media centre

How many times have you wished you'd had the benefit of foresight or hindsight when making business decisions? Speak to one of our experts today.

Minimum standards set by MOJ

The lord chancellor has told MPs concerned about the government's approach to rehabilitation that it expects probation providers to offer monthly face-to-face meetings with offenders during the first year of supervision.

There has been an acknowledgement that providers, such as community rehabilitation companies, have faced 'significant challenges' due to unforeseen changes in the types of offenders coming to court and the sentences they receive. The Ministry of Justice is looking at how to rebuild confidence in the probation system.

Probation services used to be run by 35 self-governing probation trusts, working under the direction of the National Offender Management Service. The then lord chancellor Chris Grayling decided to replace these with the National Probation Service, which would manage high-risk offenders and advise the courts, and 21 community rehabilitation companies (CRCs), which would supervise low- and medium-risk offenders and provide resettlement services to released prisoners.

Responding to concerns raised by the House of Commons justice select committee in its Transforming Rehabilitation report, justice secretary David Gauke said the government 'continues to believe that the underlying principles of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms were sound and are determined to build upon lessons learnt and work towards more effective integration of private public and social sector providers in future arrangements'.

Gauke told the committee the performance under current contracts 'has not been good enough, for a range of reasons'. The ministry will end CRC contracts two years early, with new arrangements being introduced from 2020. Gauke said the government is 'taking steps to tackle poor performance in the short term including the introduction of new minimum standards so that all providers offer a minimum of monthly face-to-face meetings with offenders during the first 12 months of supervision. 

A full government response to the committee's report will be published next year, when further details of the government's probation plans will be announced.

If you would like confidential law advice, please complete the form below and one of our expert team will contact you to discuss your query. Alternatively please call 01386 425300.

 

Close

How can we help?

Please fill in this form and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Please enter your name
Please enter your phone number
Please enter your email address
Please let us know how you heard about us
Please enter your enquiry
One more thing... Please enter the verification code

We’ll only use this information to handle your enquiry and we won’t share it with any third parties. For more details see our Privacy Policy.