Damian's latest column - Our Man in Westminster - 11.03.10
It was slightly off the normal beaten track of the events I attend in Ashford when I went to the Kent Probation Service’s Diversity fair at the International Hotel, but I was very glad I went. The Probation Service is too often one of the Cinderellas of the public sector, allowed to go on its way largely ignored unless something goes wrong, when it gets it in the neck.
This has always seemed wrong to me. One of the constant problems which affects us is the number of young people who are not stopped from re-offending by whatever punishments we devise. The first temptation is to say that we should punish them harder, but at a time when the jails are already over-crowded this is easier said than done. So we should pay more attention to the work of those who are trying their best to stop repeat offending.
The Kent service employs around 475 people, and deals with around 6,500 offenders at any one time. Two thirds of these have been given Community Orders, and the other third are offenders coming out of prison on licence.
I was particularly interested to hear about the work of the network of voluntary mentors we have in Kent, who try to keep ex-offenders on the straight and narrow by one-to-one contact. Success is difficult to measure in this kind of work, I was told of one old lag who was put on this scheme, and whose mentor was increasingly satisfied that the length of time between sentences was getting markedly longer. One day his mentor hopes he will finally put his bad ways behind him, because of the support he now receives.
There were other presentations on Restorative Justice, Community Payback, and the desperately difficult subject of dealing with sex offenders. The Probation Service may be unsung, but it is doing a difficult and essential job.
