This book began with a letter to The Independent signed by seven of us,1 all former probation-officers-turned-academics, protesting at the proposed sell-off of the probation service of England and Wales almost exactly a century after its formation:
To remove up to 250,000 of its cases and auction them off to an untried consortium of commercial interests and voluntary bodies is in our view to take a reckless gamble with public safety and to put at risk the prospects for personal change and reform which lie at the heart of what Probation is and does. (Canton et al. 2013)
It occurred to us that there were more people who shared our origins, and we recruited another ten authors, inviting them to reflect on their academic work, relate it to their time in probation and speculate about possible futures for the service. The present volume is the outcome. The contributions embody not only a prolific scholarly output, but also a shared dismay at the apparently wanton destruction for ideological reasons of an organisation that has stood for humane and effective work with people in trouble with the law. The book is not a manifesto, former probation officers are too various and independently minded for that. What it does do is to encapsulate a rare perspective on what to many will look like a minor policy shift in a small corner of judicial administration but which to us raises profound issues about the present nature and future direction of the entire criminal justice system.
During the time that the probation service of England and Wales has assisted in the sentencing of people who appear before the criminal courts it has undergone change and variation in its organisational structure, its duties, responsibilities and their governance, its theoretical models and its methodology. Nevertheless, its humanistic approach to the rehabilitation of those people it supervises has remained constant as a core, guiding value; not only has its position in the criminal justice system been unchallenged (aside from doubts about its efficacy and transient theoretical models), but successive governments of the political left and right have endorsed its value to society. It might be argued that although it has survived largely because of that political acknowledgement and acceptance, its adaptability has ensured that at critical junctures in its history it has served useful purposes for society and government: it has served as a counterweight to punitive impulses. That adaptability has applied to both its duties and tasks and governance.
As far as the former is concerned, it is worth remembering that from the beginning probation officers had acted as advisers to parents of problematic children, given budgeting advice to families, intervened in disputes between neighbours, functioned as conciliators in matrimonial disputes (matrimonial work was made a statutory duty by the Summary Procedure Act 1937), helped the relatives of prisoners and performed the role of guardian ad litem in adoption proceedings. In the 1960s its work was extended to cover the welfare of prisoners during their sentence and their after-care, and its name changed to the Probation and After-Care Service. Later in that decade parole was introduced by the 1967 Criminal Justice Act, thus expanding probation officersâ experience of supervising and engaging with more heavily convicted, and what are now termed, high-risk people. At the beginning of the 1970s the inauguration of community service led to a radical departure from traditional supervision and an influx of differently experienced staff, and the setting up of the Day Training Centre experiment placed an emphasis on providing an alternative to imprisonment. Moreover, as far as the latter is concerned, the demands of more intensive, daily contact with people â initially called trainees â stimulated significant innovation in methodology. Change has also resulted from the removal of duties as, for example, when in 1969 the responsibility of supervising juveniles was given to social workers in what were to become Social Services departments, and when the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (CAFCASS), set up by the 2001 Criminal Justice and Court Services Act, took responsibility for divorce and separation, care proceedings and adoption.
However, it is only in recent years that governance of the Service has intensified: hitherto there had been a light, tentative hand on the tiller. So, the first Probation Rules, issued by the Home Secretary in 1926, required, among other things, visits to the probationer of at least once per week for the first 6 months, the keeping of formal records, reporting back to the court on the behaviour of probationers and the submission of annual returns to the Clerk of the Justices. An increase, albeit marginal, in central control and hierarchy is evident in the extension of the 1949 rules to cover the duties of senior and principal probation officers but local Services continued to operate with little interference. That is not to suggest that those changes in governance were insignificant, but for most of the twentieth century oversight of the probation service was left to local probation committees and occasional visits from Home Office inspectors, and chief probation officers managed their areas in a largely autonomous way. 2
Of course, there was accountability but practitioners had wide discretion and idiosyncrasy was viewed as a positive element of probation work: attempts to standardise the nature of the work were, therefore, long overdue. The introduction of information systems and computer programmes facilitated greater scrutiny as well as increased transparency of practice intentions and outcomes. The year 1984 saw the first attempt to standardise through the Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (Home Office 1984). National Standards followed and centralised governance was ensconced by the introduction of the National Offender Management System (NOMS) in 2000, the inevitable National Probation Service and Probation Boards.
