Productivity is the Answer!

We all know that whatever the question, the answer is "£700million and 1,300 extra staff" but actually the real answer appears to be 'automation and productivity'. This from an NAO report published last week:-

Productivity improvement: The Justice Transcribe AI‑enabled transcription tool

This case study focuses on one example of a productivity improvement to automate and improve processes, where the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) sought to improve productivity within the Probation Service by introducing a transcription tool, Justice Transcribe, for probation officers to use in meetings. MoJ and HMPPS expect that this tool will lead to productivity improvements by reducing the amount of time needed to write up meeting notes; improving the quality of those notes; and improving the quality of the interactions probation officers have in the meetings, because they are not focused on note writing. By reducing the time probation officers spend writing up supervision meetings they have with people on probation, Justice Transcribe makes more time available for activities that directly contribute to public protection and rehabilitation. The case study sets out how the tool was identified, developed, tested, scaled and embedded into operational practice by MoJ and HMPPS. It also highlights key lessons from each stage of implementation. 

The case study is intended as a practical example for civil servants and public sector leaders considering similar productivity initiatives, providing insights into the decisions, governance arrangements, testing approaches, implementation activities and evaluation methods that supported delivery. This publication is the first of a series of case studies we plan to publish highlighting practical steps public bodies have taken to improve their productivity and the lessons others can learn from them.

The capacity challenge in the Probation Service 

1 The Probation Service has been under significant strain from staffing shortfalls and increasing demand. In our report Building an effective and resilient Probation Service, we found that, in July 2025, in 10 out of 12 probation regions, Probation Officers were working at above 100% capacity on average. Data from April 2024 indicated that the service had been operating with only around half of the staff needed to run sentence management as intended. In January 2026, the Sentencing Act was passed which introduced measures intended to increase the use of community-based sentences, placing further demands on the service. At the end of June 2026, only 74% of Probation Officer grade posts were filled. 

2 In February 2025 HMPPS established its ‘Our Future Probation Service’ (OFPS) programme. Its purpose is to improve performance, increase retention and reduce staff sickness absence. The programme aims to free up operational capacity by 25% by April 2027. Justice Transcribe, a transcription and summarisation tool enabled by artificial intelligence (AI), has been developed to reduce the amount of time probation officers spend writing up notes of the meetings they have with people on probation, improve the quality of the meeting notes and improve engagement in meetings. This case study sets out how MoJ and HMPPS developed and rolled out Justice Transcribe, and some key lessons for other organisations interested in a similar tool.

Identifying opportunities for productivity improvement 

3 Probation officers conduct approximately 3.7 million supervision meetings annually.3 An accurate record of the key points of these meetings is important for managing risks to the public and tracking progress with sentencing requirements. Writing up meeting notes and recording them in the case management system was time‑consuming and created a risk of poor quality and inaccurate records. 

4 The idea for Justice Transcribe came from front-line probation teams, who had identified the potential for AI-enabled transcription and summarisation to help them manage their workload and were exploring commercial tools on the market. HMPPS assessed the idea alongside wider organisational priorities and considered several factors, including the following.

Productivity improvement 

15 HMPPS expects productivity benefits from Justice Transcribe to include both time savings and quality improvements. It forecasts that Justice Transcribe will save around 450,000 hours per year for front-line probation officers. This estimate is based on an assumed time saving of 10 minutes per meeting on average and that the tool is used for 70% of the 3.7 million meetings a year. HMPPS also expects additional savings for support and other staff. As at April 2026, HMPPS estimated it had a capacity gap of 3,500 FTE probation staff. It expects Justice Transcribe will release time savings equivalent to 470 FTE probation officers, support and other staff, helping it to reduce this capacity gap. These estimates are based on modelling assumptions, and HMPPS told us it is planning further evaluation work to validate time savings in practice and collect more robust evidence of how the tool has changed the delivery of face-to-face supervision. 

16 HMPPS does not have actual time saved data to monitor how far estimated time savings have been achieved. However, it does have data on the number of meetings for which the tool has been used. Between 7 October 2025 and 14 September 2026, over 1,600,000 meetings were summarised using Justice Transcribe. HMPPS estimates that using Justice Transcribe has saved probation officers around 266,667 hours over this period.

17 HMPPS also holds feedback data from staff. Between launch and 2 June 2026, staff using the tool reported high satisfaction rates, with an average of 4.7 stars out of 5 across 63,000 in-app reviews. Probation officers we spoke to told us that Justice Transcribe saved significant amounts of time and improved the quality of meeting summaries as well as interactions in supervision meetings: 

“What it has allowed us to do is... have more meaningful conversations with the people we’re managing… being more active listeners, … rather than having our attention diverted elsewhere.” (Probation Officer) 

HMPPS also holds data on staff retention and sickness absence, so it could use this information to track whether uptake of Justice Transcribe is associated with benefits such as lower sickness absence or improved staff retention.

Further evaluation 

18 MoJ and HMPPS started an internal evaluation of the national rollout of the tool in 2026. This will include evaluation of how the tool is used in practice, how errors are identified and corrected, and an assessment of the quality of the final records. This national evaluation is an opportunity to build on the insights from the pilot and determine the full impacts of the tool, including the extent of time savings and quality improvements. It is also an opportunity to assess evidence of the benefits including, for example, improved retention rates or reductions in sickness absence.

Quality assurance of case management records

20 The pilot evaluation identified that there was a risk that meeting summaries were not adequately reviewed by probation officers. It recommended regular quality assurance audits and training on how to undertake a meaningful human review. Training and guidance materials emphasise the importance of reviewing the AI notes and the app included reminders for staff to do this at the point of use. For individual meetings, probation officers are expected to review the outputs from the tool before they add them to the national case management system.

21 MoJ and HMPPS are developing their quality assurance procedures. The Artificial Intelligence Playbook for the UK Government recommends that public bodies establish performance metrics for AI systems that measure the accuracy of model outputs.The national evaluation will include a linked case audit which will compare a sample of transcripts, AI-generated summaries and final case records to establish whether practitioners identify and correct errors or omissions and add relevant context and professional judgement. HMPPS also plans for regional Performance, Assurance and Risk teams to carry out case audits to look at the quality of the case records, alongside ongoing supervision by Senior Probation Officers that will include review of case management records. At present, however, there is no quality assurance mechanism to monitor the accuracy of the original transcript. This makes it difficult for MoJ and HMPPS to monitor the technical quality of the tool or the risk of probation officers becoming over-reliant on AI-generated summaries and not checking them. This could be addressed, for example, through periodic reviews of a sample of audio recordings, transcripts, summaries and final case records.

Not Fit For Purpose

With a call for probation to be put into 'special measures', I'm reminded of this that ultimately resulted in the MoJ being created and probation moving from Home Office supervision:-

"Our system is not fit for purpose."

And with this description of parts of the Home Office in 2006, the then-Home Secretary John Reid minted a phrase that has lodged in the lexicon of British politics. He was speaking a few months after thousands of foreign-born prisoners had been released from British jails without first being considered for deportation.

Lord Reid has previously attributed the four-word phrase to an unnamed senior civil servant. Now in a three-part series about the Home Office, the Newscast podcast can reveal the identity of its author. It was the permanent secretary in the department at the time, Sir David Normington.

"It is my phrase, but it was written in a private memo to the Home Secretary, John Reid, just after he had arrived. [It was] me saying, 'This is what the Home Office is like,'" he told us.

Sir David accompanied Lord Reid as he uttered the now infamous form of words to a House of Commons committee two decades ago.

"With me sat beside him, [I tried] to rearrange my face as he described all 70,000 civil servants in the Home Office as not fit for purpose," he recalled. "That was a difficult moment and the civil service said to me: 'Well, why don't you stand up and tell him it's not true?'

"The trouble was… it was my phrase."

In the 20 years since it was popularised, "not fit for purpose" has become a universal by-word for state incompetence, something bureaucrats and their ministerial bosses reach for when they are trying to strike a tough, no-nonsense tone.

The Hansard record of parliamentary proceedings suggests it has been used nearly 3,000 times in the Commons and Lords since 2006. In the 20 years before that, the phrase was used just 37 times. It has been deployed in debates ranging from conditions in armed forces housing to the sewerage system of a Cornish hospital.

