CRIME will rise sharply because of shock cuts to the region’s probation service, the Government was warned last night.

Union leaders and the Conservatives reacted angrily to news that £2.42m has been stripped from budgets this year – potentially costing 67 jobs.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw was warned criminals would be less well-supervised after release from prison, and courses to prevent reoffending would be scrapped.

The inevitable result, said the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo), was higher crime – just as burglaries and street robberies are rising again due to the recession.

According to Ministry of Justice figures, probation boards across the North-East and North Yorkshire will suffer an average 3.7 per cent cut in budgets in 2009-10 – a total £2.42m loss.

But Durham (a cut of £616,000) and North Yorkshire (£571,000) have suffered an even worse hit, each losing 5.5 per cent of their funding. The spending squeeze could claim 67 jobs, according to Napo, in Northumbria (23 posts), Durham (17), North Yorkshire (16) and Teesside (11).

Across England and Wales, nearly 800 jobs could disappear within 12 months, as £29.3m is slashed from the probation service’s budget.

To add to the Government’s embarrassment, the cuts were revealed just one day after Labour launched its campaign for next month’s local elections – under the slogan “Labour spending vs Tory cuts”.

Furthermore, Napo spokesman Harry Fletcher warned the £29.3 budget cuts this year was just the tip of the iceberg – with £120m to go over the next three years.

Already, up to 300 of 550 trainee probation officers were “heading straight onto the dole” when they completed their two-year courses this summer – at a cost of £100,000 per person.

Mr Fletcher said: “We will be running fewer offender programmes, which inevitably has a knock-on effect on re-offending rates and on the level of crime, and there will be fewer community orders – which means more people will have to go to prison.”

That message was echoed by Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve, who said: “Ministers admit the recession will lead to rising crime, yet they are releasing prisoners early and encouraging judges to send fewer people to jail.”

Answering questions in the Commons chamber, Mr Straw insisted the probation service had enjoyed a 70 per cent real-terms increase in funding over the last 12 years.

And he suggested the cuts could be achieved by stripping out “unnecessary layers of middle management”.