Tipping Point Already Passed?

Once again we thank regular contributor 'Getafix for pointing us un the direction of this important contribution to the probation debate from Professor Mike Nellis and posted by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies:-  

Do We Want a High-Tech Future for the Probation Service?

The Independent Sentencing Review, chaired by David Gauke, was published in May 2025, and brought into the open – more or less – an alarming vision of the Probation Service’s future.

Implementation, under the rubric of ‘Plan for Change’, began apace, including, in May itself, the first roundtable discussion with the corporate tech sector about their expected contributions to justice innovation.

In June the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced £700m “new money” to support the Probation Service up to the 2028-29, although without any initial clarity as to how exactly it would be spent. Precise priorities had not then been set: The ‘Our Future Probation Service’ project, established in February 2025 to improve performance and reduce workloads by 25 per cent by 2027, was still working on them.

In his July McWilliam’s lecture, Lord Timpson, the Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending Minister, extolled the rehabilitative virtues of the old Probation Service, but was singularly unclear – no less that Gauke himself – as to how these would survive and thrive in a future Service focussed so explicitly on punishment and surveillance technology.

The MoJ made no official response to the Gauke Review, but published a Sentencing Bill in September 2025 to take forward what was, in effect, their joint agenda. A month afterwards the MoJ launched ‘Justice Transcribe’ into the Probation Service, a time-saving AI tool for speedily summarising and transcribing conversations with supervisees, in which massive hopes were being invested as a contribution towards resolving the crises of capacity, staffing and performance in the Service.

Keeping a close eye

The Sentencing Bill itself concentrated on more directly punitive technologies, which on the face of it contribute nothing towards resolving probation’s crises. It promised 30 per cent increase in the use of electronic monitoring (EM) – “the biggest expansion of tagging since the adoption of curfew tags in 1999”.

Numbers on EM were growing – 28,000 people were tagged at the end of 2025 – but achieving the MoJ’s target of 22,000 more (by an unspecified date) was a tall order. One contribution towards it was “a presumption that all individuals leaving custody will be electronically monitored for the period they would otherwise have been in custody... This will ensure probation can keep a close eye on thousands more individuals”.

“Keeping a close eye” was becoming a common trope in MoJ discourse on the future of the Service. Speaking of a new, four-site pilot scheme announced in September 2025, which would use remote check-in technology on offenders’ phones, and AI to confirm their identity, possibly in conjunction with GPS tracking, Lord Timpson said:

"This new pilot keeps the watchful eye of our probation officers on these offenders wherever they are, helping catapult our analogue justice system into a new digital age"

The emerging sense that the old Probation Service was being reconfigured as a punitive-surveillance agency was strongly affirmed when former Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood, looking back, declared her real intentions (£):

"When I was in Justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times."

Concerns over direction of travel

Over the twelve months following publication of the Gauke Review, the Probation Inspectorate (April 2025); the National Audit Office; the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (PDF); and the House of Commons Committee on Public Accounts all published reports concerned about the state of the Probation Service and the direction of travel in which the MoJ was taking it.

The Inspectorate lamented continuing failings in leadership, staffing and services, inadequate material infrastructure (poor quality buildings) and outdated ICT systems. It noted cryptically that “there will need to be significant change to ensure sufficient capacity within the Probation Service to meet operational demand and improve the quality of services” without indicating what that change would be.

The recent HM Prison and Probation Service response (HMPPS) to the Inspectorate’s criticisms stated explicitly that the time-saving digital tools being introduced into the Service were indeed that change, the key to how capacity and quality of service was to be improved. It becomes increasingly difficult to resist the thought that the MoJ is using a human crisis in the Probation Service – one it has no interest in solving on its own terms – to accelerate its transformation into a punitive-surveillant agency.

The House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee “short enquiry” into EM was concerned with making EM a presumptive post-release measure, and – in an as yet unspecified way – “integrating” it into the Probation Service. The “blanket approach to tagging most prison leavers, regardless of crime and circumstances” troubled the Lords because it seemingly “diminishes the role of effective, targeted Probation interventions, and risks creating an unethical system that is overly punitive and disproportionate”.

