Privatisation of probation service - what next?

In my voluntary job in the CJS, we now have to 'clock in' so that, when the funding is cut to our bit, someone can work out how much they will have to pay to replace us?

? = !! oops

Oh dear - the privatisation of public services of this kind has always been a disaster - viz. hospital services, nursing, social services, residential care etc. It leads to fragmentation, lack of control over quality, and haphazard management; and above all else the the loss of dedication and a sense of vocation. When will they ever learn that figures on a spreadsheet are not the whole story.

The government are proposing action to bring caring back into nursing - it was the reorganisations and privatisations that led to the mess in the first place.

I am not against the privatisation of many services and I think in some ways privatisation can mean a bit of a reality check in that there is not a bottomless pit of money to pay out. However having said that I have two issues. There are certain services that should never be privatised (the probation service being one of them) and there needs to be a fair playing field, which there usually is not with private contracts being awarded for services rendered, relatives and friends of those in the know etc. and crikey knows how many back handers take place!

There has been quite a lot of privatisation of bits of the probation service for many years, all of it leading to funds being creamed off by contractors and serious offending being committed as a result of escalating concerns being missed by workers who don't understand what indicates high risk. Sending low risk offenders to private companies to be managed misses the point of being supervised by professionals who bring criminological, psychological, forensic and sociological expertise to the job. In recent years, short-sentenced offenders have been released from prison without any supervision, and they have high reconviction rates. The answer is to allow probation staff to supervise them, not to send them to private companies. Payment by result will hopefully show that this won't work in a very short time, unless the measures and outcomes are so meaningless that no-one has a clue whether it has been effective.

Probation is good at managing serious offenders, but more important, good at noticing deterioration in offenders who have committed relatively low risk offences. G4S are a joke - the workers who have anything about them soon leave and approach the police, prison and probation services. They arrive with horror stories of escaped offenders, wrong, incomplete or missing paperwork for suicidal prisoners, electronic tags being incorrectly fitted, bureaucratic disasters and poor staff retention, hence lack of knowledge and skills. SOVA and other chancers have not understood the importance of assessing low risk offenders, and have placed untreated drug addicts in unsupervised houses in the midst of housing estates where they have caused havoc, or they have placed vulnerable young females in all male houses, resulting in harassment and abuse, and so on....ad infinitum.

Probation should remain a public service. The training programme for all staff is par excellence, but costly. However, it can be supported with training and supervision from experienced and suitably qualified staff. The public will lose out if all this is sacrificed.

Exactly when - privatisation and "outsourcing" are concepts that look good on paper but create havoc on the ground - with the most vulnerable in society being the losers.

It all started as a cost-cutting exercise and a political game, and we are paying the price now in every way.

The sooner we have a government that accepts the concept of truly public services this mess will continue. Can't see this happening any time soon!

I was involved in SSD when the decision was taken to give LAs money for residential/nursing care and care-at-home rather than for it to be funded via the benefits system; and for private homes and care agencies to become the norm with the closure of LA-run homes. The government said it would save money - but we all said that it would only work if the LAs were given enough money to fund the escalating fees being charged by private homes and private care-at home services - this of course did not happen. Private care homes have always been inadequately "policed" and the same goes for private care at home - hence the scandals that hit our headlines.

When I was working I always opted first for the dwindling LA services for my clients because the staff were properly trained and the care was properly monitored.

I quite agree when and Mishap.
I think it is interesting the discussion that is going on at the moment about low-paid workers and benefits. Could these be the people whose jobs have been outsourced (hospital porters, care workers etc) who are not paid a living wage by these much vaunted private contractors who are saving so much money compared to public service? Not much of a net saving if that is the case.

I don't know whether part of the Probation Service should be privatised as is being suggested, however, I would hope that those working in the service are not too easily hoodwinked.

Some years ago I worked for a solicitors practice and was asked if I would transfer to the criminal part of the practice. To help me make up my mind I sat in on some of the interviews with clients (with their permission). I recall sitting in on one session where the client, who I thought was very intelligent, was blaming his upbringing, lack of education and just about everyone else for his offending. The solicitor had to leave the room at one point and the client looked at me, grinned and said "you aren't buying any of this are you". When I said I wasn't he said that he found it easy to convince the "middle class liberals" involved in the justice system. He said he thought they felt guilty about their own more affluent upbringing so he could easily convince them of his "deprived" upbringing when in fact the truth was that he preferred "thieving" to actually getting a job

Ha ha Barrow I soooo recognise that character! When I started out as a new probation officer, I would get all the 'potty-training trauma' stories and sit listening patiently as the trite accounts of deprivation and loss were trotted out by offenders who had learned to rationalise their laziness, greed and sense of entitlement. When I learned to steer them towards taking responsibility, they stopped trying it on with me. Coming from a working class background, I had no hang-ups about my education, which I got despite going to school!

when - I had an instant knee-jerk reaction to this proposal - that it would not be 'a good thing'!

I hoped you'd lend your wise insight and knowledge to this, knowing you'd put your views across so much better than me, which you have.

I couldn't agree more with all you've said.

Yes when, I grew up in the same area as many of the clients, in some cases knew their parents and siblings. When I tried to tell the solicitors they were being had, they wouldn't believe me.

I remember one conversation where the solicitor was representing a 17 year old, the solicitor was telling me what a terrible life this boy had had and that if he hadn't been taken into care things could have turned out worse for him - I then pointed out he was 17 years old and was charged with murder, how much worse could it be!

You're reminding me of so many stories Barrow. One thing privatisation undermines is the memory of experienced probation staff, who have known generations of offenders and their families, and can take the long view of offender progress. I sat in the magistrates court one day, observing a member of staff for her NVQ. Her client's solicitor waffled on at the magistrates, telling them all about his community alcohol treatment, which would be sabotaged if he was sent to prison. Problem was, it was the offender's brother who was in treatment, not him! Both men were supervised by my team. The magistrates made eye contact with me and stood the case down, then gave the solicitor what for. Private companies can't bring that depth of knowledge about families and communities to the work. I know everyone has to start somewhere, but not with active offenders, who won't hang around waiting for organisations to learn the ropes.

Well there it is in a nutshell - BBC News just interviewed a chief officer, who says the concern is who will provide the service when an offender's risk changes from low or medium to high or very high. G4S or Serco will have the job of completing a complex risk assessment, based around static and dynamic risk factors, and transfer the case to the probation service if risk of committing a serious offence is high/imminent.

So who will do those risk assessments, then? You can bet probation will get the blame when it backfires.