The latest Probation Journal carries an extremely important article by Professor Rob Canton and in my view should be regarded as essential reading for all probation staff past, present and future. I don't say this lightly and in an ideal world I'd rather hope it gained the attention of politicians and indeed anyone in positions of power and influence.
We find ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented prison, probation and criminal justice crisis and it's election year. Essentially this article sets out in forensic but clear detail much of how and why we got here and one would hope it convincingly makes the case for a fundamental rethink of the role and purpose of probation. In my opinion, failure to grasp the urgent need for change will inevitably mean that probation not only becomes increasingly irrelevant but most worryingly, entrenched as part of the problem.
Being conscious that the article may not be easily accessible for those who are not members of Napo, together with a desire to bring it to the attention of a wider audience, I've taken the liberty of sharing it in a number of posts.
Probation as Social Work
Abstract
In England and Wales probation was regarded as social work for most of the twentieth century, but some thirty years ago the government rejected this conception. In the context of continuing deliberations about the purpose and character of probation, it is timely to revisit its relationship to social work. It is argued that a principal reason for the politically motivated repudiation of social work was its associations with care, but this rested on confusion about care and a comparable misunderstanding of the concept of control. Appreciation of social context is argued to be fundamental to the work of probation. Social capital is no less important than human capital in achieving desistance. The skills and values of social work continue to inform probation because they match up to the demands of the job. Reaffirming connections between the professions would enhance the policy and practices of both.
Introduction
Many countries regard the activities of probation agencies as social work undertaken in the criminal justice system. This used to be the case in England and Wales, but this understanding was overturned when social work was rejected as a way of characterising probation's work. The Probation Service, set back and damaged by the project of Transforming Rehabilitation (Burke and Collett, 2015; Deering and Feilzer, 2019), has now embarked on a process of unification as a national service. Since the organisation of any agency should be fitted to its purposes, a review of the character, meaning and point of probation is timely. In a recent contribution to this debate, the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (2023) remarking that ‘Caseloads are unmanageable and job satisfaction is low.’ (page 4), referred to an occupational ‘identity crisis’ (page 70). In this paper it will be argued that, while the matter of whether probation ‘is’ social work sounds like a stale debate, reopening discussion can illuminate much about what probation is or ought to be and in particular the values that should find expression in its practices.
How probation was separated from social work
The view that probation was social work within the criminal justice system was scarcely controversial and even taken for granted in England and Wales for most of the twentieth century. Indeed, while the idea that probation might be part of a unified Social Services Department now seems implausible, in the 1960s the possibility was seriously considered. An awareness that families were poorly served by the fragmented arrangements under which services were provided by separate agencies led to an enquiry into the organisation of social work (Dickens, 2011). The resulting Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services (the Seebohm Report) recommended the creation of generic social work departments. This report acknowledged that a further impetus to the enquiry and an influence on the Committee's thinking had been the 1965 White Paper The Child, the Family and the Young Offender. It was abundantly clear to many that crime was bound up with disadvantage and deprivation and that a social work service for families might reduce the incidence of offending.
Outside of the new amalgamated services, ‘probation had severed its umbilical cord from the rest of social work’ (Whitehead and Statham, 2006: 46). Nevertheless, it was to be many years until probation formally renounced its parentage. The political debates of the 1960s and 1970s were more about organisation than purpose or ethos: probation staff continued to regard their work as welfare, sharing with social services workers the commitment to social casework as a mode of intervention.
With the collapse of the broad consensus that had prevailed for most of the mid- twentieth century, crime and punishment became ever more salient as an arena for political contest (Downes and Morgan, 1994). As ‘[t]he emotional temperature of policy-making shifted from cool to hot … the welfarist image of the offender as a disadvantaged, deserving, subject of need’ was replaced by ‘stereotypical depictions of unruly youth, dangerous predators, and incorrigible career criminals’ (Garland, 2001: 10). Welfare was to give way to punishment and control as fitting responses to crimes, together with a stated ambition that much could be accomplished in the community (for fear of an expensive and ineffective prison estate becoming even more overburdened). The Criminal Justice Act 1991 envisaged a ‘centre-stage’ role for probation, but at the price of presenting its work as punishment - a characterisation with which many practitioners were ill at ease.
