UNION officials today sounded a warning shot over "disastrous" probation privatisation plans.

Staff working with offenders handed community punishment sentences in York and North Yorkshire said the Probation Service would suffer if the Government "dismantled" it.

Local accountability faced being lost and public protection work - supervising criminals like sex offenders released from jail - could be thrown into jeopardy if services are centralised, a union warned.

David Dawson, secretary of the North Yorkshire branch of the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), said: "Dismantling the Probation Service would be a disaster.

"The Government's obsession with the 'command and control model' for the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is unlikely to deliver, staff will become alienated and recruitment and retention will suffer.

"The aims of the Government to ensure there is less re-offending, and more co-operation between agencies, could be achieved through dialogue and internal change at a fraction of the cost."

The union warned more widespread implementation of NOMS left the Probation Service faced with being "abolished, fragmented and regionalised".

NAPO said loss of boundaries with the police and courts would prove counter-productive and lead to a "less efficient, but more bureaucratic justice system".

The union added: "Co-operation between locally managed Probation Services and the police is vital to crime reduction and work with sex offenders and others who pose a risk to the public."

Mr Dawson said the threat came at a time when performance was hitting record levels.

Figures in November 2004 showed breach targets were achieved in 87 per cent of cases; orders completed in 70 per cent and offender behaviour programmes completed in 91 per cent of targeted cases.

Mr Dawson also said the service was value for money, with 44 per cent of defendants handed community sentences reconvicted within two years of completing their sentence.

This compared with 56 per cent of those caged - and the union said it cost more than £30,000 per year to jail a prisoner, compared to £3,080 to supervise somebody in the community.

A Home Office spokeswoman, responding to the claims, said: "The government's proposals include end to end offender management that will improve the way in which prisons and probation work together, giving probation officers a stronger say in what happens to offenders in prisons as well as in the community, and maximise the chances of reducing re-offending and protecting the public."

She said a system protecting the public needed to be "continually assessed and developed".

Updated: 08:36 Tuesday, July 19, 2005