A Parallel Universe?

Free Thinking : Crime and punishment medieval to modern 

Now here's a question. How can you have an hour long BBC Radio 4 radio discussion on the English criminal justice system and talk a lot about how prisons don't work, but never once mention the Probation Service? Lord Sumption mentioned pre-sentence reports, but only in the context of mental health and community service as an alternative punishment. He was completely dismissive of rehabilitation being possible in any meaningful way. He was correct in saying the public, and consequently politicians, were only interested in 'revenge', so we were highly likely to carry on spending vast sums of money on a system that makes people worse. Other guests felt people needed 'help' with issues such as drug addiction or mental health, but there seems to be a complete systemic bout of collective amnesia as far as probation is concerned, like it never existed. Maybe we've all been in a parallel universe for the past 100 years or more. Listen to it and either get angry or weep.

Crime and punishment medieval to modern 

How have attitudes to punishment changed over time, and what ideas about the rationale for punishment are circulating today? 

In Radio 4's roundtable discussion programme, Matthew Sweet and guests explore the criminal justice system through history. With: 

Stephanie Brown, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull and BBC / AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which puts research on radio 

Scout Tzofiya Bolton, poet and broadcaster who presents on National Prison Radio, and for Radio 4 the Illuminated episode called The Ballad of Scout and the Alcohol Tag. Her poetry collection is called The Mad Art of Doing Time 

Joanna Hardy-Susskind, criminal barrister and presenter for Radio 4 of a series called You Do Not Have To Say Anything 

Stephen Shapiro, Professor of American Literature at the University of Warwick 

Jonathan Sumption, former Supreme Court judge and now Moral Maze panellist for BBC Radio 4 and author of a five-volume account of The Hundred Years War

--oo00oo--

As an aside, this got a mention (AI generated):-

In January 2026, UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood expressed a desire to modernize the criminal justice system by using AI and technology to replicate the surveillance goals of Jeremy Bentham's 18th-century "Panopticon" prison design.

Here are the key details regarding her remarks:

The Vision: In an interview with Tony Blair, Mahmood stated her "ultimate vision" was to achieve, "by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon".

"Eyes of the State": She explicitly stated that her goal is for "the eyes of the state can be on you at all times," aiming to use AI to get ahead of criminals.

AI-Powered Policing: The proposal is part of a broader, £140 million plan to overhaul policing, which includes a massive expansion of live facial recognition (LFR) technology, increasing surveillance vans from 10 to 50.

Criticism: The comments have been heavily criticized by opposition politicians and civil liberties groups, with some describing it as an "authoritarian" or "dystopian" move towards a "Big Brother" state.

Context: While the original Bentham Panopticon was a design for a prison where inmates could be observed without knowing they were being watched, Mahmood’s vision extends this concept to the use of data, AI, and facial recognition in public life.

MoJ Grabs Youth Justice

Thanks go to the long term friend and supporter of this blog for pointing us in the direction of the recently published paper A Modern Youth Justice System that many feel will be anything but bad news for the one part of the criminal justice system that works reasonably well. Rob Allen has this to say about it:-   

Youth Justice - A Missed Opportunity?

There are some things to welcome in the government’s youth justice policy statement presented to Parliament today. Improved funding arrangements should enable local services to divert more children from crime, particularly knife crime and develop more effective alternatives to custody especially for those on remand. Plans to better incentivise local authorities to keep children awaiting trial for serious crimes in the community look promising.

But does the package really add up to the self-proclaimed “foundations fit for the future” of a modern system?

Yes, the government’s making some structural change- but it’s of questionable merit. They’re going further than the independent review of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) (also out today), by relieving the YJB of its roles in developing youth justice standards, overseeing how well they’re being met and advising ministers accordingly- as well as disbursing funds. These functions will revert to the Ministry of Justice, in line with cross government plans to cut spending and give ministers more decision-making powers.

The Board has at least survived, something of a surprise following its last minute reprieve from the 2010 bonfire of the quangos and loss of its responsibilities for youth custody in 2017. It would certainly have been odd to scrap entirely a New Labour creation which has been at the heart of what today’s statement calls “one of the great societal success stories in modern Britain.” The YJB will be a shadow of its former self however much it can make of its new mission of driving continuous improvement.

David Lammy’s statement also has some honest words on the dismaying conditions for children in custody, particularly Young Offender Institutions “too old and too big, they are austere and unsafe, and they were often not designed to hold children at all”. It’s just what Charlie Taylor said in his 2016 review since when the distraction of the Secure School has led to 10 wasted years. Work is now promised on a plan that is realistic, affordable, and focused on achievable outcomes, getting children safely out of their rooms and into education. Key to that will be investment in the right kinds of values and skills among staff.

That indicates where today’s proposals don’t go far enough. This was an opportunity to move youth justice policy out of the Ministry of Justice into the Department for Education. Developing the best response to children in trouble of course involves many departments and agencies. That’s why the variety of experience and expertise among YJB members is so important. Taking responsibility from them and giving it to MoJ officials seems a mistake; better the YJB report to a department more centrally involved with promoting the interests of children.

Youth Justice Minister Jake Richards recognises that successful policy and practice relies predominantly on activities outside his department’s remit. He recently expressed frustration at how long the Health department took to get the best child psychologist in the country to write a one-pager for staff at the Secure Training Centre on how to manage girls locked up there.

