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60 Prob. J. 3 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/probj60 and id is 1 raw text is: Editorial They o f Con y a m d c rs Probation Journal Th i eo h 60(1) 3-8 The rise of the © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: shadow state? sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0264550513478556 prb.sagepub.com OSAGE After some delay the government finally published its plans for the future of the probation service in England and Wales. The title of the consultation document Transforming Justice - A Revolution in the Way we Manage Offenders (Ministry of Justice, 2013) is perhaps apt although not necessarily for the reasons intended. Substituting state responsibility for rehabilitation on the grounds of encouraging investment in order to generate private profits represents a fracture of the social contract upon which notions of rehabilitation and ultimately justice are grounded. If the proposals are implemented it will represent perhaps an unprecedented trans- formation of probation work in the United Kingdom with some £600 million worth of contracts (approximately 60 per cent of the entire probation budget) to be put out to tender. The probation service's responsibilities will be confined to the core functions of supervising high-risk offenders and the provision of court reports. Of course this latest development is only the 'tip of the iceberg' in which public services are being re-arranged to favour private multinational corporations. Consider the following: The UK now has the most privatized prison system in Europe, and although there are not as many private jails as in the United States the proportion of prisoners in private prisons is higher. . With some 105,000 new starts the electronic monitoring programme in England and Wales is the largest outside of the United States and accounts for approximately 80 per cent of the European market. The UK Border agency has issued contracts worth £1.7 billion to the private sector. . West Midland and Surrey Police Forces have invited bids from G4S and other major security companies on behalf of all forces across England and Wales to take over the delivery of a wide range of services previously carried out by the police. The contract has a potential value of £1.5 billion over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5 billion depending on how many other forces get involved. The 2011 value of the outsourced market for public services in the United King- dom had an annual turnover of £80 billion and is estimated to rise to £140 bil- lion by 2014. In many respects the current transformation of public services such as probation represents a triumph of ideology over evidence. The decision to suspend the

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