--oo00oo--

Now at this point, can I point readers in the direction of Dominic Cummings' evidence to the House of Lords Consitution Committee a couple of days ago. For those interested in probation's nightmare journey at the hands of government and civil service, I think you will find your time will be well spent as you reflect on his robust demolition of the shit show that purports to be our system of government and political control. Reflect also on the role the Cabinet Secretary plays and our past dealings with the current post holder.*

--oo00oo--

In the absense of being in the room and limited news emerging, I guess this in the Guardian from Polly Toynbee gives a flavour of feeling within Napo at the AGM in Newcastle:- 

Britain is addicted to prisons. Our crumbling probation service proves they don’t work

The current system is unable to quench the public thirst for locking people up – and certainly doesn’t ensure proper care once they are released

Public services need more investment across the board. Every day, another wretched story. Look at the Institute for Government’s (IFG) Public Services Performance Tracker for a plain assessment of A&E corridor care, councils struggling to meet the demands of social care and the Send system, the courts backlog, GP caseloads or families lost in temporary accommodation. A chancellor approaching a budget is besieged by need. It’s easy for us journalists to pick out shock stories and claim each one is an absolute priority, but how should a chancellor choose?

Today it’s the probation officers, whose conference in Newcastle is launching a ballot for industrial action. Their caseloads overflowed long ago, but now thousands of prisoners released early – 2,000 this month – have been thrust upon them. The responsibility is overwhelming, with officers blamed for crimes their clients commit.

The probation story is told in scores of reports: the National Audit Office found the service running on half the staff needed to cover released prisoners. It also reported failures in electronic tagging, echoed by the IFG reporting only 55% of tags were fitted in time. Napo, the probation officers’ union, blames the problems on awarding contracts to the lowest bidders at prices that mean the job isn’t done properly.

The number of offenders charged with serious further offences while on probation has increased, with the public accounts committee blaming staff shortages. Vacancies leave probation services 25%-30% below target levels. The government is training another 1,300, but that’s not enough, says Napo, considering the high dropout rate once recruits discover the abuse, threats and stress of the work, alongside the fact that the most common cause of staff sickness is mental ill health.

The sheer impossibility of their caseloads caused the government to abandon any attempt to say what their caseload should be, so the “workload measurement tool” was abruptly ditched in September just before the October raft of new prisoner releases. There is no point in stating an official workload standard that can’t be met.

Eleven hostels and seven halfway houses, places that help probation officers supervise released prisoners, have just closed for repairs and because of a lack of staff. Drug addiction and mental health problems untreated in prisons, coupled with cuts to education, training and rehabilitation, make prisoners even less prepared for release.

The probation system was broken by a disastrous privatisation when Chris Grayling (who banned the sending of books to prisoners) split it apart into 21 private companies, with the workforce organisationally divided in two. Private companies only handled offenders judged low to medium risk, while the most serious offenders remained under the control of the state. Companies under-invested, experienced staff left, and none of the innovation promised was delivered. After this ideological privatisation was abandoned in 2021, the probation service never recovered.

The lord chancellor is set to address the probation officer’s conference. “But please,” says Napo chair Ben Cockburn, “no bullshit. Don’t tell us how well we do an exceptionally difficult job. We know that.”. Napo rejected a 5% pay offer on the grounds it falls far behind equivalent offers to workers in local government, police and social work. Under planned industrial action, Cockburn says probation officers will work to contract and refuse unpaid overtime. That, he says, will cause collapse.

What probation officers need immediately is reduced workloads, pruned to the riskiest cases, leaving less serious cases unallocated. “Put the service into special measures,” Cockburn says. He also wants the courts to stop piling on more cases until there are enough staff to cope. “We are firefighting from one emergency to another,” he says – or called away to someone in a police cell, or to a paedophile found dating a woman with a child, or a domestic violence case.

Cutting workloads for probation officers is only a short-term solution, one that avoids the real question. Why is there an ever-rising prison population, despite the sustained, multi-decade fall in crime rates?

“We are addicted to prison,” Cockburn says. In his view, probation works when officers have time for long-term working relationships with offenders. “It’s the best job in the world,” he says, recalling the journey of one prisoner who had committed a terrible crime as a young man. “I saw him in prison, knew him for 15 years, with time for therapeutic work.” But, these days, that’s so rare. “Someone now might see eight different officers, retelling their story over and over, creating no trust.”

Why build more prison cells? An inspection of a brand new private prison, HMP Millsike in East Yorkshire, found it unsafe due to a lack of experienced staff, as well as chronic staff shortages. Even at its opening, it was “chaotic”, lacking basic processes for important things like locking doors and counting prisoners. Hundreds of cells are still empty because of a lack of officers.

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So, what would 'special measures' mean? According to AI:-

If you are following current justice system reforms, calls to put probation into special measures are almost always referring to the institutional turnaround framework to prevent the service from collapsing under the weight of the prison capacity crisis.

Putting the Probation Service into special measures means placing it under a strict, time-limited intervention framework triggered by severe organizational underperformance, safety failures, or critical staff shortages.

When a public sector institution in the UK criminal justice system (such as a prison or a regional probation delivery unit) enters special measures, it signals that standard operations have failed and external authority must step in to stabilize the service.

Organizational Turnaround (The Institutional Meaning): As described above, it is an enforcement framework used by the government when an agency is failing its basic duty to protect the public.

Key Operational Changes

• Loss of Operational Autonomy: Senior leadership faces intense external scrutiny. A specialized oversight board or external management team usually steps in to run or strictly monitor operations.
• Emergency Workload Restructuring: Frontline staff and unions often call for special measures to force the government to legally reduce extreme caseloads. This allows practitioners to focus only on high-risk offenders, leaving lower-risk cases unallocated or managed via automated tracking.
• Emergency Funding and Resources: The Ministry of Justice may inject emergency capital, bypass hiring bottlenecks, or deploy "detached duty" staff from other regions to fill severe vacancy gaps.
• Mandatory Action Plans: The service is legally compelled to publish and execute a strict turnaround plan, typically within a window of a few weeks, addressing specific failures like public protection shortfalls or vetting delays.
• HM Inspectorate of Probation will conduct frequent, unannounced follow-up reviews to ensure compliance, rather than waiting for standard inspection cycles.

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We've already had one response:-

I’m not convinced that calling for probation to be put into special measures is the right strategy. It focuses on framing probation as a failing service that needs hope, help and government intervention and restructuring, rather than exposing the consequences of years of underinvestment, excessive workloads, poor pay and difficulties retaining and recruiting experienced staff.

The priority should be a sustained campaign for better pay and conditions, manageable workloads and the resources needed to deliver an effective service. These are the measures that would help retain experienced staff, attract new recruits and improve outcomes.

Calling for special measures risks handing the government the justification to restructure the service on its own terms, potentially with union consent, as happened in the past, rather than forcing it to address the issues that have brought probation to this point.

Let’s not allow union failure to hand over defeat. Probation needs investment, not a declaration of surrender. The unions should be using their collective strength to demand the conditions necessary for the service to succeed, not inadvertently strengthening the case for further government intervention.

Reading Anonymous, 15 October 2026, 23:04 — satire or not — while the AGM sabre-waves and applauds, this is the reality. The question is whether union leadership is prepared to fight for the future of probation and the people who deliver it, or whether it is helping to pave the way for another government-led restructuring.

*Postscript

Just noticed Cummings "calls on voters to back Reform UK in bombshell defection". This from AI:-

Dominic Cummings is not traditionally a "right-wing loony," though critics from both the left and right often view him as a disruptive, iconoclastic, and polarizing political strategist.

Key Context About His Politics and Reputation:

Not a Party Member: Cummings has never been a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party (and has frequently expressed deep contempt for mainstream Tory politicians, MPs, and party structures, which he has described as "dead" or incompetent).

Ideological Stance: He is best known as a committed Eurosceptic and the mastermind behind the 2016 Vote Leave campaign, rather than a standard left-right partisan. His primary obsessions are institutional disruption, overhauling the civil service, and using data and technology to reform state machinery.

How Others Describe Him:

Former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron famously labeled him a "career psychopath".

Journalists and biographers frequently describe him as a "brilliant eccentric", an "evil genius", or a ruthless pragmatist rather than an ideological extremist.

Critics on the political left accuse his brand of "disruption" of advancing a right-wing, anti-public-service agenda, while traditional conservatives have often resented his disregard for party traditions and hierarchy.