Lammy will “soon set out our plans for the system as a whole and, taken together, we believe these proposals will amount to the most fundamental reform of the youth justice system in a generation.”

To do that should paradoxically mean a significant reduction in his own responsibilities and a shift to a more fitting place in the machinery of government. After all, he who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Rob Allen

Staff Responses

James,

Your sudden concern about the impact on our families is difficult to take seriously. For years, staff have been overworked, underpaid, and stretched beyond reasonable limits, and the strain that has placed on our families has gone largely unacknowledged.

It rings hollow to hear about “extraordinary” people and work while sitting on a six-figure salary and defending a 4% pay offer that is, frankly, abysmal and does not come close to reflecting the value of the work being done or the cost of living. If we are truly extraordinary, then an extraordinary pay offer — somewhere in the region of 12–20% — would demonstrate that far more convincingly than repeated messaging ever could.

You continue to point to London weighting and prison supplements, yet the majority of probation staff do not work in London or in prisons. Those examples are not representative of the reality most practitioners face.

The follow-up communications insisting the current offer is generous feel less like engagement and more like pressure. Staff are not asking for rhetoric. We are asking for fairness, respect, and pay that reflects reality.

Had the hundreds of millions currently being poured into tagging, IT and AI contracts none of us want — designed largely to relieve prison overcrowding by shifting the burden onto probation — been used more wisely, probation might once again stand as a sentence in its own right. Practitioners would be able to do the good, traditional probation work that actually supports rehabilitation and protects the public.

So no, I won’t be voting to accept peanuts. There, I’ve had my say.

Anon

******
After a while you stop reacting to this stuff. The delays, the careful wording, the reassurance that someone somewhere thinks it’s reasonable. It all blurs into the background noise of the job, like the constant “temporary” pressures that never go away.

Calling the work “extraordinary” is becoming almost ironic. Extraordinary work, ordinary pay, permanent shortages, and a steady stream of communications telling us to be patient just a little longer. There’s always another explanation, another comparison, another reason why this is actually better than it looks.

For many of us, progression isn’t even relevant anymore. We’ve been at the top of the scale for years. Including that in the headline figure just confirms how far removed these conversations are from the reality of experienced staff.

What’s hardest to take isn’t even the number. It’s the sense that this is presented as the best that could possibly be achieved, as though the last decade hasn’t happened, as though people haven’t quietly left in large numbers, as though morale isn’t already on the floor.

You mention families. Most of us have been managing the impact on our families for years — the late finishes, the stress, the constant feeling of carrying too much risk with too little support. That part didn’t start with this pay round, and it won’t end with it either.

At this point, people aren’t angry so much as tired. Tired of being told to wait. Tired of being told this is progress. Tired of hearing how valued we are while watching the service hollow out.

The ballot will say what it says. I don’t expect miracles from it, but at least it’s one of the few moments where staff get to express a view that isn’t filtered, reframed, or summarised on their behalf. Until the next email arrives explaining why whatever happens is also a good outcome.

Anon

******
Recent times seem to have brought us an embarassment of riches when it comes to bullying by overload; Trump, Johnson, Netanyahu are but three prime examples of many. In effect they swamp everyone with a tsunami of bullshit, of lies, of misdirections, of extreme positions - and everyone is left reeling, unsure of which to react to, which is the most heinous, which deserves to be taken seriously as a threat. So people become tired, exhausted & almost bored, unable to respond in any meaningful way... and thus something slips through that would otherwise have been derided & defeated.

And thus we have experienced MoJ/NOMS/HMPPS acting in a similar manner over the last decade or so, albeit at the behest of the elected government. They are happy to gaslight, reframe, lie & deceive in order to achieve their targets. They have swamped, overwhelmed & bullied staff until their resistance is virtually gone. Many hundreds of experienced & knowledgeable staff have left, replaced with several 'cohorts' of new, eager lambs who are unaware of the slaughter they are about to experience. The justifiable cynism about Napo has left them without union membership; the joy of this is barely hidden in the sarcasm of mcewen's email: "please consider joining one of our excellent unions and have your voice heard."

Join a union and vote NO. It's time to show Whitehall that probation does have a bark AND a bite to be reckoned with; it isn't merely a pack of whmpering puppies.

Anon

******
This is a brilliantly articulated comment. The analogy to the political "tsunami of bullshit" is spot on—it's the perfect description of how organisational leadership, just like the populist politicians you mention, creates a state of permanent crisis and exhaustion. It’s a deliberate tactic: flood the zone, blur the lines, and make everything so noisy that no single scandal or failure can gain enough traction to actually stick.

Your point about the exodus of experienced staff and the arrival of "eager lambs" is the tragic core of it. The institutional memory is gone, and without it, the new cohort doesn't have the historical comparison to know just how far standards have slipped. They just think this chaos is normal.

And that McEwen quote you pulled—"please consider joining one of our excellent unions and have your voice heard"—does reek of a tick-box exercise. It’s the kind of placating gesture that does indeed barely hide the sarcasm. It says "we've done the consultation," not "we value your input."

You're absolutely right. The only counter to being treated like a whimpering pack is to show some teeth. Joining a union and voting No isn't just about this one issue; it’s about proving that the workforce isn't broken yet. It’s about saying that while they may have swamped us, they haven't sunk us.

