Guest Blog 100

Probation Past but not Forgotten 

Just to be upfront with my readers this blog is focussed upon the use and development of Business Processes and Computer Systems within the National Probation Service (NPS) and then a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) being based upon my working experiences from 2006 to 2016. I am not a qualified Probation Officer. But I have a long career prior to joining probation in the private sector in Business and Computer systems. First employed in 2006 within the NPS West Midland Trust, Learning and Development Unit, Selly Oak, Birmingham as a Business Support Training Officer. 

Then I jointly supported the Learning and Development Unit and the Central Birmingham based Business Transformation Unit (BTU) initially supporting the System Testing and Implementation of Delius. Then in 2013 I was appointed as a Transformation Administration Manager within the Birmingham based Business Transformation Unit (BTU). I was then transferred to a CRC in 2014 before being made redundant in 2016. 

I cannot blog on the current (2024) HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) since I have been outside the Probation Service since 2016. So essentially it is more of a historical record but the effort to write it is based upon me wanting to communicate on “a lessons learnt” basis that may influence and benefit those currently working within the HMPPS. It is also an historical record of the events I experienced at the NPS and then CRC.

So why start blogging on Probation after 8 years outside of the service?

When I was at Probation, like many others, I followed Jim Brown daily since he was telling the “truth” particularly through the blitzkrieg period of change. But over the last 8 years I have only on rare occasions popped onto his blog to see how things are going at Probation, now the HMPPS. So having done one of my normal LinkedIn posts that covered a bit about Probation, I was surprised to get a personal message to call him. Which I did and we had a brief chat on Monday 23/09/24. He asked me if I had any more relevant contributions. I explained that obviously all my experiences are now from the 2006 – 2016 period so lacking relevance to HMPPS in 2024. 

Then it occurred to both of us during our conversation that those experiences might help those trying to sort out HMPPS today. I explained that particularly my NPS experience, not my CRC experience, was a very positive part of my career, particularly in respect of the people with whom I worked. Whilst my experience of the Business Systems and Computer Systems was just the opposite. But I had started in 2006 with the best intentions of improving both of these aspects and to be perfectly frank, after 10 years of hard motivated work, I achieved nothing. I don’t know another part of my career where it was so difficult to influence and effect change to Business Processes and Computer Systems. So if any contribution on here could help those now within the HMPPS family achieve these changes now, I wouldn’t feel my 10 years was such a waste of effort. My commitment can only be a positive and constructive one since I don’t do negative or political.

So I walked out of the Probation Offices in Central Birmingham for the last time on the 3rd July 2016, having been disposed of by Reducing Reoffending Partnership (RRP), a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) that was now trying to run the Probation Private Services for Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Staffordshire and the West Midlands. I was deemed redundant and my services were no longer required. Not the best of timing for them or me. In their case with me having a long career prior to Probation in Business Systems design and implementation in the Private Sector, they needed me and others like me more than ever with the chaos now being unleashed. Instead they were dependant on the ”all knowing” but “knowing nothing” highly paid consultant swarms now descended on Probation. Many just out of university but deemed chargeable to the Ministry of Justice no doubt with a cashback into the RRP coffers. But it also has to be acknowledged that there were some very smart experienced consultants with some clearly wanting to support our side of how we wanted change implemented. That is carefully and progressively.

These consultants actually listened and didn’t just feedback but actively joined us in trying to get some constructive steer on the changes themselves and the rate of change being planned. They also took some risks within their own Consultant Management Companies, who had won the lucrative change management contracts from the MoJ, in supporting our side of the story. But unfortunately they weren’t listened to either, so blitzkrieg commenced at pace.

The tide of change from Government and the MoJ was too strong and too fast for all of us to contain or control it. They had enforced a blitzkrieg approach to changing Probation. Probation had established its fundamental principles over 100 years and these were already being improved upon as a result of the Carter Report, by a Probation Officer, and its implementation through the 2006 to 2010 period. Things were improving in a Japanese style of incremental improvements like the national use of a new Offender Management System called Delius and access to the Police ViSOR System. 

Although OASys was in most need of re-engineering it was not on the to do list. Probation had never faced a blitzkrieg Government attack before and it was very ill prepared to counter it. Other Government Departments, particularly our own HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) never came in with any support since whilst we were under attack they could standby, avoiding being attacked themselves. Needless to say HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) was also being attacked under austerity principles with many local court closures impacting the application of good and tried local justice principles. The blitzkrieg approach funded by the Government threw money at the private sector to establish the principles of probation moving to the private sector in the form of the CRC’s. So I was transferred to a CRC.

We CRC staff, being ex- NPS staff, were now considered only eligible to be treated with a sort of private sector employment status. Essentially exiled out into the wilderness. With no doubt their planned lowering of pay rates to reflect our drop in both economic and social status. Yes I was now employed by a new lowly entity in the Government MoJ come Probation hierarchy, which was soon to be dropped a peg down on bloc below the unit with the lock and keys the Prisons which were to upstage Probation in the political hierarchy creating the illogical HMPPS.

NPS Induction Training in West Midland taught the hierarchy where the Courts were the very top, supported by the Probation Service with the Prisons as a service locking them up as punishment and to protect the public. Whilst the Carter Report rightly recommended the Prison’s rightly focussed on rehabilitation whilst in a custody setting. Training Prison Officers on Rehabilitation Practices, we were always amazed at how enthusiastic they were about acquiring these new skills and looking forward to applying them within their prison settings. Just the locking up although critical was very boring and contributing to prisoners futures much more rewarding. Probation was a highly respected Court Service which has been that way almost from the beginnings of Probation as detailed in the Probation of Offenders Act 1907. Totally integrated into the Court System allowing them to administer justice and protect the public. Probation was a service geographically distributed in the community operating in support of the Courts as a Court Service.

So that was it. Probation was over for me. I had tried very hard with many other like minded and motivated people to get the Probation Business Processes into a better state. We even organised a group of Trusts covering London, Devon and Cornwall, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, South Yorkshire and the West Midland to establish a common National Business Standards System on the TIBCO Nimbus business mapping product we all had installed and were using daily. Although we tried we got little support from the MoJ in terms of this initiative which was in fact seeded from the bottom of the organisation upwards. Never the right way to get something established. 

The West Midlands had already led on Business Change with its Modelling District Projects but it was only when we combined with the Staffordshire Trust that we gained access to their more advanced use of TIBCO Nimbus which we quickly adopted. Obviously other Trusts had quite independently taken to using TIBCO Nimbus no doubt being targeted by the TIBCO sales force. Whilst we had some MoJ meetings in London where they were impressed by our TIBCO Nimbus efforts, it was never formally adopted and was not included in any MoJ Directives to the Trusts.

I suspect many in Probation may not even be aware of this TIBCO Nimbus initiative taking place in some Trusts. Even within the TIBCO Nimbus active Trusts their own staff were not always aware of its purpose and presence. Not being a subject included in any National Probation Communications for many using it was not seen as a priority. There was certainly no national sign off of the TIBCO Nimbus Business Processes thereby not making them the de facto way of working for everybody. It was a mess. Had it been better established it may have helped us better deflect some of the blitzkrieg attack on our undocumented working practices. We really had nothing concrete or national to defend ourselves with in respect of standardised business processes. With no defences it was inevitable we would lose the battle.

But the one last stand I took supported by my Business Process Design colleague along with surprisingly an RRP Consultant, was to try and convince the Reducing Reoffending Partnership Board to use our Business Processes already mapped in TIBCO Nimbus as a basis for building the new business models brought about by the creation of the CRC’s It made so much sense. This proposal to the RRP CRC Board was dated the 9th July 2015 and I still have a copy I can share on here in the future. I also initiated a brilliant commercial negotiation with TIBCO to virtually have free use of Nimbus for a period to get it established. What was there not to like. But the proposal got rejected by the RRP CRC Board.

The TIBCO Nimbus Servers were torn out of their server racking and sent for scrap. Somewhere I have photos of them lying on the scrap pile representing many years of process design and data entry work. Then beyond belief they started a Business Process Mapping Project to go around collecting all the information again from relevant Probation staff groups and then re mapping it all in Microsoft Visio a product considered very unfriendly for everyday business users being more aligned with the needs of IT Staff.

So to the end of my story at Probation with the CRC RRP making me redundant on 3rd July 2016. Exactly 1 year after our TIBCO Nimbus proposal to the RRP CRC Board had been rejected. My work Nimbus colleague was kept on to continue but without having TIBCO Nimbus and having to return to using Microsoft Visio the objective of installing business systems onto all employee desk tops where they would be used daily by the service was now impossible. My Nimbus work colleague soon left since Business Process Planning was not a priority in the midst of all the firefighting now required to maintain some sort of Probation Service.

Now just to complete the conversation I had with Jim Brown. He said write me a “taster” and I will see if I want to link to it. This is that taster. But included in it is a early High Level Flowchart for use in the West Midlands that I produced way back to illustrate the importance of having a holistic view of all the Business Systems.

The truth is I have many other resources that are now dated like all the original TIBCO Nimbus Process Maps extracted in a PowerPoint format. Along with various other methodologies and techniques we developed and used like iPresentation and iProcess along with Work Instructions. In fact lots of my historic bits and pieces accumulated over 10 years at Probation that may possibly interest probation staff historically or maybe in some cases prove worth reusing today in the HMPPS.

