Overhaul left sector in worse state than before and taxpayer with £467m bill, MPs report

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Chris Grayling’s widely derided changes to the supervision of a quarter of a million offenders in the community were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money, a spending watchdog has said.

In yet another damning report on Grayling’s so-called Transforming Rehabilitation strategy introduced when he was justice secretary, MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC) said the overhaul had left the probation sector in a worse position than before.

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The changes failed to achieve expected reductions in reoffending and left services underfunded, fragile and lacking the confidence of the courts, the MPs said in a report.

Action taken to tackle the problems will cost £467m, the report said, adding: “Inexcusably, probation services have been left in a worse position than they were in before the ministry embarked on its reforms.”

Probation services deal with more than 250,000 offenders in England and Wales, including those preparing to leave jail, former prisoners living in the community and people serving community or suspended sentences.

The sector was overhauled in 2014 by Grayling, who ignored significant warnings from within the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and broke up 35 existing probation trusts, replacing them with a public-sector service dealing with high-risk offenders and 21 privately run community rehabilitation companies (CRC) that manage low- to medium-risk offenders.

The MoJ plans to end the existing CRC contracts early, in December 2020. Under the proposed new system, 10 probation regions would be created in England, with each containing an National Probation Service (NPS) division and a CRC. In Wales, the NPS would assume responsibility for the management of all offenders.

The PAC chairwoman, Meg Hillier, said: “Despite warnings from this committee and the National Audit Office over the past three years, the Ministry of Justice has failed to bring about the promised revolution in rehabilitation.

“Rather than deliver the savings hoped for at the start of the programme, the ministry’s attempts to address the failures in the reforms have cost the taxpayer an additional £467m while failing to achieve the anticipated improvements in reoffending behaviour.

“Over-optimistic initial forecasts left the Ministry of Justice fighting fires of their own making since the programme’s inception.”

The committee claimed the MoJ failed to conduct adequate pilot schemes or to learn sufficiently from similar programmes elsewhere, accusing the department of suffering from “optimism bias”.

The PAC report said: “It is unacceptable that so many unnecessary risks were taken with taxpayers’ money.”

The changes failed to reduce reoffending by as much as expected, continued the report, citing figures that showed the average number of reoffences per offender increased by 22% between 2011 and March 2017.

The report also noted that the number of offenders recalled to prison for breaching their licence conditions went up by 47% from January 2015 to September 2018.

While the government says the rise reflects the extension of statutory supervision to offenders sentenced to less than 12 months, the committee said the MoJ “acknowledged that it had not got post-sentence supervision right”.

The PAC joins the chief inspector of probation, the cross-party justice committee and the National Association of Probation Officers in heavily criticising Grayling’s changes.

Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, said: “Chris Grayling’s disastrous decision to privatise probation has been a costly failure that has left our communities less safe.

“The Tories must show that they have learnt the lessons of this failure and drop their ideologically driven plans to sign yet more private probation contracts.

“Labour has made it clear that in government we will return probation to the public sector, where it can focus on keeping the public safe – not lining the pockets of failing private companies.”