Senior probation officers have attacked plans to offer private companies and charities payment-by-results for supervising people released from jail.
Supervisors would be paid according to how well they prevented reoffending in inmates' first year after release.
But the Probation Chiefs Association said the payment-by-results plan was "untried and untested".
Defending the plan, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said it was "all about reducing crime".
Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 5 live: "The truth is that reoffending is currently rising.
"600,000 crimes a year are committed by people who are going round and round the system."
He confirmed that for the first time, the government will be spending money on people who go to jail for less than 12 months.
In a separate interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme he said: "The biggest block of those that reoffend are those that are in prison for less than a year... they leave with only £46 in their pocket and that's it."
The current system supports some 250,000 ex-offenders a year, he said, while the new plan would bring another 50,000 or so people jailed for up to 12 months into the net.
He told the Today programme: "We have a system at the moment where only around 25% of probation time is spent working with offenders.
"There has got to be room for efficiency in the system - and for the big section that aren't getting support," he added.
MPs are set to continue debating the government's legislative programme as set out in the Queen's Speech, focusing on home affairs.
The so-called payment-by-results measures will affect about 65,000 offenders a year in England and Wales - the majority of whom would at present receive no supervision at all when they leave jail.
Currently, there is no statutory supervision for those sentenced to less than 12 months once they are freed.
Offenders serving longer terms are monitored by the probation service for about the same length of time as their prison sentence - for example, an offender given an 18 month sentence will serve nine months in prison, and nine months on licence in the community.
'Best value'Under Mr Grayling's plans all prisoners, whether they are let out after two weeks, two months or two years, will receive support for a minimum of 12 months to help them find accommodation, get a job or training and tackle any alcohol or drug problems they may have.
End Quote Andrew Neilson Howard League for Penal ReformA two-week prison sentence becomes a year and two weeks of being trapped in the criminal justice system"
It will mean supervision for 50,000 prisoners sentenced to less than a year and extra monitoring for 15,000 who are given prison terms of 12 months to two years.
Unveiling the plans, Mr Grayling said: "This is all about ensuring we deliver real, long-term rehabilitation and support - that there's somebody, a mentor, to work alongside a prisoner for a good period of time."
The justice secretary said he was not "setting the rules" on levels of supervision - some offenders will be monitored intensively, others less so. But the prison estate will be reorganised so that most offenders are released into the area where they will be supervised.
The objective is to reduce recidivism rates, but he said he did not anticipate a "sudden drop-off".
The latest figures, published by the Ministry of Justice, show that 46.9 % of adult prisoners commit a further offence within a year of release. For those sentenced to less than a year, the figure is 58.2 %.
Mr Grayling said: "I expect - and aim to see - a steady, step-by-step reduction year by year."
However, the government is not providing any extra funding; the supervision, under a system of 21 contracts, will be the responsibility of voluntary groups, charities and private companies, who will be paid in full only if a certain proportion of offenders don't commit further crimes.
Contracts will be awarded on the basis of "best value and innovation" in tackling re-offending.
'Dead horse'Sue Hall, chair of the Probation Chiefs Association, questioned whether the system would be robust enough to ensure that the "behaviour you pay for is the behaviour you want".
She said: "Payment by results is untried and untested in the community at the moment, where the supervision of offenders is concerned... we don't actually have any hard evidence."
Sarah Billiald, also of the Probation Chiefs Association, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme she would ask Mr Grayling why he was replacing a good service with an untested one.
She said: "Our message is to ask really, why, when you have such a high performing service... it has met all its targets... why would you not build on that success rather than dismantling it later?"
Responding to her question on BBC Radio 5 live, Mr Grayling said: "There's good work being done in the probation service but the truth is that reoffending is currently rising.
"There is some really first rate work being done in the voluntary sector and I'm looking to capture the best of the public and private sector."
Andrew Neilson, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, argued that the plans represented "an admission of the abject failure of short-term prison sentences".
"These plans set people up to fail. Rather than scrapping short prison terms, the government is creating disproportionate sentences for minor crimes, so that a two-week prison sentence becomes a year and two weeks of being trapped in the criminal justice system."
The government should make greater use of community sentences rather than "flogging the dead horse of short-term prison sentences," he concluded.
But the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust (Rapt), which provides drug treatment services for offenders, welcomed the idea of enhanced monitoring and support.
Mike Trace, Rapt's chief executive, said it would be possible to achieve greater supervision without significantly more resources - as long as the process didn't get bogged down in bureaucracy.
"If we can get very creative and very efficient methods of supervision we can improve it," Mr Trace said.
"If we end up with very much paperwork exercises that offenders are not motivated or inspired by, we end up with the same old problems."
Colin Lambert, a former prisoner and now project manager at the offender charity St Giles Trust, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was a "great idea".
"It makes no sense to put people in prison for a short period and then let them out in exactly the same situation or worse than when they went in
"I know that they are saying payment-by-results is untested, but what we have now doesn't work so we need new ideas," he said.
St Giles, which works with ex-offenders, is involved in a number of payment-by-results programmes already, Mr Lambert added.
"It's the sort of work that St Giles has been doing now for a number of years."
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