But to be effective though what Probation needs is what my last American Company had which was what they called its own university (Pollak University). In fact it wasn’t a University in our sense of the use of the word meaning a verified academic learning institution. But it was where all product knowledge, manufacturing knowledge, research knowledge, business processes knowledge and computer systems knowledge was documented, co-ordinated, researched and communicated. It had dedicated librarianship, research and training capabilities. Research papers could be submitted and reviewed and so forth. Essentially a “one stop” place for all knowledge and processes within the business entity. So they called it a University. 

Now if this blog got to the MoJ and it triggered them to setup up a “Probation University” that would justify all the 10 years I spent and enjoyed at the National Probation Service. The first thing that needs researching, documenting and standardising and communicating is all the Business Processes. This is about adopting an ideology that Probation can have a common set of Business Processes applied right across all geographical and business areas. To make it happen it needs a champion in this ideology and that champion being in a position at the top with the powers to implement it. There is an argument that computer systems in the future will have built into them workflow principles and this has been accelerated by the AI developments. But until these systems are developed and made available it is vital that all Business Processes are standardised and documented in a user friendly way.

Some may consider the Probation Institute established in 2014 could act like the Probation University I have proposed. My view is it should definitely form part of the Probation University. But a concern might be that once it became MoJ financed would it as a "membership" financed organisation have its independence compromised. I don't see it this way. The membership of the Probation Institute are working at the front line of the Service and their constructive contribution is vital and should be within the proposed Probation University framework. 

But the scope of the Probation University is much larger than that of the Probation Institute. The Probation University defines and drives the operational activities of Probation both staff and systems. I appreciate it's a much used cliche to suggest we should all operate like Amazon and some strong views exist suggesting you cannot apply their methods of effectively shipping goods to essentially the practice of a social science. All I would just say is let an Amazon IT system designer with their keystroke counting audit techniques and workflow engineering skills redesign OASys. The time we waste on OASys could then be spent with our clients (Do we call them clients or offenders these days?) doing our social science best practices more effectively.

Within the Probation University the study of Social and Behavioural Sciences should far exceed the focus on Business and Computer Systems. They are our prime activity. It is what we do working with our clients. So Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology along with an endless list of other subjects that need to be included within the Probation University framework. If this blog post achieved the setting up of a Probation University whilst I am now outside the organisation it would be amazing since I could never achieve it whilst working within the organisation.

Now to share with you a High Level Offender Management Vertical Workflow Map which is now 12 years old covering Offender Management Process Flows (circa 2012) within the Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust. I am sure this could be edited in less than a few hours to accurately represent current HMPPS Probation Business Processes since I suspect much of the supporting documentation (paperwork) has remained unchanged. Although the computer record updating may have changed. I just don't know. Maybe it is a starting point to commencing Business Workflow and Process Mapping. Certainly Indeterminate Prison Sentencing has changed with the removal of IPP's by coincidence in 2012 (As usual just after the map was drawn !!!!) although their removal was from memory not retrospective. If it generates any interest I have another High Level Horizontal Workflow Map I can share showing the relationships between all those parties linked to Probation once again somewhat dated but easily updated. 

Enjoy, 

Banno

Link to High Level Map below.

Once launched use the normal "pinch-to-zoom" gesture to zoom in and zoom out of the PDF to read the small print.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pw4dIYts48SVHQxhE1iKxl5r6eil4RJE/view?usp=sharing

Probation's Journey

The latest Academic Insight paper from HM Probation Inspectorate very succinctly charts the journey 'probation' has found itself on over recent time and how it might yet be restored to something worthwhile following the TR omnishambles, the pathetic justification for which still makes my blood boil. The following is the first of two lengthy extracts, but as always readers are encouraged to read the whole document.   

Professionalism in Probation

Foreword 

HM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth offending services. Academic Insights are aimed at all those with an interest in the evidence base. We commission leading academics to present their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth offending services. 

This report was kindly produced by Dr Matt Tidmarsh, reviewing the literature on ‘professionalism’ and applying it to the probation service. After years of instability, the recent unification of the service provides an opportunity to refocus on the professional status of practitioners. It is vital that there is sufficient recruitment and that staff then benefit from ongoing investment, developing their professional knowledge, expertise and autonomy, so that they are able to deliver a high-quality service. At the same time, the history and culture of probation should be respected, embracing its identity as a relational, collaborative and person-centred service. Practitioners thus need to be empowered to develop positive relationships with people on probation and other key stakeholders. Within our inspections of probation services, we will continue to examine whether staff are being enabled to deliver a high-quality, personalised and responsive service for all people on probation. 

Dr Robin Moore 

Head of Research

2.1 Probation’s professional project 

McWilliams’s (1983, 1985, 1986, 1987) seminal quartet of essays on the professionalisation of probation comes closest to a ‘life history’ (Abbott, 1988) approach to the study of the service as a would-be profession. He documented how, over the first few decades of the twentieth century, the service came to exhibit ideal-typical professional traits. For example, after several decades of ad-hoc provision coordinated by the Church of England, the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 established probation as a public service with a clear mission, to ‘advise, assist, [and] befriend’ – words that constituted an ideology of service premised on relationships with those subject to supervision in the community. Religious influences on practice were gradually displaced by social work knowledge learnt through education and training, which proved the ‘scientific’ basis for autonomy over work delivered with people on probation. That McWilliams (1985, p.260) considered such knowledge, methods, and values the ‘justification for claims of professionalism’ hints at the importance of the acquisition of ideal-typical traits in shaping the service’s professional identity and legitimacy (Tidmarsh, 2022).

Probation’s ‘professional project’ (Larson, 1977) was consolidated in the postwar period, as the service was unequivocally recognised as a profession. The 1962 Morison Report, for example, recognised the probation officer as ‘a professional caseworker, employing in a specialized field, skill which he holds in common with other social workers’ (c.f. Jarvis, 1972, p.66). Given this institutional support, the service continued to expand: it assumed responsibilities for prisoners’ pre-release ‘throughcare’, post-release ‘aftercare’, and community service (Jarvis, 1972). Between 1951 and 1981, the number of full-time, qualified probation officers increased from just over 1,000 to nearly 5,500 while the service’s total caseload grew from 55,000 to approximately 157,000 (McWilliams, 1987). As such, imbued with state support for its knowledge, methods, and values, the probation officer was viewed as: 

‘an independent practitioner, supported and supervised in professional practice by the probation service hierarchy’ (May and Annison, 1998, p.161). 

However, the ideal-typical tenets on which probation’s claims to professionalism rested have, in recent decades, been subjected to considerable challenge. This has occurred against the backdrop of several significant changes, including a more punitive socio-political climate; the rise of risk management practices; and numerous, centralising organisational restructurings oriented towards greater efficiency and accountability. Heightened political and media hysteria over crime (Downes and Morgan, 2007) heralded the emergence of ‘tough on crime’ policies and a significant increase in the prison population (Garland, 2001). As political confidence in the service waned, successive governments targeted the autonomy of practitioners, chief officers, and locally administered services (Robinson et al., 2012). The convergence of performance targets and National Standards (introduced in 1988 and 1992, respectively) and monitored via an intensification of audits have thereby limited practitioners’ ability to exercise discretion (Mair and Burke, 2011). 

Following the growth in those subject to criminal justice supervision, in prison and in the community, risk management practices became entrenched within probation. Following the abolition of social work training requirements for practice in 1995, risk has arguably become the dominant knowledge-base within probation (Tidmarsh, 2021a). While evidence indicates that practitioners have welcomed the greater consistency provided by risk assessment tools such as the Offender Assessment System (Mair et al., 2006; Phillips, 2016), for their use promotes ‘defensible’ decision-making (Kemshall, 1998; see also Academic Insights paper 2021/14) in ways that are not ‘anti-professional’ (Robinson, 2003), pressures to record information have nevertheless detracted from the time available to spend with people on probation (Tidmarsh, 2021b).

Since the turn of the century, the service has undergone numerous restructurings which have sought to enhance central control over services – such that, for staff, organisational change has become ‘a defining characteristic of their professional existence’ (Robinson and Burnett 2007, p.332). And yet, despite changes which have attempted to bring organisational culture into line with prevailing punitive ideology (Robinson and Ugwudike, 2012), probation’s ideology of service has persevered. Mawby and Worrall (2013) have shown that several generations of probation staff are united through a shared value base centred on working with people. Indeed, research has consistently emphasised the durability of ‘probation values’ premised on a belief in the capacity of individuals to change (Deering, 2010; Robinson et al., 2016; Tidmarsh, 2020a). These values remain key to professionalism in probation, especially after the changes wrought by Transforming Rehabilitation.

2.2 Transforming Rehabilitation: the ‘diminution of the probation profession’ 

As argued above, ‘professionalism’ was integral to the justifications given for the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. This was primarily expressed in terms of professional discretion: top-down, bureaucratic state provision of services, it was contended, contributed to ineffective practice and the spiralling costs of justice, as practitioners were focused on meeting performance targets. Competing for services, by contrast, would spark the ‘innovation’ required to reduce reoffending and render probation more efficient (MoJ, 2010, 2013). The desire ‘to unlock… professionalism’ (MoJ, 2010, p.9) to improve performance thus sought to bring together the interests of diverse groups – the public, private providers, practitioners, and people on probation – with appeals to the superiority of the market over the state. 

