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Chapter 1
Probation: a profession in transition
We arrive at the clientâs house in the midst of an argument. John, a wiry 47-year-old man, is in the front garden with his father and younger brother. Johnâs father is slouched in a deck chair, nursing a can of lager. His body language suggests calm, but this exterior is contradicted by the stream of abuse being directed at Johnâs brother, who is stood by the front door. John paces the garden, the remnants of a wooden chair strewn about his feet. He insists the chair was thrown at his brother, an accusation his father refutes. I am with Rhonda, Johnâs Case Manager. He phoned her in distress, and she decided to conduct an emergency home visit. I linger at the foot of the garden, unnoticed. Rhonda approaches John, who is clearly agitated. The argument began, John says, because his father had been violent towards the younger brother. His father is, again, vociferous in his denial; John is now the focus of his ire. Rhonda decides to remove John from the situation, and we make for her car. I climb into the back seat. Rhonda introduces me, but John barely registers my presence. We drive away.
A veteran of 39 years in the probation service, Rhonda knows John and his family from her time working in the courts. She has watched him grow from a young man involved with âa real heavy-duty crowdâ, a reference to gun crime linked to the supply of Class A drugs, to a career criminal dependent upon ÂŁ30 per day of heroin and crack cocaine, and the acquisitive crimes that feed his habit. She told me on the way to the house that John was introduced to drugs, and to drug dealing, by his older brother, a successful businessman who has long since severed all ties with the family. His father, a retired labourer, has dementia and his brother is severely autistic. Johnâs mother, âthe glue that held the family togetherâ, has recently passed away. John was released from prison four months ago and, Rhonda said, had never looked better. His motherâs death, however, had prompted a relapse. She alleged that John is incapable of looking after himself: he has his own flat, although chooses to live at the family home with his father and brother. John, like the rest of his family, relied on his mother. Since her death, no-one is eating properly, and Johnâs drug use has escalated. Rhonda was adamant that adult social care should be involved with the family, but Johnâs father refuses to accept help.
Johnâs family have always enabled his drug-taking, allowing him (and friends) to use in the house. However, his fatherâs dementia has contributed to a peculiar situation in which Johnâs behaviour is both facilitated and (aggressively) problematised. His father is regularly abusive towards John and his brother. Rhonda uses the drive to question him on the argument. John says that he loves his father; he cannot cope in the house with his family, but also does not want to live alone. John expresses suicidal thoughts to Rhonda. We stop at a pharmacy to give John the opportunity to collect his methadone script. Before he leaves the car, he starts crying: âIâm having a mental breakdown. Iâm scared for my own life.â His preferred options are getting sectioned, returning to prison, or taking his own life. Muted sobs punctuate the sound of passing traffic.
Minutes pass before Rhonda speaks. Something innate seems to dictate the moment and content of her interjection. She consoles John and reminds him of the progress that he has made. She wants him to speak to a mental health crisis team. John is initially reluctant but relents when Rhonda volunteers to speak to them on his behalf. She encourages John to collect his methadone script from the pharmacy while she dials the crisis team. Rhonda is disconnected after 15 minutes. The volume of calls they are experiencing, an automated message informs her, means no support workers are available. She swears, loudly. We are alone in the car. She turns to me and says, apologetically, that she does not know how long we will be here: âitâs probably not the kind of thing you want to seeâ. John returns a minute or so later and Rhonda tells him that the crisis team are busy. They discuss the possibility of time in a mental health unit; when Rhonda gets through to them, however, she is told that they have no male beds available. She tries the crisis team again. Another silence follows while the phone rings. Eventually, the call connects. Rhonda describes Johnâs situation before passing the phone over to him. John explains that he is having suicidal thoughts and that he is not eating. He says that he is on benefits, although this money is spent on drugs â supplemented with the proceeds of shoplifting. I cannot hear what the crisis team are saying to John; but from my view of his face in the wing mirror, it seems like they are having some effect. It is decided that John should go to A&E to seek help from a mental health nurse.
We return to the house so that John can tell his father where he is going and collect some medication. His father is still sat in the deck chair. John heads inside and returns a few minutes later with a bag and some cigarettes. He mutters that he is going to the hospital and his father rises, thrusting a ÂŁ20 note into his hand. John thanks him and walks towards the car, but then is subjected to a final tirade over his drug use: âI hope they give you some arsenic in [the hospital]â. We drive in silence. When we enter the car park, Rhonda asks John to promise that he will seek help inside, but he refuses to give a definitive response. We drop John at the front doors of the hospital, where he stands outside and lights a cigarette. As we drive away, Rhonda doubts that John, with money in his pocket, will enter to seek help.
