Thanks go to regular reader and contributor 'Getafix for rooting out the following wonderfully expansive but concise paper by Peter Raynor and published in the US by the National Institute of Medicine, August 2020. As the dreadful 'Probation Day' nonsense drags on, here's the perfect Saturday reflective piece that hopefully will be read and inwardly digested by those in positions of authority. For references go to here.
Highlights
• Twenty years ago, the Probation Service in England and Wales was widely regarded as world-leading.
• Since then it has been weakened by a series of politically driven and poorly evidenced changes.
• A badly flawed and ideologically driven privatisation programme implemented in 2015 has done serious damage.
• The recent decision to end this failed programme is an opportunity to redesign better.
At the beginning of this century the Probation Service of England and Wales (these two countries have separate Governments but form a single jurisdiction for criminal justice purposes) was regarded as one of the strongest and most advanced in the world. Twenty years later it finds itself under-resourced, understaffed, organisationally fragmented and partly demoralised, with little idea how it will look or how it will be run a couple of years from now. This is largely due to a series of decisions taken by politicians which were (believe it or not) intended to improve the Service, but which were not adequately informed by evidence or by an understanding of practical realities. The story of how this happened is an object-lesson in how not to do criminal justice reform and is summarised here in the hope that it may act as a warning to other jurisdictions.
To understand what went wrong, and what might be done about it, we need to look a bit further back, and my starting point is the development of the Welfare State in Britain after the second World War. Probation services in Britain were well established by then, and like other welfare services, they had good prospects for further development. Max Grünhut, a German lawyer and criminologist who escaped from the Nazi regime and established the teaching of criminology at Oxford, wrote ‘Probation is the great contribution of Britain and the USA to the treatment of offenders. Its strength is due to a combination of two things, conditional suspension of punishment, and personal care and supervision by a court welfare officer. With the growing use of probation, social case work has been introduced into the administration of criminal justice … ’ (Grünhut, 1952, p. 168). A few years later Leon Radzinowicz, another refugee from Nazi domination of Europe who founded the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, wrote ‘If I were asked what was the most significant contribution made by this country [i.e. England] to the new penological theory and practice which struck root in the twentieth century … my answer would be probation’ (Radzinowicz, 1958). In addition to such expert endorsements, probation services were well respected and an integral part of both the developing social work profession and the criminal justice system. They were run by County-level committees which consisted mainly of magistrates, giving the main users of probation a stake in its success and a good understanding of how it worked. Chief Probation Officers played a significant role in social work's professional organisations, and expansion and development continued fairly smoothly until the 1970s. Even the proliferation of negative or discouraging research findings about the capacity of different sentences to reduce offending (for example, Martinson, 1974) did not significantly undermine probation in Britain, as it developed a new and useful mission as the provider of alternatives to custodial sentences. Governments were keen to encourage this for financial reasons. In this way the Service largely avoided the cuts in public services which were imposed by a Conservative government during the 1980s.
1. Populist punitiveness versus ‘What Works’
The tide began to turn in 1993. A Conservative Minister, hoping to achieve popularity through a display of toughness, declared to his party's annual conference that ‘prison works’, signalling an end to ‘alternatives to custody’. The Probation Service, under considerable political attack, needed a new way to present its role, and in due course its leaders (particularly the Chief Inspector of Probation, Graham Smith) launched the ‘What Works’ initiative to develop the Service's effectiveness in reducing reoffending (Underdown, 1998). By this time the ‘nothing works’ consensus of the 1970s was being replaced by new research which showed that some ways of working could have a positive impact on offenders' behaviour. Probation leaders and researchers were strongly influenced particularly by Canadian studies of effective rehabilitation (for example Andrews et al., 1990) and by British psychologists who disseminated similar ideas (such as McGuire, 1995). Money from a new Government of a different political colour enabled the establishment of ‘Pathfinder’ projects to develop and evaluate new methods, with a particular (though not exclusive) emphasis on cognitive-behavioural group programmes, and for a while at the end of the last century and the beginning of this, England and Wales were seen as global leaders in a very ambitious and comprehensive ‘What Works’ exercise. Gerhard Ploeg, a leading figure in Scandinavian probation, told the Confederation of European Probation that ‘The Probation service in England and Wales has always been in the vanguard in these developments, and many other European countries are watching it like a hawk, ready to accept that which seems to be working and to criticise that which isn't’ (Ploeg, 2003, p. 8).
