Reforms by the Ministry of Justice to transform the rehabilitation of offenders have successfully restructured the probation landscape within ministerial timescales and without major disruption to services, but operational problems and risks to further service transformation need to be resolved, according to the National Audit Office.
Probation services were divided in 2014 into a public sector National Probation Service (NPS) and 21 new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) owned since February 2015 by 8, primarily private, providers. The NPS advises courts on sentencing all offenders and manages those presenting higher risk of serious harm, while CRCs supervise offenders presenting a low and medium risk of harm.
Today’s report found that probation services have been sustained throughout a period of major change, with 77% of service users surveyed reporting that they had not noticed any change in the overall service they had personally received. Service users were most dissatisfied in obtaining help with housing, help with finding employment and having to repeat information to different people; aspects influenced in part by factors outside the control of probation services.
The different organisations established in the reforms have different incentives, with unsurprising frictions between working level staff at the NPS and CRCs. Many junior staff at CRCs told the NAO that they considered their NPS contacts to be unduly critical and dismissive, while their NPS counterparts thought CRC contacts were often not providing them with necessary information and had become too focused on commercial interests.
While concerns over probation workloads are not new, staff in both organisations consider that high workloads have reduced the supervision and training that they receive and the service they provide. The NPS has higher than predicted caseloads and will need to successfully complete an extensive new change programme, which is now underway, if it is to provide a truly effective, national service. Front-line managers face growing pressures including dealing with an increasing level of high-risk offenders while assimilating an influx of trainees who will take time to become fully effective. In addition, caseloads at 3 of the 4 CRCs visited by the NAO were between 34 and 42 cases on average, with some staff handling a significantly higher number of cases.
According to the NAO, the various ICT systems used in probation casework also create severe inefficiencies, with new tools used by the NPS for assessing and allocating reoffenders requiring re-entry of data. Staff in the NPS and CRC also attributed several hours of lost working time per week to the main probation case management system, which was adopted before the reforms and which is expected to be used for the foreseeable future. The Ministry has been delayed in providing a data link for CRCs to fully use the system due to other priorities, increased scope and the need to jointly test the system with CRCs.
The performance of the new probation landscape will not become clear until data on reoffending is compiled in late 2017. Until that time, data on performance is focused on service levels for the completion and timeliness of probation activities, which have some data quality and availability issues. Performance across CRCs varies significantly with some areas already achieving the required level of performance though service credits to the value of £78,000 have been applied at two CRCs.
Today’s report found, however, that CRCs are paid primarily for completing specified activities with offenders; and there are significantly lower levels of business than the Ministry projected for CRCs. Both these factors risk hindering innovative approaches to tackling levels of reoffending.
“The Ministry has successfully restructured the probation landscape and avoided major disruptions in service, but this is only the beginning. The NPS is not yet operating as a truly national, sustainable service and the Ministry needs to address operational issues, many of which are longstanding, such as weaknesses in ICT systems. The Ministry also needs to have a deeper understanding of risks associated with reduced business for CRCs. Achieving value for money will require the resolution of these fundamental issues.”
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office
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Notes for editors
21
Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) in England and Wales
8
Number of different providers across the 21 CRCs
£3.7bn
Total lifetime contract value for all 21 CRCs
26.2%
Overall adult and junior reoffending rate in 2013-14
£889 million
Forecast total probation costs for 2015-16, including costs of CRC contracts, the National Probation Service, and operational and contract assurance activity
£259 million
Estimated payments to CRCs for payment by results over contract life, based on a 3.7 percentage point reduction in reoffending rates
£7.4 – £10.7 billion
Conservative estimate of the annual cost of reoffending to society in England and Wales
19
Bidders for the 21 CRC contracts
80%
Percentage of community orders and suspended sentence orders successfully completed by CRCs, in December 2015, against a target of 75%
70%
Percentage of community orders and suspended sentence orders successfully completed by the National Probation Service, in December 2015, against a target of 75%
- The NAO commissioned User Voice, a charity which carries out work led and delivered by ex-offenders, to carry out research across England to explore how current service users, who are in receipt of community supervision, understand the changes brought about by Transforming Rehabilitation. They used both qualitative and quantitative methods, by way of five focus groups and peer-distributed surveys. A total of 251 surveys were conducted across four CRCs, with two in the North of England, one in the Midlands and one in the South. The User Voice report can be found on the NAO website.
- Activities with offenders include: classroom-based, and vocational and unpaid work activities, as well as work with offenders in prison (as part of ‘Through the Gate’) prior to their release into the community.
- Press notices and reports are available from the date of publication on the NAO website. Hard copies can be obtained by using the relevant links on our website.
- The National Audit Office scrutinises public spending for Parliament and is independent of government. The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), Sir Amyas Morse KCB, is an Officer of the House of Commons and leads the NAO, which employs some 810 people. The C&AG certifies the accounts of all government departments and many other public sector bodies. He has statutory authority to examine and report to Parliament on whether departments and the bodies they fund have used their resources efficiently, effectively, and with economy. Our studies evaluate the value for money of public spending, nationally and locally. Our recommendations and reports on good practice help government improve public services, and our work led to audited savings of £1.15 billion in 2014.