Innocence and Risk

Clients who maintain innocence have always posed a particular challenge, and the following from InsideTime highlights some of the issues involved, particularly around 'risk':-   

My 10 probation officers cared about ‘risk’, not progress

I was on probation from 2018 until 2026. My main conclusion is that the experience you have in this bizarre process is entirely dependent on your probation officer (henceforth PO). Sadly, I had 10 different POs over these years. The focus of this female-dominated workforce is now entirely on ‘risk’, a long way from the ‘hand to hold on release’ which probation was originally set up for over 100 years ago. This ‘risk’ is monitored by something called an OASys report, which is updated after meetings.

Two of my 10 POs were men, the other eight women, and the ‘churn’ was unbelievable to witness. In prison the POs generally monitor progress and how the prisoner is doing; on the out, they are there to make sure the person they are supervising keeps on the straight and narrow. Many people on probation appreciate this oversight, recognising there is something in them that needs this kind of support. But many don’t, including those like me who maintain their innocence and don’t see the requirement for ‘rehabilitation’ or such intense scrutiny.

It is counterintuitive for POs to endlessly monitor their charges according to a risk criteria based on police or court records, when those records may have been fabricated or otherwise manipulated. This is the Probation Service ‘cleaning up’ after the individual has been put through the wringer of a broken justice system. When this purgatorial waste of time is put to the PO, their training is to say ‘We need to treat you based on the findings of the courts’ – which is the victory of Starmer-era bureaucracy over the humanistic founding principles of probation in Britain.

While nine of my POs may have been objective, care-focused professionals of the old school, I felt that one or two had a specific animus against the crime of which I had been convicted. This suspicion was confirmed when I made a Subject Access Request (SAR) for all notes about me and my case. It made for illuminating reading. While all the POs were reasonably polite to my face, any complaints I made about the system were minimised and even ridiculed in notes going back years.

Early on in my time on licence, I was offered a job as a magazine editor. The employer didn’t ask about convictions. But when I told my PO, she said I had to disclose them voluntarily. When I did, the offer was withdrawn. Just before this happened, in another early probation meeting I reported that I had been in contact with a well-known justice reform campaigner, and had done some media interviews and podcasts about my own case. The next week I had two new, extra conditions added to my licence – not to be in contact with people with certain criminal convictions (how would I be able to know that?), and not to talk in the media about my case. The reason given was that complaints had been received, but I could find no evidence of these complaints in the SAR response.

A year or so into my time on probation in the community I made a new friend via social media, who came to visit me once, staying overnight. She was splitting up with her partner at the time, and he accessed her phone while she was sleeping after she got home, investigated who I was, and reported it to probation. Without being asked, I was given another licence condition requiring me to take polygraph tests, even though I had disclosed to the friend as a matter of course (and we weren’t ‘romantic’ anyway).

I complained about this, and was then in a months-long struggle session with probation about the legality of polygraph tests – which don’t measure ‘lies’, just emotional responses. Still, other POs were excellent, professional and understanding. My time eventually came to a more peaceful, less scrutinised end.

As a result of these sanity-testing, counter-intuitive experiences, I am determined to push that people consistently maintaining innocence be released with NO licence conditions, only having them added if, after proper investigations, it can be proved that there is a real ‘risk’ factor. Because as it stands, while there are good people within probation, it suffers from a victory of bureaucracy over humanity. While people like former Prisons Minister Lord Timpson – who replied to none of my emails – may say that all cases are judged on an individual basis, probation is very much failing to ‘hold the hand’ of the released prisoner.

Lived Experience

As I was waking up this morning to the 6am BBC Radio 4 news broadcast, I couldn't help a wry smile because that bloody "£700 million and 1,300 new officers" got yet another outing as a further tranche of 650 prisoners are released.  Anyway, the subject of 'lived experience' and the death of former prisoner and PO Bob Turney raises yet another aspect of our enforced takeover by HM Prison Service and it's damaging effect on probation. As we know, ViSOR vetting amongst other hurdles now makes Bob's story impossible today whilst probation remains shackled to HMPPS and civil service control.

Obituary: Bob Turney, ex-prisoner who became a probation officer

Bob Turney, who recently passed away, was an inspiration to me and others when it came to changing our lives. There is nothing more inspiring than seeing someone in as low a position as yourself actually making a change and making a difference in the world. Bob had served 20 years in various prisons, mainly for petty offences, then went on to gain a degree in Forensic Social Work. In 1997 he became a Probation Officer – apparently the first former prisoner to do so. He was also, along with the late Bobby Cummines OBE, one of the founders of Unlock, an organisation set up to support former prisoners and offer practical help.

Bob was also a patron of the Longford Trust. I met him at the Trust’s annual lecture in 2016, when Unlock was awarded the Longford Prize for its work supporting ex-prisoners. He was a decent man and very supportive of former prisoners who had turned their lives around.

In 1997, Bob had his first book published by Waterside Press, a memoir titled ‘I’m Still Standing’ with a foreword by the great prison reformer Lord Longford. Bob also collaborated with Angela Devlin on a book called ‘Going Straight: After Crime and Punishment’.

Bob went from being a down and out street drinker and petty thief, a former prisoner with supposedly no future, to a well-respected figure in the criminal justice world. And, also, a respected writer. A father of five, he will be sadly missed by his family and many friends. A true legend who never gave up hope.

Overnight, a contributor highlights why it matters:- 

For me this from HMIP Insights sums it up the importance of people like the late Bob Turney.

“In other words, rehabilitation is a forced approach aimed at fixing the problem (the offender) whereas desistance is a subjective journey whereby the individual makes their own decision to change their lives for the better. In recent years, desistance has become central to probation work (heavily influenced by the work of Shadd Maruna and Fergus McNeill), and as a former probationer turned desistance scholar, this is something I welcome. Over the years I have had many probation officers, all of whom were trained social workers, and their approach was very nurturing and our rapport was essential to developing trust. There was, in essence, always a desistance-based approach – even if not officially – with practitioners being very encouraging to help probationers find their way towards a better life. At the same time, probation has also veered over the years towards risk-based approaches; I can recall that in 1998, during my final weeks on probation at North Tyneside, my probation officer told me she was planning on retiring because of the major changes in the service. “It’s going to become more like the American Parole Officer approach” she said.“

“Outside of the academic world, ex-offenders are routinely employed in prisons, and it seems that prisons have come a long way. Prison governors are much more proactive towards ex-prisoners’ involvement in prison mentoring and drug counselling and the need for such intervention has now been recognised by the Ministry of Justice who have pledged to roll out more updated and nuanced training and inclusion of diverse groups including ex-offenders. In terms of ex-prisoners working as probation officers, this is nothing new; Bob Turney and Allan Weaver (also see Hylton, 2015) are well-known examples of how people with extensive offending backgrounds can make an invaluable contribution towards the criminal justice system.”

“I continue to draw on my past experiences when teaching students and undertaking research which is personally satisfying because I know I am making a difference. Most importantly though is that prisoners’ and ex-prisoners’ voices are being heard and their experiences are being taken seriously. For all those involved in the overseeing and delivering probation and criminal justice services, the core message is that there is significant value from giving people with a lived experience a voice, ensuring that this happens in way which is collaborative, non-tokenistic, sensitive, respectful and inclusive.”

Of course yet another loss to the probation service has been the involvement of volunteers, a route by which many gained first-hand experience of a role much misundertood by the general public, but later became some of  our most valued colleagues.

A reminder that with the Napo AGM and conference in Newcastle, I am going to be at The Mile Castle Wetherspoons on Grainger Road near the railway station on Thursday from 6pm in order to meet any colleague old or new, up for a chat.

Back for More?

Academic articles are invariably extremely long and not at all conducive to the blog format, especially if accessed via a mobile, however they are often important and the following published last year, particularly so in my view. I've taken the liberty of removing the copious references and the chapter on methodology in order to make it more manageable and hope the author forgives me in furtherance of trying to bring it to a wider audience. 

So, in an attempt to maintain the current discourse regarding probation's plight, although a long read, I think it pretty much puts things into context and is particularly relevant for its testimonies from front line staff as the Napo AGM in Newcastle approaches this week. And on that note, I am going to be in that great city on Thursday 15th at The Mile Castle Wetherspoons on Grainger Road near the railway station from 6pm in order to meet any colleague old or new, up for a chat. 

