A former inmate leaves HM Prison Liverpool on 13 October 2026. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images View image in fullscreen A former inmate leaves HM Prison Liverpool on 13 October 2026. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Opinion Prisons and probation Britain is addicted to prisons. Our crumbling probation service proves they don’t work Polly Toynbee The current system is unable to quench the public thirst for locking people up – and certainly doesn’t ensure proper care once they are released
P ublic services need more investment across the board. Every day, another wretched story. Look at the Institute for Government’s (IFG) Public Services Performance Tracker for a plain assessment of A&E corridor care, councils struggling to meet the demands of social care and the Send system, the courts backlog, GP caseloads or families lost in temporary accommodation. A chancellor approaching a budget is besieged by need. It’s easy for us journalists to pick out shock stories and claim each one is an absolute priority, but how should a chancellor choose?
Today it’s the probation officers, whose conference in Newcastle is launching a ballot for industrial action. Their caseloads overflowed long ago, but now thousands of prisoners released early – 2,000 this month – have been thrust upon them. The responsibility is overwhelming, with officers blamed for crimes their clients commit.
The probation story is told in scores of reports: the National Audit Office found the service running on half the staff needed to cover released prisoners. It also reported failures in electronic tagging , echoed by the IFG reporting only 55% of tags were fitted in time . Napo, the probation officers’ union, blames the problems on awarding contracts to the lowest bidders at prices that mean the job isn’t done properly.
The number of offenders charged with serious further offences while on probation has increased, with the public accounts committee blaming staff shortages. Vacancies leave probation services 25%-30% below target levels . The government is training another 1,300, but that’s not enough, says Napo, considering the high dropout rate once recruits discover the abuse, threats and stress of the work, alongside the fact that the most common cause of staff sickness is mental ill health .
The sheer impossibility of their caseloads caused the government to abandon any attempt to say what their caseload should be, so the “workload measurement tool” was abruptly ditched in September just before the October raft of new prisoner releases. There is no point in stating an official workload standard that can’t be met.
Eleven hostels and seven halfway houses, places that help probation officers supervise released prisoners, have just closed for repairs and because of a lack of staff . Drug addiction and mental health problems untreated in prisons, coupled with cuts to education, training and rehabilitation, make prisoners even less prepared for release.
The probation system was broken by a disastrous privatisation when Chris Grayling (who banned the sending of books to prisoners ) split it apart into 21 private companies, with the workforce organisationally divided in two. Private companies only handled offenders judged low to medium risk, while the most serious offenders remained under the control of the state. Companies under-invested, experienced staff left, and none of the innovation promised was delivered. After this ideological privatisation was…