ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the creation and impact of a unified correctional agency, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), upon the National Probation Service and the community supervision of offenders. This merger between the prison service and probation service has, with hindsight, been looming since the birth of the New Labour criminal justice modernization programme and the consultation document Prisons Probation — Joining Forces to Protect the Public (Home Office 1998).