“We’ll always go back for more”? Probation, precariousness, and professional identity

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the environment in which the Probation Service in England and Wales operates has become both more punitive and managerial, dominated by the logic of risk. A challenge to the tenets on which probation’s professional project was founded, such as its (social work) knowledge base and autonomy to work with individuals under supervision, has accompanied this changed landscape. Indeed, probation’s relative powerlessness to mobilise against governmental impositions has resulted in four top-down organisational restructurings since the turn of the millennium. This paper, therefore, considers the impact of such change on professional identity in probation. Against the backdrop of the most recent organisational reform – the “unification” of services, in June 2021 which brought to an end a failed seven-year experiment in part-privatisation – it explores how punitive, managerial, and marketising reforms have contributed to a crisis of identity that has been decades in the making. The paper argues that, while an appeal to an ideology of service centred on helping clients remains significant among staff, the nature and extent of the challenges probation faces has rendered professional identity more precarious.

Introduction

Change, it seems, has been the only constant for the Probation Service in England and Wales in recent decades. Probation is a legal profession rather than the legal profession, but the two have historically had strong links – notably, through co-location in the courts. Like criminal justice defence lawyering, probation professionals have typically acted as an “ally” for those processed through the criminal justice system. In recent years, however, probation – again, like criminal justice lawyering – has experienced considerable challenges. As an “invisible” profession – one that exists in the shadow of the prison, working with involuntary, (mostly) low status clients – probation has proved especially vulnerable to interference from successive governments. Part of a broader neoliberal effort to align public service delivery with private sector techniques, the foundations on which the service’s “professional project” was built have been disturbed by the forces of managerialism and marketisation. From the 1980s onwards, practitioner autonomy has been partially surrendered to performance targets and audit; social work training requirements for practice have been abolished; and the service’s foundational mission, summarised in the words “advise, assist, befriend”, has been abandoned within official documents.

This challenge to probation’s knowledge, methods, and values extends to the service’s governance structure. There have been four top-down restructurings of probation since the turn of the millennium. In 2001, the New Labour Government concentrated 55 “constitutionally separate” Probation Areas within 42 Probation Boards, overseen by a new National Probation Service (NPS). These were further reduced to 35 Probation Trusts in 2007, as the search for greater efficiency and effectiveness saw the “ogre of contestability” rear its head in the form of attempts to outsource core practices to private (and voluntary) providers. This (part-)privatising ambition was not realised until 2014, when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government’s Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms split services between the publicly-owned NPS and 21 privately-managed Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). However, TR was a “policy disaster” and probation was subsequently “unified” (in essence, re-nationalised): on 26 June 2021, seven NPS Divisions and 21 CRCs were realigned into 12 Probation Regions and housed within the Civil Service.

These changes to probation governance and practice can be seen in expectations for professional identity (re)formation. There is no accepted definition of “professional identity”, but Obling’s review of the literature identifies three ways in which it is understood. The first sees identity as constructed through a process of professional socialisation. This refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, qualifications, and values as crucial to shaping how to differentiate between professionals and non-professionals. Second, professional identity is not fixed or immutable. Hence, work role transitions concern internal transformations of professional identity, which can be prompted by new training programmes, workplace structures, or career development. Third, identities in context relates to how “environmental change” brought about by socio-economic and political changes can exert significant influence over professional identity formation. Taken together, Obling argues, a recognition of how macro- and meso-level forces interact and are enmeshed can produce more comprehensive understandings of how professional identity is (re)constructed.

Thus, with a particular emphasis on the unification of services, this paper analyses professional identity in probation. It maps the strands of the literature identified by Obling onto the service, tracing how the “extra-organizational forces” which influence probation governance and practice have contributed to a succession of organisational restructurings, with detrimental implications for professional identity. The paper contends that the nature and extent of the challenges probation faces have reshaped the service into which professionals are socialised. While an ideology of service predicated on helping clients remains a significant source of meaning for staff, recent reforms have contributed to a crisis of identity that has been decades in the making. The result is an increasingly “precarious” professionalism. As such, the paper’s contributions are twofold. First, it provides an ongoing commentary on the impact of the unification of probation services, from the perspectives of staff. Second, following adopting an approach which bridges macro-, meso-, and micro-level changes can enhance understandings of professional identity in probation and comparable (low status) professions.

The paper begins with an overview of the power (and precarity) of professions. Thereafter, following a brief outline of the study’s methodology, understandings of professional identity give structure to the data analysis. Identities in context explores how the service’s relative powerlessness renders it an easy target for political intervention. Work role transitions reports on staff experiences of recent organisational reform – namely, TR and the unification of services. Finally, professional socialisation scrutinises the service into which new staff enter, arguing that professional identity in probation is increasingly precarious.

Professions, power, and precariousness

The legitimacy of professions depends, in part, upon the extent to which they can demonstrate “commitment to the public good”. Professions able to successfully present themselves as in service to broader societal benefit can acquire social, economic, and political power, and thereby guard against external interventions from the state or market competition. This claim as to public interest underpinned functionalist views of the reasons that professions should be considered different from other occupations. Would-be professions sought to acquire ideal-typical “professional” traits that marked them as distinct, such as a mastery of abstract knowledge, learned through prolonged education and training; capture of a particular activity, or activities, within the division of labour; and the ability to exercise considerable autonomy over how everyday tasks are undertaken. Ultimately, though, the most important trait was a client-centred ideology of service which not only communicated a profession’s altruistic social function, but also kept the potentially self-serving interests of members in check.

While later, neo-Weberian views of the professions took issue with the altruism that pervades functionalist understandings, there was nonetheless consensus on how occupations that are able to successfully lay claim to professional status cultivate a space between the state and the market. Scholars writing from this perspective asserted that professions utilise the jurisdiction granted by the state to manipulate the market to realise higher social and economic gains relative to laypeople. Hence, the claim central to neo-Weberian interpretations is that professional power is leveraged for self-interest: professions compete with others adjacent to their jurisdiction to preserve, maintain, and ultimately capitalise on their legitimacy, often at the expense of their clients. The more social, economic, and political resources a profession can command, the better it can resist extraneous interference.

And yet, not all professions benefit from such power and privilege. The extent to which a group can profit from claims to professional status depends upon its relationships with its “audiences”, such as the state, clients, and the public. Here, Johnson’s distinction between “collegiate” and “mediative” control over work can be used to show how professions can flourish under different modes of organisation. A collegiate model refers to how members of some professions are able to organise themselves. The medical profession in the US has typically provided an archetype of “collegiate” organisation: the state grants licence to practise; members are then able to restrict entry into the profession, while providing a service to fee-paying clients. By contrast, mediative professions thrived under Keynesian political economy. This model emphasises state intervention in the professional-client relationship: services are funded by the state; and clients, who are often involuntary, cannot typically withdraw their purchasing power. These professions, like social work and nursing, are often located in the public sector, staffed predominantly by women, and underpinned by an ethic of care; they are generally “multichance”, for a certain degree of “failure” must be tolerated. This means that trust, both public and political, in a profession’s knowledge and methods is more difficult to establish than, say, in the case of surgeons, whose credibility is directly linked to their ability to prevent (somatic) failure. This dependency upon the state renders mediative professions’ legitimacy more precarious, and thus less able to resist external interventions.

The Probation Service in England and Wales, Tidmarsh argues, is one such mediative, “multichance” profession. From its origins in the Church of England Temperance Society, it established exclusive jurisdiction over the supervision of offenders in the community in the first half of the twentieth century. As such, probation underwent a process of professionalisation: practitioners were trained in social work knowledge and entrusted by the state to work autonomously in diagnosing individuals’ problems and proposing solutions. Staff, in other words, were socialised into a service defined by a “medical” casework model and underpinned by the words “advise, assist, befriend”, which constituted probation’s (rehabilitative) ideology of service. While probation has always been plagued by accusations that it is “soft on crime” relative to institutions like the prison, its knowledge, methods, and values were largely shielded from public scrutiny for most of the twentieth century. What was viewed as being in the best interests of people on probation – namely, rehabilitation – was also considered to be in the best interests of taxpayers. This state-sanctioned confidence in the service enabled it to grow in the postwar period: between 1951 and 1981, the number of full-time, qualified officers increased from 1,000 to 5,500 while its caseload tripled from 55,000 to 157,000.