However, Transforming Rehabilitation merely continued the decades-long challenge to the ideal-typical tenets on which professionalism in probation was grounded – such that, in her final report as Chief Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey lamented the ‘deplorable diminution of the probation profession’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a, p.3). For example, the manner in which staff were allocated after the reforms spoke to the Government’s view on professional knowledge, education, and training in the private sector (Tidmarsh, 2020b), with most qualified probation officers being shifted to the publicly-owned National Probation Service (NPS) – which was presented as a specialist body, ‘drawing on the expertise and experience of its staff… and managing those who pose the greatest risk of harm to the public’ (MoJ, 2013, p.4). Many experienced staff also left the service in protest at the reforms, leaving a much diminished ‘pool of collective professional knowledge’ (Kirton and Guillaume, 2019, p.12). That less qualified staff in the privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) were doing work formerly undertaken by qualified officers (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a) meant the boundaries between Probation Service Officer and Probation Officer roles were blurred, part of an attempt to render services more ‘efficient’ through cheaper labour (Tidmarsh, 2020b). As such, the NPS were perceived, by many in the service and the wider criminal justice infrastructure, as the superior organisation in a ‘two-tier’ system (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2017). 

Relationships between staff and people on probation were not ‘sufficiently protected’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a, p.9) after services were split. Some staff in Robinson et al.’s (2016, p.167) ethnography of the transition to employment in a CRC reflected on ‘the pains of separation from service users with whom they had built good working relationships but who were now in the process of being transferred to the NPS’. Staff-client relationships were further exacerbated by the financial strains under which CRCs operated. Initial caseload estimates suggested that CRCs would supervise 80 per cent of people on probation, but the reality was closer to 60 per cent – in part because concerns over the CRCs’ quality of services meant fewer were assessed as low-to-medium risk (NAO, 2019). The subsequent funding shortfalls resulted in ‘substantial reductions’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a, p.74) in staffing in the CRCs. Accordingly, while organisational caseloads decreased, individual workloads increased (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2017). One such implication is a loss of professional autonomy: practitioners in the CRCs were focused on meeting the ‘fee for service’ targets through which providers derived the majority of their income, reducing the time available to build relationships with people on probation (Tidmarsh, 2020b, 2021b).

Relationships with other organisations also deteriorated under Transforming Rehabilitation. HM Inspectorate of Probation and HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2017) found that ‘Through the Gate’ provision was over-reliant on signposting to other agencies, particularly in the voluntary sector. Both the NPS and CRCs referred to such agencies, many of whom were external to supply chains, without being financially obligated to contribute to their delivery (NAO, 2019). This disincentivised many smaller voluntary organisations from involvement in probation while entrenching a ‘tick-box culture’ of monitoring (Clinks, 2018, p.24) among those that continued to deliver services, as downward pressures inhibited their ability to build meaningful relationships with clients and partners. The financial instability that characterised partnership working with the voluntary sector demonstrates how Transforming Rehabilitation damaged probation’s function as a ‘broker’ between different social spheres (Senior et al., 2016). Dominey (2019) conceptualises probation relationships through notions of ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ supervision: 

• ‘thick’ supervision refers to a productive relationship with the person on probation, embedded within the community 

• ‘thin’ supervision is predominantly office-based, with poor links to the community. 

Dominey concluded that, if probation is underpinned by networks of relationships, both among people and between people and organisations, then the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms pushed supervision in the CRCs ‘in the direction of thin supervision’ (Dominey, 2019, p.298; see also Tidmarsh, 2021b). 

The contractual pressures faced by CRCs thus created barriers to realising an ideology of service in probation. Indeed, the ability to build relationships – with clients and other stakeholders – is at the heart of probation staff understandings of professionalism (Tidmarsh, 2021a). However, both supervisor-client and probation-community relations were diminished nationally as a result of Transforming Rehabilitation (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a). The practitioners in Tidmarsh’s (2020a) ethnography of a CRC, for example, struggled to reconcile client-centred values with caseload pressures and a heightened focus on performance targets. These ‘thin’ practices also permeated intra-organisation relationships, thereby impacting practitioners’ capacity to develop professionally. Staff in Coley’s (2020, p.237) study of a CRC valued supervision time with Senior Probation Officers; however, the combination of caseload pressures and staff shortages meant that staff supervision time was often ‘compressed, offering less space for individual and personalised activities’. Likewise, in the NPS, Phillips et al. (2016) observed the ‘relentless’ emotional impact of working exclusively with high-risk offenders, for which practitioners did not receive enough organisational support or opportunities to reflect meaningfully on practice. 

As such, Transforming Rehabilitation further undermined the wide range of relationships on which professionalism in probation is founded. Professional knowledge was lost in the CRCs, eroded by an enforced contractual focus on targets. An ideology of service persists within probation, but the convergence of increased workloads and the financial consequences of a failure to conform to performance metrics impeded the autonomy to enact such values. The ways in which Transforming Rehabilitation failed to enhance professionalism in probation raises questions as to how the service can reclaim its ideology of service and the frameworks needed to recapture meaningful relationships with people on probation and other stakeholders. The next section, then, advocates for a relational, person-centred, and co-productive approach to the future of services.

to be continued

So, How Did It Go?

With the dreadful 'Probation Day' thankfully out of the way for the second year, it's probably as well if we have a look at the recent assessment of 'Project Reunification' by the rather grandly-titled Institute for Government. We're only at stage one remember and there's almost certainly a whole lot more pain and angst coming down the line for a beleaguered service that many would say is rapidly becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Of course it was a world-leading Gold Standard service only a few years ago and before the politicians got involved.      

Reunification of probation services

Introduction In 2019, the government announced it was bringing the management of medium- and low-risk offenders in England and Wales back in house. The decision followed extensive criticism of the decision to outsource these services in 2015 and is the fourth major restructuring of probation services in 20 years, two of which have taken place in the last eight years alone. This case study looks at the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) preparations for the reunification of services and their transition back into the department, highlighting successes, challenges and areas of focus for the longer-term improvement of probation services.

--oo00oo--

Leadership and engagement 

With real problems associated with TR, having the right programme leadership for reunification was an important decision. Whether by design or not, the two most senior leaders responsible for the programme – SRO Jim Barton and director general Amy Rees – were both involved in TR. Learning from its failures no doubt coloured their approach – particularly with respect to engaging providers, as we discuss further below – and helped avoid a repeat of many of the same mistakes. In addition, their understanding of probation systems, processes and culture played a notable part in helping the programme navigate a complex landscape. 

A consistent theme during our research interviews was MoJ’s commitment to open dialogue and engagement. This included visits to providers, forums with staff and regular communications, all with the aim of making the changes as smooth as possible for staff and providers alike. With more than 7,000 staff across 54 affected organisations, the programme could not have been delivered effectively without a relentless focus on business change and an approach that was inclusive, bringing together the diverse stakeholders. The programme benefited from the fact that, unlike TR – which was almost universally unpopular from the off, being literally and figuratively divisive – unification was a change that many across the probation sector wanted to see. They were therefore more responsive to MoJ’s efforts to communicate and engage. Notwithstanding this, and some mixed feedback from HMIP’s survey, it is clear that MoJ set out with a genuine intention to put engagement at the centre of its programme. Its choice paid dividends. 

CRC innovations 

A key concern of providers when reunification was announced was that the innovations developed by CRCs would be lost. These concerns were valid, given the relatively limited autonomy in the civil service. And, to some extent, they turned out to be well founded – but not in the ways expected. 

The decision to jettison innovations such as case management systems was as much attributable to the tight timetable as to the restrictions of the civil service. The programme SRO acknowledged that these could have been integrated had there been more time, though this could have been a lengthy process. As it was, the need for speed meant taking a more rudimentary approach, and the path of least resistance was followed. Further, some of the innovations that were kept were largely serendipitous. For example, contact centres in Norfolk were retained partly because the contracts were too complicated to unpick in the time available. 

Overall, despite the clear commitment of MoJ to a ‘merger’, it was probably inevitable that the cultures and working practices would lean towards the NPS rather than the CRCs, as the Probation Service, like the NPS, would be in the civil service. 

Commissioning of services 

The central commercial decision for MoJ was its commissioning mechanism. It put effort into ensuring there was strong, early engagement to generate an active market of potential providers. However, despite representations to the contrary from providers, its Dynamic Framework was complex and made it difficult for smaller providers to qualify. As a result, some gave up trying to qualify, while others had to divert front-line resources to the tender processes, impacting front-line services. The approach was partly attributable to the need for speed. Faced with a challenging timetable, MoJ opted for a procurement approach that was in keeping with previous, large commercial arrangements that better suited large national providers, rather than developing a new approach that would have better supported smaller and local providers. MoJ also opted not to use grants, a key demand of the voluntary sector, for essentially the same reasons. 

Both these decisions were incorrect. More focus from the start on whether the Dynamic Framework was proportionate and fit for use by all participants would have saved time on communications and engagement as the process developed, and would have delivered a more diverse, engaged market of providers for Day 1 services. 

Richard Oldfield’s report on the Dynamic Framework, coupled with feedback, has resulted in MoJ now developing criteria and guidance on the use of grants, in partnership with Clinks. MoJ also told us that, despite challenges with the Dynamic Framework, 74% of contracts on Day 1 went to voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations. This has since grown further, and the Dynamic Framework is subject to ongoing review and refinement. 