Just because the MoJ had a legal justification for doing this, said the Lords, did not mean they should. EM had a place, they agreed, but it should not “become a proxy for effective probation work”, and they worried that some of the £700m notionally earmarked for probation would be spent in part on EM.

Wanting to forestall the MoJ’s perceived over-investment in EM, and restore confidence in rehabilitation, the Lords asked the MoJ to revise its most recent EM Strategy (2022), believing that any balanced and evidence-based assessment of EM and the Probation Service’s respective merits would favour the latter. The Lords were somewhat “retrotopian” here, not realising that within the new tech-driven paradigm in which policy on probation is now being taken forward, the MoJ regarded the evidence-base on which the old Probation Service’s authority had once rested, as a little passé.

The Lords’ concerns about EM were sadly not matched in their stance on AI. They did not demur when the MoJ spoke of “the potential for AI to revolutionise our approach” or of “maximising data use” to improve EM. They fell for the simple efficiency argument, that AI would lift “some of the burdens from probation practitioners’ shoulders so they can concentrate their time where it is most valuable.

They seem to have taken some cues from the Confederation of European Probation’s optimism optimism about AI tools, and accepted that any challenges they might pose for Probation would be risen to. Equally, the Lords may have been seeking a trade-off: go for AI, step back on EM.

The Committee for Public Accounts were more sanguine. Echoing the National Audit Office, which had mostly concentrated on the high-risk tech strategy which ‘Our Future Probation Service’ was pursuing, it too was unconvinced that reckless investment in digitalisation was adequate to resolving the staffing and standards challenges facing the Service.

They feared that the pace at which the HMPPS was planning to introduce them could be counterproductive, and was highly likely to “disrupt services, contribute to poor outcomes and staff stress... the short time-frame carries a high level of risk and the MoJ does not have a strong history of implementing digital change programmes well”.

Tipping point

The four post-Gauke reports on the multiple crises facing the Probation Service – and the way those crises are being used by the MoJ to drive fundamental changes in its character and ethos – have yet to be properly synthesised and discussed. There is as yet no organised resistance to the move towards a punitive-surveillant agency, which is not helped by a clear statement from the MoJ on how far it actually wants it to go.

Reassuring talk about only using AI for efficiency measures like transcription is misleading: even Gauke expected it to go further, writing of using “advanced AI” and expecting this to encompass “AI agents” for planning supervision schedules and, possibly, chatbot-driven dialogue with supervisees. The MoJ’s tight relation with the tech industry – particularly its own contract with OpenAI – bodes ill in this respect. It is in the nature of the AI industry to promote continuous innovation, and to hook users with the self-deprecating guarantee that ‘this is the worst AI you will ever have’.

A tipping point may already have been passed, such that resistance to AI-driven public services is already impossible. The emerging ‘digital rehabilitation and desistance’ movement offers slender hope, because while it is expressly not aligned with a punitive-surveillance agenda, it presupposes that digitalisation will be constrained by the culture and values of the ‘old’ Probation Service, and go so far and no further than these values allow.

Quite apart from the manifest threat to these values, a culture of continuous AI innovation makes ‘so far and no further’ a rather pious hope.

Mike Nellis

Thought Piece 6

Firstly, I vote no!

Secondly, I agree with the Public Accounts Committee, a well-run probation service is a must-have. That much is obvious. What isn’t obvious is how anyone thinks a service on its knees can be stabilised with a measly 4% pay offer. If we’re serious about building something that actually works, then 20% is a starting point, not some wild, irresponsible demand. You don’t rescue a collapsing system with loose change, glossy adverts and motivational quotes.

No one is surprised that HMPPS’s latest shiny programme, Our Future Probation Service, is unlikely to be sufficient. A rebrand is not reform. It’s the same system, the same pressures, the same culture of JFDI and abuse just wrapped in nicer language. And the delusions of AI and increased tagging as a solution? That’s technological wishful thinking dressed up as policy.