However, against the backdrop of sustained increases in the crime rate, which quadrupled between 1955 and 1974, probation’s social and economic utility began to be questioned. This challenge can be seen as part of a wider shift in the 1970s, in which neo-Weberian criticisms of professional power became overlaid with critiques of the paternalistic role of the Keynesian state. Mediative professions were criticised on the grounds that their methods were ineffective. for example, alleged that for professions like probation, a failure to reduce the size of the criminal justice system in the postwar period served as a justification for their continued expansion. Thus, the legitimacy of the postwar penal welfare compromise, of which probation was a fundamental part, was challenged by the New Left and a politically ascendant New Right. For the former, penal welfarism was coercive and hierarchical, unreceptive to the needs of particular individuals and communities. For the latter, the costs of administering criminal justice services premised on rehabilitation and perceived to be ineffective during a decade defined by fiscal crises was detrimental to the taxpayer. Despite their ideological differences, at the heart of both perspectives was a distrust of the state and professionals, and the contention that “their power must be checked”. This highlights probation’s precariousness as a profession – a point that is developed below with regard to the decades-long challenge to the service’s knowledge, methods, values, and governance structure.

Identities in context: probation and extra-organisational change

With regard to the legitimacy of professions, Moorhead asks, “[d]oes there come a point at which professions can no longer satisfy their audiences that they meet their needs?” This question is relevant to the Probation Service following the collapse of the Keynesian postwar state. The election to government of Margeret Thatcher’s Conservative Party, in 1979, marked the key turning point. Her political project was predicated on neoliberal ideology, or the belief that individual freedoms are directly linked to free and unregulated markets. Amidst a wave of privatisations in the 1980s, public services which were not transferred to the market were instead subjected to the principles of New Public Management – specifically, a prioritisation of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in service delivery. Thus, where a profession’s worth historically rested upon its ability to demonstrate superior competence and ethicality, for professionals working in the public sector, the neoliberal reorganisation of the state accentuated economic criteria of legitimacy.

Political economic shifts have also prompted questions of the audience(s) to whom probation must demonstrate its legitimacy, with significant implications for its professional project. Here, “the public” are typically expressed as taxpayers and as potential victims. Both are captured in Robinson et al.’s analysis of the penal “adaptations” which have informed probation policy and practice since the 1980s. For example, a managerial adaptation witnessed the pursuit of greater accountability via new rules and regulatory frameworks. Part of a wider neoliberal agenda which sought to curb professional autonomy, targets were introduced in probation in 1988, with performance monitored via an expanded culture of audit. This was followed, in 1995, by the severance of probation from social work training requirements for practice, a “repudiation [that] was much more about connotation and political tone than substance”.

Managerial practices have been accompanied by a punitive “adaptation” which promised “tough on crime” approaches, particularly after the 1990s. This can be seen in the language used around probation policy. For example, the words “advise, assist, befriend” were removed from official probation documents from 1992 onwards. Espousing greater punitiveness was key to the election of the (New) Labour Party to Government in 199, and Canton notes how a 1998 House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee “deplored” the use of terms like “client” and “probationer”. Indeed, in 2008, Jack Straw, then Secretary of State in the newly established Ministry of Justice, bragged that “Probation officers now routinely talk of the criminals they are dealing with as “offenders”, which is what they are, and not the euphemistic nonsense of “clients”, when the client is the victim and the tax-paying public”. His comments highlight the confluence of punitive and managerial adaptations in how, and to whom, the state expects probation to demonstrate its legitimacy. They also illustrate the contempt with which the service is sometimes discussed in political discourses, rendering it an easy target for intervention. Probation is largely “invisible” it enters the public eye not for its successes, but for its failures – namely, serious further offences. The presentation of these tragic, often fatal incidents, and thus of the service, is accentuated by the so-called “undeserving” and nature of its clientele:

In the health service, you get doctors who do the wrong thing, but you don’t get the health minister playing the blame game. In health, in the police, they feel less blamed. I think that’s because we do the work nobody else does. We work with the so-called undeserving, somebody who has done wrong, and therefore we’re under a higher level of scrutiny. (RPD4)

The increased “scrutiny” under which probation operates has coincided with two significant demographic changes in probation. First, the abolition of social work training requirements prompted a significant increase in lesser qualified PSOs, who constituted the majority of frontline practitioners by 2012. Second, having historically been dominated by men, probation has experienced “feminisation”. A “gender switchover” – the moment at which women outnumbered men – occurred in 2006, and women now comprise 76.4% of probation staff has recently linked these demographic changes to “cultural dynamics of feminisation” in which an influx of women into a profession is typically accompanied by worsening pay and working conditions. This is not to present a causal link between women and a diminished professional project, but rather, to emphasise their overrepresentation in professions like social work and nursing. That these professions, like probation are predicated on care for non-fee-paying clients means their virtues are disconsonant with market-like mechanisms through which the success of neoliberal public services is demonstrated.

The consequences of macro-level, “extra-organizational forces” can be further seen in changing professional identity in probation. Mawby and Worrall’s typology of occupational narratives identified three ideal-typical profiles of probation staff. Lifers, they argue, were social work trained and most likely to view their job as a vocation. Second careerists entered into the service after a considerable period of employment in another, often unrelated occupation; some were social work trained, but others joined after its abolition as a requirement for practice. Finally, offender managers joined after the election of the New Labour Government in 1997. There was little resonance amongst this group with social work culture; they were, instead, “security-conscious” and generally comfortable with the technologies and practices of risk assessment compared to lifers and second careerists. Indeed, the logic of risk now dominates practice; it is both “a language through which probation could frame its work with offenders and a knowledge base on which staff could draw to evidence decision-making”. And yet, despite these differences, Mawby and Worrall conclude that these groups are united by a shared value set based on commitment to the client and a desire to engender change amongst the less fortunate. This claim is supported by research on the “durability” of a client-centred ideology of service. Studies of probation training, for example, have emphasised that while staff express frustrations with the managerial nature of probation work, there is consensus of why people enter the service – namely, because of a desire to work in a people-oriented profession. This highlights the importance of an ideology of service to professional identity in probation, particularly as a buffer against efforts to reshape its organisational culture.

As such, it is possible to identify several major environmental changes that have impacted probation’s professional project since the 1980s. Public ignorance about probation, largely unfavourable media representation, and the political capital made from its “undeserving” client base has rendered, and continues to render, the service vulnerable to state interference. This powerlessness has manifested in the turbulence that has marked the recent history of probation:

I think a big challenge is the complexity of our working environment – which I think, genuinely, we overcomplicate sometimes. Trying to navigate those pressures – the financial, the political, the operational – is difficult. (RPD1) 

Where, previously, ideal-typical professional tenets like social work training, practitioner autonomy, and an ideology of service were crucial to legitimacy and identity in probation, the service is now predicated on a regimen of risk management and managerial regulation. Indeed, countering this shift towards managerialism was at the heart of the Coalition Government’s implementation of TR. Part of the wider adoption of austerity measures which followed a reconfiguration of the 2007/08 financial crisis as one of government overspending, these reforms accelerated the decades-long challenge to professional subjectivities in probation. The impact of TR and the subsequent unification of services on staff is explored in more depth below.

Identities in transition? Probation and organisational reform

The financial, political, and operational challenges described by RPD1, above, have driven and been exacerbated by work role transitions. The most destabilising of these restructurings was Transforming Rehabilitation (TR), which split services between a publicly-owned NPS and 21 privately-owned CRCs, in 2014. The reforms were initiated, in part, to “unlock … professionalism” (MoJ) in probation. Part of a wider critique of public sector efficiency, the Coalition Government argued that state-run services were excessively bureaucratic, dominated by a regime of targets and audit that stifled effective performance. The innovations only market provision could generate, by contrast, would empower probation professionals with the discretion to reduce reoffending and the costs of criminal justice.

A comprehensive autopsy of the failures of TR is beyond the scope of this paper, but suffice to say that interlinked cultural and structural issues became insurmountable. On culture, studies of the transition to the private sector provide found overwhelming opposition to TR as staff identified resolutely with a public sector ethos. This suggests that attempts to promote entrepreneurial “narratives of self” through organisational reform were successfully resisted, a point further evidenced in this current study. Such cultural resistance to TR was exacerbated by structural failings in how the contracts were set up (NAO). Contrary to how the Coalition Government presented the market as a means to activate professionalism, the reforms merely entrenched the importance of meeting performance targets. As PO2 put it:

The main thing is, the CRCs had to hit targets to get paid. […] There was a massive difference, a separation, between quality assessments and performance; the two didn’t meet.

