Political Risks

Yesterday was interesting. Having brought myself up to speed by re-visiting his extensive website and learning of his proposed research project not succeeding, I had the opportunity of a chat with former chief officer and HMI Andrew Bridges. It struck me that it had been a brilliant opportunity to try and influence a change in direction at a time when an imaginative political appointment had been made in the shape of James Timpson. 

The rejected Proposal for an Experiment in Upside-Down Management in Probation

From April to December 2025 most of my ‘spare’ time was taken up in putting together a ‘Proposal for an experiment in upside-down management in Probation’ to the National Research Committee of the Ministry of Justice, together with a linked application to undertake a PhD with the University of Greenwich for this purpose, and also writing an app which would be a key component for implementing the ‘experiment’. The proposal was rejected (for a second and final time) in December 2025.​

The whole idea behind the Proposal comes directly from my Modern Probation Theory (MPT). The reason I made the Proposal that year was that Lord James Timpson had been appointed the Minister for Prisons and Probation in July 2024, and that he and his father had described the way they ran the Timpson business as being an instance of “Upside-down Management”, describing an approach that I saw as strikingly similar to MPT. I felt that, if I was ever going to have the chance to demonstrate MPT, now was the time – and I suggested trying it with a small group of volunteer Probation practitioners, in an area where the Regional Probation Director would welcome it. (I had one definite Director, and potentially two more, who said they were interested in trying it, partly because they could see that for practitioners it would both save their time and yet provide focus.)

I was not at all impressed with the letter declining the Proposal. If it had simply said that senior managers had concluded that the Experiment was too difficult or simply not wanted, I could have respected such an operational decision that was theirs to make – I could certainly understand that there were potential “political risks” that they might reasonably be unwilling to take. Instead the letter listed a number of misunderstandings and post hoc rationalisations about the nature of the research proposal, highlighted what they thought would improve it, but denied me the opportunity to attempt that. I was not completely surprised by the outcome, since I had already feared from my earlier in‑person meeting with the Minister that he personally would not be actively supporting it as I had hoped.

Andrew Bridges​

I well remember Timpson's Bill McWilliams Memorial lecture in Cambridge failing to live up to expectation and being a great disappointment. I guess we will never know exactly why, but I strongly suspect he quickly came up against what our fundamental problem all along has been, that of 'political risk'. So, seeing as I know this blog has been helping train AI in the form of Large Language Models for some time, I thought I'd use it:-

Does probation pose political risks? 

The probation and early prison release crisis in England and Wales creates severe political risks for the government, as systemic strains damage public safety and invite heavy criticism from watchdogs, unions, and opposition politicians.

Key Political and Operational Pressures

Early Release Backlash: The government's plan to release around 4,500 prisoners early (serving one-third of their sentences) to relieve overcrowded prisons (running near 98% capacity) has sparked fierce political backlash. Opposition figures, such as Joy Morrissey MP, have argued that the early release scheme endangers the public and puts vulnerable victims—particularly domestic abuse survivors—at risk.

Watchdog and Union Warnings: Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation, warned that severe officer shortages mean criminals freed early face an increased risk of reoffending, including serious crimes like murder and rape. Meanwhile, the probation union Napo has threatened industrial action and declared a vote of no confidence in management, stating that staff operate at over 126% capacity in some regions.

Public Accounts Committee Scrutiny: The UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee stated that the Probation Service is near collapse, having met only 7 of 27 performance targets last year while managing record recall populations and a 21% staff vacancy rate.

Blame Shifting Across Parties: Political debate frequently splits along partisan lines, with critics pointing to long-term systemic erosion, historic prison closures, and previous privatization experiments, while current ministers argue they inherited a broken and overstretched justice system.

So AI, did probation always pose political risks?

No, probation did not always pose significant political risks. For nearly a century following its late 19th-century origins, probation operated under a low-profile "welfare and rehabilitation" ethos that insulated it from the political crosshairs. It only transformed into a highly volatile political risk in the late 20th century due to shifting penal philosophies, centralisation, and the rise of "tough on crime" populist politics.

The Era of Low Political Risk: "Advise, Assist, and Befriend"

When formalised in jurisdictions like the UK (via the Probation of Offenders Act 1907) and the US (spreading rapidly in the early 1900s), probation was viewed essentially as a humanitarian extension of social work or religious missionary efforts.

The Welfare Philosophy: Early probation focused on a mandate to "advise, assist, and befriend" the individual. Because the prevailing social consensus leaned toward rehabilitation, reform, and addressing the root causes of crime (like poverty or alcoholism), probation was a quiet, uncontroversial alternative to costly and overcrowded prisons.

Local and Judicial Control: For decades, probation services were managed locally, often directly under the supervision of local courts and magistrates. Because it was decentralized and largely invisible to the national press, politicians rarely faced scrutiny or blame for the behavior of individuals on probation.

The Shift to Political Volatility (1970s–1990s)
The political environment surrounding probation changed drastically due to a perfect storm of ideological and systemic shifts:

The "Nothing Works" Doctrine: In the mid-1970s, criminological research (most famously Robert Martinson’s 1974 study) popularized the idea that rehabilitative efforts had no statistical impact on reducing recidivism. This stripped probation of its scientific and moral immunity, leaving it exposed to political assault. 

The Rise of Populist Punitiveness: By the 1980s and 1990s, politicians in both the US and the UK realized that campaigning on a "tough on crime" platform was highly effective. Probation was recast by critics not as a humane intervention, but as a "soft" option or an evasion of justice.

Redefinition as Punishment: To survive politically, governments actively stripped probation of its social work identity. Laws like the UK’s Criminal Justice Act 1991 legally redefined probation as a punishment in its own right, shifting its primary objective from welfare to "public protection," "risk management," and strict "enforcement".

Centralisation and Media Visibility: National governments centralized probation services under federal or state executive branches (such as the creation of the National Probation Service in England and Wales in 2001). While this intended to standardize practice, it stripped away local judicial shielding. Consequently, whenever a high-profile "Serious Further Offence" (SFO) occurred, the systemic failure was dropped directly at the doorstep of the ruling political ministers.

Today, probation is highly politicized because it operates under a risk-averse, highly audited framework where any failure by a person under supervision can trigger immediate media backlashes and threaten ministerial careers.

How can probation avoid political risks?

To avoid political risks, probation services must balance the systemic pressure of penal populism (the political demand to be "tough on crime") with evidence-based public protection. Because probation operates out of the public eye, it faces severe political risk when high-profile "Serious Further Offences" occur, frequently leading to knee-jerk legislative overhauls or privatization attempts.

The primary political risks facing modern probation services center on being blamed for failures in public safety, being forced into rigid, bureaucratic monitoring metrics that erode professional discretion, and coping with sudden policy shifts like emergency early-release schemes that strain existing resources.

1. Establish Strict Risk-Management Thresholds

Define Clear Acceptable Risk Limits: Probation leadership must align with the Ministry of Justice and government oversight bodies to set transparent thresholds for acceptable operational risk. This shifts accountability from individual officers to a mutually agreed-upon systemic framework. 

Utilize Reflexive, Dual-Method Risk Assessments: Combine algorithmic and actuarial assessment tools with qualitative, clinical judgment from seasoned staff. Algorithmic systems alone can replicate racial biases, which creates a separate political risk regarding civil rights and systemic discrimination. 

Avoid the "High vs. Low" Risk Dichotomy: Politically, funding often follows high-risk offenders, leaving "medium-risk" cases under-supervised. Statistically, a significant portion of serious further offences are committed by individuals initially categorized as medium-risk. Dynamic risk models must continuously evaluate shifting life factors like unstable housing or sudden job loss.

