Offender tracking halted over high costs

Thursday, August 09, 2007

The computer system that will keep track of offenders has been halted after costs were 'optimistic'.

The original cost of £234m to keep track of 300,000 offenders on probation or in prison has been deemed "optimistic" by Roger Hill, director of the Probation Service. Reports in The Guardian newspaper said that unions believe the cost has now risen to £950m instead.

The system was designed to provide a single database of all offenders in England and Wales and their histories, instantly accessible to the 70,000 staff in the prison and probation system. It will give every offender a number "for life" so that their record of offending, sentences, behaviour and treatment programmes can be logged.

However, in a leaked letter, Hill said that costing for this has "proven to be optimistic". The letter said: "We have advised ministers that we will need to undertake a fundamental review of the work, to return to an affordable programme."

The emergency review is to be completed in September, but Hill admitted that the ambitions of the original project would be scaled back. Hill's letter also disclosed that David Hanson, the prisons minister, has demanded a full audit trail of the programme since it was set up by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), which oversees both prisons and probation. "While we are reviewing the programme we have instituted a moratorium on further development work," Hill said.

The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that a rapid review of the information system, officially known as C-Nomis, is under way. It is believed that the project will go ahead, but in a scaled down form. Now it is more likely that a simpler version will only be available in prisons across England and Wales, but not to the Probation Service. Cancellation of the project is also unlikely since the Ministry of Justice would have to pay a £50m penalty to supplier EDS.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary from the National Association of Probation Officers, said: "The whole project appears to have been badly managed since its inception. It is arguably an outrageous waste of public money. As a consequence of the problems, probation staff will now have to use IT systems that are not fit for purpose."

Charles Bushell, chairman of the Prison Governors Association, said the news was "bitterly disappointing", adding: "Many of us who have been critical of the extravagant expenditure of the National Offender Management Service had seen C-NOMIS as the one real benefit on the otherwise bloated National Offender Management Service agenda. If C-NOMIS is now threatened we see no good reason to persevere with the conspicuous expenditure which NOMS represents."