4 - Understanding the Privatisation of Probation Through The Lens of Bourdieu’s Field Theory

Summary

Transforming Rehabilitation: Grayling's brainchild or endpoint of a long process?

There is no need to go into great detail about Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) here, as it has been dealt with in several other places, including in this volume. Suffice it to say that in 2014 around 60–70 per cent of the work of the erstwhile Probation Trusts was outsourced to Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs), which became responsible for supervising ‘low-’ and ‘medium-risk’ offenders while the publicly run National Probation Service (NPS) took over supervision of high-risk offenders. CRCs were contracted partly on a payment by results (PbR) basis, firmly cementing the profit motive into the delivery of community sanctions (although one CRC, Durham and Tees Valley, is run on a not-for-profit basis). It is also unnecessary to go over the reasons for the reforms and how they were implemented, as this has been covered elsewhere. There is now widespread acceptance that TR was unsuccessful in achieving either a reduction of reoffending or greater efficiencies in terms of delivering community sanctions. Indeed, a spate of government reports have highlighted serious concerns about the efficacy of the reforms and the government is in the process of redesigning the system.

One of the main criticisms of the reforms was that they were implemented with great speed, and with little by way of piloting or testing. Indeed, after being appointed Secretary of State for Justice in October 2012 it took Chris Grayling just 20 months to privatise a substantial proportion of the probation service in England and Wales. Grayling was quick to publish a consultation, Transforming Rehabilitation: A Revolution in the Way We Manage Offenders (Ministry of Justice, 2013a), which talked of:

The majority of rehabilitative and punitive services in the community [being] opened up to a diverse market of providers. We currently spend around £1 billion on delivering these services. Through competition and payment by results, we will introduce more efficient and effective services, specifically targeting a significant reduction in reoffending rates.

It was at this point in time that interested parties began to express a more serious concern regarding the government's plans and a visible opposition began to appear.