At the completion of the first round of inspections under HMI Probation’s new banding system in September 2019, the Midlands Division of the National Probation Service were top of the table.
The (totally unofficial) league table I’ve constructed below enables three types of comparisons:
- How National Probation Service divisions and Community Rehabilitation Companies compare with their peers.
- How NPS divisions are performing compared with the CRCs in their area.
- How probation organisations compare in different areas of performance: leadership, case assessment, court reports, unpaid work etc.
The league table benefits from the robust new scoring methodology adopted by Her Majesty’s Inspection of Probation which involves inspecting a single organisation (either a CRC or an NPS division) and giving that organisation one of four overall ratings: outstanding; good; requires improvement or poor.
Inspectors give individual ratings for ten different domains set out in detail in the infographic below but covering three main headings:
- Organisational delivery
- Case supervision
- NPS/CRC specific work
As you can see from the league table below, most, but not all NPS divisions are out-performing CRCs by a substantial margin.
It was perhaps no surprise then when on 11 June 2020, the Justice Secretary announced that CRC contracts would be terminated in June 2021 and all offender management and intervention work would be returned to the National Probation Service.
The league table is constantly updated with the publication of new inspection reports.
