Letter From a Vanished Profession

To whoever now performs the functions once known as probation,

We are writing from what you would probably describe as an earlier model - back when this work was considered a profession rather than a process.

We were trained to exercise judgement, not simply to apply guidance. We were expected to challenge decisions, including those made above us, if we believed risk or fairness required it. Disagreement was not automatically treated as non-compliance. It was part of the craft.

That word 'craft' may sound strange to you. It implied something learned slowly, through experience, supervision, mistakes, and reflection. It could not be downloaded, standardised or accelerated without loss.

Much of the work happened in conversations that were not scripted and outcomes that could not be guaranteed. Change, when it came, was uneven, fragile and often invisible to anyone not directly involved. That was understood. It was still considered worthwhile.

You may have inherited a system that prioritises consistency, auditability and risk transfer. We recognise the logic. Systems prefer certainty, and human judgement is inconveniently unpredictable.

What disappears, however, is the relational core that made probation distinct from surveillance. Once the relationship becomes secondary, the role changes even if the title does not.

We watched this transition happen gradually. New language appeared first. Then new metrics. Then new technologies. None of them individually abolished the profession. Together, they reshaped it until something recognisable only in outline remained.

The public narrative suggested modernisation. Internally, it often felt like subtraction.

Experienced practitioners left faster than they could be replaced. Those who arrived later were expected to perform complex work without the apprenticeship that once sustained it. The system called this resilience. We recognised it as exposure.

If you now work in an environment where discretion feels risky, where time for reflection is scarce, and where success is measured primarily by compliance rather than change, please understand this was not the original design.

Probation once assumed that people desist from crime through human connection, accountability, and the slow rebuilding of ordinary lives. It was imperfect, inconsistent and sometimes frustratingly slow. It was also profoundly human.

We are told progress required something more efficient.

Perhaps it did.

But efficiency answers a different question from rehabilitation.

If you find yourself wondering why morale is fragile, why turnover is high, or why the work feels heavy in ways not captured by workload tools, it may be because you are carrying responsibilities shaped by a profession that no longer exists, without the authority or conditions that once made those responsibilities sustainable.

Should you encounter references to “advise, assist and befriend,” or to probation as a service grounded in social work values, treat them not as myths but as artefacts. They belonged to a period when public protection was understood to depend on relationships as much as controls.

No formal announcement marked the end. There was no closure notice, no ceremony, no final day. The profession dissolved through incremental change while everyone was busy managing the consequences.

If this message reaches you at all, it is because someone believed a record should survive, not of policies or structures, but of what the work once felt like from the inside.

Whether that matters to you will depend on what the job has become.

We hope you have more room to be human than we did at the end. If not, then probation did not evolve it was replaced.

Signed,
A probation officer from before

Future of Blog

Jim,

I can understand the weariness in that conclusion. After years of writing, arguing, documenting and warning, there must be a temptation to step back and say: “What’s the point?” If the prevailing mood — as aired on Free Thinking — is that the public and politicians want revenge, then perhaps the honest response is simply to accept it and move on. But from where I sit — retired, yes, but still profoundly attached to what probation once meant — I don’t believe it is quite that simple.

It is certainly true that political rhetoric increasingly trades in punishment. “Toughness” wins headlines. Nuance rarely does. Yet in over four decades of practice, I never found the public to be a monolith baying for vengeance. I found fear, yes. Anger, certainly. But also confusion, contradiction and — when given the space — a surprising appetite for prevention over spectacle. The appetite for revenge is often amplified; the appetite for effectiveness is simply quieter.

What troubles me more is not that politicians talk tough — they always have — but that we in probation risk internalising that narrative and conceding the ground. If we say, “All anyone wants is revenge,” then we effectively declare the rehabilitative project obsolete. And that feels less like realism and more like surrender.

Your blog has not been shouting into the void. It has been documenting — patiently, persistently — the slow re-engineering of a service away from relational work and towards managerialism and surveillance. It has provided testimony. And testimony matters, particularly when institutions are being reshaped in ways that future generations will struggle to understand without a record.

If you wind it up, I would understand. No one is obliged to carry the burden of bearing witness indefinitely. But I would gently suggest this: the moment when it feels most futile is often the moment when the record becomes most important. Revenge may be fashionable. It may even be electorally useful. But probation was never meant to be fashionable. It was meant to be principled.

If those of us who still believe in that principle fall silent, then the narrative really does become “End of story.” And I, for one, am not yet ready to concede that the story of probation — real probation — is over. And by the way, you deserve a medal for your work on this blog overall the years!

*******
Hi Jim 

I think it is time to call it a day. Probation as we knew it no longer exists. Once you accept that it is a relief. An old friend fondly remembered has died. You have mourned. Let it go and move on. You did your bit. When HMPPS want advice and inspiration they head to Texas the workforce has no voice. AI is very much in ascendancy with the aim of replacing Probation professionals with call centres and Tags. Is Probation even fit to call itself a profession- where is the independent professional association? Those who manage AI are the new bosses with all the power and the money. Who are they even and all others like the laughably named Chief Probation Officer are all froth, frills, and window gazers. How is this blog even relevant. It is wailing in the wilderness. We will all be slaves to the machine with everything we say and do will be recorded and scrutinised and scripted by the machine. We are living the Orwellian dream.

