Memo to Andy

Dear Prime Minister, Andy

I've just watched your unscripted speech this morning in Enfield, the home of my formative years, and I believe you must earn considerable praise for your obvious determination to at last address the shame social care has become and deliver a solution. Well done for bringing forward Dame Louise Casey's Review, even though I've personally never forgiven her for further stigmatising offenders on Community Service by making them wear orange high vis jackets.

You clearly speak passionately on the subject of social care and this is to be welcomed, but seeing as we are still awaiting the appointment of a Probation Minister, one is left pondering firstly regarding your knowledge of the criminal justice system, and secondly your appetite for addressing a topic that the public has come to regard as requiring 'reform' by means of locking more people up, for longer?

You quite rightly highlighted the wisdom of trying to work collaboratively with other political parties in the hope of finding common ground rather than resorting to irritating point-scoring, but you are going to have to have rather more 'bottle' to tackle criminal justice which is equally crying out for reform, but with little or no hope for political consensus or indeed public understanding. But the cost savings and benefits to society could be enormous as our European neighbours have discovered with prison numbers significantly falling. Yes, falling!

May I be so bold as to suggest now would be a very good time to fulfill the Labour manifesto pedge of a thorough Review of the role, organisation and functioning of the once gold standard Probation Service and ensuring it returns to being part of a solution rather than part of the problem it's become under centralised HMPPS command and control. It has to break free of HM Prison Service subjugation and the civil service and return to local control as it was prior to part-privatisation. The current model is utterly failed and long-past regarded by many informed commentators as unfit for purpose.

Unlike social care, you may not have personal experience of the criminal justice system, but I urge you to appoint a suitably experienced person to undertake a Review of probation at the earliest opportunity because this vital public service is close to collapse.

I will end by applauding your Downing Street words on assuming office and particularly the pledge to treat people with decency and end rough sleeping. Of course these should be honourable aims of any government, but is particularly striking because you chose to 'say it out loud'. One of the main routes to rough sleeping is of course via the criminal justice system, so this should fit perfectly with your core belief and of course desire for devolution.

Our Collective Addiction

Just spotted this interesting Prospect article on our love of locking people up for ever-longer periods, the crisis it has created and inability of politicians to do anything about it.

We’re addicted to locking people up—but it doesn’t make any of us safer

Does Andy Burnham have the attention span, the will and the courage to tackle a collapsing justice system?

And there’s another one gone. So, farewell then, Lord Timpson, who managed a daring escape from his role as prisons minister just days before the latest farce engulfed his former department. He was over the wall and gone. As a reward for his 24 months in the job, he can attend the House of Lords for the rest of his days. Think of it as a form of rehabilitation.

Timpson was an imaginative appointment by Keir Starmer—and, by all accounts, pretty ineffective. But at least he put in a shift. In the past ten years there have been no fewer than 13 prison ministers. On average they serve for about nine months, which is the sort of term you can expect for ABH or possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply.

There is no organisation on the planet—barring Sunderland and Andy Burnham’s very own Everton—who would expel the boss on such a regular basis and hope for a different result.

Some will protest that the decision to grant early release to violent thugs isn’t the fault of the prisons: they just sit at the tail-end of a criminal justice system that is utterly broken. But you’re wasting your time looking for accountability. There have been ten justice secretaries in ten years. Average term: one year. About the same you’d get for carrying a knife or for dangerous driving.

Why are we releasing dangerous criminals back onto the streets? Because prisons are at a bursting point and by November there will be nowhere to put new offenders.

The easy thing here is to point the finger at one obvious cause. But there isn’t just one. After 14 years in power the Tories had expanded the prison estate by fewer than 500 places. So, it’s the Tories' fault. The Starmer government claimed to have opened a further 2,500 places. But most of those were due to a prison building programme started by the Tories. So, not all the Tories’ fault.

If we had a properly functioning probation service things might work better. A staggering number of ex-convicts—around 40,000 a year—are currently being recalled to prison. At any one time there are 13,000 to 15,000 people held in prison on recall, compared with the early 1990s when the figure was less than 100. So let’s not forget to blame Chris Grayling, whose dramatic reform of the probation service just over 10 years ago failed on every single count.

But the bigger problems lie further up the food chain. As a country, we are addicted to the pathetically deluded idea that by locking up more and more people for ever lengthier periods of time, we are solving anything.

Have we ever stopped to wonder why in England and Wales we incarcerate twice the proportion of the population of Germany and three times that of the Netherlands, Norway or Finland? We are currently scrambling to empty the bath at the bottom while both hot and cold taps are gushing away at the top.

