results plan for offender supervision comes under fire 9 May 2013 Last updated at 00:17 By Danny Shaw Home affairs correspondent, BBC News A group representing senior probation officers has criticised plans to supervise offenders for at least a year after they have been freed from prison. Charities and private firms providing supervision are to be paid according to how well they prevent reoffending. But the Probation Chiefs Association said payment by results in this area was "untried and untested." Justice Secretary Chris Grayling is expected to defend the plans in the Commons later. MPs are set to continue debating the government's legislative programme as set out in the Queen's Speech, focusing on home affairs. The so-called payment-by-results measures will affect about 65,000 offenders a year in England and Wales - the majority of whom would at present receive no supervision at all when they leave jail. Currently, there is no statutory supervision for those sentenced to less than 12 months once they are freed. Offenders serving longer terms are monitored by the probation service for about the same length of time as their prison sentence - for example, an offender given an 18 month sentence will serve nine months in prison, and nine months on licence in the community. Best value Under Mr Grayling's plans, all prisoners, whether they are let out after two weeks, two months or two years, will receive support for a minimum of 12 months to help them find accommodation, get a job or training and tackle any alcohol or drug problems they may have. A two-week prison sentence becomes a year and two weeks of being trapped in the criminal justice system End Quote Andrew Neilson Howard League for Penal Reform It will mean supervision for 50,000 prisoners sentenced to less than a year and extra monitoring for 15,000 who are given prison terms of 12 months to two years. Unveiling the plans, Mr Grayling said: "This is all about ensuring we deliver real, long-term rehabilitation and support - that there's somebody, a mentor, to work alongside a prisoner for a good period of time." The justice secretary said he was not "setting the rules" on levels of supervision: some offenders will be monitored intensively, others less so. But the prison estate will be reorganised so that most offenders are released into the area where they will be supervised. The objective is to reduce recidivism rates, but he said he did not anticipate a "sudden drop-off." The latest figures, published by the Ministry of Justice, show that 46.9% of adult prisoners commit a further offence within a year of release. For those sentenced to less than a year, the figure is 58.2%. Mr Grayling said: "I expect - and aim to see - a steady, step-by-step reduction year by year." However, the government is not providing any extra funding; the supervision, under a system of 21 contracts, will be the responsibility of voluntary groups, charities and private companies, who will be paid in full only if a certain proportion of offenders don't commit further crimes. Contracts will be awarded on the basis of "best value and innovation" in tackling re-offending. Dead horse Sue Hall, chair of the Probation Chiefs Association, questioned whether the system would be robust enough to ensure that the "behaviour you pay for is the behaviour you want." She said: "Payment by results is untried and untested in the community at the moment, where the supervision of offenders is concerned... we don't actually have any hard evidence." Andrew Neilson, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, argued that the plans represented "an admission of the abject failure of short-term prison sentences." These plans set people up to fail. Rather than scrapping short prison terms, the government is creating disproportionate sentences for minor crimes, so that a two-week prison sentence becomes a year and two weeks of being trapped in the criminal justice system. The government should make greater use of community sentences rather than "flogging the dead horse of short-term prison sentences," he concluded. But the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust (Rapt), which provides drug treatment services for offenders, welcomed the idea of enhanced monitoring and support. Mike Trace, Rapt's chief executive, said it would be possible to achieve greater supervision without significantly more resources - as long as the process didn't get bogged down in bureaucracy. "If we can get very creative and very efficient methods of supervision we can improve it," Mr Trace said. If we end up with very much paperwork exercises that offenders are not motivated or inspired by, we end up with the same old problems.