Ready for a candid look at probation services? We have the pleasure of hosting Tania Basset, a seasoned expert from NAPO (National Association of Probation Officers) who lends her unique perspective on the numerous challenges faced by this critical public service.
She uncovers the far-reaching implications of political decisions on probation service with her first-hand experiences, and paints a vivid picture of the privatization fallout that led to policy inconsistencies and difficulties in representing the interests of members, the public and those under probation supervision.
She takes you on a journey through the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, unmasking their profound effect on the rapport between probation and the judiciary. Tania emphasizes the necessity for autonomy in crafting pre-sentence reports, particularly for individuals with protected characteristics, as we go deeper into the sentencing process.
You'll understand the stress the probation service grapples with due to staff shortages and court backlogs and the vital role it plays in risk management and reintegrating formerly incarcerated people into society.
We conclude by reflecting on the impacts of privatization on the probation service and the changes necessary to ensure its smooth operation.
Discover how the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms have shaken the faith in the probation service, and how the pursuit of cost-cutting has overshadowed the essential delivery of justice. Finally, we ponder the need for keeping prison and probation services distinct to meet their diverse objectives and maintain their own cultures.
You won't want to miss these insightful conversations and more, so tune in and join us on Tania's courageous journey.
For more unmissable content from The View sign up here
Ready for a candid look at probation services? We have the pleasure of hosting Tania Basset, a seasoned expert from NAPO (National Association of Probation Officers) who lends her unique perspective on the numerous challenges faced by this critical public service.
She uncovers the far-reaching implications of political decisions on probation service with her first-hand experiences, and paints a vivid picture of the privatization fallout that led to policy inconsistencies and difficulties in representing the interests of members, the public and those under probation supervision.
She takes you on a journey through the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, unmasking their profound effect on the rapport between probation and the judiciary. Tania emphasizes the necessity for autonomy in crafting pre-sentence reports, particularly for individuals with protected characteristics, as we go deeper into the sentencing process.
You'll understand the stress the probation service grapples with due to staff shortages and court backlogs and the vital role it plays in risk management and reintegrating formerly incarcerated people into society.
We conclude by reflecting on the impacts of privatization on the probation service and the changes necessary to ensure its smooth operation.
Discover how the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms have shaken the faith in the probation service, and how the pursuit of cost-cutting has overshadowed the essential delivery of justice. Finally, we ponder the need for keeping prison and probation services distinct to meet their diverse objectives and maintain their own cultures.
You won't want to miss these insightful conversations and more, so tune in and join us on Tania's courageous journey.
For more unmissable content from The View sign up here
Welcome to The View M agazine's Rebel Justice podcast. This week, we will be hearing from Tania Bassett, a former probation practitioner and currently the Press and Communications Liaison at NAPO, the National Association of Probation Officers. The National Probation Service is a fundamental part of the criminal justice system, assisting courts and prisons from the conviction stage of a defendant's court case all the way through their supervision, unpaid work requirements in the community, support programs, rehabilitation, as well as parole assessments for those serving sentences and their reintegration back into the community. Tania will be taking us through the challenges faced by probation services across the country and how political decisions over many years have led to the dismantling and weakening of this valuable resource, available not only to those appearing before courts, but to lawyers, prison officers, court staff and judges. How can a society continue to flourish if the needs of the vulnerable are not met? How can a criminal justice system be effective, with our probation's input, in providing full assessments as to risk management? And how can a community benefit from offenders who would like to repay their debt to society?
Alex Bastian:I'm joined this morning by Tania Bassett. My name is Alex Bastian and we are going to talk about various things, including, and most importantly, probation's role in today's society. Tania, why don't you just tell me a bit about yourself, your background and what you do at the moment?
