What Voters Think

Thanks go once again to ace contibutor 'Getafix for truffling out an outfit I've never heard of before - Common Ground Justice Project - who claim to not only know what voters think is wrong with our criminal justice system, but what they think would fix it! This is one of my biggest takeaways:-

"Of key institutions, only the police narrowly retain majority confidence (51%) – with prisons (41%), probation (38%) and youth justice (33%) lowest."

Held to Account 

Understanding the crisis of public confidence in British criminal justice – and what voters want to change. 

Finding common ground on crime and justice 

With prisons full and reoffending high, the UK's criminal justice system isn’t working. Victims feel ignored and voters feel powerless. But a noisy, polarised debate on crime is getting in the way of change. The Common Ground Justice Project listens to the public across divides, finding common ground for a new way forward on criminal justice in the UK. We are an independent non-profit initiative, hosted by the Centre for Justice Innovation (UK charity no. 1151939)

What We Do
01 LISTEN ACROSS DIVIDES We conduct creative research and deep listening exercises across the UK, listening to voters, victims and communities who don’t feel heard.

02 FIND COMMON GROUND We uncover shared values and ideas on crime that cut across divides – uncovering a new way forward with broad public support.

03 SPARK BOLD ACTION We create a more constructive conversation on crime, shifting policy towards common ground solutions that cut crime and rebuild trust.

Foreword
I know what it means to be held to account. When I was 19, I threw a single punch that killed James Hodgkinson. I went to prison for manslaughter. It wasn't till years later, through restorative justice, that I sat down with James’s parents, Joan and David, and faced the harm I had caused in a much deeper way.

During that meeting there was no escaping that harm. Nor should there have been. Joan and David were able to tell me directly what my actions had done to them and their family. I had to listen, acknowledge it and take responsibility.

That process taught me something about justice that punishment alone never could. It gave me the motivation to completely change my life.

Joan and David still believe my sentence was too short. But over time, the question of accountability became about more than the length of my prison sentence: they wanted me to take responsibility for what I did and show that I had changed. Today, after helping me make that journey, they are senior advisers to the Common Ground Justice Project.

Our experience has taught me that justice is not necessarily a choice between consequences and rehabilitation, or between the needs of victims and perpetrators of crime. Acknowledging harm, giving victims a voice, taking responsibility, facing consequences and demonstrating change over time can all be part of holding someone properly to account.

It is one of the reasons I co-founded the Common Ground Justice Project along with Sam Boyd and Alice Dawnay. We shared a frustration that the debate on crime too often reduces complex questions to being “tough” or “soft”, pitting punishment against rehabilitation, and prioritising short-term point-scoring over long-term change. Our response was to start somewhere different: listening to people across the country who don’t feel heard.

The findings in this report suggest that Joan, David and I are far from unique in what we needed from the justice system. The British public want meaningful consequences – but also for people to own the harm they have caused, and change so they do not create more victims. And they want the system to be more accountable for delivering on its promises.

That core finding gives me hope: that when we really listen, the public are less divided about justice than our politics suggests. We hope this report encourages those in power to respond in kind: to put party politics aside and build the modern justice system that Britain deserves.

Jacob Dunne
Co-founder Common Ground Justice Project

Executive Summary

C H A PT E R 0 1 CRIME WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE
Understanding the crisis of confidence in British criminal justice 

Most Britons think crime usually has no consequence 

Fewer than one in five voters (18%) believe people who commit crimes usually face real consequences; half say consequences follow only occasionally or almost never. “Nothing happens” was a recurring refrain across our focus groups and interviews. Perceived lawlessness and unfairness in criminal justice appears to be contributing to a wider sense of national decline and erosion of trust in politics. 

Fear of victimhood is high, especially among young women 

Nearly two in three Britons (63%) expect to be a victim of crime within the next year, and one in three expects a violent or sexual crime. Fear of violence is concentrated among the young: over half of women under 35 (53%) expect to suffer a violent or sexual crime this year, as well as 39% of men under 35. These figures are roughly four times the actual rates of victimhood reported by the most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales, albeit this survey may underestimate actual victimhood on some crimes.

No core function of the justice system is rated well by a majority 

There is no function of the justice system a majority rates as doing a good job – just 22% say it does a good job of reducing crime, and only 38% of protecting the public. Of key institutions, only the police narrowly retain majority confidence (51%) – with prisons (41%), probation (38%) and youth justice (33%) lowest. The crisis of confidence in criminal justice appears to be feeding a wider sense of national decline and mistrust of politics. 

Underfunded, ineffective and unfair: the roots of mistrust 

Perceived leniency is only part of the reason for low confidence – voters point equally to underfunding, ineffective delivery and unfairness of treatment. Low confidence in prisons, probation and youth justice is mainly attributed to a failure to cut reoffending and lack of resources. Perceived unfairness is another key driver of mistrust, arising around questions of police treatment (66% believe policing is unequal by ethnicity, split evenly on who benefits), and inconsistency in sentencing. 

Voters want accountability to cut both ways 

Just as the public expects offenders to be better held accountable for their actions, they also want the system itself to be more accountable – for being fair, effective and honest. Broken promises and the cycle of crisis-response are seen as a system failing on its own terms and letting down victims, with every failure deepening the crisis of trust. 

The public want bold and balanced change 

Almost two in three Britons (62%) say the criminal justice system needs major changes – a demand spanning every party – with broad support for balancing punishment with rehabilitation and prevention. Keeping the public safe is clearly the top priority (87%), with youth services first in line for new spending. The public back bold but balanced change: a system that punishes but also treats and prevents crime.

C H A PT E R 0 2 ACCOUNTABILITY AS ‘OWNING, PAYING AND CHANGING’

Understanding what the public mean by accountability for crime

Punishment is seen as necessary but not sufficient for accountability 

Punishment is where many voters start, but only around one in ten lean towards the view that a served sentence delivers accountability on its own. Across five forms of accountability we tested – the '5 Rs' of repercussions, responsibility, repair, reform and reintegration – every one is rated important by at least 88%. The demand is 'punishment plus', not punishment alone.

Accountability as 'owning, paying and changing' 

The public see accountability as containing three key steps: owning the harm, paying for the harm, and changing behaviour. This is common ground that spans divides, and points the way towards justice reforms that will command widespread confidence. 

Responsibility is key – and the clearest common ground 

Accepting responsibility is the most widely endorsed form of accountability (96%) and the most unifying. On our 0–10 scale of importance, a tenth of a point separates Labour, Conservative, Reform and Lib Dem voters on this principle. But responsibility must be seen as genuine – demonstrated over time, not performed for a process. The public agree that taking responsibility includes engaging in treatment for addiction, where this is driving offending.

C H A PT E R 0 3 TACKLING PROLIFIC OFFENDING 

A case study of delivering accountability in practice 

Frequency of offending increases demand for punishment – but not at the cost of rehabilitation In response to repeat offending, the public raise their demands for punishment, but not at the cost of rehabilitation. Prison rises from the least popular response to a first offence (17%) to the top response once offending is repeat and organised (61%). Yet rehabilitative responses remain popular: compensation or unpaid work stays near 60% support, while treatment and help into work also stay high. Voters mostly want both. 

