The end of the Probation Service

Heard on LBC radio today, that if you are caught burgling a property there is only a 1 percent chance that you will be sent to prison, meaning a 99 percent chance you will get off with a community sentence of some kind. Not much of a deterrent is it? Those that end up with community sentences have no one to supervise them so the whole thing is pretty much a sham.
Personally I think they should bring back detention centers, borstals even approved schools. And for those that get sent to prison, take away all the luxuries and replace them with education and proper job training. And when their in court stop making excuses of their poor upbringing or time in a kids home being an excuse of why they've commited a crime.

many would agree Barney, however this country has the capacity to house 69,000 prisoners. As of yesterday we had 84,400 in custody. Many are remand prisoners (not convicted of anything) and many are serving less than 12 months. The Probation service has no statutory involvment with anyone who serves less than 12 months and yet the Tories argue Probation has not cut reoffending rates enough. How can we? we don't work with anyone who serves under 12 months and it is 80% of those indiduals who reoffend and commit the most crime.

Those released on licence to the Probation service do reoffend less, we do protect the public and if the offender fails to work with us we send them back to prison.

The Governement however think they can get this work done on the cheap, well I am sorry to say "good luck with that one".

I suspect Group 4 will reduce re-offending but that's only because a conservative MP will be doing the accounts! thumbsdown

Is this all related to the prison closures as well?

Only caught the end of the news, but is it part of one big overall cost saving exercise? From what I can gather, the prisons will close before the new super prison is ready. So what happens to the surplus of prisoners? Suppose that means they will be coming your way on early probation??

Suspect Group 4 etc will do an absolutely splendid job of transforming your low risk petty offenders into high end threats and new business for you Sharpink! thumbsdownthumbsdown

Chris Grayling (my so called boss and minister for justice) is a complete and utter retard if he thinks that Group4 can do a better job at managing low and medium risk cases. I suspect the remit should be lets do it cheaply and put lives at risk.
OK he argues that mentoring for short term prisoners is the way forward, guess what? The Probation Service has nevber done this becuase we don't have the capacity or the funding or remitt for this, so you wont save money there!

That said, a much cheaper alternative would be to stop sending low risk minor offenders to prison in the first place (at a cost of

So basically I'm getting the impression you're not that impressed with Chris Grayling? <runs for cover...>

Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, said the move was a "reckless gamble with public safety" which "risks importing all of the failures of the Work Programme into our criminal justice system".

"Our probation service does a good job in difficult circumstances on very stretched budgets," he said.

"Pilots were already underway to see if payment by results worked and to ensure any problems were ironed out before a full scale roll out.

"The new Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, has demonstrated a breathtaking arrogance in choosing to ignore or simply cancel the pilots.

"Rushing into payment by results in probation is a danger both to the offenders themselves who might not receive the rehabilitation support they require, and to the safety of communities up and down the country.

Had time to think and thought I would explain my earlier rant in a proffesional way....I Thank you in advance for taking the time to read it...

Ok academics, theorists, criminologists, psychologist, researchers, professors, sociologists and scholars that include Cesare Lombroso, Edwin Sutherland, Marx and Engels (to name but a few) have pondered the question of crime and criminality for many years.

Various theories have emerged that include Lombroso's general theory suggesting that criminals could be distinguished from non-criminals by multiple physical anomalies (sad but true). In more recent times Social conflict theorists believe a person, group, or institution has the power and ability to exercise influence and control over others.

Conflict theorists are also concerned with:
1. The role a government plays in

Now that's what I call a professional rant