Reality Check

World-first crackdown to restrict offenders’ freedom and give it back to victims

So, it’s 2:30 am, little Johnny has had one over the eight, triggering his alcohol tag……he is at his ‘mates’ house who told him to ignore his curfew at 11 pm, but being the good little soldier he is, he decides to walk home and in the dark mistakes Sevestapol Terrace for Florizel Street and breaches his proximity tag……he gets home safely and decides to get his head down…..that’s three breaches to address at 9am by his PO …..

In a bad night if you have two or three in a similar position it will be afternoon before you have done all the paperwork……but don’t worry the SPO says let the AI do it……but as his PO is covering two officers on maternity and stress leave, it’s closer to mid afternoon before it gets done….in the meantime little Billy has been picked up by the Feds for dropping his trousers in Tesco, it was in Lidl that triggered the original offence last time….and little Amelia has failed to turn up for her appointment....

Two Parole reports to be completed by Friday……a Mappa referral for little Billy at the insistence of the SPO and all day is spent trying to complete a housing referral for houses that don’t exist.The next day on the all staff call, the PO is told how much they are valued but the questions and comments are turned off as the management don’t want to hear what the valued staff members think…..it now turns out that Little Billy held a worker against their will for 15 seconds and has also been charged with False Imprisonment triggering an SFO…………..but don’t worry, our staff are the heartbeat of the organisation…………..

A fairy tale or an apocryphal future, coming soon to an office near you…….with apologies to the London and Manchester offices as it has already arrived there………

Anon

--oo00oo--

So the annual recruitment fiasco is now complete. Three different closing dates tells the tale, they cannot recruit enough staff, nobody wants the job and the attrition rate amongst the newbies is high. The reasons are simple, the recruitment process is flawed, partially because of the online process and like the promotion interviews give people the opportunity to inflate their knowledge and experience and then are found wanting in the role. 

Those of us with 25 years plus service are seen as dinosaurs by the management, the young thrusters are all 'yes' people and cannot deal with push back and this will not work. Recalls are through the roof because POs are not as versatile or able to deal with challenges and I am aware of certain SPOs operating a recall process to reduce caseloads especially those with 18 months and less to serve. 

There is a culture of giving many license conditions to those that don’t really need them but it is a 'just in case' scenario, not a fully fledged risk assessment and management process. There are far too many SPOs that should be back on the floor learning the profession and get all these QDOs back on field duties and have their crayons and bar charts removed and PTAs should have at least ten years post qualifying experience. 

Hark, I hear, 'why don’t you take up a SPO role?', because I am not a mouthpiece for management, I can do a lot more good managing complex and risky cases and pushing back and annoying the management and not ticking boxes, keeping a list of things that I have not done this week because I did not have the time. 

Work your hours and push back, we are in a position of strength and the worst they can do is threaten you with competency, but if you get your team to do it with you, you have the power and the upper hand. Be strong, be brave but most of all be honest to yourself and live a life.  Switch the phone and laptop off on Friday and leave it until 0900 Monday morning and switch off every day when you want to, but only do the hours and then the SPOs will have to pick up the incomplete work not you and not your colleagues.

Anon

Editor's note

Who writes this crap?

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."

Tipping Point Already Passed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keeping a close eye

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concerns over direction of travel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tipping point

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

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

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

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

Mike Nellis

Serious Tagging Concerns

With so much going on in the probation world recently, the following article from Civil Service World about tagging has slipped down the agenda. The subject only got a brief mention on Monday at the Public Accounts Committee car crash session and the oft-quoted '£700 million':-

Probation Service ‘being set up to fail’ with tagging expansion, committee says

Peers warn resourcing for planned surge in electronic monitoring is "almost certain” to be not enough

A House of Lords committee has warned that the Probation Service is in danger of “being set up to fail” as part of the Ministry of Justice’s planned expansion of electronic monitoring (EM) to help ease the prison capacity crisis.

Under proposals set out in the Sentencing Bill, which was introduced to parliament in September, the number of people required to undergo tagging as part of the terms of their release is set to increase significantly.

However, a letter from members of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee to MoJ ministers raises serious concerns about the resourcing for the expansion being offered to the Probation Service. Peers also question the capacity of private sector providers to cope with a near doubling of the number of offenders and defendants required to wear EM devices as a condition of their release into the community.

The committee says the government’s plans envisage 22,000 more people being subject to tagging each year – a significant hike on the 26,647 people being electronically monitored at the end of September. However, it says an extra £100m earmarked for investment into EM only represents an uplift of 30%.

The peers’ 28-page letter notes the MoJ’s “much trailed” pledge to invest £700m in the Probation Service over the next four years, but says the share that will go into staff hiring, development and retention is “almost certain to be insufficient”.

It also directly challenges the MoJ’s reliance on suppliers previously found to have massively overcharged the ministry for EM services.

“We find it extraordinary that contracts were awarded to both Serco and AUEM despite being found by the Serious Fraud Office to have been dishonestly misleading the government while providing EM services,” the letter states. Allied Universal Electronic Monitoring – or AUEM for short – is the new name for G4S Monitoring Technologies.

Serco and G4S wrongly billed the MoJ for tens of millions of pounds for tagging services under EM contracts first awarded in 2005. G4S eventually repaid the department £100m, and Serco repaid £70.5m. Investigations by the SRO resulted in Serco being fined £19.2m plus £3.7m costs and G4S being fined £38.5m plus £5.9m costs over the scandal.

The committee’s letter goes on to say: “Continued failures in service provision from Serco in particular lead us to conclude that without major changes in contract management, including flexing to additional providers where necessary, EM service provision will continue to be woefully inadequate.”

Committee chair Lord Don Foster said the government needed to reassess its approach to electronic monitoring.

“The Probation Service needs more funding, and many more well-trained staff if there is to be a successful EM expansion,” he said. “Without this, the Probation Service is being set up to fail. It is startling that the government is promoting the biggest expansion of EM in a generation at a time of great technological advancement yet does not see fit to accompany this with a new strategy.”

Foster said the rise of new technologies, including non-fitted devices and AI, further highlighted the importance of a new strategy that clearly defines the purpose of EM to both the judiciary and the public.

He added that a new presumption that all prison leavers will be subject to EM on their release from custody had the potential to hinder the Probation Service in its work.