The project to characterise probation as the agency responsible for administering punishment in the community was always likely to struggle (Brownlee, 1998; Worrall and Hoy, 2005). Not only did staff not understand their work in this way, but it has always been problematic to convince the public that community supervision, whatever else it is, counts as punishment. Supervision can be extremely burdensome and even painful (Durnescu, 2011; McNeill, 2018; Hayes, 2018), but these punitive hardships are seldom acknowledged in public or political debate. However that may be, the envisaged role for probation made connections with social work politically awkward. Association with a caring profession was altogether at odds with how government wanted to present the service.
The structures of governance, however, did not make probation readily amenable to control. The service was made up of 54 local Probation Committees (later reconstituted as Boards and reduced in number to 42). While the Home Office retained a level of oversight and direction, considerable latitude was retained locally, with councillors among the membership of Committees to represent local interests. If political promises were to be credible, central government would need to assert a much stronger and more direct control. That probation was substantially dependent on central funding gave government the leverage necessary to effect their changes. The Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (Home Office, 1984) required local services to draw up their own plans within parameters set nationally. 1989 saw the first National Standards (for community service), with a full set promulgated in 1992 in support of the implementation of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. Changes in funding formulas from 1992 tightened the screw of control and enabled central government to mould policy and practice.
While the Home Office had increasingly been seeking to exercise a more immediate control, in its assault on probation as social work it was able to exert a direct influence on training. The overall qualifying framework and curriculum had (since 1971) been overseen by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, on the basis that probation officers needed the same generic training as (other) social workers. Yet qualifying courses for probation officers in universities and polytechnics had to be approved by the Home Office, who also ‘sponsored’ students with (relatively generous) remuneration.
Concern began to be expressed that the distinctive knowledge required by staff was overlooked or suppressed, vanishing in a generic curriculum (Coleman, 1989). In response, the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work was replaced by the Diploma in Social Work in 1991. The new curriculum required much greater involvement from the agencies which were to employ their staff at qualification. ‘Streams’, including a probation stream, were devised to ensure that suitable knowledge was imparted. But they remained streams within a generic curriculum, still regarded as fully relevant to all social workers. Even though the probation stream came to be called the ‘jewel in the crown’ in social work education (Marsh and Triseliotis, 1996: 203), the government persisted in its concerns about over-genericism. It is likely there was also a suspicion that it was during their education that attitudes were shaped, perhaps including those that made staff inimical to the government's vision of probation as community punishment. If the ethos were to be changed, there had to be an altogether different approach (Dews and Watts, 1994). A social work qualification would no longer be required.
Political contest in this area intensified in the mid-1990s as parties competed for the claim to be ‘the party of law and order’ (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998). While promising to be tough on the causes of crime as well as on crime itself, as it came into government in 1997 New Labour did little to disturb the policy trajectory for probation. Punishment in the community would still be the watchword. And as the government moved quickly to set up a qualifying university education for probation officers, it was made clear that social work departments should not apply to deliver it.
Connotations of caring associated with social work, then, were still unwelcome. The administration seemed especially preoccupied with terminology. Probation service users had traditionally been referred to as ‘clients’, an established term for users of social services. But the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (1998) averred: ‘We agree wholeheartedly with the Home Secretary's comments regarding the language used in relation to community sentences; in particular we deplore the use of the term ‘client’ to describe criminals who are serving sentences.’ (paragraph 152) The word ‘offender’ was now insisted on. ‘Deplore’ is a strong word and it is worth pondering why the Committee and the Home Secretary (Jack Straw) were quite so vehement. Most plausibly, their aversion rested not on the precise denotation of the word so much as its connotations: offenders are to be condemned and punished; clients are entitled to service and to respect. Seeking ever more punitive credibility, other changes in terminology followed. After-care was to become resettlement; the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 changed Community Service into Community Punishment; the venerable Probation Order was renamed a Community Rehabilitation Order.
By 2008, Mr Straw, now the country's first ever Minister of Justice, congratulated himself 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.’ (Mulholland, 2008) There was little (party) political objection to this kind of stance. Still, the year before, at a service celebrating the centenary of the 1907 Probation of Offenders Act, the Bishop of Worcester reflected: ‘“Clients” have become “offenders” it seems; and “offender” slides easily from being a statement of fact – that a person has committed an offence or some offences – into an assertion of identity; they like the publicans and sinners of the gospel reading become a social class, a “them”.’ (Worcester News, 2007). Some words can help to sustain a protective dignity without which people may be ‘distanced and so pushed outside the boundaries of the moral community’ (Glover, 1999: 337). Language matters and is one of the principal ways in which the meanings of punishment are conveyed. To be the agency of punishment in the community, probation had to end its association with social work and the lexicon of penal policy rewritten.
