The Howard League for Penal Reform has responded to Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate of Probation’s report on adult probation services in
Northamptonshire, published today (Thursday 20 April).
The report states that the publicly-run National Probation
Service (NPS), responsible for supervising people deemed to
present a high risk of reoffending, was performing reasonably
well.
However, inspectors criticised the Community Rehabilitation
Company (CRC), which is owned by Sodexo in partnership with Nacro
and tasked with managing medium- and low-risk cases. They found
that the CRC was not doing enough to prevent reoffending and was
not focused enough on protecting the public.
Too little work was being delivered to reduce the likelihood of
domestic violence. Problems with the CRC’s work with police and
children’s services left victims and their children more
vulnerable than necessary.
Staffing shortages made it hard for people to get on to
accredited programmes, leaving some unable to fulfil the
requirements of their sentences and unable to get the help they
needed.
Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League for
Penal Reform, said: “The break-up of the public
probation service, with a large part of it handed to 21 private
companies, was supposed to turn lives around, reduce reoffending
and make us all safer.
“Today’s report is the latest in a series of inspections showing
how this has failed, increasing the risk to the public and
letting down people who are trying to change their lives.
“A general election is only seven weeks away, and one of the
first challenges for a new government will be to sort out this
mess.
“It is time to end the dangerous experiment of ‘community
rehabilitation companies’ and return to the single, successful,
probation service that we used to have.”
Among the problems identified in the report was Sodexo’s reliance
on an IT interface – to be provided by Her Majesty’s Prisons and
Probation Service – that is not yet ready. Sodexo went ahead with
implementing its new operational model anyway and made staff
redundant.
Inspectors said that it was “difficult to understand why Sodexo
gave so little attention to contingency planning, and went ahead
with large-scale redundancies, given the clear dependencies and
inherent risks”.
