The Discussion Goes On 5

If Wales Is the blueprint, God help us when England follows, it’s genuinely head-in-hands stuff. The scale of denial on display needs saying out loud. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Wales and England are already operating from the same script, driven by the same senior culture, quietly agreeing the direction of travel behind closed doors and then rolling it out to staff with a familiar message: JFDI, make it work.

The plan itself is pure managerial theatre. It responds to inspection failings with process rather than honesty. Instead of tackling workload limits or making the system credible, we get more dashboards, more audits, more templates, and more “embedded expectations”. It assumes a service that simply does not exist: properly staffed, experienced, well-paid, and capable of absorbing endless new demands from prisons. What it actually does is provide cover for those at the top, while pushing the pressure further down onto a diminished frontline.

If we add the Sentencing Act to the mix, we are told this will supposedly help by strengthening community sentences. What it actually does is dump more work into the system with no additional resources to manage it. The much-trumpeted £700 million is not investment in people at all; it is overwhelmingly for electronic tagging. Surveillance replaces supervision. Technology replaces people. The service is not being strengthened; it is being automated.

At the same time, staff are left hanging on pay. The union has been talking about a pay rise for over a year. We were told something would be announced “this week”. The week is over and we have nothing. No figures. No clarity. Just more silence. Instead, we get propaganda and recruitment campaigns celebrating “extraordinary” work, as if heroics under impossible conditions are something to be applauded rather than urgently fixed. These campaigns expose how far the service has drifted and set up new recruits for failure. Extraordinary effort, goodwill, and a pat on the back for being a “hidden hero” has become a substitute for proper resourcing.

The reality on the ground is captured far more honestly in Guest Blog 107 and the Open Letter, which describe what still remains unanswered after serious assaults on staff. The response of metal detectors, body-cams, and self-defence kits, not proper security, not systemic change, not meaningful protection. Staff are left to manage themselves while being told this is “progress”. And if you really want to understand how far we’ve fallen, go back a decade and read Guest Blog 26: Advise, Assist and Befriend, in the first comment. Reading it now is painful. It describes a service rooted in relationships, humanity, and professional trust, one that believed in rehabilitation and social justice, not just enforcement and compliance. Compare that vision with where we are now: tagging, AI-assisted case recording, endless escalation, and dashboards. It beggars belief how far we have drifted and how little appetite there is at the top to admit it.

The most galling part is the cowardice of leadership. Senior figures enjoy the power of their little regional empires, but when it comes to standing up to ministers or the centre, they fold. They mouth concern, nod sympathetically, and then fall back into line. They do not stand for the service. They manage its decline while unions look the other way. People are tired of saying this again and again. Frontline staff have been shouting for years. The uncomfortable truth is that unless someone at the top is finally prepared to step out of line, to actually challenge government rather than absorb pressure and pass it on, nothing will change. It will just be more of the same. And we all know it.

Anon

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What’s happening is systematic hollowing-out. This model is not designed to improve probation. It is designed to make failure administratively survivable at the centre while pushing risk, blame and workload further down the line. Dashboards replace judgement. Templates replace thinking. Technology replaces people. When harm follows, it is “complex”, “unforeseeable”, and never owned.

We are being asked to deliver a service that no longer exists: safely, relationally, and professionally, without the time, staffing, pay, protection or authority required to do it. Workload is unmanageable by design. Pay is delayed by choice. Safety is addressed with pilots and optics, not action. Recruitment propaganda fills the gaps left by attrition rather than fixing the reasons people leave.

This isn’t confusion or poor implementation. It is deliberate. A system engineered to function on compliance, goodwill and silence until it breaks, then quietly replaces the people who broke with cheaper ones. Probation hasn’t lost its way. It’s been taken there. And unless those responsible stop hiding behind process and start owning the damage, this will not improve. It will only continue exactly as intended.

Anon