ATTACK OF THE BUREAUCRATS:

Official: Blair's crime plan 'a threat to public' (Martin Bright, April 17, 2005, Observer)

A central plank of Tony Blair's plans to overhaul Britain's creaking criminal justice system was thrown into disarray last night when leaked Home Office documents passed to The Observer revealed that the moves could lead to the release of dangerous criminals with inadequate supervision.

A series of assessments prepared by the Government's own civil servants show they believe there is a 'very high' likelihood that flagship plans to merge the prison and probation service will put the public at risk from violent criminals.

With crime named by voters as one of their top concerns during the election campaign, the leak will prove extremely damaging to a Labour government anxious to prove it has the issue under control.

The highly critical assessments form part of the business plan for the National Probation Service for the year ahead. They show that civil servants believe the likelihood of 'inadequate supervision of cases leading to unmanageable policy making' is 'high' and that its impact would be 'very high'. They also say there is a high likelihood that 'loss of key skills' from frontline staff, will result in 'inadequate supervision of dangerous offenders'.

New community punishments could lead to 'overload' as the courts fail to understand sentencing guidelines, according to the assessment.

The so-called 'traffic light' system used within Whitehall categorises the risks as green, amber or red. But several of the risks concerned with the management of dangerous offenders were marked as off-the-scale by civil servants and given a 'black' designation, meaning that there is a high likelihood of them happening.

Now there's a nicely timed leak.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 17, 2005 12:00 AM