Tania Bassett:Thanks, Alex. So my name is Tania Bassett. I joined the probation service in 2002 as a trainee probation officer and qualified in 2004. And back then I was working in the West Mercia Probation Trust, which is Shropshire, Herfordshire and Worcestershire. I was a probation officer for 11 years, having a mixed role. So I've worked in the programs department delivering general offending behaviour programs. I worked in case management where we had a mixed case load back in those days which also included writing pre-sentence reports and doing some court duty as well, and I was a court duty officer for seven years. So I've covered quite a few bases of probation. Also, as a trainee, I did some work in the Unpaid Work department as well. So I've done quite a broad span of probation over those 11 years.
Tania Bassett:And then 11 years ago I joined NAPO full time in terms of leaving the probation service to go and work for NAPO full time.
Tania Bassett:And NAPO is the Trade Union and Professional Association for Probation and Family Court staff. So we cover probation in England and Wales family courts, as in Cafcas in England, and we also cover probation in Northern Ireland as well. So we've got a mix in terms of our membership, but the majority of our members are probation in England and Wales and I've worked for NAPO now for 10 years and my role in NAPO is working as the Press, parliament and Campaigns Manager, so I do communications and press coverage for NAPO. I also do the parliamentary side of things, which consists of writing parliamentary briefings, attending the Justice Union's parliamentary group and writing parliamentary questions to get friendly MPs to submit on the justice sector and particularly probation. But I also lead on professional and training for the union as well with my practitioner head on. So it's again quite a mixed bag that I do in terms of working with NAPO, but we do a lot of work with all our stakeholders as well as the direct employer.
Alex Bastian:Not just a mixed bag, but I imagine a lot of work must go into that. Just asking on a general basis, having had all that experience over the years, how would you say funding has changed over that period of time? Resources - is it more challenging now than it was when you first started out?
Tania Bassett:It's definitely more challenging and a lot of our members some with you know 30 years experience will say that probation is in the worst state they've ever known it currently. I think obviously the big elephant in the room in terms of how probation has changed is Chris Grayling's reforms and I use that word lightly when he decided to privatise part of the probation service. So when I joined, we were still 35 probation trusts. Each trust was a non-departmental body of the government, so they had their own budget and they had their own autonomy and they had their own chief officer. So the trust would be very much more embedded in local communities working to meet those local community needs. So, for example, if you work in a rural area, your unpaid work placements are going to look very different to people who work in very built up inner city areas. So there are different challenges depending on the environment you're working in and trusts were able to adapt and be flexible with that autonomy to meet those needs of the local community and the challenges that each community faced, as well as the differing demographics that those communities have. So when we had transforming rehabilitation and the service was privatised in February 2014, the landscape very much changed and we suddenly had a public sector known as the National Probation Service, which was part of the civil service, who dealt with high and very high risk of harm clients and did court work and court reports. They also dealt with some medium risk of harm clients who may be on the sex-offenders' register, for example, or very complex needs. And then we had the 21 community rehabilitation companies, which were actually owned by just eight large companies and they bid for different areas of the country depending on the models and target operating models they developed to meet those bits. That became very difficult for us as a union because we suddenly had 22 different employers just in probation. So each of the CRCs acted very differently. They all had different target operating models. We had an extensive amount of work harmonising policies and trying to best represent our members' interest in terms of making this really difficult situation work.
Tania Bassett:But I think crucially what happened with that target, with that transforming rehabilitation model, was it was fundamentally flawed from the outset. So even the private providers were saying that the contracts that had been drawn up were effectively unworkable. There was no money in it and they were in it for profit rather than for the public service side of things. At the end of those seven years, when the government admitted that it had been an absolutely failed experiment, the private companies were telling us that at best they had broken even one year, but none of them had made a profit. And the result of that, over those seven years, in order to try and chase the profit line, meant that they absolutely decimated their staffing levels. So some CRCs, as we call them, community rehabilitation companies they cut their staff by up to 40% in order to try and get somewhere near the profit margin by reducing their overheads, and overheads always means staff as the most expensive resource an organisation has.