“This blanket approach to tagging, regardless of crime and circumstances, diminishes the role of effective, targeted probation interventions, and risks creating an unethical system that is overly punitive and disproportionate,” Foster said.

Proper resourcing and training for the Probation Service is front and centre of the committee’s recommendations to ministers.

Additionally, peers are also calling on ministers to prioritise the publication of a new EM strategy that “comprehensively covers” the rollout, scaling, and implementation of the government’s new approach. The letter says the strategy should also address ethical issues, and the “intersection” between EM and AI.

Further demands include more longitudinal studies of the long-term efficacy of EM – both pre- and post-tag removal – in terms of reducing reoffending, supporting victims, and detecting crime.

Peers are also calling on ministers to “immediately begin” a tendering process to expand the number of EM service providers available to the MoJ.

An MoJ spokesperson said: “Tagging is a critical tool in our efforts to punish offenders and evidence shows it’s increasingly proving its effectiveness in cutting reoffending and keeping the public safe. That’s why we are increasing the probation budget by around 45% over the next three years and investing an extra £100m into electronic monitoring so we can tag tens of thousands more offenders under our upcoming reforms. We will carefully consider the committee’s findings and respond in due course.”

The ministry added that Serco has improved its performance and backlogs from last year had been cleared, with the number of outstanding visits back to normal levels. It said a “series of measures” had been introduced to toughen up scrutiny of Serco, including direct access to its systems.

The MoJ said it was “very confident” that its tagging service could meet the additional demand of the proposed reforms and said it is “working with suppliers to ensure change is implemented effectively”.

A Serco spokesperson said the company’s performance on the MoJ electronic-monitoring contract had “improved significantly” and that it is now “successfully tagging record numbers of offenders”.

“We disagree entirely with the committee’s suggestion that we lack the ability to cope with an increase to the volume of people tagged,” they said. “This is not based on recent evidence. We have already successfully dealt with a number of early release schemes and are well placed to deal with the forecast expansion in people being tagged.”

A Shot Across the Bows

Thanks go to regular 'Getafix contributor for pointing us in the direction of the following shot across the bows from Their Lordships:- 

Probation Service being set up to fail with tagging expansion, says Lords committee

The Justice and Home Affairs Committee today publishes a letter to the Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending and the Minister for Border Security and Asylum. In the letter, the Committee sets out its concerns about the woefully inadequate resources promised by the Government, and the absence of a new Electronic Monitoring (EM) strategy.The Committee also believes additional issues must be addressed before EM achieves its potential.

• Outcome of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee's inquiry into the use of Electronic Monitoring (EM): policy letter dated 5 November 2025 from the Chair to the Home Office and Ministry of Justice
• Inquiry: Investigation into electronic monitoring
• Justice and Home Affairs Committe

The letter

Electronic Monitoring (EM, commonly called tagging) is likely to double once the Sentencing Bill becomes law. This will require a significant increase in funding for the Probation Service, not least for additional staff and training.

It also requires a new EM strategy with a clearly defined purpose for how the Government believes EM should be used. Without such a strategy and additional funding, the probation service is being set up to fail, according to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

In its letter, the Committee finds:

• Poor communication to the Judiciary and the public by the Government, about the purpose and benefits of EM
• Insufficient evidence to support the efficacy of much of the use of EM, with evidence produced by the Government too often focusing on pilot studies and short-term reviews showing little to no evidence of quantifiable success
• Potential inability of current private contractors to handle the increase in those subject to EM
• Ethical concerns around the use of EM in some contexts, particularly its use in immigration bail
• Major concerns about the underwhelming, and at times dire, performance of the private sector providing EM services.
• Failure to fully grasp the opportunities provided by new technologies.

Chair's comments

Lord Foster of Bath, Chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee said:

“The Probation Service needs more funding, and many more well-trained staff if there is to be a successful EM expansion. Without this, the Probation Service is being set up to fail.

“It is startling that the Government is promoting the biggest expansion of EM in a generation at a time of great technological advancement yet does not see fit to accompany this with a new strategy.

“There is also a new presumption that all prison leavers will be subject to EM on their release from custody. This blanket approach to tagging, regardless of crime and circumstances, diminishes the role of effective, targeted probation interventions, and risks creating an unethical system that is overly punitive and disproportionate.

“Alongside a major boost in funding and training, and a reassessment of procurement and contract management, a new EM strategy is crucial. At a time when the use of EM is changing, with numbers almost doubling and the intention to tag most prison leavers ‘at source’, the Government must reassess its approach to EM. The rise of new technologies, including non-fitted devices and AI, further highlight the importance of a new strategy, one which clearly defines the purpose of EM to both the judiciary and the public.

“We look forward to the Government’s response to the observations and recommendations in this letter.”

Winner, Winner, Michelin 5 Star Dinner!

What is becoming crystal clear is that there is no extra money for probation at all. That much vaunted £700 million is all going on tagging. The future is - tagging, recalling, tagging, recalling, tagging, recalling (& bagging contracts). Thanks go to the contributor for putting all the following together:-

We start with this:-

EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM TO THE ELECTRONIC MONITORING (RESPONSIBLE PERSONS) (AMENDMENT) ORDER 2024 2024 No. 328

"This memorandum provides some historical information concerning the behaviour of Serco and G4S who were previously awarded contracts in 2005 for electronic monitoring services in England and Wales.Under those contracts, Serco and G4S overcharged the Ministry of Justice including multiple times for the same cases and for cases where the monitored person had died. This issue came to light in 2013, contracts were terminated, and the matter was referred to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for investigation." 

(the excuses on serco's behalf up front)

Some gems from this memo:

* Licence conditions should be preventative as opposed to punitive and must be proportionate, reasonable and necessary.

* The exception is where prisoners are released early on Home Detention Curfew... For these prisoners the curfew also has a punitive role that reflects the fact that they are still serving the custodial element of the sentence.

* Serco and G4S overcharged the Ministry of Justice including multiple times for the same cases and for cases where the monitored person had died.

* A Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with Serco was approved by Mr Justice William Davis, resulting in a fine of £19.2m and the payment of compensation to the Ministry of Justice of £70m.

* The SFO agreed to the DPA in recognition of Serco’s prompt and voluntary self-disclosure of the fraudulent conduct

Uh? ... "A subsidiary of contracting giant Serco will pay a £19.2m fine after admitting lying to the Ministry of Justice about the true extent of profits from supplying electronic tags. Lisa Osofsky, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said SGL ‘engaged in a concerted effort to lie to the Ministry of Justice in order to profit unlawfully at the expense of UK taxpayers’. The conduct came to light in late 2013 in an investigation into Serco and its employees in respect of the tagging contract."

