Trouble ahead for criminal justice system

By Jon Silverman Home affairs analyst

The Treasury's refusal to fund some of the more expensive ideas favoured by the Home Office is opening up rifts in the prison and probation services.

It must be of great concern to the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, that some of the key players in the criminal justice service are behaving more like warring chieftains than public servants pulling seamlessly in the same direction - just as a major bill intended to "rebalance" the system is about to be launched.

The row comes as prisons fill to overflowing

Indeed, if the language currently flying around the Whitehall corridors is a fair reflection of deeply-held views, there is serious trouble ahead. Earlier this week, one senior figure (non-ministerial, it must be stressed) said of another: "I'm convinced she's mad, bonkers. Just look at her eyes."

While another, speaking of the prison service director general, Martin Narey, said: "He's just taking advantage of the stand-off between the Treasury and the Home Office. But he doesn't realise that he's being set up as the fall-guy." So what on earth is going on?

Money at the root

The first thing to say is that these quarrels are not, in the main, about ideas, unlike in some previous governments. Ideology has largely been banished from the criminal justice process, to be replaced by arguments over delivery.

Young offenders: Behind bars, or community care?

The root of this discontent is money - or the lack of it because of Treasury parsimony.

One consequence of the Chancellor's legendary prudence is the fury of the Youth Justice Board at the prospect of losing its planned network of secure training centres for juvenile offenders.

The board's chagrin is compounded by the sight of Mr Narey demanding more money to improve conditions for juveniles in prison, where many feel they don't belong at all.

Row brewing

But another, even more acrimonious division, is threatening to rupture the probation world - just at a time when the Home Secretary needs community punishments to be at their most credible, if he is to halt the inexorable rise in prison numbers.

Conditions in prisons have come under fire

The row is between the National Probation Directorate, which came into existence 18 months ago, and the Probation Boards Association, which represents the 42 local boards in England and Wales.

Add in the disquiet of the Chief Inspector of Probation over massaging of performance figures and a threat of industrial action by probation officers, and you have a potent stew of problems poised to bubble over.

The argument between the local boards and the Whitehall-based probation directorate is perhaps the most significant because it appears to contradict the government's often-stated mantra of "national standards, delivered locally".

A senior probation figure has spoken privately of "a move by the directorate back to a 1970s, Soviet-style command and control philosophy". And when the chief executive of the boards association, Martin Wargent, talks of an "over-strong, centralising and controlling tendency" by the directorate, he is not just making a point about management style.

The strength of probation has been its links with the community and its credibility with local sentencers. Weaken those links and not only will something valuable be lost. Those who would like to see the probation and prison service merged into one may yet have their day in the sun.