2. Protect Operational Capacity Against Structural Whiplash

Resist Politically Driven Reorganizations: Over the last decade, probation services have suffered from continuous structural changes driven by ideology—most notably the failed part-privatization in 2014 ("Transforming Rehabilitation") which had to be fully reversed in 2021. Maintaining a unified, stable public service delivery model helps buffer frontline workers from shifting political winds. 

Mandate Safe Case-to-Staff Ratios: Political risks spike when understaffed, poorly compensated, and overwhelmed probation officers miss critical warning signs. Demanding institutional guardrails that tie maximum caseload limits to recruitment targets protects public safety and insulates the agency from systemic failure.

Secure Resourced Backing for Emergency Release Schemes: When governments use early-release schemes to manage prison overcrowding, probation becomes the political scapegoat for community anxiety. Service leaders must secure firm funding commitments (such as technology investments or localized restriction-zone mapping) prior to absorbing accelerated caseloads. 

3. Build Multilateral Accountability and Partnerships

Utilize Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA): Broaden accountability by co-managing high-risk, violent, or terrorist offenders through formal partnerships with local police, health authorities, and the prison service. Sharing risk governance prevents probation from bearing exclusive political liability if an individual reoffends. 

Enforce Swift and Consistent Sentence Violations: Maintaining the confidence of judges, magistrates, and the public requires clear, transparent enforcement rules. When probation demonstrably enforces court orders swiftly and firmly, it protects itself from accusations of being "soft on crime".

Change the Public Narrative: Shift away from a purely punitive rhetoric or a purely social-work lexicon, both of which are politically polarizing. Instead, frame probation through the lens of economic and social utility—demonstrating how effective rehabilitation directly reduces the billions spent annually on the cycle of reoffending.

Another Voice

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

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

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

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

Anon

*Abstract

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

--oo00oo-- 

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

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

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

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

"What am I saying?

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

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

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

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

*Other contributions can be found here and here.

Guest Blog 112

Who is listening to who?

Prison overcrowding, probation capacity, tagging, victims, AI and being “tough on offenders” — there is so much to take on board that my head is going to explode. I have completed the e-learning and learned the “new ways of working”, but I’m not quite in the zone of “new probation” yet.

I have been reading this blog forever, and it has become a source of therapy and support. The last few weeks have become intense once again. The changes being imposed on the service have created a flurry of activity, both within and in the media. What saddens me is the apparent absence of real discussion within the profession. There does not seem to be any space where we can properly discuss the impact of these changes, talk openly about what they mean for practitioners and “punters”, or propose better ways of doing things.

I cannot help but hark back to the history of Advise, Assist and Befriend, which has been discussed so often on this blog, or the historic trust placed in probation officers. The difficulty is that we all know the journey that followed, through the degradation of probation qualifications, then NOMS, Trusts, privatisation, nationalisation, unification and reset.

I sometimes wish a real probation leader would appear, someone who could help light the way. I do not particularly care whether that is Napo, the Probation Institute or something else, as long as they genuinely speak for probation and create a credible space for the profession to have a reputable voice and future.

There are already many voices out there, calling for a return to social work, for the rehabilitation of probation and for actively renewing probation. There is discussion on hope, burnout and fatigue. Even questions about who should take responsibility for prison overcrowding, early release and the impact these pressures have on probation services.

The worry: When history looks back, will this decade’s response be any better than the last? We have objected to the implementation of parts of this latest sentence act, which is no different to the probation history I’ve already described. Even if we delve into extreme pre-history, when previous generations faced prison hulks, a notorious government response to prison overcrowding during the eighteenth century, or transportation to Australia. Whatever the outcome, we the people are the ones that live and work with the consequences.

Of course, nobody is suggesting sending anyone to the other side of the globe, well not unless the pint-swigging nasty party takes root, but the “tough on offenders” rhetoric remains the same. We need no reminder that there are practitioners, academics and pracademics doing important work to understand and protect our honourable profession. If anyone needs further convincing, a quick search of the Probation Institute reveals many; practitioners sharing experiences about how probation operates in the prison environment, practitioners sharing innovative approaches to working with young adults and creating toolkits, practitioners discussing how community service can work better, and multiple practitioners trying to help us better understand much of what we do.

For those working in leadership, policy units and workforce planning, finding and considering this kind of information is surely part of the job. The leaders and policymakers have good ideas, but if there are better ways of doing things it’ll be lost if we do not have a credible forum for discussion. We might even avoid remaining perpetually in crisis, simply by taking notice of the risks being identified?

The fear: If “they” can do away with the WMT, ignore the unpaid overtime and hold-up decent pay, then is there any hope they’ll listen to the practitioners? But do they want to listen to those who scrutinise the new changes, oppose a UK Corrections and Aftercare Service, and challenge reliance on dashboards and metrics? We need a probation service that listens to its workforce to meet its true aims, helping people lead offence-free lives, primarily focused on changing individual circumstances and behaviour for the better.

The problem is that this service has become very good at creating new policies, new models, and new ways of working, while becoming less good at listening to the people who have to make them work. There are practitioners across the country who understand what helps people change, what gets in the way, what creates unintended consequences, and what could be done differently. So the question is not what the future of probation should look like, but who should get to shape it. Because if nobody is listening to the practitioners, then what exactly are we reforming probation for?

I cannot answer this question, and none of us can. Ironically, as I got to the end of typing this post and switched from watching the Justice Minister on the news to an old black-and-white western, I heard a phrase that we could perhaps apply to every Justice Minister from Grayling to the present day:

“Never trust the eyes of a man running away.”

Anon

Guest Blog 111

Rhetoric v Reality

I write this from a position that perhaps doesn’t fit comfortably into the current political narrative. I am a probation practitioner. I am also a victim of crime.

So when the Government tells me victims are “front and centre” and that we now have the “toughest supervision in British history”, I want that to be true. But my professional experience makes me deeply concerned about the gap between the rhetoric and the reality.

I know what public protection looks like from the other side of the desk. It is rarely a slogan. It is having enough time to notice something has changed, join information together, recognise an escalating pattern, make the home visit, speak to police or children’s services, ask another question and act before another incident creates another victim.

Technology can assist with that. It cannot replace it.

And this isn’t simply a frustrated workforce saying so. On 24 September HM Inspectorate of Probation reported that persistent staffing shortages and workforce instability were directly affecting the quality and consistency of risk management. In 54% of inspected cases, critical information was not sufficiently interrogated, analysed or translated into robust risk-management activity. Days later, the electronic-monitoring inspection warned of a “false sense of assurance” if technology was not matched by effective professional practice. Then Government announced the “toughest supervision in British history”.

Please reconcile those things.

As a victim, I do not want a false sense of assurance. I don’t want to hear that somebody is being monitored if there isn’t sufficient professional capacity to understand and act upon what that monitoring reveals. And I don’t want victims used to justify increasingly restrictive measures while the professional infrastructure required to make those measures protective is struggling.

As a practitioner, I worry that probation is increasingly being redesigned around how many people the system needs us to absorb rather than what effective supervision actually requires. Please do not mistake control for public protection, surveillance for supervision, contact for intervention or administrative compliance for effective probation.

I don’t simply want the person who harmed me punished. I want fewer people harmed. That means meaningful rehabilitation matters to me too. Work around domestic abuse, drugs, housing, mental health, relationships and behaviour matters. Professional judgement matters. Having enough time to know the person you supervise matters. Victims and rehabilitation are not opposing interests. Effective rehabilitation is victim protection when it prevents the next offence.