Ah, I see... "Credit was given in the deferred prosecution agreement for the prompt compensation payment to the MoJ"

The background is neatly summarised by the SFO itself:

“Serco Geografix Ltd devised a scheme to defraud the Ministry of Justice by hiding the true extent of the profits being made between 2010 and 2013 by its parent company, Serco Limited, from its contract for the provision of electronic monitoring services. By dishonestly misleading the Ministry of Justice in this way, Serco Geografix Ltd prevented the Ministry of Justice from attempting to limit any of Serco Limited’s future profits, recover any of Serco Limited’s previous profits, seek more favourable terms during renegotiations of contracts, or otherwise threaten Serco Limited’s contract revenues."

Hence the 'prompt and voluntary self-disclosure of the fraudulent conduct' via:

* falsifying accounting records to overstate revenue earned and costs incurred in the performance of the services (charges 1-4);

* falsifying its Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ending 31 December 2011 by reporting an additional £7.5m of purported revenue (charge 5).

But then: "On 26 April 2021, the prosecution by the Serious Fraud Office (the "SFO") of fraud charges against two former directors of Serco Geografix Limited ("Serco") collapsed. At the commencement of the trial, 9 years after the conduct underlying the charges began, and 7 years after the SFO commenced its investigation into Serco, disclosure failings came to light."

Winner Winner, Michelin 5 Star Dinner! MoJ gets a £70million bung, Serco get £hundreds-of-millions in new contracts, Serco directors aren't prosecuted, er, that's it. Nothing to see here. It's all perfectly normal.

The Contract awarded:

Electronic Monitoring Field and Monitoring Service (FMS). The provision of contact and monitoring centre and field service functions for Electronic Monitoring. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has awarded this contract for the provision of Electronic Monitoring Services (EMS)... FMS is a service which has been delivered under one national contract... FMS includes the monitoring of offenders released on licence which covers Global Positioning System (GPS) monitoring, Radio Frequency (RF) monitoring and Alcohol monitoring (AM).

Value of contract: £329,900,000.00

Contract start date: 27 October 2023
Contract end date: 30 April 2030

This contract was awarded to 1 supplier: Serco Corporate Services Ltd

--oo00oo--

House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee

Investigation into electronic monitoring 16 September 2025

The Justice and Home Affairs Committee is questioning Lord Timpson OBE DL, Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending and Jim Barton, Director for Probation Reform and Electronic Monitoring at the Ministry of Justice. The Committee will cover a range of topics, including the purpose of Electronic Monitoring, the future of Electronic Monitoring technology, anticipated increases in the use of Electronic Monitoring, and the use of Electronic Monitoring in detecting and preventing crime. The Committee will also ask about accountability mechanisms for private contractors, the consequences of breaching an Electronic Monitoring order, and the move to tag prison leavers as they leave prison.

The job title that sums it up in one pay packet: Director for Probation Reform and Electronic Monitoring. Highlights of the Timpson/Barton oral evidence... read it & weep:

On tagging:

Lord Bach: My general question is about what the Ministry of Justice sees as the purpose of electronic monitoring. I suppose another way of putting it is to ask whether probation can manage offenders just as effectively without resorting to electronic monitoring.

Lord Timpson: Electronic monitoring has an absolutely key central role in the justice sector. Its role is as punishment... Because we know that the technology works, you can look at what the evidence is... The technology is going to get more interesting.

Lord Tope: the Government are saying they really want to go big on EM... Is there going to be a new strategy?

Lord Timpson: There is not going to be a new strategy, but we need to expand the way electronic monitoring works ... to help us manage offenders more effectively in the community... we are doing a trial starting next month in six prisons where we will be, as we call it, tagging at source. That is, before people leave prison, we will be putting the tag on their ankle.

The truth about the £700million:

Lord Filkin: The plan is to double its use over the next few years, which is a quite remarkable increase. First, is probation ready for this?

Lord Timpson: As we expand electronic monitoring... We also need more probation staff... It is a case of recruiting them and training them up to do the job. That is where the £700 million of extra funding over the next three years is absolutely vital... I am confident in our suppliers’ ability to deliver this because I have ongoing conversations with them. I have had five board-level meetings with Serco.

Jim Barton: Building on the Minister’s evidence, we are working already with both suppliers in order to maximise the time that we have available to be ready for the expansion of EM... we have already delivered a doubling of the EM case load over the last five years. We have a track record of delivering significant expansions and innovations... How do we streamline process? That is where EM is so powerful, because it provides probation staff with data and information for them to have richer, more impactful conversations with the people on probation who they are working with.

On the contracts:

Lord Filkin: You have a duopoly, in effect, with just two suppliers, at a time when you are doubling your demand.

Lord Timpson: This is a contract that we inherited.

Lord Filkin: The implication of what you have said, Minister, is that you are contractually locked into those two suppliers. For how long are you contractually locked into those two suppliers?

Jim Barton: I am happy to come in on that point, Lord Filkin. There are a few points. The current contracts run until 2030. They are not monopoly contracts. If we wanted to, we would be able to run parallel competitions for alternative EM provision... We do not want to do that

The Chair: So that we are absolutely clear, the contract, as we understood it, with Serco and Allied Universal is basically a six-year contract from 2024 to 2030, but there is then an additional two-year option to extend it. During that period of time, you have said that you could be in a position to run a parallel contract or contracts

Jim Barton: To be really clear, we have no plan whatsoever to run a parallel contract... Our contracts work... We need to keep working with Serco and Allied Universal.

The Chair: Mr Barton, you are continuing to tell me what you have chosen to do. I am merely asking whether you have the option to do it differently, should you choose to do it differently.

Jim Barton: Apologies, Lord Chair. I think I said yes, but perhaps in Civil Service terms

The Chair: We hear very clearly where you are coming from, Mr Barton. We will move on.

The future:

Baroness Cash: We would be very interested to have some insight into what is coming.