Workforce management 

MoJ’s core message to staff was that the change was a merger, not a takeover. With TR still casting a shadow over reunification, this was the right approach. But MoJ’s desire to ‘live and breathe’ this motto, while admirable, led to difficulties. 

An early decision was to carry out a job evaluation and grading support (JEGS) exercise: a process by which each new post’s grade in the Probation Service was assessed independently. While this undoubtedly reinforced the message that the Probation Service was, essentially, a new organisation being built from scratch, it did lead to unpredictable outcomes, with some CRC staff matched into roles at grades lower than expected. This, in turn, would leave some staff on lower pay after the three-year pay protection agreed for them in the National Agreement with Probation Trade Unions came to an end. Similarly, the emphasis on a new corporate identity led to some staff having inflated expectations that unification would make an instant and tangible difference to their work, when the reality was that these changes were simply a first step. While MoJ was generally excellent at communicating throughout the process, it could have better managed expectations about the immediate impact the transition would have on working conditions and service performance. 

A recurring theme in our research into the reunification of probation was the high volumes of cases CRC staff had to deal with post-unification. CRC staff arrived having to hold on to their existing cases until a new IT system could be developed to accept them. This lack of new, integrated IT capability on Day 1, rendered impossible by the aggressive timetable, was sub-optimal. It led to unnecessary pressure on some staff and this, in turn, likely coloured the perspectives of those who already felt ‘second class’. Staff shortfalls contributed to the caseload pressures, too. CRCs were required to freeze recruitment for up to three months prior to unification to minimise the overhead of onboarding and then transitioning further staff. While understandable, this led to critical gaps in the workforce. 

The future 

The probation reform programme will be formally wound up at the end of 2022. But the longer-term programme of work to improve the performance of probation services has only just begun. The structural changes of 2021 are the platform on which deeper and difficult changes will be built. That will be a lengthy journey. 

Transition highlighted several themes that will play an important part in that journey. For MoJ’s long-term ambitions for probation to be successful, the following areas should be focussed on. 

Operational performance 

A central criticism of TR was the poor performance of CRCs. Although performance improved over time in some CRCs, TR could not completely shake the perception of poor service delivery. 

Current probation performance is ‘not great’ with four ‘Inadequate’ and two ‘Requires Improvement’ Inspectorate reports. To some extent, this is to be expected, given wider public service performance27 (post-Covid-19, in particular28), existing challenges in probation and the post-transition bumps. But the success of unification will ultimately be judged by the performance of the new Probation Service. Without swift action that leads to better services, the reform programme risks being added to the long list of unsuccessful historical restructures. 

Recruitment 

By June 2022, 1,518 new probation officers had been recruited, but staffing numbers still remain below target: as of May 2022, there were 1,106 vacancies across the Probation Service.29 The government aims to recruit a further 1,500 officers in 2022/23. If it meets this target, it will be fully staffed. But this does not allow for staff attrition or increased demand on probation services. Sustained investment is needed in the years to come. The government previously announced an additional £155m for probation services, which, while helpful, may not be sufficient given the competition from other public sector employers, such as the police and Border Force, as well as the pressure from staffing groups to increase pay in line with high levels of inflation.  

The government’s recent announcement of an arbitrary reduction of the Civil Service by 91,000 will also make it more difficult – though not impossible – to secure the necessary agreements to recruit the necessary numbers beyond 2022/23, particularly after having already absorbed over 7,000 CRC staff. 

Cultural integration 

MoJ’s tagline for the unification of probation was that it was a ‘merger, not a takeover’. But mergers require cultural and contractual cohesion. MoJ is still in the process of trying to harmonise the terms and conditions for some 700 staff who worked for parent companies or subcontractors. This will be an important step towards proper workforce integration, without which true transformation and effective delivery of probation services will be difficult to realise.

The Probation Treadmill

I notice that Russell Webster recently highlighted some research by Matt Cracknell and published in the European Journal of Probation. Trying to precis or summarise any academic research is a skilled business and Russell's three minute read is to be commended, but to be honest the ground covered just brings the whole TR omnishambolic nightmare back to mind and the anger means I can't stop myself quoting at length. Yes, I know it's too long and won't play well on a mobile, but; but I just can't stop myself:-

Running on the treadmill: Practitioner experiences of mass supervision

Abstract

This article explores the impacts that the addition of individuals serving short sentences has had on daily practice and working culture for probation workers. These practitioner perspectives are explored through the lens of ‘mass supervision’, providing a new insight into the harms and implications for its inherent deskilling qualities and constraints. This empirical research underlines three main themes related to the harms caused by mass supervision: firstly, that it inhibits innovative practice; secondly, that it necessitates a more limited model of supervision that undermines practitioner autonomy and the reach and scope of the supervisory relationship; and thirdly, that mass supervision corrodes the values of probation staff, leaving many experienced practitioners struggling ethically, practically and emotionally. The experience of mass supervision is compared to a treadmill by several practitioners and employed as a metaphor to analyse practice in the confines of mass supervision as generic, monotonous and relentless.

Findings

Mass supervision and the undermining of innovative practice

The MoJ promoted TR as an opportunity for renewed creativity and innovation, where CRCs would be free from the constraints of centralised top-down management, bureaucracy and report writing (MoJ, 2014a). This led to the hope that CRCs would have the most scope to undertake ‘edgework’ in practice (Burke and Collett, 2015). Worrall (2015) describes edgework as the opportunity for probation workers to put their skills to the test and have creative freedom in their supervisory relationships. One of the principal means of innovating probation work in the case study area involved re-organising the areas’ entire caseload (approximately 20,000 individuals) into five categories, with practitioners working within one of the five cohorts:

1. Women
2. Young Men (aged 18–24)
3. Adult Men (25–49)
4. Older Men (50+)
5. Mental Health

However, there were several failures regarding the cohort model. Principally, the inconsistency in caseloads between the different cohorts. The mental health cohort had a very small number of individuals (one business manager estimated less than 90 for the entire CRC), which barely justified its status as a separate category, whereas the adult male cohort became the most populous cohort. One CRC business manager estimated that contained within the adult male category, were:

About 70% of all service users. It just became this generic catch-all they got thrown into (CRC business manager).

The bulk of the total CRC caseload ended up in one cohort and the majority of this work was labelled as ‘generic’. Frequently, it was those serving short sentences who would be penned into this large catch-all cohort. However, these were still service users that required a lot of resources, time and effort, but due to the large cohort these individuals were allocated to, there often was not sufficient time for the probation worker to build relationships or address all needs. This demonstrates the consequences that ‘aggregation’ (McNeill, 2018) can entail, as individuals subject to this cohort became an indivisible mass.

Furthermore, the cohort system reinforced the encultured thinking that ‘resources follow risk’, and demonstrates the arbitrary nature of how risk is quantified and has been used to divide probation work. principally as the needs of the short sentence population often did not translate into an identified high risk of harm, this could leave CRC practitioners to manage this population alone. Reflecting the views of other respondents, a probation officer explained how individuals subject to short sentences did not attract the additional support that higher-risk individuals might receive:

In general short sentence people tend to be more problematic than higher-risk people, you tend to do more work with them. With a higher risk person there tends to be more agencies you’re working with. With the lower-risk people, they tend to have no job, no home, so there’s a lot more practical work that you’ve got to do. (Probation officer).

The extent of the ‘practical work’ needed with this cohort presented as a particular challenge and contributed towards the difficulties probation workers faced in their supervision of individuals on short sentences. The multi-systemic issues that many individuals serving a short sentence presented with, labelled this cohort as particularly unique and challenging within the system, requiring unique levels of support in turn. However, simultaneously the short sentence was often the most common sentence on practitioners’ caseloads, making them extraordinary in needs, yet ordinary in numbers. This was compounded by the lack of resources the CRC had to adequately address these needs, relegating the short sentence cohort as an undesirable figure of practice. Many probation workers outlined a perceived difference in approach to cases within the NPS and practice in the CRC, again drawing distinctions through the lens of risk, for example one officer noted:

It is a lot harder because NPS clients have access to a lot more resources. They have approved premises and there’s a lot more planning in regards to their release. Because they often have to go through parole and because they’re higher risk, people want plans to be in place. Whereas for our clients on shorter sentences, they don’t necessarily get that, it’s more like, ‘ok you’ve done your 6 weeks, off you go’ and that’s it. (Probation officer).

Practitioners often distinguished the differences in attitude and approach to resettlement for individuals serving short sentences, from those serving longer sentences with the NPS. This perception was borne out of two distinct measurements in facilitating resettlement; resources and time. CRC practitioners held a view that NPS service users retained more value in terms of resources, because they were assessed as higher risk of harm. This included specialist and dedicated planning pre-release, in order to mitigate risks in the community. However, practitioners felt that individuals serving short sentences did not receive the same level of support, despite their high re-offending levels, because of their lower risk of harm assessment and the sheer volumes within practitioner caseloads.

The longer sentences of NPS clients, also afforded these practitioners more time to form resettlement plans and to build a professional relationship. However, the brevity of the short sentence meant this was not a possibility and CRC practitioners complained of very limited timeframes to put resettlement plans into place. This distinction further highlighted the presumed disparity between the CRC and NPS and meant practitioners were constrained in what they were able to achieve with these service users as the support and time was not available. This further contributed towards the devaluing of the work, the staff and the people being supervised.