Probation services in England and Wales can be brought back from the brink, the PAC report alludes to this, but only if leaders are willing to confront the culture and problems that’s helped drive it there. A culture built on the abuse of goodwill, routine gaslighting of staff, relentless emotional strain, and the normalisation of trauma is not a foundation. You can’t physically, financially and emotionally drain a workforce, while under resourcing the service itself, and then act shocked when the system fails.

Thirdly, can we stop with the emotional manipulation? Stop the false advertising calling frontline staff and work “extraordinary”. Stop brainwashing staff into thinking “we don’t do this job for the money”.

I do come to work to be paid. I’m not a “hero” and my work is not “extraordinary”. That’s not cynical, that’s reality. If the Chief Probation Officer and the layers of Regional Directors, Heads of Operations and Heads of PDUs truly come to work purely for the love of the job, they’re welcome to wear a cape and donate their salaries to the people on the frontline actually holding the risk, the caseloads, and the consequences when things go wrong.

Lastly, frontline practitioners already know the solutions to the probation crisis. The committees have heard us. The inspectors have heard us. The inquiries have heard us. The evidence exists. The voices are there. The only thing missing is the will of the leaders to act.

Probation Officer

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Probation services pushed to the brink of collapse in England and Wales risk endangering public

A new report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the Probation Service in England and Wales is being placed under significant strain, seriously impeding its ability to protect the public and reduce reoffending rates.

Read the report
Read the report (PDF)
Inquiry: Efficiency and resilience of the Probation Service
Public Accounts Committee

In 2024-25, HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) spent £1.34bn on the Probation Service. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) estimates that the economic and social cost of reoffending across adult offenders is around £20.9bn a year.

The number of prisoners recalled to prison is at an all-time high. At the end of March 2025, the recall prison population was 13,583, accounting for 15% of the prison population, a 49% increase since June 2021.

Since the Probation Service was brought under full public control in 2021, its performance has deteriorated, along with an overall rise in reoffending rates. Last year, the service met just seven of its 27 performance targets. Three years earlier it was meeting half of its targets.

HMPPS’s’ new programme, Our Future Probation Service, was introduced in an effort to combat this declining performance. However, the PAC warn that this is unlikely to be sufficient.

The MoJ does not have a strong history of implementing digital change programmes well, and crucially they have yet to make decisions on changes they plan to make to the level of supervision some offenders receive.

Given the risk these decisions could pose to the public, the PAC is calling for the MoJ and HMPPS to set clear thresholds for the level of risk they are willing to accept, to help monitor operational and public protection risks.

Evidence to the inquiry showed that people classed as low-risk often require support to prevent them reoffending. HMPPS’ planned changes to probation will likely reduce supervision for these lower-risk offenders, while involving a large increase in electronic monitoring.

Noting serious performance issues with the electronic monitoring service, including delays by Serco in fitting tags, the PAC is seeking more information on how the company is performing from government, as well as what role third sector and private sector organisations will play in probation to make up for this reduction in supervision.

The vacancy rate for probation officers increased from 14% in 2021 to 21% in 2025. Probation officers are estimated to have been working on average at 118% capacity for several years, though recent findings suggest this figure is likely much higher. The inquiry heard evidence that the Probation Service's culture is built on ‘emotional strain' and 'trauma’.

The PAC is sceptical that HMPPS has a real understanding of how many staff it needs to sufficiently improve performance. The report calls for HMPPS to set out when and how it expects to be able to provide clarity to staff on when their workloads will reduce to acceptable levels.

The PAC was concerned to learn that when evaluating the risk of harm presented by offenders, practitioners only adequately assessed 28% of cases in 2024, compared to 60% of cases in 2018-19. This report calls for the MoJ to set out a clear timeline for when it expects its performance against key metrics to improve.

Chair comment

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said:

“The probation service in England and Wales is failing. The endpoint of this failure is demonstrated by our report, which shows the number of prisoners recalled to prison is at an all-time high.