Unions watch in bewilderment as the white heat of AI tools  march on crushing them and drowning their feint cries in the relentless onward surge. At best we will have some oversight as rubber stampers. I would wrap it up now and admit defeat. Defiance was admirable but in the words of the late great Douglas Adam’s ‘We’ll see who rusts first!!!’ but then the Vogons destroyed the world and nothing much else mattered from that moment. It was good while it lasted. So long and thanks for the blog.

*******
"probation was never meant to be fashionable. It was meant to be principled."

There are too few people left in the world who understand those words, the work they do & the weight they carry. This blog took a principled stance. It has been a cheerleader for commentary on the realities of probation work, the positives and negatives, and it has always delivered; having been managed with considerable skill & judgement whilst retaining the option of allowing contributors to post anonymously. Relatively few have abused that privilege, save for a handful of disruptive posts.

Was I hallucinating or do I recall some way back that Jim announced the blog was being saved as a contemporaneous record of the probation story?

For what its worth, given the mindless vandalism being dished out by politicians & civil servants, I think now is as important a time as any - maybe more so - to keep the running reports on record. Then the eyes of the future can understand that not everyone was in thrall to the liars & bullies & greedmongers... some of us are fucking furious at the disgraceful, shameless, amoral shitshow.

*******
Jim, don’t wind the blog up, this is a safe space for discussion and getting rid of the frustrations of working for buffoons. The current Our Future Probation Service 2026 update just highlights how the work has and will change. Courts will no longer gate keep PSR’s all will be FDR’s , no layer 3 OAsys, reduces the input and knowledge base which means you can get Band 4 staff back into operations. Justice transcribe means that you can have a queue of punters and just roll them in and record the conversations, so no need for QDO’s they can get back into the operational roles as well. It is pointless releasing prisoners they just get recalled so let’s get all the POMs back into operations and save money from additional pay. Get all Band 4 qualified operational staff on the same pay banding if you’re not a qualified probation officer you don’t need band 4 pay or put all band 4 probation officers up to band 5 like NSD.

Do you see where we are going? The management have been divisive in splitting probation into groups playing staff off against each other, promoting non-qualified operational staff into higher pay bands , promoting more SPO’s and PDU Deputies forcing larger caseloads on already overworked staff, forcing an increased stress, sickness absence and resignation of those experienced staff close to pension maximum and leaving a group of newly qualified staff to take the hits with SFO’s etc. AI is here, it is 1984 come to fruition, Animal Farm is the management model and I am off to buy a De Lorean.

*******
Jim,

I’ve been reading your blog a long time and I can understand why you are thinking it might be time to wind the blog up – but I really hope you don’t. Whatever else has changed, this space has become something far more important than commentary. It’s a record. A living archive. A witness statement. Probation as many of us knew it has, for all practical purposes, been dismantled, reshaped, centralised, rebranded and bureaucratised beyond recognition. Structures have come and gone but what this blog has done – patiently, stubbornly, week after week – is document it as it happened. And that matters. Because memory is fragile. Institutional memory even more so. The official version of events will always tidy things up. It will speak of “modernisation”, “improvement”, “alignment”, “public protection outcomes”. It will rarely speak of what it felt like on the ground: the loss of professional discretion, the hollowing out of relationships, the quiet exodus of experience. This blog does.

If it disappears, a primary source disappears with it. Future researchers, practitioners, historians – even policymakers with a conscience – will have one less window into what really happened during these years of fragmentation and centralisation. Penal policy has long been vulnerable to populism. But that’s precisely why spaces like this remain necessary. When the public mood hardens, when nuance gets drowned out, when complexity is inconvenient – someone still has to say: this is what probation was for. This is what it did well. This is how it was undone. And crucially – this blog has never shied away from an uncomfortable truth: that what happened to probation cannot be laid entirely at the feet of politicians or civil servants.

Yes, there were catastrophic structural decisions imposed from above. Yes, ideological experiments caused damage. But the profession itself was not blameless. There were times when practitioners disengaged from leadership. Times when we failed to articulate our value clearly enough. Times when managerialism was tolerated in the hope it might pass. Times when professional confidence ebbed and collective voice weakened. Acknowledging that isn’t self-flagellation. It’s honesty. And honesty is the foundation of any meaningful record.

The strength of this blog has always been that it allows complexity. It holds anger and affection in the same space. It publishes dissent. It captures disagreement. That in itself reflects the best traditions of probation: reflective, critical, rooted in evidence and experience. Even if probation never returns to what it once was, the story of how it changed deserves to remain accessible. Not as nostalgia, but as evidence.

And there is another reason to continue: morale. For those still inside the system – often feeling isolated, unheard, or professionally diminished – knowing that there is a space where their experience is acknowledged has real value. It reminds them that what they remember wasn’t imagined. That standards once existed. That principles mattered.