Tania Bassett:We were lucky in the National Probation Service in that we had an agreement that there would be no redundancies. But what happened was we found that 50% of the staff went to the National Probation Service and 50% went to the private companies. But actually they split the staff before they split the work. So 75% of the work actually went to the public sector, which meant that only 25% of the work went to the private companies, and that meant we had a displacement of work. We had the wrong people in the wrong place to do the wrong sort of work, if that makes any sense. So once those contracts were ended and we had reunification in 2021, the whole staffing group was brought back together, but what we were left with was a massively understaffed probation service because of the cuts that the community rehabilitation companies had made in terms of redundancies over those seven years.
Tania Bassett:So we now have a hugely understaffed probation service that is massively overworked, and the funding cuts that the MOJ has suffered over the last 10 years have been up to 40% across the board, and we're forever hearing that funding is going into probation, but it seems to be constantly misplaced. It's always for what NAPO would call a vanity project. You know, we'll expand GPS tagging, we'll do this new computer system. None of that money that we've had in terms of extra lump sums has actually gone towards frontline staffing in terms of pay for retaining current staff, but also in terms of training new staff as well.
Tania Bassett:Because of the staffing crisis we've had, we've had to have some recent funding in the last few years in order to really boost recruitment of trainee probation officers in particular. So there has been a massive recruitment drive, but because the working conditions are so bad, with Improbation because of the understaffing and overworking, we're not retaining those staff. So out of the 1500 staff that are employed every year. We're not actually keeping those on board and we're also losing very experienced staff as well. So I would say that funding over the years has been quite drastically cut and or has gone to the wrong places within the organisation. That means it's not stabilising the organisation and I think for me that's fundamentally the biggest driving force that, coupled with being part of the civil service and being very centrally driven by white hall and not having any local autonomy- From my experience I've noticed that, to compensate for the lack of staff and lack of resources, judges in cases of often chosen not to request pre-sentence reports for defendants because the workload is so heavy on probation.
Alex Bastian:Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Tania Bassett:Yes, I mean back in the probation trust days we had locally very good connections with the judiciary. We used to work very closely with magistrates in terms of doing joint training and have regular magistrates meetings, sort of once every couple of months to bring them up to speed and what was happening in probation on the day. And we had really close ties with the Crown Court judges in terms of we do regular training exercises with them on sentencing what they wanted from a pre-sentence report but also informing judges what the purpose of a pre-sentence report was from a probation perspective. Transforming Rehabilitation massively damaged the level of trust and confidence between probation and the judiciary.
Tania Bassett:I think the judiciary weren't clear exactly who was delivering what interventions, whether it was private or public, and if it was private, was it going to be in the local area or was it going to be in a different private company?
Tania Bassett:I think that confusion was also with the staff on the ground floor as well. So if you were doing a pre-sentence report for somebody that was going to be sent managed out of your area, you weren't always clear what provisions that particular private company had in terms of interventions. And I think that damage to trust and confidence between probation and judiciary is still being felt and he's been made worse, I think, by the fact we've got such massive staff shortages. I think, coupled with the court backlogs, that's also created a pre-sentence report backlog with Improbation as well, and judges are acutely aware of the time scales it's now taking to provide even the basic fast delivery reports, never mind the full pre-sentence reports with a three week adjournment. For me, pre-sentence reports are kind of fundamental to the whole process going forward and I think that's something we need to focus on to get right.
Alex Bastian:Indeed, just to focus a bit more on the pre-sentence reports and the impact that that has on a defendant's case, especially somebody vulnerable. A judge obviously does not get the opportunity to speak to a defendant and the real insight that they would have would be through that pre-sentence report. Obviously, a barrister on behalf of a defendant can put across some mitigation, but at the end of the day, a more independent report or an independent perspective can be provided by probation alone. Would that be an accurate description of that?
