Statement from the Probation Institute
The Criminal Justice System is in crisis and currently there are record numbers in prison with capacity about to be exceeded. We share the aspirations to reserve prison for the most serious offenders and to use community sentences wherever possible. However, the current proposals to release some prisoners early and to increase courts' use of community sentences, give us cause for concern. Temporarily solving one problem in the system (prison overcrowding), runs the risk of pushing the problem on to another under-resourced agency - the Probation Service - that is already struggling. Probation workloads are too high and HM Inspectorate of Probation reports have drawn attention to issues of inadequate staffing and poor levels of performance because of this, most notably in managing public protection. The evidence suggests that Probation supervision can be very effective when properly resourced.
We take the view that the problems of prison overcrowding will not be solved until a fundamental review takes place, examining the Criminal Justice System as a whole and the way different parts of the system interact. Fundamentally, there needs to be a rational debate about the place of prison and community sentences within our society, if not a Royal Commission.