The Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has unveiled a major vision for the Probation Service, focusing on tougher supervision for high-risk offenders, hiring 1,300 new probation officers, and introducing new technology to ease administrative workloads.
While these steps acknowledge long-standing issues, Napo warns that without real investment in staff pay, conditions, and structural reform, the system will remain in crisis.
A Service at Breaking Point
The probation service has struggled since Chris Grayling’s disastrous privatisation experiment, which dismantled an award-winning system and left chaos in its wake. Since reunification in 2021, staff shortages and overwhelming caseloads have only worsened.
The Justice Secretary admitted that probation staff are spread too thin, unable to focus on the most dangerous offenders. Her solution? A shift towards earlier intervention for low-risk cases, AI-assisted note-taking, and a digital case management system to speed up risk assessments.
While efficiency is vital, technology alone won’t fix chronic underfunding and staff burnout.
Recruitment Without Retention?
The pledge to hire 1,300 new probation officers by 2026 is welcome—but it won’t solve the crisis if experienced staff continue to leave due to poor pay and unmanageable workloads.
Napo General Secretary Ian Lawrence said: “Our members have gone above and beyond for over a decade to keep the probation service running, but they need more than just words. The 2.8% public sector pay cap simply isn’t enough. If the government truly values probation staff, it must offer fair pay and real workload reductions.”
Without urgent retention strategies, new recruits will step into an already broken system—only to leave before they can make a difference.
Probation Trapped in a Failing System
A major barrier to real reform is probation’s place within HMPPS, which prioritises prisons over probation. Instead of an independent, community-focused service, probation is being used as an “escape valve” for the overcrowded prison system.
Napo has long called for probation to be removed from HMPPS and re-embedded into local communities. Ian Lawrence made this clear: “Before Grayling’s reckless reforms, all 36 Probation Trusts were rated good or excellent. Since 2014, that progress has been lost. Probation doesn’t fit the civil service model, and we risk losing the profession entirely if we don’t separate it from prisons and central control.”
The Change That’s Really Needed
The government’s plan acknowledges the need for reform, but it ignores the root causes of the crisis. Without fair pay, sustainable workloads, and an end to prison-led bureaucracy, these reforms risk becoming yet another set of empty promises.
Recruitment alone won’t fix a system on the brink. Without urgent action, public protection, staff wellbeing, and the very future of the profession remain at serious risk.
4 responses
issues as above and:
the relentless bureaucracy and red tape, the micro management, the repetition of work – often within the same document – the use of algorithms, or whatever they are, to make decisions such as licence conditions and PSR proposals , removing professional judgement, etc etc
Kate you raise some interesting points.
Working inside a prison for Probation, it is clear that the Prison system is very different. It is managed differently, the culture is different and the staff are different. Probation needs to be freed from HMPPS where it is a poorly regarded cousin to a department which takes all the attention and most of the resources. The Probation IT system is a disgrace and NSIs are simply a waste of people’s time. Too much resource goes into bean counting in Probation. Also OMIC is completely failing due to the lack of staffing and time for Community Practitioners to undertake their responsiblities. This needs acknowledging and redesigning immediately.
Non of the announced reforms take into account of the people who are on probation needs. We continue to move towards a system led approach and further away from a person centred approach. These so called reforms simply will not work. More victims will be created.