A Traumatised Organisation

It was an interesting discussion, I clicked on it when Jim put it up in a previous blog. Gaie Delap used the term "moral injury" to describe the trauma of the injustice she experienced. This term occurs to me whenever I read the comments section in this blog, or when I reflect on why I am still raging at the damage to my profession after retirement, or when I speak with colleagues still in work. 

Just recently one of them, talking about the terrible morale in their office, said "even the new staff, they're hating it. They just dont feel they are helping anyone" It was sort of encouraging to hear that the new recruits, who have never known any different than HMPPS, are there because they want to HELP people, not batter crap into a laptop and breach and recall. I mean, there's the poor pay, and the vicious blame culture too, but right at the centre is the yawning chasm where a solid set of values and sense of justice should be.

Anyway, back to Moral Injury, which depending on where you look for a definition, is a form of PTSD,. Collectively and individually, Probation is a traumatised organisation, and it is playing out in front of us. It plays out in this blog; the rage and the grief, the fury aimed at any and everyone who might have prevented or softened the damage. It plays out in work, the bullying and intimidation meted out by an organisation that, at least at the top, is run by people who sold their souls and they know it. 

Run by "leaders" (now that is a trigger word for our shared condition to flare) who spout guff about "trauma informed practice" but can't or wont translate that into what they do to their staff, like it doesnt tanslate into the work we are told to do. So it plays out in long term sickness and people just voting with their feet and leaving at the first viable opportunity. 

Heaven forfend Probation staff are instructed to name and shame their clientele in public. Such a stark horrible reminder of just how dismal the whole thing is, and where its heading. Question is, can anything be done to turn this tanker around? If so, what?

--oo00oo--

Would the state wish to lose the control over the criminal justice system it has now secured following the sham of TR? Would it willingly return the Probation Service to its original position of self determination and independence? The Tories are now talking about placing sentencing guidelines into the hands of politicians - how long before Labour are saying that's a good idea? 

Lots of traditional ideas are being destroyed - customer service, social justice, rehabilitation etc - we're now a nation of consumers, or units, in a market driven economy, losing our sense of community, justice and fairness for their own sake. I expect the last thing to go will be the lie being sold to new probation recruits that they will be spending their time 'helping' people - a blatant miselling of the role because the unfolding truth is too soul destroying to contemplate - that they will be monitoring, controlling and enforcing all day to align with the plan to finish off probation and integrate with the new ethos of units, markets and profits.

--oo00oo--

My researching the notion of 'moral injury' led to much discussion of it in the context of military action, but it then brought me to this article published in the Probation Journal of June 2022:- 

Probation and the ethics of care

Abstract

Discussions of probation's values can be enriched by an appreciation of care ethics. This approach is explained with attention to its emphasis on relationships and individualisation. The implications for probation's work are explored, including its significance for the supervisory relationship, its challenges for the management of the organisation and the value of individualised approaches. Care ethics argues for practice shaped not by rules and processes, but by people and their circumstances in all their diversity. Care ethics offers a principled and effective approach to probation's work.

The values of probation

Probation workers have been aware of the moral significance of their work from the earliest days. In recent years, these aspects have often been explored in terms of probation values, considering the moral worth, the politics and the practical feasibility of finding ways of giving expression to probation's ethical commitments (Canton and Dominey, 2017: Chapter 3; Cowburn et al., 2013; Gelsthorpe, 2007; Nellis and Gelsthorpe, 2004; Williams, 1994).

Sometimes, in the contested political arena, it can seem as if these concerns have been pushed aside in the relentless pursuit of the enquiry to find out ‘what works’. Yet, as David Garland has insisted ‘… the pursuit of values such as justice, tolerance, decency, humanity and civility should be part of any penal institution's self-consciousness - an intrinsic and constitutive aspect of its role - rather than a diversion from its “real” goals or an inhibition on its capacity to be “effective”.’ (1990: 292)

For that matter, it has been argued that trying to establish probation practice on the foundation of what's right rather than what works may turn out not only to defend and enhance these values, but even to make it more likely that probation practice will achieve some of the objectives that it sets for itself (Canton, 2013).

Conclusion

The argument here is not that codes of ethics and practice guidance have no part to play in ensuring good quality probation practice, nor does it suggest that the probation service should pay no attention to the outcomes of its work. However, drawing on the principles of virtue ethics and care ethics, it does advocate an approach that takes seriously the relational element of practice, that considers the circumstances of each case, and that has an unapologetic focus on care.

Viewing probation practice through the lens of care ethics suggests that probation values emerge from principled people (at all levels in the organisations) trying to do the right thing in a caring way in difficult circumstances. Both care ethics and virtue ethics focus on the characteristics of the practitioner and, for care ethics, on the interaction between the practitioner and service user. Both approaches are sceptical that probation values could be understood simply as a set of prescriptions that simply need to be applied in each case and in each situation.

To put caring at the centre of probation practice does not produce easy answers to the ethical dilemmas faced by practitioners, which often involve not just the interests, rights and concerns of service users, but also those of past and potential victims of crime and of the wider community. Identifying the course of action that best communicates care and meets needs requires debate and reflection; different people may come to contrasting conclusions.

Care is as much about how work is undertaken as what is done or what outcome is achieved. For example, service users have been found to accept most probation interventions as legitimate. Even monitoring, which might be supposed to be a resented intrusion, can be perceived as an indication that you matter, that somebody cares about what you are doing, especially when it is acknowledged as a legitimate aspect of the role (Dominey, 2019). And a corollary of the acceptance of monitoring is that sometimes the service user will be found to have been in default and enforcement action taken.

There may be objections to the idea that caring is the ethical way to approach probation practice. Perhaps ‘offenders’ do not merit care; perhaps care has no place in punishment. The arguments from care ethics, and from this article, push in the opposite direction: care deserves consideration as a guiding virtue of probation. It is not the case that according more care to ‘offenders’ leaves less for ‘victims’; ethical practice is concerned about the needs of everyone in the community. Further, the victim/offender dichotomy is misleading; insights into the trauma and abuse that form part of the life stories of so many service users (Anderson, 2016) highlight the extent of the victim/offender overlap and demonstrate that probation practice should, drawing on Tronto’s (1993) framework, include caring about, caring for and care giving.

A signal advantage of a care ethics approach to the work of probation is its promise to align ethical practice, effective practice and the motivations that inspire so many probation staff. Although our main line of argument has insisted on the ethical merits of a care approach, we have also seen that it turns out to be effective in terms of the purposes that are often set for probation – in particular, compliance, reduced reoffending and even the management of risk. Any successes that probation might achieve in reducing reoffending and in public protection amply fulfil its responsibility to show care to everyone and not just those under its supervision.

Care ethics, like virtue ethics, insists on doing the right things for the right reasons. For all the political attempts to disavow caring, it remains the case that large numbers of people join the profession because of a commitment to help and care for vulnerable people (Cracknell, 2016; Deering, 2011; Mawby and Worrall, 2013). The principle of care engages these motives, aligning them with both effective and ethical practice, bringing a coherence and integrity to probation's work.

Jane Dominey

Rob Canton