The Socialist 21 July 2010

Warning: NHS under attack

Warning: NHS under attack

Youth and students: organise to fight for a future

Class struggles on the rise

Stand united, fight the cuts!

Lessons of the cuts

Education workers must teach Tories a lesson

Fast news

Union recommends BT pay deal

Stop the courts closures

Wales: No to fire service cuts

Strike action wins at Tube Lines

Swansea Linamar

Cuts blogger!

PCS: a strategy to stop the cuts

TUC refuses national demo

Unite the struggle to defend pensions

Con-Dems propose denationalisation of the NHS

The Socialist Party needs you!

More join the Socialist Party in Yorkshire

Funding the socialist fightback

Building new workers' parties and the tasks of socialists

Egypt: Thousands protest over brutal police killing

Harder work, longer hours... All part and parcel?

A testing 'pudding' for councillors

Keep probation services public

Previous issues, etc

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Keep probation services public

IN HIS interview (The Socialist 632), Brian Caton rightly highlights the hypocrisy of Ken Clarke's plans to cut the prison population by increasing community sentences.

Barry Conway

As a probation officer, responsible for overseeing offenders in the community, I listened with interest as Clarke gave lengthy radio interviews about the importance of rehabilitation without once mentioning the probation service. As with prisons and all other public services, this government is planning to slash our budgets massively.

This year alone, the probation service has been told to cut £44 million and anticipates double this amount over the next two years. Cuts of this size will mean 20% fewer can be supervised safely in the community. So what is Clarke up to?

As Brian Caton points out, Clarke and his colleagues are looking for private companies and charities to do this work, and big business stands to make a healthy profit. Clarke gave the game away on the Today programme when he talked about "paying by results" to companies that show they stopped someone offending for two years by getting them a job or putting them through a rehabilitation programme.

But this is like telling a doctor that you will only pay them if the patient is cured. The logic of this is that you will only treat those you think you have a good chance of saving! So what happens to all the others with complex drug, mental health and personality problems in the prison system?

Prison and probation staff should stand united in defending our public services. We need also to fight for political change that can start to address the massive social inequalities that are the basis of much of the crime and anti-social behaviour in our communities.

In this issue

Warning: NHS under attack