The purpose of briefly revisiting these milestones in probationâs story in England and Wales is not to write another historical account â the interested reader can turn to any one of a number of informative histories (for recent examples see Gard 2014; Mair and Burke 2012; and Whitehead and Statham 2006) â but rather to show that the probation service has accepted imposed as well as consultative change during its history and maintained a cooperative relationship with governments of different political hue. Some of that change was necessary and pertinent to the type and quality of service delivered to the people it supervises and to the community generally, but it is no exaggeration to argue that latterly, what might be more accurately described as a series of transformations driven by a neoliberal governmental programme, has decimated the probation service to such a degree that it hovers on the brink of extinction: at the very least it has reached the most critical juncture yet in its distinguished history.
Now, therefore, seems to be exactly the time to publish the thoughts of our authors with the broad aim of mounting a fundamental and coherent challenge to that policy agenda and mapping out a positive future for the probation service. Their contribution carries great weight not least because they have been practising, researching and writing about probation for the last 50 years. Their collective output is vast and includes 95 authored or edited books, 200 contributed chapters, 370 journal articles and 230 non-refereed papers and publications that total almost 900 descriptive, empirical, practical, historical and theoretical additions to the professional literatures of probation, criminal justice and criminology. They have covered a varied array of topics: privatisation, ethnicity, feminist theory, professional ethics, de-professionalisation, risk/need assessment/OASys (Offender Assessment System), violent offending, violence against helpers, sex offending, sentencing inequalities, victims, restorative justice, community justice, punishment, probation history, probation bail, sentencing, prison biographies, Rule 43 prisoners, probation in Macedonia/Romania/Ukraine/Turkey/Sweden/Norway, offending behaviour, rehabilitation, prisoner re-entry, voluntary aftercare, probation on film, the right to help, desistance, sex offending, persistent and prolific offending, mental health, alcohol and substance use and treatment, inter-agency relationships, what works/effectiveness research, accredited programmes, cognitive behavioural methods, community regeneration, day centres, worker skills, training and probation culture. This in itself is testament to the nuanced and complex nature of probation work.
In bringing this remarkable body of work together in this book, we want to avoid falling into the golden age trap. It is important to emphasise that the chapters do not constitute a nostalgic celebration of probation but rather a critically honest examination of what the probation service has contributed to the processes of justice and the rehabilitation of people who have come before the courts. Collectively, they will reflect on, among other things, what the probation service has, and what it should now, stand for; how it has engaged with evidence; whether it has heightened its own vulnerability to political power through, at times, being reactive rather than proactive; the extent to which its ideals have been contaminated by punitive values and language; the effects of taking on measurement of risk as a guide to practice; and how it has responded to the particular needs of women and minority groups. In addition, through the presentation of their own writings and rhetorics, the contributors will describe the history of its achievements, address what can and cannot be inferred from research findings about the effectiveness of probation work, explain the diverse and specialised nature of probation practice, and flesh out both implied and explicit values. The book raises questions about whether probation has a future humanising role in the implementation of justice and whether it can lay claim to reducing the harm caused to communities by crime. It will be argued that fundamental to those questions and their possible answers is an understanding of the effect of political interventions on its past and present organisation, practice and policy.
In addition to these reflections, each contributor tells the story of her or his probation and academic career, a reading of which we hope will yield insights into theories, philosophies and ideologies as well as what motivates some people to embark on such a career trajectory. Though not generalisable, together they constitute a unique portrait of a group closely involved in the practice and rhetoric of the probation service during perhaps the most dynamic period of its history. They moved into academia, often from supervising students on practical placements and contributing to in-service training, in order to teach and train social work and would-be probation officer students, and although little mention of it is made in their contributions they have influenced, informed and stimulated students with their considerable knowledge of a broad range of relevant subjects. Moreover, as can be discerned from their personal stories, they have modelled curiosity as a fundamental characteristic of the reflective practitioner.
Inevitably, given shared interests, themes overlap, but when that happens, the contributors bring their particular and unique readings and interpretations, thus avoiding prosaic repetition. Because we could not identify any obvious thematic groupings, the contributors and their chapters are presented alphabetically. The book begins with Jill Annison relating her experience of joining what seemed like a benevolent âgentlemanâs clubâ which combined with early work in prisonersâ wives groups stimulated an abiding interest in the gendered nature of professional duties. In a stimulating opening chapter she traces the changing composition of staff in the probation service, presents her analysis of the gendered nature of probation policy and practice and explains how her research into practice with women who have offended, including its history, has led her to believe in the need to focus on their social circumstances and take many of them out of the criminal justice system altogether. Like Jill and every other contributor, Lol Burke explains how his awareness of, and concern about, inequality and diversity was heightened in training and left him motivated initially in his practice and subsequently in staff development and training. Enthused by Bill McWilliamsâ seminal quartet of essays on probationâs origins, history and development, he shaped his academic interest around the increased governance of the service. His chapter offers a trenchant and detailed analysis of the inexorable growth of central control, imposed structural change involving fragmentation and the introduction of contestability as it develops via New Labour, the Coalition and the current Conservative government. Tellingly, he characterises all this by drawing on Marquandâs âdecline of the publicâ argument. The year that it can be argued the decline began â 1979 when Margaret Thatcher came to power â was when Rob Canton completed his serendipitous journey into probation via a therapeutic community. Unsurprisingly that experience heightened his interest in the exercise of power and his chapter is a salutary reminder of the limitations and false expectations of the criminal justice systemâs impact on crime. His honest critique of probationâs role in that system, its limits and value as an inclusive force, makes a strong argument against reducing the business of rehabilitation simply to quantifiable processes, an argument underpinned by human rights-based probation values. Importantly, his chapter strikes a note of optimism based on the strength of the voices of users and the essential nature of probation work.
