A damning report by HM Inspectorate of Probation has
sparked calls from Plaid Cymru to renationalise the probation
service in full and transfer responsibility
for probation in Wales to the
Welsh Government.
The highly critical report finds Community Rehabilitation
Centres (private probation companies) are "nowhere near effective
enough" in reducing domestic abuse and protecting
victims.
The report states that "many individuals [are] drifting
through their supervision period without being challenged or
supported to change their predilection for domestic violence"
adding that, "too often we were left wondering how safe victims
and children were, especially when practitioners failed to act on
new information indicating that they could be in danger.
Practitioners often underestimated the level of harm victims and
children were exposed to. Some practice was of grave concern to
us."
Responding to the report, Plaid Cymru's Justice
spokesperson, MP said:
"This damning report exposes serious failings in a
probation service that has become a means for private companies
to profit from the rehabilitation of offenders.
"The probation service was once held in high
regard, winning awards for its effectiveness and success in
rehabilitation, until ideological politicians
in Westminster succeeded
in privatising it.
"The facts speak for themselves, showing that since
the service was privatised there has been an extremely worrying
rise in serious crime committed by offenders who are supposedly
under the supervision of the probation service. Westminster was
warned that privatisation would have such an effect but they did
it anyway. It was a decision based on ruthless ideology -
willfully wrecking the humanitarian principle of
rehabilitation.
"That the inspectorate has "grave concerns" about
these companies' practices surely calls for urgency from the
Government to take action. The service needs to be
renationalised in full, and responsibility over probation in
Wales must be urgently transferred from Westmisnter and
handed over to our own government in
Wales."
Notes:
The HM Inspectorate of Probation report is available
here: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/09/Report-Domestic-Abuse-the-work-undertaken-by-CRCs.pdf
The Guardian: Increase in serious
crimes by offenders on probation, figures
show: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/02/increase-serious-crimes-offenders-probation-figures-show-plaid-cymru
The UK Government was warned in 2013 that privatising
the probation service would lead to “an
unacceptable drop in operational performance” and trigger
“delivery failures”: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jun/24/probation-privatisation-warning-chris-grayling
Offender crime figures provided to MP in response to a
Parliamentary Question:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2017-07-04/2737/
Parliamentary Question exposing use of telephone reporting
instead of face-to-face reporting: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2017-07-04/2799/
The Labour Government of 2007 paved the way for
privatisation by giving the Secretary of State the power to do
so. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government then
succeeded in privatising the service across both Wales and
England in 2013. Justice is devolved in Scotland and Northern
Ireland and so were not affected by Westminster policies.