Unfortunately the results of the ‘Pathfinders’ were not as good as probation's leaders hoped (Raynor, 2004). Over-rapid and top-down centralised implementation did not give probation staff time to understand and adapt: many of the new methods eventually became established, but this took at least twice as long as the three-year period allowed for the Pathfinders to prove themselves. In addition, political changes were reinforcing central Government control over probation, so that probation policy became more politicized and local influence and control, particularly by the Courts, was diminished. A new Criminal Justice Act in 1991 had redefined probation as a punishment in its own right (no longer Grünhut's ‘conditional suspension of punishment’) and in 2001 the Service became the National Probation Service, run from London. This also meant it was very visible to London-based politicians, and vulnerable to politicians of both major parties who wanted to be seen as ‘tough on crime’. In 2004 the Probation Service was merged with the larger and wealthier Prison Service to form the National Offender Management Service, which in theory might have led to better integration of offender management across the criminal justice system but in practice meant that the central administration of probation was dominated by officials who understood the needs and practices of prisons better than they understood probation.
2. Evidence versus delusion
Practice in the meantime had become dominated by risk assessment and risk management, with some officers having to spend more time on their computers than with the people they were supervising, and with a new official focus on enforcement as a priority. The evidence-base of practice remained primarily psychological, and there was less time to address social circumstances and social needs or to link people into the other services from which they could benefit. Probation officer training had been disconnected from social work training. However, the biggest changes were yet to come, as a new Conservative-led Government looked for opportunities to reduce social spending and to marketize public services by moving them into the private for-profit sector. A new Government Minister, Justice Secretary Christopher Grayling, was a particular enthusiast for privatisation and saw this as a way forward for probation. There was, in fact, no evidence to suggest that this was a good way to run community corrections in Britain, or that this might be profitable for the private companies jostling for a slice of the criminal justice pie. The Minister was encouraged to pilot the proposed arrangements but stated that there was no need to do so. This egregious example of evidence refusal was motivated by blind faith in markets and a right-wing Conservative tradition of scepticism about State-funded public services, and in 2014 seventy per cent of the Probation Service's work was handed to private companies, some with little criminal justice experience (Raynor, 2020).
After implementation in 2015, it quite quickly became clear that the private companies (known as Community Rehabilitation Companies) were in difficulty, and a series of inspections by the independent Inspectorate of Probation consistently showed them to be performing considerably worse than that part of the Service which had remained public. The companies had exaggerated what they could offer, and only a high degree of magical thinking by politicians could explain their confidence that the new arrangements would work. Before long the companies were trying to maintain profitability by making about a third of their staff redundant, leading to over-large caseloads handled by often inexperienced people. In short, although some innovations were interesting, overall the private companies damaged the services they claimed to be able to improve, leaving them in ‘a worse position than they were in before the Ministry embarked on its reforms’ (Public Accounts Committee, 2019 summary). Eventually, after four years of bad results, politicians had to recognise their mistake. The decision has now been taken, by a new Justice Secretary, to terminate the contracts of the private companies and to re-unify probation as a public service. This is already happening in Wales, and England is following.
It is, of course, encouraging to see a bad policy decision reversed by considering the evidence; this does not always happen. However, the new Probation Service faces a considerable task of reconstruction and recovery, and discussions are still continuing about exactly how it should be organised and managed. Many commentators favour a greater degree of local involvement in governance with the restoration of some judicial input, not just central control by civil servants in London. In addition, practitioners and their managers need to be able to focus on the development and use of evidence-based skills, informed by what we already know about how to promote rehabilitation and desistance from offending. The coronavirus pandemic has shown that Government spending on public services is necessary and unavoidable, and there is less political clamour to shrink the State and hand over services to private enterprise. However, the post-Covid world will be short of money, and criminal justice will have to compete with other strongly justified demands for public expenditure. Perhaps the most important lesson learned from the rise and fall of British probation is that there is no magic bullet to bring about a step-change in the effectiveness of probation services: development needs to be gradual and incremental, and informed at every step by evidence and evaluation rather than ideology.