ANARCHIST PO

Thought Piece 11

We need to be real about the future of probation. You couldn’t make it up really. A new Sentencing Act, £700 million invested in AI and IT, and 1,000 new trainee probation officers promised, yet here we are on the precipice with rising workloads, growing uncertainty and a carefully packaged 4% pay offer presented as progress. We’re told probation is “extraordinary work”; the glossy recruitment adverts insist on it. But scratch beneath the surface and a different picture of probation in 2026 begins to emerge.

Imagine every probation office of the near future. An offender walks in, places their bag in a locker and pauses at the door to be facially and bodily scanned. If the system does not recognise them, or flags an unknown object in a pocket, a security wand completes the ritual. Efficient. Controlled. Managed. They sit and wait for their probation practitioner, who is likely newly qualified, recently out of university, bright and well-intentioned but learning the craft in a system that no longer appears to value craft. It isn’t their fault. They need employment and income like anyone else. Many will leave when something more stable or better paid appears, unless they are accelerated into management within a year if their psychometrics fit.

They move to a supervision room. An induction, a toolkit session, a review of licence conditions, delivered through structured prompts. Tick boxes completed. Risk assessment refreshed. Every word captured in real time by Justice Transcribe AI and uploaded directly into the case management system. Reports drafted instantly. Risk tools auto-populated. Supervision records formatted before the conversation has properly settled. The practitioner informs the individual that their risk level has been lowered. Not necessarily through nuanced professional judgement shaped by experience and relational depth, but because the algorithm indicates it. The outcome is eligibility for automated reporting. Instead of attending weekly or fortnightly, the offender now logs into an app once a month, speaks to an AI interface and confirms everything is fine. Compliance recorded. Case maintained. Human contact reduced to exception management.

Meanwhile, the probation practitioner holds a caseload exceeding 100. With no short sentences going into custody, probation absorbs the volume. Post-Sentence Supervision has ended, everyone is electronically tagged and tracked, and recalls recycle through the system with predictable speed of less than 2 months. Reports are AI-drafted. Risk assessments AI-assisted. Supervision notes AI-transcribed. Enforcement actions processed by administrative teams prompted by automated flags. Half the caseload reports digitally. The practitioner’s role becomes one of oversight rather than engagement, validation rather than intervention. Professional discretion narrows as the system standardises responses. Time once spent building motivation or challenging thinking is redirected into monitoring dashboards, tracking offenders on tags, and ensuring the technology has functioned correctly.

At that point, the question becomes uncomfortable. If supervision is automated, reporting is automated, monitoring is tagging and tracking, enforcement is automated and risk assessment is automated, what exactly are the 1,000 new probation officers for? What is the long-term workforce plan in a service increasingly shaped around digital compliance? Perhaps the 4% pay offer was not misjudged after all. Perhaps it was transitional, and intentional. It is easier to contain pay when you quietly redesign the profession to be less.

On a shelf somewhere in that office sits a book with that old motto: advise, assist, befriend. It reads almost like an artefact from another era. Now replaced by scripted prompts, app notifications, dashboards and tracking. This may sound exaggerated, even dystopian, but the building blocks are already visible. Technology and AI isn’t enhancing probation, it’s replacing it now.

Anon

Thought Piece 10

Don’t panic Mr. Mainwaring!  Extended like the last two deadlines, they will never hit the target unless they pay existing staff the right salary. Trainee probation officer programme deadline extended – don’t miss out! There’s still time to apply for the trainee probation officer programme (PQiP).

The deadline has been extended to Monday 2 March at 11.55pm in:

East of England
Kent, Surrey and Sussex
London
South Central

The deadline has been extended to Monday 23 February at 11.55pm in:

East Midlands
Greater Manchester
North East
North West
South West
Wales
Yorkshire and Humber

If you’re interested there’s still time to submit your application. This is your chance to earn while you learn, gain a degree equivalent qualification, and play an essential role in your community and the wider justice system.

*******
Nothing says “high demand, thriving profession” quite like repeatedly extending the application deadline. We’re told the staffing pipeline is being strengthened with 1,300 trainees. Yet deadlines keep shifting. Almost as if the issue isn’t awareness… but attractiveness.

And while we’re here, just a small but important point. PQiP leads to a Level 6 professional qualification. That sits at the same academic level as a bachelor’s degree. It is not the same thing as being awarded a university degree. Calling it “degree equivalent” is shorthand for level, not status. That distinction matters not because the training lacks value, but because clarity builds credibility.

The bigger question isn’t the label. It’s whether newly qualified staff enter a service where:

• Experienced mentors are available
• Workloads are manageable
• Professional judgement is respected
• Pay progression makes staying worthwhile

You can rename a qualification and you can extend a deadline. But unless the job itself is sustainable, recruitment campaigns become a revolving door and that’s the part no advert fixes. No panic though. Everything’s fine.

Thought Piece 9

There is a casm between new qualified staff and older gen po. The new only learn to say yes ok sure what have you.

******
I don’t think it’s as simple as “new staff just say yes.” There is a gap, but it isn’t about age or character. It’s about culture. Many newer practitioners have entered a service that is already overstretched, target-driven and short on experienced mentors. They’ve trained in an environment shaped by SFO anxiety, compliance metrics and constant performance scrutiny. In that climate, you quickly learn what feels safest: follow the direction given, escalate upwards, don’t rock the boat. That isn’t weakness. It’s self-preservation.