Lord Timpson: The first thing to say is that everyone gets very excited about new things... We are exploring new hardware. We had a “Dragons’ Den” event before the Recess... We are trialling, from spring next year, live access for probation to where someone is. We will be able to check in. For example, an offender comes to see a probation officer and they say, “Why weren’t you at your appointment last week?” They say, “I was at the doctor’s”. They will be able to go in and say, “You weren’t at the doctor’s. You were in Blackpool for the day”... I am really determined that, if offenders do not comply, I can have sanctions on them and recall them back to prison, because it is a punishment and we need to use the data effectively.

Jim Barton: I have a few very quick additions, if I may... The acquisitive crime pathfinder that the Minister referenced is a good example of that, through which we are already able to provide, not live but overnight, GPS data for probation practitioners where they have robbers or burglars on their case load.

Lord Timpson: There is a small trial still going on in Northumberland on proximity tags

Oh yes, cobbler, we hear VERY, VERY clearly where you are coming from:

"Working in a prison is the most amazing job. If I had not gone down my path in commercial life, I think it would have been a most rewarding job to do. We have done a really good job on recruitment."

"I am really determined that, if offenders do not comply, I can have sanctions on them and recall them back to prison, because it is a punishment and we need to use the data effectively."

A Turning Point?

Isn't it extremely worrying that in this interview with David Gauke for Inside Time, the only mention of probation is in the context of bloody tagging:-

David Gauke Interview: ‘This is a turning point’

David Gauke’s review was the blueprint for last month’s Sentencing Bill. In an interview with Inside Time he gives his verdict on the Government’s plans

David Gauke thinks he has started something big. His ideas for changing the way sentences in England and Wales are served have been adopted by the Government and brought before Parliament last month. They ought to stem the month-by-month increase in prisoner numbers which has brought the prison system to the brink of crisis. But he wants to go further.

“I don’t see why the UK –England and Wales alongside Scotland – should have a prison population that is so much bigger than the rest of Western Europe, and so much bigger than was the case 30 years ago,” he tells me.

“I would like to think, maybe, that the review I chaired is a turning point, but it’s certainly not the completion of the process. I would like to see the prison population smaller than it is today, not larger. That’s never going to be something that can be achieved very quickly, but I think there’s an argument there to be won.”

The Sentencing Bill brings major changes. Most prisoners will serve only one-third of their term behind bars; most prison-leavers will wear tags whilst on licence; and most sentences of less than 12 months will be served in the community. It has been a long time in the making.

Capacity crisis

Since the Covid pandemic, the prison population has risen by 10,000, and it is still rising. Causes include more people held on remand, more recalled while on licence, but chiefly ‘sentence inflation’ – the trend for politicians and judges to make jail terms longer and longer.

At times in the past couple of years, there have been only a few hundred free places left in men’s jails. Successive governments have been forced to introduce unpopular early release schemes to ensure there are still places free for new arrivals.

Labour’s 2024 election manifesto promised a review of sentencing. In office, the party followed through on its pledge. Conscious that making punishments more lenient is never popular with voters, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer appointed a Conservative to lead the review. Giving the reforms a gloss of cross-party unity could only limit political fall-out.

The man selected was Mr Gauke. As justice secretary in Theresa May’s Tory government from 2018 to 2019, he had tried to stop people from being sent to prison for just a few months – but failed. Now he would have greater leeway to find radical solutions to the capacity crisis.

A numbers game

Mr Gauke was asked for a set of proposals which could reduce the prison population by 9,500. His report, published in May, went a bit further. It contained recommendations which he said would, if made law, lower the number of prisoners by 9,800.

But there’s a big ‘if’ in that sentence. The Sentencing Bill presented to Parliament last month includes many of Mr Gauke’s ideas, but some have been dropped and others watered down, leaving a package which the Government claims will reduce prisoner numbers by just 7,500. This, by ministers’ own admission, would not be enough to halt the rise in the prison population. But it would slow it down.

What does Mr Gauke think? “I am pleased that the Government is proceeding with the vast bulk of our recommendations,” he says. “Of course, there are some areas where they’re taking a slightly different approach to the one we outlined, but that’s only to be expected.

“I’m pleased to see a Government that is facing up to the realities of our present population and the need to address that in a strategic way, rather than trying to muddle through.”

Points of contention

One area where the Govern-ment has gone against Mr Gauke’s recommendations is prisoners serving Extended Determinate Sentences (EDS). Mr Gauke said they should benefit from an earlier release point, like those on fixed-term sentences. The Government rejected this.

Mr Gauke sees why, but believes ministers are wrong. “I do think there is a strong case for providing that incentivization for EDS offenders,” he says. “I can see that that is perhaps more politically sensitive than some of the other recommendations, given the nature of the offences that we are talking about. We live in a political world, but on the merits, I think our recommendation was fully justified.”

Another point of disagreement was on how the ‘earned release’ model will work. Mr Gauke recommended that well-behaved prisoners should serve one-third of their time, while those who behave badly should serve a maximum of two-thirds. The Government rejected this and says the badly-behaved should be eligible to have days added, via adjudications, until they end up serving their full term.

Mr Gauke sees a difficulty: “If, in practice, what we see is lots of offenders serving 100 per cent of their sentence, then you will have real problems in terms of the prison population. I just hope that those powers are used sparingly and proportionately.”

One particular concern, raised by Inside Time readers, is that prisoners might find their ‘earned release’ delayed if their prison does not offer enough courses or jobs for them to demonstrate progression. Mr Gauke is clear this should not happen: “As long as offenders do what they can, then they should be on track to be released a third of the way through.”

Fewer prisoners?

Among many Government announcements last month, the most eye-catching was that most prison-leavers will in future have to wear electronic tags. Mr Gauke is supportive. “The more that the general public can be reassured that those who are not in prison are being properly monitored in the community,” he says, “then, I think, the greater the public appetite will be for moving people out of prison.”

But he says probation must improve to cope with the extra demand: “Over the course of the review, I met people who were inside apparently because the monitoring wasn’t working, and not through their own fault – batteries running out, and matters such as this. I’d be very concerned if we were seeing a lot of evidence of that.”

Mr Gauke has worked closely with Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary until last month, even visiting Texas with her to see how earned release works there. He says: “I was impressed by her. She’s prepared to face up to some difficult decisions, and deal with longer-term problems rather than just what’s immediately in front of her.”

Regarding David Lammy, appointed last month as her successor, Mr Gauke sounds less certain: “I know David Lammy reasonably well and I’m confident that he’ll take forward this agenda and will want to be remembered as a reforming Lord Chancellor.”

