Transforming Rehabilitation Programme Debate
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Gerald Jones
Main Page: Gerald Jones (Labour - Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare)Department Debates - View all Gerald Jones's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on securing this important debate. According to the Ministry of Justice, the aim of the reforms was to ensure that offenders were not only punished, but better rehabilitated by offering them greater support in the rehabilitation process, reducing reoffending rates while continuing to ensure public safety.
Is it not the case that the reforms were untried, untested and rushed through at breakneck speed? The former chief inspector published his first inspection of the transforming rehabilitation reforms in 2014, which was critical and found that splitting the probation service caused significant issues with process, communication and information sharing. The major problems were rushed timing, the fact that the model was untested and, as we have heard, fragmentation.
The speed of the reforms caused real concern and their implementation caused operational problems that could have been avoided or mitigated. Most worrying is the fragmentation, which means that offenders are juggled between multiple members of staff before they finally meet their personal probation officer. Many of the new processes also take longer and are more complex than the previous arrangements. Surely changes are meant to bring more efficiency, not less.
Significantly, in the most recent report from May 2015, the chief inspector of probation said that the picture was “mixed” and that inspectors found that many of the challenges identified in the earlier report remained. The IT systems remain a barrier and a number of tasks at the pre-allocation stage are “time consuming” and “not streamlined”. Those wide-ranging concerns remain unresolved. The Government must take action, and I urge the Minister to address those concerns today.