Those who trained 15–20 plus years ago came into something different. There was more reflective supervision, more protected space for professional judgement, and more confidence in constructive disagreement. You could push back on an SPO or even a PDU head and it was understood as professional discussion, not defiance. That space feels so much narrower now.

The real issue isn’t whether newer staff “say yes.” It’s whether anyone, new or experienced, genuinely feels able to say, respectfully, “I don’t agree,” or “This allocation isn’t safe,” without fearing consequences. A professional service must have room for challenge. If practitioners can't question workload, allocation or risk decisions without worrying about performance measures or reputational damage, that’s not a generational flaw. That’s a psychological safety problem. The question isn’t why some say yes, it's whether the system makes it safe to say no.

******
Recruitment numbers look reassuring on a spreadsheet.

“1,300 trainees onboarded.”
“FTE up this quarter.”
“Shortfall reduced.”

But probation is not a call centre. It is not a processing factory. It is a profession built on judgement, risk formulation, relational skill and accumulated experience. You do not learn that from a target. Experience in probation isn’t just about years served. It’s about pattern recognition. It’s about having seen escalation before it escalates. It’s about knowing when a compliant presentation masks something more concerning. It’s about understanding local services, local courts, local patterns of behaviour. It’s about confidence to challenge poor decisions including from above. You cannot fast-track that.

Recruiting thousands will plug a numerical gap. It does not plug an experience gap. And here is the uncomfortable part: when the system is overstretched and inexperienced at the same time, risk doesn’t disappear. It just becomes harder to detect and harder to manage. That’s bad for the organisation. It’s worse for new staff. Because where exactly are they meant to learn from?

If experienced practitioners are carrying overload, leaving, or being performance-managed for structural failings, the informal supervision that actually builds competence erodes. E-learning modules don’t replace corridor conversations. They don’t replace reflective debrief after a near miss. They don’t replace a senior colleague saying, “I’ve seen this before , slow down.”

Probation used to develop people through apprenticeship in the truest sense. Now we are onboarding at scale while simultaneously hollowing out the very people who hold the institutional memory. You can’t run a risk critical public protection service on enthusiasm and PowerPoint. Numbers matter. Of course they do. But if experience is treated as optional, we are storing up problems that won’t show on a recruitment dashboard until they show somewhere else. And by then, it’s too late.

******
So let's just look at what the numbers actually mean on the ground. Yes, recruitment is up. Yes, trainee numbers are high. Yes, FTE figures can be presented as improving. But there is a difference between headcount and experience. If 1,300 trainees enter the system while hundreds of experienced Band 4s quietly leave or step back, the spreadsheet looks healthier. The skill mix doesn't. What you end up with is:

• Teams heavy with PQiPs and newly qualified officers
• Fewer long-serving practitioners at the top of bands
• Middle managers supervising people who are still learning the craft

On paper: recovery. In practice: fragility.

Probation is not a production line. It is a judgement profession. And judgement is learned through experience, through seeing risk escalate, de escalate, surprise you, and sometimes outwit you. That can't be accelerated through e-learning modules. When experience thins out, which is happening now, practice naturally becomes more procedural. People lean on templates. Risk assessments become defensive. Recalls increase because discretion feels dangerous. Oversight tightens. Anxiety rises. That shift doesn’t show up neatly in workforce statistics. It shows up in:

• Rising recall numbers
• Over cautious decision making
• Burnout in new staff who don’t feel properly mentored
• Middle managers stretched between targets and reality

And when something goes seriously wrong, it won’t be framed as a structural experience deficit. It will be framed as individual failure. That’s the risk.

The Sentencing Act only works if probation has the depth of experience to manage complexity safely in the community. If we plug gaps numerically but hollow out institutional memory, we create a system that looks staffed but behaves brittle.

Recruitment is necessary. Retention is critical and that what those at the top either don't recognise or choose to ignore. Probation doesn’t fail slowly. It fails when judgement margins narrow and something tips. And at the moment, the conversation feels very focused on the numbers and not nearly focused enough on the experience behind them.

All contributions Anon

Probation in Crisis Shock

As Dame Antonia Romeo is being considered for the top Civil Service job, thanks go to the contibutor for pointing us in the direction of yet another influential report confirming probation continues to be in crisis as a direct result of her previous outstanding work at the MoJ:-

  
Is this Plan A, or just a plan? The Bromley Briefings say it all

Each year, the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) publish the Bromley Briefings. These fact sheets on the criminal justice system are not named after pleasant parts of London, neither the one in Kent nor that in east London, but in memory of Keith Bromley who was a much-valued supporter of the PRT and a passionate advocate for change in our criminal justice system. The latest edition has just been released and can be found on the PRT website. These are always an invaluable source of information and presented in a user-friendly way.

The February 2026 document looks at the prison capacity crisis, and includes information that is vital to understand why we must gain maximum impact from the Sentencing Act 2026, just passed into law. It comes at a crucial time. As the Prisons Minister said just last week, implementing the Act is the only hope of stopping prisons being full once again by September this year. So, with thanks to the PRT for all this information, here is my assessment of where we are, along with some extracts from their excellent work.