"It was deeply alarming to hear of probation staff working under immense pressure in a seemingly toxic environment, in a culture built on emotional strain and trauma. This not only raises concerns about the toll the overall system is taking on their mental health but the impact it is having on their ability to perform their duties. The public’s safety relies on them doing so.

“Unfortunately, the landscape for probation is not going to become more forgiving for a service which has slipped into decline in recent years, as plans to free up capacity, including with early release schemes, in other parts of the crisis-ridden justice system are likely to increase demand.

"Well-run probation is a must-have, helping those who have served their time find their place back in society. HMPPS accepts that the current picture is unsustainable, but its own planned changes could cause further disruption and place more pressure on overstretched staff. The probation service is already teetering on the brink. Government’s immediate goal must be to avoid making matters worse.”

Guest Blog 105

A Cruel Parody

The blog post and the resulting comments powerfully capture the profound disconnect between the realities of frontline probation work and the leadership tasked with its stewardship. The NAO report laid out the facts of the crisis, but the reaction from staff after the PAC hearing reveals the true depth of the failure: a collapse of trust.

The PAC session wasn't just a poor performance; it was a testament to a leadership culture that seems to prioritise bureaucratic reassurance over honest reckoning. To claim ignorance of the workload crisis, after years of warnings from staff, unions, and inspectors, is not credible—it's insulting. To remain silent on attacks on staff is a dereliction of duty. To offer "digital transcription tools" and "digital platforms" as the primary answer to a crisis of understaffing, burnout, and physical danger is to fundamentally misunderstand the problem.

The comments from readers underscore three irreducible truths that any real solution must address:

1. Leadership must be accountable and present. The "missing in action" critique is damning. Leaders cannot manage a human service by spreadsheet and risk register alone. They must be visible, especially in crisis. They must speak plainly about problems, take responsibility for their role in creating them, and fight unambiguously for the resources staff need—starting with pay that reflects the complexity and risk of the job.

2. Safety and morale are prerequisites, not afterthoughts. A service where staff feel unsafe, unheard, and disposable cannot function effectively. The silence following the Oxford incident speaks volumes. Investing in staff wellbeing, security, and professional respect isn't a cost—it's the foundation of any resilient service.

3. Probation's soul is at stake. The managerial shift towards a narrow, risk-averse model of "public protection" is stripping probation of its rehabilitative heart. As noted, this is backwards. Effective public protection flows from successful rehabilitation. A service that sees its clients only as risks to be managed has already failed in its broader social purpose.

The £700 million announced in the Spending Review is a recognition of the scale of the problem, but money alone is not a solution. It will be wasted if spent on technological sticking plasters or to sustain the same failing structures and leadership approaches.

The path forward requires humility: listening to frontline staff who know where the system is broken. It requires courage: making bold decisions about pay, workload, and the purpose of supervision. And it requires integrity: leaders who can say, "We got this wrong, and here is how we will fix it, with you."

Until then, the "virtuous circle" promised by officials will remain a cruel parody. The real work of rebuilding probation must start from the ground up, with the people who have been holding the service together despite it all.

ANARCHIST PO 

Starting to Turn the Corner?

It will be recalled that the National Audit Office issued a damning report on the state of the Probation Service in October, which we covered here. Well, yesterday all the top brass found themselves in front of the Public Accounts Committee for a grilling, including the 'Missing in Action' Chief Probation Officer and the hapless Permanent Secretary:-. 

Dr Jo Farrar CB OBE
Permanent Secretary at Ministry of Justice

Adam Bailey
Director, Probation and Reoffending Policy at Ministry of Justice

James McEwen
Director General CEO at HM Prison and Probation Service

Jim Barton
Executive Director, Capacity Implementation at HM Prisons and Probation Service

Kim Thornden-Edwards
Chief Probation Officer at HMPPS

Here's what the Committee were exercised about:-  

Efficiency and resilience of the Probation Service

The Probation Service is suffering from poor performance and persistent staffing shortages, particularly of qualified probation officers. The National Audit Office in its recent report found a service under significant strain following reforms in 2021, meeting only 26% (seven out of 27) of its performance targets in 2024-25.

While HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) has made efforts at recruitment and retention, in 2024 it found it had been underestimating the number of sentence management staff by around 40% (around 6,900 full-time equivalent staff.) This meant it had been operating with only about half the staff needed to manage offenders' sentences.

In an evidence session with senior officials from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HMPPS, the PAC will seek answers as to why probation performance has gotten worse, not better, despite past reforms. Other likely topics for questioning include the management of the Our Future Probation Service programme, and how this will achieve its planned aims to reduce workloads by 25%.

I was alerted to this session by catching a clip on the BBC Radio 4 'Today in Parliament' slot at 11.30 last night, no doubt to be repeated at 5am this morning.The snippet I caught of Clive Betts laying into Jo Farrar and her deeply unimpressive bluster in response confirms in my mind that the whole two hour session will repay close examination and almost certainly will be more shocking and impactful than trying to plough through the transcript when available. As I'm preparing this 'holding' blog post, some early comments 

Seems hmpps' perm sec got a kicking about probation staffing today... Tonight's bbcr4 Today in Westminster... I'm sure there's a transcript online somewhere.

Excruciating, embarrassing, dishonest, delusional... Utter bollox from farrar & mcewen: "a situation we inherited"... Fucking liars...

are confirming my suspicion that this car crash of a session just might turn out to be of huge significance for the incompetents in charge at Petty France.

For those that want to leap straight in with either a strong coffee or stiff whisky, here's the link to the excrutiating video:-

https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/7de0b0ba-a35c-4337-86f1-4f189810733e

I've now endured the whole session:-

Floundering, bullshitting, waffle. Key bits:-

Data moving in the right direction, not complacent, listening to staff concerns, more complex caseload, recalling for the right reasons, didn't take eye off the ball, inherited difficult situation, fair and manageable workload, we now understand the full picture, £700 million, digital platforms, recruitment, brave decisions, hoping for a virtuous circle, it's why we're here as a service - to protect the public, no big bang changes, impressed with governance, 30 plus initiatives on the way,  Our Future Probation Service, (OFPS), Impact, Reset, address 25% capacity gap,£700 million, transcribe will allow higher caseloads, digital tools will help fill capacity gap, review of OMIC, tackling the root causes

Loved this bit:-

Chair "HMPPS have been behind the curve all along because they think they know how long it takes to do a job and the staff keep telling them it takes longer. How can we have any confidence you actually know how many staff you need to do the work?" 

Answer "Staff surveys reveal staff are actually doing more than they need to."

What is my take on what I've heard?

1) A deeply, deeply unimpressive management team

2) A total failure to admit Probation is utterly dysfunctional

3) Politicians who don't understand Probation and that it's heading in the wrong direction

4) Probation has no effective voice with a coherent plan for structural reform

5) Public protection is NOT the main purpose of Probation. 

6) Rehabilitation should be the main purpose and public protection thus follows  

7) Management have no clue what is involved in being a Probation Officer

8) Tagging at prison? What could possibly go wrong?

9) Scope for diverting some people to voluntary sector - social work needs perhaps? 

10) Naive belief in tagging answer to everything

MoJ Tagging Scandal

The suspicion has long been held that the MoJ basically feels that tagging everyone would be a really easy and cheap way of reducing crime and 'supervising' offenders. The trouble is it's not cheap; the technology isn't that good and nobody knows if it's actually effective. Of course the MoJ has quite a track record on poor contract writing and wasting public money through IT failures, but are very effective in lining the pockets of huge private sector corporations. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies are on the tagging case though:-

Whiff of scandal over electronic monitoring

The Centre for Crime and Justice today called for the use of electronic monitoring (so-called “tagging”) as part of a criminal justice sanction to be based on proper evidence and guided by clear principles.

The call came in response to today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee, which paints an alarming picture of government failure and waste.

