The outsourcing of probation jobs

This is a partnered post.

In an effort to lower the re-offending rates of criminals, and to drastically reduce the cost of the United Kingdom’s criminal justice system, the British government have begun to outsource probation jobs to private companies. Under this scheme, the British government have awarded contracts to private companies who will be responsible for supervising approximately 200,000 low and medium risk English and Welsh offenders. These private companies will be paid a fee for monitoring these offenders and will receive bonus payments if they meet the government’s targets to cut the number of criminals who re-offend.

Since September 2010 a similar outsourcing of probation jobs scheme has been in operation in Peterborough Prison in Cambridgeshire. Within this scheme, short-term prisoners have been placed under intensive supervision after being released. A BBC News report discussing this Peterborough Prison outsourcing of probation jobs revealed how this scheme is beginning to have a significant impact on the reoffending rates of British criminals and on the number of crimes committed across the United Kingdom. This BBC News report discussed how the scheme has been endorsed by justice secretary Chris Grayling and included figures which were published by Interim that highlighted how; “reoffending rates among the Peterborough prisoners are falling, while among a national sample of offenders they are increasing”.

However, despite these positive results the prospect of outsourcing these probation jobs has also received a substantial amount of criticism. For instance, Sadiq Khan, Labour’s shadow justice secretary, publicly stated that; “David Cameron’s government is putting companies with little or no track record in criminal justice in charge of dangerous and violent offenders”. Khan went on to discuss the lack of testing or piloting that has been carried out with regards to this scheme and expressed his concerns over whether this outsourcing of probation jobs could put the safety of the general public at risk. Khan concluded his criticisms by highlighting how it is “unacceptable that ministers are going out of their way to tie the hands of future governments to multibillion-pound contracts for 10 years”.

Despite these concerns, given that statistics from the National Audit Office demonstrate that approximately a quarter of all government expenditure is spent on outsourced services, it looks like outsourcing is a common governmental practice that is only set to become more prevalent in the coming years. After all, according to an article published by Management Today; outsourcing “is evolving into what Richard Harries, deputy director of the think-tank Reform, calls ‘outsourcing 2.0″. Consequently, it seems that only time will tell whether the outsourcing of probation jobs will be a positive move for the British criminal justice system or whether further measures will need to be taken to prevent recidivism.