4. Memorandum submitted by
the Chief Executive Designate of the National Offender Management
Service
When I wrote to you in November, I mentioned
that I would write to you once we had received the report from
the No 10 Strategy Unit review led by Patrick Carter which was
looking at the future strategy for Correctional Services. On
6 January, the Home Secretary announced the next phase of our
strategy to improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice
system and in particular correctional services. I am enclosing
a copy of his report entitled "Reducing Crime—Changing
Lives" together with Patrick's report which was published
simultaneously.
There have, as I mentioned in my earlier memorandum,
been great improvements in security in prisons and in the delivery
of programmes and interventions to help offenders to desist from
crime. But the new sentences that will be introduced following
the Criminal Justice Act will require much closer working between
prisons and probation and a fully integrated approach to the management
of offenders whether they are in prison or in the community.
The new single offender management service,
on which I will elaborate below, will play a major role in the
rehabilitation of prisoners. It will ensure that they receive
end-to-end case management tailored specifically towards tackling
offender behaviour and designed to ensure that re-offending is
reduced.
THE MAIN
REFORMS
The key elements of the strategy we are adopting
involve creating a renewed focus on paying back to the community.
We intend to rebuild fines as a credible punishment for very low
or low risk offenders and to establish more demanding community
sentences and greater sanctions for persistent offenders. This
will involve more extensive use of electronic monitoring and will
help to ensure that custody is used much more effectively.
Prison will continue to remain the right place
for serious and dangerous offenders, and judges and magistrates
must be able to make independent decisions on sentences in individual
cases. But there is an inexplicably wide range of sentencing outcomes
across the country, and sentencing needs to ensure the consistent
and cost effective use of prison and probation capacity.
THE NATIONAL
OFFENDER MANAGEMENT
SERVICE [NOMS]
At the heart of the Government's reform is the
creation from 1 June of a new single service, the National Offender
Management Service [NOMS]. I have been appointed its first Chief
Executive and am beginning work immediately on establishing its
structure and setting its strategic direction. The organisation
will build on the achievements made in the Prison Service and
the National Probation Service and will have two very clear and
transparent objectives: to punish offenders and reduce re-offending.
I shall also sit on the National Criminal Justice
Board and shall be an observer on the Sentencing Guidelines Council.
I shall seek to provide the Council with much more information
about the effectiveness of different sentencing in reducing re-offending
and their relative value for money.
A REGIONALISED SERVICE
We will also be appointing a new National Offender
Manager as soon as possible who, reporting directly to me, will
have responsibility for the management of offenders in and out
of custody. The National Offender Manager will contract with prisons
and providers of community sentences. But, the task of integrating
the management of offenders whilst in custody or under supervision
in the community is best managed at regional level where effective
links can be forged and joint strategies developed with complementary
services, including health, education, and employment. We will
therefore be seeking to appoint 10 Regional Offender Managers
who, reporting to the National Offender Manager, will have to
take responsibility for end-to-end management of offenders in
the nine English regions and Wales.
This focused accountability within a single
service on reducing re-offending will be crucial to making the
new sentences of intermittent custody, custody minus and custody
plus work effectively, each requiring a sea change in joining
up work in prisons with work in the community.
CONTESTABILITY
Contestability will be key to the success of
NOMS. The private sector has been able over the last few years
to run some demonstrably decent, humane and even caring jails.
But just as importantly, they have also provided the stimulus
for the radically improved performance of public sector prisons.
What I want to see in the new organisation is performance being
driven upwards through competition between the Public Prison Service
and private contractors.
Contestability will also apply to community
interventions. I envisage that the challenges of managing community
penalties will be taken up by the private and not for profit sectors,
whether separately or in partnership with each other. I am very
eager for offender managers to purchase such programmes from those
who can deliver them most cost effectively. The main challenge
that has faced the National Probation Service in the recent past
has been to get enough offenders to complete their programmes.
I will make it clear to Regional Offender Managers that a successful
provider of community interventions must be considered as one
which delivers a high rate of programme completions and not simply
programme participants.
CONCLUSION
I am delighted to have been asked to take forward
the establishment of the new single offender management service.
I am also excited at the prospect of working with the real expertise
that there is within the existing Prison Service and National
Probation Service in order to transform our correctional services.
I believe that we now have a real chance, through the effective
targeting of resources and with dedicated offender managers providing
a seamless management of offenders to make very significant progress
in reducing re-offending.
Martin Narey
23 January 2004
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