We sling convicts in cells for up to 22 hours a day at a cost per head (£58k) which roughly equates to the school fees at some of our more exclusive private schools—say, Uppingham, where Lord Timpson spent his formative years. Do we educate or otherwise attempt to rehabilitate them while they’re in? Only in your dreams.

So let’s blame the judges, who will insist on locking people up for ever longer sentences. Unless you have the memory of a goldfish you will recall that barely a year ago David Gauke, one of those ten hapless MPs who briefly served as justice secretary in the last decade, published a weighty review about our addiction to sentence inflation. In 1993 we locked people up for 16 months on average: now it’s 22 months. For murder you used to get 12 years: now it’s 21 years.

But the judges are only doing what the law obliges them to do. Which takes us back to the politicians who keep ramping up prison sentences. Why? Well, Gauke partly blames the media for its persistent “tough on crime” narrative which has, over the years, convinced the general public that—in Chris “failing” Grayling’s words—our “jails are like holiday camps”.

So MPs think they are responding to public pressure. But public opinion is, in fact, all over the place when it comes to our criminal justice. More than three quarters of us believe that sentencing in England and Wales has become shorter in length, whereas the opposite is true. In other words, we’re not soft on offenders, but the public thinks we are.

However, public opinion is also much more nuanced on the effectiveness of prison. We do think violent people should be locked up, but 75 per cent of us think the prison system is failing. And we’ve got this far without even mentioning the crisis even further up the chain.

Two blockbuster reports from Lord Leveson have warned us that the court system has been so catastrophically destroyed that we have to contemplate junking aspects of the cherished jury system for it to stay afloat.

With some serious offences, you might now have to wait until 2030 to have your case heard: that’s four years of kicking your heels in a prison cell costing the taxpayer over £50k a year. As Leveson notes, the real day-to-day budget of the Ministry of Justice is set to be 14 per cent lower than in 2007/08. So let’s remember to blame George Osborne.

But don’t worry, because we have a new justice secretary, one Alex Norris. He is not a lawyer, but then neither were Chris Grayling (2012-15) or Liz Truss (2016-17), so there are, um, precedents. Mr Norris’s main professional experience hitherto is as an East Midlands area organiser for Unison while serving as councillor for the Basford ward on Nottingham City Council.

If the past is a guide to the future, he’ll be lucky if he’s still in post in a year’s time. Ands who would bet on the latest prisons minister, Catherine McKinnell, still being there in 10 months’ time?

When Andy Burnham walked into Downing Street he acknowledged that politicians haven’t been good enough and that they needed to raise their game. He promised a “circuit-breaker”.

If any part of government needs a circuit breaker it’s the entire shattered, malfunctioning criminal justice system. Is Burnham the man to have a painful and honest conversation about the multiple failures and the need for a drastic rethink of attitudes to crime and punishment? He has the vibes. Does he have the attention span, the will and the courage?

Alan Rusbridger

Alan Rusbridger was editor of Prospect from 2021 to 2025 and is the former head of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He was editor of the Guardian from 1995 to 2015.

Burnham Causes Chaos

It didn't take long did it for the new Prime Minister to plunge prison and probation into chaos. This from the Guardian:-

Prisoner early release scheme paused by Andy Burnham may still go ahead

Probation union and crime victims had raised doubts over plan to free 6,000 offenders across England and Wales

An early release scheme for thousands of prisoners paused by Andy Burnham after an outcry from victims could still take place this autumn, despite warnings by probation officers of potential chaos.

The prime minister ordered an urgent review into the proposed early release of about 6,000 prisoners, due to begin in September with an initial group of about 700, saying he wanted to “minimise risk to the public” and would not hesitate to make changes.

But with government officials accepting that the prison system remains near capacity, and no appetite to use alternatives such as police cells beyond emergencies, it is unclear what options exist beyond continuing with the plan, even in a different form.

Victims groups had objected to the proposal for 6,000 people to be freed early under the new Sentencing Act, with Debbie Adlam, the mother of the police officer Andrew Harper, saying the proposed inclusion of two of her son’s killers – Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers – was “another letdown” for their family.

In the latest of a flurry of policy announcements since he took over in No 10 on Monday, Burnham said: “I am working closely with the new justice secretary and have instructed my team to put a pause on the changes that were due to start in September.

“No prisoners will be let out under this policy until we have conducted an urgent review and done everything we can to minimise risk to the public. Where changes are needed, we will not hesitate to make them.”

With officials warning that without the scheme, prisons in England and Wales will run out of capacity by November, the most likely outcome appears to be a tweak to the early release system, with some offenders held back.