To understand what went wrong, and what might be done about it, we need to look a bit further back, and my starting point is the development of the Welfare State in Britain after the second World War. Probation services in Britain were well established by then, and like other welfare services, they had good prospects for further development. Max Grünhut, a German lawyer and criminologist who escaped from the Nazi regime and established the teaching of criminology at Oxford, wrote ‘Probation is the great contribution of Britain and the USA to the treatment of offenders. Its strength is due to a combination of two things, conditional suspension of punishment, and personal care and supervision by a court welfare officer. With the growing use of probation, social case work has been introduced into the administration of criminal justice … ’ (Grünhut, 1952, p. 168). A few years later Leon Radzinowicz, another refugee from Nazi domination of Europe who founded the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, wrote ‘If I were asked what was the most significant contribution made by this country [i.e. England] to the new penological theory and practice which struck root in the twentieth century … my answer would be probation’ (Radzinowicz, 1958). In addition to such expert endorsements, probation services were well respected and an integral part of both the developing social work profession and the criminal justice system. They were run by County-level committees which consisted mainly of magistrates, giving the main users of probation a stake in its success and a good understanding of how it worked. Chief Probation Officers played a significant role in social work's professional organisations, and expansion and development continued fairly smoothly until the 1970s. Even the proliferation of negative or discouraging research findings about the capacity of different sentences to reduce offending (for example, Martinson, 1974) did not significantly undermine probation in Britain, as it developed a new and useful mission as the provider of alternatives to custodial sentences. Governments were keen to encourage this for financial reasons. In this way the Service largely avoided the cuts in public services which were imposed by a Conservative government during the 1980s.
1. Populist punitiveness versus ‘What Works’
The tide began to turn in 1993. A Conservative Minister, hoping to achieve popularity through a display of toughness, declared to his party's annual conference that ‘prison works’, signalling an end to ‘alternatives to custody’. The Probation Service, under considerable political attack, needed a new way to present its role, and in due course its leaders (particularly the Chief Inspector of Probation, Graham Smith) launched the ‘What Works’ initiative to develop the Service's effectiveness in reducing reoffending (Underdown, 1998). By this time the ‘nothing works’ consensus of the 1970s was being replaced by new research which showed that some ways of working could have a positive impact on offenders' behaviour. Probation leaders and researchers were strongly influenced particularly by Canadian studies of effective rehabilitation (for example Andrews et al., 1990) and by British psychologists who disseminated similar ideas (such as McGuire, 1995). Money from a new Government of a different political colour enabled the establishment of ‘Pathfinder’ projects to develop and evaluate new methods, with a particular (though not exclusive) emphasis on cognitive-behavioural group programmes, and for a while at the end of the last century and the beginning of this, England and Wales were seen as global leaders in a very ambitious and comprehensive ‘What Works’ exercise. Gerhard Ploeg, a leading figure in Scandinavian probation, told the Confederation of European Probation that ‘The Probation service in England and Wales has always been in the vanguard in these developments, and many other European countries are watching it like a hawk, ready to accept that which seems to be working and to criticise that which isn't’ (Ploeg, 2003, p. 8).
Unfortunately the results of the ‘Pathfinders’ were not as good as probation's leaders hoped (Raynor, 2004). Over-rapid and top-down centralised implementation did not give probation staff time to understand and adapt: many of the new methods eventually became established, but this took at least twice as long as the three-year period allowed for the Pathfinders to prove themselves. In addition, political changes were reinforcing central Government control over probation, so that probation policy became more politicized and local influence and control, particularly by the Courts, was diminished. A new Criminal Justice Act in 1991 had redefined probation as a punishment in its own right (no longer Grünhut's ‘conditional suspension of punishment’) and in 2001 the Service became the National Probation Service, run from London. This also meant it was very visible to London-based politicians, and vulnerable to politicians of both major parties who wanted to be seen as ‘tough on crime’. In 2004 the Probation Service was merged with the larger and wealthier Prison Service to form the National Offender Management Service, which in theory might have led to better integration of offender management across the criminal justice system but in practice meant that the central administration of probation was dominated by officials who understood the needs and practices of prisons better than they understood probation.