So by all means tell me how many people are tagged, how much money has been invested and how many staff have been recruited. But also tell me whether practitioners have enough time to do the work properly, whether experienced staff are staying, whether workloads are manageable and whether the quality of risk management is improving.

You cannot solve a prison capacity crisis by quietly creating a probation capacity crisis. And you cannot protect victims by weakening the professional service upon which so much of that protection depends.

I say that as somebody delivering probation. I also say it as somebody who knows what being a victim means.

If victims really are “front and centre”, listen to this one.

Anon

The Reality

The clueless new Justice Minister Alex Norris is clearly following his minders instructions at the MoJ and HMPPS. This from the big release day October 1st:- 

Toughest restrictions ever imposed on offenders on licence

Offenders leaving prison from today will be monitored under the toughest supervision in British history, as new powers to restrict their movements come into force.

• World-first restriction zones will keep offenders in areas just a few miles wide
• Bans from pubs, clubs, football matches and public events
• A record number of offenders are being tagged, as Government rolls out biggest ever extension of tagging
• Victim-focused approach to justice will see national helpline for victims and trauma-focused local support services

Offenders leaving prison from today will be monitored under the toughest supervision in British history, as new powers to restrict their movements come into force.

The tough new rules mean the prison gate is no longer where punishment ends, creating a prison in the community to protect the public and victims.

For the first time anywhere in the world, new restriction zones will tightly control the movements of the highest-risk sexual and violent offenders - confining many to an area just a few miles wide, keeping them away from those they have harmed and allowing victims to rebuild their lives without fear.

The biggest ever expansion of electronic monitoring in British history is also being rolled out with a new presumption that offenders will be electronically tagged and monitored when they leave prison. New technology rolling out this year will give probation near-live access to tagging data, helping probation staff spot breaches and act quickly when offenders step out of line.

Cracking down further still, offenders can also now be banned from pubs, clubs and public events like football matches to prevent disruption and harm to the community. From next year, the government is also launching random drug testing for thousands of offenders.

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Alex Norris, said:

"Today we are introducing the toughest ever range of tools to control prison leavers and better protect the public.

We understand the anxiety victims face ahead of offenders’ release dates, but the greatest danger to victims would be prisons running out of cells for dangerous criminals which was the crisis this government inherited.

Our plan will make sure this never happens again by building 14,000 prison places while subjecting offenders to the toughest ever controls – leaving them nowhere to hide and under no doubt that we are watching them."

Unfortunately for him this reality came out from HMI Probation on September 24th:-

National findings: Dynamic Inspection of Public Protection in the Probation Service

HM Inspectorate of Probation has published its national findings following a review of public protection measures delivered by all 12 regions of the Probation Service across England and Wales.

Martin Jones, Chief Inspector of Probation, said: “Frontline probation staff are working hard to keep communities safe, often in very difficult circumstances. However, public protection work was not being delivered consistently well enough to provide the assurance that victims, communities and partner agencies were entitled to expect.

“Persistent staffing shortages and workforce instability, combined with inconsistent information-sharing with the police and children’s services, meant that practitioners did not always have what they needed to identify, understand and manage risk effectively. As a result, opportunities to recognise patterns of harmful behaviour, safeguard children, protect victims and respond to escalating concerns were too often missed.”

Findings

• Vetting delays remain a significant barrier to recruitment, hindering the timely filling of vacancies and, in some cases, causing successful candidates to withdraw before appointment.
• Increased workforce instability, and decreased resilience across probation staffing, is directly impacting the quality and consistency of risk management practice; these are longstanding problems, and recruitment shortfalls and staff shortages do not simply mean a busier workforce, they contribute to a heightened risk to public protection.
• Information-sharing with the police has improved, but in almost one in five cases (18 per cent) information received about domestic abuse was of insufficient quality to be meaningful in assessing risk; information-sharing with children’s services remains a more significant and persistent weakness, with information of insufficient quality to inform risk assessment in nearly a third of relevant cases (31 per cent).
• Even where information was available, practitioners did not always make effective use of it: in more than half of cases inspected (54 per cent), critical information was not sufficiently interrogated, analysed or translated into robust risk assessment and management activity.
• There is currently no agreed national strategy setting out overarching principles for how probation should work with the police and children’s services, meaning individual Probation Delivery Units are left attempting to solve the same shared problems in isolation.
• Public protection outcomes were consistently strongest where regions and Probation Delivery Units had the flexibility to use their initiative and apply locally innovative solutions, within a clear national framework.

Mr Jones added: “Our findings show that regions cannot resolve these issues alone. National action is needed to stabilise the workforce, strengthen information-sharing with the police and children’s services, and support practitioners to make full and confident use of the information available to them. We also need the right responsibilities sitting in the right place: clear national consistency where it matters most, alongside room for regions to use their initiative, where our evidence shows the best outcomes are delivered. If our recommendations are adopted, the foundations for sustained improvement will be in place.”

And then by happy coincidence this came out with more reality just before the big release on Thursday:-

 

Electronic monitoring in practice: Early Report Briefing from HM Inspectorate of Probation and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services

HM Chief Inspector of Probation, Martin Jones CBE, said:

“The findings of our inspection are clear: electronic monitoring is expanding rapidly, but the systems, processes and frontline practice needed to make it effective have not kept pace. Until those issues are addressed, the criminal justice system risks relying on a technology whose potential is not being fully realised.

“There is a real danger that electronic monitoring creates a false sense of assurance if the technology is not matched by effective professional practice. Expanding tagging programmes without addressing their weaknesses risks overpromising and underdelivering on public protection.”

HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Service, Michelle Skeer OBE QPM said:

“In the cases we examined, alleged breaches of electronically monitored bail conditions did not consistently lead to structured consideration of risk to victims, witnesses or the wider public. Poor record-keeping, information-gathering and analysis made it difficult for forces to understand either the demand generated by electronically monitored bail or the effectiveness of their response”.

--oo00oo--

I note a reader and contributor has added the following:-

Notes to Editors:

A selection of SCS staff responsible for this shitshow include:

• Antonia Romeo, now head of the country's civil service
• Amy Rees, now Chief Executive of Homes England
• Jo Farrar, now Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice
• Phil Copple, who baled out last year, now describes himself as a 'prisons & probation operations expert'
• Mc Ewen's export has been in post for a year
• There's supposed to be a Chief Probation Officer, but no-one's seen or heard of her for nearly 3 years

Finally, we would all do well to recall this posted on Twitter recently by former Prison Governor John Podmore:-

While Andy Burnham is busy writing the next Labour Party manifesto he should reflect on the last one : “Labour will conduct a strategic review of probation governance, including considering the benefits of devolved models.”

So, How's it Going?

There’s an enormous part of today’s story that seems to be getting lost in all the coverage about early release.

The headlines are understandably focused on how many prisoners are being released and whether probation has sufficient capacity to manage them. But 1 October isn’t simply an early-release date. A whole series of operational changes are landing in probation at the same time: OFPS, new tiering arrangements, Supervision Packages, the Progression Model, changes to licence supervision and all the processes sitting underneath them. And some of those changes create work before they create any of the capacity they are supposed to release.

Take Supervision Packages. Existing cases can now have a package tier identified, but during this transition period an OASys review is required to actually move a case into its Supervision Package and allocate the appointments. Regions are apparently being asked to prioritise particular reviews until a future digital change automatically transitions cases that haven’t already moved across.

I’m not convinced every PP yet appreciates the potential significance of that. It is very easy to hear “new tiering” and “Supervision Packages” and assume the system simply calculates something in the background. But if reviews are required during this interim period, that represents potentially significant additional practitioner activity across an already enormous existing caseload.

