‘Crime will rise’ as £1.4m cuts bite

Crime will rise because of cuts to the probation service in Greater Manchester, the Government was warned last night.

According to the Government’s own figures, £1.4 million has been stripped from the budget this year.

Union leaders from the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) last night warned Justice Secretary Jack Straw that criminals would be less well supervised after release from prison and courses to prevent them re-offending would have to be scrapped.
The inevitable result, said Napo, was higher crime.

And the Tories, who demanded the figures, said the funding cut could mean 40 job threats across Greater Manchester, with 799 across England and Wales, as £29.3 million is slashed from national budgets.

Napo spokesman Harry Fletcher warned the £29.3m was just the tip of the iceberg, with £120m of cuts pencilled in for the next three years.

Already, up to 300 of 550 trainee probation officers were “heading straight onto the dole” when they complete their two-year courses — despite costing £100,000 each to train.

Mr Fletcher said: “It’s disastrous. We are anticipating up to 800 job losses in the current financial year, which is bound to mean that the quality of supervision will suffer.

“We will be running fewer offender programmes, which inevitably has a knock-on effect on re-offending rates and on the level of crime, and there will be fewer community orders.”

Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “This is a direct consequence of Labour having run out of money.

“Slashing spending on supervising offenders puts the public at risk.”

Answering questions in the Commons chamber, Mr Straw insisted the probation service had enjoyed a 70% real-terms increase in funding over the last 12 years.

And he suggested the cuts could be achieved by stripping out “unnecessary layers of middle management”, adding: “We are in no doubt that front-line delivery of probation services can be continued at its current level.”

Mr Fletcher was meeting Mr Straw last night to discuss the crisis.