2. Evidence versus delusion
Practice in the meantime had become dominated by risk assessment and risk management, with some officers having to spend more time on their computers than with the people they were supervising, and with a new official focus on enforcement as a priority. The evidence-base of practice remained primarily psychological, and there was less time to address social circumstances and social needs or to link people into the other services from which they could benefit. Probation officer training had been disconnected from social work training. However, the biggest changes were yet to come, as a new Conservative-led Government looked for opportunities to reduce social spending and to marketize public services by moving them into the private for-profit sector. A new Government Minister, Justice Secretary Christopher Grayling, was a particular enthusiast for privatisation and saw this as a way forward for probation. There was, in fact, no evidence to suggest that this was a good way to run community corrections in Britain, or that this might be profitable for the private companies jostling for a slice of the criminal justice pie. The Minister was encouraged to pilot the proposed arrangements but stated that there was no need to do so. This egregious example of evidence refusal was motivated by blind faith in markets and a right-wing Conservative tradition of scepticism about State-funded public services, and in 2014 seventy per cent of the Probation Service's work was handed to private companies, some with little criminal justice experience (Raynor, 2020).
After implementation in 2015, it quite quickly became clear that the private companies (known as Community Rehabilitation Companies) were in difficulty, and a series of inspections by the independent Inspectorate of Probation consistently showed them to be performing considerably worse than that part of the Service which had remained public. The companies had exaggerated what they could offer, and only a high degree of magical thinking by politicians could explain their confidence that the new arrangements would work. Before long the companies were trying to maintain profitability by making about a third of their staff redundant, leading to over-large caseloads handled by often inexperienced people. In short, although some innovations were interesting, overall the private companies damaged the services they claimed to be able to improve, leaving them in ‘a worse position than they were in before the Ministry embarked on its reforms’ (Public Accounts Committee, 2019 summary). Eventually, after four years of bad results, politicians had to recognise their mistake. The decision has now been taken, by a new Justice Secretary, to terminate the contracts of the private companies and to re-unify probation as a public service. This is already happening in Wales, and England is following.
It is, of course, encouraging to see a bad policy decision reversed by considering the evidence; this does not always happen. However, the new Probation Service faces a considerable task of reconstruction and recovery, and discussions are still continuing about exactly how it should be organised and managed. Many commentators favour a greater degree of local involvement in governance with the restoration of some judicial input, not just central control by civil servants in London. In addition, practitioners and their managers need to be able to focus on the development and use of evidence-based skills, informed by what we already know about how to promote rehabilitation and desistance from offending. The coronavirus pandemic has shown that Government spending on public services is necessary and unavoidable, and there is less political clamour to shrink the State and hand over services to private enterprise. However, the post-Covid world will be short of money, and criminal justice will have to compete with other strongly justified demands for public expenditure. Perhaps the most important lesson learned from the rise and fall of British probation is that there is no magic bullet to bring about a step-change in the effectiveness of probation services: development needs to be gradual and incremental, and informed at every step by evidence and evaluation rather than ideology.
Peter Raynor
Professor Criminology, Criminology, Sociology and Social PolicySwansea University
Professor Raynor worked as a probation officer until 1975, and much of his research has concerned the evidence base for effective probation practice. He has carried out research on victims of crime, drug and alcohol services, young offenders, social work education, unemployed young people, intensive probation, and the relationship between rehabilitation and justice and a range of other criminal justice topics.
A series of Home Office funded studies since the early 1990s has included work on the quality and effectiveness of pre-sentence reports; a pilot of a cognitive-behavioural programme for offenders; the confirmation of probation officers in appointment; risk and need assessment in correctional services; the resettlement of medium-term and short-sentence prisoners, and the needs and experiences of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic probationers. He has also worked on the development of prisoner resettlement services for the Romanian Ministry of Justice.
--oo00oo--
About
Professor Raynor worked as a probation officer until 1975, and much of his research has concerned the evidence base for effective probation practice. He has carried out research on victims of crime, drug and alcohol services, young offenders, social work education, unemployed young people, intensive probation, and the relationship between rehabilitation and justice and a range of other criminal justice topics.
A series of Home Office funded studies since the early 1990s has included work on the quality and effectiveness of pre-sentence reports; a pilot of a cognitive-behavioural programme for offenders; the confirmation of probation officers in appointment; risk and need assessment in correctional services; the resettlement of medium-term and short-sentence prisoners, and the needs and experiences of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic probationers. He has also worked on the development of prisoner resettlement services for the Romanian Ministry of Justice.