And an OASys review isn’t just pressing a button. If it is going to mean anything, somebody has to look properly at the case, consider what has changed, review risk and needs and make sure the assessment actually reflects the person being supervised. Otherwise we are simply generating another administratively compliant document to make the new system work.

That work lands alongside everything that was already there. Existing appointments still happen. New court orders still arrive. People continue to be released from prison. Risk changes. Safeguarding concerns emerge. Recalls happen. Enforcement happens. Assessments and reviews already due still need completing. And now practitioners have to understand and implement an entirely new architecture for supervision while doing all of it.

This is why I don’t think we’ll understand the impact of 1 October by counting how many people walk through the prison gate today. Watch what happens over the days, weeks and months that follow.

Watch caseloads as courts continue sentencing and prisons continue releasing. Watch the number of assessments and reviews practitioners are carrying. Watch how much additional work is generated simply by transitioning the existing caseload into the new arrangements. Watch what happens to appointment lengths, recording, risk work and the time available for actual supervision.

Because there is a rather extraordinary contradiction here. We are introducing changes partly on the promise that they will create probation capacity, while relying upon an already overstretched workforce to provide the additional capacity required to implement them. And once again, the question nobody seems particularly interested in answering is the most basic one:

Where are the practitioner hours supposed to come from?

That, rather than the number released on day one, may turn out to be the real story of 1 October.

*****
Even with the early release scheme there is over 80,000 people in prison. The crown Court backlog stands at over 80,000 cases too. Probation is supervising over 240,000 people. That is the equivalent of all the number of Crown Court backlog cases and the total prison population combined plus another 80,000, and there is more people going to prison through reall then are being sent there by the courts! Surely the answer is not how many can be released early from custody, but how can we get people to exit the CJS as early as possible? I think the universal imposition of post sentence supervision is one of the major contributors to the state of the CJS today. The capacity crisis is not just about prisons, it's the whole of the CJS thats bursting at the seams.

*****
Getafix raises what may be the bigger question underneath all of this. We keep talking about the prison capacity crisis as though probation exists somewhere outside it, waiting to receive whatever solution is devised. It doesn’t. Probation is part of the same system and is carrying an extraordinary volume of people in its own right.

The latest published figure is actually over 258,000 people under probation supervision. Put that alongside a prison population of more than 85,000 and a Crown Court open caseload of more than 80,000 and perhaps we need to stop talking about a prison capacity crisis and start talking about a criminal justice system capacity crisis.

And recall surely has to be part of that conversation. In January–March this year there were 13,193 licence recalls and 12,977 releases from custodial sentences. Those figures aren’t directly opposite sides of the same equation, but they illustrate the extraordinary churn now taking place between prison and the community.

So what exactly are we trying to achieve? If somebody leaves prison, enters an overstretched Probation Service, receives increasingly rationed contact, struggles with housing, drugs, mental health, relationships or whatever else brought them repeatedly into the system, breaches or deteriorates, is recalled, occupies a prison place, is released again and comes back to probation — where exactly is the saving?

We seem obsessed with finding ways of moving people around an overloaded criminal justice system rather than reducing the number of people who need to remain in it.

That is why the prevention argument matters so much. Success surely isn’t getting somebody out of prison slightly earlier so another person can occupy the bed. Nor is it keeping somebody technically compliant with probation for as long as possible. The real success is helping somebody reach the point where they no longer require prison, probation, police, courts or endless commissioned interventions at all.

And Getafix’s point about post-sentence supervision deserves proper examination in that context. If supervision is genuinely reducing reoffending and protecting the public, demonstrate it. If particular forms or lengths of supervision are instead increasing the opportunities for breach and recall without producing a corresponding rehabilitative benefit, we ought to be prepared to examine that too.

Because there is something fundamentally circular about responding to prison overcrowding by releasing people earlier into an overloaded probation system, then recalling large numbers of people back into the prisons we’re desperately trying to empty.

Perhaps the measure we should become genuinely obsessed with isn’t how quickly we can move people through the criminal justice system, but how successfully we can help them leave it.

*****
So its now just after 6pm & all I've heard on various news channels ALL DAY is "prisoners walking free", "victims are terrified", "prisoners set free by Labour", "Probation have had £700million to assist them".It's all utter bollocks. Not one report that I've heard has offered any sort of assessment, context or factual analysis - not even Casciani on the beeb, who repeated the £700million mantra, the additional numbers of staff and the amazing new hi-tech tags.

Dominic, everyone - it's all fucking lies. None of what this (or any previous) govt is saying about justice, jails or probation is in any way based in reality. It's political fluffing, prepping the public for the unholy fucking that's heading our way... "at pace", no doubt! They - the politicians & the advisers & the whitehall moneypits - haven't got a fucking clue what to do.

Bellend Norris - a man of many years experience of the justice system? No! - had the brass neck to say: "we've been preparing for this day for the last two years." BULLSHIT, you utter arse.

If only for once in their terribly comfortable lives would these wet farts slide down from their ivory chamber pots & see what's really happening, hear it, smell it... feel the fear, the despair, the pointlessness of their empty words about "seven hundred million".

Sorry for the many expletives, Jim, but today has been a calamitous shitfest of utter fuckwittery. The Grand Shafting (I liked that term, thanks) & the CRC debacle were mostly hidden from public gaze. Today's headline blog, I think, neatly sums up how the X Factor had her dabs all over the scene of so many crimes. They were NOT crimes of passion, but crimes against COMPASSION.

As an old skool PO, I'd love to know why. What was the motivation to cause so much damage & pain to so many people, particularly probation staff & those subject to supervision, but also the £billions of public funds re-directed away from public service provision & into the pockets of fatcat multinationals & their shareholders? It must have been one hell of a trauma to want to hurt so many so badly!

*****
Anyone else noticed the complete bait and switch they've done with OASys reviews? Everyone is now being expected to review their entire caseload.

*****
That comment about OASys reviews has just made my blood boil. Whether reviewing an entire caseload is the national expectation or something being interpreted differently locally almost misses the point. Why, after the endless communications, briefings, guidance, presentations, cascades and mandatory learning we have been bombarded with, are practitioners apparently still discovering the scale of what is actually expected of them on the day it goes live?

We have been absolutely drowning in information. Emails about emails. Guidance explaining guidance. PowerPoints. FAQs. E-learning. Briefings. Cascades. Yet somehow something as fundamental as the amount of reviewing required to get existing cases correctly tiered and onto the appropriate Supervision Package has not landed clearly with the people who actually have to do it. And if significant numbers of existing cases now require reviews, when exactly are we supposed to do them? Seriously. When?

The appointments are still in the diary. People still need seeing. New cases are still being allocated. Courts haven’t stopped sentencing. Prisons haven’t stopped releasing. Recalls, safeguarding, MAPPA, enforcement, risk management, home visits, referrals, recording, assessments and everything else haven’t conveniently disappeared while we implement the new model. So where are these extra hours coming from?

I am becoming genuinely furious with this constant assumption that practitioner capacity is infinitely elastic. Another requirement arrives and somehow we are simply expected to absorb it. Then another. Then another. Nothing meaningful comes off the other side. Apparently there is always another little bit of us available to squeeze. 

What are they trying to do, break us? Because I genuinely don’t know how much more people are expected to absorb before somebody at the top accepts that there are only so many hours in a working day and only so much pressure human beings can carry.

And please don’t tell us we have been “prepared”. Completing an e-learning package is not capacity. Receiving a cascade is not capacity. Reading another 30-page document is not capacity. A 98% completion rate on mandatory learning does not magically create the practitioner hours necessary to implement what people have been trained to do. That distinction seems to have been completely lost.

