10 Reasons Why Probation is Finished

As we head to the end of one year and the beginning of another, I find that I'm in a particularly sombre and increasingly angry mood, hence the stark title of this piece. I know I'm prone to being a pessimist, but those who really know me are aware that throughout my career I have always tried to be positive. I'm by nature a fixer of problems - you have to be to be a Probation Officer in my view. But a good Probation Officer should also be able to analyse a situation and sort the wood from the trees. Talking my profession down gives me no satisfaction at all, but there comes a time when we have to recognise the direction of travel and face up to some uncomfortable truths. Only then can we begin to do something about the situation.

The following is my analysis of where I think we are and where we are heading and it's not good. I seriously believe we are destined for the same treatment as the Forensic Science Service whose demise was announced last week with little ceremony. If others think I'm wrong, misguided or over-stating the position, then please tell me.  

1. Ken Clarke can't stand the Probation Service for some reason and hasn't mentioned it once since taking up office as Justice Minister. This does not bode well for the Minister responsible for the Service to come to its aid. Indeed I think the groundwork is being prepared so that he can 'do a John Reid' and declare the whole thing 'unfit for purpose.'  
2. The Coalition government are privatising Approved Premises and Community Payback, so have a very clear agenda of wanting to see the Service slimmed down and operated more cheaply. In relation to Unpaid Work, the government obviously feel that the current ethos would not be conducive to the implementation of a tougher work regime.
3. Pre-sentence reports have been 'dumbed-down' and are rapidly becoming useless as sentencing documents. This is all too clear to people who have been around for a while. Together with the inexorable growth in short format FDR's, even at Crown Court, it will only serve to convince sentencers that they can largely dispense with PSR's completely.   
4. There is an inexorable move towards PSO's doing the work of fully qualified PO's. I predict that the full role of PO will be undertaken by PSO's in a couple of years. The training has already been dumbed down and there is a growing chorus from PSO's that PO's weren't that skilled anyway. This is great news for management because they are much cheaper to employ.  
5. The Probation Unions refuse to acknowledge Payment by Results as worthy of field trials. I have repeatedly said that this stance is a big mistake and arguments about it not working are utterly futile because if necessary, the figures will be fiddled to prove otherwise, just like all those in the past. Oh, of course it just might work too. I think the public image of NAPO looks tired and needs sharpening up.
6. Probation Trusts continue to support large Head Offices at the expense of field offices. I continue to be amazed at the size of the management bureaucracy, just as local offices are being shut to save money. One Assistant Chief is currently trumpeting a 'going local' initiative at the very time that he's closing a local office. Such humbug will not go unnoticed. The same Service is introducing a leave purchase scheme to save money with each officer being able to buy up to 30 days extra leave a year. That not only says a great deal about current attitudes to the job, but I wonder who is expected to cover for all these missing people when caseloads are so high?
7. The Service has no unified public identity, national champion or high profile leadership. Since the control freak government of Tony Blair, Chiefs of Probation have been effectively silenced and have yet to find an effective voice. The new Chiefs Association has been ominously silent for a couple of months now, and even before only spoke in relative hushed tones. There is no longer any central Probation Management, it having been completely dismantled and subsumed into a prison-dominated NOMS.
8. The public simply do not understand what the Probation Service does. This is extremely handy for a government intent on breaking the whole thing up. There will be absolutely no public opposition to our demise.  
9. The Service is paralysed with bureaucratic processes which hinder client contact. The imposition of OASys was utter ill-thought out madness and has done more damage to client contact and morale than any of the worst excesses wreaked on our Service in living memory. Can I remind people that, far from management having the bottle to admit this, the real driver behind them imposing the short format FDR's is that they cunningly avoid a full OASys. 
10. The architecture is in place to facilitate the dismantling of the Service. Together with the powers contained in the legislation that set the National Offender Management Service up and the compulsory transition to independent Probation Trusts, the government would find it administratively very easy to transfer all probation functions to any organisation it felt appropriate.