SIR – Plans to sell off half the Probation Service to G4S, Serco and the like will reduce the chance of offenders going straight and end up costing a lot more.

In our area, probation has achieved year-on-year reductions in crime, is cost effective, and has shown continuous innovation and creativity in delivery. It co-ordinates the public protection work of a host of other agencies, charities and community groups. It works well in partnership with others, including the private sector.

All this will be destroyed by a privatisation designed to exclude small or local providers. Instead the rewards will go to huge companies whose track record in providing security to the Olympics, and electronic “tagging” has been marked by over-promising and dodgy performance figures. The only good thing is a new duty to supervise short-sentence prisoners on release from prison.

But this is best done with community groups and charities working with their local Probation Service, not big multi-nationals providing paper services which tick performance boxes but achieve little. There’s no evidence that the plans will produce better or cheaper results. It’s a rushed, dishonest privatisation driven by ideology and belief that private profit is the only way to provide public good.

We can only hope that there’s sufficient outcry to force a rethink.

Rob Voakes, Hall Royd, Shipley