Probation's Journey Continues

Extracts from the first part of the latest Academic Insights paper 'Professionalism in Probation' has produced some very interesting responses, so here is the second and final extract. 

2.3 Towards a relational future for professionalism: opportunities and challenges 

In 2018, just four years after Transforming Rehabilitation was implemented, the Government announced yet more probation restructuring. Initial plans for the next iteration of services retained a commitment to a ‘mixed market approach’ (MoJ, 2018, p.3), with the Government pledging to work with CRCs to renegotiate contracts. However, after a consultation (MoJ, 2018), a subsequent response (MoJ, 2019), and several (draft) target operating models (HMPPS, 2020a, 2020b, 2021), it was announced that offender management would return to the public sector – a decision influenced in part by the Covid19 pandemic. Probation was unified in June 2021: CRCs were terminated, with services divided between 12 regions and housed within the Civil Service. The Chief Inspector of Probation has warned that while unification ‘is not a magic bullet for improving performance’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2020a, p.8), structural reform can provide the stability from which to rebuild. In this sense, it offers opportunities for the future of professionalism, but also challenges. 

Among the challenges for probation as services are unified is the recent uptick in punitive rhetoric. For example, in September 2020, a white paper entitled A Smarter Approach to Sentencing (MoJ, 2020a) mostly contained ‘tough’ measures, including longer sentences for a variety of offences. As a result, changes to sentencing, alongside plans to increase police numbers and a prison building programme, have led the Ministry of Justice (2020b) to predict that the prison population could rise to 98,700 over the next six years. The likely impact of such punitive discourses on probation caseloads poses both organisational and individual challenges. At the level of the organisation, appeals to ‘tough on crime’ initiatives undermine public confidence in community sentences, for pro-punitive sentiments mean that probation services can struggle to gain credibility (Robinson et al., 2012). Probation staff, meanwhile, may experience difficulty in (re)articulating and realising a distinct ideology of service if individual caseloads increase – especially from within the Civil Service, if these values conflict with Government policy (Carr, 2020). 

Caseload pressures can also be exacerbated by the challenges of recruitment and retention. A survey of 1,534 probation staff conducted by HM Inspectorate of Probation (2022, p.15) as part of their most recent annual inspection of services revealed that about half (51 per cent) thought their workloads were ‘not so manageable’. Additional funding was allocated to recruiting 1,000 staff onto the Professional Qualification in Probation in 2021, the training pathway to become a probation officer, with another 1,500 in 2022 (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022). However, lengthy vetting procedures, the time taken to train new staff, and increasing resignations (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022) suggests that the benefits of recruitment and (re)professionalisation strategies will take time to realise. The role of the staff-client relationship in supporting desistance is salient within the probation literature (McNeill, 2006; Weaver, 2011); hence, it is crucial that staff, as the service’s most valuable asset, are the subject of ongoing investment. If, as argued above, professionalism in probation refers to a way of organising work according to knowledge, discretion, and the opportunity to realise distinctive, people-centred identities, then reduced caseloads and the greater provision of training can enhance professional skills and afford the space to deploy and reflect on such expertise. 

Key to the plans to develop professionalism in probation is the creation of ‘an independent statutory register for probation professionals’ (MoJ, 2019, p.4), with the intention of (re)forging a common identity among all staff. This seeks to better recognise probation work as a profession, building upon similar proposals by HM Inspectorate of Probation (2019a) to bring the service into line with other certified professions, such as medicine. The register will mandate professional training, ensure that clients and the public are protected from gross negligence via debarment (MoJ, 2019), and provide ‘access to high-quality, practical learning resources that… support day-to-day tasks’ (HMPPS, 2020c, p.9). While, at the time of writing, there has been little progress on the professional register, it provides an ideal resource through which to (re)establish a clear ideology of service. Here, Canton’s (Academic Insights paper 2019/02) analysis of the European Probation Rules (EPR) provides a framework within which to develop the professional register. Articulating values grounded in human rights and the minimisation of harms, he contends, is at the core of the EPR. Making such values explicit through the professional register can serve to instil a common identity among probation staff that was fractured by Transforming Rehabilitation. 

And yet, while attempts ‘to improve… professionalisation’ (MoJ, 2020a, p.63) through appeals to its ideal-typical tenets have thus far been presented as vital to the future of the profession, McNeill (2019, p.145) states that an exclusive focus on staff betrays a ‘tunnel vision in the supervisory imaginary’. He argues that the development of new ways of working ‘begin in the wrong place’ (McNeill, 2006, p.45) if the focus is on practice rather than how individual change occurs. As probation scholars have argued, professionals do not ‘own’ the process of desistance (Albertson et al., 2020); rather, its ‘rightful owners [are] victims, offenders and communities’ (Maruna, 2006, p.24). Relevant persons other than professionals can thus play a meaningful role in decision-making. This is supported by recent research which indicates that services can be improved if we enable meaningful citizen participation. HM Inspectorate of Probation (2019b) argue that service user involvement in service provision benefits staff by providing insights into how clients experience probation. Greater involvement in, and co-production of, services is a way to ‘democratise engagement with service users’ (Weaver, 2011, p.1045): learning about clients as individuals rather than cases, as one member of staff put it, enabled him to ‘see the person behind the risk’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019b, p.15; emphasis in original). This suggests that probation professionals have an important role to play in reinforcing a sense of belonging in clients through a focus on collaborative relationships. 

