Just how do you square the notion of professionalism in probation when you believe that the whole ethos is wrong? I've struggled with it all day, and I still can't find an answer. Is it even possible for 'professionalism' to exist in today's model of probation?
For sure, there's people that are enthusiastic and good at their job. They can dot all the I's and cross all the T's. They can keep all their files up to date, and leave their desks clean and tidy at night. But it's all prescribed. When do they get the opportunity to make a difference? Surely for most joining the service, making a difference was the original attraction to the service? If the service isn't about making a difference then do we really need it?As I say, I've struggled all day with the concept of professionalism in probation. I've considered fundamental questions like purpose, ethos and identity, and now I'm going to sleep with another fundamental question on my mind:- "What makes a good probation officer?"
Wednesday, 9 July 2025
A Very Good Question
As usual, regular reader and prolific commentator 'Getafix hits the nail on the head here and I know I'll be pondering all day to try and come up with an answer:-
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I was just replying to this on the earlier post on professionalism. It felt more like a biography of the author than an essay about the service. Personally, I couldn’t identify what the winning quality was, perhaps it was the only submission. Getafix, I noticed the author seemed to be recalling her own time working in Handsworth, not Mike’s. She also referenced riots breaking out later, not during her tenure, which made the inclusion feel somewhat misplaced. Inner-city work offers different experiences to different people, so I wasn’t sure of the relevance here. I would have liked to see more reflection on how those experiences shaped her values and identity. After a 30–40 year career, what ethos and values should underpin probation today? Interestingly, for someone who speaks so much about professionalism, she left the service at least twice and never appeared to challenge the systemic issues, just quietly walked away. I did like your final question. A recent article I read asked: “What do clients think of probation? What should it be, a friend, an acquaintance, or an authority to be feared?”
ReplyDeleteIts in the CEP newsletter https://www.cep-probation.org/newsletter-june-2025-out-now/
Delete“What do clients think of probation? What should it be, a friend, an acquaintance, or an authority to be feared?”
https://www.probation-institute.org/news/shaping-probations-identity
09;23 Thanks for that nudge - I think the author gained a 'Highly Recommended' for the Mike Guilfoyle essay competition and we'll cover that over the coming days.
DeleteThe mistake here is the author is giving one view on what professionalims is not speaking for the professions.
ReplyDeleteIs it even possible for ‘professionalism’ to exist in today’s model of probation?
Not as things stand. The current model needs to be fundamentally challenged, reformed, and rebuilt. Professionalism can’t thrive in a system that undermines the very values it claims to uphold.
Surely for most joining the service, making a difference was the original attraction?
Absolutely. But once inside, many quickly realise the reality: the work they came to do, rehabilitation, reintegration, and support, is severely constrained by excessive caseloads, a risk-averse culture, and a performance-driven, tick-box approach.
If the service isn’t about making a difference, do we really need it?
We do, but not in its current form. A probation service is essential to a just society, but it must return to its core purpose. Getafix often points out whether probation is needed, but being anti-probation isn’t the answer, transformation is.
What makes a good probation officer?
A good probation officer is often someone committed to rehabilitation, reintegration, and support while also willing to speak out when the system prevents this. But they can only truly flourish within a service that embraces and enables these principles.
Circles us back to the point about identity.
Delete08:44
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you say.
One small point of clarification however. I am in no way anti probation. Im a strong supporter of it. We need a probation service and all the good that it can do.
The point I try to make is that the current model (as I see it) has naff all to do with probation. I take your point about reform, but I've reached a point where I believe it's to broken to be reformed, a bit like a computer program with too many viruses.
People joining the service are being trained to be 'parole officers' not probation officers and that embeds the 'enemy' of the probation ethos within the service itself. That's not a criticism of those joining the service, they come to the service as they find it. It's just not probation. This current system serves no-one.
● My views are my own. They're not designed to be inflammatory or offensive, and I'm greatful to have a platform where I can air them.
'Getafix
I mean anti-probation in views on abandoning it. I do not agree with that, maybe abandoning in its current form but not altogether. Probation has a strong place in the CJS it’s just not represented very well.
DeleteAn interesting debate to be had.
