§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will carry out a feasibility study into the possibility of the probation service being given a direct subsidy for each offender it takes out of the prison system.
§ Mr. BrittanWe are aware of the Californian scheme of this kind but have no plans to introduce it here. The responsibility for placing offenders under supervision in the community rests with the courts and not with the probation service. Funding arrangements for the probation service are shared by central and local government, and already take account of the workload of probation officers.
§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department for how many people the probation service was responsible in each year since 1970, breaking these down into (a) probation orders, (b) after-care supervision, (c) offenders on community service orders and (d) juveniles on supervision orders and any other categories.
§ Mr. BrittanThe information available on those supervised by the probation service since 1968 is summarised in table 6.2 of "Statistics of the criminal justice system, England and Wales, 1968–78". Further details are to be found in table 3 of "Probation and after-care statistics, England and Wales 1978" and table 7 of "Statistics on Community Service Orders" (Home Office Statistical Bulletin, issue 3/80). Copies of these pulications are available in the Library of the House.