I’m struck by Mr Gauke’s claim that his proposals can be a “turning point”, leading to a falling prison population, so I ask how confident he is. He hedges his bets, saying: “If we can get the probation service working, then I think there are grounds for optimism. But that is dependent upon getting the reoffending rate down – and, of course, resisting the temptation to extend sentences.”

More big ‘ifs’. When politicians stop demanding longer sentences and judges stop imposing them, then we really will be at a turning point.

Ben Leapman

Usual Populist Political Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternatives to Prison

The prison capacity crisis together with a new government is at last giving us the opportunity of having a grown up debate about everything, including the urgent need to look at sentencing policy. This from Rob Allen:-  

Intermediate Treatment

Not surprisingly, we’re seeing a plethora of proposals for new Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood about how to solve the prison crisis. If I was in her job, I’d be particularly attracted to the Howard League’s idea of returning responsibility for prisons and probation to the Home Office. But I think that’s unlikely and undesirable. Peter Hennessey rightly described the Home Office as the graveyard of liberal thinking since the days of Lord Sidmouth.

Most of the suggestions being floated by think tanks, charities and experts focus on reducing demand for prison places in the short term through early release. Implicit in many proposals is the notion that when the 20,000 new prison places are up and running in a few years’ time, some sort of equilibrium will be restored between supply and demand.

I’ve argued that a new way of developing policy about who should go to prison and for how long, distanced from party political competition, might reverse the sharp rises in the custodial sentencing rate and length of prison terms we’ve seen in the last 14 years.

In addition we need to diversify the range of options that can be used as alternatives to prison.

Some of these are institutional alternatives. Many people in prison should be in hospital but thresholds for transfer and waiting times are both too high. The Justice Select Committee asked then Prisons minister Ed Argar about the number of available secure hospital beds for prisoners but doesn’t seem to have received a reply. There are simply not enough.

Other prisoners could potentially be transferred to residential treatment facilities which are being expanded as part of the 10 year Drug Strategy.

Other options include hostels and other supervised accommodation. From 2019 to 2023 the Approved Premise Expansion Programme delivered 169 additional beds, including opening 4 new Independent Approved Premises (83 beds) and 51 additional beds in dedicated premises for women. But there’s a case for a much more ambitious increase in half way houses. It could be paid for by paring back the prison building plans to say 15,000.

Back in 2001, the sentencing review carried out by senior Civil Servant John Halliday recommended that the Home Office- they were responsible back then- should

“establish a review of the existing “intermediate estate” for accommodating and managing offenders in the community, with the aim of developing a strategic plan for its future use, staffing, management and development. The review should embrace all types of accommodation, whether owned by the prison or probation services, or the independent and voluntary sectors, and whether used for prisoners on temporary release; prisoners on conditional release; offenders serving community sentences; or ex-offenders receiving support voluntarily”.

I am not sure such a review was ever done – but it’s certainly needed now.

Three years after Halliday’s review, then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that “satellite tracking technology could provide the basis for a 'prison without bars', potentially cutting prison overcrowding, and expensive accommodation”.

Progress with electronic monitoring has been chequered during the intervening years. But the review should look at whether the role its currently playing is optimal or whether it can serve to manage security risks for people placed in non-secure accommodation- what Halliday called “containment in the community”.

As well as the where of alternatives to prison, there’s a need to look at the how.

Back in 1979, I started work as a volunteer in IT- not computers (there weren’t many back then) -but Intermediate Treatment. With mixed results, I spent most of the next ten years trying to keep young people out of residential care homes, detention centres, Borstals and their institutional successors.

A generous description of the approach might be “eclectic”- camping trips, sports and drama sessions as much as counselling and groupwork. One troubled young man was placed on a ship in the Caribbean for several months, and an IT officer in a neighbouring area allegedly entered a crew into the Henley Regatta.

Quirky some of it might have been, but with relatively small caseloads, we were able to fashion a wide-ranging package of therapeutic and constructive activities for each individual which would help give them the best chance of staying at home, at school or work and out of trouble.

Of course there are resonances with the best of the approach in youth justice and even parts of probation today. There's a growing recognition that relationship based practice is a key to successful supervision and desistance from crime.

Practitioners need to have the opportunity and training to put that into practice so that more offenders can serve their sentences in the community and those that leave prison don’t go back. By enabling that to happen alongside a wider range of treatment and accommodation options, Ms Mahmood may be able not only to find a solution to the immediate crisis but chart a more positive long-term course. She will need to work with her colleagues responsible for health and local government to make it happen. Let's hope she does.

Rob Allen

--oo00oo--

This from Frances Crook 9th July:-

There has been a lot in the news about the crisis in prisons. They are full, rat infested, ridden with drugs and violence, and the most serious challenge is that they feed the crime problem thus creating more victims and mayhem in the community. This has been a problem for more than a hundred years and cannot be solved with a few quick fixes like extending early release.

There are plenty of papers from academics and voluntary organisations suggesting ways to ease the crowding in prisons that would get the issue off the front pages but I would argue that unless we want to revisit this every few years something more fundamental needs to happen.

A succession of ministers have come and gone and given speeches about making prisons work better and introducing initiatives to improve education and ‘rehabilitation’ and yet nothing has changed. Things can only get worse unless we do something radical.

It is interesting that the new government is planning to fix the front door of the NHS by diverting billions to local services. That is what needs to happen in the justice system. We should divert funding to front end services which means to probation but also to mental health, drug services and to support for housing and crime reduction. If we want to prevent crime, this is the sensible way forward. Just in the health service, the expensive use of residential services like hospitals and prisons, should be used as a last resort and the emphasis should be on the front end and prevention.

We cannot build our way out of the challenge. Building more prisons is a criminal waste of public money that embeds the problems. I have written about how new prisons simply replicate the problems of old prisons in a previous blog.

The new government has to get to grips with sentencing reform. The inflation in sentences has seen people spend many years longer in prison than before and I have never seen any research that showed that sending someone to prison for twenty instead of ten years makes them safer. Too many people are sent to prison in the first place and too many are sent to prison on remand. Big changes are required. It will take legislative bravery which is why it needs to be done in the early years of a government.

Secondly, money needs to go to probation. It deals with the majority of people convicted of a crime, either under sentence or on release from prison. It has been starved of funding and respect. Probation should be untied from the shackles of the civil service, linked to local democracy and the service given the freedom to act with professionalism.