Those values and what Malcolm Cowburn terms âepistemicâ values, perhaps, face their greatest test in work with perpetrators of sexual crimes. Wishing to reduce the hardship caused by the criminal justice system he began his career in probation working with groups of people convicted of sexual offences, and later when he left the Service worked in a therapy centre for survivors. His chapter describes how punishment values have encroached into work with those who commit sexual crime and contains a very interesting examination of the value-based problems of mandatory treatment. It leaves in no doubt that values based on knowledge are critical to informed understanding of, and appropriately responding to, perpetrators of this type of crime. Political rhetoric, which is brought to bear most forcefully on the subject of sexual crime, is a focal point for John Deeringâs chapter. His interest in helping people was honed in social work with juveniles, his work before becoming a probation officer. Drawing on his research, the chapter examines the difference between political definitions of what probation is and the view of probation and its values that emanates from the voices of practitioners. Encouragingly, it reveals that government attempts to redefine probation have failed in so far as practitioners have retained traditional commitments to helping and rehabilitating. This offers some optimism for the future but as John points out, it is tempered by the fact that in a broader sense the probation ideal has been overcome by marketisation and the dividing up of the Service. For him the jury is out on what kind of practice and values will emerge from this process.
Mark Drakeford was drawn towards probation by reading Bill Jordanâs article âIs the client a Fellow Citizen?â and despite being encouraged to look beyond the âpresenting problemâ early in his career has retained his interest in the social circumstances of probationers. In his argument about the importance of the probation service engaging with the socio-economic context of peopleâs lives, he uses the example of non-cooperation with the Social Fund and practitionersâ role in bridging the gap between the welfare state and the criminal justice system through a focus on the right to services. (He is well placed to argue this case as he, with a group of colleagues, helped set up a housing project for young people that survives to this day.) A glimmer of optimistic light shines through the end of the chapter with his proposition that the motivation and willingness to focus on social circumstances lingers and that desistance theory might be the conduit for its continuation. Implicit in Markâs argument is the importance of human rights and David Denney moves on specifically to the continuing impact of discrimination within the criminal justice system on those rights. A student of radical social work, uniquely in this group we believe, he returned to probation work from academia. Language is at the core of discrimination and the chapter underlines this in its coverage of race, mental disorder and learning difficulties while also exposing how risk assessments have limited value in these areas. David touches briefly on violence and abuse against staff and argues that the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda is leading to a de-professionalised response to all but so-called high-risk cases.
Wendy Fitzgibbon joined the probation service imbued with a strong belief in public services and a concern about marginalised people and carried these forward into her academic career. Her chapter sets out a critique of âneoliberal-inspiredâ management strategies, target and risk agenda, and privatisation. It illuminates the negative impact privatisation has had on probation partnerships with the voluntary sector, but through reference to her work on the nature of media responses to high-profile scandals within the criminal justice system it shows the deleterious effect on public perceptions of probation caused by media moral panics. Tellingly, Wendy maps out the decline in the status of probation officers, crucially, at a time of increased âsocial polarisationâ and inexorable decline of the welfare state and its notion of âcollective citizenshipâ. Similar beliefs and concerns are evident in Marilyn Gregoryâs chapter although they were nurtured in experiences in a group home for people with learning difficulties and behavioural problems in Detroit and probation practice in the decimated mining communities of Yorkshire. As her chapter explains, work in prison and family court welfare led to research interest in domestic abuse and homicide, but the main emphasis is on research into the views of practitioners which complements (and adds extra dimensions to) John Deeringâs findings. Encouragingly, she found that amidst ever-increasing managerialism practitioners retain a commitment to all the acknowledged elements of rela...