Officials have refused to say if the plan could be amended to block early release for people convicted of offences against emergency workers, such as Harper’s killers, or against women and girls.

Alex Norris, the new justice secretary, told reporters on Thursday the government needed “time to get it right”. He said: “We’ve put an important pause on this policy. It gives us a little bit of time to look at this, to make sure we do our best by you.”

Probation officers have warned that a “sense of chaos” had descended across the Prison Service, with staff unable to make preparations for the mass release. Tania Bassett, Napo’s national officer, said that after the trade union asked the Prisons Service if staff should continue with preparations for the early release scheme, it was now informing them it has been paused.

She said: “Napo’s concern is this will mean probation staff stop doing pre-release work. Whatever the prime minister’s final decision is, he has created a delay as well as confusion amongst the staff tasked with dealing with this.

“He needs to be more decisive about critical public protection issues and we urge him to treat this situation with the upmost urgency.”

According to the union, preparations for release require probation staff to carry out extensive work that usually takes at least six to eight weeks.

This includes reviewing risk assessments, making referrals for accommodation, carrying out home visits, coordinating with victim liaison officers and domestic abuse support officers and developing multi-agency safeguarding plans.

It can also take several weeks to ensure that tagging measures are in place before an offender is placed in accommodation. Unless probation staff received “imminent, concrete direction” about who will be considered, established release plans could collapse, a union official said.

The review has caused chaos in prisons, where managers are responsible for calculating release dates over several weeks from 2 September.

The Sentencing Act 2026 introduced an “earned progression model” that replaces automatic halfway release for prisoners serving standard determinate sentences in England and Wales with a tiered, behaviour-based system.

It will allow most prisoners to be released after serving a third of their sentence behind bars rather than 50%, with the rest of their sentence served under strict supervision in the community with the help of electronic tagging.

Prisoners serving time for sexual or violent offences where the automatic release stage is set at two-thirds will become eligible for release at the halfway point, provided they have not committed serious breaches of prison rules.

This applies to Bowers and Cole, two of Harper’s killers who were jailed for 13 years in 2020 for manslaughter. Burnham confirmed that Henry Long, the main perpetrator, “will not be subject to any early release” under the scheme.

After news of the pause emerged, Debbie Adlam told ITV News that this was “not enough”. She said: “It’s a good start, and it really is a good basis to begin working on some sensible alternatives and looking at options for going forward, because there’s so many people this affects, it’s not just us.”

An Impossible Job

I think the following two contributions sum the situation up neatly:-

So who thought that justice would be a priority?

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/alex-norris

Minister of State (Minister for Border Security and Asylum) and Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice - Alex Norris MP

Biography

Alex Norris was appointed Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice on 20 July 2026. He was previously Minister of State at the Home Office between 6 September 2025 and July 20 2026.

He was previously Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government between 9 July 2024 and 6 September 2025.

He has been the MP for Nottingham North and Kimberley (and its predecessor Nottingham North) since June 2017.

Minister of State (Minister for Border Security and Asylum) - The Minister’s responsibilities are:

Border Security Command: reducing small boat arrivals and organised immigration crime
reducing the asylum caseload, exiting hotels and reducing the supported population
Immigration Enforcement: Increasing returns (including FNOs), immigration detention estate expansion, illegal working
asylum, illegal migration and returns policy, safe and legal policy and refugee resettlement policy
reducing net migration: legal migration policy
tackling visa abuse
innovative solutions
Immigration White Paper implementation
European Entry Exit System
modern slavery policy as it relates to immigration status

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice

Oversight of all justice portfolios, policy, and Ministry of Justice strategy
Oversight of cross-cutting emergency issues, responses supported by other ministers according to portfolio
Oversight of international business and future relations with the EU
MOJ support for the Union
Resourcing of the department

Functions of the Lord Chancellor

Judicial policy including pay, pensions and diversity (these and other operational decisions affecting the judiciary are reserved to the Lord Chancellor)

--oo00oo--

I’m not going to write Alex Norris off before he’s even started. Every minister deserves the chance to prove themselves. But I do wonder how anyone without a substantial justice background can fully appreciate the scale of what they’re inheriting. Probation isn’t something you understand from a briefing paper. It sits at the intersection of housing, mental health, addiction, domestic abuse, children’s services, employment, policing, prisons and the courts. It is where the consequences of policy decisions made across government all arrive at once.

Andy Burnham has rightly spoken about ending rough sleeping. That’s an admirable ambition. But this is where I think governments often miss something fundamental.

They talk about the “golden thread” running through assessments. What probation sees every day is the golden thread running through society.

Housing affects employment.

