Napo HQ Blog

Birmingham Rep brings the CJS to the stage Three short plays combined in one production, The Sentence , from the BOLDtext Playwrites collective will be performed by Birmingham Rep on 28th January as part of their 'Open Door' season. It will be followed by a panel discussion with Napo's Tania Bassett on the panel.

The Sentence is a set of three new short plays from West Midlands based Boldtext Playwrites. Writers Liz John, Vanessa Oakes and Julia Wright continue their fascination with the Criminal Justice System with three playlets they say will "shine a dramtic spotlight on sentencing and explore the inevitable fallout for everyone affected".

The 3 plays are

• Paying the Price by Liz John (a disgraced surgeon awaits sentencing, when a young solicitor arrives with unexpected news)
• Offences Against the Person by Vanessa Oakes (Why do sentences somethimes bemuse and enrage the public?)
• Working Mother by Julia Wright (Karen will soon be leaving prison. Has she learned her lesson? Sophie tries to help her but is it working?)

The evening is a 'pay what you can on the night' show so tickets are free but booking is recommened by calling the box office on 0121 236 4455 or ONLINE

With prisons in England and Wales bursting at the seams, proposals to axe sentences under six months seem like a great idea.

Justice minister, Rory Stewart, who put forth the plan, told the Telegraph that short sentences were "long enough to damage you and not long enough to heal you" and went on to say: "You bring somebody in for three or four weeks, they lose their house, their job, their family, their reputation.

"The public are safer if we have a good community sentence... and it will relieve a lot of pressure on prisons".

And who could argue against that? Such a move would certainly ease the burden on prisons and help avoid some of the social and economical issues a short stint behind bars can create. But is an under resourced and fragmented probation service equipped to pick up the slack?

Napo's GS told the BBC the part-privatisation over the past four years had "had a massive impact on service delivery and the ability of our skilled professionals to do exactly what they should be doing".

"Levels of supervision, in many regards, are unsatisfactory," he said. "It's not conducive to proper rehabilitation. It's not cost-effective for the taxpayer.

"And what we need to see is more provision in the community for people to be given the opportunity to turn their lives around."

Let's hope the MoJ has learned from previous mistakes, and this time makes sure there is enough funding available to support this ambition.

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This weekend, the Observer reported that serious further offences have risen by a staggering 50% since Grayling got his hands on the probation service.

SFOs increased from 409 in the year before the 2014 reforms to 627 in the 12 months up to last April.

Napo's general secretary told the paper that there was a "clear correlation” between the increase in SFOs and the reforms and said that workloads and staff shortages were to blame.

In true MoJ fashion, a spokeswoman played down the link between the shambolic reforms and rise in serious offences saying 40,000 more offenders were now being supervised each year so “analysis of the number of offences does not provide a like-for-like comparison”.

Meanwhile, friend of Napo, Liz Saville Roberts of Plaid Cymru who obtained the figures via a Freedom of Information request, echoed Napo's sentiments accusing the government of “wilfully wrecking the humanitarian principle of rehabilitation” and demanding probation be brought back under public control.

Read the Observer piece in full here

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