Tania Bassett:Yes, absolutely, and I think in terms of highlighting the key issues for the client in terms of issues that may be fundamental to being underlying causes of their offending behaviour, experiences they may have in their life, but also what their current situation is, as well as a detailed offence analysis in terms of what happened and why it happened, are really crucial in terms of providing the most appropriate sentence for that client going forward. And my concern with pre-sentence reports is that previously we had autonomy as a probation officer or probation service officer to choose which type of report you wrote for a particular defendant. So it may be that, for example, I've got somebody who's committed a very serious offence and I'm choosing to do a full pre-sentence report because I think this person may be high risk of harm to the public, for example. Then you may also get somebody in the magistrates for a lower level offence, but actually you do need to do a detailed report because their personal circumstances are really important to what sentence they have going forward. So choosing the type of report for the individual in front of you is fundamental part of probation. One of the things that Chris Grayling introduced was to take away that autonomy from probation and bring in an arbitrary target of 80% of pre-sentence reports being done in a fast delivery format. So the difference with that is a fast delivery report is written and produced to court within five working days, whereas a full pre-sentence report requires a three week adjournment because you need to go into much more detail and do more detailed checks on the individual.
Tania Bassett:What we would like to see in NAPO is a return to staff having that autonomy to choose the type of report, and one of the key drivers for that request is people with protected characteristics. In our view, anyone with a protected characteristic should automatically get a full pre-sentence report so that you can go into all of the circumstances around their life, whether it be they've experienced high levels of racism or other forms of discrimination that could contribute to their offending behaviour. Their lifestyle and associates are absolutely critical, but also for other issues. For example, women who find themselves in the justice system are most likely to have committed a nonviolent offence but more likely to get a short custodial sentence. So it's really important that courts are aware of that woman's personal circumstances, because the knock on effect of a short custodial sentence on a single mother of three, for example, is far wider than just six weeks in prison.
Tania Bassett:It's losing the house, it's losing any employment, it's the children potentially going into care. So you've got social care costs, you've got potentially NHS costs going forward, and also women are more likely to be the victim of the forms of abuse, themselves to find themselves in the justice system. So they may be survivors of domestic abuse. They may have suffered sexual abuse in their life as well. There will be likely to be substance misuse issues, so complex cases with multiple needs that actually are all underlying causes of any offending behaviour. So for us, we need to get back to basics when it comes to pre-sentence reports, because they are vital not just for the court sentencing but also managing that case going forward.
Alex Bastian:Yeah, and of course it's really about getting the right sentence for that particular person. So it's not a case of oh, can we go down a route, of a more lenient approach or be more harsh in terms of a particular crime or anything like that. It's looking at the individual and seeing what kind of benefit probation can have, or even what the impact of a custodial sentence would have on that individual In terms of probation's role. Then it sort of begins at that stage, doesn't it? But it doesn't end at the PSR stage. It continues through the supervision element, the unpaid work element, or if somebody goes to prison, there is still probation involvement anyway as part of their sentence and their licence. Is that correct?
Tania Bassett:Yes.
Tania Bassett:So we're kind of right from the from the outset of pleading guilty or being found guilty, right the way through to the end of that sentence.
Tania Bassett:So your probation has quite an in-depth role in managing that person's sentence, which is why the pre-sentence report isn't just for the court. It actually feeds into the supervision or managing of that case through the duration of their sentence and will often be referred to. For example, it's a crucial part of any parole dossier to look at what the original pre-sentence report said as a measure to then mark against you know, what progress somebody has made, either in custody or in the community, at addressing those underlying offending behaviors. That would help reduce their risk of harm or their risk of reoffending going forward. So it is a fundamental bedrock and it's you know. Probation officers often say that if you get the pre-sentence report wrong, you will likely end up mismanaging that case going forward. It's very difficult to correct it after that stage. So we really need to invest time in giving staff the opportunity to write the best pre-sentence reports they can from the very outset.
Alex Bastian:Does it also cause you problems or not you personally? But probation officers, probation writers, PSR writers problems when they are making recommendations, knowing that resources are limited in terms of what they can offer in terms of supervision, in terms of non-custodial disposals, if I can put it that way.