Most importantly we need new leadership. It is depressing to hear some senior politicians repeating the tired and failed rhetoric of ‘we must build more prisons quicker (yes, I mean you Yvette Cooper) which will waste public money and embed more crime and drug addiction. New thinking, brave thinking, is needed that talks to the public as grown ups. With a massive Parliamentary majority and a crisis that is generating front page news, the new government should act with integrity and speed. It can do in the justice system what it is doing in the health system. Learn the lessons of past failures and make things better.

Frances Crook

MoJ Top Table Changes

Senior changes from 1 February

From today (1 February) Phil Copple, as Director General of Operations for HMPPS, takes on responsibility for the Probation Service.

Phil was appointed as Director General last August, but he takes over line management of the Chief Probation Officer today, bringing the Probation Service under his own remit. This coincides with Kim Thornden-Edwards taking over as Chief Probation Officer, replacing Sonia Flynn. Sonia now takes on a key role driving professional standards in probation.

Speaking of the changes, Phil said: 

“I am delighted to be taking on this responsibility and working with Kim and all of you to deliver this crucial service across England and Wales. I want to recognise Sonia’s extraordinary work during her six years as Chief Probation Officer. Sonia guided the Probation Service through both the pandemic and the service’s unification, remaining focused on driving professional standards across the organisation throughout. 

We all owe Sonia a huge debt of gratitude and I am delighted we are retaining her experience as she assumes her new role leading on learning and development and setting up a professional register for probation. I’ve spent more than 32 years in public protection roles spanning all areas of HMPPS. 

I see clearly the benefits of bringing the various strands of the Ministry of Justice together so that we can work to change people’s lives, reduce reoffending and protect the public.​​​​​​Probation is a critical part of this picture and I am excited about the roles Kim, as Chief Probation Officer, and I will be carrying out.”

Chief Probation Officer

Speaking of her appointment, Kim said: 

“I would like to echo Phil’s heartfelt words about Sonia and her remarkable leadership as she guided probation through the pandemic and early stages of unification. I started my career as a probation services officer in Kent in 1992 and went on to qualify as a probation officer in 1996. I have experienced many different roles in the service, spanning both public sector and Community Rehabilitation Company delivery. During that time, I have developed a deep understanding of the work we do and the vital public protection role we play.

“Combining my experience with your feedback and the ambition set out by our Chief Executive Officer Amy Rees – that everything we do concentrates on the frontline and our overarching aim of reducing reoffending – I have developed three strategic priorities.

“Firstly, delivering excellent practice, with a particular emphasis on risk management and public protection. This is my number one priority. The need for this focus has been underlined by the two recent Serious Further Offences involving Damian Bendall and Jordan McSweeney, which many of you will have seen covered in the national media. These terrible and tragic events really bring home the critical importance of us all delivering the best possible risk management practices.

“Secondly, continuing our relentless focus on recruitment and retention in collaboration with the Probation Workforce Programme so we can deliver our Target Operating Model.

“Thirdly, strengthening ways to support our senior probation officers, in recognition of the tough demands and swift pace of change faced by this crucial staff group.”

My commitment to you

“Late last year we heard from Teresa, who spoke to the BBC about how Probation Officer Catherine Bateman helped her turn her life around. Teresa had finished a short prison sentence after committing an assault and agreed to wear an alcohol tag to help her continue the positive changes she’d begun in prison. She believes probation’s unstinting support has helped her embrace a new life. I know each and every one of you is working towards supporting people like Teresa and I am committed to championing the incredible work that you deliver day in and day out across England and Wales.

“Finally, I want to hear what you have to say so we can ensure our service continues to improve. I know some of the best ideas come from the frontline and that’s why I’ll be meeting as many of you as possible over the next 12 months. Myself and my senior leadership team are dedicated to supporting you to deliver on our collective promise to change lives, manage risk and protect the public by reducing reoffending.”

--oo00oo--

The BBC article referred to:-

Sobriety tag changed my life, says alcohol offender

"I was using it as a mechanism when I was feeling down and sad, but then I'd drink too much at one time and end up binge drinking." 

Teresa - not her real name - was sentenced to 28 weeks in custody for an alcohol-fuelled assault. On her release, for 60 days she had to wear a "sobriety tag", which were introduced in Wales exactly a year ago. Now the 33-year-old says it has allowed her "self-recognition" and is rebuilding her life. The tag monitored her sweat every 30 minutes and alerted probation staff if she drank alcohol.

"Initially it felt like an additional sentence or punishment but over time, without drinking, there seemed to be no issues, no dramas, my life was better," she told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast with Oliver Hides. Those who are found to be in breach of their drinking bans can face fines or be sentenced in court. Nearly 1,000 prison leavers have been tagged in the first year of the scheme designed to crackdown on booze-fuelled crime. According to UK government figures, alcohol plays a part in 39% of all violent crime in the UK.

"It was a harrowing experience going to prison," said Teresa. "Because I didn't drink every single day, I didn't crave it, or have any shakes or anything like that."  Some 20% of offenders supervised by the Probation Service are classed as having an alcohol problem. "The only time I'd done some sort of offence was under the influence of alcohol," she said. "It helped me recognise that without the alcohol there was no offending behaviour," she said.

Probation officer Catherine Bateman suggested that as Teresa's offences were triggered by drink, as a licence condition, a 60-day tag would give her time to reflect on her life. She also said it would enable her to work with her to address the underlying causes for the offending.

"People who've been in prison have had a period of very restricted time where they can't actually access any alcohol and then they're released into the community where it's readily available," she said. "That is a very big challenge for those people who often struggle. The alcohol monitoring allows them that transition back into the community."

Teresa thinks wearing the tag has changed her life around. "I probably would have come out and just gone back to drinking," she said. "It gave me time to do some self-recognition and it's been brilliant. "I've started an access to university course, I'm out running with my dog, I've joined a netball team and I've got new friends. "I do look back on it, just so I can take some accountability, and think what was I doing?"

Raab Update

This from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies eBulletin yesterday:- 

Is the Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, prepared to take decisive action to address the multiple injustices of the imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence?

Speaking to the House of Commons Justice Committee earlier this week, he acknowledged the many problems with this dreadful sentence. He also told the Committee that, had he been an MP at the time the sentence was introduced in 2003, he would not have voted for it.

Perhaps.