In this context, working with individuals on short sentences, with their array of attendant needs, mass volumes and high rates of re-offending, exemplify the increasingly degraded ‘dirty work’ (Mawby and Worrall, 2013:8) (meaning work that is necessary for society, but is becoming devalued and viewed as unpleasant) of CRC practice in comparison to the high risk and high-value work of the NPS. Within this impaired and under-resourced practice, many serving short sentences were left to churn and recycle through practitioners’ caseloads. Practitioners seemed unsure of how best to support these individuals and provide adequate resettlement support to stop the revolving door of re-offending, further demonstrating that risk does not always represent complexity in the work that is done with a service user, this was illustrated by one officer:

I’ve got one at the moment… Soon as he goes in, he comes out, soon as he comes out he’s back in. He came out again last week and in less than a week he’s back in again. That’s because the licence period isn’t long enough and there isn’t much you can do on it. (Probation officer).

The exasperation of working with individuals serving short sentences and their relative unattractiveness as a type of sentence to effectively engage had also been realised on a wider level by the managerial team of the case study CRC. A partnership manager outlined the difficulties the CRC had in effectively managing this group, the uncertainty regarding what worked to reduce re-offending and the negative impact of the inability to achieve any tangible results in reductions in reconvictions:

This service user group has the highest and most prolific offender characteristic set, 60-70 previous offences sometimes. disproportionally most of the re-offending is coming from this group, which has been over and over through the prison revolving door and no one can ever really figure out what to do with them… I don’t think any of these CRCs have really found their attempts at being innovative have been that fruitful. I think most CRCs are just trying to retract a little bit. (CRC partnership manager).

The inability to ‘figure out what to do’ regarding the engagement and management of the resettlement needs of short sentence individuals, resulted in a curtailment of the innovative approach previously envisioned for the CRC, with a return to a more prescriptive and bureaucratic system to manage the demands of mass supervision.

The retraction of innovative practice: adapting to the realities of the short sentence caseload and mass supervision

The realities of caseload numbers and the inherent difficulties of managing the short sentence cohort, meant that the ambitious plans for autonomous staff operating away from central government oversight was replaced with a more centrally accountable administrative system. The model that replaced it was reported by practitioners as having led to an overtly office-based and desk-bounded administrative staffing culture, ultimately serving to restrict practitioner autonomy. This system ensured that officers were primarily tasked with producing timely statistical inputs and ensuring all IT data systems were accurately maintained. These activities took precedence over meaningful engagement with service users.

One of the primary indicators which encapsulated the re-configuration of the practitioner role as administratively focused, was through the implementation of a planning and engagement system called plan, meet and record or PMR. This included: planning the meeting with the service user, meeting the service user and then recording the meeting. All three parts should have taken place within a 1 hour window to ensure practitioners time was used productively. The use of this system indicated a move towards efficiency as a priority in CRC practice. This further signifies the prevalence of entrenched managerialism in probation practice (Tidmarsh, 2021).

A consequence of the implementation of the PMR 1 hour window, was its restrictions upon the scope and remit of the supervisory relationship, limiting it to a highly regimented and transactional practice, which rarely provided opportunities to explore anything beyond signposting to address immediate practical problems. This resulted in relegating the importance and centrality of supervision within probation practice and ensured supervision became a more clinical undertaking. For example a PSO provided an overview of what supervision sessions usually consisted of with her service users and what the aims and scope of these sessions were:

See where they are, see if they’ve had their housing sorted out, see if they’ve had their benefits sorted out, see if there’s issues with their accommodation, see if they are attending their appointments with the drugs agency and they are engaging. (Probation service officer).

Many of the individuals interviewed also shared similar experiences of supervision practice. This has often left the relational aspect of supervision to be replaced with a more distant experience, where the practitioner operated a series of pulleys and levers to ensure the service user was redirected towards the most appropriate agency. By concentrating on practical issues and breaking resettlement down into a disparate set of needs to be met, important elements of skilled practice, such as the motivational and therapeutic aspects of supervision became neglected. These are aspects that Maguire and Raynor (2017) contend are crucial for effective resettlement.

The priorities of the supervising officer could shift away from facilitating meaningful and long term change, towards fulfilling a far more modest set of administrative inputs and processes, ensuring the basic management of the case. This altered supervision to a means to an end to meet central MoJ targets. The signposting system also limited the role of the practitioner, making their former position as an agent of change redundant and re-configured their role into a broker and facilitator that redirected the service user to the most appropriate resettlement expert. This served to foster a sense of detachment between the service user and practitioner, which did not provide a positive grounding for a meaningful therapeutic relationship. This further demonstrates inherent harms caused by the ‘aggregation’ of mass supervision (McNeill, 2018), which narrows and reduces the role of the probation worker and the importance of the supervisory relationship.

It is within this context that PSOs became a more central part of CRC practice. Canton and Dominey (2018: 273) describe PSOs as ‘paraprofessionals’ who do not have the training and qualifications or hold the same responsibilities as probation officers. In the case study office, TR also oversaw a realignment of job roles and the case administrator role was abolished; these former administrators were retained as PSOs. This reflected the new realities and shifting priorities of CRC practice, away from the relational aspects of engagement and towards a tightly constricted and standardised processing model of management. It is within this model that the former case administrator staff were perceived as best placed to efficiently perform these new core requirements. Several practitioners outlined concerns regarding the proficiency of some of the new PSOs. Reflecting this, a business manager outlined the lack of relational and supervisory skills that the former administration staff possessed:

They had 2 weeks of training and that’s it, they hadn’t had any training as far as the essential skills of probation. The training is just the bare minimum and they’re asked to adhere to these standards, these timescales. They wanted staff to be managers of stuff, rather than engaging service users because that’s just so much more time consuming. (CRC business manager).

Here, training was focused on the basic procedures of managing cases and instilling the importance of timescales and standards, reflecting the back to basics core priorities of the case study CRC. Canton and Dominey (2018) assert that probation training can serve to sustain and transmit probation organisational culture. However, the emerging administrative top-down culture of the case study CRC no longer required the training of practitioners to be skilled in the ethos of engagement and rehabilitation. This was because it was not a core requirement of the CRC practice. This could create a culture of practitioners less willing (or able) to be flexible in their approach or focused on building a professional relationship.

Many practitioners, particularly those with extensive experience pre-TR, struggled to adapt to the new realities of practice in the CRC. For these experienced officers, this caused tension between personal values and the organisational imperatives of the restrictive CRC framework. Numerous officers in the case study CRC articulated a struggle to maintain a way of working which was consistent with a set of values and beliefs centred on rehabilitation and engagement. These values often seemed incompatible with the new administrative and technical imperatives of mass supervision. Robinson (2003) refers to this process as ‘technical proleterianization’ which relates to the practitioners loss of control over the labour process and prescribed and routine practices that are imposed on probation workers.

The struggle of maintaining ‘old school’ probation values, within the new realities of mass supervision

Many practitioners articulated a concern that the operational imperatives of the CRC, including the extensive caseloads of officers and the resulting data inputting administrative processes, seriously curtailed the ideals of the therapeutic principles of supervision. Instead, there was an expectation to undertake tick-box work and appointments were formulated into a conveyer-belt of continuous limited check-in appointments in order to meet the large volumes of cases that practitioners were tasked to supervise. A business manager explained how this operated in practice:

We’re forced into a model now of everyone gets seen for 15 minutes, then the next one, then the next one. That’s because of the volumes we have. We had to reduce staff and so everybody has huge cases now and nobody has time for anything else beyond tick-boxing. Even though a lot want to do more of the therapeutic engagement stuff, actually working with someone to help change their lives. That’s why a lot of them got into it in the first place. (CRC business manager).

The realities of mass supervision necessitate a conveyer-belt model of case management which had severely limited and standardised supervision into a one size fits all framework. Within this model, probation practitioners with experience pre-TR struggled to adapt to these new realities and faced considerable barriers to maintaining an ethos conducive to their values and beliefs. Experienced officers outlined some of these challenges, as the current conditions of CRC practice enforced limitations within which practitioners must conform in order to operate. For one officer, this meant limiting the scope of probation appointments, which he worried would harm the value of supervision and inhibit trust and communication with the service users on his caseload:

I used to see everyone for an hour. Because that was the ethos of how you work with them. But now, it’s just not possible. It’s hard for me and a lot of colleagues to change the way we work. My training was about rehabilitation and now you’re telling me I’ve got to work differently. (Probation officer).

Other experienced practitioners in the case study CRC, including a PSO with over 14 years’ experience, also appeared to struggle with this conflict between the new practice model and the value base of traditional probation training. The PSO articulated a struggle where the day-to-day realities of CRC practice conflicted with his value base and even inhibited his motivations for the job:

You’ve got certain targets that you need to meet. They say on one hand to spend less time with the service user, but also you still need to produce quality work and it’s just not possible. I’m from the old school where I feel like I need to do quality work with people. These are people’s lives we’re dealing with. I want to go home in the evening and say ‘you know what, I did something good’. (Probation service officer).

