3. Memorandum submitted by
the Probation Boards Association
THE FUTURE OF PROBATION
FOREWORD
Major change and disruption is usually the result
of acknowledged problems, yet despite upheavals and new targets
the Probation Service in England and Wales has maintained its
international reputation and enhanced its performance. The development
and implementation of offender management can be achieved without
restructuring a successful service.
LOCAL GOVERNANCE
— The 42 local Probation Boards of
England and Wales are the accountable bodies for the governance
of probation. They hold the legal responsibility for managing
offenders in the community.
— Probation Boards were introduced
in 2001 to bring local people and business skills into the governance
of the service. They have a track record of success.
— The key stakeholders for probation
are the courts and local community. Boards include sentencers
and local councillors as well as other community members.
— Current Board members have the competencies
that the Home Office sets out for proposed Trusts.
— Those Trusts would not necessarily
consist of local people, would not represent sentencers or hold
accountability locally for work with offenders.
— Local governance and accountability
are the key concepts of the government's "localism"
agenda. The involvement of local communities should be strengthened,
not weakened.
— The proposals state that the needs
of offenders will be assessed and services identified and purchased
by the regional civil servants (the 10 Regional Offender Managers),
independently of the providers (trusts and other voluntary or
private sector providers).
PARTNERSHIPS
— Joined up criminal justice is about
mutual ownership of the outcomes that matter.
— The employment of offenders, accommodation
and education are critical factors in crime prevention, needing
the major involvement of the private, voluntary and not for profit
sectors. The further development of work in partnership with these
sectors would be of more value than competing over core probation
services that we believe should stay in the public domain.
— More involvement of the voluntary
sector can be achieved without re-structuring. Probation used
to spend 7% of revenue on voluntary bodies; in Northern Ireland
this is 23% as the NI Board believes that grass-roots voluntary
involvement is essential to crime prevention.
— User-led (courts, offenders, victims,
local communities etc) services need local accountability, not
top-down management.
— Complex contractual arrangements
go against the government Compact[2]
with the voluntary sector.
— A contract culture can be restrictive,
creating boundaries and constraints and may alter the voluntary
sector culture of commitment and innovation.
— Professional partnerships with other
agencies (police, courts, health, housing etc) are the key to
successful work in criminal justice; the success of Local Criminal
Justice Boards and Multi Agency Public Protection Panels are evidence
of this. A fragmented probation service with `provider only' status
could not play its part in these arrangements.
— Serious issues of confidentiality
and conflict of interest arise at many points when a multiplicity
of probation provision occurs.
MANAGEMENT OF
RISK
— Accountability for professional risk
needs to be held at the local operational level not transferred
to the Secretary of State who delegates it to regional civil servants.
— Lack of a sound, evidenced and fully
costed business case risks operational chaos.
— Lack of planning for contract failure
risks similar problems.
— The proposals could lead to a decrease
in information sharing on dangerous offenders; increasing the
number of "silos" as the Carter[3]
report put it, with the risk of offenders "falling through
the gaps".
— Fragmenting probation provision risks
the loss of a universal level of service, particularly to courts
and the Parole Board, and the potential loss of equal access to
services by offenders.
— Any change process should trigger
a full risk assessment; if there is one for these proposals it
is not in the public domain.
SENTENCERS
— These changes pose significant risk
to the impartial advice given to courts by probation staff on
sentence options. A commercial incentive to favour specific outcomes
introduces a conflict of interest into the heart of the criminal
justice process.
COMMISSIONING AND
CONTESTABILITY
— Probation Boards already commission
services, close to where need exists.
— Health and Local Government achieve
contestability without structural purchaser/provider splits.
— A modern, successful organisation
is adaptive and customer driven. The proposed model is centrally
driven and inflexible with regional civil servants replacing courts
and communities as the customers.
— The "Regulatory Impact Assessment"[4]
provides no substantiated evidence of any savings and fails to
address quality of service.
— The "world of contracts"
which the Home Office wants will encourage a culture where process
is easier to measure than outcomes, where minimum response replaces
problem solving and innovation.
— In a contract culture, innovation
is only present up until the point the contract is signed.
— The voluntary sector may be at a
serious disadvantage; the majority of voluntary and charitable
organisations exist only at the local level and would be too small
and too local to compete in an artificial market contracted for
on a regional basis.
— Replacing an ethos of partnership
working with "a world of contracts" may well introduce
secrecy and new levels of bureaucracy.
— The experience of major centrally
let contracts in the probation service so far has been of failure
and high cost.
— A fragmented probation "business"
with many different providers may lead to inequitable employment
practices and a loss of management information.
— Lord Browne (Chairman of BP) said
this year that pseudo-markets damage the professional ethos in
academic institutions, hospitals and jails.
— Lord Warner said this month of commissioning
in the NHS that it must be genuinely responsive in terms of location,
be linked in with local government, and be as close to the patient
as possible. The proposed model for probation goes in the opposite
direction.
FUTURE PLANNING
— The Carter Report and the Home Office
response were not the subject of full consultation; this has affected
the development of NOMS at every step. Current proposals have
major implications and need the widest possible consideration.
— The current consultation document
is not a comprehensive exercise, in that the majority of questions
concern matters of implementation. Responses are not sought on
the underpinning arguments (local publicly accountable offender
management, integrated local services, purchaser-provider split
etc).
— Rational planning must be based on
the needs of users and stakeholders (courts, communities, victims,
offenders, police etc); it should be demand-led, a real, not an
artificial market.
— An unnecessary restructuring of probation
will cause disruption to the planned introduction of features
of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 such as Custody Plus.
The Probation Boards' Association joins with
others in calling for a Royal Commission to explore in depth the
issues facing the criminal justice system as a whole, thinking
through criminal and penal policies in England and Wales, including
the impact of police boundary changes.
November 2005
2 Compact: Getting it right together (Compact on
Relations between Government and the Voluntary and Community Sector
in England) Home Office, November 1998. Back
3
Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A new approach, December
2003. Back
4
The Partial Regulatory Impact Assessment-"Restructuring
Probation to Reduce Re-offending", November 2005. Back
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