Another makeover for offender management

There were few laments heard when Jack Straw, the justice secretary, read the last rites in all but name to the National Offender Management Service (Noms) last week. The ambitious but worthy attempt to cut sky-high reoffending rates by providing "end-to-end offender management" for the 300,000 people sentenced each year to probation or prison died as it was born, in 2004, amid a bureaucratic Whitehall shakeup.

"It has been four wasted years." "It was a damaged brand." "Noms simply never got a grip on anything." These were among the kinder comments heard around the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office last week.

Noms was born out of Lord [Patrick Robert] Carter's first report on prisons published in 2003, which called for its creation to "break down the silos of prison and probation to ensure a better focus on the offender". To do this, it separated the management of offenders from the provision of prison places, treatment services and community programmes.

In the process, Noms spent £2.6bn and created a 1,600-strong rival headquarters and regional management structure - based on incomprehensible "organograms" (Roms and Dipsies) - that was inserted between ministers and the national prison and probation service managements.

Nearly all attempts at innovation were overwhelmed by computer failures or simply the relentless rise in the prison and probation population which reduced Noms to crisis management. At the same time, political support for the project was dissipated in repeated and ultimately pointless parliamentary battles over the scale of "contestability" and third sector involvement in the probation service.

Four years later, the vast majority of offenders are still not included within the "one offender, one file" Noms objective, with its rollout still confined only to the highest-risk or most prolific criminals.

It was no wonder that moving prisons and probation out of the Home Office lay at the heart of John Reid's "split for purpose" attempt to restore that department's reputation when he was home secretary. There is an irony in the fact that to finally bury Noms it has taken an internal review, by Ursula Brennan, to make the Ministry of Justice "fit for its new purpose". As a leaked document made clear, her motives lay in trying to protect the reputation of a department that was more used to being a genteel Whitehall backwater serving the political rhythms of the House of Lords than coping with potentially damaging crisis management.

So what of the future? Noms chief executive Helen Edwards is said to have been "cast aside" into her new role of director general of the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. Setting up the new Sentencing Commission will be one of her most important tasks as well as providing a policy and regulatory overview.

The big winner has been Phil Wheatley, whose stewardship of the prison service has been widely admired. At the same time, he gained a reputation as a defender of the public service ethos as the prison service repeatedly emerged successful against performance tests with the private sector.

But Wheatley's public sector enthusiasm should not be mistaken for some ideological attachment. His new role of chief executive of the restructured Noms will see him continue to run public prisons but also manage performance across the sector. He will not be shy in raising the prospect of competition from third sector or private prison providers.

Wheatley's first major task is to take a good look at the probation service and ensure that it does only what it can afford. One area to be looked at is whether the complex risk assessments that take eight hours to complete are necessary for all offenders.

It is an approach that promises delivery rather than organograms.

· Alan Travis is the Guardian's home affairs editor.

· Guardian event: Criminal Justice Summit March 10