The role of addiction increases support for treatment – but not at the cost of punishment 

Told that repeat offending is driven by homelessness and addiction, support for treatment jumps 19 points to 73% and becomes the clear winner among every party’s voters – but support for prison never falls below 43%. Empathy is evident and reduces the demand for punishment, but it does not remove support for clear repercussions.

‘Punishment plus’ policy packages win broadest support 

In our conjoint experiment, eight of the ten most popular policy combinations to address prolific offending paired a clear consequence with treatment or visible repair. 'Punishment plus' consistently performed better than 'punishment only', while rehabilitation-only packages performed the worst. When it comes to community sentences and diversion, the public is mostly supportive; their biggest concern is not leniency but underfunding and ineffective delivery by overstretched public services.

C H A PT E R 0 4 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 

Summary of recommendations for politicians, policymakers and campaigners 

This report concludes that rebuilding trust demands accountability that cuts both ways: for people who commit crime to be held to account for their actions, and a justice system that's held to account for honest and effective delivery. Our research suggests the public is less divided than political debate often implies – and political pointscoring on crime risks obscuring the common ground that does exist. Seven recommendations follow, for policymakers and campaigners in criminal justice: 

1. Ensure consequences and public safety are the foundation – reassurance here is what creates permission for bold action on rehabilitation and prevention. 

2. Focus on accountability and responsibility to reach across divides - responsibility is the clearest common ground, while punishment is a popular but more divisive frame. Policies which recognise this will win broad support. 

3. Restore visible consequences for prolific and low-level crime – everyday crime that visibly goes unaddressed is driving the confidence crisis and needs urgent action. 

4. Improve communication and honesty with victims and the public – say what sentences mean, follow through, and tell victims what happened in their case. 

5. Strengthen and amplify community justice – make non-custodial sentences more robust, more visible and clearly evidenced; scepticism is mostly about the system’s capacity to deliver, not leniency.

6. Make recovery from addiction central to tackling prolific offending – getting the balance of consequence and high-quality treatment right for this group is where the public's demand for 'punishment plus' can work in practice. 

7. Develop a cross-party 10-year plan for justice – politicians should respond to public frustration by working together across parties on a long-term approach to fixing the criminal justice system: a plan built on pragmatic 'common ground' solutions.

Upstream or Downstream?

I found myself paying careful attention to Andy Burnham this morning on the Laura Kuenssberg show as he spoke at length about the recent death of his father and his absolute determination to address the social care issue before he leaves office. Of course we all know this is going to be a monumental task, not least because it's likely to cost a fortune and he has little room for manoeuvre given the tax 'take' is already so high. But when pressed by Laura on this point he responded by saying "but it's preventative".

Wow, lets just think about that for one cotton pickin minute. Supposing he wasn't talking about social care at all, but instead the criminal justice system? Whilst expanding on his social care hypothesis ahead of his big speech on Tuesday, he convincingly made the case for the commonsense approach of spending money upstream rather than downstream as a "preventative" measure. Isn't that the ethos of encouraging healthy living as a way of preventing ill health? A good education system as a way of preventing illiteracy and poor life chances? A criminal justice system that encourages rehabilitation rather than increased prison population? A probation service that is part of a solution rather than part of the problem?

Well, by a stroke of good timing, a recent contributor pointed us in the direction of not one, but two recently published reports that expand on Andy Burnham's "preventative" hypothesis within the criminal justice system. Interestingly they don't seem to address either prison or probation directly, but do highlight the entirely predictable effects of scrapping upstream funding in the form of a functioning youth service, together with Sure Start. 

Lets hope Andy is a quick learner and appreciates his enthusiasm for the concept of upstream funding being "preventative" can be equally applied in other area's of social policy and in fact could be classed as an investment. I'm reminded that Prof Rob Canton is on record as saying quite recently that " Perhaps the best way to enforce, rehabilitate and protect the public is by advising, assisting and befriending."

The justice system's problems are not just about money

Higher spending, without attention to how resources are used, may not translate into better outcomes

The justice system is under visible strain. Crown Court backlogs stand at over 80,000 cases. A record 330,000 tribunal cases were open in early 2026. Since 2010, over 300 magistrates' court sites have closed and Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) reforms have significantly reduced the scope for legal aid, and the number of providers. Prisons are almost at full capacity, with high levels of violence. These are not abstract statistics: they represent real delays, unresolved disputes, and people left further away from services they may need.

When performance falls short, our first instinct is usually to look at the budget. And the budget does matter. Ministry of Justice day-to-day spending fell 33% in real terms between 2007-08 and 2016-17, compared with a 3% reduction across all departments. Spending per person remains around 17% below its 2002-03 level. Spending has recovered somewhat in recent years, though delivering on the scale of reform needed across backlogs, prison capacity and access to justice remains a significant challenge.

But new research from the IFS Transforming Justice programme finds that budget alone will not fix the system's problems. Across policing, courts, prisons and legal aid, how resources are used, where they are located, and what pressures arrive from outside the system are all important determinants of performance. This means that higher spending, without attention to how resources are used, may not translate into better outcomes.

Take the Crown Court backlog. Sitting days rose 32% between 2019 and 2024, yet case closures (disposals) increased by only 20%. Had pre-pandemic productivity been maintained, even when adjusting for changes in the complexity of caseloads, the backlog could almost have been cleared by the end of 2024, without additional resources. This shows that investing in more court time alone has done little to clear the backlog. Doing so requires every part of the system to be working effectively together: judges, barristers, court staff, prison transport and case preparation.

The same is true when we look at management more broadly. In the Metropolitan Police, the effectiveness of individual borough commanders accounts for around a quarter of the variation in policing productivity across London divisions. In prisons, independent inspections by HM Inspectorate of Prisons reduced violence by around 12 incidents per 1,000 prisoners per month over the 15 months following inspection, without any increase in staffing or expenditure. In other words, good leadership and management can deliver real improvements even when additional resources are not on the table.

Where services are located, and who can reach them, is another important dimension of how the justice system performs. Magistrates' court closures have more than doubled the average distance to the nearest court for many communities. Police station closures increased violent crime in surrounding areas by around 9%, a rise that the evidence suggests could have been avoided had different stations been selected for closure. And funding changes in legal aid have reshaped where private providers operate, leaving 12% of local authorities with no active civil legal aid provider. Behind these changes lies a pattern of uneven geographic impact that deserves closer attention.

A further dimension concerns pressures that originate entirely outside the justice system. Several pressures are driving tribunal backlogs: disability and social security cases make up the largest share, while SEND and asylum and immigration appeals have seen the sharpest recent increases. Youth club closures following cuts to youth services raised offending in their vicinity by around 14%. Evidence from Sure Start suggests that early years interventions can reduce more serious offending later in life. More broadly, decisions made in other parts of government, often years earlier, shape the demands placed on the justice system. The introduction of mandatory reconsideration by DWP shows this clearly: designed to resolve more disputes before they reached tribunals, it directly reshaped the flow of cases into the system.

Funding matters, and the cuts of the 2010s had a significant and lasting impact on the system. But it is not the full story. The evidence base being built as part of the IFS Transforming Justice programme suggests that better use of existing resources, more efficient allocation of services across geography, and a clearer understanding of how other departments affect justice outcomes could all make a material difference. The question is not only whether the justice system is adequately funded, but whether the resources it has are being used as well as they could be, and whether the pressures it faces are being understood and addressed at their source.

Magdalena Domínguez is a senior research economist at the IFS, working on its transforming justice project and the education and skills sector. Imran Rasul is professor of economics at University College London, co-director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and research co-director of the Entrepreneurship Research Group of the International Growth Centre. They are co-authors of a new report on the pressures and challenges facing the UK justice system

--oo00oo--

Transforming justice : the interplay of social change and policy reforms

Resources and the justice system

Executive summary

The justice system in England and Wales is a significant area of public spending (£11.8 billion in day-to-day spending in 2025–26) and touches on almost every aspect of economic and social life. It has also seen many important changes and reforms in recent decades. Despite the scale of change and the central importance of justice in underpinning economic and social relations as well as trust in the state, economists have paid relatively little attention to these developments.

In this report, we bring together insights developed through the IFS Transforming Justice programme, established in 2024 and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, to respond to this relative lack of quantitative economic analysis. These insights emerge from a range of studies undertaken to date that examine different parts of the justice system. The programme is interested in all areas of the justice system, but the examples we draw on reflect the areas in which our analysis under the programme is most developed. We organise the evidence presented in this report around one connecting theme: the importance of understanding the role of resources for the functioning of the justice system, where resources refer not only to financial spending, but to a fuller set of inputs that shape the justice system’s capacity and performance, including infrastructure and management. The studies presented demonstrate why it matters to understand how resources are deployed within the justice system, whether the system is allocating and using resources efficiently, and how resources shape justice outcomes and outcomes outside the justice system itself. While the important role of resources forms the backdrop of much existing legal and social science research on justice systems, our studies show how economics research can advance understanding of how justice systems work and how they may work better.

Key insights

1. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ)’s day-to-day budget – £11.8 billion in day-to-day spending in 2025–26 – is a key input into the financial resources of the justice system. It saw large reductions in the early 2010s, followed by a partial recovery in recent years. Between 2007–08 and 2016–17, this budget was reduced by 33% in real terms, compared with a 3% reduction in total day-to-day departmental spending. MoJ spending began to recover from 2016–17, and by 2025–26 the day-to-day budget stood 2.4% below its 2002–03 level in real terms. Current plans imply real-terms growth in day-to-day justice funding of around 1.8% per year between 2025–26 and 2028–29, faster than the 1.2% per year average for overall departmental spending. Recent increases are expected to undo, in aggregate, the spending reductions of the early 2010s, but spending per person in 2025–26 remains 17% lower than its 2002–03 level.

2. Pressures on justice system resources are shaped by demand on the system. For example, the number of open cases in party-to-state tribunals reached a record 330,000 in early 2026, driven largely by rapid growth in the number of appeals. As a result, average waiting times have risen substantially: asylum and immigration appeals were taking 61 weeks to resolve in early 2026, compared with 23 weeks in 2013, while social security appeals (predominantly for disability benefit applications) were taking 35 weeks, compared with 18 weeks in 2013. These delays – in part a result of increasingly stretched resources – appear to reflect rising demand more than a recent deterioration in the productivity of tribunals.

3. Productivity, management and organisation can, however, have large effects on outcomes in the justice system, helping to determine how effectively justice institutions convert existing resources into results. We provide three examples. In the Crown Court, sitting days increased by 32% between 2019 and 2024, but case disposals rose by only 20%, which helps explain why backlogs continued to grow despite increased court capacity. In policing, differences in the characteristics and operational practices of Borough Commanders explain around one-quarter of the variation in crimes solved per officer across London police divisions. Finally, in prisons, independent inspections reduced violence by around 12 incidents per 1,000 prisoners per month in the 15 months following an inspection, without requiring an increase in staffing or expenditure. Instead, inspections appear to work by changing how existing resources and practices are managed.

4. The geographic allocation of justice resources can affect access to justice and outcomes. Since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, volumes of civil legal aid cases have fallen by around 57%, and the number of providers has fallen from roughly 3,000 in 2010 to 1,400 by 2024, leaving 38 local authorities with no observed civil legal aid provider activity in 2023. In London, police station closures increased the average distance for households to the nearest station from around 1.3 kilometres to 3 kilometres and were associated with a 9% increase in violent crime in affected neighbourhoods. Court closures have similarly increased travel distances, with the average distance for households to their nearest magistrates’ court more than doubling, from 5.7 kilometres to 12.1 kilometres.

5. The justice system can be affected by decisions made about resource allocation outside the system. For example, following a 71% real-terms reduction in youth service spending between 2011 and 2019, around 40% of youth clubs closed, and young people in London who lost access to nearby clubs became 14% more likely to commit an offence. Evidence from Sure Start similarly suggests that early years interventions can reduce more serious offending later in life. These examples show that spending on services for children and families can generate substantial downstream effects on crime and reduce pressures on justice institutions, meaning the returns to such spending may be larger than conventional assessments imply.

6. How we measure the benefits of justice interventions can substantially affect assessments of value for money. We illustrate this with an example using the fact that conventional estimates of the social costs of crime primarily focus on victims. However, evidence presented in this report suggests that crime also imposes high costs on witnesses. Accounting for these wider effects increases estimated social costs of individual crimes by around 25% on average and by around 28% for violent crime. Over time, victimisation rates fell by 25% between 2003–04 and 2014–15, yet once the costs borne by witnesses are included, the aggregate social costs of crime are estimated to have remained largely unchanged. These findings suggest that the returns to policies that prevent crime – from being witnesses to reducing victimisation – may be substantially larger than conventional measures imply.

7. Together, these findings point to a broader conclusion. Budget levels alone do not capture all the constraints facing the justice system. How resources are used and how different parts of the system interact matter as much as how much is spent, and decisions about resource allocation made outside the justice system can shape its outcomes too.

Burnham Doesn't Get It

Just as we thought, Andy knows nothing about the Criminal Justice System and the proof comes in his new government's announcement last night:-

Fixing the prison and probation crisis

The Government is taking action to keep the most dangerous offenders locked up, expand prison capacity and strengthen protections for victims and the public.

This Government inherited a prison system in crisis, putting the public at grave risk. Prisons were on the brink of collapse, with capacity dangerously close to being exceeded. That’s why the Government is taking decisive action.

1. The Government is building new prison places. By 2031, there will be more prison places than ever before

• This Government has already built around 3,200 new prison places and aims to create 14,000 by 2031, giving communities confidence that those who pose the greatest risk will be locked up.

• We are also speeding up the deportation of foreign criminals, saving money for taxpayers and protecting the public from dangerous offenders. Over 11,700 foreign criminals including murderers and rapists have been removed since July 2024.

2. The Government is making changes to sentencing so that prison places are used for the most dangerous criminals

• The most dangerous offenders must be locked up for a long time. That will not change.

• We are introducing reforms to prison release arrangements through the Sentencing Act 2026 which change the amount of time offenders will spend in prison. However, over 18,000 offenders serving life and extended sentences, murderers and those serving sentences for rape and serious sexual child and grooming offences, are completely excluded from these changes.

• For offences with sentences of 12 months or less, there will be a presumption against custodial sentences in favour of community sentences – including unpaid work, electronic monitoring tags, curfews and exclusion zones. Courts will still be able to send offenders to prison when there is significant risk of harm to the victim or public.

3. The Government is improving the monitoring of offenders when they are released from prison

• Prisoners who are released will not be free and can be recalled to prison at any time if they step out of line. Victims will have a say over tough new restrictions on offenders leaving prison.

