Justice Week 8-12 December 2008

March 25, 2009

Probation in Meltdown - campaign launched

Napo's campaign against Probation budget cuts was launched on 9th Marhc with a press release and the publication of a report on the extent of the cuts.

In the release Napo said
Probation Areas in England and Wales are facing cuts to budgets of between 13% and 25% over the next three years. Napo has calculated that this will mean minimum job losses of 2,500, the vast majority of whom will be frontline staff. As a consequence the service will not be able to fulfil its statutory duties, the quality of supervision will deteriorate, fewer court reports will be produced and because of this there will be more crime and more victims.

In 2008 the Probation Service was allegedly merged with the Prison Service. In fact it was a takeover. Only 3% of posts in the National Offender Management Service, which oversaw the merger, have a Probation background; the remainder are from the Prison Service. No senior managers in NOMS are from Probation. The post of Director of Probation has been abolished. Prison Service managers are attempting to introduce a centralised control and command model to Probation, which has traditionally been managed through consultation and consensus. This will lead to demoralisation and an absence of any voice for Probation in government.

The Ministry of Justice Business Plan which was published in February shows astonishingly that the amount spent on NOMS HQ now exceeds £1 billion, which is more than is spent on the entire Probation Service for the whole of England and Wales. The budget for NOMS has shot up from a modest £12 million in 2003/4 to £1 billion now. There needs to be an urgent enquiry by the National Audit Office into how this has been allowed to occur.

A briefing paper published today details the effect of the cuts in 30 of the 42 probation areas. Figures from the 14 areas which have given them would suggest that up to 880 jobs could be lost, in those areas, by the end of the financial year 2011/12. This would equate nationally to at least 2,500 posts made redundant. This will affect the ability of the Probation Service to provide supervision, programmes and prevent re-offending. Napo has calculated that a 25% reduction in supervision and programmes will lead to the commission of at least 300,000 additional offences a year. This is a conservative estimate based on an additional offence per person per week. The vast majority of people on probation have severe problems with drugs or alcohol and 84% have literacy levels of an eleven year old or less. The vast majority lead chaotic lives, a fact that seems not be understood by the new NOMS management.

Probation managers were told last autumn that £120 million needed to be cut from the budget by 2011/12. In addition no allowance would be made for cost of living increases. The government justifies this on the grounds that the Probation budget has grown by 70% over the last decade. However the number of probation officers is falling, the workload rose by 23% between 2002 and 2006 and the new money was predominantly used to employ more managers, consultants and bureaucrats at the centre.

Harry Fletcher, Assistant General Secretary of Napo, said: “The level of cuts is unsustainable. The gains made in reducing re-offending over the past five years will be lost. There will be at least one third of a million more offences as a consequence of the curtailment of supervision and programmes. The recession will make matters much worse. There are already indications that acquisitive crime and fraud are vastly on the increase. This will put an additional strain on Probation, the police and on prison numbers.”

He added: “It is of extreme concern that the Probation presence is being eradicated within the Ministry of Justice. There are no Heads of Department with a Probation background and just 113 Probation secondees compared with 3,400 transfers from the Prison Service. The introduction of command and control models into the Probation Service is totally inappropriate and will lead to demoralisation of staff. The affect of the cuts to budget and the absence of a Probation voice will render the service unable to fulfil its statutory duties.”

Find a copy of the briefing - Probation under Stress below
Download file

Posted by kfalcon at March 25, 2009 04:05 PM