Probation now lasts just 16 weeks

Thousands of prison-leavers and people on community sentences are getting only 16 weeks of supervision under a policy designed to ease the workload of the overstretched Probation Service.

The ‘Impact’ policy was introduced on 28 April, without announcement. People starting on probation after that date who are assessed as low or medium risk of causing serious harm will attend between four and seven meetings with their probation officer before contact is suspended at the 16-week point.

It means that someone sentenced to 10 years in prison, who is released on licence after four years and might have expected to spend the next six years under supervision, may now spend only four months under supervision – although they would remain on licence until the end of their sentence.

The new approach appears at odds with the sentencing reforms proposed by David Gauke’s Independent Sentencing Review and adopted by the Government in May, which would see most people handed prison sentences spending the first third in custody and the next third under intensive probation supervision. Mr Gauke also called for people serving community sentences to be supervised intensively, to reassure judges and magistrates.

Rules for Impact have not been made public, but Inside Time used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a document titled ‘Impact: a lower intensity approach – staff guidance’. 

It says the aim of Impact is to “assist us to refocus probation’s finite resources”.

It lists groups who are automatically excluded from the 16-week cut-off, including people convicted of sexual offences, domestic abuse, and serious violent crimes, as well as under-18s. Probation managers have an option to exclude people linked to organised crime, street gangs, county lines or hate crime.

A hint of the new policy was offered by Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood in a speech in February, in which she warned that the Probation Service would have to reduce the amount of work it did with lower-risk offenders – but did not mention the 16-week cut-off.

In the speech, delivered at London probation headquarters in Southwark, Ms Mahmood said that when Labour came to power last year it inherited a Probation Service “burdened with a workload that was quite simply impossible”, with a caseload of almost 250,000 people.

She said: “For lower-risk offenders, we will task probation officers with providing a swifter intervention … as long as the offender stays on the straight and narrow, we must then focus probation officers’ time more effectively.” 

The staff guidance says that people managed under the Impact guidelines will get a minimum of four meetings with their probation officer: an induction appointment, a meeting to complete assessments, and two ‘desistance conversations’ – once called “Starting with the end in mind”, the other called “My future story”.

They may get up to three further meetings if they require a home visit, a three-way meeting involving another agency, or further desistance conversations.

Solicitor Laura Janes, vice-chair of the Association of Prison Lawyers, told Inside Time: “It is unclear how the policy will work with the proposed Gauke reforms, which rely on the very opposite approach of more intensive and robust supervision and support in the community.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Our top priority is keeping the public safe. Those who pose a high or very high risk will always be subject to robust license conditions throughout their sentence. We are boosting probation funding by 45 per cent, investing up to £700 million more by 2028, and are on track to recruit 2,300 probation officers nationally by March next year.”

Impact – staff guidance