JOHN REID is accused today of undermining the Probation Service by presenting a distorted picture of its record in supervising criminals.

The head of the probation services in England and Wales makes his unprecedented attack in a letter sent to the Home Secretary and the permanent secretary at the Home Office.

John Raine said that remarks by Mr Reid last week bluntly saying the Probation Service was not working as well as it should had presented a false impression to the public.

He also attacks Mr Reid for making his comments in front of an audience including prisoners who will have to be supervised by probation officers on their release from jail.

Mr Raine, chairman of the association representing the 42 probation boards in England and Wales, said that the speech by Mr Reid at Wormwood Scrubs had caused widespread consternation and resentment across the service.

“Your focus on areas of underperformance without acknowledgement of the overall record high levels of performance by probation services across England and Wales presented a distorted and undermining picture to a wider public audience,” Mr Raine says in a letter to the Home Secretary.

Mr Raine said that he had been ordered by representives of all the 42 boards, the employers of probation staff, to express their concern and disappointment at Mr Reid’s attack on the service.

He also condemns the failure of Mr Reid and his ministerial team in the Home Office to give strong leadership and encouragement to probation staff at a time of such difficulty for the service.

He warns the Home Secretary that part of the problem facing the service is that probation staff see themselves under attack and responsible for all that goes wrong, with little praise for their work from Mr Reid or other ministers.

In his speech last week the Home Secretary said that the Probation Service was not working as well as it should in a number of areas — the supervision of dangerous offenders, too much money on writing reports and not enough on practical help to criminals and high reoffending rates.

He said that in too many areas offenders received a service that was poor or mediocre.

Mr Reid’s attack came after a series of incidents in which offenders under probation supervision have killed. The incidents and investigations uncovering a series of failings have alarmed ministers and shaken public confidence in the service.

Ministers believe that unless there is confidence that the Probation Service is properly supervising offenders they will never be able to convince the public that community penalties are a rigorous alternative to imprisonment.

The Home Office will publish a Bill next week to reform the Probation Service including the abolition of the probation boards and their replacement by trusts. The aim of the Bill is to open up the Probation Service to enable much greater involvement by the voluntary and private sector in supervising and treating offenders. Mr Reid wants to see voluntary and private sector organisations to be given the chance to bid for more than £250 million of probation service work each year — nearly a third of the total budget — from April 2008.

The Home Secretary made clear in his speech that he wants to see some routine and administrative work such as checking on curfew conditions or running random drug tests done by others. This would leave task involving higher skills, such as creating packages of surveillance and treatment for more serious offenders, to trained probation officers.

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