Thanks Jim and Getafix.
ReplyDelete"The evidence-base of practice remained primarily psychological, and there was less time to address social circumstances and social needs or to link people into the other services from which they could benefit."
The psychological turn (and shift away from the welfare state) was already happening under New Labour. It makes the individual the site of the problem, which lets the capitalist state avoid accountability. We're seeing echoes of this play out now with all the #probationday agenda.
For the mess that is probation we can blame all probation chief officers (now regional probation directors) since 2010. Pay freezes, privatisation, dumbed down training, abuse of unpaid work,TR, unification … they oversaw it all and told #probation workers to say thank you.
ReplyDelete" However, the post-Covid world will be short of money"... but seems to be spending an inordinate amount of it, in Probation, on teetering bureaucrasy, apalling IT and layers and layers of managment. It would be interesting to take a look at the total expenditure, I suspect a radical redistribution of resources and power would go a long way. That of course applies to the wider context, as does most of our gripes about our working world in public services
ReplyDeleteIts the same in nhs mental health services. Instead of meeting workers demands of improving pay and conditions, management push all the usual psychobabble about well-being, self-care, and mindfulness.
Deletehttps://www.routledge.com/Probation-and-Privatisation/Bean/p/book/9780815353980
ReplyDeletePrivatisation was introduced into the probation service on the 1st June 2014 whereby work with medium and low risk offenders went to a number of private and voluntary bodies, work with high risk offenders remained with the State. The National Probation Service (NPS) covered State work whilst the 35 existing Probation Trusts were replaced by 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). Staff were allocated to either side of the divide but all remained as probation officers. The effect was that the existing probation service lost control of all but 30,000 of the most high risk cases, with the other 220,000 low to medium risk offenders being farmed out to private firms. Privatisation was justified as the only available way of achieving important policy objectives of extending post release supervision to offenders on short sentences, a group who are the most prolific offenders with high reconviction rates yet who receive no statutory support.
This book describes the process by which the probation service became privatised, assessing its impact on the probation service itself, and on the criminal justice system generally. It considers both the justifications for privatisation, as well as the criticisms of it, and asks to what extent the probation service can survive such changes, and what future it has as a service dedicated to the welfare of offenders. It demonstrates how the privatisation of probation can be seen as a trend away from traditional public service in criminal justice towards an emphasis on efficiency and cost effectiveness.
1. Introduction: Privatisation and Neoliberalism
2. Government Intervention
3. The Probation Service's Response
4. Privatisation at Work: Separate Services Opening up the Market and Payment by Results
5. Privatisation at Work: Through the Gate Services and the Probation Institute
6. The Future of Probation
Philip Bean is Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Loughborough, UK.
Philip's wife Val was my probation practice teacher back-in-the-day. The sharing of knowledge, opportunity for reflection & steadying-of-the-ship when I was wildly out of my depth was invaluable. Without Val's guidance I wouldn't have been able to offer 26+ years of professional public service. It would have been many more years had that rancid turd C.S.Grayling & the impropriety of a host of other greedy self-important thieving aresehole bullies not brought my career to an abrupt end. But reading the comments by current practitioners it seems those vile shitheads unwittingly did me a massive favour.
DeletePointless book because nobody outside of probation gives a toss, and everyone inside probation knows exactly what happened.
DeleteAcademics should have written books at the time to stop it happening, instead of afterwards profiting by writing about what happened.
For those intending to buy it let me save you £34.99. Chris Grayling privatised probation in 2014. It failed. Probation was unified in 2021. It failed. Probation directors were awarded MBE’s for their good work. Probation officers left because they were badly treated and poorly paid. Probation failed.
The assertion that privatisation was introduced into Probation in 2014 is factually incorrect. It was introduced in 2012 with the sell off of UPW to Serco. If that hadn't happened then TR wouldn't have happened. That is a fact.
Delete@21 August 2022 at 12:58
DeleteThe assertion privatisation was introduced as recently as 2012 is similarly incorrect. Take a look for The Carter Report.
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"2 years into a 3 year YOT secondment and so have thankfully avoided all of the service issues in that time. Opportunities on the horizon to leave the service and stay in YOT. Do I really want to return to 160% WMT?"
