Cultural Tensions 2

When Michael Howard scrapped the requirement for probation officers to have a social work qualification, it was inevitable that cultural tensions would result. Jack Straw helped the process along by emphasising that the service was to become a 'law enforcement agency' concerned primarily with punishment and public protection. The new job based distance learning arrangements only served to highlight the differences between old and new style officers, along with the recruitment of significant numbers of untrained Probation Services Officers. The process from a social work agency within the criminal justice system to a law enforcement agency has been painful and one that old style officers have had to cope with on their own and with absolutely no help. I know it made me take sick leave for stress for the first time in 18 years. I've often wondered how other officers felt about this and in the process came across these comments on the Guardian website from October 2009 in response to a couple of articles. This from a new officer:-

"...but it is a bit worrying that at 3 and 4 years post-qualifying Rabbi and myself are now seen as the experienced officers. Before I was a PO I worked with people who had 10, 20, 30 years under their belts, they inspired me so much and had such a wealth of knowledge and experience. Now they've all been driven off, or pissed off too much, and the equivalent is me after 4 years? I'm good, but hell, things ain't how they used ter be!


...... "as a general rule the British public know bugger all about the probation service and their officers. A documentary which highlighted how the system works would certainly be of benefit."


..." but I have to say that 'in-depth looks at probation' on tv or in print, eg the panorama hostels programme or the article on Bristol Probation in G2 the other day, have felt either sensationalised or sanitised to me. In the former, an ill-informed media seems to be seeking to scare an ill-informed public (perhaps a particular section of it?), and in the latter the access journalists will have had may well be carefully managed and restricted. Not saying that's happened in the Bristol article but it can seem like that. I suppose it's a question of what you're trying to achieve: the Bristol article did shed some light on the kind of work we do and the people we work with, but seemed simply descriptive rather than aiming to really inform. There was no indication of the still-raging debate about the fundamental ethos underlying our work, the tension between new managerialist approaches and the more traditional, people-focussed approaches, and the massive cuts facing the service and their potential impact on the protection of the public and the work we're able to do with people, and the madness of NOMS and the problems caused by the current obsession with trust status. I realise one has to know a little about probation to really grasp some of the finer points of these debates, but the thing is that at the moment there is a fight on about what probation is, what are its principles and what is it really for, and why shouldn't the wider public get in on that?"

From an old style officer:-

"The Probation Service I joined in 1975 was heaven after 3 years of unmanageable caseloads as an Unqualified Social Worker. Now I had my own office and one secretary between 2 officers. Having an office meant I could see the late arriving clients whose lives were so chaotic. Home Office standards applied and most Probation Officers were male."

"By the time I retired in 2007, we were working in open plan offices, insufficient interview rooms and typing, if that is the word, our own reports, which our much abused "support staff" were required to tidy up. I had become an in-putter of data into a system which failed to work. Sonnex wouldn't have happened in 1975, my case load was protected, built up slowly and I was supervised weekly. Probation staff had become overwhelmingly young and female, giving hardened offenders the excuse that they were too inexperienced in life to understand. Attitudes had changed and we were supposed to become Offender Managers. The distinctions between qualified and unqualified staff became increasingly blurred, little case work was done with individual clients. The Probation Service now farmed out much of the work to other agencies."

"I would admit that in the 1970s we were too vague about how we succeeded with clients and some of us were scared to call ourselves professional. We have been our own worst enemies. I have had colleagues who admit they are afraid to tell people outside work what they do for a living. I was always proud to call myself a Probation Officer."

"That the destruction of this Service was begun at the hands of Michael Howard should have come as no surprise. That it should have then beeen continued by the likes of that once so radical student leader, Jack Straw is a tragedy."

"I was surprised that your otherwise very balanced article made no mention of NOMS, the money which has been wasted upon it, its failure to deliver joined up sentencing and its impact upon the tiny Probation Service. Fewer and fewer people seem to be aware of the history of the Service, stemming from the 19th century work of the Police Court Missionaries, from which, like Topsy, it grew."