The impact of the crisis

The prison capacity crisis in England and Wales is still impacting all aspects of prison performance, with indicators on safety, use of force, purposeful activity, and overcrowding all deteriorating significantly in the past two years. To put the numbers into perspective, the prison population has risen by 94 per cent since 1990, and currently stands at between 87,000 to 87,500. If nothing changes that will keep rising, and whilst the early release schemes of 2024 and 2025 led to 50,000 people leaving prison, the overall number inside jail, because of the numbers still coming in, did not fall significantly.

The resulting overcrowding means that key activities required for rehabilitation and preparation for life on release all too often do not take place. Pressures on staff mean people do not get taken to education and training. Even key health issues are not resolved, as appointments for doctors are cancelled, and there are stresses and tensions within the jails. Officers are disillusioned, and sickness levels rise. Violence is all too often threatened.

Here, from the Briefings, are the bare facts of the matter:

• In 2024–25, almost three quarters of prisons (72 per cent) in England and Wales were overcrowded – a nine percentage point increase on the previous year. Private prisons have seen a 17 per cent increase in their numbers of overcrowded prisoners in the past year. More than 21,600 people – a quarter of the prison population – are held in overcrowded accommodation.
• 49 per cent of prisons were judged to have concerning or seriously-concerning performance by HM Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS), a notable increase from 42 per cent the previous year.
• Inspectors found that almost three in four inspected prisons (74 per cent) were poor or not sufficiently good at providing purposeful activity.
• Inspectors found that safety was not good enough in almost half (44 per cent) of the 31 men’s prisons inspected in 2024–25
• There were seven homicides in prison in 2024 alone, compared with nine in total over the preceding five years

The consequences of overcrowding are all too easily seen.

Will the Sentencing Act change this picture?

The Sentencing Act aims to reduce demand by an estimated 7,500 places through measures like increased use of deferred and suspended sentences, the bringing-forward of release points on standard determinate sentences, and reforms to recall. Alongside the act, the Government’s prison building program aims to deliver an additional 14,000 places by 2031.

It is hoped that, as the measures in the Act are introduced and more capacity comes on stream, it will create the space for the Prison Service to focus on much needed improvement. But even accounting for the impact of the provisions in the legislation, the prison population is still predicted to increase by an additional 2,000 people by 2029.

While many of the provisions of the Act are welcome, it fails to tackle sentence inflation at the serious end of offending as a primary cause of the growing prison population. A particular point of concern is the exclusion of prisoners serving an Extended Determinate Sentence from the Sentencing Act; this group now accounts for over one in seven of the sentenced prison population and is rapidly growing. Other groups are also excluded from the opportunities the Act aims to provide.

Furthermore, while the Act includes measures to increase opportunities for people serving IPP (Imprisonment for Public Protection) sentences in the community to have their licences terminated, it does nothing to address the injustice faced by just under 1,000 IPP prisoners who have never been released.

The Government has accepted it must turn towards the community rather than solely building prisons. Measures in the Act to increase the update of effective community alternatives should mean few people are sent to prison to serve short sentences, which have among the highest reoffending rates.

There is a major problem

But a significant challenge lies in ensuring the Probation Service is adequately resourced for the additional numbers under community supervision. After a decade of struggles to cope with endless reorganisations, the service delivers poor performance, with staff shortages, and escalating caseloads. The Chief Inspector of Probation, the Justice Select Committee, and now the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have all highlighted the crisis. Prisons and Probation Minister Lord Timpson said just last week that while the prisons are in crisis, probation is “sicker”.

The number of recalls has risen sharply, reaching over 40,000 in the year to June 2025 – a 32 per cent rise on the previous year. While recalls can be necessary, they are often the result of support failures or risk-averse reactions from an under-resourced system.

The Government has committed to recruiting an extra 1,300 probation officers and an additional investment of £700 million in the service by 2028, as well as funding for increased IT and AI support for the staff.

However, that recent report by the influential PAC highlighted that the Probation Service at present fails to meet the majority of its targets, and doubts that simply recruiting brand new staff and pushing them through training will succeed. Indeed the MPs worry about this creating more difficulty, and fear there will be strong and negative public reaction should many of those out of prison earlier, or indeed on community sentences, commit additional crimes.

The Committee also fears that the morale of probation officers will suffer from the public, and political, fallout of any headline cases, as has happened on many previous occasions.

Furthermore, now the Government has admitted that across the prison estate education classes are being cut by between 20 and 25 per cent, it is feared that rehabilitation opportunities will be reduced dramatically. Teachers are losing their jobs, and once classes are closed, they will never reopen. Instead of walking out of the prison gates with increased confidence in their ability to learn and adapt to life outside, people will leave with the same life struggles as they had before. For instance, the cancellation of the Sycamore Tree course has taken away opportunities for those in prison to benefit from Restorative Justice, and it has not been replaced.

Therefore the enhanced element of enhanced progression is cut back, and those who have investigated the ability of the Probation Service to deliver have concluded that the system, with the best will in the world from those working within it, is struggling to cope now, let alone in the future. The tagging system also has failings, and the PAC questions if the provider of the service will cope with the huge extra demand.

Pia Sinha, chief executive of the PRT, sums it up: “This briefing highlights a worrying decline in performance across the board and underlines the urgent need for measures to reduce demand on our critically-overburdened prisons. The Sentencing Act goes some way to meeting this challenge. Provisions to limit the use of short sentences and increase the uptake of effective community alternatives are welcome but must be backed by sufficient resource and support for probation.