Despite the “foul stench” of injustice the IPP sentence continues to represent, Raab showed little appetite for the decisive action required. He appeared to reject the Justice Committee’s central recommendation of a resentencing exercise for all those currently subject to an IPP.

Given the government is yet to give its formal response to the Justice Committee report, we must hope that his remarks do not represent a settled position.

Raab also appeared daunted by weight of history. “I am stuck with the legacy of something I didn't vote for,” he said at one point, “but that is the way our system works.”

“So we are stuck with an injustice because it was done in the past?”, the Committee Chair, Sir Bob Neill, replied, leaving Raab thrown and flailing for an answer.

The eleven-minute section of the Committee hearing dealing with IPP (you can watch it on the Centre’s Youtube channel), concluded with a revealing comment by Raab. “I will be responsible, and held responsible, for mistakes that are made in relation to public protection and risk”, he said.

If the government were to accept all the Committee’s recommendations, including on resentencing, Raab will gain plaudits from some quarters as a bold reformer. He also faces political risks, including from unforeseen and unpredictable developments over which he has little or no control.

Put bluntly, when it comes to IPP reform, what’s in it for Raab?

Politics, of course, is a risky business. Politicians have to be prepared to make the big calls, accepting the risks that come with them. If not, they are merely enjoying the trappings of office, without accepting the responsibilities that come with it.

If Raab is not prepared to take the big decisions to address a major injustice, then he should make way for someone who is. Given the current difficulties he is facing from other quarters, the decision may, in any case, be taken out of his hands.

Richard Garside
Director

--oo00oo--

Oh and there's this:-

A whiff of scandal

Last month, we called for the use of electronic monitoring (so-called ‘tagging’) as part of a criminal justice sanction to be based on proper evidence and guided by clear principles. Our call came in response to a report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which painted an alarming picture of government failure and waste.

According to the Committee, nearly £100 million of public funds have been wasted, with the Ministry of Justice still unable to determine if tagging works. Yet the government still plans to press ahead with a £1.2 billion programme, expanding tagging to an additional 10,000 people over the next three years.

Our submission to the Committee was the only written evidence that it published.

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

Read more about it here.

--oo00oo--

Finally, I saw this in the Telegraph:-

Prisoners treated as 'residents' despite demands for no more 'woke' terminology

Prison Service admits the term should not have been used and has since been removed from HMP Moorland in South Yorkshire

Prisoners have been treated as “residents” in jail despite demands by Dominic Raab for staff to stop using “woke” terminology.

HMP Moorland in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, put up a sign directing “residents” or prisoners in the jail to facilities despite an instruction from the Justice Secretary that inmates must no longer be called by such “politically correct” terms.

The language which has also seen offenders called “clients” or “service users” has been part of efforts by prison officials to avoid “labelling” people as offenders in order to help them move on from their lives of crime.

Other prisons have renamed cells as “rooms,” prison blocks as “communities,” holding cells as “waiting rooms” on the basis that deprivation of liberty is sufficient penalty and to help rehabilitate offenders.

Woke terms 'undermine public confidence'

However, guidance issued in April by Mr Raab to prison governors and their staff made clear they should stop using woke terms for offenders because it undermined public confidence that they were being punished for their crimes.

Instead, the Justice Secretary told them that inmates should be called “prisoners” or “offenders” rather than “residents”, “clients” or “service users”. In addition, cells should not be labelled “rooms”, as they are known in two of the newest and largest jails in England and Wales.

On Wednesday the Prison Service admitted the term should not have been used and had been removed.

"We are very clear that this term should not be used and have directed that all communications should follow strict rules. The sign was painted without the knowledge of the prison’s leaders and has been removed,” said a spokesman.

What else is being missed?'

Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and ex-adviser to Government on extremism in jails, said: “HMP Moorland holds high risk high harm sex offenders judged by a recent inspection to be failing to manage them safely.

"I'm told this sign was up for six weeks. If prison 'leaders' which I take to mean senior managers and the governor haven't been visible enough to notice this sign after a month and a half in one of the prison's House Blocks what else is being missed?"

HMP Moorland has also raised eyebrows by putting up a 12-foot high map of the prison on a main walkway, including a “you are here” sign.

“It is a bit contentious when you're locking up people in secure conditions who you're trying to stop escape,” said one insider. “The obvious risks include being able to coordinate drugs being thrown into prison/delivered by drone.”

There was this comment from a reader:-

"Dominic Raab needs to stop using "the public" to justify his every argument when it is clear he is wholly out of touch with what the public actually want. Apart from the ignorant "throw away the key" mob, most people do not want prisoners "punished" as the loss of liberty is quite sufficient.

We want the focus to be on rehabilitation so that the prisoner can be part of society again and benefit from prison time, rather than prison time mean that that person is forever shunned and scorned.

As for Dominic Raab's reaction to the scandal of IPP where prisoners have done years above their tariff often for very minor crimes originally, his response that "he hadn't voted for it" as if that meant there was nothing he could do now, was lame to say the least. He is the justice minister!

Justice is in total decay. It is time MPs woke up to it, because it would appear they are taking no responsibility for it at all and any issues arising are seen as simply too much of a "hot potato" to confront. Sad times, and terrible for so many innocents implicated in something which never happened, because the system in so many ways has gone wrong and there appears to be no accountability whatever."

A Dystopian Nightmare

Seeing as it's been referenced, ('more wanky shyte') we might as well cover the latest Probation Service Change Bulletin. I have to say I find it paints a particularly depressing and emotionless picture of bureaucratic-speak, utterly devoid of any soul and in somewhat stark contrast to all the fluffy bullshit associated with 'Probation Day' at the other end of the spectrum.

Of course, as we know, the centre of the practice spectrum is characterised by widespread low morale, departures and crisis, but hey ho, this is what happens when you have the vast civil service bureaucracy running things and, as has been highlighted, the perfect recipe for more breaches; more offences; more imprisonment. But then HM Prison Service is increasingly driving things. What a dystopian nightmare we are steadily creating.  

1. Foreword

Welcome to the bi-monthly Probation Service Change Bulletin – keeping you updated on what is happening across the Probation Service. I’m Ian Barrow and I’ll be hosting this month’s bulletin. I’m the Executive Director of the Probation Workforce Programme.

