The new prime minister is under pressure.
The government’s early release plans have dominated the headlines, with victims’ groups, politicians and criminal justice leaders all weighing in on what should happen next. But among the noise, something significant has happened.
Probation has become part of the national conversation.
For years, Napo has been taking the realities of probation into parliament, to ministers and into the media. We’ve consistently warned that excessive workloads, chronic understaffing and relentless pressure don’t just affect probation staff – they affect public safety.
Now those warnings are being heard.
On Channel 4 News, Napo National Official Tania Bassett joined a panel to debate the future of the early release scheme alongside former prison governor Paul Fetherstone and Brian Booth, Deputy National Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales.
It was an important reminder that every part of the criminal justice system is under pressure.
Prisons need investment. Policing needs investment. Probation needs investment.
All three services have compelling arguments. All three will be making their case to government as decisions are taken over the coming months.
The difference is that probation has too often been expected to do more with less.
We’ve seen prisons receive emergency funding. We’ve seen policing become the focus of political debate. Meanwhile, probation has quietly absorbed more responsibility, more complexity and more risk, without the resources needed to keep pace.
We cannot allow that to happen again.
While others on the panel focused on prison capacity and the wider pressures across criminal justice, Tania brought the discussion back to the question ministers cannot avoid: can probation actually cope?
Tania’s answer was unequivocal.
“The focus has been on the prison crisis, but I think the question needs to be, can probation actually cope with this workload and manage people safely in the community? At the moment, it’s not in a state fit to do that.”
Tania explained that the challenge extends far beyond early release. Changes under the Sentencing Act will place even more people under probation supervision through greater use of community sentences and suspended sentence orders, increasing pressure on a workforce that is already stretched beyond its limits.
She also highlighted the human cost of the crisis, pointing out that 65% of staff sickness is caused by work-related stress, with burnout fuelling vacancies and creating a vicious cycle of ever-increasing workloads.
Most importantly, she made clear that this is not simply about staff welfare.
It is about public protection.
“There has to be… a focus on the workload crisis in probation which at the moment is preventing our members from doing the job that they’re meant to do and to do it safely.”
This is exactly why your vote in Napo’s indicative workloads ballot matters.
Everyone with a stake in the justice system is vying for attention and probation must make sure its voice is heard just as loudly.
If we don’t, there is a real risk that history repeats itself: prisons receive the headlines, policing receives the attention, and probation is left to carry the extra workload with whatever resources remain.
A strong YES vote sends a different message.
It tells government that probation practitioners are united and public protection depends on giving staff the time, resources and support to do the job safely.
We’ve fought hard to get probation into this national debate.
Now let’s make sure we don’t leave it empty-handed.
2 responses
I think a key message that’s being lost here is that, while this has primarily been framed as a response to pressures on prisons, probation was already in crisis long before any of these measures were introduced. Arguably, probation’s crisis is far more extensive than the prison capacity crisis. The difference is that prison failure is visceral and visible. When prisons run out of places, the consequences are immediate, obvious and impossible to ignore. The public can easily understand a system that has literally run out of room.
Probation is different. For years, the service has been struggling with workload pressures, staffing challenges, retention issues and performance concerns. Against that backdrop, every scheme designed to reduce pressure on prisons was always likely to place additional strain on an already overstretched probation service.
That is why the premise of probation bailing out prisons has always seemed questionable to me. The Sentencing Act was never going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, because the camel had been slaughtered and crudely taxidermized years ago.
There is an issue in that we don’t have a widely recognised image of what catastrophic failure looks like for probation. With prisons, the crisis is obvious because there is nowhere left to house people. In probation, failure is less visible. It looks like excessive workloads, increasing staff turnover, reduced capacity for meaningful supervision, delayed interventions, poorer outcomes and growing pressure on public protection functions. If that’s what catastrophic failure in probation looks like, then I would argue we’ve been there for quite some time.
This is also why the workload dispute matters. The debate cannot simply be about what additional pressures probation might be expected to absorb in future. We need to be honest about the reality now. Probation cannot continue to be expected to compensate for wider failures and pressures elsewhere in the criminal justice system. The public wouldn’t entertain the thought of diverting traffic from a strained bridge about to collapse into a tunnel that has already collapsed.
VOTE YES!!!
Community Payback teams are facing increasing operational pressures due to the growing number of Unpaid Work requirements being imposed by the courts. Current staffing levels are insufficient to meet demand, with ongoing recruitment challenges, sickness absence, and significant delays in the vetting process impacting our ability to maintain service delivery.
The current recruitment and onboarding processes are not fit for purpose. Suitable candidates are being lost due to vetting times of up to 9-10 months, by which point many have secured alternative employment. Additionally, concerns remain regarding the effectiveness of the national sifting process in identifying candidates with the appropriate skills and experience.
Staff are also expected to operate within outdated infrastructure and working practices, creating inefficiencies and increasing operational risks. There is a growing concern that these issues are affecting staff wellbeing, morale, and safety.
These concerns have been raised repeatedly by frontline staff and managers; however, there is a perception that they are not being adequately addressed. Urgent investment in staffing, recruitment processes, vetting capacity, infrastructure, and staff safety measures is required to ensure Community Payback can continue to deliver the punitive element of sentencing effectively and safely.