• A record £700m investment going into probation by 2028/29, which has already helped us hire 1,000 new trainee probation officers, will enable 1,300 more to be added by March 2027.

• It also means we can ramp up the electronic tagging of offenders on release from prison, with nearly all offenders tagged and subject to curfews and exclusion zones to keep victims safe.

• Rape and certain child sex offenders will now face tighter controls than ever before after leaving prison, with more intensive probation supervision and a mandatory condition that will give constant access to their location via a GPS tag.

• We are also expanding other protections including chemical suppression for sex offenders, random drug testing, and bans from driving, pubs and events such as football matches.

4. The Government is improving support for victims

• The Government is introducing a stronger package of support for victims, including increased and improved contact to all affected victims.

• This will be supported by a £10m boost for victim support to fund extra local frontline services for victims to get trauma-focussed support.

• This is on top of the largest ever investment into specialist services that offer practical and emotional support to victims and witnesses. Over half a billion pounds of funding over the next three years will help charities and others deliver support like counselling and advice on attending court.

• A dedicated victim helpline will be available by October for all those affected by the reforms to provide emotional support and practical guidance.

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The future appears to be already written. Published a few hours ago, here's the answer, here's the fix! I personally struggle with the logic of creating more routes to recall people back to prison whilst at the same time trying to free up space. Available capacity stands at around 1800 places. Early release scheme hopes to free up a further 1500 places. Recall figures however exceed 50,000 in the last year. My maths are not great, but I just can't see how they hope to achieve anything.

'Getafix

*****
The order of priority & language is essential to understand that nothing has changed in downing street or whitehall for decades & decades:

"As Home Secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s government from 1979 to 1983, Willie Whitelaw pursued a hard-line law and order agenda. He is best known for introducing the "short, sharp shock" policy for young offenders and embarking on major prison-building programs to tackle rising street crime."

Michael Howard: "Prison Works": Argued that keeping serious and persistent criminals behind bars reduces crime rates through incapacitation and deterrence.

Deterrence and Detection: Advocated for an across-the-board approach focusing heavily on measures to catch and punish lawbreakers rather than relying solely on social or economic explanations for crime.

Rejection of Fatalism: Maintained that rising crime is not an inevitable fact of modern life and can be reversed with political will.

The bliarweasel project: "Tony Blair famously defined his approach to law and order with the 1993 political slogan: "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." This dual strategy balanced strict enforcement and punishment for offenders alongside social interventions addressing poverty, lack of opportunity, and family breakdown" - sadly he unleashed tough on criminals but failed to deliver when it came to "the causes of crime", viz- "The government policy under Tony Blair has been one of relentless attack on our civil liberties; the expansion of new police powers, the introduction of new offences, and harsher penalties with longer custodial sentences – all of which has been matched by an increased weakening of the safeguards in the criminal justice process."

Now we have burn'em & co:

1. The Government is building new prison places. By 2031, there will be more prison places than ever before "HUZZAHH!"
2. The Government is making changes to sentencing so that prison places are used for the most dangerous criminals "LOCK 'EM'UP"
3. The Government is improving the monitoring of offenders when they are released from prison "MAKE THE PUNISHMENT LAST AS LONG AS POSSIBLE"
4. The Government is improving support for victims

A serious point can be made here whereby prioritising & elevating the victim's status whilst confabulating it with the means or severity of the punishment is not healthy. It runs the risk of making the victim a 'legitimate' target (in the eyes of the perpetrator) & potentially places the victim in greater peril, e.g. if the victim can be silenced then the punishment might be less harsh. The victim's voice is undoubtedly important, but the justice system should be the arbiter of punishment, not the volume, articulation or skill of the victim's opinion. Similarly I would argue that the imposition of victim work upon the probation service was, again, a big mistake. It has led to some terrible conflicts of interest.

*****
And there it is again.

The Government’s shiny new “Fixing the prison and probation crisis” page tells the public that prisoners released under these reforms “can be recalled to prison at any time if they step out of line”, that nearly all offenders will be electronically tagged, and that short sentences will increasingly be replaced by community sentences.

Who exactly does Government think is going to manage all of this? Because every one of those policies creates work for probation. More people managed in the community. More licence supervision. More electronic monitoring information. More curfews and exclusion zones. More potential breaches. More decisions about whether behaviour represents escalating risk. And, inevitably, more recall decision-making.

Then comes the reassurance: £700m and recruitment. Except read the Government’s own words carefully. The investment has apparently helped recruit 1,000 new TRAINEE probation officers, with another 1,300 to be added by March 2027.

We have literally just been discussing Millsike, where the Government accepts that having physical capacity isn’t enough because inexperienced staff require time to develop the skills and confidence to operate safely. Apparently probation works differently. And Getafix raises another rather obvious problem. Government is desperately trying to create prison capacity while simultaneously creating more routes through which people in the community can be recalled back into those same prisons.

Meanwhile OFPS is supposed to release 25% of probation capacity by reducing the amount of professional supervision some people receive. Which part of this is the coherent strategy?

More people in the community. More tagging. More surveillance. More potential breaches. More recalls. Less practitioner contact. An inexperienced workforce being recruited at pace. And a WMT that’s about to disappear. Yet the Government page presents all of this under the wonderfully reassuring heading:

“Fixing the prison and probation crisis.”

From the frontline it looks rather more like moving the crisis out of the prison gate and expecting probation to carry it. And when that doesn’t work, I suspect we’ll hear the same thing we always hear: “Lessons will be learned.” Perhaps somebody could try learning them before this time.

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.

MoJ Undermine Rehabilitation

As I continue to ponder on my own despair regarding current criminal justice policy, I see InsideTime are in despair at latest decisions by the MoJ in the prison estate that astonishigly undermine rehabilitation programmes:-  

The MoJ: Look on their works and despair

I want to start with a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1818. It is entitled ‘Ozymandias’ and describes a large stone in the Egyptian desert bearing an inscription from the great king Rameses II. It says “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair”. It was Rameses intention that the city with magnificent buildings and monuments on which it was placed would last forever, and that all those passing by would be jealous of his fame. Yet this stone was just lying on the floor amongst ruins, the city having been worn down and destroyed by the baking sun and the sandstorms. Nothing remained.

I thought of that because there were great works within the prison system that are now lying in ruins, not because of sandstorms but because of the action of the Ministry of Justice’s own team of investigators, the National Framework for Interventions Panel. They did not take 2,000 years to tear down the structures, just a couple of days of sitting in an office, putting ticks and crosses into little boxes on a sheet of paper during a Teams meeting, and then pulling the plug and stopping hundreds of those in prison from having the chance to improve and progress. So here is why I despair.

Hard to believe

The Ministry of Justice have informed Inside Time that the highly praised rehabilitation course Time4Change that has run in Pentonville since 2019 has been scrapped. They tell us that it “does not meet the evidence standards required for approval” as an “intervention designed to reduce reoffending”. These are the same standards that led to the cancellation of the Sycamore Tree Restorative Justice scheme without any replacement being provided, a decision that was much-criticised by contributors to this paper.

The Ministry of Justice told us their “system provides a consistent and transparent process” to assess such schemes. We asked, as it was transparent, if we could interview someone who undertook this particular study and receive a copy of their points based assessment process to find out how they reached the decision but, despite the ‘transparency’, they refused to arrange an interview and told us to apply under Freedom of Information for the marks. That is not my understanding of transparency at all.