Employment affects offending.

Mental health affects addiction.

Addiction affects family stability.

Family breakdown affects children.

Children become tomorrow’s adults entering the criminal justice system. None of these things exists in isolation, yet government too often organises itself as if they do.

Probation doesn’t have the luxury of seeing only one department’s problem. We deal with the whole person and the cumulative effect of every public service that has either succeeded or failed them. So I genuinely hope the new Justice Secretary spends less time asking, “What does justice need?” and more time asking, “How does justice fit into everything else?”

Because until government starts seeing the same golden thread that frontline probation staff see every day, we’ll keep treating symptoms while wondering why the causes never seem to go away.

Time to say 'no'!

Some recent contributions:-

There's growing disconnect between the wellbeing message coming from HMPPS nationally and the day-to-day experience being described by many frontline staff. If people consistently feel that targets take precedence over wellbeing, then the issue isn’t the message, it’s whether that message is translating into practice.On the removal of the WMT, the FAQs repeatedly refer to line management discussions, professional judgement and management oversight. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with that. The WMT was never perfect. But it did provide a shared reference point. PP and SPO could both see the same information and have a discussion based on objective evidence.

From September, the emphasis appears to shift much more towards SPO judgement informed by dashboards, operational data and discussion. That inevitably changes the power dynamic.

Im sure a lot of SPOs will continue to act fairly and professionally. But good systems should be designed to protect people when relationships become difficult, not only when they are good. If a PP believes their workload is unsafe and their SPO disagrees, what independent evidence is there to resolve that disagreement? A good governance system shouldn’t rely solely on trust between individuals; it should provide transparent evidence that both parties can rely upon.

For me, that’s the real concern. We seem to be moving from an evidence-based conversation about workload to a relationship-based one. If trust is high, that may work well. But if trust has already been eroded, it risks creating inconsistency, discouraging challenge and leaving some staff feeling they have little objective basis on which to question workload decisions. That, more than the removal of a percentage figure, feels like the real cultural shift taking place.

--oo00oo--

HMPPS has completely lost touch with what it feels like to be a frontline PP. Every answer seems to be another dashboard, another AI tool, another restructure, another “holistic approach”, another management conversation. What nobody ever seems willing to acknowledge is the obvious: there is simply too much work.

No amount of dashboards will create more hours in the day.
No amount of management discussion will reduce an impossible caseload.
No amount of corporate wellbeing rhetoric will undo the damage of years of relentless pressure.

We’re expected to carry more risk, more responsibility, more bureaucracy and now, apparently, accept that if we feel we’re at capacity we’ll just have a conversation about it. What happens when that conversation ends with “I think you can take another case”? That’s not workload management. That’s asking PPs to negotiate their own breaking point. And let’s stop pretending this is about modernising the service. It’s about normalising overload.

The WMT may have been flawed, but at least it gave practitioners something objective to point to. Now even that is disappearing, replaced by assurances that everything will be fair because managers will use their judgement. Forgive me if I don’t find that reassuring.

Every year we’re told the next reform will fix things. Every year workloads increase, experienced colleagues leave, sickness rises and the people left behind are expected to absorb even more.

At some point HMPPS needs to stop telling us to be resilient and start admitting the truth: the system only functions because frontline staff are sacrificing their own health, family life and professional wellbeing to keep it afloat. That isn’t leadership. It’s exploitation.

--oo00oo--

Good points, all the things that we try to as POs such as building trust, discussions, focus and understanding the offenders we work with has unfortunately not only reduced in that work but also relationships between frontline POs and the SPO’s who sit in their offices dishing out work to those they know can take pressure and on the other hand protecting their friends with the easier cases. 

Possibly a delicate subject but how many of us are holding extremely high caseloads because others cannot cope? I am sick to death of people receiving a full wage when they are on a reduced caseload because they are ‘stressed’ we are all stressed and adding to my caseload stresses me more and more especially when so many people appear to be working from home more than they should be and those of us in the office have to deal with the fallout from their cases. 

How many times do you see your SPO out of their office? How many times is the SPO in after you and left before you? A lot of the new SPO’s are freshly qualified can make up a good story for interviews but never asked the basic leadership questions and that is why there is no leadership in the NPS just a full on ‘do as I say, not do as I do’. 

I no longer can have serious risk based conversations with the SPOs in my team as they are hardly there and so inexperienced, what happened to the five year post qualification rule? I hear you ask why don’t I get an SPO role, well it is because it does not pay enough for me to listen to moans, record sick and holidays and at the same time make life easier for some and not others.I also enjoy working with people who need my support and guidance and I am good at that and dealing with the violent ones who other people will not work with. 

