The obituary of the National Offender Management Service

Not many will cry for the demise of NOMS, the unwieldy National Offender Management Service which was supposed to merge and replace the Prison and Probation services.

Since 2004 it has spent £2.6 billion of taxpayers’ money, including £155 million on a failed computer system and more than £5 million on consultants in the last two years.

According to The Times newspaper (28 September), one Whitehall source said: “God knows where all the money has gone.” Into the pockets of over-paid consultants and computer geeks by the sound of it.

Big is not beautiful and you certainly don’t get out of an operational crisis by providing more management. The struggling criminal justice providers need less bureaucracy, not more; less central control and more community links.

But most of all we need a radical rethink about the way we manage crime. Prison is a failed experiment: three-quarters of people released from prison re-offend within two years. Probation also has a high rate of recidivism. In both cases, staff struggle to provide the help offenders need to stay away from crime partly because of a severe shortage of resources. They could have done with some of the money wasted on NOMS.

It’s generally accepted that the main problems behind most crimes are to do with someone’s personal and social situation, which has led to faulty ways of managing in the world. Going to prison isn’t going to make a positive impact on that; in fact, it will make it worse.

If we are going to make a real impact on reducing crime, we need to accept that the old ways aren’t working and that different interventions are urgently needed to make our communities safer and more cohesive.

The Howard League’s Commission on English Prisons Today is looking at these issues, and at effective alternatives to imprisonment, and we promise to be radical – exactly what I wanted to hear when we had our first official meeting in September. The Commission will report in 2009. Hopefully those responsible for the dire state of our prisons and the probation service will be prepared to listen.