Probation renationalised: Another twist in the tale for the ‘national service of second chances’
| Author | Nicola Carr |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550520947867 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
Editorial
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Probation
2020, Vol. 67(3) 193–197
ª The Author(s) 2020
renationalised: Another
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0264550520947867
twist in the tale for the
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
‘national service of
second chances’
The past few months have been momentous. The global pandemic is still impacting
all of our lives including how the criminal justice operates and how probation
supervision is conducted. The death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers
in the United States has led to global protest about racism in society and within the
criminal justice system in particular. The words that George Floyd spoke as he
pleaded for his life – ‘I can’t breathe’ – resonate even more widely when we see
evidence of the differential impact of the Coronavirus on Black, Asian and Minority
Ethnic (BAME) Communities (Public Health England, 2020). The treatment of people
from BAME communities in the criminal justice system, including the dispropor-
tionate use of stop and search, and the significantly higher number of young people
from BAME backgrounds in custody have been previously documented in the
Lammy Review (2017). David Lammy is now the Shadow Secretary of State for
Justice, and he was in parliament on June 11th to respond to the government’s
announcement that probation services in England and Wales would be
renationalised.
Robert Buckland, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice,
announced in parliament that the process for competitive tendering of contracts for
the delivery of rehabilitation services in England and Wales would end, thereby
signalling the renationalisation of probation. The announcement was welcomed
across a broad spectrum, and in particular by those who were most vociferous in
their criticisms of Transforming Rehabilitation (see the back issues of the journal for
full coverage). In his response, David Lammy welcomed the government’s decision,
describing the probation service as ‘the national service of second chances’.1 The
government decision follows years of disruption to probation services, a great deal
of expenditure and wasted resources, which have impacted on service delivery,
including experiences of supervision. It is important to remember the staff who have
been caught up in all of these changes, and indeed the many who have departed
the probation services over the past 5 years. Staff working in Community Rehabi-
litation Companies (CRCs) in particular have faced uncertainties about their future,
and both CRCs and the National Probation Service (NPS) have seen a depletion in
the overall workforce, which has invariably placed more strains on those remaining,
194
Probation Journal 67(3)
who have carried higher caseloads as a result. The Chief Inspector of Probation
cautions that the government’s decision is ‘not a magic bullet’ and that significant
further investment will be required to fill vacancies and improve infrastructure
(Russell, 2020). The need to focus on investment in staff has been recognised
...
To continue reading
Request your trial