However, a warning for those further up the greasy pole, people like me are now rare in probation a dying breed, a dinosaur some may say, however with three months left to go, I can already hear the voices, 'I cannot take that case', 'I won’t be taking that' and just the other day, ‘miserable bast*rd why are they taking early retirement, how can they do this to us.‘ 

I say, time to pick up the gauntlet, baton or the reins and get on with it, time to stand up and be counted and it is alright to say no, which is a lot harder than saying yes. What does the future hold, I don’t know but will be watching the next episodes from outside.

Dawn of MoJ Enlightenment?

Tomorrow is a significant day for the UK as yet another Labour leader 'kisses hands' and is invited to form a new government by HM King Charles III. Many of us hope dearly that almost certainly we will get a new Justice Minister, as well as a rowing back of the drive for digitisation at the MoJ and HMPPS. Lets hope that this, coupled with a drive for devolution and shifting of power may give support to a better-informed approach to the Probation Service and the chance of re-gaining its identity and function away from the dead hand of Civil Service command and control.

As always, staunch reader and contributor 'Getafix helps us focus on things and points us in the direction of a recent speech by HMI Martin Jones. Lets hope he has the ear of Andy Burnham and the new Administration:-   

Martin Jones’ keynote speech for StandOut
Published: 13 July 2026

On 08 July 2026 the Chief Inspector of Probation, Martin Jones, gave the keynote speech at an event for StandOut, a charity that provides coaching and support to bridge the transition between prison and the community.

“I am delighted to be here for this event and would like to start by congratulating and thanking you for the brilliant work you are doing.

Your work is making a difference every day for people preparing for release and ensuring they have a better chance of succeeding when they reach the community.

This success means better outcomes for people on release, their families and their communities and it is in all of our interests to ensure more people are supported to succeed.

I was appointed Chief Inspector of Probation in the Spring of 2024, having now spent well over three decades working in justice – including latterly time in charge of the Parole Board.

Much public and political attention is focused on prison. I would argue too much.

Traditionally public discourse has focused on whether prison sentences are long enough and the size of our prison population.

But too little attention is focused on the community. How do we avoid sending people to prison and break destructive cycles of reoffending? How do we better prepare people for release?

The numbers are stark: According to the last published figures:

• 87,342 people in prison
• 248,568 people on caseload of probation (70 per cent of whom are in the community)
• 56,923 releases in last twelve months as early release schemes and changes to fix term recall have started to impact.
• 48,327 recalls in latest period.

In essence there is massive change moving pressure from our overstretched prisons to our equally overstretched probation service – where we have too few staff, with too little experience, managing too many cases.

As Chief Inspector it is important I maintain a critical eye on the problems facing the service.

I am pleased that the Government is investing more in probation – and there have been some successes. But it needs care and attention. I might even say TLC.

The service still bears the scars of change over the last 10-12 years.

According to the Public Accounts Committee the service has a staffing gap of c 25 per cent, we have a workforce that has lost too many experienced staff, and new probation staff often have a full or excessive caseload far too soon.

There is a sense that some probation “craft” has been lost.

Does the service understand enough about the people they are working with? Do they understand their lives, their problems, their worries, their needs, their risks? Our inspections tell us they do not.

There are problems with information exchange and there is, in my assessment, an excessive fear of SFOs – but despite this fear, there is a shortfall in the quality of work taking place on public protection.

It is against that difficult backdrop that the sentencing review brings further changes. In essence more people will be dealt with in the community.

How well prepared is it for that change?

Huge efforts are being made to ensure the service is as well prepared as it can be and there have been some improvements in recruitment and retention rates.

There have been changes to reduce workload, so the resources better match the demand, and new initiatives – such as justice transcribe – are freeing up probation officers to spend more of their time with people on probation rather than form filling and stuck behind computer screens.

However, more is still needed – that is why I am delighted to be here today.

In reality, we need to better harness the expertise, innovation and resources within the third sector to ensure we provide better support and services for people.

We know that most people in prison have huge unmet need that contributes to reoffending and poor outcomes. Working with organisations like Stand Out we can surely better prepare people for their release from custody.

It has always been true that if we have the right plan, we massively increase success rates.

• Support with substance misuse and mental health.
• Somewhere to live
• Something worthwhile to do.
• Support in the community – (family/friends/a mentor) someone who wants you to succeed…

Unless we get that right we see predictable failure.

• Recall because of a lack of support with problems.
• Reoffending because we have not tackled the underlying causes.
• Harm to the community and to people on probation because people are not safeguarded.

I do however see a pathway to improvement.

