Emotional Toll

There was a line in Friday nights first episode of 'The Investigation' on BBC2 that immediately resonated with me. It's the beginning of a murder case and stress is already becoming apparent amongst the detectives involved. Before heading home in pensive mood, an experienced officer makes a revealing statement to a younger colleague along the lines of 'there hasn't been a homicide case I haven't taken home with me'. Oh boy, that resonated and got me reflecting. 

I think we're all familiar with the old probation mantra of 'advise, assist and befriend' and I know for a fact that this remains a fundamental element of practice amongst some officers and especially of a certain vintage. For those not 'in the know' it's hard to adequately explain the stress caused by having to try and help (supervise?) clients who are homeless, destitute, frightened and possibly suicidal. 

In addition to the person's situation assaulting your emotions and challenging your professional skills of advocacy, it can utterly disrupt your planned working day and 'essential' record-keeping. The advent of the computer has made things 100% worse. And then supposedly you have to 'switch off' and go home, hopefully to a contrasting world of calm, comfort and safety, but not always of course. 

The cumulative effect can be extremely serious and lead to what used to be termed 'burnout', long term sickness, depression and in some instances suicide. Sadly during my career I have known of two colleagues who took their own life and one who had to be 'sectioned' for their own safety. This sort of thing doesn't seem to be talked of nowadays and I wonder why? Can you do the job 'properly' any more, or just 'sign-post' everything off? 'Not my job guv'.  

But 'advise, assist and befriend' and social work was only ever part of the story because the job has always been concerned with justice, punishment and rehabilitation too. In order to be effective there is an inherent need to get to the truth, a task that can be extraordinarily difficult especially in relation to sex offenders and people convicted of murder. 

It can be incredibly stressful, particularly as parole dates approach and you become acutely aware of the importance that words can have in influencing key decisions. Did they really not do it? Has there been a miscarriage of justice? Is that really what happened? Will it happen again? In my experience these cases have not only 'come home' with me but continue to live with me years and decades later. 

The recent ITV drama-documentary about the notorious Pembrokeshire murders reminded me that, not withstanding a whole-life tariff, one or more probation officers will have that case, but unlike police officers will never talk about it publicly, write a book or sell a story to the media. It all means the public and politicians continue to remain blissfully ignorant as to what the job is all about. I sometimes reflect that even in my fairly pedestrian career, I carry around the baggage attached to more than a handful of stories, the telling of which would amount to much media interest and quite a pretty cash sum. It will never happen though, such is the distinctive probation ethos that still survives.

I'll end this meander with a final thought. Just imagine the emotional effect on probation officers prior to the 1965 abolition of the death penalty and their involvement with clients destined for the gallows. I've never heard any discussion at all of this, but wonder if this was the origin of the practice of 'pairing' in cases of murder right from first allocation. I know that when I joined in 1985 it was routine practice to have a colleague assigned as a 'pair' on all  murder cases for support, continuity and essentially another view.