Tania Bassett:I think that in terms of writing the pre-sentence report, the author will always go with what is the best sentence, above and beyond what the reality of that resource might look like, because you have to write it for the perfect world, not necessarily the world you're living in because it needs to meet that individual's needs. I think there is a pressure on PSR authors to there has always been a pressure actually on PSR authors to go down particular routes, mainly when there's a new sentence being introduced. So I remember when we first started doing curfews there was a real push to utilise curfews as a means of avoiding custody. So if somebody was on the cusp of a custodial sentence actually really look at whether or not a curfew would be manageable. So they've got that restriction of liberty, but in the community, and you can still do some community-based work.
Tania Bassett:But I think the reason growing sort of pressure now that what work will be done in the community because people are carrying such dangerously high case loads, their time with that person and having any meaningful supervision is really curtailed by their current work loads and their ability to fit all of that time into a five day working week. So I think there are pressures across the board. My concern is that court staff that do the PSR writing now because probation has siloed very much into different departments and there's not the crossing over there used to be of staff. So when I said earlier about mixed case load, I would case manage and I would write the PSR a week as well, whereas now I think there is a detachment from people working in the courts to what's actually happening in sentence management, which may mean it's easier for the PSR writer to propose a sentence because they're not fully aware of how that will be delivered. But obviously it does mean a disconnect within the service between those managing the case and those proposing sentences.
Alex Bastian:Tell us a little bit more about that in terms of your earlier experience as a PSR writer and probation officer. I just want people to understand the impact that probation can have in terms of the right sentences, impacting defendants in a way to minimise or avoid any future reoffending, as opposed to prison being the all inclusive answer and deterrent.
Tania Bassett:I think it is. For me it's a fundamental bedrock of the justice system. I know we're currently going through yet another slightly hysterical phase of lock everyone up for as long as possible, but actually I think it's really important that we understand the purpose of prison, and I think we've lost that. I think people don't know what prison is actually for and until we really define the purpose of prison, it's very difficult to place it as a suitable sentence, aside from those that are the most dangerous and the most at risk that need to be incarcerated for public protection.
Tania Bassett:For me, probation is about the majority of the case load. It's about how can we understand why this person is committed an offence, what are the triggers or underlying causes of that offending and how can we help them to address those underlying factors. So, for example, if we look at a acquisitive crime, we know a lot of the aquesitive crime is committed by those with substance misuse. So it's about getting those people into the right treatment to address their substance misuse, which will in turn reduce their risk of a quisitive crime. But also it's about there is an element of taxpayer value for money.
Tania Bassett:Probation is considerably cheaper than custody. It's about what do we want as a society, do we want to reduce the number of victims and reduce crime overall? If so, probation is actually the best place service to deliver on that objective. Do we want to just bang people up for as long as possible as a punishment and then they come out with potentially more issues than when they went in with and then therefore more likely to commit a crime? If that's what our objective is, then prison can deliver on that. But I think as a society we've lost sight of what we see the purpose of prison being.
Alex Bastian:Following up on your point about probation being cheaper than custody. I mean, just give us a little bit more information in relation to that first. But also, can you just tell us it would therefore be such an issue for the government, when it would be a cost saving exercise to fund probation more in respect of criminal cases, why they are choosing the other approach of restricting probation's role and therefore, obviously the the ongoing impact ends up being that they are paying more money and people are being locked up.
Tania Bassett:There is a huge amount of how the justice system generally is managed by political ideology and I think we have to be very honest and upfront that politics influences the justice system we have. Therefore, the government of the time will influence the justice system the way so that it serves the purpose of meeting their political objectives. That's a fundamental part. I think people forget just how political the justice system is. That determines the policies that come out, the funding, the operating models of the different agencies right across the board for the justice sector. So that to me, is a fundamental issue in terms of prioritising probation over prison.