Despite the pressure facing probation, I still see professionals who want to do a good job. I see so much determination (maybe with some frustration) in the third sector to achieve better outcomes. And I am seeing signs that probation performance is improving. Public protection scores are up in every reinspected region. Desistance and engagement scores are better.

But the gap in delivery? That is now the task.

Can we free probation up to deliver better results, with greater local autonomy and accountability, and better join up?

How do we build to deliver this at a greater scale. Surely the answer must be for a continued realignment and investment in community provision and support.

If we can do that, we can – perhaps achieve a virtuous circle – less failure in the community, lower reoffending rates, fewer victims, safer communities.

That must surely be a driving ambition of the next steps of reform.”

Martin Jones 

HM Chief Inspector of Probation

--oo00oo--

Our mission

StandOut's mission is to empower people leaving prison to transform their lives, realise their potential, and leave the criminal justice system behind - for good.

Our values

At StandOut, we’re led by our values: Champions, Connected, Committed, First Class, and Courageous. They are at the heart of everything we do – from how we work with our participants, to how we relate to each other, our partners and stakeholders. We don't believe in quick fixes, nor that life runs in straight lines, especially if someone has experienced prison. Our values keep us focused and remind us of the things that matter most.

Our history

StandOut is the vision of our founders Penny Parker and Jo Fellows.

Penny’s background was in running the highly regarded Sycamore Tree restorative justice course, which she was involved in setting up in HMPs Wandsworth, Bronzefield and Pentonville. Too often she saw that having unlocked a motivation to change in people, the practical steps to prepare for the transition out of prison were missing. When she found Resurgo’s award-winning Spear Programme, Penny thought it could be adapted to work very effectively with people leaving prison. Working with Jo, whose background was in working with young people facing barriers to employment through the Spear Programme, they brought their shared vision to reality in 2017 as they piloted StandOut in HMP Wandsworth.

Having successfully established the programme in HMP Wandsworth, in 2019 StandOut launched in HMP Pentonville, and in 2023 we launched in our third prison - HMP Wormwood Scrubs.

Cause For Hope?

From a contributor:-

Strong indications now that Lammy, not regarded by anyone as the sharpest tool in the box, is heading towards the back benches or even out of government entirely. Game over. Will the Justice shakeup see ministers such as Kiers buddy Timpson also ousted? Very likely. It is currently unconfirmed who will replace Lammy, or if he will be retained in Burnham's government at all. While some say he’ll be one of the first to get his marching orders on 20/07 others say his future at the Ministry of Justice is a subject of heavy speculation regarding how fast he is removed so he may be left hanging about whilst negotiations regarding his replacement proceed or policies are scrapped as a fall guy. Burnham is reportedly planning to scrap some of Lammy's recent policies, including the curbs on the right to trial by jury and the early release scheme aimed at easing prison capacity. Better to remove him rather than force him into humiliating U-turns.

Given these policy clashes, a change in leadership at the Ministry of Justice seems highly likely. The incoming cabinet appointments will be critical to watch, as they will undoubtedly signal a significant shift in the department's strategic and operational direction. The approach to AI and technology may see significant changes with much hyped MoJ Justice Digital and Justice AI being seen as expensive failed centralised projects the very opposite of the new decentralised approach. Burnham is for example is said to favour devolved more locally accountable Probation Services developing their own initiatives as appropriate that may see prison and probation regions playing more of a role. What is certain is that he will want to get a firmer grip on Justice with Thornberry rumoured to be first among several people being considered as a smarter upgrade who will want to have a good clear out. Streeting and Jarvis also mentioned as possible options if they do not land plum jobs elsewhere. You heard it here first.

Blimey! Tags Not Being Fitted

Thousands of offenders not wearing electronic tags, report says

Almost 9,000 people in England and Wales required to have an electronic monitoring tag did not have one, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has found. They are likely to include violent offenders and prisoners released from jail who need to be checked on. The NAO said, as of March 2026, prison authorities were reviewing around 8,900 cases of individuals recorded as having an active monitoring order but no tag.

However, the Ministry of Justice has disputed the figure, saying its own review puts the number of unmonitored individuals at 5,450. It said the NAO figure referred to the total number of cases they are checking to see if they need monitoring.

The NAO called the current system "inefficient".

Electronic monitoring, also known as tagging, is used in England and Wales as a way of monitoring curfews and conditions of a court or prison order.

Criminals and people deemed to pose a potential risk are sometimes fitted with an ankle tag so that their movements can be monitored. These individuals can include serious offenders such as rapists and murderers. There are three types of tags: curfew tags, location tags, and alcohol tags.

