PROBATION IN POST-LIBERAL ENGLAND
The government and the Labour Party have both instigated reviews of the probation service. No one would deny that change is urgently needed but the government certainly, and the Labour Party probably, will be looking for conclusions which fall conveniently within their own comfort zones. The situation calls for a more radical approach which takes account of the wider social and economic context.
The reviews are taking place at a time of exceptional uncertainty about the United Kingdom’s future direction as a country, and for many people their prospects as individuals. The dividing lines are shifting between those who ‘belong’ and those who are part of the ‘other’, and between those who command authority and respect and those who do not. Identity is displacing class as an identifier in politics and social interaction. Old landmarks have disappeared and new ones have not yet taken their place.
It has long been one of the principles of good government and good public management that decisions should be based on rational judgement, attention to evidence and respect for expertise, while decision-makers have at the same time to take account of how things look and feel. They have to pay attention to sensibilities, impressions and emotions. Governments have increasingly done so over the last 25 years, and yet ‘ordinary people’ have continued to feel neglected and overlooked, by the criminal justice system but also by government more generally. Brexit in Great Britain and Trump in the United States have been attributed to the ‘establishment’s’ failure to respond.
That failure is associated with three things. One is the increasing politicisation of government and public services, as party political advantage, political dogma and party management became confused with, or took the place of, the wider national interest. Another is the advance of neoliberalism and its substitution of metrics, targets, markets and contracts for professional judgement, public responsibility, public accountability and democratic control. The third is austerity whose effects on probation and prisons have now become all too visible. At the same time the boundaries of criminal justice have been extended into new areas of behaviour, beginning with anti-social behaviour orders, with serious implications for standards of justice. Probation has become essentially an agency of punishment, while the police have increasingly been expected to act as a social service when other services have been withdrawn or not available.
An effective and influential probation service is especially important in a situation of this kind. Probation works in those places where people’s lives are most precarious and their future most uncertain, and where the effects of social, economic and criminal justice policy come together. The country needs the service to do much more than punish offenders and coerce them into socially acceptable behaviour. Probation staff should encourage offenders to find opportunities and take advantage of them, to find a direction and purpose in their lives and to have some hope for the future. The service should establish or re-establish a place for itself in the communities which it serves, with a presence, an identity, a sense of belonging and an authority to make itself heard and felt in those communities.
That failure is associated with three things. One is the increasing politicisation of government and public services, as party political advantage, political dogma and party management became confused with, or took the place of, the wider national interest. Another is the advance of neoliberalism and its substitution of metrics, targets, markets and contracts for professional judgement, public responsibility, public accountability and democratic control. The third is austerity whose effects on probation and prisons have now become all too visible. At the same time the boundaries of criminal justice have been extended into new areas of behaviour, beginning with anti-social behaviour orders, with serious implications for standards of justice. Probation has become essentially an agency of punishment, while the police have increasingly been expected to act as a social service when other services have been withdrawn or not available.
An effective and influential probation service is especially important in a situation of this kind. Probation works in those places where people’s lives are most precarious and their future most uncertain, and where the effects of social, economic and criminal justice policy come together. The country needs the service to do much more than punish offenders and coerce them into socially acceptable behaviour. Probation staff should encourage offenders to find opportunities and take advantage of them, to find a direction and purpose in their lives and to have some hope for the future. The service should establish or re-establish a place for itself in the communities which it serves, with a presence, an identity, a sense of belonging and an authority to make itself heard and felt in those communities.
Staff should concern themselves not only with the offenders assigned to them but also with offenders’ families and the environment in which they have to make their lives; they should show that they are responsive to those who are affected by or concerned about crime or trouble in their communities or neighbourhoods, and that they have something to contribute. They should work closely with the courts, other services (and not only those which are thought of as part of the criminal justice system), local government and civil society. They should be out and about and not spend too much time in offices or looking at computer screens.
Probation should not be thought of as being somehow apart from and nothing to do with ‘ourselves’, or with ordinary people going about their lives. The arrangements for probation’s management and accountability should reflect and facilitate that wider role, and should enable work to be arranged to suit local conditions as well as comply with national standards and objectives. The parameters for the service’s reform should therefore include:
- Separation from the Prison Service;
- A local structure based on a suitable number of geographical areas;
- Accountability to probation authorities that are representative of local communities and stakeholders;
- Strong and independent professional leadership;
- The private sector’s role, if any, should be confined to specific, limited tasks commissioned by the new probation authorities.
David Faulkner
David Faulkner served in the Home Office from 1959 until 1992, being involved in probation’s expanding role in prison after-care in the 1960s and becoming Deputy Secretary for criminal justice, including probation, in 1982. He was Principal Private Secretary to James Callaghan and appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1985. He was subsequently a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford and an associate at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology. He has written and lectured widely on how criminal justice policy is formulated and about the relationships between civil servants and elected politicians. His most recent book is Servant of the Crown: a civil servant’s story of criminal justice and public service reform, published in 2014 by Waterside Press.
David Faulkner served in the Home Office from 1959 until 1992, being involved in probation’s expanding role in prison after-care in the 1960s and becoming Deputy Secretary for criminal justice, including probation, in 1982. He was Principal Private Secretary to James Callaghan and appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1985. He was subsequently a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford and an associate at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology. He has written and lectured widely on how criminal justice policy is formulated and about the relationships between civil servants and elected politicians. His most recent book is Servant of the Crown: a civil servant’s story of criminal justice and public service reform, published in 2014 by Waterside Press.
