November 23

November 23, 2006: New Bill: Offender Management and Probation Privatisation?

A new Offender Management Bill was published today. The government argues that it aims to reduce re-offending and better protect the public by improving the way in which offenders are managed. In particular, the bill seeks to remove the public sector monopoly on the provision of probation services and enable the Secretary of State to commission services from the best available provider in the public, private or voluntary sector. The bill also:

supports commissioning by creating greater parity between the powers of staff working in public and private sector prisons
strengthens and updates the offences of bringing articles into prison to cover articles such as mobile phones
enables the component parts of National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to share information
removes the requirement for prisons to appoint a medical officer, bringing legislation in line with changes to the delivery of health services for prisoners which is now dealt with by the NHS
enable NOMS to bring programme accreditation in house
makes some minor technical amendments to provisions relating to juvenile offenders sentenced to custody

The government view is that the main aim of the provisions in the bill is to enable NOMS to be more flexible in the way that it provides services. This, it is argued, will ensure that communities are served by the best possible probation service.

Speaking at Wormwood Scrubs prison earlier this month, Home Secretary John Reid emphasised that the probation service has delivered improvements in performance over recent years, but that the effective tackling of re-offending requires a broad coalition of effort.
The Home Secretary stated:

“We need to bring the voluntary sector back to centre stage as an equally professional partner in supervising and rehabilitating offenders when they leave prison and in the community.”

Speaking about the bill, the Under-Secretary for Criminal Justice and Offender Management, Gerry Sutcliffe has stated:

“We need to allow all of those who have the right skills and expertise to be able to make a contribution to the management of offenders, whether they are from public, private or third sectors. And we need to make sure that we are getting the most out of our considerable investment by developing new ways of working across difference sectors, and custody and the community, to better meet local needs.”

The bill will achieve this end by transferring the statutory duty to make arrangements for the provision of probation services from the 42 local probation boards to the Secretary of State. It will create new public sector bodies to be known as probation trusts. Regional commissioners, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, will be free to contract for probation services across organisational and geographical boundaries. In line with the roll-out of the offender management model, the focus will be unremittingly trained on the offender, and what is needed to protect the public and reduce re-offending. Commissioners will not do this in isolation. They will be required to conduct statutory consultations on a regional basis so that they are able to deliver services targeted to meet the specific needs of local communities.

A Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) of the offender management bill is available, as well as an RIA for the proposed new arrangements for provision of probation services and an RIA for the transfer of powers to contracted prisons and secure training centres. It also contains a Race Equality Impact Assessment. These RIAs are available online.

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