Domestic abusers and sex offenders in England and Wales will be rehabilitated by less-experienced staff with fewer qualifications from June, prompting warnings from a watchdog that the plans must be closely monitored to ensure public safety.
Proposals approved by ministers will roll out behaviour programmes for offenders to be delivered by “band 3” staff who are not fully qualified probation officers.
The work is currently carried out by highly skilled “band 4” probation officers who have extensive experience dealing with rapists, paedophiles, violent partners and online abusers.
There are also plans to cut the number of low- and medium-risk offenders required to sit through the twice-weekly rehabilitation courses. Probation officers will instead be expected to manage these offenders through “toolkits” at weekly meetings rather than completing the specially designed programmes.
Officials will also scrap some intervention programmes for sex offenders such as Horizon, Kaizen and iHorizon. They are expected to be replaced with a single scheme called Building Choices.
Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation, said the government must closely monitor the new courses to ensure public safety.
“HM Prison and Probation Service needs to ensure that it is certain and keeps under review the effectiveness of those programmes to ensure that they don’t end up in a position in a number of years’ time when they’ve spent a lot of public money, and those programmes have not delivered the sort of changes that we would want.”
Jones said he was aware that staff had been concerned about the changes for months. “It has caused a lot of disquiet amongst probation officers,” he said.
Whitehall sources are worried that far from slashing the burden of probation officers, the changes could increase their workload.
It is likely to fuel concerns about the effectiveness of probation work after damning reports into five murders and two sexual offences committed by two men who were under supervision.
Two weeks ago, the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced that rehabilitation courses for 13,000 convicted criminals would be cancelled because of probation officers’ “impossible” workloads.
One probation source said: “The MoJ [Ministry of Justice] has been told by its own staff that there are real reputational risks for the probation service.
“There are also huge concerns over the way the rehabilitation courses have been redesigned. To make sure these courses work, there must be qualified staff on hand to deal with those in denial.
“If you have a man who is expressing denial about his offence, people in that group will challenge him, and peer challenge is part of the reason that those groups are so effective.
“Peer-to-peer challenges are more likely to happen in groups with high- and medium-risk offenders.”
Mahmood said in mid-February that courses where criminals are forced to confront their behaviour would be ditched for many “low-risk” offenders as probation officers target more serious criminals.
They will still receive supervision from a probation officer and any breaches of a licence condition could put them back in prison, she said.
“We will ensure those offenders who pose a higher risk and who need to receive these courses will do so,” Mahmood added. “This isn’t a decision I take lightly, but it is a decision to confront the reality of the challenges facing the probation service.”
Asked by reporters how low-risk offenders would be assessed to have their courses cancelled, the justice secretary said it would be decided on risk of harm and risk of reoffending rather than offences committed.
Mahmood also plans to recruit 1,300 probation officers by March 2026 and introduce technology to stop staff “drowning” in paperwork when more time could be spent supervising offenders. The staff will be in addition to 1,000 officers to be recruited by this March.
An MoJ spokesperson said: “Our first priority is keeping the public safe, which is why the probation service is focusing resources on those offenders that pose the greatest risk.
“Probation staff are only able to deliver accredited programmes if they have been fully trained do so. This will not change as part of the proposal being developed.”