Restorative practice could represent a framework through which probation can better embed partnerships ‘between the state and individuals, victims, families and communities as co-producers of justice’ (Weaver, 2011, p.1048). Indeed, restorative theories around conflict ownership and the notion of justice as identifying and meeting stakeholders’ needs (Christie, 1977) correspond closely with the literature on the desistance process (Maruna, 2006; McNeill, 2006). Marder (Academic Insights paper 2020/04) notes that restorative practice comprises:

 • values – including stakeholder participation, the goals of addressing and repairing harm, and a focus on cultivating positive relationships 

• language – open, non-judgemental questions, encouraging emotional expression and reflection 

• processes – including circles, family conferencing and mediation, through which the values are enacted. 

Marder argues that better integrating a restorative culture within probation would ‘actively build positive relationships with and among colleagues, clients and the community [and] enable those who hold a stake in a given issue to participate voluntarily in dialogue and decision-making around that issue’ (Marder, 2020a, p.4). As the 2018 Council of Europe framework on restorative justice states, restorative practice has a wide range of applications across probation (Marder, 2020b). In this way, it holds significant potential for building relationships with victims and communities, promoting multi-agency work, and healing internal divisions (Tidmarsh and Marder, 2021). 

That probation ‘services are part of an ecosystem which is… suffering from declining investment’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2020a, p.6) heightens the need for ‘co-productive’ approaches – defined by Bovaird (2007, p.847) as: 

‘the provision of services through regular, long-term relationships between professionalized service providers (in any sector) and service users or other members of the community’. 

Such an approach is supported by Rule 12 of the EPR, which states that probation services ‘shall work in partnership with other public or private organisations and local communities to promote the social inclusion of offenders’ (c.f. Canton, 2019, p.7). Relational approaches that involve people on probation, such as restorative practice and co-production, have the potential to expedite the acquisition of pro-social and non-criminal identities (Weaver, 2011). Unification provides an opportunity not only to re-centre probation as a public sector profession underpinned by knowledge and expertise, but also to build professional networks in the community. Here, the provision of time and training can enable staff to develop the links which can help them to realise a client-centred ideology of service. 

Perhaps the most promising initiative which emphasises the benefits of involving external stakeholders in service design and delivery is that of ‘community hubs’, introduced by some CRCs as a way to support multi-agency working with local health and welfare organisations. They are an innovation that staff and service users have generally received positively (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2020b). Community hubs thus illustrate probation’s potential for co-production, as the connective tissue that binds together different social spheres and the communities they represent (Senior et al., 2016). Albertson et al. (2020, p.6) suggest that the range of actors involved makes hubs ‘well placed to affect structural impediments to desistance at the nexus of community, society and the individual’. Desistance literature emphasises not what is done to an offender in the course of a criminal justice sanction, but rather, the importance of acquiring positive internal narratives (Maruna, 2006). Remaking the temporal-spatial and relational boundaries of probation practice by promoting ‘enabling’ structures can thus hasten the ‘discovery’ of agency (Albertson et al., 2020). 

Unification, therefore, offers an opportunity to build on best practice. Investment in staff should be at its core: 

• providing the foundations for upskilling professional knowledge and expertise  

• improving autonomy to work with people on probation and build community links 

• helping to develop the ability to reflect critically on practice. 

A clear focus on enhancing the tenets of professionalism identified in this paper can thus help to rebuild an identity and culture within probation which is relational, collaborative, and, above all, person-centred.

3. Conclusion 

After years of instability within probation, the potential for some stability as a result of unification is welcome. Transforming Rehabilitation has brought many of probation’s underlying issues to the surface; its essence (Senior et al., 2016), if not lost altogether, has been further tainted by the logic of competition and profit. The ‘national service of second chances’ (House of Commons Hansard, 2020), as the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice recently described probation, itself requires a second chance. Most staff within the new probation body will likely welcome the changes, while remaining anxious about the future (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2020a) – especially, as Carr (2020) has observed, from within the unfamiliar institutional environment of the Civil Service. 

The next iteration of probation should be reconstructed around the professionalism of its staff, its most valuable asset, with the goal of building and maintaining a wide ‘network of relationships’ (Dominey, 2019, p.284) at its core. A renewed focus on ‘professionalism’ is rooted in a recognition of the need to re-professionalise staff through knowledge, education, and training, and to engage them in an evidence-base. The benefits of this strategy will take time to realise, particularly because it takes place against an all too familiar backdrop of punitive criminal justice rhetoric and projections that prison populations will continue to increase (MoJ, 2020a, 2020b). A likely increase in people on the probation caseload could further hinder professional autonomy and an ideology of service. It is thus vital that further recruitment enables staff to spend more time with people on probation and to reflect critically on their practice. This, alongside resources like the professional register, can help to re-emphasise shared values and create a positive service identity into which new staff can be socialised. 

Greater co-production with external stakeholders, too, can underpin a relational basis for a new ‘professionalism’ – one that respects the service’s unique history and culture while emphasising its contemporary relevance as a social, legal and moral arbiter between people on probation, the state, victims and communities. This collaborative, bottom-up focus on relationships, between and among people on probation, communities and professionals, clearly overlaps with restorative practice (Marder, 2020a). Indeed, the new probation body could explore dialogic and restorative models to negotiate a new culture to which all staff buy-in. With sufficient institutional support and investment in the wider social infrastructure in which the service operates, probation staff can pursue a professionalism which is grounded in ‘thick’ (Dominey, 2019) relationships that help the new service to recapture its legitimacy.

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Mention of 'relationships' here takes me right back to the beginning of this blog and something I published in 2010 'It's the Relationship Stupid' and re-visited in 2017 'Nothing New'. I understand recently-departed Chief Probation Officer Sonia Flynn will be undertaking work on setting up the Professional Register as part of the Probation Workforce Programme.