My MP is Andrew Selous. This is about why my MP is so disappointing. Firstly, he is a member of the Tory Party. He was briefly a Minister while the disastrous privatisation of the Probation Service took place in 2015. It was all Chris Grayling’s idea while he was Secretary of State for Justice and Selous supported him. Grayling and Selous were told many times how the misguided reforms wouldn’t work and yet they pressed ahead with their ill fated ideology of privatising the Probation Service.
I was amongst those voices warning against privatisation on such a huge scale; I was in the management team in a Probation Trust, although I corresponded with him in my private capacity.
Explained below is, in my opinion, why my MP is so disappointing and, you could argue, is such a disgrace.
Since the disastrous privatisation of the Probation Service in 2015….
- The entire ideology is wrong. It is going too far with privatisation and once again an example of Whitehall wielding too much power.
- There have been 8 inspections of the privatised service, specifically the new Community Rehabilitation Companies. All 8 have failed their inspections and have been classed as either requiring improvement or are rated as inadequate.
- The profession has been ripped apart. Worth remembering the UK Probation Service started in such a humble way in Victorian times and its approach has been admired and modelled by many other countries.
- The Probation Service used to be an ‘evidence based’ or ‘what works’ service. We did what we knew worked. Instead we have many untested schemes which are proving themselves as misguided and deeply unpopular with Courts.
- The numbers of prisoners taking their own life has continued to rise (doubled since 2011) while staff numbers have been reduced.
- There have been an extra 40,000 people on the Probation caseload and yet staff numbers have been slashed.
- The numbers of serious further offences (murder, rape etc) has increased by 21%
- Two Community Rehabilitation Companies have gone into administration even though the Ministry of Justice has pumped in an additional £342Million since 2017.
- The National Audit Office and a Commons Select Committee have been extremely critical of the reforms.
The list goes on and on. Before the privatisation of the Probation Service, I wrote to my MP and told him how misguided the reforms were and that they simply wouldn’t work. He kindly wrote back saying he knew nothing of the reforms but raised my concerns with the Minister concerned.
Next, in what seemed like no time at all, my MP became the Minister responsible for the reforms under Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Justice. That was some transformation, going from honestly admitting he knew virtually nothing about the reforms to becoming the Minister.
Grayling and his cronies were consistently told by professionals how the reforms wouldn’t work but they pressed ahead with untried models which have proved ineffective and costly. Naturally while we were all in post we did our bit to make things work but we all knew it was futile.
The new owners
As an example of the foolish approach, I remember being instructed by the new owners to send a letter to Hertfordshire County Council advising them an arrangement for housing offenders was cancelled. It had taken me and a number of others years to build up that mutual trust and financial agreements which were working well. And it all came crashing down at the click of my mouse, as I was instructed by idiots who simply didn’t understand local communities.
Prisons are costly
I also remember suggesting we should have minimum sentences ie Courts cannot send someone to prison for just a few weeks. This would instantly lower the prison population and you could close a prison, thus saving lots of money. Recycle that money into the Probation Service and suddenly you reduce the reoffending rates. Simple. Suddenly it now seems to be on the cards as a good idea!
Just remember, on average it costs £38,000 a year to keep someone in prison for a year and they stand a 66% chance of reoffending in the next 2 years. The Probation Service is far mor effective in terms of rehabilitation and cost effectiveness – this is well proven.
Becoming more outspoken!
This is yet another example of me becoming more outspoken in my retirement. I’ve only been retired for 8 months and I’m just getting going!