It is not surprising to learn that the review of the Ministry of Justice structures has concluded that the National Offender Management Service (Noms) is surplus to requirements. The project has proved to be expensive, unfocused and bureaucratic, and has added nothing to the front line.
It was originally set up in the spring of 2004 but there was no consultation with parliament, or anybody else for that matter. No business case was produced and the service was introduced too quickly. The idea of merging prisons and probation was soon lost in favour of contestability, or privatisation by another name.
Over the next two years numerous blueprints were produced by Noms, all of which were dismissed as unworkable. In 2006 Noms produced its grand plan for the future which did go out to consultation. Out of 750 responses only 10 were in favour of the changes. Nevertheless, Noms continued to expand. A parliamentary bill to establish contestability at a national level was introduced in 2006 and was badly mauled by both houses of parliament. As a result, the government conceded that any commissioning or contracting out had to happen at a local level. It then emerged in April this year that the cost of the Noms national and regional bureaucracy had soared to £899 million - an increase of 555% in a two-year period. Indeed the cost of the Noms bureaucracy exceeded the entire budget for the probation service in England and Wales.
Throughout the last three-and-a-half years, Noms has struggled to come up with a price mechanism or supply-and-demand model that would allow it to operate a commercial market. Perhaps this is not surprising as offenders are not a commodity, and supply and demand are not particularly predictable. To resolve this conundrum Noms decided to instruct the probation service to hive off 10% of its work, regardless of merits. After parliamentary debates this concept was replaced this year by one of "best value", though details of how this would operate are still very vague.
In essence, the government took the view that the problem with prisons and probation was one of communication. To improve that they believed reorganisation was needed but they added two unnecessary levels of bureaucracy. As a consequence staff became demoralised and the frontline starved of resources. Maybe some of the £899 million saved from the deconstruction of Noms could be redirected to the overstretched, underfunded, probation and prison services.