Nearly three hours have elapsed since we left âElizabeth Streetâ, the probation office where we are based. As we return, Rhonda reflects on the morning. She is conflicted on what has been achieved. On the one hand, she removed John from a volatile situation and, with the assistance of a mental health crisis helpline, assuaged his suicidal thoughts. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to speculate that her actions saved him from serious harm. This mode of working, she insists, is worthwhile; it is a source of pride, part of her professional self. On the other hand, Rhonda expresses frustration at the time taken out of her day. She enjoys the opportunities that probation provides for meaningful engagement with people, but it also involves considerable desk-based âback workâ â that is, the administrative requirements that accompany every case. Such work has increased markedly since she began her employment; she speculates that it has perhaps become the most important part of the job. This morningâs encounter will have to be logged on her computer when Rhonda returns to the office and she has already lost valuable time catching up on similar administrative work for the other 72 individuals on her caseload. The longer the client interaction, she says, the less time available for recording. The longer the time spent recording, the less time available for client interaction.
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The conflict captured in the above observations of a morning spent with Rhonda is at the heart of (changing) understandings of âprofessionalismâ in probation, the subject of this book. John is low risk of harm to the public (if not himself) but at high risk of reoffending. His needs (substance use, mental health, unemployment, and unstable accommodation) are multiple and complex, commonplace amongst probationâs clientele â although their intersections mark him as one of the more challenging individuals on Rhondaâs (oversubscribed) caseload. Addressing them is beyond the capacity of any one provider, programme, or practitioner. Attempting to coordinate different services and agencies on Johnâs behalf, and to ensure that this information is properly recorded, is both necessary and time-consuming. The nature and extent of work with clients must thus be weighed against the objectives that shape the contemporary probation field. This is not to suggest that the organisation does not value how Rhonda reacted to Johnâs situation; rather, her professional self-expectations co-exist in an uneasy, asymmetric harmony with political (economic) and organisational demands for efficiency and effectiveness, risk management and public protection (Robinson, 2008). Accordingly, probation staff demonstrate their competence in divergent ways to multiple (and competing) stakeholders in a ânetwork of accountabilityâ (Fournier, 1999: 286) which spans clients, the public, the state, and, more recently, the market.
Data on which this book is based were derived from ethnographic study of âElizabeth Streetâ, a pseudonym for a privately-owned probation office in a large city in England. It was managed by a major, multinational outsourcing firm (hereafter, to adopt the language of the House of Commons Justice Committee [2018a: 18)], referred to as the âparent companyâ), which assumed control of the office as a result of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition governmentâs (2010â2015) Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms to probation services in England and Wales. For the first time in the serviceâs history, the majority of probation work was to be delivered by private, (mostly) for-profit providers â a structural arrangement âunprecedented across Europe and the worldâ (Annison et al., 2014: 17). John is the type of (repeat) offender targeted by the reforms: a reoffending rate of 58% for prisoners released from short-term prison sentences of less than 12 months, a cohort over whom probation had no statutory responsibility, brought the serviceâs effectiveness into sharp focus (Ministry of Justice [MoJ], 2010). Competing for services, the Coalition government argued, would âextend rehabilitation⌠within allocated budgetsâ (MoJ, 2013: 11). From 1 June 2014, 35 publicly-owned Probation Trusts were dissolved and the service was split into two types of organisation: the publicly-owned National Probation Service (NPS) was created to manage offenders who pose a high risk of harm to the public, while 21 privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) were established to supervise low-to-medium risk offenders (National Audit Office [NAO], 2016). Paid via a payment by results (PbR) mechanism, the stated aim of which was to shift the focus of practice from outputs to outcomes, CRCs were expected to âinnovateâ to reduce reoffending (MoJ, 2013). TR was thus presented as a means to liberate providers and practitioners to find new ways to deliver rehabilitation, by refocusing the probation service through the lens of the market (MoJ, 2013).
The preoccupation of academics and quasi-governmental bodies with CRCs, not least in this book, has meant that cultures and practices in the NPS have been under-scrutinised (Carr, 2020a) â a neglect which reflects the ânoticeably betterâ (HMI Probation, 2017a: 23) quality of probation work in the latter. An office within a...