ReplyDeleteI was regaling or boring somebody with a tale of my first day in a busy market town office on the outskirts of a major city in 1992.
My manager invited me to choose 10 case files ‘to be going on with,’ after sifting through them and selecting those across a spectrum of seriousness, I was fool enough to ask him, ‘ what do you want me to do.’
His reply has stayed with me to this day. ‘ what are you asking me that for? You have had two years training and are a fully qualified officer, get on with it.’ I did. Sometimes we were making it up as we went along but always within the concept of Advise, Assist and Befriend.
We were the buffer between the state and the ‘client.’ Our friendship was of the critical kind, demanding answers and explanations, pointing out alternative strategies that could be used and making suggestions as to the way forward.
There was limited cognition of the concept of risk, but we worked in a family focussed manner, often with people who the courts weren’t really sure what to do with.
On the whole, it worked although it took time, patience and constant revision.
Probation Officers were dedicated officers of the court and were afforded great professional respect by both magistrates and crown court judges.
On reflection, times changed with the advent of two factors, the boom in the use of Class ‘A’ drugs and associated social deprivation and criminality, the heroin epidemic brought previously unthought of offending, and the removal of probation officers from frontline duties to complete admin tasks and data inputting.
If you cease to be high profile in your own shop window, you lose any prospect of being considered professional by others around you.
Haha. Some of us are still making it up as we go along. I read the other Mike Guilfoyle winner about bringing back the concept of Advise, Assist and Befriend. Never going to happen in this climate but a class read.
Deletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/probation/comments/1ia83an/what_makes_a_good_probation_officer/
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately what makes a good Probation Officer is 90% up to the management, SPO's and upwards to the Head of the MOJ and the policy makers. If they want Officers to hit perverse targets and concentrate on risk and enforcement it matters not if you're amazing with the clients and try as much as possible to help them, no one really notices that, what gets noticed is when shit goes wrong or you've missed a Part B or Mappa screening. Probation has been a factory for years, input, monitor, output, once it could have been described as a farm, nurturing, growing, developing people (possibly not the best allegory sorry)
ReplyDeleteI think they should just get rid of probation and replace it with a voluntary councilling service for prison leavers(and put it on a 5 year contract and see how many take up the offer) , put the risky ones on a tag throughout their licence with their exclusion zone inputted into the device so it will alert a central server if they go inside the exclusion that then alerts police,
ReplyDeleteLet police do recalls after they have issued charges and let police manage SO's, put all the programmes inside prison and let housing and employment contact the prison for risk information on offenders wanting those services, let the prison link up with community social services for old and learning impaired impending prison leavers and go back to the old way of probation not managing those under 12 months and get rid of unpaid work...
“Let police do recalls” - the further the police are kept away from probation the better. Part of the problem has stemmed from buddying up too much with services with a different agenda.
DeleteSuch a pertinent question, Getafix, and I've been pondering it since. Which made me remember a piece Jim kindly published over a year ago (Guest Blog 95: The Bob Hall Test). The answer to the question "What makes a good probation officer?" is in my experience, spending lots of time with a long experienced good probation officer. That of course requires an enabling professional culture... and the availability of long experienced good probation officers. I didnt come to the service with a fully formed set of values or understanding, I was exposed to the values and culture and soaked it in. I "found my tribe" as one essayist put it. By the time I got round to qualifying and then management roles, managerialsm was all the rage, but Advise Assist Befriend had been welded into my DNA by then, as it had with many, so the values base was extraordinarily resilient against the corrosive political drive towards a punitive target driven approach. I wrote in that blog piece..."Did I make a difference?" is the question we should all ask ourselves every day. Top down. “Did I hit the targets?” is an incidental, secondary issue, and if the first test isn't met, the second is irrelevant.... Any professional and a good probation officer, will prioritise the first, and be supported in so doing if the culture is a professional one. It goes without saying that professional organisations need to be based on high quality training and pay their staff professional wages, of course, and that has been as savagly eroded as the values and ethics, so lots of hills to climb. Thanks for asking the question, for prompting memories of the wonderful Bob Hall, and for giving me the excuse to write "making a difference" and "Advise Assist Befriend" yet again. Always worth repeating.
ReplyDeletePearly Gates