Transforming Probation

Social Theories and the Criminal Justice System

Whitehead, Philip, Philip Whitehead

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781447327660
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9781447327707
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Written by an established author in the field, this book explores the politics of modernisation and transformation of probation in the criminal justice system. It is unique in drawing upon innovative social theories and moral perspectives to analyse changes in the probation service by including data from quantitative and qualitative empirical research. This highlights the challenges to, but also support of, the platform of modernisation that culminated in the transformative Rehabilitation Revolution. Providing critical tools for the reader to use in their own work and studies, it makes a timely contribution to criminal justice and probation theory and uniquely provides insights into what representatives of other organisations think about probation – from the outside looking in.

FIVE

Modernisation and cultural change under New Labour: views of solicitors, clerks, magistrates, barristers and judges

Introduction: practitioner research in probation

By the mid-1980s, I was several years into working as a probation officer at ‘Northtown’ within a rapidly changing organisation (Beynon et al, 1994; Haxby, 1978). The election of a Conservative government in 1979 signalled a discernible shift of direction for criminal justice in England and Wales, from an ostensibly rehabilitative discourse towards a more punishment-oriented tone (but see Whitehead, 2015b, ch 3). Paradoxically, events circa 1983/84 produced a Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (SNOP) (Home Office, 1984), which encouraged probation to pursue alternatives to custody. Consequently, the theme of alternatives to custody became emblematic during the 1980s, which culminated in the Criminal Justice Act 1991 and its advocacy of punishment in the community to enhance the credibility of community sentences to magistrates and judges.

Within this situation, empirical research was conducted between 1985 and 1989 by a practitioner-researcher (Whitehead, 1990). Its main purpose was to determine whether the probation order was being used as an alternative to custody in the post-SNOP political and local service organisational context. Various methods were utilised: a quantitative recording schedule to collect numerical data on probation orders being proposed by probation officers in their reports on offenders, subsequently imposed by the courts; and a qualitative semi-structured interview schedule and additional unstructured interviews to pursue relevant topics in greater depth. For example, data were collected on the rationale of probation, court sentencing practices, probation ideologies and methods of working with offenders. Individual and focus group interviews comprising probation staff, magistrates, judges, recorders and court clerks amounted to 69 respondents.

During the 1980s, there was a tangible sense of unity between the government and probation at the point both pursued alternatives to custody. One can also recall a land of opportunity for the practitioner-researcher to initiate and undertake research activities in the then 56 probation areas. Once it was decided to research an issue of penological concern, the process was supported by staff at ‘Northtown’. Governance arrangements enabled chief probation officers (CPOs) to grant permission to aspiring practitioner-researchers, without Home Office approval, if potential benefits were justified. The office of CPO was imbued with autonomy and authority to make such decisions at the local level. Once permission was secured, then access to data and respondents proceeded uneventfully within circumstances where research was perceived as a valued activity, particularly if it contributed to effective practice outcomes. Durham University provided oversight, which facilitated academic legitimacy. Looking back from 2015 to the 1980s, my findings conjure an air of nostalgia for a discernibly different probation culture. That probation culture no longer exists.

Notwithstanding a changing political and criminal justice context during the 1980s, local probation areas maintained room for manoeuvre facilitated by flexible governance arrangements, the governing class and probation were united in pursuing alternatives to custody, opportunities existed for practitioner-researchers, local support endowed the practitioner-researcher role with legitimacy, the service was interested in research findings that enhanced effectiveness, and there were few issues surrounding access to respondents and data collection. I recall isolated pockets of resistance but they were not insurmountable in pursuit of research objectives.

Further research after 20 years, 2006–07

During the summer of 2006, when I had worked as a probation officer for 25 years, I returned to empirical research in the same probation area. This was a markedly different political and probation climate. I was now employed as a part-time probation officer in a team servicing magistrates’ and crown courts, in addition to teaching part-time at a nearby university. Since 1997, New Labour had embarked on a mission to modernise the public sector, including the criminal justice system. This politically induced process culminated in the nationalisation and centralisation of probation areas in 2001 that attenuated local autonomy. Moreover, the imposition of the new central command-and-control structure transformed the role of the CPO, by government dictat, into a chief officer as civil servant. This reconfiguration adversely affected operational relationships between senior managers and other grades of staff (Whitehead and Statham, 2006). One effect was the creation of less propitious circumstances for individual practitioner-researcher initiatives within local probation areas. Research activity existed, but it was strategically controlled by the Ministry of Justice, which reflects discernible shifts in the balance of power.

Therefore, political, cultural and organisational reconfigurations since 2001 (Whitehead, 2007), transformed governance arrangements affecting the work of senior managers, and the observation that not all senior managers had worked as probation practitioners raised questions about their level of experience, knowledge and insight into practice issues and related questions of occupational legitimacy. The imposition of a political orthodoxy that actively promoted a ‘can do’ culture in the public sector is translated as just get on with the job, specified by central government, rather than engage in critical scrutiny via research at the local level.

These were some of the dynamics by 2006 when I formulated my research into the nature and effects of modernisation and accompanying cultural changes at ‘Northtown’. I was interested in this theme because of first-hand experience of the cultural effects upon probation since 1997, but especially since 2001, while continuing to work within the organisation. I also surmised that it would be difficult to obtain permission from senior managers to pursue my research interests, particularly if this involved interviewing probation staff. Nevertheless, anticipated obstacles within probation inspired innovation to turn my research gaze from inside to outside the organisation, to solicitors, court clerks, magistrates, barristers and judges. The theme of modernisation remained intact, but the research angle was of practical necessity, and fortuitously, transformed.

