Best Of a Bad Job

'Best of a bad job'. Although not my words but that of fellow blogger 'Bystander' over on the Magistrates Blog and commenting on a recent piece in the Daily Telegraph, they still had an instant resonance. In many ways they very succinctly sum up the task that society has historically given to the Probation Service since it was acknowledged that custody was not the only answer to offending and in many cases could make matters worse. In essence what lies behind those five words is the following sentiment 

'here's someone who's life has been messed up for some reason or other - they are now causing society a problem - can you find out why, try and sort it and if not, well just keep trying until they either stop or die'.

Now I've been happy to draw a salary on that basis for many years, understanding fully that the reasons why people commit offences are complex and that 'sorting it' might take longer for some people than others. It has never, ever occurred to me though that some people were not worth 'bothering' with firstly because that's what I thought I was being paid to do and secondly because I remain convinced that it's the best way for society to deal with such people. I accept however that this concept might be easier to comprehend when every probation officer was required to have a sound grounding in social work. Not so anymore, hence Bystanders blog has attracted the following comment from a colleague relating to the issue of whether PO's should recommend custody in a Pre Sentence Report or not

"It's not a case of giving up. Many of the people we work with have no intention of stopping their offending, despite any 'interventions'. How can we, professionally and personally, propose a community sentence knowing full well that John/Jane Doe WILL re-offend!

That view does not sit well with me; nor I imagine the public who pay our wages".

I'm going to be deliberately provocative here and say that I think this sentiment displays a degree of what many in the profession would call 'distorted thinking'. None of us are blessed with crystal balls and can predict with 100% accuracy what any client is going to do. We could and indeed do make informed assessments as to what might happen, but I would venture to suggest that any officer expressing the above sentiments has the wrong mindset for this type of work. How else are you going to give your best shot in trying to help change that persons behaviour? Just shrugging your shoulders and saying 'I know he/she will offend again so I'll just recommend custody'  is not what the job's about and isn't sufficient to be drawing a salary in my view. 

I think what the public expects is for all probation officers to be straining every sinew in an effort to effect change in an offenders situation, behaviour and attitude. Yes of course it's difficult, but what sort of message does it send out to offenders if the officer feels there's no hope of their offending stopping? Of course from time to time an officer might need a break from a particularly difficult case or intransigent client, but that's the time to negotiate a transfer to a colleague for a fresh start. Admittedly our task in effecting change has not been made any easier in recent time by successive governments and their infernal meddling, but I think society is still paying us to make the best of a bad job, and not to give up and recommend custody for goodness sake.