Comment on Transforming Rehabilitation report

Our Director Richard Garside today welcomed a new report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on the transforming rehabilitation programme.

Richard said:

'Many of us warned the government at the time about their disastrous plans to privatise the probation service. This latest report by one of the House of Commons most influential committees offers further evidence of the scale of this disaster.

'It is worth recalling that before the government embarked on the transforming rehabilitation programme, every probation area had been rated as excellent or very good.

'Little over two years later, the delivery of probation services across England and Wales has become mixed and patchy, when it is not chaotic and inadequate.

'The Ministry of Justice should seize the opportunity presented by this report to draw a line under the mistakes of the past and begin the process of re-establishing a coherent and sustainable delivery model for probation services in England and Wales.'