News

'Best in the business' bidding for probation work

The Ministry of Justice has announced that 30 bidders have passed the first stage of a competition to win regional probation service contracts.

Bids come from a range of private firms, charities, British and multinational business. The contracts will for the first time require every...

19 December 2013
News

Government policy 'inhumane' and 'dysfunctional'

The offender management system in prisons in England and Wales is dysfunctional and should be subject to a fundamental review, the Chief Inspectors of Prisons and Probation have concluded...

17 December 2013
News

On probation

Colin Allars, incoming Director of the National Probation Service, has told The Guardian that the public sector should not expect to be the 'monopoly...

11 November 2013
News

Probation privatisation: making the sums add up

We have come rather late to this post on how the Transforming Rehabilitation sums might add up. It was publised back in June on the Buying Quality Performance website.

'Despite the rhetoric about a “rehabilitation revolution”,' writes Richard Johnson, 'this is the outsourcing of probation...

5 November 2013
Comment

Risky and fundamentally misguided

I won't forget 19 September 2013 in a hurry. Though it was my daughter's birthday, that's not the reason.

My mind was focused on the heavily predicted, but no less shocking,...

24 September 2013
Comment

The great probation sell-off

Today marks the next stage in the Transforming Rehabilitation programme, with the launch of the competition to deliver the bulk of probation work in England and Wales.

The...

19 September 2013
Comment

Transforming Rehabilitation: five questions

On January 9 the Ministry of Justice published Transforming Rehabilitation, its latest plans for the management of convicted lawbreakers in the community. The proposals can be...

10 January 2013