A total of 28,700 people were recorded as being tagged in England and Wales as of March 2026. The NAO said some of the 8,900 cases in its report would include people who were registered as being tagged by mistake. But it also said the real number of those slipping through the system could be "significant".

People can be identified as being "unmonitored" for a number of reasons. These can include errors in the system, refusal to wear a tag, a delay in the fitting of the tag, or an arrest where the tag is removed. But it can also include people who haven't been tagged when they should have been.

Responding to the NAO's report, the Ministry of Justice said: "Public protection is our priority, which is why we're investing £100m in electronic monitoring, tagging offenders before release for the first time and strengthening victim protections via new alert systems – all of which will help cut the number of unmonitored offenders."

The National Audit Office argues the current monitoring system is not fit for purpose.

"Electronic monitoring is central to managing pressures on prisons, but it is not working effectively, creating risks to public protection," NAO chief Gareth Davies said. "Improvements are required to ensure that those who should be monitored are monitored and that breaches are responded to effectively," he added. The report also says police and probation staff often lack information or capacity to respond quickly to breaches.

People tagged are placed under strict conditions as part of their punishment. This can include having to remain in a specific area or sticking to a curfew. If someone breaches their conditions, it can result in a formal warning, being taken back to court, or an immediate return to prison.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice announced plans to significantly expand electronic monitoring as part of the Sentencing Act 2026, which aims to ease prison pressures by managing more offenders in the community.

Thousands more prisoners may be released early from autumn this year as part of the new law. Reports suggest killers, rapists and sex offenders could be among them. Most will require tagging.

Several probation officers have told the BBC they are worried about how they will cope.

Probation officers are responsible for checking offenders are following the terms of their release from prison. This could include things such as wearing ankle tags or not taking drugs.

"The report makes clear we're overworked. And it's only going to get worse with more people set to do their punishment in the community," one probation officer said. "There aren't enough of us, and we have no idea how the government is going to make it work so that nobody is at risk. Because something bad will happen, someone who is dangerous and isn't monitored will kill someone," the probation officer added.

The NAO says that part of the problem is a shortfall of around 2,200 full time probation officers, which the government expects to reduce to around 1,500 by September of this year.

The watchdog also says even though the security contractor Serco - which manages the tagging system for the government - met its 95% timeliness target for tag fitting visits, "it was only successful in fitting tags on 62% of the individuals it visited within its two attempts".

In a statement, Serco told the BBC it had made "significant improvements" and was "tagging a record number of people" and "consistently" meeting key contractual measures, as recognised by the Ministry of Justice and NAO report. It added that efforts to fit tags "rely on us receiving the correct information" from relevant authorities and partners. "We attempt to fit a tag to every person who should be wearing one. Where, for reasons beyond our control, we are unable to do so, we report those breaches to the relevant authorities."

The NAO is calling on the government to improve data quality and management of the monitoring system. It added the government had been working with Serco to improve performance and reduce the backlog in fitting tags. Ministers estimate a further 22,000 people per year will need to be tagged from 2027.

"The government needs to improve the service's resilience and efficiency, otherwise expanding electronic monitoring risks wasting public money and puts public safety at risk", said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts.

The Ministry of Justice said the government inherited "a failing tagging system with record backlogs". "As this report shows we have worked hard to fix this, with install rates up by nearly 50% since 2024," it said. "This is in addition to our record £700m investment in probation, recruiting 2,300 trainee probation officers over the last two years, and recruiting a further 1,300 this year - making sure the Probation Service has the resource it needs to keep dangerous offenders under closer surveillance than ever before."

Confidence Broken

I guess I should be paying more attention, but I seem to think we never covered this Guardian article from 19th June and I notice Napo are kicking up a bit of a row, no doubt with the fast-approaching AGM in mind. 

Excessive probation workloads put public at risk in England and Wales, union warns

Exclusive: Napo declares no confidence in probation service managers and threatens industrial action

The public is “at direct risk” from unsupervised ex-offenders because probation officers in England and Wales are being asked to cope with excessive workloads, a union has said.

As ministers prepare to release and monitor tens of thousands more prisoners this autumn, Napo’s executive has declared for the first time that it has no confidence in managers at the probation service.

In a worrying development for the government, the union is threatening to launch industrial action in three months’ time unless members receive increased support and pay.

The motion comes at a crucial time for the government’s plans to relieve pressure on the criminal justice system. From September, ministers will embark on the biggest expansion of tagging in British history so that up to 40,000 former offenders will be monitored by tags and overseen by probation officers – a 40% increase from the 28,000 currently on tags.

