What Does a Probation Officer Do?

An obvious question and one I should have tackled earlier I suppose. For the purpose of trying to outline an answer I will assume that the PO in question is working in a field team and has a generic caseload. This is still the core role within the Probation Service and generally speaking all new officers start here before possibly moving on to a whole host of specialist posts in prisons, hostels, programmes, court etc. 

A field PO or Offender Manager as most are styled nowadays will typically have a caseload that consists of about a third in custody and two thirds in the community. Of the clients in the community, some will be on Community Orders, or 'probation' and some on licence having been released from prison. Every adult sentenced to more than 12 months imprisonment will be allocated an officer based in their locality. The only major change in recent years is that the supervising officer may be a Probation Services Officer, rather than a qualified probation officer. In theory the distinction is based on risk and seriousness, but increasingly the boundaries are being blurred. For example it used to be clearcut that all domestic violence cases went only to a probation officer, but little by little management are finding ways of fudging this and PSO's are being asked to take on more risky cases. 

Prisoners will keep either the same officer, or another officer but from the same team, wherever they end up in the prison system. This means that typically the officer will be responsible for prisoners scattered all over the country, which can make visiting extremely difficult. The only time another Service or office will accept transfer of a case is when a definite settled release address is confirmed elsewhere and even then experience says transfer is not straightforward. There are sound reasons for this, not least being the opportunity to get to know the prisoner and idealy the officer will have prepared the original PSR. I think it is understandable that prisoners find changes of officer unsettling and although not good practice in my view it happens more frequently nowadays.

The supervising officer is expected to maintain contact throughout the sentence and idealy attend Sentence Planning Meetings in person and work with the prisoner and prison staff in terms of sentence progression and in preparing a sustainable Release Plan. I say idealy because increasingly there is pressure to either use audio or video links which are no substitute in my view. All this is the theory and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The harsh reality is that prisoners are not a high priority most of the time and 'out of sight' can mean 'out of mind.' 

Prisoners serving four years or more are entitled to apply for early release on Parole Licence, in addition to getting the automatic right to release at the half way point. A Parole Report will be prepared and if the officer is supporting the application, the release plan will have to be detailed and may include a condition to reside at an Approved Hostel, take part in a certain programme or a prohibition on entering certain geographic areas, meeting certain people or undertaking certain activities. All this will be in addition to regular reporting to the supervising officer. In serious cases such as with lifers, the probation officer will be required to attend in person at a Parole Board Oral Hearing held at the inmates prison. The officer will have to give evidence in support of their report, answer questions from the Panel and be cross-examined by the solicitor or barrister acting for the prisoner. Clearly in such instances full knowledge of the prisoner will assist the process and be accepted as possibly more authoritative.  

In addition to making sure all those clients subject to Community Orders actually report when they are supposed to and are making some progress with the targets identified in the Supervision Plan, the other big requirement is the preparation of Pre Sentence Reports for court. Typically this might be two a week which may not sound a great deal, but as I have indicated repeatedly, the mind-numbing requirements of OASys has turned a previously interesting and professionally challenging piece of work into a dreadfully protracted and frustrating chore. Officers always used to take enormous pride in a skillfully crafted document that typically outlined in succinct form a highly complicated story that contained well argued analysis, assessments and recommendations in an easy-to-read format. I defy anyone who has been around a few years to say that current computer-generated reports are an improvement on what went before.

To a certain extent readers will have to accept my word that the job outined above has become nigh-on impossible in recent years. It is hard to adequately convey the twin pressures that come from clients who typically have chaotic lifestyles and consequently throw up a whole host of issues on a daily basis together with the inexorable demands of the computer. I have been known to joke that you can either do the work or the recording, but not both. The problem is that you are most unlikely to get into serious trouble for being either lazy or not very good, but quite likely to get the sack for failing to record everything. Quite ironic really.