Another Voice

"Whether they come here or not, there are plenty of people speaking, researching and writing about what probation is, what it should be and what needs to change. We have no shortage of voices, ideas or evidence. The irony, though, is that some of the strongest voices can be heard when people are on the frontline or in the earlier stages of academia, yet far fewer seem to hold on to those same principles once they climb the greasy promotion pole.

I remember reading Helping, Holding, Hurting: A Conversation about Supervision co-authored by Kim Thornden-Edwards and Fergus McNeill. The article*, written somewhere between being a probation manager or a director, makes a strong case for protecting the human relationships, professional judgement and intuition at the heart of good supervision, rather than allowing rigid, tick-box compliance to dominate practice.

Those are important ideas. The question is what happens to them when people move from writing about probation to leading it. There is an uncomfortable disconnect between some of the things people have argued for academically and professionally, and what practitioners experience on the ground today: severe staff shortages, high vacancy rates, unmanageable workloads and warnings of the need for “urgent, focused action” from the Chief Inspector of Probation.

Perhaps the problem isn’t that probation lacks people with something worth saying. Perhaps we have plenty of them. The question is whether those in positions of influence are still prepared to listen to them — and, more importantly, act on what they are saying."

Anon

*Abstract

This article begins with an overview of some of the late Bill McWilliams's key contributions to probation research and scholarship, focusing in particular on how his work helps us think about how people experience supervision, and about how the practice of supervision should be conceived and constructed. In the sections that follow, three of the co-authors respond to these ideas from their different perspectives as service user, as frontline probation officer, and as probation manager. In the conclusion, we summarise the discussion by focusing on the role of values, of relationships and of evidence in the reform and development of probation.

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"Give the probation officer the autonomy to trust in their own skills, and allow trusting relationships between the probation officer and the people they work with to develop."

I think the above from regular contributor 'Getafix is as good a sentiment as I've seen on here in a long time and it got me pondering. Given the recent lively discussion about practitioners not being listened to, I decided to revisit a past contributor, the former Chief Officer and HMI Andrew Bridges*. He continues to maintain a comprehensive website covering his career, practice and policy proposals and I could not help noticing the following as part of his submission to the House of Commons Select Committee last year:-

"Research from the last 50 years (at least) shows that there are no magic bullets to stopping people from reoffending, but, when well-motvated staff are enabled to use their creativity and initiative, they can influence individuals who have offended to change their behaviour and thus make a small but significant improvement to overall reoffending figures."

The submission is substantial and wide-rangning and well worth reading in full, but as a taster this from the beginning gives an indication of his direction of travel:- 

"What am I saying?

I will largely confine my evidence to Probation specifically, because I expect politicians to find it too difficult to move to a rational policy of making less use of prison. It seems to me that the political imperative to be seen to be tough on crime and to protect the public appears to trump the evidenced analysis (that no doubt others will also submit) that our present excessive use of prison is poor value for money.

I argue, in contrast, that a major “Refocus” is possible specifically for Probation, even in today’s political climate. I do not seek yet another restructuring, but instead I make the case for a coherent strategy, together with some intelligent rationalising of post-custody licences and community sentences.

However, the remedy that would not have the intended helpful effect would be to develop the idea of so-called “tougher” community sentences. Instead we need a comprehensive ‘Probation Refocus’ that would replace the existing top-heavy cumbersome management with a much more ‘bottom-up’ approach to managing Probation work, to liberate its creative potential. Even with Probation’s very limited resourcing this would enable the additional necessary changes to post-custody supervision and community sentences to have the desired helpful effect. I outline these additional ‘necessary changes’ further below."

It's interesting to note that this submission, along with a well-argued research proposal, were during the tenure of Lord Timpson as Justice Minister when there was some optimism that his 'bottom-up' business management style might signal similar moves within the Department. Sadly, this was proved to be unfounded and indeed the political enthusiasm for both tougher community sentences and greater imprisonment appear undiminished. Additionally, the new Labour government have showed no appetite to follow through on their Manifesto promise of a thorough independent Review of probation.

*Other contributions can be found here and here.