Latest Developments in the Probation Service
National Offender Management
The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) was created in 2004 following a review of correctional services led by Patrick Carter. The review identified key gaps in the work of prisons and probation. It also identified changes in sentencing that had led to increases in prison and probation workloads.
As a new single service, the NOMS brings together the work of correctional services. It ensures that court sentences are effectively implemented, across organisational boundaries and that the focus is on end to end management of the offender. NOMS will also be responsible for designing interventions and services for offenders that are designed to reduce reoffending and reconviction and protect the public.
Central to NOMS is the principle of offender management. This ensures offenders are managed in a consistent, constructive and coherent way during their entire sentence. Pre-sentence, this will include assessing offenders and judging risk so that the courts can reliably target sentences. At every stage an offender manager has responsibility for planning the offender's supervision, whether they are in custody or in the community and for the interventions and services they receive, ensuring there is no breakdown and that none of the advances by an individual are lost. Within NOMS a separation will develop between offender managers who will manage, supervise and administer all offenders through their planned sentence, and those working in services to change behaviour and circumstances of offenders or providing other services vital to the sentence and public protection.
In 2007 NOMS was moved out of the Home Office and was relocated in the newly formed Ministry of Justice.
Further information can be found on the Ministry of Justice website:
As part of NOMS, the aims of the National Probation Service are: