[2018] ** Motion 67 The transforming rehabilitation counter-revolution

carried motion
Carried motion

Received from:

Chris Grayling’s dogmatic ‘rehabilitation revolution’ was supposed to transform probation services and support for offenders on their release from prison. It saw the abolition of locally accountable, publicly funded Probation Trusts, but the main achievement was the ruinous division of an award-winning service, leaving it in an unsustainable mess. Private community rehabilitation company contracts, despite additional funding by government of over £230m, are still operating at a loss, prompting further dangerous staffing and service cuts. Napo believes it is no coincidence that serious further offences have increased since this disastrous privatisation.

The National Probation Service can’t recruit, pay or collect staff pensions adequately or consistently, further undermining morale. Calls to their HR department cost the taxpayer 88p a minute. The MoJ, following the qualification of recent accounts, is seemingly being run from the Treasury with every major financial decision taken by its auditors.

It is time for a rehabilitation counter-revolution and a new model, built around consensus not dogma, where an independent, locally accountable, reunified and publicly funded core probation service is run in the public interest and not for profit.

Congress calls on the General Council to facilitate and support unions in:

i. building a cross-sector alliance with HM official opposition, charities, public sector partners and supportive cross-party politicians and academics to
develop a consensus and refine a new model
ii. lobbying politicians to secure the funding and legislation needed to deliver a better, safer and more sustainable model for probation founded upon these principles.

Napo