Several experienced practitioners outlined a struggle to make practice meaningful and fulfilling. They felt restricted in their ability to affect change and this led in some instances to dissatisfaction with the job. This struggle existed in a system of practice where service users’ needs were secondary to practice imperatives. Their realities and issues were subsequently reduced to a series of needs identified in tick-box risk assessments, which the practitioner monitored and managed in 15 min check-in sessions and then portioned these issues off to an appropriate expert. This indicates that the aggregating features of mass supervision frustrated and dissatisfied these experienced probation workers and demonstrates that there is a burden felt not just by service users, but also the practitioners who are responsible for their supervision. Fenton (2015: 1415) in her study of criminal justice social workers in Scotland refers to this as ‘ethical stress’, which is generated by the inability of workers to base their practice on social work values.

The relational value of supervision was clearly still central to several practitioners practice and one officer referred to himself as ‘old school’ probation, viewing probation practice as a vocation that placed importance on the individual and making a positive change. In this respect, these practitioners’ experiences and value base were in line with what Burke et al. (2017) term the ‘marooned’. However, increasingly the case study CRC leaves limited space for probation workers who exuded ‘old school’ probation values. Instead, the realities of mass supervision are more predisposed towards the more pragmatic and adaptable individuals who were more office-bound, comfortable with ICT systems dominating their working practice and ambivalent about offender engagement. It was these individuals that better fit the needs and requirements of mass supervision.

In this context, ‘old school’ probation values and practices were struggling to survive and experienced officers felt uncomfortable in adapting to this new culture of practice, as it conflicted with their values. This resulted in experienced practitioners becoming part of a marginalised ‘probation diaspora’ (Burke et al., 2017: 194) who were expected to conform and adapt to these new realities. This ongoing struggle took place against the more adaptable probation practitioners who had not been exposed to probation practice pre-TR and were comfortable operating within the existing managerialist target culture.

Running on the treadmill: Conceptualising mass supervision

Commenting on the effects of a target-based culture on CRC practice, then HM Chief Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey (2019: 3) stated that ‘CRCs are understandably focused on meeting those transaction-based targets. They are kept very busy, doing that. Many are running to keep still. Running on the treadmill’. The metaphor of ‘the treadmill’ had also been used by various practitioners in the case study area to describe the nature of their work.

A conventional definition of a treadmill would describe it as a machine powered by a conveyer-belt, commonly used to run, walk or climb at a controlled and measured pace whilst staying in the same place. Unlike conventional running, this activity lacks any conventional end-point. It is often critiqued as a monotonous and generic activity not requiring any particular skill. The use of the treadmill also takes place in an individualised ‘atomised space’, where the human is reduced to ‘machinelike processes’ (Greif, 2016: 360). However, in this context, the treadmill is used here as a fitting metaphor to identify the relentless, yet monotonous and often repetitive nature of mass supervision. The treadmill encompasses the conveyer-belt of repetitive assessments, standardisations and target hitting data-inputs. It is used to explain the frustrations of constantly working to keep up, but not achieving any significant progress or tangible end-result from the often exhaustive work. The treadmill metaphor helps to describe the atomised nature of supervision practice, which has become disconnected from its intended relational and therapeutic meaning, to become a less skilled practice. The treadmill also denotes the constraints placed on practitioners, where practice was no longer allowed to deviate from the pre-determined path laid out in front of them. Finally, the treadmill represents the increasingly generic and de-skilled nature of the job.

A probation officer used the treadmill metaphor as a way to describe the almost frantic nature of her daily practice, constantly working to keep up, but feeling like she was not able to undertake any meaningful work or achieve any tangible outcomes. This could be a frustrating and often futile experience:

I’m trying to do everything on a treadmill. They’re just in and out and it can be frustrating as you can’t do any meaningful work with those that might need it. Those with the shorter sentences you’re always on the treadmill - if they want someone met at the gate, if they need an appointment and support for housing if they need their benefits started. You’re constantly on the go of trying to make sure each person sees everyone that they need to see, whether it means anything to them or not. (Probation officer).

For many practitioners work was paradoxically generic and de-skilled, as it was simultaneously exhaustive and relentless. In this respect, it was the extensive needs of individuals serving short sentences, combined with the external pressures of high volume caseloads and meeting targets, which inhibited and devalued CRC practice into a treadmill. Practitioners were rarely able to identify any positive achievements or end-results with the short sentence cohort, as the limited time and space did not allow for creative or meaningful skilled work, set outside of the limited managerialist parameters and pressures. Exemplifying the views of other practitioners, a PSO outlined her experiences of running on the treadmill. She captured the lack of autonomy and agency in being able to provide meaningful support for individuals serving short sentences. Instead, the relentless levels of work leave the PSO just trying to keep up with her workload:

When it comes to really short-term sentences, we don’t have time. We have really big caseloads, we’ve got to get around everyone…When you think you’ve cleared it, a whole new heap comes on, it’s just continuous.(cracknell, 2018) (Probation service officer).

Discussion: The future of probation practice in the era of mass supervision; How do we get off the treadmill

This article has sought to make an empirical contribution to our understanding of ‘mass supervision’ and how its impacts reach beyond the type of supervision that service users are receiving, but also directly effects probation workers, who suffer ethically, practically and emotionally from a relentless persistence to do more with less. This research has also highlighted a discrepancy between the level of need and complexity of the short sentence cohort, and the inadequate time and resources practitioners are provided to undertake effective work with this group. The inability to provide support beyond routinized and technical work, has serious detrimental consequences. Indeed, the Probation Inspectorate (HMI Probation, 2020) found that 40% of serious further offences came from CRC service users. This demonstrates the significance of this work and the dangers of not properly equipping staff with the time and space to build relationships with people to protect the public, when scaling up supervision to a new group.

Returning again to McNeill’s (2018) understanding of mass supervision and aggregation, this research underlines the consequences for the mass processing of individuals, demonstrating that alongside curtailing innovation and limiting the probation worker role, it further corrodes the values of many officers. This can have serious negative outcomes to the service, and serves to undermine public protection and rehabilitation.

This article focuses on practice in one probation area, at one particular point of time. As such, further research is required in order to develop a national picture of what may be occurring at the frontline in other areas. However, empirical research on TR demonstrates an emerging pattern of considerable constraints on effective practice in multiple areas of modern probation. This includes the ‘relentless’ nature of high-risk work in the NPS (Phillips et al., 2016); the increased growth of standardised office-based work in the CRC (Tidmarsh, 2021); the ‘McDonaldization’ of court-based work (Robinson, 2017); the challenges to supervision practice (Dominey, 2019; Robinson and Dominey, 2019); how payment-by-results has centralised practice, inhibited practitioner autonomy and innovation and entrenched a ‘box-ticking’ culture (Tidmarsh, 2020); and an interlinking set of work-based harms caused by TR and the wider conditions of austerity (Walker et al., 2019). Collectively, these findings suggest that the impacts of ‘mass supervision’ became a structural issue for probation practice during TR, and that the Government should be held accountable if staff are not provided the means to provide meaningful and effective support.

The recent reunification of the probation service provides a unique opportunity to re-imagine probation practice into a framework that places the relational aspects of probation as central to practice. The recent HMPPS, Target Operating Model for Probation Services in England and Wales (2021) outlines three ways that could potentially mitigate the harms of mass supervision: the ‘probation workforce programme’; the ‘short sentence function’ and a ‘national culture implementation plan’.

Firstly, a ‘probation workforce programme’ has been implemented, with plans to recruit an additional 1000 new probation officers. A central aim of this programme is to bring caseloads down by 20% (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2021) to ensure officers across the service have sustainable caseloads. However, it will take time and resources to recruit and train these new officers, so it will certainly not be an instant solution. Indeed, it is estimated that it will take until 2023 to reach this aim, and initial caseload allocations in the newly reunified service have been described as ‘enormous and unworkable’ (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2021: 35). Furthermore, it is important that when these new staff are recruited, that they are properly supported in order to help retention. To address this a peer support programme is being implemented but does not appear to be fully utilised yet (Ibid).

Secondly, the new operating model has also designed a specialist ‘short sentence function’, where each probation region will have a dedicated team that works with individuals serving sentences of 10 months or less. These teams promise to promote a way of working that values intensive community work, alongside a flexible and responsive approach and building a trusting relationship (Insights, 2021). Notwithstanding the difficulties of achieving this with an inherently complex and challenging group – often distrustful of probation services (Trebilcock, 2011), it is important that the short sentence teams do not become a generic catch-all as we saw in the case study area, and that the practitioners who work within these teams are provided with the time, space and skills to work effectively with individuals subject to short sentences.

Thirdly, the model outlines a ‘national culture implementation plan’, which aims to ensure concerns around the fractured relations between CRC and NPS staff caused by TR are addressed. The model highlights professionalism as a central theme in staff development and seeks to implement Professional Standards alongside a professional register framework of probation practice, in order to safeguard these standards. The model also promotes a new integrated programme of training – however, it does not specify if staff who are migrating from CRCs – particularly those with no practice experience pre-TR – will receive adequate training to ensure they can work with a wider variety of clients.

Although these reforms should be viewed with cautious optimism as a means to promote the probation value base, it remains to be seen if this alone will be enough to help practitioners to step off the treadmill. Indeed, the most important factor for a sustainable probation service is to now provide a period of sustainability for the service after the numerous penal turns it has faced, and provide practitioners with the space, time and skills to provide meaningful change to the individuals they supervise.

Matt Cracknell

An Opportunity

For those either living and/or working in London, here's an opportunity to have your say on what you think of the 'new look' probation service:- 

Probation in London

The London Assembly Police and Crime Committee has launched an investigation into the London Probation Service.