Alex Bastian:Focusing on your personal experiences. I mean, obviously, I think most probation officers go into probation work because they have a passion for social work. Often the ones that I've met are very much passionate about making sure the most vulnerable in society and community are given the best chances they can. Would you say you've been more inspired having had all these years kind of front facing work with clients, with offenders, or have you been with this heart and having seen what you know, case after case after case, and so on and so forth?
Tania Bassett:I think, in terms of cases, much more inspiration. Probation is definitely a vocation. I and might come on to that later I'm concerned that that's changing, actually going forward, but Certainly I think historically it's been very much about being a vocation but also about, I suppose, make wanting to make that difference and the diversity that the role can bring. I find clients generally, if that's the inspiration working with people it might be that you don't get the person to turn their life around completely, but they make that one step in the right direction and you may have to see them five or six different sentences before they get to their end destination, but the lot, a lot of people do.
Tania Bassett:I think my cynicism comes from the system. I don't think the justice system should be politically motivated and I don't think it should be directed by political ideologies. It should be a completely wholly, independent sector In order to serve everybody to the best of its ability, whether that be clients that were working with all the public and also, I think, in terms of trust and confidence in the system. It's been used probation in particular, and I'm not completely sure why, but basically in particular has been used as a huge political football over the last 13 years. If we look at Chris Grayling's transforming rehabilitation program, we are, you know, privatizing one of the smallest public sectors services that we have in this country is not about saving money or efficiency, because the probation services so small compared to every other public sector.
Tania Bassett:I think it was very much about ideology and wanting to leave a mark on, just to sort of leave a legacy as a minister, rather than actually serving any real purpose. I would like to see going forward a full, fully politically independent review of probation and and actually the justice sector as a whole. I think needs to need to have a full review, looking at it objectively, about how have we got to where we are now. How have we got to where we are now in order to know how we can get out of the problems that we're currently experiencing across the board, but it's particularly acute in probation at the moment has anything good come out of the privatization?
Tania Bassett:There's a really long pause. There wasn't there. I genuinely don't think there has I mean, I struggled see any benefits that came about as a result of transforming Rehabilitation. Pretty much every policy that Chris Grayling introduced has been reversed, with the exception of the pre sentence reports. We subsequently seen Dominic Rob making huge changes to the parole process and then losing that through judicial review and those all having to be reversed. This constantly tampering around probation In particular, has just left the service in absolute disarray and we're in a phase of going through complete, constant Organize, an organizational change which is exhausting for the people trying to do the job day in and day out. So I know, you know, honesty, I don't think there's been any benefits of privatization.
Alex Bastian:Probation and if there were, there were to be some, some input in terms of financial input, with that be the beginning in terms of what we were discussing, the psr element. We talking that the real need is more In terms of the supervision, which is the part that follows the sentence, or is it to do with inmates in prisons getting help from probation in terms of rehabilitating them back into society once their sentence is coming to an end?
Tania Bassett:I think, before we even get to that stage, there's some other fundamentals that need to change. I think, yes, we can talk about money and we can talk about that as the panacea and it will solve everything. I think to a certain extent will solve some things. I think, actually, it's about how the organization is structured. So one of NAPO's campaign pledges is to get probation out of the civil service. It's not a service that fits into the civil service model very well at all.
Tania Bassett:The civil service is you know, I always thought it was a bit of a cliche but it actually is incredibly bureaucratic, centrally driven, almost detached from the front line work that sits in the egg that it sits behind. And I think probation as a, as an organizational model, doesn't suit the civil service model in the slightest. We have very little local autonomy in terms of how the services run to meet community needs. So getting out of the civil service and embedding it much more in local communities with autonomy to make decisions around budgets, around target operating models, the delivery of services is really important and I think sitting alongside that is the current drive from from the ministers and from HMPPS to deliver what's called ONE HMPPS, which, as far as we're concerned and other stakeholders are concerned Is probation being subsumed by the prison service and that is a fundamental risk not only to probation as a service and as a profession, but also to how we deliver justice sector going forward.