According to the Public Accounts Committee, nearly £100 million of public funds have been wasted on the failure to deliver a new case management system. Remedial work on the current creaking system will incur extra costs. The Ministry of Justice, the Committee notes, still does not know what works, or whether tagging reduces reoffending. Yet it plans to press ahead with a £1.2 billion programme, expanding tagging to an additional 10,000 people over the next three years.

Dr Roger Grimshaw, Research Director at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said:

"Today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee paints an alarming picture of government failures in managing electronic monitoring.

At a time when there is so much for them to grapple with, it would be tempting for criminal justice practitioners and observers to assume that the failings exist in some faraway management bubble, with few implications for people under supervision, or their families.

In reality, the expansion of EM being planned is due to create a new world of electronic supervision, supplementary to the prison system, unguided by firm evidence about any positive role in rehabilitation.

The whiff of scandal over EM should be a wake-up call for a much more informed and wide-ranging discussion, developing a platform for reform which delimits a place for EM in a modest, humane and purposeful system.”

'Transforming electronic monitoring services': for what purpose?

Today’s report by the Public Accounts Committee paints an alarming picture of government failures in managing electronic monitoring (EM) services in criminal justice.

Its detailed analysis and criticisms are extensive: nearly £100 million of public funds have been wasted on the failure to deliver a new case management system. Remedial work on the current creaking system will incur extra costs. The implications of ‘real-time’ monitoring data access for police remain to be explored.

A striking finding is the weakness of the evidence base for the planned expansion of EM.

"The Ministry and HMPPS still do not know what works and for who, and whether tagging reduces reoffending… Despite the lack of evaluation, government is pressing ahead with its £1.2 billion programme to expand tagging to another 10,000 people in the next three years."

As the Committee notes, these concerns are not new: the New Generation electronic monitoring programme was beset by a similar level of ineptitude. In our evidence to the Public Accounts Committee inquiry, the only written evidence the Committee published, we highlighted the systemic failings in the EM programme. We also called for the appointment of a regulator with an ethical and practical mission of ensuring that only appropriate services are provided, in the public interest.

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From the Public Accounts Committee website:-

“Avoidable” mistakes in tagging programme “wasted £98 million of taxpayers’ money”

In a report the Public Accounts Committee says a “high-risk and over-complicated delivery model, poor oversight of suppliers, overambitious timetable and light-touch scrutiny from the Ministry of Justice” all contributed to the failure of a new case management system for electronic monitoring of offenders which has “cost taxpayers dear”.

The Committee says “avoidable mistakes” wasted £98 million of taxpayers’ money and left the tagging service “reliant on legacy systems that needed urgent remedial action, costing a further £9.8 million”.

Even after this, the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS still “do not know what works and for who, and whether tagging reduces reoffending”. Despite the lack of knowledge and evaluation, government is pressing ahead with a £1.2 billion programme to expand tagging to another 10,000 people in the next three years.

Given the “long history of poor performance in this area” the Committee is “unconvinced” that the MoJ is equipped to handle emerging problems and will continue to monitor the “serious risks” that remain for the expansion of tagging and the need to procure new contracts by early 2024.

Chair's comments

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said:

“The prison and probation service is reliant on outdated technology that is swallowing taxpayers’ money just to stand still. The existing system is at constant risk of failure – and let us be clear that in the case of tagging, “failure” can mean direct and preventable risk to the public – and attempts to transform it have failed.

The incredible scale of waste and loss in the Government’s Covid response should in no way inure us to this: that’s another hundred million pounds of taxpayers’ money for essential public services just thrown away, wasted, lost. We expect a serious explanation, and a serious plan, from the MoJ and Government more widely how they are going to stop this haemorrhaging of taxpayers’ money that they are presiding over. We need assurances up front over the further £1.2 billion they have already committed to the tagging programme – what will be achieved, by when, and, crucially, what will be recovered for the public if goals aren’t met.”

