Probation Service: Community-sentenced Offenders

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the management of community-sentenced offenders will remain the responsibility of the Probation Service.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, the Transforming Rehabilitation consultation by my department closed on 22 February and we are now considering our response. We have proposed opening up the market for rehabilitation services to a more diverse range of providers, but the public sector will retain ultimate responsibility for public protection and will manage directly those offenders who pose the highest risk of serious harm to the public.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Last week, the Justice Secretary appeared before the Justice Select Committee in another place and said that we have a duty to supervise offenders in a consistent way and that he wanted to make the probation world more independent of Government and the big bureaucratic documents that tell them how to do their job. For 100 years until recently dissolved by its subordination to prisons, the probation service, in partnership with the police and the courts, was responsible for the consistent supervision of community-sentenced offenders independent of such interference. Can the Minister tell the House how the Justice Secretary’s proposed division of responsibility for the supervision of different types of offender between probation and an unknown number of untried private and voluntary sector organisations will better honour his duty of consistency?

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!