Nicola Roberts

Inspecting ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’: The pitfalls of an austerity managerialist approach to offender supervision

This chapter explores the Government’s strategy of the part-privatisation of the probation service: Transforming Rehabilitation delineates between those in ‘need’ of rehabilitation and those ‘at risk’ of surveillance. Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) have competitively won contracts to achieve targets lowering offender reoffending with those assessed at low risk. The National Probation Service (NPS) remains to manage high risk offenders. The chapter focuses on an analysis of the Government’s inspections of both providing evidence that CRCs are not achieving government goals partly because of lack of resources (especially adequately trained staff). The place of rehabilitation is discussed in the new penology and under austerity and the argument made that this needs to be resourced properly if third and private sectors are expected to undertake the contracts.