November 18

November 18, 2003: Probation Could Be Dismantled, Says Union

Probation union Napo has published its 10 key reasons for opposing the forthcoming Offender Management Bill, trailed by Home Secretary John Reid earlier this month. Napo raises these points:

If the Bill becomes law probation work, particularly interventions, including unpaid work and many accredited programmes, will immediately be the subject of competition with voluntary and private sector providers.
Core probation work, and probation staff, will be transferred to the private or voluntary sector by dictat, not on the basis of which provider is the most effective or which provider offers the best ‘value for money’.
Duties in relation to victims, crime and disorder partnerships, and multi agency public protection arrangements will also be the subject of contracts, so the provider will not necessarily be the Probation Service.
If a Probation Board is deemed to be ‘underachieving’ it would be contracted out and excluded from putting in a bid for its own work. The Boards would disappear leaving no local public provider to bid in future when contracts come up for renewal.
The introduction of competition will lead to less communication and cooperation between agencies as has happened in the Prison Service. It will undermine the stated aim of NOMS; to introduce better end-to-end management of offenders, reduce re-offending and increase public protection.
The public service ethos, local accountability and links with sentencers will be lost. The Trusts will be business-like bodies with members drawn from the world of business and human resources rather than the local community. There will also no longer be the requirement for magistrates, judges or local councillors to sit on the new Trusts.
Probation services will be controlled regionally or nationally rather than at local level and the ability to respond to local crime and local needs will be undermined.
There is no evidence to support the Government’s contention that competition drives up standards, and no business case has ever been produced to demonstrate how it would.
The dismantling of the national Service means the end of the Probation profession and national collective bargaining. It thereby threatens the performance of the Service and the terms and conditions of staff. The future of staff training is in doubt and the fragmentation of the Service threatens to reduce opportunities for career development.
There is no support for the proposals. When they went out for consultation at the end of
2005 the overwhelming majority of the responses (788 out of 798) were opposed. Opposition came not only from practitioners and probation employers, but also from sentencers, academics, local authorities, the police and the voluntary sector. Home Office figures show that Probation performance is better than at any time in its history to date. Napo believes that the objectives of reducing re-offending will best be served by building on the principles of partnership rather than competition, and on the strengths of a coordinated public National Probation Service rather than a fragmented mish-mash of providers.