A lot has happened since the last bulletin in July. We have seen significant changes in Government and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). We welcome back Dominic Raab as the Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

There have also been changes within our own leadership team. Amy Rees was appointed Director General CEO for HMPPS and Phil Copple appointed Director General Operations, further information on these changes can been see in our recent update.

Amy and Phil are leading our plans to reshape the agency, with their joint focus being a continuing and greater focus on the operational front line. Their aim is to make sure the frontline has the right support and that we remove any obstacles that stop us being more efficient and effective, ensuring that Prison, Probation and the Youth Custody Service are support to enhance the vital services they provide.

Jo Farrar continues to have oversight for HMPPS alongside her wider Second Permanent Secretary responsibilities overseeing the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), Legal Aid Agency, Office of the Public Guardian, and leadership of the service delivery transformation portfolios. Amy and Phil’s appointments signal the start of an exciting journey for HMPPS.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Sonia Flynn, Chief Probation Officer, who after 35 years of working in Probation will be making a change of career direction and taking up a part time role within the Probation Workforce Programme as of February 2023. Sonia will be leading on the development and setting up of the new professional register, an area of work I know she is particularly passionate about. It will be great to still have her wealth of experience and knowledge within probation.

2. Reform Programme Closure

The probation reform programme will close as planned at the end of the year. We have delivered a big, very complex Government programme on time, to budget, much of it in a global pandemic. In June 2021 we welcomed over 7,000 probation professionals, either directly into probation services or employed by one of the organisations delivering commissioned rehabilitative services. We have completed 47 delivery priorities out of 69 based on the target operating model. Highlights this month include the launch of the new resettlement framework and enhancements to the Victims Contact Management System.

Since unification, our focus has been on ensuring a smooth transition phase and embedding some of the changes we have made. Once the programme does close, we will continue to implement the reforms set out in our Target Operating Model. In the December issue we will be updating further on all that has been achieved since the programme commenced.

3. Reducing Reoffending

This summer (July) we marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of our prison leaver accommodation service (Community Accommodation Service – Tier 3, or CAS3), a temporary accommodation service which aims to ensure no individual subject to probation supervision is released from prison into homelessness.

CAS3 provides up to 84 nights of temporary accommodation and support for all adult offenders released from prison or leaving an Approved Premises or BASS (Bail Accommodation and Support Service) residence who would otherwise have nowhere to go upon release. Hear from Probation Officer Lindsay as she explains how CAS3 supports safe reintegration back into society.

3.1 Stable Accommodation

Prison leavers who do not have access to stable accommodation on release are almost 50% more likely to reoffend. In creating a stable environment through accommodation, CAS3 gives people on probation the opportunity to address aspects of their behaviour linked to their risk of reoffending, including substance misuse issues and unemployment. CAS3 also supports pathways into settled accommodation, working with local authorities to increase access to private rental properties for prison leavers at risk of becoming homeless.

3.2 One Year On

CAS3 was launched in July 2021, initially in the North West, Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and the Humber, East of England, and Kent, Surrey, and Sussex probation regions. Since then, 2,396 individuals have been successfully placed into temporary accommodation. Roll out in Wales has now begun, and the programme team are in the process of competing contracts for the remaining probation regions.

3.3 Mandatory Drug Testing

People on probation recently released from custody residing within Approved Premises will now be randomly tested for 14 different types of drugs as part of a £1.2 million initiative to reduce reoffending. Read more about how this will help to reduce drug-fuelled crime.

4. Electronic Monitoring

We highlighted in the last bulletin the publication of the electronic monitoring strategy, setting out our clear vision for electronic monitoring. One of the key aspects of the strategy is the integration of electronic monitoring into Offender Management.

As we continue to expand electronic monitoring capabilities and its use, we will continue to ensure that our electronic monitoring structures are more closely integrated to offender management, building on the advantages of the Probation Reform Programme, ensuring electronic monitoring can provide the greatest effect for both those on probation in terms of rehabilitation and from a safety perspective for wider society.

The latest electronic monitoring statistics were recently published, with figures showing that the number of individuals actively monitored has increased in the last year, with 14,996 individuals actively monitored at 30 September 2022.

This is the first quarterly publication that has been produced and contains details of the number of individuals in England and Wales with an active electronic tag fitted, the number of new notification orders and the number of completed orders. It also contains details of the number of individuals with an alcohol monitoring tag and the number monitored under the acquisitive crime pilot.

We continue to expand electronic monitoring capabilities and Wednesday 26 October saw the expansion of the eligibility criteria for the compulsory GPS tagging of people on probation convicted of specific acquisitive crimes.

The project will now see the eligibility cohort expanded to those who are serving standard determinate sentences of 90 days and over – previously only those serving 12 months or over were eligible – who are released or re-released to reside within one of the 19 in-scope police force areas: Avon & Somerset, Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Gwent, Humberside, West Midlands, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Metropolitan, North Wales, Nottinghamshire and Sussex.

5. Grant Scheme

A grant scheme launched by the Probation Service is encouraging applications from charities and not-for-profit organisations. The scheme is to assist people with shared characteristics or shared experiences, and to provide support for people on probation with their desistance and rehabilitation. Grants are being funded through the Probation Service’s Regional Outcomes and Innovation Fund and aim to cover most activities regions would wish to grant fund.

Organisations interested in applying for a grant from this scheme should register through the Probation Grants Application Portal.

Once registered on the Ministry of Justice Sourcing Portal, organisations should go to PQQ open to all suppliers and click on Probation grants Application Process to complete their registration. The first round of grants will be for people from ethnic minority groups. Organisations successful registered on the Portal can submit a funding application for the first round until 2pm on 2 November.

6. Unpaid Work

People on probation on Community Payback are cleaning up the coastline in South Wales as part of the Marine Conservation Society’s annual Great British Beach Clean. The groups will be bagging up broken glass, plastic, and litter from beaches in Ogmore and Aberavon to support the green drive and pay back to the communities they have harmed. The rubbish they recover will be logged and the data then used by the charity to pinpoint the main pollutants and campaign for change.

The coastline clean-up marks the beginning of a new partnership between the Probation Service and Marine Conservation Society that will eventually see hundreds of people on probation on Community Payback cleaning beaches across England and Wales.

It follows a similar partnership with the Canal & River Trust with offenders on Community Payback helping to maintain the country’s waterways and is part of the government’s £93 million investment to increase unpaid work carried out by offenders up to eight million hours a year. The public can nominate Community Payback projects in their local area via the nominations page.