Before discussing matters in greater detail, it should be acknowledged that some of the features confronting the practitioner-researcher just alluded to were intriguingly manifested during the summer of 2007. The data collection stage was well under way when my immediate probation line manager informed me, sotto voce, that questions were being asked by senior managers about my research activities. I was not approached directly by senior managers but disquiet was circuitously communicated. As the research with respondents was undertaken during lunch breaks at the ‘Northtown’ courts, often interviewing on days when employed by the university, not probation, and respondents willing to take part, it was not necessary to satisfy managerial curiosity. This, in itself, revealed the extent of organisational and cultural transformation that had occurred since the 1980s. What was once understood as legitimate criminal justice research was reframed as snooping around that caused consternation. I was perceived as a negative threat, not positive contribution.

Operational framework

After 10 years of New Labour’s modernising agenda, and the approach of probation’s centenary (1907–2007), I made the decision to research the meanings and implications attached to the related themes of modernisation and cultural change in the probation service (Hope and Walters, 2006). Formulating a proposal should not be limited to specifying what the researcher wants to do; it also benefits from reflections on why. The experience of working as a probation officer since 1981, periodically as participant-observer/ethnographer, confronted me with a series of profound cultural effects associated with the politics of modernisation that were worth exploring and explaining.

Next, after consulting with university colleagues, it was decided to select quantitative and qualitative methodologies to collect data on perceptions and understandings of modernisation and cultural change in probation. The quantitative approach comprised two tick boxes to collect numerical data on two specific areas of practice (see later). Where the first tick box is concerned, respondents were invited to consider a total of eight statements illustrative of cultural change in probation, for example: Are you aware of a change of emphasis within probation from advise, assist and befriend to punishment in the community? These results are assimilated in Tables 5.1 and 5.2.

The second tick box was used to shed light on their understandings of probation work after considering a set of 14 statements. If, for example, they associated probation work with a social work ethos or, by contrast, with an organisation that exists to provide a robust, tough, punitive approach to offenders – possibly both – again, they ticked the appropriate boxes that corresponded with their views. There was no limit to the number of boxes that they were allowed to tick, and these results are contained in Tables 5.3 and 5.4. The form of words comprising the second tick box was constructed with care to represent contrasting value categories (values of tolerance, care, compassion and decency, contrasted with a robust, tough and punitive approach to offenders). These contrasts represent some of the competing impulses, sensibilities and conflicting rationalities within modernised criminal justice.

The qualitative research instrument was a semi-structured interview schedule that posed the same questions to all respondents, in addition to providing opportunities to pursue points of interest in greater depth in order to yield rich bodies of data. The interviews were taped, and some areas of interest pursued were: the rationale of probation work; tensions between achieving government targets and pursuing justice for individual offenders; the punitisation of reports prepared by the probation service, which included recommendations for custody; the personal and social circumstances of offenders; and contestability, which exposes offender services to competition between the public, private and voluntary sectors within the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). Therefore, I concur with Newburn’s (2007, p 899) assessment that some of the most useful research involves combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

A combination of personal knowledge of probation and criminal justice accrued since 1979, assistance by university library staff and utilising Google scholar confirmed that there was a paucity of published research on modernisation in the criminal justice domain. It was particularly difficult to track down publications related to solicitors and courts clerks, which made this project innovative. By contrast, there is a literature on magistrates, barristers and judges.¹

Indubitably, employment as a probation officer (from July 1981 to November 2007) cultivated important contacts with different criminal justice professions. To progress the research, I initially approached as many ‘Northtown’ magistrates’ solicitors as possible on the court landing during the summer of 2006 when working as a part-time probation officer. A preliminary exploration revealed that 36 solicitors appeared regularly before the justices to represent their clients. Subsequently, when data collection began in September 2006, 31 out of the 36 made themselves available for interview. Significantly, it was made clear that unless they had worked with and knew me, thus establishing professional trust accrued over a period of time, interviews would not have occurred. In other words, a letter sent to a solicitor’s firm by an unknown practitioner-researcher may not have received a favourable reply. Consequently, my professional status as a probation officer opened doors into spheres of research activity, and most solicitors were enthusiastic as well as intrigued about participating. Consent was generously provided in writing and interviews were completed by December 2006.²

When expanding the research to court clerks and magistrates, it was necessary to obtain permission from the clerk to the justices, with whom I discussed the interview schedule and clarified that interviews could last up to 45 minutes. Permission was quickly obtained, which facilitated the cooperation of 22 out of a total contingent of 30 clerks, in addition to 20 magistrates who responded to the invitation for interview between February and July 2007. There were over 300 magistrates at ‘Northtown’ and time constraints could only accommodate 20. However, it became manag...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Introduction
• One: Probation and criminal justice, 1997–2015: from New Labour to the Coalition government
• Two: Assembling the resources to theorise probation and criminal justice
• Three: The religious and personalist tradition: or, reflections on the moral economy of criminal justice
• Four: Putting theories and moral sensibilities to work
• Five: Modernisation and cultural change under New Labour: views of solicitors, clerks, magistrates, barristers and judges
• Six: Modernising monstrosities and transformational traumas: social theory, criminal justice and morality
• References