I can already imagine the assurance going upwards: staff briefed, tick; learning completed, tick; implementation commenced, tick; Progression Model successfully launched, tick.

Meanwhile at practitioner level the real question will be: how the hell am I supposed to do all of this as well? And this is only day one. That’s what people outside probation need to understand. The danger was never that the service would dramatically collapse at 9am on 1 October. Practitioners will do what they always do: scramble, prioritise, stay late, worry, improvise and somehow keep the plates spinning.

It’s the days, weeks and months after today that concern me. Because the courts will keep sentencing, the prisons will keep releasing, new work will keep arriving and all of this implementation work will be sitting on top of the caseloads people already had. You cannot keep solving a capacity crisis by taking more capacity from the people who have none left.

*****
Something else troubles me reading these comments. Look at what this is doing to us as a workforce. When people are under relentless pressure for long enough, empathy starts disappearing not only from the organisation but sometimes between colleagues. Someone is struggling and instead of asking what has happened to make an experienced practitioner reach this point?, it becomes well I’m managing, why aren’t they? That is a very dangerous culture for probation.

This work already asks us to carry things most people outside the job never see. We hear traumatic histories, make decisions involving risk and people’s liberty, deal with crises, worry about victims, worry about the people we supervise and occasionally go home wondering whether we’ve missed something important. There has always been pressure in probation. But there is a difference between a demanding professional job and an environment in which people are repeatedly prevented from doing that job to the standard they know it deserves. I think that’s the bit we don’t talk about enough.

It’s not simply being “too busy”. It’s knowing the home visit would be useful but having three other things that have to be done. Knowing somebody needed longer than the appointment you could give them. Knowing an assessment deserved more thought. Knowing you should chase something up and watching another urgent task land on top of it. You constantly make choices about what won’t get your time.

For people who came into probation because they actually care about doing the work well, that takes a toll of its own. And then scarcity starts turning practitioners against one another. Who has the easier caseload? Who isn’t pulling their weight? Who gets protected? Who works from home? Who leaves on time? Who is off sick? Who has managed and who hasn’t?

Meanwhile the much bigger question quietly disappears: why are highly trained professionals being placed in circumstances where doing the job properly has become something they have to fight to find time for? That’s why some of these accounts of people finally leaving and feeling an enormous weight disappear are so sad. We aren’t just losing a number from a staffing spreadsheet. We’re potentially losing experienced people who once cared enormously about this work.

A service can recruit another trainee. Replacing years of judgement, confidence, relationships, local knowledge and experience is considerably harder. And if the people who remain eventually protect themselves by caring a little less, giving a little less and emotionally detaching from what they cannot possibly fix, perhaps nobody should be surprised. You can't indefinitely run a profession on people’s goodwill and then wonder where the goodwill went.

X Marks the Spot

This blog might get lots more traffic over the coming weeks; almost 19.3 million visits to date. Well done sir!

So, in the event of so many casual visitors wanting to know more about probation & why it's in the pickle it is, I'd like journalists or interested parties to get their heads around &/or teeth into the managed decline of the probation service & the one name that pops up every time there's a key moment in the genesis of that managed decline.

Offender Management Act 2007, which opened the door to outsourcing/privatising probation services.

• "In 2006, X became principal private secretary to the Lord Chancellor – initially Charles Falconer, then from 2007 Jack Straw."

UK Ministry of Justice introduces the Revised Probation National Standards, 2011.

• "In 2011, after 18 months at the Cabinet Office, X moved back to the Ministry of Justice, taking on the role of Director General, Transformation."

In 2013, the most significant legislative and structural overhaul of probation occurred in England and Wales under the UK Ministry of Justice's Transforming Rehabilitation strategy.

• "in 2013 X became Director General, Criminal Justice"

The Probation Modernisation Fund (often referred to as the Mutuals Support Programme or specific probation spin-out funding) was an initiative driven by the Cabinet Office under Francis Maude during the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the early 2010s... The total amount of taxpayer cash deployed from this specific Modernisation Fund was allegedly £80 million, though critics and parliamentary evidence noted that exact, itemized figures were never fully disclosed by the government...

... Specifically, the *public funds* were utilized as a mechanism to cover pre-planned workforce restructuring costs, redundancy packages (which was supposed to offer up to 67.5 weeks of enhanced voluntary redundancy), and pre-planned job losses as staff transitioned to private-sector bidders, but much of it disappeared into the pockets of the multinationals, as confirmed here in Hansard:

"15 June 2015 - Andrew Selous, Written Answer: Under the enhanced voluntary redundancy scheme opened in advance of the transition of the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) to new providers, probation staff were able to apply for voluntary redundancy on the basis that they would leave the service by 31 March 2016. The total cost of these redundancies was £16.4m."

Here's the tell that selous dangles before your very eyes:

"All remaining Modernisation Fund monies were awarded to CRCs. Redundancy funding was allocated pro-rata to CRCs based on their size and estimated future staffing requirements."

• Following the 2010 United Kingdom general election X transferred to the Cabinet Office as the Executive Director in the new Efficiency and Reform Group under Francis Maude."

X marks the spot. Every. Single. Time.

Anon

Listen to Practitioners

Yesterday saw Andy Burnham make an historic speech. Beyond doubt he proved he cares and he has the wisdom and confidence not just to follow public opinion, but lead it for the public good. But he must apply the very same logic he so eloquently espoused at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool yesterday to the way society currently views crime and criminality. It never used to be a political football and has exactly the same roots in social inequality and poor life chances he so passionately cares about. 

We simply cannot keep spending ever greater sums downstream on locking more people up with no hope of rehabilitation. He must have the bottle to recognise this and that money spent wisely upstream on investing in people and returning the probation service to the task they once so skillfully undertook would fit perfectly with his vision. Listen to them Andy:- 

--oo000oo--

Ask practitioners. We know what good probation looks like. That’s what makes me so bloody angry about the direction we’re travelling in. We haven’t forgotten how to do probation. Increasingly, we’re being prevented from doing it.

It’s the reduction in human contact that worries me most. It feels increasingly like a conveyor belt. Assess somebody, put them into the appropriate box, prescribe X number of appointments, move them through the stages, reduce contact, move them online and call it proportionate supervision.

Except these are people. People are complicated enough without adding trauma, abuse, addiction, poverty, neurodiversity, mental ill-health, damaged relationships, institutionalisation and all the other experiences so many of the people we supervise bring through the door with them. Two people who look remarkably similar on an assessment can need completely different things from us.

You cannot dictate that somebody needs X appointments because they fit into an A box or an F box and pretend that tells you how long it will take to build a relationship with them. One person might tell me everything in their first appointment. Somebody else might take six months before they trust me enough to tell me the thing I actually needed to know. That isn’t inefficiency. That is probation.

Give me a manageable caseload and I can actually know the people I supervise. If somebody who always attends suddenly doesn’t turn up, and I know they’ve been struggling recently, I can think that’s not like them. I can pick up the phone. I can speak to somebody who knows them. I can get in my car and do a home visit because my professional judgement tells me something might be wrong.

Under a conveyor-belt model, that same absence risks becoming something to process. Did not attend. Attempted contact. Warning. Rearrange. Next case.

Yet that person might have relapsed. Their mental health might have deteriorated. Their relationship might have broken down. They might have lost their accommodation or something else might be unravelling. Or there might be nothing seriously wrong at all. But I only know that their absence is unusual because I know what normal looks like for them.

That is what you cannot prescribe in a supervision package. It comes from knowing somebody well enough to recognise change and having enough space in your working day to do something about it. Give me an impossible caseload and I don’t suddenly lose those skills. I lose the time to use them.

