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Strengthening probation?

Document Cited authorities 1 Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 December 2018
AuthorNicola Carr
DOI10.1177/0264550518812491
Published date01 December 2018
Subject MatterEditorial
PRB812491 375..377
Editorial
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Strengthening
2018, Vol. 65(4) 375–377
ª The Author(s) 2018
probation?
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0264550518812491
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
The future of probation in England and Wales is once again under the spotlight as
the government undertakes a consultation on how to remedy the serious failings of
Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. According to the Ministry of Justice the
Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence (MoJ, 2018a) consultation is taking
place because of difficulties with CRC contracts caused by changes in the type of
offenders coming before the courts and the sentences they receive. This assertion
is true on one level but is somewhat disingenuous given that there is clear evidence
that changes in patterns of sentencing had been taking place prior to Transforming
Rehabilitation reforms. Trends in the decline in the use of community sentences, the
rise in suspended sentence orders and increases in use of imprisonment were
evident before TR and certainly following the introduction of the Legal Aid, Sen-
tencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012. Furthermore, ‘Through
the Gate’ provisions, which involved extending post-custodial supervision to all
sentenced prisoners, and which served as a central rationalising pillar for the
Transforming Rehabilitation project, meant that CRCs’ caseloads increased in a
way that was not anticipated (although it should have been), with fewer clients
referred directly from the courts, but more from the ‘back-end’ of the system. In
addition to contractual difficulties, the extension of post-custodial supervision
without the necessary provision of supports has resulted in a classic and pre-
dictable net-widening effect with an attendant impact on the prison population
(Cracknell, 2018).
The government states that it intends ‘to stablise probation services in the next two
years’ (MoJ, 2018a: 5), but be...

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