"If I sound disillusioned, it is because I am. Would I have missed it? Not for the world. I just wish that standards had not been eroded so carelessly. But for that there may have been several people still alive and contributing to this world."

Another old style officer:-

"I left the Probation Service in 2003 along with a large number of other disillusioned 'traditionally' trained officers. By that I mean most of us had social work qualifications which meant we were very able to effect change in our clients through making relationships with them and building trust. The typical Probation Officer was an avuncular type who knew when to turn a blind eye but was adept at applying necessary restrictions without all the top down directives on targets or worse the pre-prepared OASys tickbox which was so insulting to our professionalism and took such a huge proportion of our working week to complete. The erosion of professionalism was exacerbated by the hiring-to save money naturally-of totally untrained good hearted citizens who took over the bulk of the supervision. They were supposed to see only the 'low risk' cases but that begs a lot of questions. The whole issue of risk assessment is very flawed-for one thing the Home Office never made clear if you were assessing likelihood of reoffending or danger to the public. Any risk assessment carries with it the danger of infringing human rights-how can anyone reliably predict the first crime or the next crime or the magnitude of that crime? It is easy to label people wrongly and often indelibly. How often is the risk revised downwards?"


"Mental health issues are endemic among offenders and trained officers are much better equipped to spot this and deal with it. Since 'Care in the Community' Probation officers have become de facto mental health professionals and prisons, containers. It is truly terrifying for a nice lady from the health food shop who is now labelled a 'Probation Service Officer' when a big burly man intimidates her. Someone who has learned how to manage anger or at least to assess how dangerous an offender might be-an imprecise science of course-is less likely to hand out breaches. I believe the breach rate has gone up to the detriment of those who have to write pre sentence reports (PSRs), to the courts and to the poor offender whose pre-con list lengthens often for some minor misdemeanour like saying 'fuck' or arriving 5 minutes late. For the untrained officer his only tool is breach and he uses it too often."

"Another bleat is about Cognitive Behaviour Treatment (CBT) groups in and out of prison. We were all compelled to train and after 3 days were titled therapists. I refused to run groups as I did not feel adequately prepared and indeed those who were strongarmed into it had a rough ride from offenders who were quick to cotton on to asking a question off the page of the manual you were supposed to be sticking to. One of my tasks was to visit offenders after they had been through such a course so they could demonstrate what they'd learned. It was unfailingly unimpressive-most had got a few mnemonics but could not relate them to themselves or to connect them to offending. Yet every prisoner has a 'sentence plan' which in my experience is usually scribbled out by some bored prison officer who knows/cares little about the individual offender and it becomes gospel. A prisoner cannot be releasd till he's completed these groups but sometimes they are not even available to him. I had a lifer client who was three years over tariff. He was an elective mute so unable to take part in groups-even had there been a suitable group for him and since he was violent he was not deemed worthy of being moved to another prison, or of getting one to one help. He is probably still languishing at my expense in a £40k p.a. prison bed, poor devil. I am extremely sceptical of the value of groups because they depend on thinking skills whereas we all know that crime is driven by emotions and so are not addressed by CBT, which deals in symptoms, not underlying causes."

"There are so many sad changes to this once magnificent profession. Like others I was proud to call myself a Probation Officer but please don't associate me with the current officers who have arrived through a process of one year's distance learning with barely a mention of psychology. It is this country's loss and don't let any politician think he will reduce crime using the present probation service which is intent on punishment and control not genuine rehabilitation."

Of course newly qualified officers will refute much of this, citing how wonderful their training has been, how good the comprehensive OASys assessment tool is and that we are just a load of old farts stuck in the past. Whatever, it is the subject for academic study at last. I note that Rob Mawby and Prof Anne Worrall of Keele University have won an ESRC grant to research "occupational cultures of probation officers". I await the results with interest.