Following the historic joint shadow and Welsh Labour cabinet meeting in south Wales, shadow justice minister Sadiq Khan and Labour’s Cardiff Central candidate Jo Stevens paid a visit to Napo Cymru to get a better understanding of how Grayling’s madcap reforms of the Probation Service are impacting on frontline staff and service delivery.
Napo members welcomed the opportunity to tell Sadiq and Jo just how bad things are following the dissolution of the Wales Probation Trust and the implementation of the new National Probation Service and the Community Rehabilitation Company. Napo has been campaigning fiercely to highlight that these reforms will undermine risk management and put the public at risk; and these concerns are now becoming a reality. Staff in Wales are struggling with inadequate IT systems, restricted access to offenders records and significantly increased workloads since 1 June.
Tania Bassett, Napo National Official said: 'we are really pleased that Sadiq is taking a direct interest in this issue. The Probation Service has been in chaos since 1 June and our members are really concerned that this is having a direct impact on service delivery and public safety. If staff cannot access offenders’ records due to poor IT systems, they have no way of knowing what someone's risk triggers are or how to manage them safely in the community. The changes have already seen a drop in the production of pre-sentence reports by a third, which is then delaying sentencing and clogging up the Courts'
She added: 'Grayling's plans are an untried and untested social experiment that will lead to increased reoffending and an increase in victims, all at a huge cost to the tax payer. We welcome Labour’s support for our campaign and call on the government to halt these plans before something goes seriously wrong'.
Sadiq Khan MP, Shadow Justice Secretary, said: 'I was really pleased I had the chance to talk to probation staff while in Cardiff and hear from them the chaos this Government’s reckless and half-baked privatisation is having. Experienced probation staff play a crucial role in keeping our communities safe, often out of sight and below the radar. But this doesn’t make their work any less important. Labour has opposed this privatisation. There’s no evidence it will work, and many experts fear it’ll put the public’s safety at risk. It’s ripping apart trusted working relationships and entrusting the supervision of serious and violent offenders to multinational companies with no track record in this area. I’ve called on the Government to halt their plans before the situation gets any worse.'
Jo Stevens, Welsh Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Cardiff Central, said: 'The UK government’s probation privatisation is unnecessary and risky. Independent analysts and professionals are all warning that this compromises public protection. NAPO and people across Cardiff Central are right to be extremely concerned.'