Back to the Future? Where Next for Probation.

What to make of today’s announcement about the future shape of probation services? Is it as Russell Webster pronounced the end of Transforming Rehabilitation? Or is the foreshortening of existing private probation contracts merely a case of reculer pour mieux sauter ? All bets are off of course if Labour come to power. They have pledged a unified public-sector service with Lord Ramsbotham currently mulling the best way to organise it. But today, the Government offers the opportunity for anyone to pitch in ideas for the best way forward if they stay at the helm. Although the Consultation invites views on 17 specific questions, it will not require too much creativity for answers to propose more macro level suggestions about how to rescue probation from the mire.    

Despite many calls for the public National Probation service to be reunited with the Community Rehabilitation Companies, this seems to be happening only in Wales. In England, 10 new CRC’s will be contracted to replace the current 20. The MoJ say they’ll explore with the market how to establish a more effective commercial framework which better takes account of changes in demand for probation and ensures providers are adequately paid to deliver core services. It’s possible that such exploration will find no workable framework other than reunification. But I doubt it.

For one thing, big beasts G4S and SERCO may be allowed back on the scene. Although still under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging on tagging contracts, both companies seem to be back in the contracting fold, relieved perhaps to have missed out on the embarrassment of TR1 and eager to show how they can learn from its mistakes.

More significantly, privatisation is now hardwired into conservative thinking. The party’s new vice chairman for policy, Chris Skidmore, was among those who has in the past argued that all prisons should be contracted out on a payment by results (PBR) basis. So too was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, who’ll have to sign the new probation arrangements off. Before doing so, she will surely want to reflect not only on private sector underperformance but on how little risk the businesses have taken on.  We are told today that long-term trends in re-offending are substantially affecting providers’ payment-by results income, threatening to undermine the delivery of core services.  Setting aside the fact that declining clear up rates should make it easier to reduce recorded reoffending, the limited impact on persistent and prolific offenders is one of the many disappointments of the TR scheme. If today may not mark the end of TR, it may be the demise of PBR, in this field at least.

What comes next? The Howard League are pushing a Scottish type arrangement which has a lot going for it- although they’ll need to re think their proposed 21 service delivery areas. Maybe because I used to be on the Youth Justice Board, I’ve always favoured an Adult Offending Team model  along the lines of Youth Offending Teams (YOT’s).   These local authority based multi-agency teams, developed in Tony Blair’s first term, partly in response to a damning critique from the Audit Commission, have by and large proved an effective model for diverting young people from crime, from prosecution and from custody.

This is surely the sort of approach we now need for adults. There’s scope for discussion about the role Police and Crime Commissioners might play in any new system and whether Adult Offending Teams should form part of a broader devolution of justice responsibilities and budgets to a more local, and locally accountable, level. This is just the kind of discussion we need to have now.