The National Probation Service for England and Wales is a statutory Criminal Justice Service, mainly responsible for the supervision of offenders in the community and the provision of reports to the criminal courts to assist them in their sentencing duties. It was established in its current form by the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act in April 2001, but has existed since 1907 as a set of area based services interacting at ever-shortening arms-length with central government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own probation services. Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... This article is about the country. ... Motto: (Latin) No one provokes me with impunity(English) Wha daur meddle wi me? (Scots)[1] Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow Official languages English, Gaelic, Scots[2] Government  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister Tony Blair MP  - First Minister Jack McConnell MSP Unification    - by Kenneth I... Anthem: UK: God Save the Queen Regional: (de facto) Londonderry Air Capital Belfast Largest city Belfast Official languages English (de facto), Irish, Ulster Scots 3, BSL, NISL, ISL Government Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair MP  - First Minister Ian Paisley  - Deputy First Minister...

In its current form, the NPS is part of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) within the Home Office and comprises 42 probation areas which are coterminous with police force area boundaries. Areas are funded by NOMS and employ all staff except the Chief Officer; they are accountable to their Boards (comprising up to 15 members appointed by the Secretary of State) for day to day operations and financial management, and to NOMS via a Regional Offender Manager, with whom they have service level agreements, for performance against the targets for the offender management and interventions services for which they have been funded. The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is a department of the Home Office responsible for the correctional services in England and Wales (separate arrangements exist in Scotland and Northern Ireland). ... The modern concept of Small Office and Home Office or SoHo , or Small or Home Office deals with the category of business which can be from 1 to 10 workers. ... There has been a Regional Offender Manager (ROM) for each of the nine English Regions and Wales since 2004/5, when the National Offender Management Service within the Home Office was created to oversee correctional services in England and Wales. ...

The work of probation areas is scrutinised by HM Inspectorate of Probation, which reports independently to UK Government Ministers.

The Service, at the start of 2004, had some 18,000 staff. Statistics for the year 2002 state that it supervised just less than 193,000 offenders and provided 253,000 Pre Sentence Reports to courts in England and Wales, advising them on the background of and proposing appropriate sentences for convicted offenders. In addition, it has responsibility for ensuring that victims of violent and sexual crime resulting in prison sentences of over 12 months are consulted before offenders are released from custody.

The advent of NOMS in 2004 is set to change the pattern of correctional services delivery in England and Wales. The Offender Management Bill, introduced in Parliament late in 2006,is intended to enable some probation areas to become trusts; this is part of wider Government policy to open up the provision of correctional services to greater competetion from the voluntary, community, and private sectors. This was one of the recommendations of the Carter Report (2003): others were to introduce a system of end-to-end offender management, with one named offender manager having responsibility for an offender throughout his or her sentence (be it in custody, the community, or both), and to rebalance sentencing in order to redress the drift towards less and less serious offences resulting in imprisonment or community sentences. Carter saw the need to improve public and sentencer confidence not only in community sentences but also in the fine as credible sanctions for appropriate offenders and offences. The Bill has successfully passed through the House of Commons and is due to be debated in the House of Lords in April 2007.

The probation service will reach its 100th anniversary intact, but the Government's commitment to a wider range of provider agencies seems destined to result in probation areas' monopoly over their current range of services coming to an end shortly afterwards; an active campaign to resist these changes has been mounted by probation trade unions and some politicians.

History

The Church of England Temperance Society and other voluntary societies appointed missionaries to the London Police Courts during the late nineteenth century. From this developed the system of releasing offenders on the condition that they kept in touch with the missionary and accepted guidance. In 1907 this supervision was given a statutory basis which allowed courts to appoint and employ probation officers.[[1]]

See also

• Violent and Sex Offender Register
• OASys
• UK topics

In the United Kingdom, the Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR) is a database that can be accessed by the Police and some Probation Service personnel. ... OASys is the Offender Assessment System, used by Her Majestys Prison Service and the National Probation Service from circa 2002 to measure the risks and needs of Offenders under their supervision. ... This is a list of topics related to the United Kingdom. ...

External links

• National Probation Service
• Probation Statistics 2002 Caution: PDF
• Managing Offenders, reducing Crime - Home Office paper describing proposals for NOMS Caution: PDF
• Excel spreadsheet linked to National Probation Service Circulars issued over last 10 years. Provided free of charge by www.probation2000.com

List of NPS Probation Areas

• Avon and Somerset
• Bedfordshire website
• Cambridgeshire
• Cheshire website
• Cumbria
• County Durham website
• Derbyshire website
• Devon and Cornwall website
• Dorset
• Durham website
• Dyfed-Powys
• Essex
• Gloucestershire website
• Greater Manchester website
• Gwent website
• Hampshire & Isle of Wight website
• Hertfordshire
• Humberside
• Kent website
• Lancashire website
• Leicestershire and Rutland website
• Lincolnshire
• London
• Merseyside
• Norfolk
• North Wales
• North Yorkshire website
• Northamptonshire
• Northumbria website
• Nottinghamshire website
• South Wales website
• South Yorkshire website
• Staffordshire website
• Suffolk website
• Surrey website
• Sussex [www.sussexprobation.gov.uk/ website]
• Teeside website
• Thames Valley website
• Warwickshire website
• West Mercia website
• West Midlands website
• West Yorkshire website
• Wiltshire website