This focus on metrics was further heightened by lower than anticipated caseloads. Fewer individuals allocated to the CRCs by the courts resulted in a combined £1.4bn shortfall against the initial £3.7bn promised to private providers (HMI Probation). Many CRCs responded with redundancy programmes, which not only increased individual caseloads for those who remained but also intensified target-driven, “box-ticking” practice (HMI Probation). Accordingly, HMI Probation’s conclusion that TR contributed to “deplorable diminution of the probation profession” was echoed by PSO11, whose summary of the impact of the reforms can be taken as evidence of an increasingly precarious professional identity:

Prior to the privatisation, we were very proud of the fact that we were a public sector organisation that delivered a very specific and significant, very specialist service. I think the roots of where the Probation Service came from were still visible and were still quite obvious to any member of staff and especially new staff coming in. […] I’m afraid that my opinion is that it’s all been eroded because of what happened through the privatisation.

One of the most consistent findings within probation research in recent decades is the persistence of a client-centred ideology of service. Staff, as argued above, have successfully mobilised such values as a way to “grasp the nettle”, to make sense of practice with reference to the profession rather the organisation. The period of TR was no exception: despite considerable opposition to the reforms, most staff could be described as guardians of probation identity. This view was summarised by PO3:

If we didn’t have the passion for the job, it would be easy for us to walk out and double our salaries in the private sector. We’ll always go back for more; it’s the way we’re built. The one thing we have in common is that we believe in the work. (my emphasis)

What could be interpreted in positive terms, as an ideology of service that willingly places the care of individuals above all else could equally represent the normalisation of overworking in probation. This raises questions about the impact of yet another work role transition on professional identity (re)construction.

Since the “unification” of services in June 2021, PO3’s contention that staff will “always go back for more” has been undermined by the confluence of challenges which continue to besiege the service. Staff feel “overworked, understaffed, [and] underpaid” (PSO2) – claims that are borne out in the national data. For example, while caseloads vary by Probation Region, a survey of 1,534 probation staff conducted by HMI Probation found that 51% thought their workloads were “not so manageable”. The challenge presented by high caseloads is compounded by staffing levels. The extent of frontline practitioner vacancies did not become known until unification – in large part because commercial confidentiality laws meant CRCs were not required to disclose data on staffing – but the evidence points to a “retention crisis.” As of June 2024, 2,357 people left the service in the previous 12 months, an increase of 10.6% on the previous year. M2 reflected upon the impact of staffing shortages, which she attributed to the continuance of managerial adaptions:

We’ve struggled with staffing levels that I’ve never experienced in any job. Everything was cut to the bone and trying to manage the cases appropriately and still maintain the community links and find the work … it’s been really tough. People have got to have the time and the headspace to supervise the teams, do the community liaison, and actually motivate people to attend. It’s all been about meeting deadlines, meeting time limits, and just chasing targets that are completely unrealistic.

This contention that staffing “was cut to the bone” could apply to numerous public services during a period defined by the politics of austerity; however, there is evidence that budgetary pressures have been felt more acutely in probation than in comparable professions. For example, many of the professionals to whom informants compared themselves – such as police officers and NHS staff – have seen pay increases of approximately 15% since 2010  – but pay in probation has largely been stagnant, with just a 1% increase in real terms over the same period:

People realise that they can get more stacking shelves for less stress. I think, even now, you know, people haven’t had a pay rise again; the unions are trying to argue again, but they never seem to be able to argue what we’re worth. If they manage to argue a 3% pay rise, everyone will be like, “great, what does that mean in real terms?” The cost of living is soaring – food, electricity, petrol – so, actually, we’re taking a pay cut: it’s horrendous. (PSO7)

The comparison to “stacking shelves” resonates with similar research. It should not be read as an attempt to belittle retail work, but rather, as a way to emphasise that the pay is “not commensurate with the weight of responsibilities upon the shoulders of probation staff”. This points, then, to a sense of demise among probation staff in this study, of identity in crisis. As M6 summarised:

It’s sad because I don’t see the profession that we had before, I think it’s been decimated. I don’t want to be depressing, but I really do. I think it’s been decimated. It needs to be redone, rebuilt.

Accordingly, recent work role transitions in the form of top-down, organisational restructurings have surfaced longstanding concerns, around caseloads and the pervasiveness of managerialism. The findings presented in this section point to a heightened sense of precarity regarding how staff understand their work. This raises questions about the culture of the service into which new staff enter, which are explored in the next section through the lens of professional socialisation.

Identity and socialisation: the “enculturation” of probation staff

Professional socialisation entails the acquisition of the knowledge, qualifications, values, and practices which differentiate professionals from non-professionals. It typically occurs through training and exposure to the established working cultures and practices of other professionals, thereby contributing to a collective sense of identity. In a probation context, Robinson refers to this process as “enculturation” – that is, how “new members acquire the norms, values, behaviours and other tools of [a] particular culture”. However, these facets of identity formation have been challenged by successive governments and codified within numerous organisational restructurings. Despite claims to the contrary, recent reforms have served only to bring longstanding problems to the surface, particularly with regard to caseloads and poor retention rates. This raises questions about the nature of the service into which staff are socialised and, by extension, how they construct their professional identity. Hence, this final section explores the enculturation of probation staff, including the roles played by Practice Tutor Assessors (PTAs) and Senior Probation Officers (SPOs) – two groups that are important to the socialisation of frontline practitioners.

As acknowledged above, one of the most consistently observed findings within probation research is the persistence of a value base which foregrounds the importance of non-judgemental approach to those who have offended and a belief in the capacity of individuals to change. Staff, in M2’s terms, share an “underlying moral compass”

If you talk to people in probation, they all have – no matter how they present as characters and personalities – this underlying moral compass of not only wanting to see that justice is done and people are dealt with appropriately but also to make a difference and get those difference and get those people off the paths they’re currently on. […] I do think that people who work in probation have this desire to care, to change the way the wheel is turning for some people.

Her allusion to care-based practice means probation can be located alongside comparable (low status) professions, such as nursing and social work. Accordingly, this current study supports a substantial body of research on why people work in probation. It suggests that an ideology of service underpinned by a desire to work with people to motivate change is the most significant factor in professional identity formation, one that cuts across experience and job role:

… to work with offenders to help them improve their lives in effect, in some shape or form. I think that for me is the main common denominator. So, thinking of my colleagues, those who have left, those new ones who have joined, a big one is they want to improve people’s lives. (PSO4)

… it’s about social justice, the path we walk, where we find ourselves – just being able to have a temperament to work with people. They’ve been judged, so there’s no point in judging them; I just want to help them. (RPD4)

PSO4’s reference to new entrants into the service is particularly important given the challenges of retention identified in the previous section, and the subsequent need to recruit staff. According to the latest HMPPS Workforce Statistics Bulletin, of the 1,047 frontline practitioners that joined the service in the year-end June 2024, the overwhelming majority (95%) entered at PSO grade. Just over half (n = 543) of these new staff are enrolled on the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP), completion of which is prerequisite for qualifying as a PO. The PQiP is comprised of an academic component located in a university and on-the-job learning, which includes managing a (reduced) caseload. Newer staff who had recently completed (PO5) or were enrolled on (PSO2) or the PQiP at the time of interview were generally positive about their experience, but also commented on its intensity:

At some points, it became overwhelming, especially at the end when you have deadlines and you’re expected to deal with higher risk cases. But it did give me a theoretical underpinning to the work that I needed to do. For me, it was a good experience overall – I just recognise that there were some really intense periods. (PO5)

It’s intense, is one word to describe it. It’s just a lot. It is manageable and my SPOs are happy to be flexible with deadlines; but with deadlines for work and deadlines for uni, it’s, urgh, a lot. (PSO2)

PSO2’s emphasis on “deadlines” highlights the dual pressures under which trainee POs operate, as individuals who manage a caseload alongside undertaking education and training. It suggests how both an ability to demonstrate the acquisition of knowledge via university assessment and to meet performance targets, part the neoliberal demand for accountability which has reconfigured practice in recent decades, are crucial to professional socialisation into probation. The latter, in particular, reflects a “narrative of efficiency” by which identity among public sector professionals has been reshaped. This further underscores the shift towards working with “things” over “people”, manifest in greater administrative responsibilities. As PTA2 put it:

The biggest difficulty about the job – and they’re all graduates, right? None of these kids are stupid and they’ve gone through a ton of hoops to get into the service – is they arrive into the service and go, “what, I’m not seeing anyone?” […] I think that individuality of care has been lost to the administration side of things. That’s why I think people have completely left the service, because of the amount of time people spend staring at their screens. (my emphasis)

PTA2’s role entails inducting new staff, observing them as they begin to undertake interviews with clients, and assessing their practice skills. He is, in other words, responsible for socialising new recruits into the culture and practices of the service. Tensions between with the time spent with people relative to time spent behind computers have long defined new starters’ experiences, but PTA2’s above comment suggests that unification has exacerbated the conflict between probation’s ideology of service and managerial administration, contributing to problems of retention. This culture, he argued, is dominated by the logic of risk, which prioritises proficient “typists” over “people-people”:

I really want more time to be spent between probation officer and client, face-to-face, in the room, and not feeling under any pressure to have to get out of the room to go and write about them. I think, when we get to that point, we’ll have people coming into this job who are not administrators, they’re not great typists – they’re people-people.