And apparently the answer to that is everything except fewer cases. Justice Transcribe saves minutes. Online reporting removes appointments. Supervision packages reduce contact. Electronic monitoring provides surveillance. AI creates efficiencies. Dashboards measure performance. Another e-learning package tells us how to implement the latest version of probation.

I’m not against technology. Use it to get rid of pointless repetitive administration and give me more time with people and I’ll welcome it. But technology is a tool. A tag can tell you where somebody is; it cannot tell you why their life is falling apart. An online check-in can tell you somebody has ticked “fine”; it cannot necessarily tell you that they very obviously aren’t.

What makes me angry is that we seem to be designing probation backwards. Prisons are overcrowded, so more people must be managed in the community. Probation hasn’t enough capacity, so rather than genuinely addressing that, we redesign probation until the available workforce can absorb the numbers. Less contact. More automation. More remote supervision. More “efficiency”. Human contact itself becomes the resource to be rationed.

Of course not everybody needs intensive supervision and of course contact should be proportionate. But proportionate should mean responsive to the individual in front of me and capable of changing when their circumstances change. It should not mean fitting a human being into a centrally designed package because somebody has calculated how many practitioner hours the system can afford them.

We talk endlessly about individualised, trauma-informed, relational practice while simultaneously building a system which increasingly standardises how often practitioners are permitted to have the relationship. Those two things simply do not sit comfortably together.

And please don’t keep telling practitioners to exercise professional curiosity while systematically removing the time in which to exercise it. Professional curiosity is useless if I haven’t got the time to act on what makes me curious.

Stop asking how little probation we can give somebody and still call it supervision. Ask what this particular person needs to make it less likely that they come back through the system, then give practitioners enough time and professional freedom to respond.

Because if we keep stripping human contact out of probation to create capacity, eventually we may have a wonderfully efficient conveyor belt. I’m just not sure we’ll still have a Probation Service.

Anon

*****

This sums up the situation eloquently, and I applaud their contribution however, probation staff have been raising their objections to the direction of travel both in person and via this blog for several years, and the powers that be simply disregard us.

Do ‘they,’ not know our views? Do they not know that they have a crisis of confidence? Do they believe that they have a glorious vision of the future or that they know life at the sharp end better that frontline workers, or are they following a blueprint with an end point that has never been disclosed.

Dialogue, evidence, statistics, data and history are simply overlooked or disregarded either because of arrogance or a directive from above and we are playing a game without the privilege of holding a full deck of cards.

At the end of the day, bonuses will be paid, gongs awarded, promotions granted and the back slapping will continue. ‘They,’ have nothing to lose, they’re not listening and they don’t care what you say or do. It’s called abuse and they can do it because they have the power.

Anon

*****

I agree with this, and I think that’s what makes me angrier than anything else. We need to stop pretending the problem is that nobody has explained it clearly enough. How many more times do practitioners have to say it? How many different ways do we have to describe what is happening before we accept that lack of information isn’t the problem?

We’ve explained the workload. We’ve explained what relentless change does. We’ve explained why relationships matter. We’ve explained the danger of reducing human contact. We’ve explained what happens when professional judgement is squeezed between national processes, targets and performance demands. We’ve explained why people are exhausted, why experienced practitioners are leaving and why confidence in the direction of the service is disappearing.

And still we get another transformation. Another model. Another package. Another dashboard. Another e-learning module. Another “efficiency”. Another announcement telling us how much better probation is going to become.

So yes, I agree. At some point you have to consider the possibility that they already know what we think. And that is far more frightening than believing they simply haven’t listened properly.

Because if you know that the people delivering the service are deeply concerned about its direction and you carry on regardless, what exactly is “staff engagement” for? If practitioners are invited to meetings, surveys, consultations and events but the fundamental direction is immovable, stop calling it engagement. Tell us what has already been decided and spare everybody the pretence.

The power imbalance in that is what I find increasingly disturbing. The practitioner still carries the case. The practitioner still carries the risk. The practitioner will still have their decisions scrutinised when something goes catastrophically wrong. Yet how much genuine influence does that same practitioner have over the systems, workloads, contact models and processes within which those decisions have to be made?

And eventually people learn. They stop putting their hand up. They stop challenging in meetings. They stop answering honestly. They sit through the presentation, complete the training, tick the box and keep their head down. Not because they agree, but because they have concluded that speaking achieves nothing except potentially marking them out as “difficult”, “negative” or “resistant to change”.

For an organisation supposedly dependent upon professional curiosity and people being prepared to say something doesn’t feel right here, that should be absolutely terrifying.

I’m angry because I still care. I still believe probation can be better than this. But I’m increasingly tired of hearing that practitioners need to make their voices heard. Our voices have been heard. The question now is why so little appears to change when we use them. And perhaps that is the crisis of confidence we should really be talking about.

Anon

*****

Thursday 1 October 2026: one for the probation history books. Apart from the introduction, and eventual unwinding, of Transforming Rehabilitation, Thursday could be one of the most significant days the Probation Service has faced in recent times - again. The media attention around the Sentencing Act may have died down, but that does not change what is about to happen across prisons and probation. 

The new Progression Model comes into force with hundreds of prisoners estimated to be released on the first day, followed by implementation across 10 tranches between October 2026 and June 2027. These are modelled estimates rather than fixed numbers, so the scale of the challenge is clear. There is an enormous amount of work happening behind scenes and credit is due where it is due, but the level of guidance, communication, instructions and mandatory learning accompanying all this change does not make the situation better. We do not need to return to the past, but you’d think they’d have learnt from it. 

No rational person thought they’d be reversing rehabilitating, revitalising or renewing probation into something better. It is possible, but not if the future of probation success is primarily framed around justice transcribe, AI, tagging and reducing the prison population, with little serious consideration of what probation actually is or what it could become. 

Probation has become the mechanism for implementing whatever happens elsewhere in the justice system, but without its own identity, professional voice and purpose. I do not even think there is real sympathy for probation staff being pulled from pillar to post through yet another major programme of change, while continuing to deliver a demanding public service, while poorly paid.. 

It’s totally ignored that within there is a legitimate sense of anger at those who have been complicit in allowing probation to become increasingly defined by the demands placed upon it rather than by what it can contribute. This force fed approach is simply that Thursday is where the policy document ends and operational reality begins, take it or leave it because once again the change machine is upon us and this time the Progression Model risks becoming another missed opportunity to properly understand, develop probation, rehabilitation and justice.

In a word, another omnishambles.

Anon

A Well-Argued Point

The upstream/downstream distinction gets right to the heart of what has happened to probation. Probation should surely be one of the most obvious examples of preventative public spending. The person has offended, yes, but the purpose of supervision cannot simply be to monitor whether they offend again and react when they do. The opportunity is to intervene in all those things that might make another offence more or less likely: housing, relationships, employment, substance use, mental health, debt, isolation, attitudes and simply having somebody consistent enough to notice when things are beginning to unravel.

That takes us straight back to the uncomfortable question of what we actually want probation to do. If we want prevention, then practitioners need time. Not merely enough time to complete an assessment, satisfy National Standards, make the required referrals, record the contact and demonstrate compliance. Time to know somebody well enough to recognise change. Time to make the phone call that might secure the accommodation. Time to speak to the treatment service rather than simply signpost to it. Time to have the conversation that goes somewhere unexpected rather than ending it because the next appointment is waiting.

The irony is that much of the current direction seems to be travelling the other way. Reduce contact. Automate administration. Introduce online reporting. Increase caseload capacity. Measure activity. Manage risk. Recall when things go wrong. Then spend an extraordinary amount of money dealing with the consequences downstream.