Time4Change was commended by Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, when he issued an Urgent Notification for Pentonville in 2024. He called it “valuable” and praised the “experience and ability of the facilitators with this hard to engage age group of men”. In September 2024, Lord Hastings raised the scheme with Prisons Minister Lord Timpson in the House of Lords telling him: “I am attending a graduation for 100 young men in Pentonville along with men who have been through the Time4Change course and moved on to positive lives.” Lord Timpson responded: “I am always pleased to know of schemes like this that succeed in this all important task.”

A source close to the course told us that the assessors said that they wanted changes in the key role of psychologists which the course team feel would undermine the programme, and they would not run a third-rate version. It is in limbo unless the MoJ review their decision.

A modern history

The scheme was created in 2016 when a group of the men talked to CM Ricardo Lafuente-Dyer about how lockdowns could be avoided. It was arranged for Rapper Big Narstie to come in for a large gathering in the prison, and following that a series of one-off events was staged. CM Dyer then developed the concept with more activities.

In 2019 the first Time4Change course was run, for young adults, with debates, counselling, conversations about consent, knives, parenthood, and more. It was run by officers with specialist support, and changed the atmosphere on the wings. During COVID this was the only course that continued with face-to-face sessions, as it was considered essential. Funds were provided through charities approached by the Revd Jonathan Aitken, one of the prison’s chaplains, and also from the prison Governor’s discretionary budget. Courses ended with a graduation ceremony, with speakers with lived and life experience. Previous graduates came and acted as mentors.

Key staff were CM Lafuente-Dyer, officers Green and McCracken, and Jason Brown. CM Lafuente-Dyer was awarded the Butler Trust award for his work with young adults and in creating Time4Change, whilst officers Green and McCracken have just received community awards for their success in changing lives and making society safer. The MoJ says Time4Change does not meet its standards, but will not explain how they reached that view which is clearly not shared by others.

Because the MoJ assessors do not visit prisons – they “are too busy”, and just do a paper exercise – they did not meet anyone who had been through the course. They did not see Godfrey Poku, whose attendance in Time4Change turned his life around. He now teaches in a primary school, stopping children drifting into crime. The assessors also failed to meet the headteacher who gave Godfrey the post, and who attends the graduations. Godfrey says: “I cannot believe this is happening.” Mr Aitken told us: “I am astonished and appalled at this truly bad decision by the MoJ umpires.” He has seen every course and every participant.

The assessors did not talk with the other officers in the prison, who tell me whenever I visit that schemes such as Time4Change are exactly the sort of thing they joined the prison service to run. They did not meet the motivational speakers who join the graduation ceremonies to share their life experiences, many of whom spent time in prison and have moved on to either great success, or to leading happy and healthy lives outside.

They did not meet the families who attend the graduation. They did not speak with Nur, a young woman who was standing outside Pentonville looking lost at one graduation and who told me her brother was graduating. She said he had been excluded from school, got caught up in crime, was arrested with a knife, and sent to prison. Her parents were ashamed of him, but she knew how proud he was of taking Time4Change, and how proud she was of him. She has kept in touch. He now works for Transport for London as a Customer Assistant and is going to college. I told her of this decision. She says she will pray during Ramadan that this decision is overturned, and for those who will miss out on the chances her brother was given, and then accepted, to get a future.

They did not meet the father of the young man who played a classical improvisation on his violin and received a standing ovation from the 18-25-year-old men, or the mother who cried when her son performed a rap starting “I wish I had listened to my mum.” I cried too, as did everyone there. If they had met the families who come along, with children, they would have understood that this is an important part of the course as it reminds those in jail what they are missing and what they can go back to.

They would have seen the mutual respect and appreciation of those members of what Mr Taylor says is a “hard to involve group” and understood that this course not only impacts on the future lives of the graduates, but actually makes a difference to day to day life on the various prison wings, as people on the course mix together regardless of their previous postcodes and backgrounds. But they don’t visit. It is a paper exercise. And they will not talk about it with us.

If it was me

I love the Winter Olympics. If I were asked to judge the Ice Dance competition I would jump at the chance, even though I know nothing about it. But I would go and watch, not just stare at sheets of paper, and if my scores were different from those given by experts such as Torvill and Dean, I would question my judgement. Perhaps I gave too many points because it is so slippery out there.

Here, however, the judgements were made with absolute certainty. And regardless of what people like Charlie Taylor, who knows quite a bit about prisons, and Lord Hastings, who knows about rehabilitation, and Lord Timpson, who has it in his job description, think. Also they ignore what the students did, and how it impacts on the prison. I do not blame those who carried this out, but think they could explain. I blame the ridiculous system.

Look at Sycamore Tree. Its Restorative Justice sessions ran for 25 years around the country, so it would not have been hard for any assessors to get to one near them. The sessions featured victims of serious crime talking directly to those in prison about how crime has wider implications than just losing a few quid to a thief, or having stuff stolen from your home. One such victim, whose brother was beaten up by a gang and thrown into a pond where he drowned, told me that he felt his brother was with him when he walked into prisons, and that Sycamore Tree being scrapped killed his brother again. He knew he was steering people away from crime. I would not sleep if I was responsible for his renewed sorrow.

There is a long list of people who changed completely after Sycamore Tree, and dedicate their lives to stopping others from getting involved in criminality. That is not happening now as there was nothing better to replace it, thanks entirely to this exercise. It is clearly bringing down great schemes. That is the work of the Ministry of Justice, and I despair. And yet nobody will come forward and explain why it is a good thing.

You cannot assess anything properly on paper, you have to look at it to understand it. It is an academic exercise but it is all about people’s lives, futures, and chances in life. They should not be subject to a superficial analysis like some sort of cheap TV game show. I am sure those doing this work mean well, but this has to stop before other schemes are destroyed.

Final thoughts

Two last points, the first of which is a hope and expectation. I know CM Lafuente-Dyer will not run a third rate version of Time4Change, as it would betray the young men. However, I am certain he will want to produce something new that will meet their aspirations, as he did back in 2016. I know those who have been through the scheme, and the inspirational speakers who attended graduations, will help him. So something will come from this, and I trust the sad, dead, hand of the Intervention policy does not try and crush that.

The second is this. Perhaps this is not the story of Ozymandias with the crumbled stones. Perhaps this is the story written by Percy’s famous wife, Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein. A side issue here; she finished that notorious tale in a house in Marlow in Buckinghamshire which still stands though it is now a number of small cottages. Years ago a friend of mine owned one of those properties, and so I spent a number of nights sleeping in the room in which Mary Shelley completed her horror story. That is of no importance at all, but I like to remember it once in a while.

Anyway, apologies for that pointless digression and back to Frankenstein. The doctor was an academic who put together a plan to create a living creature from various parts, but instead made a monster that went around destroying life and hope with wanton abandon. In the end, people got together with pitchforks and burning torches and drove both Frankenstein and his creation away. They vanished, never to be seen again.

Perhaps, metaphorically speaking, that could happen here. If enough people are angry over this academically-invented monstrosity of a scheme, administered by the National Framework for Interventions Panel, then they could make a fuss with metaphorical pitchforks and metaphorical burning torches. If anyone has a metaphorical pitchfork, I could provide some metaphorical matches. This monster must not harm any more lives.

