Here’s an idea? Treat people with empathy and respect, stop behaving like a communist state police force and your punters might thrive better, progress and be more respectful to you, in turn you might enjoy what you do more.
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You what?! Nah, too much like hard work; it's easier to issue appointments, demand respect & breach when they don't play ball. Keeps the IT police off yer back, keeps the numbers right. As long as it's on the system in the 'correct' format, no-one gives a toss. HMIP can't find fault in the audit trail. £650 in the pocket for 35 hours a week, every week, good holidays & pension. Input whatever you need to & do as you please with the rest of the time. Piece of piss. And a free degree thrown in. Why stress?
What we “have” is a pretty shameful take, to be honest. I get that somebody is making a point by posting it but it’s a completely distorted picture.
ReplyDeleteNot all, but many, if not most, probation practitioners genuinely do treat people with empathy and respect. The job is hard work, the pressures are constant, and the conditions are often demanding. Plenty of staff already hold degrees before they even start, and as for “£650 a week”, that wouldn’t even cover a room in a shared house in many areas today.
Critique the structures, yes. But reducing the whole profession to laziness and box-ticking isn’t just unfair, it ignores the reality of people who are doing their best in a system that’s stretched to breaking point.
Average weekly 1 bed flat in London is about £300-600. But I get your drift. These days £650 (£500 approx after tax and Ni) a week doesn’t go far.
DeleteBy contrast, here are some selected points from a post made yesterday which suggest that even the box-ticking (allegedly) stress-free poster's antics could still be having a positive impact. Maybe someone in the illuminati could help explain?
ReplyDelete"603 people have been convicted of murder while being supervised by probation since 2014"
Grim reading. But, whilst never wanting to minimise anyone's loss or distress, let's place that figure in context with Home Office data relating to known/recorded homicide incidents 2014-2024, i.e. 6,386.
603 represents 0.00025% of the caseload over 10 years (assuming an average of 240,000 cases/year)
Probation-as-was is fucked, long dead & buried by this neo-con hmpps, it doesn't & can't achieve what is claimed by hmpps & politicians because they broke it beyond repair & now have no idea what to do except to proclaim "we're recruiting more people".
And yet, in its most parlous form to date with staff stressed to fuck, caseloads through the roof & pay at rock bottom, it is *still* making a difference to a significant number - the vast majority - of those subject to supervision, despite those numbers falling away as the clusterfuck continues to implode."
Probation centred on punishment and public safety will falter, whereas probation focused on rehabilitation and reintegration will thrive. For probation to expand its scope in supervising individuals in the community, is perhaps fundamental to the success of rehabilitation-focused approaches. The future of probation lies in evidence-based reform, practitioner development, and adequate resourcing.
DeleteOr we can denigrate it to a “communist state police force”, for which most of the practitioners and clients I see on a daily basis it is not!
Perhaps its indicative of how fucked up everything is throughout our communities when even the most cursory of insincere contacts from, say, someone in a probation role hell-bent on ensuring their data is up to date, still has a positive impact?
DeleteWe do indeed need a few MP’s willing to challenge the status quo and not simply tow the party line, pouring out the same rhetoric which shackles Probation. Sadly, apart from a few who have spoken up/out for Probation few understand Probation’s ethos or those drivers which once gained international recognition. I do hope/pray those who can will continue seek to try to influence/inform and make aware to their own MP‘’s that Probation remains a vocation still worth caring about and if able fight for. Although, I accept it probably won’t make a lot of difference, I for one will continue to try and engage my own MP who up until now has shown very little interest . Firmly believing that the only certainty is to do nothing. With the added stronghold and hope that is contained in the legacy that this blog continues to hold after 15 years . Truly remarkable really. Ian
ReplyDeleteHow easily it all goes so wrong & what happens when staff are placed out of role as 'cover' - Ricky Crosher died at HMP Lowdham Grange in Nottinghamshire on 11 October 2023.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg9j420w5wo
"The court heard Mr Drughe had worked at Lowdham Grange since 2018, and was normally stationed with the search and security team.
He said he started his shift at 06:00 GMT on 11 October, but was then cross-deployed over to the wings to cover for a staff member who had called in sick.... Mr Drughe was seen going past Crosher's cell at 06:47, and he told jurors the observation hatch was clear and he had seen the inmate. At 07:02 he saw the observation hatch was now blocked while doing an ACCT check, but completed his other checks before getting Ms Barnett to revisit the cell.
Mr Drughe said he was not aware of Crosher or his history of self-harm, substance abuse, and other risk factors.
He told the inquest he had been wary of opening the cell alone due to a high number of attacks on staff at the time... Noting how he was covering from another part of the prison due to staff sickness, Mr Drughe said there was "no staff support" from senior management..."
Todays post reminded me of an article from Inside Time published as far back as Feb 2009. If anyone is interested in reading it I'd ask them to bear in mind that it was written some years before TR.
ReplyDeleteThe rot had long set in before the disaster of privatisation!
https://insidetime.org/newsround/probation-officers-friend-or-foe/
'Getafix
The general perception of the public, and certainly the media, is that probation officers fit into the category of those who are more concerned with offenders than their victims. Veritable ‘do-gooders’ dressed up as concerned officials of the criminal justice system and, as befitting do-gooders, likely to be seen as making excuses for criminal and anti-social behaviour whilst actually achieving very little in response to the public’s concern over crime.