Perhaps the question we should ask of every new probation policy is ridiculously simple: does this make another offence less likely? Not: does it save ten minutes? Does it produce a better-looking record? Does it improve a dashboard? Does it allow another five cases to be allocated? Does it demonstrate that a process has been completed?

Does it actually make another offence less likely? Because if prevention really is an investment rather than an expense, probation should be absolutely central to that thinking. But probation cannot prevent much in isolation either. A practitioner cannot manufacture a home, a job, drug treatment, mental-health provision or a functioning support network. Cut those things upstream and eventually their absence arrives at probation, the police, the courts and the prison gate wearing a much larger price tag.

Maybe that is the fundamental mistake we keep making. We keep trying to make the downstream response cheaper and faster instead of asking what investment upstream might have prevented the person reaching us again at all. And perhaps “advise, assist and befriend” doesn’t sound quite so antiquated when viewed through that lens. It sounds remarkably like prevention.

Anon

*****
A well argued point but... absolutely no-one with the authority to implement change will pay any attention to the argument. Why? Because they're all invested in a completely different set of imperatives, i.e. control & restraint via optics & metrics that nets votes for the political classes & wealth for their chums - tags, prisons, hardware/software & a layer of management to oversee it. All paid for by the taxpayer who has already been fleeced to the tune of £1billion+ by unnecesary, ineffective &/or failed projects. And STILL the emperor has no clothes!
Anon

*****
I fear you may be right about nobody with the authority to change things listening, but that almost makes it more important to keep asking the questions.

What troubles me is that the things we can measure and purchase increasingly seem to determine what probation becomes. Tags can be counted. Contacts can be counted. Compliance can be counted. AI can produce measurable time savings. Software can generate dashboards. Restrictions can be monitored. New systems can be commissioned and somebody can announce the number of hours or pounds they are expected to save.

What is much harder to quantify is whether a probation officer knowing somebody properly prevented something happening six months later. There is no neat metric for the conversation that changed somebody’s thinking, the relationship that meant they disclosed something before it became a crisis, or the experienced practitioner who spotted that something wasn’t right.

Perhaps that is precisely why those things become vulnerable. What is easily measurable starts being mistaken for what is valuable.

I don’t expect one blog comment to change Whitehall. But I do think we should keep challenging the assumption that because something produces impressive metrics it represents progress. Otherwise we eventually end up with a beautifully measured, technologically efficient, highly controlled Probation Service that has forgotten what probation was actually supposed to achieve. And then, as you say, everyone will admire the Emperor’s new dashboard.

Anon

*****
V. F. Ridgway published a paper in 1956 criticizing the measurement mantra. Simon Caulkin, a columnist, neatly summarized Ridgway’s argument as:

“What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so”.

Indeed the paper’s title is “Dysfunctional Consequences of Performance Measurements”. 
Ridgway clearly was onto something in 1956. Not everything that matters can be measured. Not everything that we can measure matters.

• Ridgway observes that once a quantitative measure of performance is installed, people reorganise their behaviour around the measure rather than around the underlying purpose it was meant to track
• A single performance measure produces tunnel vision, with effort flowing to whatever is counted while everything uncounted is neglected
• Multiple measures reproduce the problem and add conflict between them, so that people optimise the easy or the rewarded number and trade off the rest.
• Composite measures, which try to solve this by rolling everything into a single weighted index, merely bury the arbitrary judgements about what matters inside a figure that then looks objective.
• The problem with measuring a construct like safety is not merely technical imprecision but the behavioural distortion that installing any metric sets off.

See also Goodhart's Law, Campbell's Law, and the Cobra Effect — what happens when measures become targets.

Goodhart's Law: Named after British economist Charles Goodhart. When a metric is used to reward performance or judge success, people change their behavior to optimize for that specific number rather than the real objective.

The Cobra Effect: A classic manifestation of perverse incentives. It gets its name from an anecdote during the British Raj in India, where the government offered a cash bounty for every dead cobra to reduce the snake population. Instead of lowering the population, enterprising citizens started breeding cobras to collect the reward. When the government cancelled the bounty, breeders set their snakes free, resulting in more cobras than before.

Campbell's Law states that the more a quantitative social indicator is used for high-stakes decision-making, the more subject it is to corruption pressures, and the more it will distort the social process it is meant to monitor.

Anon

Sources:
https://medium.com/centre-for-public-impact/what-gets-measured-gets-managed-its-wrong-and-drucker-never-said-it-fe95886d3df6

https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/ridgway-1956/

Upstream or Downstream?

I found myself paying careful attention to Andy Burnham this morning on the Laura Kuenssberg show as he spoke at length about the recent death of his father and his absolute determination to address the social care issue before he leaves office. Of course we all know this is going to be a monumental task, not least because it's likely to cost a fortune and he has little room for manoeuvre given the tax 'take' is already so high. But when pressed by Laura on this point he responded by saying "but it's preventative".

Wow, lets just think about that for one cotton pickin minute. Supposing he wasn't talking about social care at all, but instead the criminal justice system? Whilst expanding on his social care hypothesis ahead of his big speech on Tuesday, he convincingly made the case for the commonsense approach of spending money upstream rather than downstream as a "preventative" measure. Isn't that the ethos of encouraging healthy living as a way of preventing ill health? A good education system as a way of preventing illiteracy and poor life chances? A criminal justice system that encourages rehabilitation rather than increased prison population? A probation service that is part of a solution rather than part of the problem?

Well, by a stroke of good timing, a recent contributor pointed us in the direction of not one, but two recently published reports that expand on Andy Burnham's "preventative" hypothesis within the criminal justice system. Interestingly they don't seem to address either prison or probation directly, but do highlight the entirely predictable effects of scrapping upstream funding in the form of a functioning youth service, together with Sure Start. 

Lets hope Andy is a quick learner and appreciates his enthusiasm for the concept of upstream funding being "preventative" can be equally applied in other area's of social policy and in fact could be classed as an investment. I'm reminded that Prof Rob Canton is on record as saying quite recently that " Perhaps the best way to enforce, rehabilitate and protect the public is by advising, assisting and befriending."

The justice system's problems are not just about money

Higher spending, without attention to how resources are used, may not translate into better outcomes

The justice system is under visible strain. Crown Court backlogs stand at over 80,000 cases. A record 330,000 tribunal cases were open in early 2026. Since 2010, over 300 magistrates' court sites have closed and Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) reforms have significantly reduced the scope for legal aid, and the number of providers. Prisons are almost at full capacity, with high levels of violence. These are not abstract statistics: they represent real delays, unresolved disputes, and people left further away from services they may need.

When performance falls short, our first instinct is usually to look at the budget. And the budget does matter. Ministry of Justice day-to-day spending fell 33% in real terms between 2007-08 and 2016-17, compared with a 3% reduction across all departments. Spending per person remains around 17% below its 2002-03 level. Spending has recovered somewhat in recent years, though delivering on the scale of reform needed across backlogs, prison capacity and access to justice remains a significant challenge.

But new research from the IFS Transforming Justice programme finds that budget alone will not fix the system's problems. Across policing, courts, prisons and legal aid, how resources are used, where they are located, and what pressures arrive from outside the system are all important determinants of performance. This means that higher spending, without attention to how resources are used, may not translate into better outcomes.

Take the Crown Court backlog. Sitting days rose 32% between 2019 and 2024, yet case closures (disposals) increased by only 20%. Had pre-pandemic productivity been maintained, even when adjusting for changes in the complexity of caseloads, the backlog could almost have been cleared by the end of 2024, without additional resources. This shows that investing in more court time alone has done little to clear the backlog. Doing so requires every part of the system to be working effectively together: judges, barristers, court staff, prison transport and case preparation.

