Mic Drop

Rather happily, much of today's blog post presented itself yesterday via a readers contribution:- 

Some of us remember when Probation Officers were seconded to prisons. I do not believe the development of Offender Management Units or the later OMIC model has ever truly worked. My recollection is that OMIC was introduced primarily to reduce community probation caseloads by retaining individuals in custody, thereby lowering WMT figures. OMIC might have been effective if prisons had been properly resourced and if OMUs had taken full responsibility for pre-release and resettlement work. It was also a mistake to place Senior Probation Officers under the line management of prison governors, though some seemed to welcome the change for its status rather than substance. It’s always seemed a bit hush-hush if they received the prison pay bonuses we in the community did not.

The ethos and values of probation have undoubtedly been eroded by OMIC’s implementation, which stood in direct contrast to the earlier “end-to-end offender management” model probation had taken on a decade before. The simultaneous continued shift towards risk assessment and management alongside police-led models for managing RSOs and IOM cases further diluted probation’s rehabilitative role. I think the increase in electronic tagging and monitoring is only going to make this worse.

An excellent article by both a Probation Manager and a former Director of the Probation Institute makes a persuasive case for returning to the original offender management model, (without Probation Reset, Probation Impact, or OMIC which have since taken over), and restoring probation’s role as the commissioner of local services. This would allow a single Probation Practitioner to provide consistent support from custody to community, just as recommended by the original blueprint by Baron Patrick Carter in Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A New Approach.

The Justice Committee’s recent inquiry into Resettlement and Rehabilitation also focuses on breaking the cycle of reoffending through holistic, rehabilitative methods. Though it has not received much attention I have seen, the submissions are outstanding.

Professors Mike Maguire and Peter Raynor’s submission is particularly strong.They describe the collective failure of resettlement practice, worsened by the organisational upheaval of splitting, part-privatising, and later reunifying the Probation Service. They seem to argue that existing OMIC and resettlement structures prevent the continuity and relational focus essential for genuine rehabilitation, a view that’s hard to dispute.

A submission from a Probation Manager recalls the success of Probation Trusts and reinforces the need for probation as a vehicle for rehabilitation, transformation, and effective supervision. Their related and linked article offers vivid examples of real end-to-end offender management.  It is good this still exists, but it is achievable only through a stable, consistent, and professionally empowered probation workforce.

In what could best be described as a mic-drop on this entire subject I highly recommend Professor Rob Canton’s Probation as Social Work as shows how probation has been recast as a punitive agency, constrained by its alignment with prisons and shaped by risk-based systems, bias, and overreliance on generic interventions. The result is a service that was always destined to struggle.

Most of these authors are, or were, qualified probation officers, their views deserve to be heard. All are calling for an enhanced probation approach, to lead on resettlement from prison and to be coordinators of access community services. I didn’t intend to write an essay (nor did I read all of Napo’s commentary), but on this point, they are entirely right OMIC does not work, and in truth, it was never designed to work for probation. It has never been structured, resourced, or managed to support the prisoner as a client or enable probation to fulfil its purpose.

There are already enough credible voices pointing to what would work. Perhaps it’s time to bring them together with the Probation and Prison Chief Officers, David Lammy, HMIP, the Probation Institute, Napo, and a few renowned individuals, academics and practitioners with lived experience, keeping the rest of NOMS, HMPPS, and associated bureaucracy out of the room, and see what they produce.

The Napo 2025 AGM takes place from October 16th–18th in Eastbourne and online, with key figures such as Kim Thornden-Edwards and Martin Jones in attendance. I’ll want to be optimistic but I won’t be holding my breath.

Anon (Probation Officer)

--oo00oo--

It's interesting that the above takes us back to Rob Canton's 'mic drop' paper Probation as Social Work which I rather cheekily re-published in full over 4 posts in May last year and introduced thus:-

The latest Probation Journal carries an extremely important article by Professor Rob Canton and in my view should be regarded as essential reading for all probation staff past, present and future. I don't say this lightly and in an ideal world I'd rather hope it gained the attention of politicians and indeed anyone in positions of power and influence.

We find ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented prison, probation and criminal justice crisis and it's election year. Essentially this article sets out in forensic but clear detail much of how and why we got here and one would hope it convincingly makes the case for a fundamental rethink of the role and purpose of probation. In my opinion, failure to grasp the urgent need for change will inevitably mean that probation not only becomes increasingly irrelevant but most worryingly, entrenched as part of the problem.

Being conscious that the article may not be easily accessible for those who are not members of Napo, together with a desire to bring it to the attention of a wider audience, I've taken the liberty of sharing it in a number of posts.

But the issue of us being forcibly removed from our social work roots has been discussed on here many, many times. In searching the archives, I came across this from 2020 in response to a blog post:-

1. Did the removal of the Social Work requirement in 1997 move probation from a left wing to a right wing organisation? Yes. More accurately, it anchored the moves that had already taken place. 

2. If the social Work ethos belongs to the left, then its removal must surely cede possession to the right? Yes. Its now 'owned' in every sense by the MoJ/HMPPS, a control-and-command led profit-oriented structure.

3. Why does social work define anyone's political identity? For myself, it's tied up with whether we regard people as a commodity to be exploited or as part of the social fabric, to be cherished. The 'right' embraces control & command, monetisation, exploitation, profiteering - 'they know the price of everything but the value of nothing'. The 'left' tends towards the nurturing, caring & sharing of peoples' experiences, cultures & lives, regardless as to whether its the fruits or the burdens that are being shared.

There you go, Bamber, there's my starter for ten.

Note 

"A "mic drop" is an act of triumphantly and dramatically dropping a microphone at the end of a performance or speech to signify a final, impressive, and unbeatable statement. Figuratively, it can also refer to making a decisive and impactful statement, argument, or action that leaves others speechless."