We will consider how the London Probation Service is working in partnership with statutory agencies and voluntary sector organisations since reunification, to support people under probation supervision and reduce their risk of reoffending.

Background

In June 2021, the London Probation Service was established, signalling a major change in how probation services are delivered across London. The creation of the London Probation Service was part of wider reforms to the delivery of probation services across England and Wales.

These reforms brought to an end the previous Transforming Rehabilitation model, which split the delivery of probation between privately-operated Community Rehabilitation Companies and the state-run National Probation Service. In its place, the Probation Service was established, with London as one of its 12 regional units across England and Wales.

The reunified service is responsible for the delivery of all sentence management, Unpaid Work, structured interventions and the commissioning of rehabilitative and resettlement services from third-party providers.

One-year on from these reforms, the Police and Crime Committee will consider how well the reunified model is operating and whether it is working as effectively as it can with partner agencies such as the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), the Metropolitan Police, London Boroughs, voluntary organisations and community sector organisations, to reduce reoffending.

Key questions

1. What, if any, improvements have there been in the delivery of probation services in London one-year on from reunification? Please refer to any aspect of probation delivery you have knowledge of, i.e. 

• advice provided to court
• pre-release planning
• resettlement support
• access to accommodation
• sentence management
• delivery of Unpaid Work, accredited programmes and structured interventions.

2. How have changes to probation services affected partnership working between the London Probation Service, MOPAC and the Met?

3. Has the experience of those bidding for contracts or applying for grants to deliver services under the new model improved, either through the London Probation Service or MOPAC?

4. What further action could MOPAC and the London Probation Service take to access voluntary sector expertise in the design and delivery of services aimed at reducing reoffending?

5. Are the specific needs of women being met under the reunified probation service?

6. Are there particular challenges facing Black, Asian and/or minority ethnic people under probation supervision in London?

7. Are the specific needs of other groups of Londoners being met under the reunified probation service? For example, disabled people, people who are LGBTIQA+, older people etc.

8. Do you have any other thoughts in relation to probation services in London not covered by the questions above?

How to get involved

Submissions should aim to address any of the questions outlined above, and other issues that are relevant to the investigation.

We are keen to hear from probation practitioners, campaigners, voluntary sector organisations, London boroughs and anyone else with an interest in this topic. We also particularly welcome evidence from service users and those with lived experience of probation services in London and are open to receiving evidence in different formats, such as videos or voice recordings if that makes it easier for someone to respond.

To contribute, please send submissions to the committee by the deadline of Monday 18 July 2022 by emailing scrutiny@london.gov.uk using 'PCC - probation investigation’ as the subject title. 

A Dose of Reality

Following yesterday's upbeat PR puff piece by the HMPPS spin doctors, for a dose of reality lets take a look at the March reunification-themed Bulletin from the Howard League's Early Career Academic Network:-  

Introduction

Lol Burke

After a disastrous flirtation with privatisation, the unification of probation services was seen as a welcome development by many. However, unification has been challenging. The reorganisation involving bringing together staff from the National Probation Service and the 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies, has been marked by chronic staff shortages and high caseloads. These are of course long-standing issues, and it would be unduly optimistic or perhaps naïve to expect that they would be resolved by structural reform alone. As the Chief Inspector of Probation has forewarned, the ‘amalgamation of inherited structures and the implementation of a new operating model will take time … and there will be inherent risks’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation 2022).

A decade of underinvestment in the Probation Service and the broader social and treatment systems in which it operates has left services ‘threadbare and struggling’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation 2022). A recent post-unification survey of probation practitioners by HM Inspectorate of Probation (2021) found that only 12 per cent of those interviewed believed that service delivery had improved since unification. Around half claimed that their caseloads were difficult to manage because of the volume of cases and a similar number felt that insufficient services were available for the people they worked with. A report by Clinks (2022) tracking the voluntary sector’s experience of the probation reform programme concluded that the Ministry of Justice had made limited progress in facilitating partnerships and that its commissioning process was ‘complex, cumbersome and bureaucratic favouring larger, well-resourced organisations and disadvantaged smaller, local and specialist ones’ (Clinks, 2022).

Although six in ten practitioners said that they felt positive about working for the Probation Service (HM Inspectorate of Probation 2021) such positive responses tended to be expressed by recently employed staff. Attempts to provide more balanced caseloads involving cases at a higher and lower risk of serious harm have been thwarted by on-going IT issues as systems attempt to play catch up with significant organisational changes. Plans are in place to recruit and train around 2,500 additional probation officers to address the shortfall in qualified staff. However, given that the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP) takes a minimum of 15 months (and that those undertaking the training have reduced caseloads and require increased mentoring and oversight) it is unlikely that services will receive any respite from the current ongoing pressures before 2024 at the earliest. Worryingly, anecdotal evidence suggests that a considerable number of learners are leaving the programme because of the relentless pressures of balancing their workplace and academic commitments.

Ensuring that appropriate resources and sustained investment are available to enable probation to meet its statutory responsibilities and provide meaningful support for those under its supervision is of course vital. But the current problems facing the newly unified Probation Service run much deeper. Several studies undertaken during the implementation of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms (Deering and Feilzer, 2015; Robinson et al., 2016; Tidmarsh 2021) have highlighted the detrimental impact upon the working cultures within probation, creating a ‘two tier’ system that in some cases fractured long-standing professional relationships. These underlying tensions appear to have been carried forward into the unified structure with those practitioners formerly employed by the Community Rehabilitation Companies believing that their skills and experience were underappreciated. 

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Reunified probation: An opportunity to finally progress a desistance paradigm of practice?

Sam Ainslie 

Introduction 

Despite the fact that a desistance paradigm of probation practice has long been advocated (McNeill, 2006) and the main principles of such an approach operationalised (McNeill and Weaver, 2010), barriers continue to exist for probation practitioners in practicing in a desistance-focused manner consistently. This is despite the presence of an aligned and enduring value base (Ainslie, 2021). Debates continue in relation to potential ways of reconciling the perceived tensions between traditional (but prevailing) risk-based approaches to correctional rehabilitation with a desistance-informed approach (Maruna and Mann, 2019). In recognition of the argument that a desistance paradigm of practice is dependent on the legal and organisational context (McNeill and Whyte, 2007), consideration needs to be given to the opportunities presented by the reunification of probation services to enable a desistance paradigm of probation practice to flourish, and thereby benefit those people subject to probation intervention and the communities in which they live. 

Drawing on findings from a qualitative study undertaken in one National Probation Service (NPS) division in 2018, this article explores the difficulties shared by NPS practitioners in their attempts to consistently apply a desistance-informed approach to practice. These difficulties are presented as 'practice pains' consisting of solely managing high risk and complex caseloads, target and accountability culture, fragmented approaches to intervention and insufficient training and development. 

Background and methodology 

In an effort to understand the barriers to, and enablers for desistance-focused practice in the NPS an exploratory study using triangulation of three qualitative data collection methods (documentary analysis, observations of practice and practitioner focus groups) was undertaken within one NPS Division in 2018 (see Ainslie, 2021). For the purposes of data collection, desistance-focused practice was conceived as being in accordance with the eight desistance principles outlined by McNeill and Weaver (2010). These principles emerged from an in-depth review of the desistance literature and were likely to be known by practitioners having previously been incorporated into training materials and policy documentation. This paper draws on the perspectives of 14 NPS practitioners (Probation Officers, Probation Service Officers and Trainee Probation Officers) provided across three focus groups, each lasting 90 minutes. Questions were framed using an appreciative approach to generate discussion about what aspects of a desistance-focused approach practitioners were achieving, as well as providing space for the organic presentation of perceived barriers (Robinson et al, 2012). 

Whilst the study was undertaken in one NPS Division, focus groups were undertaken in three different delivery areas purposely selected in recognition of the fact they covered diverse demographic areas with inner city and rural offices. Despite the study taking place within the context of the NPS, inevitably practitioners offered their perspectives on the working arrangements with the CRCs operating in their local area. This paper draws on their views to consider what possible lessons can be learnt from the failed part-privatisation agenda. It focuses in particular on how a desistance paradigm of practice might be progressed in the ‘new’ Probation Service. 

Analysis highlighted a group of specific difficulties practitioners experienced in their attempts to practice in a desistance-focused manner. I present these here as 'practice pains' consisting of solely managing high risk and complex caseloads, target and accountability culture, fragmented approaches to intervention and insufficient training and development. 

‘Relentless’ caseloads 

Reflecting on the realities of working with high caseloads of people assessed as presenting a high risk of serious harm or with complex needs, practitioners’ descriptions of their work aligned with Phillips et al’s (2016) description of working in the post-TR context as ‘relentless’. Practitioners were frustrated at not being able to work with people in the way they considered effective due to workload demands arising from caseloads where everything was perceived as urgent and risky and therefore difficult to prioritise. 