Summary

HM Prison & Probation Service’s (HMPPS) transformation programme for electronic monitoring (‘tagging’) has failed to transform the service as intended. HMPPS launched the programme to improve efficiency and increase the usefulness of tagging for police and probation services, but after significant setbacks and delays the failure has cost taxpayers dear. Its high-risk and over-complicated delivery model, poor oversight of suppliers, overambitious timetable and light-touch scrutiny from the Ministry of Justice all contributed to its failure to introduce a new case management system, which underpinned the intended benefits and transformation. These avoidable mistakes wasted £98 million of taxpayers’ money and left the tagging service reliant on legacy systems that needed urgent remedial action, costing a further £9.8 million.

It is unacceptable that, despite our previous recommendations, the Ministry and HMPPS still do not have sufficient data to understand the outcomes of tagging and that police forces and the Probation Service continue to lack timely access to the high-quality data they need to monitor offenders and keep the public safe. The Ministry and HMPPS still do not know what works and for who, and whether tagging reduces reoffending. HMPPS has committed to improving access to data and evaluating its new tagging expansion projects, but appears unambitious about the level of insight that it expects to achieve.

Despite the lack of evaluation, government is pressing ahead with its £1.2 billion programme to expand tagging to another 10,000 people in the next three years. It has harnessed innovative technology to deliver new projects—such as in its alcohol monitoring scheme and acquisitive crime pilot—where early progress has yielded some encouraging results. However, although HMPPS has identified lessons from the failure of its transformation programme, there remain serious risks associated with its expansion of tagging and the need to procure new contracts by early 2024. Given the long history of poor performance in this area, we remain unconvinced that it is sufficiently well-equipped to handle emerging problems and will continue to monitor developments for the foreseeable future.

Only Sensible Option is Reunification

Oh look! Another report highlighting the Probation Omnishambles. This in the Guardian:-

Grayling probation changes 'took unacceptable risks' with public money

Overhaul left sector in worse state than before and taxpayer with £467m bill, MPs report.

Chris Grayling’s widely derided changes to the supervision of a quarter of a million offenders in the community were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money, a spending watchdog has said. In yet another damning report on Grayling’s so-called Transforming Rehabilitation strategy introduced when he was justice secretary, MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC) said the overhaul had left the probation sector in a worse position than before.

The changes failed to achieve expected reductions in reoffending and left services underfunded, fragile and lacking the confidence of the courts, the MPs said in a report. Action taken to tackle the problems will cost £467m, the report said, adding: “Inexcusably, probation services have been left in a worse position than they were in before the ministry embarked on its reforms.”

Probation services deal with more than 250,000 offenders in England and Wales, including those preparing to leave jail, former prisoners living in the community and people serving community or suspended sentences. The sector was overhauled in 2014 by Grayling, who ignored significant warnings from within the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and broke up 35 existing probation trusts, replacing them with a public-sector service dealing with high-risk offenders and 21 privately run community rehabilitation companies (CRC) that manage low- to medium-risk offenders.

The MoJ plans to end the existing CRC contracts early, in December 2020. Under the proposed new system, 10 probation regions would be created in England, with each containing an National Probation Service (NPS) division and a CRC. In Wales, the NPS would assume responsibility for the management of all offenders.

The PAC chairwoman, Meg Hillier, said: 

“Despite warnings from this committee and the National Audit Office over the past three years, the Ministry of Justice has failed to bring about the promised revolution in rehabilitation. Rather than deliver the savings hoped for at the start of the programme, the ministry’s attempts to address the failures in the reforms have cost the taxpayer an additional £467m while failing to achieve the anticipated improvements in reoffending behaviour. Over-optimistic initial forecasts left the Ministry of Justice fighting fires of their own making since the programme’s inception.”

The committee claimed the MoJ failed to conduct adequate pilot schemes or to learn sufficiently from similar programmes elsewhere, accusing the department of suffering from “optimism bias”. The PAC report said: “It is unacceptable that so many unnecessary risks were taken with taxpayers’ money.”