--oo00oo--

As an aside and given the astonishing Green Party victory in Thursday's Gorton and Denton by-election, AI reminds us of their criminal justice policies:-

The Green Party criminal justice policy focuses on rehabilitation, crime prevention, and reducing the prison population through a "justice reinvestment" approach. Key proposals include a presumption against custodial sentences under two years, investing heavily in probation services, ending routine stop and search, and legalising or decriminalising drugs to treat addiction as a public health issue.

Key Criminal Justice Policies:

Prison Reform & Alternatives: Proposes a presumption against prison sentences of under two years, favoring community-based rehabilitation, especially for women and young people.

Sentencing & Courts: Advocates for a £2.5bn investment to repair the "crumbling" court system and reduce case backlogs.

Drugs Policy: Supports the decriminalisation of personal drug possession, focusing on harm reduction programmes, with leadership discussing the legalisation of all drugs.

Policing & Rights: Seeks to repeal the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Act, which they argue restrict the right to protest.

Stop & Search: Calls for an end to routine stop and search and the use of facial recognition, citing disproportionate impact on Black and minority communities.

Victim Support: Promotes restorative justice to give victims a greater voice and help offenders take responsibility.

The Greens argue that many crimes are driven by poverty and austerity, advocating for investment in social services rather than building more prisons.

MoJ Grabs Youth Justice

Thanks go to the long term friend and supporter of this blog for pointing us in the direction of the recently published paper A Modern Youth Justice System that many feel will be anything but bad news for the one part of the criminal justice system that works reasonably well. Rob Allen has this to say about it:-   

Youth Justice - A Missed Opportunity?

There are some things to welcome in the government’s youth justice policy statement presented to Parliament today. Improved funding arrangements should enable local services to divert more children from crime, particularly knife crime and develop more effective alternatives to custody especially for those on remand. Plans to better incentivise local authorities to keep children awaiting trial for serious crimes in the community look promising.

But does the package really add up to the self-proclaimed “foundations fit for the future” of a modern system?

Yes, the government’s making some structural change- but it’s of questionable merit. They’re going further than the independent review of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) (also out today), by relieving the YJB of its roles in developing youth justice standards, overseeing how well they’re being met and advising ministers accordingly- as well as disbursing funds. These functions will revert to the Ministry of Justice, in line with cross government plans to cut spending and give ministers more decision-making powers.

The Board has at least survived, something of a surprise following its last minute reprieve from the 2010 bonfire of the quangos and loss of its responsibilities for youth custody in 2017. It would certainly have been odd to scrap entirely a New Labour creation which has been at the heart of what today’s statement calls “one of the great societal success stories in modern Britain.” The YJB will be a shadow of its former self however much it can make of its new mission of driving continuous improvement.

David Lammy’s statement also has some honest words on the dismaying conditions for children in custody, particularly Young Offender Institutions “too old and too big, they are austere and unsafe, and they were often not designed to hold children at all”. It’s just what Charlie Taylor said in his 2016 review since when the distraction of the Secure School has led to 10 wasted years. Work is now promised on a plan that is realistic, affordable, and focused on achievable outcomes, getting children safely out of their rooms and into education. Key to that will be investment in the right kinds of values and skills among staff.

That indicates where today’s proposals don’t go far enough. This was an opportunity to move youth justice policy out of the Ministry of Justice into the Department for Education. Developing the best response to children in trouble of course involves many departments and agencies. That’s why the variety of experience and expertise among YJB members is so important. Taking responsibility from them and giving it to MoJ officials seems a mistake; better the YJB report to a department more centrally involved with promoting the interests of children.

Youth Justice Minister Jake Richards recognises that successful policy and practice relies predominantly on activities outside his department’s remit. He recently expressed frustration at how long the Health department took to get the best child psychologist in the country to write a one-pager for staff at the Secure Training Centre on how to manage girls locked up there.

Lammy will “soon set out our plans for the system as a whole and, taken together, we believe these proposals will amount to the most fundamental reform of the youth justice system in a generation.”

To do that should paradoxically mean a significant reduction in his own responsibilities and a shift to a more fitting place in the machinery of government. After all, he who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Rob Allen

Guest Blog 106

Unintended Consequences or Quiet Conspiracy?

I'm retired a few years now but I spent nearly 40 years of my career in and around probation. Like Jim I'm old school CQSW trained probation - and I would be the first to admit that I'm distant from modern day probation practice. But that doesn't stop me from caring about what is happening to probation or trying to work out how we ended up in such a mess. So I jotted the following thoughts down. I thought I would share them here. I'm sorry they got too long so I'll have to do it in parts.

When you look at what has happened to probation and prisons over the past decades, you can approach it in two ways. Either it’s a story of unintended consequences—well-meaning reforms that spiralled into dysfunction—or it’s the product of a subtle, persistent ideological project driven by right-wing political and commercial interests. In truth, you don’t need to believe in conspiracy to see how powerful interests lined up behind the same direction of travel: marketisation, managerialism, and a performative toughness on crime. The outcomes, planned or not, have been the same.

1. Privatisation: When Ideology Meets Profit

The probation and prison services became testing grounds for the idea that the private sector can always deliver public services more efficiently. It didn’t matter that evidence was thin or that services relied on professional relationships rather than widgets on a production line—privatisation fitted a political worldview and appealed to commercial providers keen for long-term government contracts.

The result? Large outsourcing firms took over supervision, tagging, and entire prisons. Success was measured in contract compliance rather than human outcomes. Inevitably, quality gave way to cost-cutting. Staff were stretched. Services became fragmented. And when things went wrong, the response wasn’t to question the model but to double down on it.

2. Managerialism: The Belief That Targets Fix Everything

A deep belief in managerialism crept across the justice system. It told ministers that if you create the right KPIs, dashboards, and compliance regimes, services would magically improve. But probation and prisons aren’t factory floors. They’re complex, relational environments where trust and time matter.

The managerial turn shifted culture from professional judgement to box-ticking, from human contact to case throughput. Officers increasingly spent more time recording their work than doing it. Decisions became less about what helps an individual change and more about what satisfies the audit trail. In the process, creativity, discretion and empathy were squeezed out.

3. Appealing to the Public’s Punitive Instincts

Politically, there’s always been an easier sell in punishment than rehabilitation. Saying you're “tough on offenders” gets headlines and applause lines; saying you want to invest in rehabilitation gets you accusations of being soft.

So the political incentives tilted decisively toward enforcement: more tagging, more conditions, more surveillance, more breaches, more recall. “Help” became “compliance.” Probation’s identity shifted from a service that supported people into one that monitored them.

It is cheaper and more electorally convenient to promise punishment than to engage the public in the harder truth that rehabilitation is messy, individual, and long-term—and far more effective in reducing crime.

4. The Cultural Shift: From Care to Control

Probation once lived in the space between social work and criminal justice. It was a service that believed people could change and worked with them to make it happen.

But over time, the system moved steadily from care toward control. The pressure to enforce, the contractualisation of services, and the politicisation of crime all pushed probation to become an arm of enforcement rather than an agent of rehabilitation.

Prisons, too, became less about resettlement and more about containment. Overcrowding, underfunding and constant crisis management left little room for anything resembling rehabilitation.

