Call for delay to government probation plans
Our Director, Richard Garside, is one of eight signatories on a letter to the Justice Secretary, David Gauke, calling for him to 'pause and reconsider' the government's plans re-let probation contracts to private companies.
The call comes in the wake of a damning National Audit Office report last week, which concluded that the Ministry of Justice 'should pause and reflect on whether its propsed approach is both deliverable and consistent with its strategic aims for the probation system'.
The seven signatories write that they 'keen to offer solutions in respect of what is an increasingly unsatisfactory situation' and suggest that their collective 'breadth of knowledge and experience... might serve to assist and inform' the Justice Secretary's thinking on the future of the probation service.
The other signatories to the letter are Helen Schofield from Probation Institute; Ian Lawrence of the probation staff union Napo; Ben Priestley of UNISON; Frances Crook from the Howard League; Phil Bowen from the Centre for Justice Innovation; and Maris Stratulis and John McGovern from BASW.
You can download the letter below.