“However, the Act will not fix all the manifold problems in our prison and probation system, and it dodges the crucial task of turning the tide on runaway sentence inflation, which has been the chief cause of rising prison numbers. But with sustained political will and investment, it could be the start of a journey towards a more effective and humane justice system.”

The Government must be bold

This is the only hope to solve this crisis once and for all. For the Sentencing Act to deliver at all it will take a change of approach from across Government, with the involvement of the voluntary sector – including those passionate people with lived experience of our jails who want to support others newly-incarcerated, and also to assist those newly-released.

The cuts in education and training must be reversed, all classrooms opened, and capital at present allocated to build more and more prisons switched to improving the ones we have, with revenue to ensure that the services within them give an opportunity for rehabilitation. More resources need switching to guarantee homes for those walking out of the prison, and pressure put on employers to offer work.

Where prisons are being built, why not make them open prisons with independent living accommodation? Expand Release on Temporary Licence to get people used to freedom, and, above all, when something goes wrong there must not be a panicky reaction to negative Press headlines.

This may be the last hope, and is certainly at present the only hope. It can work. If everyone joins in and the Ministry of Justice have imagination, it will work. There is no Plan B, and I find that concerning. But at least we have a reasonable Plan A, and the Bromley Briefings lay out exactly why that is so desperately needed.

Raymond Smith - Writer and former resident of HMPS

Probation Pay and Myths

Has anyone seen the Chief Officers Pay myth busting article today, in a vain attempt to spin it that we are and have been generously compensated over the years? For example she's stated that Band 4 (PO's) have had a massive 22% Pay increase since 2010, except that basically means we've had on average a 1.3% increase in pay each year, WOW Kim thanks! As the Chief Probation Officer shouldn't her role be to lead us, fight for us, advocate for us, inspire us, all I see is that she's a mouthpiece for her HMPPS bosses and nothing else...

******
I did, it really angered me! The tone was so awful, as if we’re going to read that and then realise we’ve all been looking at it all wrong. All hail the chief PO for busting those myths and essentially calling us all liars and over-reactors. And you wonder why there’s a retention problem…

******
I’ve read the Chief Probation Officer’s “myth busters” piece carefully. It sets out three main corrections and provides percentage tables to show pay growth over time. So let’s respond clearly and factually.

Myth 1: CBF is separate from the pay award

It’s correct that progression (CBF) sits within Civil Service Remit Guidance and forms part of the annual pay framework. But progression is movement within a pay band. It is not a cost-of-living increase. It does not raise the value of the band itself. It simply moves someone closer to the ceiling that already exists. Once staff reach the top of their band, progression ends. From that point on, only the headline uplift matters. So while CBF may technically sit inside the “award”, it does not function as restoration for experienced staff already at band maximum. That distinction is not a myth. It’s mechanics.

Myth 2: Only 1% between 2018 and 2021

The article states that between 2018 and 2024 average increases were 24.4% at band minimums and 10.8% at band maximums. Minimums rose faster to support recruitment. Maximums rose more slowly. That means newer entrants benefited proportionally more than long-serving staff at the top of bands. During the same period, cumulative inflation — especially post-2020 — significantly reduced real-terms value. Nominal increases without inflation context do not equal restored purchasing power.

Myth 3: Only 11% since 2010

The table shows band maximum increases since 2010. For Band 4, that’s 17.56% (22.26% including the proposed 2025 uplift). Spread across roughly 14–15 years, that averages around 1–1.5% per year. Over that same period, inflation has substantially exceeded that figure. The question staff are asking is not whether pay bands have moved at all. It’s whether pay has kept pace with inflation, expanding workload, heightened risk, professional registration requirements and responsibility creep. Those are different questions.

The 2025–26 offer remains:

• 4% uplift to pay points
• 4% uplift to allowances
• Progression where eligible

No one is disputing the arithmetic. What staff are disputing is the framing. Because when real-terms pay erosion is reframed as “misunderstanding”, it feels less like myth-busting and more like minimising. You can call it clarification. But when experienced practitioners calculate what their pay buys now compared to ten or fifteen years ago, the gap is not imaginary. It’s visible. And no table changes that.

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We are not stupid. We do not need “myth busters” to explain percentages to us. We can divide 22% by 15 years. We can compare it to inflation. We can look at our rent, mortgages, fuel bills, childcare and food costs and do the maths without supervision thanks! The issue is not misunderstanding. The issue is erosion.

Calling it a “myth” when staff point out that 1–1.5% a year over a decade and a half is nowhere near real-terms restoration feels profoundly insulting. It suggests the problem is that we haven’t grasped the figures properly, rather than the figures being inadequate. Progression is not a pay rise for experienced staff at the top of bands. It is internal movement within a ceiling that itself has barely moved. Recruitment minimums rising faster than maximums doesn’t disprove erosion. It highlights it. And presenting nominal percentage tables without inflation context is technically correct but economically hollow. We are being told, essentially: “Look at the numbers. You’re doing better than you think.”

Eh, No!

We are looking at the numbers.
And we are looking at our bank accounts.
And we are looking at workloads that have intensified year on year.
And we are looking at risk that has escalated.
And we are looking at professional expectations that have increased.
And we are looking at colleagues leaving.

