MINISTERS must halt handouts to private probation firms until they can prove they are “fit for purpose,” Labour demanded last night after a damning TV investigation exposed a catalogue of failures in the service.

The BBC’s flagship Panorama programme uncovered how one contractor had failed to take action over 15,000 appointments missed by convicts.

The documentary, which aired last night, also investigated how probation service failures led to the death of a five-year-old child.
Liliya Breha’s son Alex Malcolm was beaten to death in 2016 by her former partner Marvyn Iheanacho after the boy lost his shoe in a park.

Mr Iheanacho had a string of previous convictions for violent offences against women and children, which the National Probation Service (NPS) had failed to warn Ms Breha about.  

The probation service has faced numerous controversies since it was part-privatised by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition in 2014.

Now the NPS deals with only the most high-risk cases, with all others farmed out to community rehabilitation companies (CRCs) run by outsourcing giants.

After the programme aired, Labour’s shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon stormed: “The Conservatives’ reforms of the probation service have been a monumental failure. The government was warned that its probation reforms would cause great damage to the sector.

“But the Conservatives ignored the experts and bulldozed through the changes despite them not being properly tested and being founded on a weak evidence base.”

Many of the CRCs have found themselves losing money after the private companies only ended up handing 50 per cent of offenders, rather than the expected 70 per cent.

Therefore the government has agreed to a bailout worth £277 million over seven years.

Mr Burgon said it was “completely unjustifiable” to hand more public money to providers.

“The government should stop rewarding failure and guarantee that no more new money will go to these private community rehabilitation companies until they can show that they are fit for purpose and can make a real difference to keeping our communities safer,” he said.

The BBC also investigated the case of David Braddon, who missed eight probation appointments while under the supervision of private company Working Links before murdering 18-year-old Conner Marshall in 2015.

Probation union Napo said the service was now “failing on every level,” warning that rank-and-file officers were bearing the brunt of mismanagement.
“CRCs are answerable to their shareholders, not the communities they should be serving,” the union’s general secretary Ian Lawrence said.

A whistleblower at private prison operator MTC Novo told Panorama that some of the 15,000 missed appointments in London had not been dealt with after two years.

HM Chief Inspector of Probation Glenys Stacey told Panorama: “We inspected the London probation company last year and I expressed grave concerns about the number of missed appointments and the number of people not being seen at all.

“I was so concerned about it, I required an action plan and am inspecting that London probation company again now.”

A spokeswoman for MTC Novo said: “Any missed appointments are a matter of concern. Staff are directed never to ignore these and always to follow up with the service user.”

Despite the failings, the Ministry of Justice insisted that it was “absolutely right” that the coalition government carried out the reforms.

“These crucial changes have meant that around 40,000 offenders who previously would not have been supervised — because they had been in prison for less than 12 months — are now being monitored,” a spokesperson said.

“We are looking very closely at these issues as more needs to be done.”