UNITED KINGDOM
The UK Ministry of Justice says it will end current private sector involvement in the running of the probation service by cancelling contracts with 21 companies two years before they are due to expire.
Justice Secretary, David Gauke said decisive action was needed because the 2014 decision to split the probation system in two had experienced significant challenges.
Under the system, the monitoring of medium and low-risk offenders was given to the private companies, with the Government-run National Probation Service (NPS) looking after higher-risk offenders.
Mr Gauke said the changes had led to 40,000 extra offenders a year receiving support and supervision on release across England and Wales, but “unforeseen changes” in the types of offenders coming to the courts had substantially reduced the income of the community rehabilitation companies.
He said several of these companies had made substantial losses, resulting in the Government having to bail them out with an additional £342 million (A$193 million) allocation.
According to figures published in January, just two of the companies met their targets to reduce reoffending in the first year of the system’s operation.
Mr Gauke said the Government would now work with the private sector to design new and improved contracts that would align the probation firms with the NPS into 10 regions to improve joint working.
The reforms have long been criticised by MPs on Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee for setting probation services up to fail by massively underestimating the costs incurred by the new providers.
Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Yvette Cooper (pictured) said the Government had been warned about this again and again.
“Probation officers, police officers and frankly pretty much everyone else all warned them this policy would be a disaster and would put the public at risk,” Ms Cooper said.
London, 29 July 2018