Last year, an official watchdog warned that the probation service had too few staff with too little experience and training, which it said left members of the public at risk. The public accounts committee found that longstanding staff shortages had left probation staff dealing with “excessive and unmanageable workloads”, with officers working at 126% of capacity for several years in some areas.

Tania Bassett, a Napo national official, said probation officers were unable to cope with the growing number of ex-offenders they were being asked to supervise, and many more people were ending up on the street.

“Excessive workloads and staff burnout poses a direct risk to the public with staff being unable to effectively manage the risk of their clients in the community,” she said. “Added to this is the shortage of accommodation, which will result in more people being homeless and therefore more likely to reoffend.”

Managers were trying to get rid of a tool that measures the workload each probation officer is being asked to cope with, a move that would hide the magnitude of the tasks they were being asked to perform, Bassett said.

“The loss of a workload measurement tool will leave staff, including managers, unable to see their workloads and therefore unable to evidence that they are overworked,” she said.

The Prison Service met only 26% of its targets for timeliness of appointments and delivery of services in 2024-25, down from 50% in 2022, according to the National Audit Office. The Ministry of Justice said that between 2023 and 2025, 31% of target probation appointments did not take place.

The MoJ said earlier this year that it would recruit 1,300 extra probation officers in the next year as part of a £700m investment by 2029, which included £100m for the tagging expansion by the end of this parliament. The department said “proximity monitoring technology” for domestic abusers and stalkers would be tested in a £5m pilot.

The union’s executive has voted for a motion that says a failure to address persistently high vacancy and staff sickness rates and removing a tool that measures workloads means that “the current position is untenable and cannot continue”.

It says: “[HM Prison and Probation Service’s] leadership has demonstrably failed in its duty of care to the workforce of the Probation Service, and this represents a reckless disregard for our welfare and professional integrity as well as the safety of our communities.”

James Timpson, the prisons minister, told MPs last week that the probation service was under severe pressure after disclosing that staff were each managing an average of 32 ex-offenders.

“It’s running too hot … we inherited a system that was broken, and we’re putting it all back together again. It’s going to take time,” he told the justice select committee.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We remain committed to working closely with trade unions to ensure our staff continue to get the support they need to cut crime and protect the public. We have full confidence in Probation Service leadership to deliver the necessary changes and improvements.”

--oo00oo--

Confidence Broken in HMPPS to deliver 

Napo is pressing for urgent national action to tackle the workload crisis before it pushes probation staff any further to the brink. We are calling for immediate workload protections, stronger safety measures, a fair and jointly owned workload measurement tool, protected learning time, and meaningful partnership with the trade unions. These are practical solutions that put staff wellbeing, public protection and professional standards first. 

Profession or Job?

A reader suggests "I want to propose a new thread."

‘Can Probation call itself a profession in 2026 or is it just a job?‘ 

I would argue it is now no longer a Profession if it ever was. The profession died when the service was assimilated by the Civil Service which is a Profession that contains professions such as Policy, Project Management etc but Probation or Prison Officer are occupations not professions. If for instance we were all members of professional institutes that licences and regulated our practice then it would be a different matter. Licences to practice are meaningless if given by the sole employer of a job role who would never employ someone unless they had relevant qualifications or were working towards a relevant qualification. Being a professional involves not only having:

A Specialised Body of Knowledge: Access to the occupation is barred without extensive, highly specialised academic training and intellectual instruction. It cannot be learned through a brief apprenticeship or casual trial-and-error.

A Social Contract and Public Trust: Professions are granted a degree of monopoly and status by society because they provide a vital public service (e.g., healthcare, justice, structural safety). In return, they are expected to prioritise public welfare over pure commercial gain.

Autonomy and Self-Regulation: True professions largely govern themselves. They establish their own professional bodies (such as a Bar Council, Medical Board, or Engineering Council) that set entry requirements, define standards of practice, and handle disciplinary actions.

An Enforceable Code of Ethics: Professions maintain strict, formalised ethical frameworks. Violating these codes does not just look bad-it can result in a tribunal stripping the individual of their licence to practise ("striking off" or disbarment).

Monitored Standards of Entry and CPD: Entrance requires passing rigorous, objective assessments. Once inside, members must usually demonstrate Continuous Professional Development (CPD) to maintain their legal or formal right to practise.

In short, an occupation becomes a profession only when it moves from a job anyone can try, to a regulated discipline that requires a licence, an oath, and a high level of public accountability with professional indemnity. How is Probation then more than just an occupation and in fact more like a profession? If anything it looks less like a profession than it has ever done. We are at best pseudo civil servants specialising in working with offenders but on less money.