Minister rejects regional boards

Home Office minister Paul Goggins has announced that the Probation
Service will continue to be managed by 42 probation areas for the
foreseeable future.

In a statement Goggins said that, following two consultation
exercises, an immediate move to create new regional boards was
“unlikely to deliver better management of offenders and better
services”.

Instead, he said he wanted to focus on introducing the concept of
end-to-end offender management and that the best way at present to
achieve this was through the existing 42 probation boards.

Napo’s general secretary Judy McKnight said the “wholesale
reorganisation of the probation service in order to expose it to
the threat of privatisation” had never been the way to achieve an
integrated prosecution service pivotal to an effective
community-focused justice system.