The same is true when we look at management more broadly. In the Metropolitan Police, the effectiveness of individual borough commanders accounts for around a quarter of the variation in policing productivity across London divisions. In prisons, independent inspections by HM Inspectorate of Prisons reduced violence by around 12 incidents per 1,000 prisoners per month over the 15 months following inspection, without any increase in staffing or expenditure. In other words, good leadership and management can deliver real improvements even when additional resources are not on the table.

Where services are located, and who can reach them, is another important dimension of how the justice system performs. Magistrates' court closures have more than doubled the average distance to the nearest court for many communities. Police station closures increased violent crime in surrounding areas by around 9%, a rise that the evidence suggests could have been avoided had different stations been selected for closure. And funding changes in legal aid have reshaped where private providers operate, leaving 12% of local authorities with no active civil legal aid provider. Behind these changes lies a pattern of uneven geographic impact that deserves closer attention.

A further dimension concerns pressures that originate entirely outside the justice system. Several pressures are driving tribunal backlogs: disability and social security cases make up the largest share, while SEND and asylum and immigration appeals have seen the sharpest recent increases. Youth club closures following cuts to youth services raised offending in their vicinity by around 14%. Evidence from Sure Start suggests that early years interventions can reduce more serious offending later in life. More broadly, decisions made in other parts of government, often years earlier, shape the demands placed on the justice system. The introduction of mandatory reconsideration by DWP shows this clearly: designed to resolve more disputes before they reached tribunals, it directly reshaped the flow of cases into the system.

Funding matters, and the cuts of the 2010s had a significant and lasting impact on the system. But it is not the full story. The evidence base being built as part of the IFS Transforming Justice programme suggests that better use of existing resources, more efficient allocation of services across geography, and a clearer understanding of how other departments affect justice outcomes could all make a material difference. The question is not only whether the justice system is adequately funded, but whether the resources it has are being used as well as they could be, and whether the pressures it faces are being understood and addressed at their source.

Magdalena Domínguez is a senior research economist at the IFS, working on its transforming justice project and the education and skills sector. Imran Rasul is professor of economics at University College London, co-director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and research co-director of the Entrepreneurship Research Group of the International Growth Centre. They are co-authors of a new report on the pressures and challenges facing the UK justice system

--oo00oo--

Transforming justice : the interplay of social change and policy reforms

Resources and the justice system

Executive summary

The justice system in England and Wales is a significant area of public spending (£11.8 billion in day-to-day spending in 2025–26) and touches on almost every aspect of economic and social life. It has also seen many important changes and reforms in recent decades. Despite the scale of change and the central importance of justice in underpinning economic and social relations as well as trust in the state, economists have paid relatively little attention to these developments.

In this report, we bring together insights developed through the IFS Transforming Justice programme, established in 2024 and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, to respond to this relative lack of quantitative economic analysis. These insights emerge from a range of studies undertaken to date that examine different parts of the justice system. The programme is interested in all areas of the justice system, but the examples we draw on reflect the areas in which our analysis under the programme is most developed. We organise the evidence presented in this report around one connecting theme: the importance of understanding the role of resources for the functioning of the justice system, where resources refer not only to financial spending, but to a fuller set of inputs that shape the justice system’s capacity and performance, including infrastructure and management. The studies presented demonstrate why it matters to understand how resources are deployed within the justice system, whether the system is allocating and using resources efficiently, and how resources shape justice outcomes and outcomes outside the justice system itself. While the important role of resources forms the backdrop of much existing legal and social science research on justice systems, our studies show how economics research can advance understanding of how justice systems work and how they may work better.

Key insights

1. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ)’s day-to-day budget – £11.8 billion in day-to-day spending in 2025–26 – is a key input into the financial resources of the justice system. It saw large reductions in the early 2010s, followed by a partial recovery in recent years. Between 2007–08 and 2016–17, this budget was reduced by 33% in real terms, compared with a 3% reduction in total day-to-day departmental spending. MoJ spending began to recover from 2016–17, and by 2025–26 the day-to-day budget stood 2.4% below its 2002–03 level in real terms. Current plans imply real-terms growth in day-to-day justice funding of around 1.8% per year between 2025–26 and 2028–29, faster than the 1.2% per year average for overall departmental spending. Recent increases are expected to undo, in aggregate, the spending reductions of the early 2010s, but spending per person in 2025–26 remains 17% lower than its 2002–03 level.

2. Pressures on justice system resources are shaped by demand on the system. For example, the number of open cases in party-to-state tribunals reached a record 330,000 in early 2026, driven largely by rapid growth in the number of appeals. As a result, average waiting times have risen substantially: asylum and immigration appeals were taking 61 weeks to resolve in early 2026, compared with 23 weeks in 2013, while social security appeals (predominantly for disability benefit applications) were taking 35 weeks, compared with 18 weeks in 2013. These delays – in part a result of increasingly stretched resources – appear to reflect rising demand more than a recent deterioration in the productivity of tribunals.

3. Productivity, management and organisation can, however, have large effects on outcomes in the justice system, helping to determine how effectively justice institutions convert existing resources into results. We provide three examples. In the Crown Court, sitting days increased by 32% between 2019 and 2024, but case disposals rose by only 20%, which helps explain why backlogs continued to grow despite increased court capacity. In policing, differences in the characteristics and operational practices of Borough Commanders explain around one-quarter of the variation in crimes solved per officer across London police divisions. Finally, in prisons, independent inspections reduced violence by around 12 incidents per 1,000 prisoners per month in the 15 months following an inspection, without requiring an increase in staffing or expenditure. Instead, inspections appear to work by changing how existing resources and practices are managed.

4. The geographic allocation of justice resources can affect access to justice and outcomes. Since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, volumes of civil legal aid cases have fallen by around 57%, and the number of providers has fallen from roughly 3,000 in 2010 to 1,400 by 2024, leaving 38 local authorities with no observed civil legal aid provider activity in 2023. In London, police station closures increased the average distance for households to the nearest station from around 1.3 kilometres to 3 kilometres and were associated with a 9% increase in violent crime in affected neighbourhoods. Court closures have similarly increased travel distances, with the average distance for households to their nearest magistrates’ court more than doubling, from 5.7 kilometres to 12.1 kilometres.

5. The justice system can be affected by decisions made about resource allocation outside the system. For example, following a 71% real-terms reduction in youth service spending between 2011 and 2019, around 40% of youth clubs closed, and young people in London who lost access to nearby clubs became 14% more likely to commit an offence. Evidence from Sure Start similarly suggests that early years interventions can reduce more serious offending later in life. These examples show that spending on services for children and families can generate substantial downstream effects on crime and reduce pressures on justice institutions, meaning the returns to such spending may be larger than conventional assessments imply.

6. How we measure the benefits of justice interventions can substantially affect assessments of value for money. We illustrate this with an example using the fact that conventional estimates of the social costs of crime primarily focus on victims. However, evidence presented in this report suggests that crime also imposes high costs on witnesses. Accounting for these wider effects increases estimated social costs of individual crimes by around 25% on average and by around 28% for violent crime. Over time, victimisation rates fell by 25% between 2003–04 and 2014–15, yet once the costs borne by witnesses are included, the aggregate social costs of crime are estimated to have remained largely unchanged. These findings suggest that the returns to policies that prevent crime – from being witnesses to reducing victimisation – may be substantially larger than conventional measures imply.

7. Together, these findings point to a broader conclusion. Budget levels alone do not capture all the constraints facing the justice system. How resources are used and how different parts of the system interact matter as much as how much is spent, and decisions about resource allocation made outside the justice system can shape its outcomes too.