Probation Service

Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Baroness Linklater of Butterstone

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity this debate gives us to look at the work of the probation service today and examine its value in the context of the changes the Government want to make, the implications for its future and, equally important, the future of its clients.

I declare an interest that I was a patron of the Probation Boards Association in 2005, when I joined the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and I have had connections with the service for many years.

Since its origins more than 100 years ago, the probation service has developed into the national provision for people in trouble with the law at the interface between offenders and the courts, prison, community provision and the public. It represents the bedrock of the system by which we manage offenders in this country in conjunction with the myriad agencies—statutory, voluntary and private—which work to keep our society safe. It is a highly professional service with a hinterland of skills, knowledge and experience which is second to none and on which we all depend when dealing with offender management.

All the performance indicators show that the service is doing well. The MoJ rating system shows that targets have been reached with performance ratings of “good” or “excellent”, and just two years ago the service became the first public sector organisation to be awarded the British Quality Foundation’s Gold Medal for Excellence in recognition of

“outstanding and continued commitment to sustained excellence over a number of years”,

an achievement of which they—and we—should be proud.

We know that the cost of the service is considerable, as one would expect of a national public service. Indeed, the MoJ budget is second only to the costs of the Prison Service, and cuts are inevitably constantly sought by the Government, particularly in these times of recession. Savings of 20% have been found between 2008-9 and 2012-13, while the budget also fell by 19%, but costs are a persistent issue as they are in all the social services. What also matters, however, is the quality and professionalism of the service, which is dealing, in the community, with some of the most damaged, difficult, vulnerable and often dangerous members of our society. This requires skill and experience that comes only with time. It also depends on relationships with the police and on “integrated offender management” with a host of other colleagues in the social services world, health, education, employment and so on.

It is worth reminding the House that, in the recent past, prison numbers have been dropping. Last year there was a 5% decrease in those being sentenced on the year before, and the prison population itself fell in the past 12 months for the first time since 1999. Recorded levels of crime are at their lowest for 30 years, and youth crime is down 47%. This illustrates the effectiveness and significance of probation in helping to keep people out of prison, by managing them in the community, where they are less likely to reoffend, at a fraction of the cost of imprisonment. Where the figures go the other way relates to those 50,000 minor, persistent offenders, of whom 57% reoffend, serving a year or less in prison. Until now this group has never had any statutory probation support; hence the high reoffending rate which the Minister now wants to include.

In the light of the probation service’s performance and background, it beggars belief that the Minister, Chris Grayling, should be contemplating handing over 80% of the probation service’s work to an almost untried and untested system of payment by results, which is still being assessed, to be administered by 21 crime reduction companies (CRCs) with no earthly idea of what the outcomes are likely to be. Probation officers will still have a guaranteed job for the first year up to 1 April 2015, when the scheme goes live, when their jobs will be “sold to the market”. There is no indication of what the workforce will consist of, except possibly most of those redundant probation officers. Their task will be to manage the 150,000 offenders that probation currently manages in the community each year—excluding the high-risk offenders —and at the same time to provide a year’s support to the 50,000 additional group of low-level offenders that the Minister now wants to be supervised for the first time. It is of course an admirable aim to have additional support for this group, and it could be of great benefit to offenders and public alike, but only if there is the skilled supervision available in appropriate numbers. The Minister’s solution of handing over the whole task to the new private sector, divided into 21 community rehabilitation companies, in contract package areas and overseen by six divisional heads, is what is being announced. Beyond this there is absolutely no indication where the staff on the ground are going to come from, who they will be, let alone what experience and skill sets these newcomers will have. I understand that this information comes under the heading of “commercial confidentiality”.

We know, however, that the 20% of current probation service staff who will be left will be required to manage all the high-risk, most challenging offenders, who will be assigned to them. Here their skills are recognised. This is very important and welcome. They will also have responsibility for bringing back all breach cases to the courts for review and sentence.

Risk management is part of probation’s professional work. It is a delicate skill, and the assessment and allocation of risk is inevitably subject to change. Of course, with professional help, people come off the risk register, but they can also fluctuate, which raises the question of whether each time offenders become low risk they will be transferred to a CRC and will then have to be reassigned again if circumstances change once more—as well they might. This is another “detail” of some significance, because continuity of offender management, as anybody in the business knows, is of extreme importance. However, how these issues will be expected to be dealt with remains unclear—as does whether people will be shifted between CRCs and probation depending on their assessed level of risk. What is clear is that the division of management between low and medium-risk, and high-risk, offenders means that the service will inevitably be fragmented, thus compromising accountability and effective community support. 1 would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on this.

The additional cohort of 50,000 offenders will be required to remain on supervision for a whole year, regardless of the length of the short sentence served or the nature of the offence. For example, it could be a two or three-month sentence for a driving offence. How appropriate is a year’s supervision for that?

Apart from issues of staff training and experience, there are considerable risks in the management of a whole year’s supervision. Offenders and professionals are likely to find a year disproportionate, which will make compliance very difficult and almost inevitably will increase the risk of breach by this group.

It is estimated by the Government that around 13,000 offenders each year will be recalled or will breach their conditions and end up in prison again, because for many a year is inappropriate and too long. It is not clear how the CRCs will manage this potentially enormous addition to their workload, and it will increase the prison population by an estimated 600 people. This in turn will impact on current prison management, which is simultaneously dealing with unprecedented cuts on the one hand and the reorganisation of resettlement prisons on the other. Resettlement is another big issue because it has already resulted, inevitably, in the mixing of young people, who are often vulnerable, with adults. This is highly undesirable and destabilising to the normal allocation of prisoners, which is an important part of prison life. It has already led to increased violence and drug use in HMP/YOI Portland, as reported by the IMB, and to a 50% increase in self-harm among young people within a year of mixing with adult prisoners.

I regret that the Government have not wanted to take more time and have not tried out the ideas in some pilot areas, for example. Instead, everyone in the service is now working to ever-tighter deadlines as the goal posts shift. Probation trust chairs are finding the time for transition impossibly short to plan for proper delivery of services, which will be damaging to both future performance and public protection.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that my noble friend will forgive me for pointing out that there is a time limit of 10 minutes for each speaker, and that we have a speaker in the gap.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

I am sorry; I will wind up. I have had letters from professionals who are really worried about this. There is a blank wall of information about how they are to plan and budget beyond next April.

It is surely important to get this right and to reach greater levels of clarity. It is too big a project to be allowed to fail, when excellence should be the goal. The focus of our exercise should be the most vulnerable and difficult in our community.