Tania Bassett:Prison has a purpose, probation has a purpose. They're two very different services and they should remain so, because their objectives are very different and as a result of that, their cultures and the way they work are incredibly different. One is a very much top down uniform service. The other one is much more linear. It's not where we're not wearing uniform information. It's much more about being seen by the community, being able to meet community needs, doing home visits, that side of things. So I think at the moment we need to get out the civil service to stop the organizational change that is relentless, but also we need to maintain the identity of the probation service as a separate entity to the prisons.
Alex Bastian:And following on from that, I suppose some of the prisons have now been privatized, haven't they? So if there was going to be some sort of unification, that would be extremely challenging, based on the fact that it's not just one organization working with another single organization, is it?
Tania Bassett:No, I'd love to give you how, the answer of how they'll deal with that, but I don't genuinely don't think the plans are that far forward.
Tania Bassett:In thinking there is a real habit of the civil service will come up with this brilliant idea which meets the need of a minister because he's directed or she's directed a certain thing, and policy boards in the civil service will draw up a model, having never worked in the service that they're reorganizing and it almost feels like the old adage of on the back of a fag packet. You know we said it about transforming rehabilitation, but it seems to be a very civil service thing. We've got this idea and we haven't quite thought it through, but we're going to push ahead with it anyway because it will work out in the wash. So I don't know how, if it gets to that point, that would be resolved. At the moment it's. You know, we're seeing it very much as a. This is something we need to stop because it's not going to be good for the prison service, it's not going to be good for probation and ultimately it won't be good for the public or the clients that we work with.
Alex Bastian:Going forward what could the ordinary person do in this situation? So if someone's listening in at the moment and they've been moved by what you said and they want a better probation service and more effective probation service, what can we do with within our communities and what can we do within our lobbying government and things like that? Is there any, is there anything that the listeners can take on board from what you're saying in action?
Tania Bassett:I think absolutely definitely like to your MP and explain that you're concerned about the probation service and the direction it's traveling in. We do need to raise more political awareness about probation. It's always been a kind of hidden public service and to a certain extent I think that's why the privatisation was able to be railroaded through quite as quickly as it was. We're almost like a victim of our own success. No one really wants to know about the supervision of people who've committed offences within their communities. People don't want to think about the fact that probation and managing those who've committed a sexual offence on a community order, for example, or on a licence within their own community. So the railroading through privatisation I think was able to happen because the public were unaware really of what probation was and what we do. So it's very much about find out about what probation does in your local area. Definitely write to your MP and say that you're concerned about its future and how it's managing at the moment.
Tania Bassett:There are other ways that people can get much more actively involved. So if you live near and approve premises in your community which is a probation hostel, then they will have lay people sitting on a board in the local community that help talk about the management of how that hostel runs and how people are managed there. There are also lay members of the multi-agency public protection panels that sit map us sit and work as a multi-agency response to high and very high risk of harm people. But there's also, you know, if you're running a local community project, you can get probation involved to do unpaid work at your local community centre to paint the walls or do the weeding at your local churchyard. So there's ways that people can get involved to find out more about probation and that's the way that we start to make that fundamental change is bringing communities back into the work that we do. But ultimately at the moment it's very much a political battle. So I would urge people to write to their MPs.
Madalena Alberto:And this concludes our podcast for today. Thank you, Tania, for the insightful conversation on the National Probation Service and our criminal justice system and for leaving us with plenty to reflect on, including how the government is not utilizing what could be of benefit to taxpayers, like having offenders on probation instead of in prison. Rebel Justice podcast is produced by the View Magazine, which is the only platform by and for women in the justice system where, by amplifying their stories, we shine a light on injustice, gender inequality and abusive systems. Check out our quarterly magazine to stay on top of all that is relevant and important in the justice system and find out how you can activate your rights and citizenship to create a meaningful, lasting change. You can subscribe to the View at The View Mag org uk and follow us on our social media. We are Rebel Justice on X, formerly Twitter, and the View Magazine on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. Thank you.