Chelmsford Prison will see more than half of its inmates re-offend, according to recent statistics released by the Ministry of Justice.
Official MOJ numbers put re-offending rates at 62.4 per cent for offenders serving less than 12 months in Chelmsford prison, and at 39.1 per cent for prisoners serving more than 12 months, with an average of 4.92 and 3.55 offences per re-offender serving under and over 12 months, respectively.
The damning statistics follow a pattern of high re-offending rates nationwide, and have led to an overhaul of the rehabilitation service, which is in the process of being implemented.
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling, who visited HM Prison Chelmsford and Essex Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) last week, said: "What we have done is effectively divided probation into two different groups.
"We have created a single national organisation, the national probation service; a smaller, specialist team that will focus on public protection, risk management, and dealing with the most problematic dangerous high-risk offenders.
"Besides that, we have created 21 local community rehabilitation companies, and we saw the one in Essex, to work with low and medium-risk offenders, and its focus will be more on helping those people organise their lives, providing more of a mentoring service."
His visit to Essex coincided with the roll-out of the rehabilitation reforms, which mean all prisoners, even those sentenced to less than 12 months, receive a year of support from probation services on leaving prison.
Key changes to the service also include the aforementioned division of responsibility within probation, and the share sale of CRCs to private companies, which will be paid based on results.
As one of the top performing probation services in the country, the Essex team was of great interest to Mr Grayling, who said that he had met with staff from the probation team at the offices in Braintree Road, Witham.
He explained: "I met a team of probation officers today who are enthusiastic about the reforms, and there are people who are saying they see opportunities with this new system.
"There are also people who are saying I am pretty uncomfortable with the reforms but I am getting on with the job.
"There are also people who are still very resistant to it – the unions had a rally at Westminster yesterday to protest about it, but this is the right thing to bring down re-offending."
However, news of the reforms has not been popular with everyone in the county, with Nick Adams, chairman of HMP Chelmsford's Independent Monitoring Board, explaining that the new way of running the probation service was of particular concern.
"Certainly there is trepidation as far as the prison is concerned, as past experience of contracting out services hasn't been positive," he said.
"All things, for example healthcare, are contracted out to Care UK – education is contracted out, library services are contracted out, but when things go wrong, the prison is unfairly slammed."
Each CRC is currently up for share sale. An array of organisations have met the end-of-June deadline for offers and the Government will be scrutinising them and deciding by the end of this year which bidder will take on each one.
It is thought that around four organisations are in the bidding for Essex, including a mutual, formed by some Essex Probation employees, which has put forward its own bid.
Mary Archer, the chief executive of the CRC, and chairwoman of the CRC Board, said: "It's been a huge transition for everyone and obviously quite an emotional one, but most people have moved into Essex CRC by choice.
"We are really pleased to be working with offenders who have served less than 12 months. Some of the most prolific offenders we work with anyway, but this means we can grab hold of people who go in and out of prison, and look at what's needed in Essex."
Despite many people within the system, including former offenders, suggesting that shorter sentences may not be as effective as working with the probation service, Mr Grayling confirmed that he has no plans to scrap sentences of less than 12 months.
"I am clear on this – there are some people saying we should give everyone a community sentence. Some of the people who end up in prison have already done a community sentence, and so if they were the panacea we wouldn't have all these people turning up in prison," he said.
"If we were to say 'you can't get a short sentence', you either say to people they are going to jail for longer or we say 'we know you have committed crime after crime and you keep on coming back but we're still not going to do anything more than give you another community sentence'.
"And there's no deterrent there at all so, no, I believe prison is necessary, and I want to see more of the right people going to prison but then the objective is to have fewer of them coming back."