"Historically YOT have employed seconded POs. They have used the PO qualification for their own gain without the cost! Why wouldn’t they? It would be interesting to see how many YOT managers have a PO qualification?!"
"2 out of 3 managers in my YOT. 3 out of 4 if you include the Advance Practitioner!"
"I worked in a London Probation office where 5 POs resigned for roles directly with YOS in a period of about 4 months. It was a route that was frequently followed in West London!"
Compared to probation, theYOTs mean less work and more pay. It’s a no-brainer.
DeleteIn my area seconded PO's that go to YOT are part time in each role. Is that the same for you? Imagine doing both roles? Two lots of systems, IT, managers. I don't think that's sustainable.
ReplyDeleteI loved being a seconded PO in YOT until my PDU head insisted I work half time in YOT and half time at probation with a more than 50% case load! My secondment was for 3 years but she reneged on the agreement 9 months in. YOT tried to find funding to give me a role but could not get it for 6 months so rather than go back to probation at all I resigned. I then became an agency worker and have got my love of work back and control over what I do. I am able to work my hours for the first time ever and it’s liberating not to have burn out. At the moment they need me so I am treated respectfully. I know not suitable for everyone and won’t last for ever though.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing I have learned in my many years in The Service is that criminology is in many ways a huge con to deflect from the impact of social deprivation and trauma. We will never be able to deter people from crime if we continue to separate it from the impact of social deprivation and and unless we develop a holistic medical model. When you meet with a lifer and dig deep, tracking back as far as their birth you can will often see a picture of severe deprivation in infancy, trauma, the care system, moving into borstal and such like. Drug and alcohol problems often associated with disadvantage and trauma, lack of positive parenting and little concept of healthy relationships or the tools needed to survive life. The festering roots of their almost inevitable crime are laid bare. We will always be limited in terms of what we can do until as a society we fully commit to ending social deprivation and focus less on capitalism as the so called solution. As soon as you get out of the office and drive through one of the numerous sink hole estates in most cities and towns the truth of this will slap you in the face. So many of my service users are very ill. Physically ill and mentally ill. We call it personality disorder but the real disorder is societal disorder that breeds poverty and trauma and permanently impacts on the life chances of children growing up in these communities through the generations. It's uncomfortable but we need to face this and at the very least acknowledge the unfairness of it all.
ReplyDeleteYour spot on anon 11:06, and perhaps criminology being out of touch is representative of academia as a whole - it is a predominantly middle and upper-middle class domain.
DeleteSurely you mean we should develop a social model, not a medical one ? In mental health its the biomedical model that views people suffering mental illness as having faulty genes and chemical imbalances, which erases the social context, and offers pharmaceuticals and therapy instead of structural change.
11:06 you have very articulately outlined the state of probation that is and has always been. This is the best contribution I have read in a long while. Why do we have to wax lyrical and go through the painful motions of trying to attend to/fix/modify those who were shafted from the outset - society is grossly unfair and we all have to play host to a series of naked emperors and as you point out look at criminological factors when the elephant in the room is social deprivation and a society that is rigged to favour the rich.
DeleteWell said both 11.06 and 13.59.
DeleteOn another subject - probation disorganisation and centralisation had a mighty leap forward in 2001 with the amalgamations and establishment of large "Probation Areas" often out of touch with localities and certainly the local courts. It also was accompanied by a wave of early retirements of officers at CPO level - who had all begun as probation officers.
I think it was also the very beginning of non social work qualified Chief Officers being employed with John Powls a former prison governor being one of the first in Greater London. I still recall how he was disrespected by at least one very senior prison governor as he did not cover himself in glory in that career either - he did introduce the marking of national poetry day in probation - is that still kept up?
Wrapping up the #probationday Monday on the #frontline my best and very satisfying moment has been a nice bit of work between my client, his RSO police officer and myself, where we all agreed that he needs to get out more. When I say "a nice piece of work" that has been years in the making on all sides. This is slow burn stuff and. frankly, emotionally exhausting, but it will not be served by political meddling and short termism.
ReplyDeleteI am optimistic to see the debate running here on what we do and why, our values. It should be raging in every probation office now. Urgently.
Pearly Gates