The anger isn’t because we can’t do maths. It’s because we can! When a workforce under sustained strain is told their concerns are “misunderstandings,” it doesn’t feel explanatory. It feels incredibly dismissive! And that is what has landed so badly. This isn’t about confusion. It’s about value. If leadership wants trust, start by acknowledging real-terms loss without reframing it as myth. We don’t need correcting. We need recognising. There's a difference.

--oo00oo--

What does AI say?

This article aims to address common misconceptions surrounding the pay, workload, and career value of probation officers in England and Wales, based on recent data from 2024–2026.

Myth 1: "Probation officers are well-paid for their work."

Reality: Pay has fallen significantly in real terms.
While starting salaries for qualified probation officers rose to £35,130 (plus London weighting) by 2024/25, unions argue this does not compensate for over a decade of wage stagnation. Data indicates that probation staff have faced a real-terms pay decrease of roughly 22% compared to similar professions over the past decade, with some estimates suggesting a 60% real-terms cut since 2010.

Myth 2: "The 2024/25 pay rises resolved the pay crisis."

Reality: The rises barely kept up with inflation, and negotiations for 2025 were delayed.
While a 2024 deal brought a 6.4% increase for some and brought forward pay dates, it followed years of suppressed wages. As of late 2025, unions were still in dispute, with reports of "relentless" workload pressures and no immediate 2025 pay offer, leading to threats of industrial action.

Myth 3: "Probation officers are paid equivalent to police/prison officers."

Reality: Probation staff have consistently fallen behind other justice sectors.
Comparative data shows that probation staff have received lower, or joint-lowest, pay awards compared to police staff and prison officers since 2010. As of 2024, probation pay lagged behind other public sector roles (Police Staff 20%, Health 16%, Local Government 18.4% vs. Probation 9.9% increase).

Myth 4: "The high caseloads are temporary, justifying the pay rate."

Reality: Unmanageable workloads are now considered systemic.
The service is under severe pressure, often described as "buckling" or in crisis, with high turnover, severe staff shortages (estimated at 3,150), and unsustainable caseloads. Staff describe pay as "atrocious" for the high-risk, 24/7 nature of the work.

Myth 5: "The service is now properly funded after reunification."

Reality: Despite returning to public control, funding remains a key issue.
Although the 2021 unification was generally welcomed, reports from 2025 show that the service is "under-funded, under-staffed, and overworked". The reliance on early release schemes (SDS40) has exacerbated workload issues without corresponding pay increases for the increased risk.

Disclaimer: Pay data is based on 2024-2025 union negotiations and Ministry of Justice figures. The situation regarding 2025/26 pay is subject to ongoing negotiations.

Thought Piece 8

I think what this thread has exposed isn’t just anger at one person or one union. It’s something deeper. It’s about probation staff feeling abandoned by EVERY layer of authority.

By management.
By policy-makers.
By inspectors.
By ministers.
And yes, by unions.

When people feel unheard and unprotected for long enough, distrust spreads everywhere. Leadership becomes a symbol for a much bigger loss of faith.

I don’t for one minute dismiss the criticism. Membership has fallen. Confidence has eroded. Some people have had poor experiences with reps. Some feel leadership hasn’t delivered. That frustration is real. But here’s the part that matters now. We have decisions coming up on pay and reform in the immediate term. Not in two years. Not after a hypothetical reset. Now.

If the argument is that the union is structurally compromised, then the obvious question is this.What is the concrete, time-bound alternative that increases leverage before the next pay round? Not a feeling. Not a verdict on personality. A plan.

Joining a different union fragments density further.
Leaving reduces bargaining weight.
Building a fourth union from scratch takes years.
Waiting for collapse is not strategy.

So what is the operational route that creates political or industrial risk in the next 6–12 months? Because power responds to risk. Risk comes from numbers, turnout and coordination. If we believe probation is pivotal to sentencing reform and prison capacity, then leverage only exists if it is organised and visible. Anger alone doesn’t create that. This isn’t about defending anyone’s salary or record. It’s about avoiding paralysis.

If leadership needs replacing, that requires members.If strategy needs rewriting, that requires mandate. If unity is the goal, it requires participation. Otherwise we stay exactly where we are which is divided, exhausted, and easier to manage than we'd like to think. I genuinely want to know what is the alternative that strengthens our hand before the next negotiation, not after it?

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1. Work your hours.

2. No overtime.
3. No late night reporting.
4. When re-allocated cases for those on sick or maternity, rack, pack and stack them. Prioritise your caseload and keep yourself sane.
5. Don’t take on SPOC roles.
6. Do everything within timescales.
7. Friday afternoon give your manager a list of the work you could not complete.
8. Remove the goodwill and let’s see how the management deal with that.
9. Everyone go on the sick and take at least six months.
10. Don’t feel guilty the management put you in this position.

*******
Love your thinking. However if you do this and then go off sick, you get victimised. Colleagues have gone through traumatising Performance Management processes for allegedly not being up to scratch and failing. Colleagues claimed in their defence that it was impossible to achieve all the dictates within contracted hours. Were told they just couldn't cut it. PDU heads and their deputies can be quite vindictive not realising they are not quite that clever despite it been brought to their attention regularly. Some clearly do not even know what ACAS is and what they do - God forbid. Employment Tribunal claims on their way and not done via NAPO either.