5. So Was It a Conspiracy or a Collision of Interests?

You don’t need backroom plots or dark networks pulling strings. Right-wing political ideology, commercial interests, and managerialist thinking simply aligned. They didn’t have to coordinate—they shared assumptions:

the market is efficient
the private sector can do it better
punishment is popular
professionals need tighter control
rehabilitation is too complicated to sell

These beliefs produced structural change that hollowed out probation, overcrowded prisons, failed communities, and ultimately made society less safe.

What we’re living with now may not have been intended, but it certainly wasn’t accidental. When ideology, profit and political convenience march in the same direction, you don’t need a conspiracy. You just need a government willing to ignore the warnings.

6. And Now?

We’re left with a probation service recovering from fragmentation, a prison system bursting at the seams, and a political climate that still reaches for punitive solutions first. The road back to a system rooted in rehabilitation, professional expertise and humane purpose will be long.

But admitting the truth is a start: the damage didn’t happen by chance. It happened because the incentives favoured control over care, punishment over change, measurement over meaning, and ideology over evidence.

The question now is whether we’re willing to reverse that trajectory—or whether the unintended consequences will continue to play out exactly as some interests always expected they would.

Anon

Cause and Effect

We have a very serious situation:-

Trainee probation officer stabbed yesterday. Circumstances being kept tight lipped. Questions raised as to why changes since Preston haven’t been implemented, being blamed on funding and all offices requesting it. Not good enough. I don’t want to work for this service anymore, we are not valued.

******
Almost 6 months after the last one. Still no security or scanners in the office. Yet Martin Davis assures us staff security is at a premium. yeah right sure it is.

*******
If things are being missed when certain behaviours mean alarm bells would be ringing loudly... then where the hell is the management leadership and oversight, and when is it going to be properly held to account rather than case managers being blamed totally and punished in isolation under the SFO procedure, leaving managers in the clear.

*******
Good on Mr Gilmore. Win, lose or draw, he should be able to clarify a situation which exists in this country too. I had issues previously about a pre-sentence report where there was a great disparity between what the quality control audit people felt and what the sentencing judge thought. I asked the question, who are we writing the report for, the probation service or the sentencer? There was much huffing and puffing and a bit of threatening before it all went away unanswered. I know from speaking to colleagues that I was not on my own.

*******
I can recall being in a parole hearing when the case manager was asked to express their opinion on how manageable was risk. The initial response was, ‘my manager says…..’ the panel quite rightly pressed the matter in line with Parole Board rules and we’re then told, ‘the area manger thinks,……’ Upon being asked a third time, they were told, ’the MAPPA committee has decided……’ This is what they have created. Supposed professionals who either don’t have, or who aren’t allowed to express an opinion.

*******
There's one seriously important & invaluable observation from Acheson, one that NOMS/MoJ/HMPPS has never understood and will never understand, as they have no concept of managing that tightrope:

"I can still remember when these organisations were different but complementary entities. As the Governor of a prison with a lifer unit, I was inclined to keep most of the risk inside the walls and my colleague, the seconded senior probation officer, had the opposite perspective. That creative tension meant good risk-based decisions happened."

This puts me in mind of the similar *necessary* tensions that existed between Pre-Sentence Report authors & sentencers, carefully crafting argument & counter-argument, balancing all facts & considerations in a bid to realise the most appropriate & effective outcome. A balance that was shattered - & shat all over - when 'the centre' decided that concordance rates (probation proposals were in alignment with sentence outcomes) were a key performance indicator. Proof positive they had no concept of what constituted meaningful risk assessment.

Again, to quote Acheson:

"It was certainly no worse than the algorithmic, push button approach that dominates today."

*******
Two stabbing in the space of five months and no actual physical changes in offices to safeguard staff. Lockers to be installed but what about weapons concealed against the person? Workloads through the roof, a culture of bullying from senior management, and a pay deal that isn’t likely to materialise this financial year leaving staff struggling against the cost of living rises. What a sh*t place to work.

*******
Unfortunately since the Damien Bendall murders in 2021 HMPPS have forced Probation to over risk, cover backs and have trained new staff (and bullied/threatened experienced staff) to see offenders as the 'enemy' and to breach and recall for any slight issue. New staff haven't been encouraged to build rapport or develop relationships but to hit targets and write Oasys. This has made offenders see us as basically police or community prison officers who aren't there to help and support but to hinder, control and punish. I'm generalising but it's how I see the situation and I don't think it's possible to turn the tanker around...

*******
Very sad and shocked to read the extraordinary staff briefing yesterday afternoon. A trainee PO stabbed in Oxfordshire Probation office. Thankfully not critical but the trauma for them and colleagues must be enormous. What is being done to protect us as this is becoming a very real threat now with the proliferation of knives.

********

Recall, breach, recall, breach, exterminate, exterminate, PQIQ Daleks

--oo00oo--

Lets just cut to the chase here. 'Probation is now seen as the enemy' fed into Google AI delivers this:-

The idea that "probation is now seen as the enemy" stems from a shift in its role from rehabilitation to a more punitive, risk-management-focused system, which can be perceived as adversarial by offenders. This change is linked to increased bureaucracy, pressure from managerialism, and a focus on "tick-box" procedures rather than social inclusion. As a result, probation officers are sometimes seen as part of the state's penal apparatus rather than as supportive "friends" who help offenders lead non-criminal lives.

Shift in focus: The original purpose of probation was to "advise, assist and befriend" offenders, but this has been increasingly overshadowed by a focus on risk management and punishment.

Increased bureaucracy: A "tick-box" culture and heavy procedures dominate the service, sometimes undermining the judgment of individual officers and causing offenders to feel that progress is being hindered.

Punitive measures: The system has become more risk-averse, making breaches of community orders and licences, which can lead to re-sentencing or prison, a default position for probation staff.

Perceived as adversarial: The more punitive and bureaucratic nature of modern probation means offenders can see their probation officers not as helpers, but as adversaries or the "enemy" who are trying to catch them out.

Cultural and structural changes: The service's integration with the prison service and its placement within the civil service have been criticized as culturally inappropriate, further contributing to this perception of a more adversarial system.

--oo00oo--

England once had a gold-standard and world-leading Probation Service that was informed by a Social Work ethos and staffed with highly skilled and well-motivated professionals able to exercise skill and judgement to 'advise, assist and befriend' in furtherance of both rehabilitation and public protection. Management, at the behest of politicians, have destroyed that over recent years and brought us to the point of utter chaos, rammed prisons, totally demoralised workforce and England having become an outlier as far as enlightened world-wide practice is concerned. This cannot go on as Acheson indicates:-

"But there’s no time and no appetite for any more change in this much abused and misunderstood service. The Government has made its choice on sentencing, and that is to load even more risk onto an agency that can’t guarantee public protection and rehabilitation with existing workloads."

The Government must bite the bullet - Probation as part of HMPPS is totally unfit for purpose and must be reformed and recast or things will get even worse.

Towards a Moral Revolution

I must be honest, I've become increasingly demoralised by the criminal justice picture emerging on a daily basis, together with no sign of hope for the Probation Service returning to something approaching the force for good it once was. Having to admit failure is never an easy thing to do and I've always had the naive belief that a blog could be part of trying to make things better. Surely the force of sound argument, evidence and testimony can change things?