As such, PTA2 sees his role as training practitioners in the hope that they will have the time to realise a client-centred ideology of service:

We’re training people for the future possible, in the hope that they will go back to seeing clients properly, for an hour at a time, weekly.

The present reality, though, is of a service that is overwhelmed, not just at practitioner level but also at the level of management. Like PTAs, SPOs are crucial to the process of enculturation. The role was integral to the professionalisation of probation in the postwar period: established via the Probation Rules of 1949, SPOs provided a measure of oversight over practitioners whilst ensuring that complex cases were managed by an individual with the appropriate skills and experience. For PTA3 (a former SPO), however, the role has changed markedly in recent decades:

… the SPO role has changed dramatically from when I first qualified, when it was about case supervision. Now, it’s about performance management. I think that’s what senior probation officers should be doing: they should be working with people on their cases. The HR function, the performance function, should be done by a different role or grade.

This response speaks to both quantitative and qualitative shifts. SPOs should be both the “manager and developer of frontline probation practitioners”. Present workloads, however, mean they are unable to give sufficient support to their staff. Qualitatively, the tasks that fall within SPOs’ remit have expanded, as understaffing has meant that “their focus is too often on non-operational tasks” (HMI Probation). Quantitatively, then, this increase in the volume of work has reduced the time SPOs are able to spend with their staff. Both shifts were emphasised by SM1:

If we had more staff, [SPOs] could do more. We also have quality development officers; but the problem is, because we’re so understaffed, they’re used elsewhere to plug operational staff. So, it comes down to the SPOs, many of whom have got large teams. They haven’t got the capacity to do what they’d like to do.

One of the consequences of these staffing pressures is that practitioners are able to move into management roles more quickly than has previously been possible in probation. Here, there are parallels between the post-unification Probation Service and Healy’s research on children’s social workers in Australia. She argued that “low status and poor working conditions” which stemmed in large part from a societal ambivalence towards caring profession, contribute to high staff turnover and an inexperienced workforce. This inexperience was felt higher up the managerial hierarchy, for newly qualified social workers were quickly promoted into decision-making roles and, once there, discovered that workload pressures impinge upon their ability to develop the structures “to support a largely novice casework workforce”. Such concerns were articulated by PSO12, who reflected on what she saw as a “new breed” of SPOs who had risen through the ranks too quickly:

I think people are moving up really, really quickly. A woman who was a PSO five years ago in [this region], she’s now an SPO. That’s quite a new thing. […] Here, there are two SPOs. One of them was highly thought of by colleagues because she got on with people. She’d come up through the ranks and had been a senior for a long time. Whereas the other one was more like the newer breed; she didn’t have a lot of time for staff, closed door all of the time, works from home. If you did have supervision, it’d be via Teams. The management isn’t as visible now as what it used to be. They don’t seem to be as hands on and have enough knowledge of all the processes and policies that are being churned out. (my emphasis)

PSO12 works in a rural office with just two SPOs. Her comparison cannot be extrapolated to the service at large nor, even, to practitioners in this study – most of whom were supportive towards SPOs and acknowledged the pressures they face – but others reported similar experiences. As PO4, who joined the service in 2020, summarised:

It’s difficult to allocate the time to spend to maybe reflect on practice, even in supervision. The time is limited. You can always tell when the SPO is clock-watching or thinking about those 50 emails that are in their inbox. […] You’re left to your own devices quite a lot, to be honest. Often, you can feel like you’re on your own on a little boat sailing. It can be unsettling, at times, when there’s lots going on – people going into crisis, all sorts of risks to manage. […] A lot of the time, I think a lot of people try to bottle it up and deal with it themselves.This response highlights how pressures upon SPOs in some regions can manifest in an absence of support. It suggests that, since unification, new staff in some regions are being socialised into an increasing atomised, “unsettling” probation culture – one that points to an increasingly precarious sense of professionalism and professional identity.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that probation staff in England and Wales are being socialised into a culture beset by multiple and interlinked challenges. It adds to a significant body of research on the persistence of a client-centred ideology of service which guides why individuals enter into probation, one that has proved relatively resistant to numerous (and damaging) restructurings. However, the ability to realise these values is being impaired by the confluence of staffing shortages, high workloads, and a regime of performance management, manifest in an increasingly “precarious” professional identity. The value of the paper, therefore, lies in its focus on professional identity (re)construction – specifically, how macro-level environmental shifts filter into meso-level work role transitions which, in turn, impact micro-level processes of how probation staff understand their work.

No profession has been exempted from the forces of neoliberalism; but the changes to the Probation Service described in this paper demonstrate how it has proved especially vulnerable to extraneous intervention, not least because of the low-status, involuntary nature of its clientele. The politicisation of these concerns from the late-1970s onwards accelerated demands for probation to display its punitive credentials. This extra-organisational change prompted the rise of managerialism: as caseloads increased, so did pressures on the service and its staff to manage the risks posed by clients – reconstituted as “offenders” – in more efficient and effective ways. Accordingly, while an ideology of service has not disappeared altogether, it has been tempered by the work role transitions extant within several organisational restructurings and changes to probation’s knowledge and methods.

The most damaging of the recent organisational reforms to probation was the TR, which brought many of the service’s underlying problems to the surface. Here, the emphasis placed by staff on care-based practice provides the clearest articulation of the best of probation work, and thus the findings typically associated with AI research. For the most part, though, staff were pessimistic about the service’s contemporary iteration. Ongoing staffing shortages are felt by practitioners, not only in terms of workloads but also in their socialisation. For new staff, two groups are key to this “enculturation”: PTAs and SPOs. The former prioritise educating staff in the knowledge and practices of risk management; the latter, many of whom were relatively inexperienced practitioners before progressing into the SPO role, are preoccupied with a culture of performance management.

The findings presented in this article have several implications for the future of probation. First, organisational reform has not alleviated the challenges experienced throughout the period of TR; indeed, since unification, problems of high caseloads and low morale have worsened. This suggests that further attempts at restructuring should be approached with caution. Second, the client-centred ideology of service espoused by staff in this study is testament to its durability, but it is not a sustainable base from which to rebuild the service. The pressures under which practitioners operate, manifest in a “retention crisis” hint at an atomised probation culture and an increasingly precarious professional identity. More, then, is needed from Government, both in terms of financial resources and political backing, if the trends towards precarity described in this paper are to be reversed. Third, investment in the service since unification has understandably been put to the recruitment of trainee POs, but other groups should also be prioritised. This article has highlighted the dual roles of SPOs, who are responsible for both performance management and case working elements of staff supervision; however, the former dominates over the latter. Rebalancing this asymmetry, or perhaps even splitting the quantitative and qualitative tasks between distinct SPO roles, could not only provide better role clarity but also help new practitioners to feel more confident in their practice.

Matt Tidmarsh

University of Leeds

Associate Professor in Criminal Justice

Areas of expertise: Probation; community sanctions and measures; sociology of the professions; organisational culture; offender rehabilitation; alternatives to custody

What Voters Think

Thanks go once again to ace contibutor 'Getafix for truffling out an outfit I've never heard of before - Common Ground Justice Project - who claim to not only know what voters think is wrong with our criminal justice system, but what they think would fix it! This is one of my biggest takeaways:-

"Of key institutions, only the police narrowly retain majority confidence (51%) – with prisons (41%), probation (38%) and youth justice (33%) lowest."

Held to Account 

Understanding the crisis of public confidence in British criminal justice – and what voters want to change. 

Finding common ground on crime and justice 

With prisons full and reoffending high, the UK's criminal justice system isn’t working. Victims feel ignored and voters feel powerless. But a noisy, polarised debate on crime is getting in the way of change. The Common Ground Justice Project listens to the public across divides, finding common ground for a new way forward on criminal justice in the UK. We are an independent non-profit initiative, hosted by the Centre for Justice Innovation (UK charity no. 1151939)

What We Do
01 LISTEN ACROSS DIVIDES We conduct creative research and deep listening exercises across the UK, listening to voters, victims and communities who don’t feel heard.

