Hundreds of offenders in the Northumbria Probation Trust area, many of them guilty of serious crimes including robbery, sex attacks and burglaries, could soon be supervised by private companies such as G4S and Serco, as the Conservative- led government privatises the Probation Service.

A Freedom of Information request has revealed the number of offenders currently being supervised by highly trained professional probation officers that will be off-loaded to private companies. In the Northumbria Probation Trust, that means that 5932 offenders in the hands of the likes of G4S and Serco.

Up to now the government has refused to reveal how many serious and violent offenders would be put in the hands of private companies, but Labour’s Freedom of Information request has revealed the true scale of their plans in our local area.

Bridget Phillipson MP, commenting on this data, said:

“You can’t take risks with public safety yet this is precisely what the government is doing with their reckless plans to privatise the Probation Service. Handing over supervision for serious and violent offenders to the same companies that time and again let down the taxpayer is a recipe for disaster.

“The government has failed to bring these privatisation plans before Parliament. Instead of choosing to rush ahead at breakneck speed and impose their untried and untested privatisation on our communities.”