You may feel the tide has turned irrevocably. Perhaps it has. Recording what has been lost is not futile; it is an act of professional integrity. If all the public and politicians want is revenge, then it becomes even more important that someone keeps writing about rehabilitation, proportionality, and the human realities behind risk labels. The blog has become part of the historical record of probation’s transformation. To close it now would be understandable. But to continue it would be quietly defiant – and profoundly useful.

*******
Jim,

I think the previous comment captures something fundamental about what this blog has become. It is no longer simply commentary. It is, as they say, a record — and not just of policy decisions, but of mood, morale, dissent, disillusionment, stubborn hope and professional memory. That matters. It really does. But I also think there’s something important to say that perhaps doesn’t get said enough: you have carried this thing for a very long time. Through restructures, privatisation, reunification, centralisation, endless “operating models”, shifting ministers, and more than one cycle of collective despair — you kept it going. Through thick and thin. And not just institutional upheaval, but your own health challenges as well. Most readers will never fully understand the toll that takes.

Producing a sustained, thoughtful, moderated space like this is work. Emotional work as much as intellectual work. It absorbs frustration. It absorbs anger. It absorbs grief for what was lost. That doesn’t come without cost. So yes — this blog is an archive. Yes — it is a witness statement. Yes — it has documented what the official narrative will never quite capture. But you are not an institution. You are a person. You should absolutely feel proud of what this blog has achieved. It has outlasted governments. It has outlasted policies that were once presented as irreversible. It has given practitioners a place to recognise themselves when the formal structures around them seemed designed to erase professional identity. That is no small thing. At the same time, you owe it to yourself to put your health first. No archive is worth your wellbeing. No act of quiet defiance should come at the expense of your recovery or peace of mind.

Perhaps the answer is not closure, but evolution. If the burden has become too heavy, then sharing it seems the obvious path. Bringing in someone trustworthy — someone who understands the history, the tone, the complexity — could both preserve the record and ease the load. Getafix certainly springs to mind as someone with the intellectual grounding and steadiness of judgement to help carry it forward. There may be others too. Succession is not surrender. It’s stewardship.

Whatever you decide, no one could reasonably accuse you of giving up lightly. If you chose to stop tomorrow, the blog would still stand as a substantial and important body of work. If you choose to continue — alone or with support — it will remain what it has always been: a place where probation’s story is told without slogans. You have done more than enough to justify stepping back if that’s what you need. But if there is a way of preserving this space without it costing you further personally, that would feel like the best of both worlds — for you, and for those who still find strength in reading it.

*******
Hi Jim,

Personally, I hope you’ll keep going. The blog has been a steady and important voice for probation through some very turbulent years, and that still matters. There is always something to say about probation; even when things seem to go quiet for a while, it’s rarely long before new issues emerge that deserve reflection or challenge. If, however, there were to be another structural upheaval on the scale of TR, particularly something as symbolic as a name change, that might be a natural point to pause and reconsider. Not because the conversation lacks value, but because it would signal that something more fundamental had shifted, locking probation into a quickening death roll.

And when I talk about an end, I don’t just mean for the blog. I mean for this particular chapter of probation as we’ve known it and worked within it. If it did ever come to a final post, it would need to be something fitting, somewhere between symbolic and a cracker, with comments closed after a few weeks, then left to stand as an ever-present record, resurfacing in conversations and Google searches for years to come. Whatever you decide to do, thank you for the thoughtful reading over the years, and for keeping our mini-rebellion alive.

--oo00oo--

Thanks to everyone for taking the trouble to respond so eloquently to my feelings of despair - it's important to know how people feel and it's giving me much to ponder on. One thing I need to be clear about is that the collective memory must be secured and I'm currently giving thought to the matter of Digital Executor and how the record can be archived safely. I'm genuinely unsure about this, but wonder if some academic institution might be an appropriate avenue?   . 

Thought Piece 12

I was reminded of the following from a previous read, more relevant now than ever:

“Similarly, if probation is unable to develop a clear and credible identity, distinct from narratives around punishment, public safety, use of technology, cost-effectiveness, or custody alternatives, and to resist the urge to overpromise on risk management, public protection, and crime control, then it may continue to face the challenge of misrepresentation.”

Probation 2026 isn’t really a “parallel universe” anymore. It is reduced, forgotten, and often airbrushed out of existence in policy and public imagination.

This is made more urgent by the Sentencing Act, and expanded technological monitoring. Technology and AI are presented as solutions to efficiency pressures, managing caseloads, reducing admin, analysing data, increasing remote supervision. Used properly, these tools can support professional judgement and reduce bureaucracy.

But if probation is to be a sentence and agency in its own right, not just a cheaper alternative to custody or an extension of surveillance, then how can it rehabilitate people and improve practice when the focus shifts to security, tagging, remote monitoring, and efficiency metrics?

AI can process information and flag patterns, but cannot build trust, hold difficult conversations, exercise moral judgement, or navigate human realities that underpin change. If efficiency and security dominate, and probation does not define what must remain human and relational, technology then replaces relationships with surveillance tool.

The question is not whether technology has a role, whether it serves probation’s rehabilitative mission, or quietly reshapes it into something else. At that point, it is no longer simply misrepresentation; it is existential if being used to serve probation’s purpose by redefining it beyond recognition.

Anon

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