I wasn't going to publish anything today, but I've changed my mind. In recent years it's become fashionable to talk about the need to recruit new entrants with 'lived experience' which is basically code for those with an offending history. Well, the following that came in yesterday should therefore be of interest and concern to us all:-
I find it ironic that the police are still charged with vetting. Given that their own processes have failed to stop rapists, domestic abusers, thugs and voyeurs joining various forces….
Looking around now it’s hard to see anything of value in the CJS. Prison numbers remain far too high, racism is endemic, politicians make appalling decisions and rehabilitation feels like a thing from the distant past. Voluntary groups are underfunded, accommodation is dreadful, benefits are pernicious and even now people are released from prison homeless. It doesn’t really take a great leap to see why people continue to offend. Alongside this the cost of living keeps rising and the rich simply peel off more and more. The Labour Party is equally clueless. As I cast my gaze around I often ponder what life would have been like if I had been born in the 1990s rather than the1960s.Given my background I doubt I would have been able to achieve anything really. When I was younger I shoplifted, stole Ford cars (easy locks), got into trouble with an air rifle (accident) left school with 2 CSEs, worked in a factory, got sacked and then started my education. It was all free. Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister. I had all my university fees paid, got a PO job and well that’s it really. The fact is it would be impossible to take that path now without amassing some serious debts.
On my course we learned about Marxism, power and social control. Probation has always been about social control so stop kidding yourselves. It’s just more overt these days. I grew up with criminals, I saw houses raided, police sticking the boot into neighbours and appreciated early on how the state flexes its muscles when needed. Probation these days is an extension of that power. It monitors thoughts, ideas, politics and passes information about political extremism and even identifies asylum seekers for the Home Office. I mean really….how low can you get. I wouldn’t have seen probation as a worthy career. It’s no better than the police and prison service.
And that’s a real problem. Why would anyone tell you anything? If I was unfortunate enough to have to see an officer I would never tell the truth. Contrast that with my experience when I first started. What surprised me was I was how willing people were to tell me all sorts of things that were really very private and personal. It took me ages to cotton on that they actually trusted the probation service in ways that they didn’t trust the police or the prison service.
I still have friends who remain well known to the police and from time to time finish up in front of a harassed officer for a report. My advice these days is lie, don’t trust them and tell them nothing. Smiley pigs are still pigs. All the trust has gone, and that will never return. So to conclude, what would I have done if I had been born later? Education is expensive, even if you finish up paying for it, the probation is service is what these days? Smiley pigs, and an embarrassment to its history. No thanks I would rather have developed my car skills [and] fucked off with an ACOs posh car.
I worked for years in service many many years. I never understood the phrase lived experience as a cover for ex offenders. In any case I was a token to cover a checklist I did very well but would never trust the people in management not many of the staffing either who only look to exploit criticise and attack any vulnerabilities. The snobbery and looking down is endemic and won't change not a chip either . One thing is for sure it is not a grand old golden age lost .
ReplyDelete"So to conclude, what would I have done if I had been born later?"
ReplyDeleteIn this 'progressive first-world country' you wouldn't even be considered 'worthy' of education, you wouldn't be 'allowed in'.
And therein lies the rub ... its all about being 'allowed in'; and if you aint allowed in, you're excluded. And if you're excluded, you're fucked all ways round.
So how do you get 'in'? Birthright. Entitlement. Others' approval. Accepting the rules & playing the game.
I wouldn't have passed the vetting procedures. I barely got through the interviews with Home Office staff in the 80's, when one especially obnoxious suit took against my precons... I learned later it was the determination of one senior university lecturer that swung it for me. I owe them my 30 year career (and luckily managed to tell them so before they passed away).
To extrapolate, you could argue that the biggest change in the probation service came with oasys & the risk business. If we are honest its not really about risk assessment - its about exclusion by numbers.
Where probation was once about inclusivity, including people, bringing people back into society it is now about exclusion... labelling people, controlling &/or incarcerating them.
A valuable piece from parody kuennsberg helps illustrate the topsy turvy world we live in:
ReplyDeletehttps://normalislandnews.substack.com/p/police-advise-women-on-how-to-avoid?sd=pf
"Fresh from their failure to protect women from the never-ending deluge of male violence, the police have issued helpful advice so women can avoid tempting the worst of men to become rapists and murderers. This is because it’s not the job of the police to keep women safe in public and also because policemen can be tempted to do terrible things too. Obviously, the temptation is the key problem here... "
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"So true. I have worked in probation for 30 years and seen the vital relationship between worker and “client”. Eroded away. The only relationship that exists now is between me and the lap top."
I grew up a few decades later. It was the same and the police were awful. The amount of times I’ve been hassled, harassed, abused by them. I wish I had kept all those stop and search records which in those days you had to go all the way to the police station to collect. The amount of times I’ve been wrongly arrested, stripped searched, even a few times prosecuted for doing nothing wrong. I benefited from the grant based university system which gave me options to out of a life I was struggling to get out of on my own. When I first joined probation I was embarrassed about telling people my job because of its link to the police. Honestly I’ve never liked the police and I still don’t. I have met some very good police and have some friends that have joined up and have had mixed experiences. Through probation I still come into contact with many that are rude, arrogant and are so belittling about others. They don’t respect probation or the people we work with. We shouldn’t be working with them and they shouldn’t be vetting us.
