure human beings can carry.
And please don’t tell us we have been “prepared”. Completing an e-learning package is not capacity. Receiving a cascade is not capacity. Reading another 30-page document is not capacity. A 98% completion rate on mandatory learning does not magically create the practitioner hours necessary to implement what people have been trained to do.
That distinction seems to have been completely lost.
I can already imagine the assurance going upwards: staff briefed, tick; learning completed, tick; implementation commenced, tick; Progression Model successfully launched, tick.
Meanwhile at practitioner level the real question will be: how the hell am I supposed to do all of this as well?
And this is only day one.
That’s what people outside probation need to understand. The danger was never that the service would dramatically collapse at 9am on 1 October. Practitioners will do what they always do: scramble, prioritise, stay late, worry, improvise and somehow keep the plates spinning.
It’s the days, weeks and months after today that concern me. Because the courts will keep sentencing, the prisons will keep releasing, new work will keep arriving and all of this implementation work will be sitting on top of the caseloads people already had.
You cannot keep solving a capacity crisis by taking more capacity from the people who have none left.
This has been my argument. Unfortunately my colleagues aren't quite as empathetic.
Delete