There’s no middle ground with the work anymore. You’ve got the older, more compliant sex offenders who you can have a proper conversation with, and they seem to tell you a lot. But then, you’ve got the other end of the scale with the youngsters who are here for violence and just don’t want to engage. (Della, Probation Officer) 

He's half a caseload on his own; I have two co-workers just to give me some respite from him. (Judy, Probation Officer) 

In view of the high number of practitioner vacancies across the unified Probation Service, it remains to be seen whether caseloads will reduce in volume in the foreseeable future. Perhaps however, unification represents the opportunity to regain some of the ‘middle ground’ referred to by Della, with a more balanced caseload that permits some relief from the relentless nature of purely high-risk work. Alternatively, it could extend this particular practice challenge to all practitioners. This could therefore compromise their ability to work in a desistance-focused way that relies on practitioner ability to install hope, reflect on their practice, build links in the community and provide the practical support necessary to assist people in overcoming barriers to desistance. Emotional labour is inherent to the work of probation practitioners and in the absence of sufficient support from the Probation Service they are at substantial risk of burnout (Phillips et al, 2021). This can take the form of emotional exhaustion perhaps seen here in the comments from Pippa: 

I've got one to this day that when I see him in my diary I just (deep sigh). I’ve also got a few that fantasise about children, that's all they want to think about and they're like 'I'll do this work but I'm not going to change'. That's really hard. I've got three of those and I just find that really... where do you go with that? It's hard. (Pippa, Probation Officer) 

Alternatively, burnout can manifest as desensitisation which arguably compromises a practitioner’s ability to form the positive working relationships that are central to desistance-supportive approaches (McNeill and Weaver, 2010). Reflecting on her training experience, Sonja provides a worrying reflection on practitioner attitudes to service-users in her office: 

In relation to desistance, based on my experience at the moment, the cultures in the office at the moment, how they talk about offenders, I'm shocked by how derogatory they are in my office. I do understand when you do the job day in and day out it gets frustrating but, yeah, it's bad. I heard someone say the other day it would be better off if this person was dead… I know the actions of the people we supervise can be frustrating and I'm sure I've said things that if I heard them back, I'd not say them again, but yeah, I'm finding it bad the way people are talking about offenders, and I think it goes against the desistance agenda. (Sonja, Trainee) 

Unification presents the opportunity for the Probation Service to review (and take urgent action) in respect of the support available to protect practitioners from the emotional demands of their work. Without this, they will continue to be ‘over extended, and exhausted’ (Porporino, 2018) seriously compromising practice and outcomes for the people they supervise. 

Unified approaches to intervention? 

Desistance research highlights the need for people to feel there is a sense of commitment from practitioners (Rex, 1999) and NPS participants bemoaned the fragmented nature of the delivery of interventions and services following TR. They were conscious of the potential for lack of continuity in the working relationship due to processes such as risk escalation and the contracting out of intervention delivery: 

Now people can have three or four offender managers and that's not helpful because sometimes you're going over old ground, they've already been over and then it's 'why do I have to tell you all again?' You've already built that relationship with them haven't you and they get moved on from the CRC due to risk escalation or over to the CRC for them to deliver an intervention. (Bruce, Probation services officer) 

Practitioners were frustrated by the way in which their role had been reduced to that of assessor and enforcer in the NPS context and considered their ability to deliver meaningful interventions to be compromised. They were also mindful of the reality that the quality of the interventions being delivered by their local CRC was less than conducive to supporting desistance processes: 

Basically, we've been told we can do the assessments, the report, in black and white, 'you focus on your computer stuff', we were told 'specialists' are there to do the one-to-one work and that's the message we've been given although we haven't really got the specialists here. CRC haven't got the range of things we probably want. (Anna, Probation Officer) 

In theory, unification could reduce the fragmented nature of delivery of services, if only due to the removal of case allocation and risk escalation processes that resulted in convoluted bureaucratic processes. These processes positioned people as ‘things’ to be managed (Burke and Collett, 2010) as opposed to people needing support in transforming their lives. However, the ability to deliver individualised and meaningful desistance-supportive interventions that promote growth of human capital alongside provision of opportunities to build social capital is likely to remain compromised given the continuation of a model of probation delivery that does little to enable flexible and creative one-to-one work. The unified Probation Service has thus far signalled an intention to roll-out heavily prescribed approaches to the delivery of Rehabilitation Activity Requirements (RAR) and post-sentence supervision periods (HMPPS, 2021) which does little to inspire hope that a desistance paradigm of practice can flourish. Whilst initiatives such as the Structured Intervention digital toolkits are desistance informed (Morris et al, 2021) they remain focused on the development of human capital rather than acknowledging the role of probation (practitioners and the organisation as a whole) in engaging with local communities to reduce stigma and support growth in social capital. 

Target and accountability culture 

NPS practitioners identified target driven performance as a barrier to a desistance approach, particularly in respect of individualising practice approaches. They were frustrated by prescription and bureaucracy, particularly in respect of requirements to complete repeat risk assessments and administrative tasks which they saw as detrimental to the time available they had to work with service users. They were also mindful that binary and deterministic performance targets failed to measure the important aspects of probation practice or recognise the complexity of desistance processes. 

The targets are just so black and white. Did he re-offend or not? Well, yes, he did, but it was far less serious, and he went way longer than he ever has before so let’s give some credit for that shall we. (John, Probation Officer) 

They also spontaneously discussed their fears in terms of being held to account via formal accountability processes such as Serious Further Offence (SFO) reviews or inspection activity. Their comments suggested that such fear impacts on their decision making when working with people, particularly in respect of deciding to reduce restrictive conditions or encourage more involvement in the local community. In this way, the pressure to be risk averse represents a barrier to building trust and reduction in restrictions that is required to support desistance in the long-term. 

I guess what is frustrating is sometimes when they have been open and they disclose, you want to work with that, but my experience so far, and the attitude of those around me that I'm having to take feedback from is quite punitive in how they respond to that. And I feel like this person has opened and disclosed and then we slam some bricks down on that with 'this is what is going to happen now' and it's just like well, they're not going to open-up and disclose again are they when our response is, I think, too onerous at times and I do think it feels just so risk averse. (Leon, Trainee) 

Arguably, both NPS and CRC practitioners will carry the legacy of accountability processes into the unified Probation Service and will face renewed scrutiny from stakeholders in the coming months. Further exploration in respect of the potential for accountability concerns to restrict a desistance paradigm of practice would be beneficial and could make a meaningful contribution to future policy development. 

Training and development 

HMPPS has committed to recruiting 1000 new probation officers by 2023, alongside an agenda for strengthening the training and development opportunities for all practitioners (HMPPS, 2020). It is concerning that the reflections of NPS trainee probation officers raised serious concerns about the quality of their training. They questioned whether the current HMPPS training provision enabled them to approach their one-to-one practice with confidence: 

Everyone's the same, saying 'what do we actually do with them when we're in the room together? You're told, you've got all these workbooks but then I feel like I'm a teacher who is a fraud. It took me ages to figure out what I was actually going to do with each person and how I would approach different things. They just don't train you! (Toni, Trainee) 

This lack of confidence in knowing how to adapt their approach to people compromised the trainees’ ability to work in a way that supported desistance. This lack of confidence extended to the ability to deal with the emotional demands of practice: 

They don't teach you how scary it is either to sit in front of somebody who you don't know, and it's horrible because you've got the conscious or maybe even unconscious bias in your mind that this person in front of me has done all these horrendous things, I was terrified in my first supervision session, I was so scared. (Kayleigh, Trainee) 

I think people I've spoken to who have recently qualified or have been through the process, they all say the same thing, it is pretty much learning by your mistakes which, let’s face it, outside of this room, if you went up to members of the public and said 'did you know that about 20 % of the probation service are brand new and learning by making mistakes' everyone would just look at you like you were mad! We are all learning by our mistakes really which is not ideal. (Leon, Trainee) 

In the absence of sufficient training, trainees turned to colleagues as a means of developing and coping with the demands of the role. Whilst this was perceived favourably by some, others indicated that variations in office cultures and ongoing pressures post-TR impacted on the level of support and advice that was offered to newer staff. This finding aligns with the work of Durnescu (2014) who argued that professional socialisation can be affected by major events such as significant changes in legislation, and that stress can impact on social learning processes. As such, it is worth considering what the Probation Service needs to do to improve the support available to a large number of inexperienced staff to avoid the development of practice approaches that take practitioners further away from a desistance paradigm. 

Conclusion 

The unification of probation services, whilst welcomed by many, represents yet another period of upheaval and uncertainty for probation practitioners and the people they supervise. This reflection from Della reminds us of the pain caused by TR: 

Aside from forging the resentment in the probation staff and how people feel their anger, TR was like a mad chef with a chopper and just went through it and everything was scattered. And we also have austerity measures and all these resource issues at the fore. It’s a monumental mess. (Della, Probation Officer)

Unification in and of itself is unlikely to resolve many of the systemic issues that have hindered the development of a desistance paradigm of practice, but it does present the opportunity to try and mitigate some of the pains experienced by practitioners in their efforts to support the people they work with. 

You've got to keep trying. What's it called again 'rolling with resistance', remember that guys from the good old days? (Laughs) We're always rolling and rolling and rolling… (John, Probation Officer) 

The quote here from John is testament to the tenacity of practitioners to keep trying to practice in ways that are aligned to their professional values, despite the barriers they encounter as a result of their working conditions and the organisational processes they need to navigate and endure on a daily basis. Ultimately, assisting people to achieve sustained desistance ‘should be the holy grail for probation’ (McNeill, 2014: 168) and as such, the Probation Service needs to take action to address the apparent practice pains that have been hindering practitioners in their efforts to practice in accordance with a desistance paradigm in recent years.