The government has announced that 700 organisations, including 399 voluntary sector organisations, are competing to take part in its transforming rehabilitation programme which will see probation services contracted out of the public sector.
The scheme will be worth £450m this year with contracts split across 20 regions for England and one for Wales with responsibility for supervising and rehabilitating 225,000 low and medium-risk offenders each year.
Providers will only be paid in full if they meet designated targets.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said: “Today marks a crucial step forward to finally cracking our stubbornly high reoffending rates.
“Each year around 600,000 crimes are committed by those who have already broken the law – that is a dreadful figure and I am determined to bring it down.
“The scale of interest in these contracts from so many diverse and creative organisations is extremely encouraging. This is great news for the public who will finally benefit from the best of the private and voluntary sectors, working together with the public sector, to cut reoffending.”
Alongside the competition announcement, a "target operating model" has also been published setting out the full details of the reforms and how it will bring down reoffending rates.
It explains the role for the National Probation Service (NPS), a new public sector organisation tasked with supervising and rehabilitating 31,000 high-risk offenders each year, and how it will work alongside the 21 contract package areas.
It also reveals that the government will be working closely with the Probation Association and Probation Chiefs’ Association to create a new national Institute of Probation, a centre of excellence for anyone working in offender rehabilitation, and a platform to share best practice and innovation across the profession.
This comes as a report out today titled Transforming Rehabilitation: a summary of evidence on reducing reoffending seeks to show providers what works when it comes to tackling reoffending.
Greater use of mentoring
A key part of the government reforms will see a greater use of mentoring, with reformed offenders meeting prisoners at the gate on their release and guiding them through their first weeks and months in the community.
Forty-seven existing mentoring organisations, and a further 12 who are interested in building capacity, have shown interest in helping reform offenders coming out of prison.
Labour: Government is ignoring Parliamentary process
But Labour has slammed the latest updates, accusing Grayling of “running scared” from Parliament over "half-baked probation privatisation".
It says the government is "riding roughshod over Parliament, and running scared of public scrutiny of their dangerous plans for probation".
The Offender Rehabilitation Bill which introduces the probation reforms is still going through Parliament.
Sadiq Khan MP, Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary, has today written to Chris Grayling condemning the use of existing parliamentary legislation to deliver its probation plans. He accuses the Justice Secretary of hiding behind this existing legislation in order to avoid parliamentary and public scrutiny of his proposals.
Khan said: "Chris Grayling is running scared from Parliament. Instead of putting his proposals in front of MPs for proper scrutiny and debate, he’s hiding behind a 2007 Act of Parliament which was never intended to be used in this way. By avoiding scrutiny, Chris Grayling is showing utter contempt to due process and to the role of Parliament.
“Let’s not forget that his plans involve community supervision of 200,000 serious and violent offenders being handed over to private companies, and the fragmentation of our probation service. Therefore, it’s only right that Parliament should scrutinise these proposals, given they have a very real effect on the day-to-day safety of communities that MPs represent.
“Labour opposes this reckless gamble with public safety. People want a justice system that puts their safety first but instead, this out-of-touch government is putting it at risk.”