ReplyDeleteProbation has no collective identity anymore.
ReplyDeleteThe relationship between a client and their supervising officer will largely be determined by the supervising officers school of thought. Are they social work and problem solving oriented, or are they enforcement and policing oriented.
Probation has become, like police and prison, a "them and us" profession.
There is no trust any longer between probation services and the people subject to those services. I'd also advance a notion that public trust in probation is waning pretty quickly at the moment.
When theres no trust, then really what have you got?
On Probation blog, 2011.
"Trust me I'm a probation officer."
http://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2011/06/trust-me-im-probation-officer.html?m=1
'Getafix
Wow 'Getafix a 12 year-old post from the early days and I stick by every word. The most-read post of all time attracting an incredible 289 comments - in latter years mostly from the US!
DeleteReading some of the comments about probation, the police and vetting I’ve thought about my own journey.
ReplyDeleteI remember my interview for probation officer training. There was me, a young black person sitting in front of an all white male middle class looking panel of professionals. To the question “tell us about a change and the process you followed”, I just went for it and explained my journey of being a school dropout, care leaver and juvenile prisoner to become a university graduate with a good work history. I think I fought not to shed a tear when I was speaking and they listened without a flinch and simply asked how I had such a story but was no different in age from many of the other graduates being interviewed.
To my surprise I got the job and during the first few days in probation I was summoned to HQ. It was all very formal and was sat in front of two older middle class looking females who had a printout on me that looked like an old MG16. I remember feeling so worried and that my dream of being a probation officer was about to end. There was a blank sheet of paper and an envelope on the desk for me to write the what, where, when, why, how. They gave me a cup of tea and left me alone for an hour with instructions to seal and leave the envelope with the person outside the door on my way out. I did what they asked, went back to the office and it was never mentioned again.
A few years later I went for a promotion elsewhere and came across one of the same women at interview. I was successful and I saw her again a few weeks later when I started the new job. She reminded me of when we first met at that HQ in my first week and told me she had thought, “good heavens, what have we taken on here”, but thought my education and work history “spoke for itself”, adding that I had proven myself and had got the promotion as my practice as a probation officer was “shit hot”. I wasn’t used to positive feedback and remember being amused to hear such a posh looking older woman use a swear word.
So you see probation used to be all about believing in people and change but we’ve lost that a bit. We had people in positions of authority that believed in giving people like me a chance and did so. I would not be writing this story without those people that gave me a chance and judged me on my merits. I’ve hardly told this story and rarely share my pre-probation background with anyone in the workplace. I’ve never used my background as a talking point either, even though I could have spent my entire career doing talks about ‘lived experience’. I always thought that while I’d be wheeled-out and applauded at conferences, I feared there will be too many colleagues negatively whispering about me. I’ve also always wanted to leave the past in the past where it belongs.
For those already whispering about people like me, we all wholeheartedly wish we hadn’t made those mistakes but cannot change the past. I remember speaking to a family friend about this shortly after I qualified as a probation officer. A really old black lady I’d known much of my life who came all the way to my house just to congratulate me for qualifying. She knew all I had been through, including some of the things I had suffered at the hands of the police which her own children and grandchildren had suffered too. She told me not to worry about my past any more or the stigma, “don’t be ashamed of your past, it was your journey to become who you are and look at you now and look at all the people you’re helping”. She was right and I’ve never forgotten those words.
Cont.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think people like me are welcomed as much by probation as we were in the past. I do think my experiences overall have made me a better probation officer. That is not to say criminal convictions should be an eligibility criteria, but my reasons for wanting to be a probation officer were very simple but also very unique. I have found that probation teams do benefit from a varied mix of people and a good cross-reference of society. I don’t call it desistance or lived-experience and I do not consider myself to be an ex-offender either. I’m just a person with many experiences who wants to be defined by who I am today not what I did for a very short period in my distant past. I’ve encouraged every person of probation I’ve ever worked with to do the same.
I have always wished I didn’t need to feel so guarded about my past, but it’s what’s worked so far. CRB, DBS, Vetting is always a worrying time for me, with vetting being the worst as I’ve a few family members with not fully clean histories too, but all now upstanding professionals. I have passed vetting and know others that have passed too with similar pasts. The advice I was given and which I give to others is to tell them everything and don’t hold back. It’s still a bit hit and miss, I think luck plays a part too. The advice I give to probation is to do a bit more to enable those that struggle with vetting to pass the process and carry on with their jobs.
P.S. I also give credit to the police that vet and pass people like. They’re giving us a chance and judging us on our merits too.
ReplyDeleteNobody trusts you anymore, nobody.
ReplyDeleteThanks :-(
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