I once worked with a wise chief constable who loved to talk about childhood games of cricket by the canal in his home town in Lancashire. It was his misfortune as the smallest lad to be the ‘backstop’, the last line of defence before the ball went into the murky waters. Not only did he get wet retrieving the ball, he was blamed by everyone for missing it. It was never the fault of the older boys: the other fielders, the bowler sending down wides, or of the captain who was supposed to be the leader.

The chief said that the police, courts and probation were society’s backstop. “We think about them as the first line defending us from crime,” he said, “but it’s easy to see that the criminal justice system is not like that at all. It’s the backstop, not the main game.” Facing such facts is necessary if we are to be honest about policing, or sentencing. Or the work of the probation service which is getting so much attention in the press.

In 2007 the Probation Service celebrates its centenary. Across the globe the UK’s service is held up as the bench-mark for excellence. Across Eastern Europe, in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and elsewhere, our staff are establishing probation on our model. This is not out of respect but on the evidence of what works. But despite this in the UK probation is on the verge of serious difficulties.

When he was Home Secretary, Jack Straw referred to probation’s dynamic tradition, and the fact that it was a role model for the rest of the world. Paul Boateng, when a minister, said the figures showed it as very effective. Hilary Benn called it a ‘hidden jewel’. Today there are no such messages.

In 2001 what was a locally managed service changed into a national one with a national directorate. Immediately, costs escalated. The 70 civil servants in Whitehall who dealt with finance and policy suddenly increased to about 500. After a non-merger with the Prison Service a new National Offender Management Service, NOMS, acquired a staff of at least a thousand, but posts appear and disappear with such rapidity it is doubtful if we know how many there are.

This has imposed two management structures on top of the local ones in the 42 English and Welsh probation areas. Instead of developing good policies and financial systems, there has been decline. In one hundred years no probation area has had serious financial problems. This year, to take one of many examples, local areas did not receive their budget information until the second week of the new financial year. Good practice is to supply definite budgets three months before the start of the financial year. Chief officers have to meet targets and protect the public with no certainty on what finance will be available.

Despite recruiting local people onto probation boards there has been more centrally driven intervention and duplication. The opportunity for local people to manage the local services and be accountable for them has not been significant enough despite the quality of those that came forward. It would be hard to find anyone who would deny it.

Central contracts let for estate management have been ruinously expensive, draining money away from front line staff.

Bizarrely set targets to put offenders on ‘cognitive behavioural programmes’ failed to take account of disruption to the service and the unlikely effectiveness for many offenders with addictions, mental health problems and homelessness. These time-consuming targets did not allow for careful implementation and assessment of the work.

The increase in direction has been overwhelming. Offenders are ‘breached’ by probation staff when they don’t keep to the terms of their orders or licences. This means being taken back to court for re-sentencing or being returned to prison. The fact that staff traditionally used discretion here was anathema, so discretion was replaced by targets. A court which now puts a schizophrenic young man on probation in the hope that help and treatment will be provided will soon see the offender again when he fails to remember his appointments and has to be re-sentenced. The Chief Inspector of Prisons called the increase in recalled prisoners ‘staggering’; the figure is a 250% increase.

One hoped-for benefit in 2001 was a ‘national probation voice’. Sadly, chief probation officers were forbidden to make comments on matters of importance. The Home Office Press Office tried to persuade local boards that all national comment had to pass through its own processes. There has subsequently been a deafening silence. When probation work needed to be explained no press officer came forward.

Ministers have consulted on a new model for probation with a multiplicity of providers, particularly from the private sector. The rationale for this has been the unevidenced success of private prisons.

The National Audit Office was unable to find out the cost benefit of private prisons as information was ‘commercial in confidence’. One privately run prison was so out of control the public prison service had to take it over to restore discipline. It was then handed back. Another prison inspected was found to have a staff turnover of 40%, not an uncommon figure. Two poorly trained staff members were often in nominal charge of a wing of 70 prisoners who did as they liked. Fights, mobile phones and other matters were not reported.
 
In 2005 a BBC documentary showed, with hidden cameras, the situation in a private prison. Breaches of safety or discipline were not recorded in case the company lost money through ‘fines’ on the contract. An ex-governor confirmed this was normal practice.

The evidence of benefit for having probation run by private correctional companies does not exist. Out of the 750 responses to the consultation on reform, 740 opposed the suggested model, including academics, judges, magistrates, local authorities, police bodies, local criminal justice boards and many individuals. David Blunkett, Home Secretary at the time, said he would proceed anyway as he was not really consulting on whether the changes should take place.

Of course we need the strongest possible performing private sector. Whose financial future is not tied up with good commercial results?

The objections to core probation work being run by the private sector are straightforward. No company with a financial interest should advise courts on sentence as probation officers do. There is a massive gain to be made from increased numbers in prison, and no company is in a position to deny its shareholders increased business. If more people need to go to prison, then so be it. But not for profit.

There is an important place for private investment in criminal justice. Employment, accommodation and skills training provided by private enterprise could transform the lives of many, particularly young, offenders. There is much to do and our safety depends on it. The possibilities for private sector and voluntary sector cooperation are massive. But instead a probation service that delivers on the targets set it, that is cost effective and efficient, that provides a real measure of protection, that is open in its dealings is about to be put at risk. Blame the small kid playing at backstop.

This is the key issue. How, exactly, do we best provide support for offenders. Although probation is only one agency working with offenders the likely disruption that the current NOMS model might bring would impact on every organisation concerned with supporting and controlling offenders. Support for a regional commissioning structure seems to be dwindling and may well never emerge in the form that was suggested two years ago. There is perhaps a growing consensus that it is out-moded, not fit for purpose, and not flexible. If we cannot get the structures right then good practice will struggle to deliver.

At the heart of the vision for the future is the government’s commitment to ‘localism’. Restructuring probation must re-visit principles and objectives and make sure these are aligned to local governance and joined up public service delivery around local area agreements (LAAs) and local strategic partnerships (LSPs).

Offender Management targets will not be meaningful unless integrated into the ‘safer and stronger’ block of LAAs, working on the basis of needs analysis.
Approaches to Offender Management should not be centrally driven from a Home Office ‘silo’ but part of a coherent local strategy, particularly (as the Local Government Association says) in upstream joint work on preventative measures involving education and youth services, employment services, police and health. A separate free-for-all regional commissioning structure led by the Home Office would be at odds with what already works locally.

Integrated targets should be set by probation boards or trusts alongside youth offending teams, YOTS and Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships. Trusts should commission through contracts wherever best value can be evidenced. A duty to cooperate would apply to probation trusts as with other partners to LSPs and LAAs to reinforce collective responsibility and joint working.

Competition should work to widen service provision for offenders, private and third sector providers taking a determined percentage, a model similar to social services commissioning.

Unless and until probation can play a full and uninhibited part in local partnership work it will struggle to be truly part of a local strategy, to find ways of sharing budgets and resources, to be connected to local need; it has to be fully involved, not just a backstop.

This article first appeared in issue 70 of prisonREPORT

When this article was first published Martin Wargent was chief  executive of the probation boards' association, he is now chief executive of the penal affairs consortium.