1. Memorandum submitted by
the Home Office
INTRODUCTION
1. Reducing re-offending is a critical part
of our overall effort to reduce crime and build a safer society.
More than half of all crimes are committed by offenders who have
been convicted before. The National Offender Management Service
(NOMS) was formed in 2004 to bring together prison and probation
into a single service with a mission to cut repeat offending.
2. On 20 October, the Government published
proposals for restructuring the probation service with the aim
of further reducing reoffending. This memorandum summarises those
proposals and outlines the justification for them, with particular
emphasis on the effect on local probation boards.
CURRENT STRUCTURE
OF THE
PROBATION SERVICE
3. The current National Probation Service
comprises 42 local probation boards whose statutory function is
to make arrangements to deliver probation services in their area,
either directly through their own staff or through contracts.
The Secretary of State is responsible for making provision for
the boards to perform their functions. The Secretary of State
appoints all members of probation boards, including the chief
officer of probation. Chief officers are accountable to the Secretary
of State through the Director General of the National Probation
Service.
4. Boards are required to prepare an annual
plan of how they intend to exercise their functions in any year
(the Secretary of State can, and does, direct them to modify it
if he does not consider it to be satisfactory) and to make a report
to the Secretary of State on the performance of their functions
at the end of the year.
WHY CHANGE?
5. The National Probation Service has delivered
real improvements over recent years. A strong performance improvement
framework has been put in place, a full range of group work programmes
has been rolled out based on "what works" evidence,
and performance is at record levels: community penalty enforcement
rates, for example, have risen from 43% in 2001 to over 90% now.
6. But reoffending remains too high. We
are still some way off meeting our target to reduce the rate of
reconviction by 5% by 2008 and by 10% by 2010, improvements in
performance have not been consistent across the service, and we
are still constrained by organisational and geographical boundaries.
So we must maintain the momentum of reform.
7. Patrick Carter's review of the correctional
services in England and Wales, "Managing Offenders, Reducing
Crime", concluded that a new approach was needed with:
— prison and probation focused on the
management of offenders throughout the whole of their sentence;
and
— effectiveness and value for money
improved through greater competition from private and voluntary
providers and through establishing a purchaser/provider split.
8. Building on the work of the National
Probation Service to improve the case management of offenders
on community sentences, we have now developed an offender management
model which will ensure that offenders are managed in a consistent
and coherent way during their entire sentence. The North West
Pathfinder project is working with more than 10,000 offenders,
including 1,100 young offenders and 244 adult males who are currently
in prison. The model will apply nationally to all offenders in
the community, both those serving community orders and those on
licence after release from custody by April 2006. It will extend
to those in custody from September 2006, focussing initially on
sexual, violent and prolific offenders, and it will extend to
all other prisoners progressively during 2007 and 2008.
9. To make end-to-end management of offenders
fully effective, we need to be able to commission services across
organisational and geographical boundaries. Separating out commissioning
from the provision of services has other benefits. It will enable
the National Offender Management Service (NOMS):
— to think and plan more strategically
and proactively;
— to think about offender needs and
the services they require, rather than what they have historically
had;
— to set policy in terms, not of detailed
process, but of desired outcomes;
— to free up providers to manage their
businesses, and to generate more innovative approaches and solutions;
and
— to be more disciplined in the development
of policy at the centre.
10. But the full benefits of commissioning
cannot be achieved while we lack the ability to challenge existing
suppliers of probation services and commission from new providers
where this is appropriate. Experience in the custodial sector
demonstrates that the introduction of contestability drives up
performance on the part, not only of the new providers who enter
the market, but also of the existing public sector providers who
raise their game to meet the challenge.
11. Commissioning and contestability will
also increase the capacity and capability to meet the additional
demand for probation services which will result from the implementation
of the sentencing options made available by the Criminal Justice
Act 2003. The proposals will facilitate the more imaginative delivery
of these new areas of work in ways which are most likely to reduce
reoffending.
PROPOSALS
12. We have already appointed a National
Offender Manager and ten Regional Offender Managers to commission
services on behalf of the Secretary of State. From April 2006,
they will have service level agreements in place with the prison
and probation services. But the introduction of full commissioning
and contestability requires legislative change. That is why we
are proposing:
— to give to the Secretary of State
the statutory duty to make arrangements with others for the provision
of probation services; and
— to create new probation trusts, replacing
the probation boards, with whom he may contract.
13. These proposals have been presented
in some quarters as privatisation. This is categorically not the
case. Contestability is about challenging existing suppliers to
demonstrate that they continue to offer the best value for money
to the taxpayer and, if they do not, offering other providers
the opportunity to do it better. What we envisage is a phased
programme whereby certain elements of probation activity are market-tested
to find the best provider. In some cases, that provider will come
from the private sector, in some from the voluntary and community
sector. But in many cases, we expect that the best provider will
continue to be the public sector, either because the public sector
is already delivering a high-quality service in the particular
case and/or because the competition has provided an incentive
to raise performance further. We want to see a mixed economy of
providers, and encourage competitors from both the private sector
and the voluntary and community sector. We will be looking at
how we can encourage the voluntary and community sector to compete
for contracts either bidding directly or in partnership with trusts
and other providers.
14. These proposals have also been seen
by some as the end of probation. Again, this is not the case.
The Government has invested heavily in probation services since
1997. Funding has increased from £439 million in 1996-97
to £804 million in 2005-06, a real terms increase of 55%,
and the number of staff has risen from 14,000 to 20,000. This
commitment remains strong and these proposals place end-to-end
offender management and reducing reoffending—both core probation
tasks—at the heart of the NOMS reforms.
BOARDS
15. As far as probation boards are concerned,
the removal of the statutory duty to provide probation services
means that they cannot continue in their present form. The new
trusts will exist by virtue of their contracts with the Regional
Offender Managers. They will need to be able to deliver services
in a competitive environment and manage performance in order to
deliver against the contracts. The change of name to "trust"
is intended to signify this change.
16. Although boards will cease to exist,
the new trusts will build on the existing model. In developing
these proposals, we rejected the option of simply abolishing boards
and bringing staff into a central organisation. Transferring the
statutory duty to the Secretary of State may seem like a centralising
step, but it is counterbalanced by the much greater autonomy that
trusts will enjoy in comparison to boards. Members of trusts will
be appointed by the Secretary of State, as board members are now,
but they will then be free to appoint their own chief officers
and will operate with much greater independence from the centre.
17. Concerns about loss of business to other
providers are understandable. But market-testing of probation
services will be introduced gradually to allow the market to develop.
Business will be lost only if an alternative provider is able
to demonstrate that they could do a better job. Though it is possible
that a trust could lose all its business and cease to exist, this
is not something which we are currently anticipating. And, if
it does occur, the Secretary of State will be able to create a
shadow trust to bid for work on behalf of the public sector in
a future market test, with a full trust being set up if the bid
is successful.
TIMING
18. The consultation period runs until 20
December and we are engaging actively with key stakeholders during
this time, including considering the implications of the separate
proposals to restructure police force areas. We hope to introduce
legislation to give effect to these proposals when parliamentary
time allows.
November 2005
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