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Splitting the Home Office

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorHindpal Singh Bhui
Published date01 June 2007
Date01 June 2007
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0264550507077223
Subject MatterArticles
Probation Journal
Editorial
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright © 2007 NAPO Vol 54(2): 107–108
DOI: 10.1177/0264550507077223
www.napo.org.uk
http://prb.sagepub.com
Splitting the Home Office
On 9 May the probation and prison services were separated from the Home
Office and brought into a new Ministry of Justice, which will also have lead
responsibility for the criminal law and sentencing under the overall control of the
Department for Constitutional Affairs. The Home Office will concentrate on counter-
terrorism, the police, crime reduction, immigration and asylum issues. There are
reasons to believe that for the probation service this could turn out to be one of
the more positive reforms of recent years. The work of probation and prison services
has undoubtedly suffered from being under the aegis of a Home Office that has
for most of the previous six years been preoccupied with terrorism and immigration.
The Ministry of Justice should in theory bring a welcome focus on probation work,
although there is of course a danger that it will become an easier to ignore minor
player in heavyweight contests between government departments.
There are also some wider implications that deserve some consideration –
alongside the earlier transfer of the race and communities brief from the Home
Office to the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of
Justice has left an almost exclusively security-focused Home Office. What does this
mean for a police service, which has put considerable effort into multi-agency
work and community policing? The police’s alignment with agencies concerned
with security may have both symbolic and practical consequence in years to come.
Another more unequivocally positive development is the uncharacteristically
balanced media coverage of two recent reports arguing that fewer people should
be sent to prison and more people given community penalties. The reception given
to the reports, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research and the...

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