DeleteWhilst the probation service offers little to allay the public’s fear over crime and provide for public protection, neither does it achieve anything significant in reducing offending behaviour or attitude change in ex-offenders. Record numbers of released prisoners are subject to licence conditions and many will be recalled to prison by probation officers for non-criminal misdemeanours. These can include failing to keep an appointment; failing to notify changes of address; domestic disputes with a partner or alcohol/drug consumption. Even for uttering a difference of opinion with the probation officer and whatever is perceived by that individual as ‘behaviour likely to increase the risk of re-offending’, which is at best a subjective judgement.
In stark contrast to the former culture of probation work, which saw its role as assisting and befriending offenders towards leading non-criminal lifestyles, it is now common practice to hear offenders refer to probation officers by such non-endearing terms as ‘the enemy’, ‘the filth’, ‘the odd lot’ ‘the Gestapo’, and other uncomplimentary adjectives. Indeed, those who put people in prison are very much part of the state apparatus which seeks to penalise the mentally disordered, the unemployed and unskilled, the homeless, and those who have been excluded from and have no stake in society through poverty and lack of opportunity. They find themselves in prison warehouses and the consequential revolving door of offending is therefore seen as being the natural disposal of the unwanted. You couldn’t make it up.
It is noteworthy that as probation officers become less concerned about an offender’s social standing, inclusion and rehabilitation and being more punitive and bound up in bureaucracy (which some offenders equate with vindictiveness), anyone entering many probation offices for the first time cannot help but be aware of security measures more in keeping with a prison. CCTV, PIN number locks on doors for staff, door entry and intercom systems, strengthened glass which separates callers from probation staff and receptionists, and waiting room chairs bolted to the floor. What therefore could have led to such a shift in policy that probation officers now see themselves almost under siege and fearful that they have had to resort to such measures?
The answer lies somewhere between many ex-offender’s perceptions of probation officers as being firmly camped on the other side of the fence with the very system which excludes them, to ‘fitting-up’ offenders with comments and remarks allegedly made which then find their way into adverse reports and the forming of opinions which wouldn’t be out of place in works of fiction, yet form the basis of the notions of risk and further oppression.
There is also perhaps some currency in the notion that probation officers are all too ready to rely on hunches and guesswork in risk assessment rather than evidence, and what they lack in evidence they are astute at inventing or fabricating to bolster a higher risk score. This remains common practice to assuage the public’s demand for retribution.
The decision taken by probation, prison governors and managers that probation policy and coercion could be compatible remains reprehensible, whatever the reasoning. It has led to disadvantaged ex-offenders being sentenced and coerced by the use of threats into cognitive behaviourism courses whether they like it or not and taught to think differently against their will, which is all part of the current approaches applied by probation staff but which are measures that have failed miserably in spite of very selective evidence and so-called ‘research’ that probation officers rely on to promote such interventions.
DeleteTo be labelled a criminal, and the effects of ‘labelling’, is widely known amongst psychologists as a start in the process whereby probation officers look not for the positives in an ex-offender’s life, and what is needed to encourage and support, but where the whole process focuses on all the negatives and the past. Clearly, a disgraceful re-offending rate of those released from prison (and again this only applies to those who are caught), a shambolic prison system, and a cavalier approach by probation staff to the recall of offenders; the enforcement of ‘tough cure’ just has not worked.
Releasing ex-offenders in the condition in which they were originally caught but just a bit more battle hardened is a sad indictment of the present policies of both the Prison and Probation Services in dealing with offenders; but does the Government really care, let alone the Prison and Probation Services? It seems not.
Sound-bites and rhetoric are empty of meaning until given effect, and with public protection being the main focus of probation officers it is something at which they fail miserably.
It was former Home Secretary Michael Howard who argued that ‘prison works’; proposing even more draconian measures for prisoners and ex-offenders a stand bitterly opposed by the more liberal commentators including the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), whose members have since gone along in some way with that philosophy and to which they seemingly hang their collective hats on.
Anthony Goodman of Middlesex University, in the Probation and Offender Management Handbook, argues that … ‘there now exists a probation crisis of confidence because the superficial nature of probation supervision is patently failing to protect the public; with the Government now signalling its intention to rely on the voluntary sector to supervise ex-offenders going on to argue that one day the centrality of knowing, understanding and working constructively with the offender will have to be reintroduced and social work with clients reinvented’.
Government proposals to cut the budget to the Probation Service by an estimated 20% and the need to make efficiency savings has already led to wholesale redundancies across many probation areas, with many no longer recruiting trainees; and the response from NAPO? They maintain that such cutbacks will result in an extra 300,000 crimes a year, with a ‘knock on’ effect on the Prison Service who are also to be affected with major plans to cut back on middle management (Governor grades). It is not clear exactly how NAPO arrived at such a high figure of increased crimes (more guesswork) for it seems to suggest that they have faith in their own ability to reduce crime when in fact the reverse is shown to be true; although if recalling people to prison for failing to keep appointments, or being seen to have a difference of opinion with one’s probation officer should count, thus filling up our penal dustbins for non-criminal activity, then this goes some way towards demonstrating how ex-offender’s lives are not being turned around and the public not being protected; unless of course they subscribe to the stated views of Michael Howard that ‘prison works’.
Written under the last Labour totalitarian Government, some people really need to stop believing that Labour have our best interests at heart...
DeleteAbove entitled :- Probation Officers - friend or foe? By Charles Hanson HMP Blantyre House. He wrote this as well:- A short history of the Probation Service.
Deletehttps://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2022/08/our-roots.html