Written statement: Update on Probation Delivery - Mar 19

Justice Minister (Jake Richards): My Noble Friend, the Minister of State for Justice (Lord Timpson), has today made the following statement:

"The Government is committed to strengthening public protection and ensuring the Probation Service has the tools and capacity it needs to keep communities safe, protect victims and change lives.

Today I am setting out a package of reforms that will deliver tougher, more targeted supervision for offenders who pose the greatest risk, expand the use of electronic monitoring to improve management of offenders in the community, and ensure probation officers can focus their time where it has the biggest impact on public safety.

For too long, the Probation Service has operated under immense pressure. Years of unsuccessful structural reforms, rising caseloads, outdated systems, and chronic underinvestment under the previous government left the Service overstretched and without the tools to manage risk effectively. These pressures were exacerbated by the wider Criminal Justice System challenges we inherited, including the prison capacity crisis.

This Government has already taken decisive action to stabilise the system, including through the Independent Sentencing Review and the Sentencing Act. We are now going further to ensure the Probation Service can better supervise those most likely to reoffend, strengthening protection for victims and the wider public across the country.

The Government is investing up to £700 million into probation and the community by 2028/29 – a 45% increase on current funding – which will be spent on measures including tagging, accommodation, and a new commitment to onboard at least 1,300 additional new trainee probation officers in 2026/27. This is on top of the 1,000 brought in in 2024/25 and the 1,300 committed to for 2025/26, which we are making progress on.

A central part of strengthening the Probation Service is professionalising the workforce, building upon its legacy of over 100 years of dedicated service but equipped with skills to reduce re-offending in the 21^st Century. Later this year the Government will publish a consultation on introducing external regulation for the Probation Service, to gather views on the most effective approach and legislation required. External regulation would aim to strengthen public understanding and provide formal recognition of the status of probation practitioners. This fulfils a long-standing commitment to recognise the professionalism, qualifications, knowledge and skills required for the unique role of a probation practitioner, in providing trusted advice to the courts and protecting the public. Regulation would enhance confidence in the workforce and secure parity with other recognised professions.

The Government is also committed to ensuring that probation staff are safe at work and we are taking action to protect them. We are installing visitor lockers in all probation contact areas to reduce the risk of weapons being brought into interview spaces, and rolling out bleed control kits and defibrillators to every probation office. In addition, we will pilot enhanced safety and security measures in seven probation offices from April 2026, including the use of archway scanners, handheld wands, body-worn video cameras for unpaid work staff, and enhanced personal safety training focused on de-escalation and aggression management.

These improvements form the groundwork for a more resilient and effective Probation Service that enables staff to build the right relationships to motivate change and spot early signs of escalating risk. Building on this foundation, and the encouraging signs of improved performance already emerging across probation regions during recent Ministerial visits, the Government is today announcing a set of measures that will significantly strengthen how offenders are supervised in the community.

First, we are significantly strengthening the Service's Electronic Monitoring (EM) capabilities. Performance of the service is now significantly improved and, as part of up to £700 million investment in probation by 2028/29, we will introduce a presumption that all offenders released from prison will be tagged for the period of time they would have been in custody. This is unless probation practitioners deem it unsuitable for that individual. This step alone will mean thousands more offenders are electronically monitored on release. To enable this the Government will invest £100 million to deliver the largest expansion in the use of Electronic Monitoring in the Service's history to enhance public safety.

The Government will invest £5m of this £100m to pilot proximity monitoring within this Parliament, as committed to in the Government's 10-year Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. This new technology – used to different extents internationally in countries such as Spain, the Netherlands, and Australia – enables us to know if an offender comes within a preset distance of a victim, adding a further layer of protection for victims of high-harm domestic abuse and providing a further powerful tool for managing risk.

We are also expanding intensive monitoring for priority groups where technology can provide even stronger safeguards. This includes the national rollout of our Domestic Abuse Perpetrators on Licence (DAPOL) Pilot, which will extend from eight probation regions to all twelve across England and Wales. This programme gives probation staff the ability to tag any offender they assess as posing a domestic abuse risk, not only those with a domestic abuse-related conviction. Tags can be used to impose curfews confining the offender to an address between certain times, require the offender to stay away from specific locations such as the victim's home or workplace, and provide constant whereabouts monitoring to see exactly where they have been. Probation staff working with victims report high confidence in the scheme – 83% say that tagging provides victims with greater peace of mind, and 75% say it has improved victim protection.

Further, we are expanding the use of technology to tackle some of the most persistent and harmful offences in our communities. The Acquisitive Crime pilot, already operating across 19 police force areas, sees burglars, robbers and thieves required to wear GPS tags which map their movements against the locations of recent unsolved offences. Any matches are shared with the police to support their investigations. This acts as a strong deterrent to reoffending with our impact evaluation suggesting that the pilot has cut reoffending by this group by 20%. From Autumn 2027, the pilot will be rolled out further, being made available to all 43 police force areas by the end of this Parliament.

We are also improving the way electronic monitoring data is shared. The new Electronic Monitoring Data Insights tool will provide probation staff with quick access to electronic monitoring and behavioural information. Timely sharing of behaviour patterns – such as licence condition violations – will help staff make better decisions and support rehabilitation through earlier interventions, while easing their workload by replacing inefficient data collection processes. A small pilot will start in June 2026, and we aim to fully rollout by Autumn 2026.

Alongside expanding tagging, we are taking steps to improve offender supervision. Persistent pressures on the Probation Service have meant that staff have not been able to deliver the levels of face-to-face supervision expected with all offenders. Between 2023 and 2025, 31% of target probation appointments did not take place due to unmanageable workloads. The position has been improving – the proportion of target appointments not completed fell from 35% in 2023, to 31% in 2024, and 27% in 2025. However, the system remains under significant strain. We must take further steps to ensure our most dangerous offenders receive the frequency and quality of supervision required to manage their risk effectively.

We are therefore making a number of key changes to ensure staff time is focused where it has the greatest impact on public safety. First, we are changing the way staff assess overall offender risk, integrating the use of statistical tools to the risk assessment processes. These tools will support practitioners when making their clinical assessments by providing information on an individual's reoffending likelihood. Second, we will ensure we can deliver the face-to-face expectation with our highest-risk offenders through an overall rebalancing of staff time away from lower-risk offenders. This rebalancing will help us to set out expectations for Probation supervision which are genuinely deliverable for staff, and which will protect the public by ensuring those most at risk of serious reoffending receive the most supervision.

There are two core safeguards we have considered in the design of these measures. First, practitioner judgment remains at the heart of the risk assessment process – those identified as posing the highest risk of reoffending and harm by probation staff will always receive the strictest supervision. Equally, in keeping with this Government's commitment to tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, offenders we know have a history of domestic abuse will never be eligible for our lowest levels of supervision. These measures will help us to strengthen public protection practice, protect victims, and strengthen Probation supervision by targeting it to where we can have the greatest impact.

Taken together, this package of reforms represents a major shift towards a more resilient, better-targeted and modern Probation Service – one that harnesses the expertise of its practitioners, makes full use of modern technology, and enables staff to build the right relationships to motivate change and spot early signs of escalating risk. By focusing probation's resources where they are needed most and ensuring closer oversight of offenders who pose the greatest risk, we will strengthen public protection, support long-term reductions in reoffending, and give victims greater confidence and reassurance."