The changes failed to reduce reoffending by as much as expected, continued the report, citing figures that showed the average number of reoffences per offender increased by 22% between 2011 and March 2017. The report also noted that the number of offenders recalled to prison for breaching their licence conditions went up by 47% from January 2015 to September 2018.

While the government says the rise reflects the extension of statutory supervision to offenders sentenced to less than 12 months, the committee said the MoJ “acknowledged that it had not got post-sentence supervision right”. The PAC joins the chief inspector of probation, the cross-party justice committee and the National Association of Probation Officers in heavily criticising Grayling’s changes. 

Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, said: 

“Chris Grayling’s disastrous decision to privatise probation has been a costly failure that has left our communities less safe. The Tories must show that they have learnt the lessons of this failure and drop their ideologically driven plans to sign yet more private probation contracts. Labour has made it clear that in government we will return probation to the public sector, where it can focus on keeping the public safe – not lining the pockets of failing private companies.”

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On the day Rory Stewart decided to move on to pastures new and confirms that his hat is in  the ring for Tory Party leader, I hear that Napo have been given a 'heads-up' regarding MoJ thinking in advance of appointment of yet another Prison and Probation minister:-

Napo Official Briefing on Future of Probation as at 2nd May 2019

We have established that the MOJ has informed the market that it is looking at all options for probation going forward. This includes the possibility of rolling out the Wales model everywhere. However, nothing has been decided at this point and we will have to wait for a statement by Ministers and their formal response to the consultation paper that we now expect to be published in the middle of May.

Over the last few days, we have seen some irresponsible and poorly informed communications from one of the largest private providers and we are reliant on members keeping us informed of any statements being sent out by CRCs as the MOJ seemingly has no central [control] over what their contractors say to staff.

We understand from the MOJ that the market has given a mixed response to the various options under consideration (as listed below) including some saying that they are not interested in any future contractual arrangements other than TR Mark 2.

In the meantime, Napo Officers and Officials will continue to engage with CRCs on issues such as pay and operational/ collective bargaining matters on a business as usual basis. We will also be drawing up transition papers to highlight the pros and cons of each potential option for the future provision of services and will be priming our contacts in the press and political circles.

What are the options?

1. TR Mark 2. This would see new contract package areas being drawn up to match the intended 10 divisions of the NPS. These CPAs would then be sold off in a similar way to TR. Our 8 reasons to reunify Probation give you an outline of the key issues that we are asking members to raise with MP’s but also more local concerns. I.e. DTV CRC will not exist if TR Mk2 goes ahead yet it is the only mutual and certainly not the worst performing CRC.

2. Welsh model. Clearly, this would be a massive step in the right direction for our campaign to reunify probation. It is not without its pitfalls such as the so far untested transition risks and could be seen as leaving behind comrades in Interventions and Programmes, but it would at least give us good grounds for pushing our campaign for full reunification, as well as giving us an opportunity to press again for pay parity. It is estimated that between 250-300 staff will move into the NPS Wales from KSS CRC when the transfer of Offender Management work is completed by December this year.

3. Total reunification - private sector. If we get a new Prime Minister and/or Justice Secretary then there is a real risk that they would seek to privatise the whole of Probation. While this is the least likely option, we must factor it into our planning. Our main objective would be to highlight the failure of CRC’s to deliver the most basic of probation services and lobby politicians on the basis that private providers simply cannot be trusted to hold high and very high risk cases.

4. Total reunification - public. Clearly, this is the major objective of our campaign and one we will continue to fight for. The Wales model (if it were to be the preferred option for Government) would give us a real head start, but we can still hold some hope on the possibility of the Minister accepting that a total rethink is the best option. However, any reunification would still require us to push for the NPS to have local accountability and budgets as well as our claim that Probation should be removed from the civil service and given back its former independence.

We had anticipated that a decision would have emerged by now but it is clear that more analysis is being undertaken and yesterday’s announcement that Rory Stewart has been promoted to the Cabinet has obviously also been a factor in the delay. We currently await news of his successor.