02 FIND COMMON GROUND We uncover shared values and ideas on crime that cut across divides – uncovering a new way forward with broad public support.

03 SPARK BOLD ACTION We create a more constructive conversation on crime, shifting policy towards common ground solutions that cut crime and rebuild trust.

Foreword
I know what it means to be held to account. When I was 19, I threw a single punch that killed James Hodgkinson. I went to prison for manslaughter. It wasn't till years later, through restorative justice, that I sat down with James’s parents, Joan and David, and faced the harm I had caused in a much deeper way.

During that meeting there was no escaping that harm. Nor should there have been. Joan and David were able to tell me directly what my actions had done to them and their family. I had to listen, acknowledge it and take responsibility.

That process taught me something about justice that punishment alone never could. It gave me the motivation to completely change my life.

Joan and David still believe my sentence was too short. But over time, the question of accountability became about more than the length of my prison sentence: they wanted me to take responsibility for what I did and show that I had changed. Today, after helping me make that journey, they are senior advisers to the Common Ground Justice Project.

Our experience has taught me that justice is not necessarily a choice between consequences and rehabilitation, or between the needs of victims and perpetrators of crime. Acknowledging harm, giving victims a voice, taking responsibility, facing consequences and demonstrating change over time can all be part of holding someone properly to account.

It is one of the reasons I co-founded the Common Ground Justice Project along with Sam Boyd and Alice Dawnay. We shared a frustration that the debate on crime too often reduces complex questions to being “tough” or “soft”, pitting punishment against rehabilitation, and prioritising short-term point-scoring over long-term change. Our response was to start somewhere different: listening to people across the country who don’t feel heard.

The findings in this report suggest that Joan, David and I are far from unique in what we needed from the justice system. The British public want meaningful consequences – but also for people to own the harm they have caused, and change so they do not create more victims. And they want the system to be more accountable for delivering on its promises.

That core finding gives me hope: that when we really listen, the public are less divided about justice than our politics suggests. We hope this report encourages those in power to respond in kind: to put party politics aside and build the modern justice system that Britain deserves.

Jacob Dunne
Co-founder Common Ground Justice Project

Executive Summary

C H A PT E R 0 1 CRIME WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE
Understanding the crisis of confidence in British criminal justice 

Most Britons think crime usually has no consequence 

Fewer than one in five voters (18%) believe people who commit crimes usually face real consequences; half say consequences follow only occasionally or almost never. “Nothing happens” was a recurring refrain across our focus groups and interviews. Perceived lawlessness and unfairness in criminal justice appears to be contributing to a wider sense of national decline and erosion of trust in politics. 

Fear of victimhood is high, especially among young women 

Nearly two in three Britons (63%) expect to be a victim of crime within the next year, and one in three expects a violent or sexual crime. Fear of violence is concentrated among the young: over half of women under 35 (53%) expect to suffer a violent or sexual crime this year, as well as 39% of men under 35. These figures are roughly four times the actual rates of victimhood reported by the most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales, albeit this survey may underestimate actual victimhood on some crimes.

No core function of the justice system is rated well by a majority 

There is no function of the justice system a majority rates as doing a good job – just 22% say it does a good job of reducing crime, and only 38% of protecting the public. Of key institutions, only the police narrowly retain majority confidence (51%) – with prisons (41%), probation (38%) and youth justice (33%) lowest. The crisis of confidence in criminal justice appears to be feeding a wider sense of national decline and mistrust of politics. 

Underfunded, ineffective and unfair: the roots of mistrust 

Perceived leniency is only part of the reason for low confidence – voters point equally to underfunding, ineffective delivery and unfairness of treatment. Low confidence in prisons, probation and youth justice is mainly attributed to a failure to cut reoffending and lack of resources. Perceived unfairness is another key driver of mistrust, arising around questions of police treatment (66% believe policing is unequal by ethnicity, split evenly on who benefits), and inconsistency in sentencing. 

Voters want accountability to cut both ways 

Just as the public expects offenders to be better held accountable for their actions, they also want the system itself to be more accountable – for being fair, effective and honest. Broken promises and the cycle of crisis-response are seen as a system failing on its own terms and letting down victims, with every failure deepening the crisis of trust. 

The public want bold and balanced change 

Almost two in three Britons (62%) say the criminal justice system needs major changes – a demand spanning every party – with broad support for balancing punishment with rehabilitation and prevention. Keeping the public safe is clearly the top priority (87%), with youth services first in line for new spending. The public back bold but balanced change: a system that punishes but also treats and prevents crime.

C H A PT E R 0 2 ACCOUNTABILITY AS ‘OWNING, PAYING AND CHANGING’

Understanding what the public mean by accountability for crime

Punishment is seen as necessary but not sufficient for accountability 

Punishment is where many voters start, but only around one in ten lean towards the view that a served sentence delivers accountability on its own. Across five forms of accountability we tested – the '5 Rs' of repercussions, responsibility, repair, reform and reintegration – every one is rated important by at least 88%. The demand is 'punishment plus', not punishment alone.

Accountability as 'owning, paying and changing' 

The public see accountability as containing three key steps: owning the harm, paying for the harm, and changing behaviour. This is common ground that spans divides, and points the way towards justice reforms that will command widespread confidence. 

Responsibility is key – and the clearest common ground 

Accepting responsibility is the most widely endorsed form of accountability (96%) and the most unifying. On our 0–10 scale of importance, a tenth of a point separates Labour, Conservative, Reform and Lib Dem voters on this principle. But responsibility must be seen as genuine – demonstrated over time, not performed for a process. The public agree that taking responsibility includes engaging in treatment for addiction, where this is driving offending.

C H A PT E R 0 3 TACKLING PROLIFIC OFFENDING 

A case study of delivering accountability in practice 

Frequency of offending increases demand for punishment – but not at the cost of rehabilitation In response to repeat offending, the public raise their demands for punishment, but not at the cost of rehabilitation. Prison rises from the least popular response to a first offence (17%) to the top response once offending is repeat and organised (61%). Yet rehabilitative responses remain popular: compensation or unpaid work stays near 60% support, while treatment and help into work also stay high. Voters mostly want both. 

The role of addiction increases support for treatment – but not at the cost of punishment 

Told that repeat offending is driven by homelessness and addiction, support for treatment jumps 19 points to 73% and becomes the clear winner among every party’s voters – but support for prison never falls below 43%. Empathy is evident and reduces the demand for punishment, but it does not remove support for clear repercussions.

‘Punishment plus’ policy packages win broadest support 

In our conjoint experiment, eight of the ten most popular policy combinations to address prolific offending paired a clear consequence with treatment or visible repair. 'Punishment plus' consistently performed better than 'punishment only', while rehabilitation-only packages performed the worst. When it comes to community sentences and diversion, the public is mostly supportive; their biggest concern is not leniency but underfunding and ineffective delivery by overstretched public services.

C H A PT E R 0 4 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 

Summary of recommendations for politicians, policymakers and campaigners 

This report concludes that rebuilding trust demands accountability that cuts both ways: for people who commit crime to be held to account for their actions, and a justice system that's held to account for honest and effective delivery. Our research suggests the public is less divided than political debate often implies – and political pointscoring on crime risks obscuring the common ground that does exist. Seven recommendations follow, for policymakers and campaigners in criminal justice: 

1. Ensure consequences and public safety are the foundation – reassurance here is what creates permission for bold action on rehabilitation and prevention. 

2. Focus on accountability and responsibility to reach across divides - responsibility is the clearest common ground, while punishment is a popular but more divisive frame. Policies which recognise this will win broad support. 

3. Restore visible consequences for prolific and low-level crime – everyday crime that visibly goes unaddressed is driving the confidence crisis and needs urgent action. 

4. Improve communication and honesty with victims and the public – say what sentences mean, follow through, and tell victims what happened in their case. 

5. Strengthen and amplify community justice – make non-custodial sentences more robust, more visible and clearly evidenced; scepticism is mostly about the system’s capacity to deliver, not leniency.

6. Make recovery from addiction central to tackling prolific offending – getting the balance of consequence and high-quality treatment right for this group is where the public's demand for 'punishment plus' can work in practice. 

7. Develop a cross-party 10-year plan for justice – politicians should respond to public frustration by working together across parties on a long-term approach to fixing the criminal justice system: a plan built on pragmatic 'common ground' solutions.