Private Probation Services

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves]

Yes. If the Through the Gate system is not working and if offenders are not resettled in the community with employment, housing and engagement with probation services to get their lives back on track, we know that they are more likely to reoffend. The CRCs are not getting reoffending rates down—they have failed to deliver that.

The “Transforming Rehabilitation” programme was not just about rehabilitation, but about protecting the public—a linchpin of any justice system. However, in a recent BBC “Panorama” documentary, Dame Glenys Stacey, the chief inspector of probation, stated that she could not say for certain that every private probation company was managing to protect the public as well as it should. In its investigation, “Panorama” spoke to an offender who was released from a short sentence in May. He said that he had not met his probation officer for almost a month after release, and that probation services were deteriorating; in the past, he knew exactly who his probation officer was, but now it was hard to tell. The CRC in that instance was MTCnovo, which covers all medium and low-risk offenders in London.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

From what my hon. Friend is saying, it seems that the current system is potentially putting the public in danger and, furthermore, the leaked memo shows that the Government must have been aware that that might happen. Is that the case?

[Ellie Reeves]

That is absolutely the case. If ex-offenders are released from prison but have no contact, or only very sporadic contact, with the probation services, how can the public be assured that they are being kept safe? The chief inspector has made that point and other people made it when the reforms were going through, but still no action has been taken and these CRCs continue to operate, which puts people at risk.

“Panorama” went on to say that it has records from MTCnovo that reveal that 15,000 appointments were missed by offenders over a 16-month period, a problem that was compounded by probation officers failing to take any action over missed appointments. A whistleblower from MTCnovo said that CRCs are employing fewer staff, so individual members of staff have higher case loads. That probation officer says that he now only has 20 minutes a month with the offenders he has to deal with, which is simply not enough. He had inherited cases where 20 to 30 appointments had been missed by offenders, and in addition he said that staff were instructed by the CRC to alter records, so that missed appointments were wiped if they were more than two weeks old.

It seems that public protection is not at the heart of this programme, and the toxic climate created by this ill-judged privatisation has clearly had a detrimental impact on staff and services too. Following the creation of the National Probation Service and CRCs, existing staff were redistributed between the two organisations. From the start, CRCs had smaller case loads than predicted, which resulted in reduced levels of income, followed by restructuring with substantial job losses. Fewer staff can deal with fewer cases and the added focus on restructuring has often meant that the quality of core service delivery suffered. Low-risk offenders were often only supervised by telephone, as we have discussed, and work on safeguarding and domestic abuse was often substandard.

Three and a half years since the CRCs were created, it is clear that staff morale is low and individual case loads are too high. There are not enough staff, and many of them lack the experience and resources to do the job properly.