More than 5,500 unpaid work orders that form part of community sentences have not been completed more than two years after being handed down, with experts blaming “chronic understaffing” in the probation service.
Ordinarily the orders, which can be for between 40 and 300 hours, should be completed within 12 months of sentence. Figures show there are more than 15,100 unpaid work orders not completed in that time in England and Wales,
182 of which have not been delivered more than four years after sentencing.
The use of community sentences is set to increase under government plans to scrap short jail terms for most offenders to alleviate prison overcrowding. The changes have been welcomed by campaigners but they say they must be accompanied by more resources for the probation service.
Andy Keen-Downs, the chief executive of the Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact), said: “These are worrying statistics that reveal the scale of some of the major challenges facing the probation service. Many of these problems can be traced back to the 25% budget cuts to the Ministry of Justice in the decade following 2010, alongside the ill-judged part-privatisation of probation when Chris Grayling was justice secretary.
“Bringing probation fully back in-house in 2021 was a positive move but it has so far failed to prevent chronic understaffing and high caseloads for hard-pressed frontline practitioners.
“The government is quite rightly moving towards a presumption against short prison sentences. However, without the right funding, that will simply mean more pressure on probation, more unpaid work going uncompleted and more people failing to complete their community orders.”
The figures, which date from May when the Guardian made a freedom of information request that it only received a response to last month,, show the total number of hours outstanding under unpaid work orders was 4.4m. In 2019-20, the total delivered hours under unpaid work orders was 4.9 m.
As of 30 September, there were only approximately two-thirds of the required number of probation officers employed, with a shortfall of 2,129 officers against a target of 6,780. Many have left the service in recent years, including 806 in the past 12 months. While the MoJ has blamed competition in the labour market, the HM Inspectorate of Probation’s annual report said “staff burnout and stress … are the main reasons for experienced staff leaving the service”.
Andrew Neilson, the director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the government should divert some of the funding from its £4bn prison expansion programme into community orders “that are more effective at reducing offending”.
He said: “There is increasing public attention on the state of prisons and the overcrowding to be found behind bars, but similar overcrowding can also be found when it comes to those being supervised by the probation service.
“This backlog in unpaid work orders speaks to the fact that across probation, overstretched staff face unrealistic caseloads and struggle to provide high-quality support and supervision.
“It also makes clear that while recent proposals to reduce the use of ineffective short prison sentences are hugely welcome, it is vital that such measures are coupled with additional investment and a serious review of how probation services can function both efficiently and effectively.”
A government source said the number of offenders with at least one uncompleted work order – different from the total number of work orders – had fallen by two-thirds since spring 2021 to about 5,000.
An MoJ spokesperson said: “The delivery of unpaid work was severely impacted by the pandemic but thanks to the £93m we’ve invested since 2021 the number of offenders completing their orders within 12 months continues to increase.”
