An observation of the "privatisation" of Probation Services.

I have had the misfortune to have been placed on a period of "supervision" after an excellent assessment with a highly professional and experienced Court PO who recommended it as a continuation of counselling and support that I was receiving via the NHS.
Sounds good so far but sadly my arrival in the system coincided with the decision to split the local Probation Services into a 30% retained public sector element and a 70% hive off into a Community Interest Company (a non profit form of governance) which was given the rehabilitation and resettlement contract.
Oh Joy. In the eighteen months of the order I have had no less that six PO's due to staff shortages, maternity leave, internal reorganisation and transfer of staff to other offices and sick leave. That has meant I have had to repeat my history to six different people with six different ways of working and any hopes of continuity and genuine help has disappeared into smoke!
The real farce is that as a highly experienced top level manager I have been able to offer them an insight into the was organisations run and are managed, especially at the early stages of development after being set up. The hardest thing they have had to learn is that they are no longer public servants and the imperatives of their employer - now a private company fighting to achieve it's contractual targets and bid for new work - over-ride any notions they may retain of being able to "help" people towards genuine rehabilitation. We have seen this with Group 4 and Private Companies running services and it is now a feature of Probation. 
So at the end of the period I have probably given much more than I have received and my own notions of being helped along my personal journey have been well and truly shattered on the rocks of "austerity" cuts in public services.
As someone unlikely to ever fall into the hands of the criminal justice system again I have been something of a "banker" for my PO's who meet with me for a perfunctory chat every month and who will be able to tick the box that records "has not re offended in the past twelve months" which will eventually enable a Home Office Minister to stand up in the House of Commons to report that the new policy has been a "success". 
After all, that is (cynically) what all of this comes down to in the end, isn't it?

How are people finding this?

I'm pretty much with Moo on this one. You only have to look at water utilities to see that some degree of change was required, but that it went too far on something that is a vital service - contracts require a minimum amount of repairs to leaks but beyond that the profits from running a more efficient service go to the shareholders, not fixing more leaks & avoiding serious drought issues.

The headlines label this as a way of helping prevent re-offending but I can't see the proposals being about that, unless by cutting waste, the savings are pumped back into the system. But will a private company be able to run a better service & still make good profit? Or will it result in fewer probabtion offices & further for people to travel? I see my PO in the evening because I work - would changes result in less flexibility so money can be saved on staff hours?

Its not like things aren't already starting to change. Fingerprint readers are coming in, so that people who don't need any help from probation can just turn up & press a button & go. For me this makes massive sense as since i completed the isotp my monthly visits to probation have been a total waste of time - better served by my PO spending that time with an offender who really needs support or managing. I accept that the justice system decides that I need to turn up every 4 weeks but the meetings are no more than hello, is everything ok? Any issues? The next meeting is on xxxxx there is no managing or supervision as such, so a fingerprint machine would make for more sense unless I specifically had an issue to discuss.

Its not like the service is great now - my pre-sentance report was basically inadmissible as the person doing it didn't actually read the offences properly & did a report based on a very different scenario, but thankfully my solicitor kept pushing for a copy before sentencing & eventually got it the night before & rung me to say the sentencing might have to be postponed. I did the pre isotp course work every week for a month or so & turned up on the course to find none of it had been passed on, so we had to waste time doing it again. But I can't really see how those types of things will improve with privatisation, as staff will probably be under pressure to do things even faster.

The idea of voluntary organisations bidding sounds great on paper because it could pretty much blow out most of what I've written, but realistically, how many voluntary organisations would be in a position to bid for this sort of work & win against some of the existing private companies already involved in this area.

The one bit that does jump out at me as being a definite area for change is the reduction of the number of regions. You can be pretty certain that's the area where big savings could be made based on previous privatisations, as there'll be lots of unnecessary duplication of work & functions where centralising servers & back office functions

Hmmm...being a libertarian lite, I'm not sure what I feel about this.

Normally, I'd be glad to see the state stepping aside to allow the market to do what it does best but I'm not so sure the market would do it better. There are sound philosophical arguments for the state retaining control of the criminal justice system (which, if it is to remain unified, fair and regionally consistent, must end up as a monopoly anyway) so I don't think this qualifies as a 'better in the free market' issue.

For those of us who are considered especially dangerous, we won't be affected as the probation trusts will remain in control of our cases.

Will do! Thanks Chris

Blimey! With that picture I'd ring the police the moment I saw you!

You've got my email address Chris. Feel free to send me the pdf when you have time.

Interesting...

Will it help? Help what? Isn't it the justice system as a whole, that needs addressing? I cannot see how privatisation of the current probation service will reduce re-offending.

240,000 offenders were supervised by probation last year. One of those was me. How would it have affected me? My pre-sentence report was good, little risk of re-offending, it stated. Would I want a voluntary organisation writing recommendations to a judge on my behalf?

Frankly, it is a money making scheme, as opposed to tackling the real problem. The persistant offenders are what cost the country the most money. For me, that is where to start overhauling what is a huge, costly problem.

One thing is for sure, it would go to the lowest bidder!

I suppose it would depend on the type of person the job would attract. People have moaned about G4S running the security, and often the front desks, but to be honest, on the whole I find them more courteous than a plastic plod or actual officer - I've never had cause to complain about any of them (now there's a first!).

So who knows - privatisation has shown itself to be a mixed bag of success and failure. I just wonder what problems all those redundant probation officers roaming the streets will cause.

It's all good points BT. It's a poor service at present, so let's farm it out to the lowest bidder to pay the workers even less money - that should work.

 

Your right SC, i suspect it's one of the few things that would be better off staying a monopoly. I also have rather a weird view in that - i was proscecuted and sentenced by the State, and therefore i should also be supervised by the State until the end of my sentence. I'm not sure that i'd be very happy being supervised by someone working for a private company, whose ultimate aim is to make profits?
To be honest i don't really know what the answer is, but i'm not entirely convinced that a commercially run company could run it any better.

Thanks to everyone for contributing to this thread.

It may be of interest for you to take a look at a post I've done on my own personal blog - see christopherstacey.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/opening-the-criminal-justice-market-who-is-the-customer/.

It links to an article that I wrote back in Summer 2012, but it wasn't published until last month, so it's hit the proverbial shelves just at the right time.

Keen for peoples thoughts.

I'm guessing some of you didn't know that I had a personal blog. Haven't done much on it in the past. Hope to do more in the future though.

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Post Edited (Christopher Stacey) : 09/01/2013 21:49:37 GMT

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Hi All,

Many of you will have read annoucements this morning about the privatisation of Probation - see www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/09/probation-service-private-firms-grayling.

I was wondering what people thought of this, in terms of thinking back to how you think it would have affected you. Would it have bothered you? Are the planned changes a good thing?

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Ha, thanks.

I've got the article on a different system (my personal one), so if you could drop an email to the one on the blog, I'll send it over in the morning.

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