Introduction

In a written ministerial statement to Parliament on 29 October 2014, Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary at the time, announced the preferred bidders in a competition to outsource 21 offender rehabilitation contracts in England and Wales. These contracts, estimated to be worth anywhere between £5 billion and £20 billion in total over 10 years, form a core component of the UK Coalition government and subsequently, the majority Conservative government's ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ strategy (Ministry of Justice, 2013d) designed to open up probation services to a diverse range of providers, release resources and improve rehabilitation outcomes. The accompanying press release suggests that as a result of the announcement the voluntary sector will be ‘at the forefront of a new fight against reoffending’ with winning bids involving partnerships between large private companies and ‘some of Britain's biggest and most successful rehabilitation charities’ (Ministry of Justice, 2014a). The ministerial statement is at pains to highlight the third sector's central place in the reform process: ‘You will see that we have a strong and diverse market, with Preferred Bidders in all but one of the 21 contract areas including voluntary and social sector organisations as “top tier” partners in their bids’ (Ministry of Justice, 2014b).

Thus, in a core and long established public service – probation – we have a statement extolling the presence of a strong and diverse market, with a role for voluntary and community organisations. It is interesting to reflect upon why such great play has been made for the diversity of the market. The Ministry of Justice appears to have been anticipating potential criticism for a lack of evident voluntary sector involvement. Indeed, Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, commented that ‘As we expected, the big winner of the probation sell-off is not the voluntary sector but large private companies run for profit’ (Burne James, 2014).