National Audit Office report late last year confirmed what we have been telling our esteemed employer all along. Mmmm... they underestimated the time things took despite us at the coalface telling them this consistently. They admitted it at the PAC hearings and then again decided to go against their own underestimation again and didn't deliberately correctly adjust the timings. Classic FU to their employees. Talk about deliberate perpetuation of Workplace Harm! Talk about government sanctioned Modern Day Slavery. They have no idea how to manage, don't care about their employees. If this was a private company the lot of them would have been given their P45s and would have walked out with a cardboard box of personal belongings, but no, they still in their positions and receiving performance bonuses. LIDL now pays more per hour for much less responsibility.

*******

I understand the instinct behind some of these suggestions. People are exhausted. They feel unheard. They feel cornered. But there’s a difference between withdrawing goodwill and detonating your own position.

Work to contract? Yes.
Stop unpaid overtime? Yes.
Document what can’t be completed? Absolutely.

That’s not rebellion. That’s professionalism. Mass resignations, coordinated sickness or banking on tribunals as a system reset isn’t strategy. It’s a series of individual risks in a system that has repeatedly shown it will protect itself first.

If this thread shows anything, it’s not laziness or cowardice. It’s something more serious, people don’t trust any layer of authority to protect them anymore. Not management. Not leadership. Not unions. That level of mistrust is dangerous in a public protection service. But fragmentation and individual legal battles won’t fix that mistrust. They confirm it.

If probation is genuinely pivotal to sentencing reform and prison capacity (and it is ) then leverage has to be credible, coordinated and collective. Not reactive. Boundaries are strength. Organisation is strength.Burning out one colleague at a time is not. If senior leaders are reading this, the message isn’t that staff want chaos. It’s that they feel abandoned. And that’s a far bigger warning sign.

Thought Piece 7

In case anyone hasn't realised it thus far, irrespective of PAC & uncle tom cobbly, NO-ONE in Westminster or Whitehall or MoJ or HMPPS gives a crap about the predicament of probation staff. Why? Because it doesn't affect *them*.

Only when someone's job or promotion or public reputation is on the line will anyone with half-a-chance of making a difference raise an eyebrow &, at a stretch, wonder what the fuss is about. They're not in positions of power because they give a crap; its because they *DON'T* give a crap. They're teflon.

The cobbler, lammy, the invisible woman, young ewan mcgregor (or whoever it is)... they're all invested in tech & prisons - probation staff are merely cannon fodder. Ask yourselves: why would they be interested in reversing all of the PR & vested interest & public cash spent building cosy relationships with the tech & incarceration industries? What is the biggest risk they take?

1. Pissing off powerful people with excellent corporate entertainment & razor-sharp lawyers? OR
2. Stuffing up a handful of whiny bastards who they've been treating like shit with impunity for a decade or two? Less than a third are in a frail union led by a hapless wannabe, and even fewer are in a union that says "yes" to every govt proposal.

As of December 2025, resident doctors (formerly known as junior doctors) in England have staged 14 separate rounds of strike action since the dispute began in March 2023. They've voted again in favour of a further 6 months of action if required:

Number entitled to vote in the ballot: 54,432
Number of votes cast in the ballot: 28,598 = 52.54%
Number of spoilt/invalid voting papers returned: 17

Result of voting:
Yes: 26,696 (93.40%)
No: 1,885 (6.60%)

27,000 of the most committed & critical workers in the country have not yet achieved their aim because the teflon-coated, cloth-eared ideologues in Westminster & Whitehall feel able to ignore them for the past 3 years. The most recent ballot *might* just have twisted Streeting's lugs BUT... I suspect it's more likely he's positioning himself as Starmer's successor & making himself out to be the resolver of the issue.

Probation staff do not have the same leverage & will not have the same effect upon lammy, a deputy pm desperate to step-up, because he's already laid out his tag'em & bag'em agenda.

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I understand the frustration behind this, but I don’t think it’s as simple as “they don’t care.” It’s worse than that. Probation doesn’t move votes. Hospitals collapsing move votes. Trains not running move votes. Doctors striking move votes. When 27,000 resident doctors vote 93% for industrial action, it makes front-page news and creates immediate political risk.

Probation? We operate in the shadows. When it fails, it’s framed as individual practitioner failure, not systemic collapse. When it holds things together, no one notices. That’s the difference. It’s not personal malice. It’s political calculus.

And right now the political calculus favours:
• prisons (because visible custody reassures the public),
• tagging (because tech looks modern and decisive),
• “tough community sentences” (because it sounds robust).

What doesn’t generate headlines?
Workload ratios.
Case quality.
Professional discretion.
Emotional strain.
Retention.

You’re right about leverage. Doctors can withdraw labour and the NHS feels it immediately. Teachers can strike and parents feel it within hours. Probation withdrawing labour would cause disruption, but it’s slower, more diffuse, easier to spin as irresponsibility. That doesn’t mean we’re powerless. It means influence won’t come from outrage alone. It comes from unity, turnout, credibility and sustained pressure.

If less than a third of staff are union members, and turnout is patchy, decision-makers will calculate that the noise is containable. The uncomfortable truth is this: power responds to risk. Until probation creates political risk (reputational, operational, electoral) it will remain a lower priority than prisons and headline management. That’s not because staff are “whiny.” It’s because we’re structurally easy to ignore. The question isn’t whether they care, the question is how we make it cost them not to.