Chris Grayling: charities may be better at helping prisoners than probation officers Speaking on BBC Radio Four's Today programme, he said low-risk offenders will get mentors to guide them through the process of leaving prison. "I think there is no-one better by a former offender turned good to actually influence some of the less serious offenders to turn their lives around," he said. I want the system to be open to that kind of expertise too. There are fears that private companies could pay more attention to easy cases, rather than difficult prisoners, if they are paid according to how many do not re-offend. Liz Calderbank, the Chief Inspector for Probation, told the Today programme: "The probation service deals with a huge range of individuals, some of whom have very complex and are very difficult, damaged individuals. What do you do with those individuals on a payment by results scheme? You can't say they're not worthy of the investment. However, Mr Grayling promised that these prisoners who are hard to help will not simply be "dumped in a corner." "I want to have a grown-up discussion with people across this world to say how exactly do we best we best built a pricing system [with] the incentives for the providers that make sure they don't park the most difficult offenders in and ignore them," he said. We can't afford that to happen. They have a duty to implement the order from the court, the requirements of the system. So of course, they need to earn their spurs. All prisoners released from jail, including for the first time those serving less than 12 months, will face mandatory supervision and rehabilitation courses, such as drug treatment programmes, to help stop almost half of all inmates reoffending within a year. The Probation Service will also continue to provide advice to the courts and make initial risk assessments of all offenders. Mr Grayling said: "What we do at the moment is send people out of prison with £46 in their pocket, and no support at all. No wonder we have such high levels of reoffending. It is madness to carry on with the same old system and hope for a different result.