Our recent discussions surrounding morality have very neatly brought us to the BBC's Reith lectures and a tantalising notion of hope in the offing. I urge readers to come along on this journey. I didn't catch the first broadcast on Tuesday, but listened to the linear repeat last night. It's good and it's promising:-

"What we need now is not just better policies or better politicians. We need a moral revolution. We need to revive an ancient idea, almost laughable in today's climate, that the purpose of power is to do good. And that is the goal of this lecture series. To argue that the most urgent transformation of our time is not technological or geopolitical or industrial, but moral. We need a new kind of ambition, not for status, or wealth, or fame, but for integrity, courage, and public service, a moral ambition. This may sound.....   And yet, it's precisely because things can get much worse that they can also get much better. History is not just a record of the declines. It's also full of astonishing turnarounds. In my next Reith Lecture, I will show how moral revolutions have shaped the past and how we can make it happen again."

The transcript indicates a missing word, so I used AI to sort it:-

"The most likely missing word is "controversial" or another word with a similar meaning, as the full sentence would be: "This may sound controversial, and yet, it's precisely because things can get much worse that they can also get much better." The statement suggests that the potential for extreme negative outcomes provides the necessary impetus for significant positive change."

The transcript can be found here and all episodes here.

Moral Bankruptcy

Continuing with our morality theme, regular contributor 'Getafix has unearthed yet another interesting contribution to the discussion here:- 

Challenging the moral bankruptcy of the criminal justice system

Justice is an interpretive process, from the investigation of alleged crimes through to trial, acquittal or conviction, punishments for past actions, deterrents and identification and prevention of potential future threats and possible rehabilitative interventions.

This represents a considerable number of interpretive acts involving a significant number of agencies and professional groupings. The criminal justice system is procedurally bureaucratic and criticised by just about everyone involved: it fails victims, the accused (including those on remand), criminals (whether on probation, in prison, on parole) and communities. It seems that no one is satisfied with the processes or outcomes of justice. Add to this the realities of institutional racism, sexism, homophobia and transgender bias, then there would appear to be a significant problem.

In terms of punishment, there is no disagreement on the facts of record imprisonment rates and their consequences including the exacerbation of existing problems – overcrowding, terrible prison conditions, addiction, mental health problems, self-harm and suicide. Once understood, this should be genuinely terrifying, but despite this knowledge, nothing changes.

The ‘tough on crime’ consensus between both the left and the right of politics is based on individualism and market economics, where – despite the rhetoric of rehabilitation – punishment and incapacitation are the sole purposes of prisons. They have become places of deliberate torture and suffering, with institutions such as the National Probation Service providing a constant conveyor belt of supply by returning people to prison often for technical breaches of orders rather than for having committed more crimes.

Build more prisons, recruit more staff, so that more people can be punished more efficiently and effectively, conflate treatment and rehabilitation with punishment to keep people employed and economies stimulated. Tough deterrent sentencing ensures that more people are imprisoned, and quite simply people are set up to fail. This circular, self-justifying rationale fails to deliver justice or healing, to victims, criminals or communities. While private companies may welcome the profits, morally the approach is bankrupt.

In Redemptive Criminology we argue that the places of justice are the places of injustice, with utilitarian justifications for punishment being stupid, banal and dangerous. People who have committed crimes become the necessary scapegoats around which we can all cohere by agreeing on their guilt and using the innocence of victims to justify harsher punishments. It seems that, in an age of global anxiety, the necessity of punishment is the only certainty that we can agree on.

Winston Churchill famously said in 1910:

“The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country. A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the state and even of convicted criminals against the state, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry of all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if only you can find it in the heart of every person – these are the symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it.” (Hansard, 20th July 1910).

We fail every single criterion that Churchill articulates. He was not a man renowned for compassion, his politics are not our politics, but that difference is important because despite political differences we should agree that a common humanity, an understanding of virtue, and the rights of every person are at the heart of both the meaning and the practices of criminal justice espoused in our politics. A civilised justice system expects and demands that punishments are limited by inalienable human rights. This is opposed to the open-ended approach of actuarial risk and public protection measures, and deterrent sentencing.

Institutional justice implies shared values and institutional memory and a need for the organisations involved to be learning organisations. At the heart of this process is a conformity–creativity paradox. One of the interesting things to come out of the assault on institutional justice from the populist insurrections of both Trump and Johnson is that to maintain systems of justice that have integrity, we need people who are committed to human rights and due process, are able to resist and push back.

Once we are aware, then we need to act. The authentic practitioner is a non-violent practitioner, someone who is trying to bring peace to situations of conflict, and thus transforming society from the ‘bottom up’. This firstly involves understanding the self in the light of others within the systemic context (conflict) and exploring the boundaries of professional practice in day-to-day interactions and decision making. In challenging violence and discrimination within the CJS, practitioners must develop a hermeneutical narrative to understand their own complicity in violence and discrimination. 

Hermeneutical narrative is the process of understanding our own story of how we have arrived where we are and how we take our lived experience into professional practice. Conformity requires replication, creativity, originality. Any of these can be problematically rooted in our own potential for violence. Only authentic practitioners working through their own thoughts, feelings and actions in collaboration with others can disentangle the inherent violence of institutional processes to enable working with self-organising capacities and allow new things to emerge rather than repeating the same. 

Andrea Albutt, President of the Prison Governors’ Association, has identified the ongoing commitment to increasing prison places as lunacy, and Jo Farrell, the new Chief Constable of Police Scotland has acknowledged that the force is institutionally racist. Other leaders must follow these examples of honesty by providing resources for their staff to reflect on their own practice individually and collectively to promote change in their organisations. This is most powerfully effective at team level.

Practitioners must engage with the contested concept of forgiveness. In Redemptive Criminology we develop a rereading of the Judaeo-Christian understanding of forgiveness to argue that this provides us with a dynamic energy in the systemic space between victims, criminals and communities. Forgiveness is the space of possibility that is given up front rather than the end-point reward for jumping through hoops (aka atonement). With the latter, the end point is never reached, another aspect of the moral bankruptcy of the system – people are locked in with no way out. Failure is profitable.

By being authentically human we recognise the authentically human in others, meaning that we see them as human beings first (human rights are grounded in that common humanity) before the requirements of justice or the job that we are required to do. Irrespective of the crimes committed, this embracing of the other’s humanity ensures their rights are recognised, welcomed and ensured. It acknowledges and does not forget harms caused to others, but ultimately recognises the possibility of some degree of healing so that those harms are not replicated.

Authentic practice then is that space between conformity and creativity which invites all those involved to recognise their own complicity in violence and to do things differently, trying to ensure that cycles of violence – whether personal, institutional or both – are broken, and providing a way forward for all those involved.

Aaron Pycroft PhD Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Social Complexity, University of Portsmouth, UK. Clemens Bartollas PhD Emeritus Professor of Criminology, University of Northern Iowa, USA.

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This starts this morning 9.00am BBC Radio 4

BBC Reith Lectures 2025 – Moral Revolution

Bregman's 2025 Reith Lectures will reflect on moments in history, including the likes of the suffragette and abolitionist movements, which have sparked transformative moral revolutions, offering hope for a new wave of progressive change. Across four lectures, he will also consider the explosive technological progress of recent years - placing us at a moment of immense risk and possibility, and will look ahead to how we might shape the future.