In England and Wales probation was regarded as social work for most of the twentieth century, but some thirty years ago the government rejected this conception. In the context of continuing deliberations about the purpose and character of probation, it is timely to revisit its relationship to social work. It is argued that a principal reason for the politically motivated repudiation of social work was its associations with care, but this rested on confusion about care and a comparable misunderstanding of the concept of control. Appreciation of social context is argued to be fundamental to the work of probation. Social capital is no less important than human capital in achieving desistance. The skills and values of social work continue to inform probation because they match up to the demands of the job. Reaffirming connections between the professions would enhance the policy and practices of both.
Introduction
Many countries regard the activities of probation agencies as social work undertaken in the criminal justice system. This used to be the case in England and Wales, but this understanding was overturned when social work was rejected as a way of characterising probation's work. The Probation Service, set back and damaged by the project of Transforming Rehabilitation (Burke and Collett, 2015; Deering and Feilzer, 2019), has now embarked on a process of unification as a national service. Since the organisation of any agency should be fitted to its purposes, a review of the character, meaning and point of probation is timely. In a recent contribution to this debate, the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (2023) remarking that ‘Caseloads are unmanageable and job satisfaction is low.’ (page 4), referred to an occupational ‘identity crisis’ (page 70). In this paper it will be argued that, while the matter of whether probation ‘is’ social work sounds like a stale debate, reopening discussion can illuminate much about what probation is or ought to be and in particular the values that should find expression in its practices.
How probation was separated from social work
The view that probation was social work within the criminal justice system was scarcely controversial and even taken for granted in England and Wales for most of the twentieth century. Indeed, while the idea that probation might be part of a unified Social Services Department now seems implausible, in the 1960s the possibility was seriously considered. An awareness that families were poorly served by the fragmented arrangements under which services were provided by separate agencies led to an enquiry into the organisation of social work (Dickens, 2011). The resulting Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services (the Seebohm Report) recommended the creation of generic social work departments. This report acknowledged that a further impetus to the enquiry and an influence on the Committee's thinking had been the 1965 White Paper The Child, the Family and the Young Offender. It was abundantly clear to many that crime was bound up with disadvantage and deprivation and that a social work service for families might reduce the incidence of offending.
Outside of the new amalgamated services, ‘probation had severed its umbilical cord from the rest of social work’ (Whitehead and Statham, 2006: 46). Nevertheless, it was to be many years until probation formally renounced its parentage. The political debates of the 1960s and 1970s were more about organisation than purpose or ethos: probation staff continued to regard their work as welfare, sharing with social services workers the commitment to social casework as a mode of intervention.
With the collapse of the broad consensus that had prevailed for most of the mid- twentieth century, crime and punishment became ever more salient as an arena for political contest (Downes and Morgan, 1994). As ‘[t]he emotional temperature of policy-making shifted from cool to hot … the welfarist image of the offender as a disadvantaged, deserving, subject of need’ was replaced by ‘stereotypical depictions of unruly youth, dangerous predators, and incorrigible career criminals’ (Garland, 2001: 10). Welfare was to give way to punishment and control as fitting responses to crimes, together with a stated ambition that much could be accomplished in the community (for fear of an expensive and ineffective prison estate becoming even more overburdened). The Criminal Justice Act 1991 envisaged a ‘centre-stage’ role for probation, but at the price of presenting its work as punishment - a characterisation with which many practitioners were ill at ease.
The project to characterise probation as the agency responsible for administering punishment in the community was always likely to struggle (Brownlee, 1998; Worrall and Hoy, 2005). Not only did staff not understand their work in this way, but it has always been problematic to convince the public that community supervision, whatever else it is, counts as punishment. Supervision can be extremely burdensome and even painful (Durnescu, 2011; McNeill, 2018; Hayes, 2018), but these punitive hardships are seldom acknowledged in public or political debate. However that may be, the envisaged role for probation made connections with social work politically awkward. Association with a caring profession was altogether at odds with how government wanted to present the service.
The structures of governance, however, did not make probation readily amenable to control. The service was made up of 54 local Probation Committees (later reconstituted as Boards and reduced in number to 42). While the Home Office retained a level of oversight and direction, considerable latitude was retained locally, with councillors among the membership of Committees to represent local interests. If political promises were to be credible, central government would need to assert a much stronger and more direct control. That probation was substantially dependent on central funding gave government the leverage necessary to effect their changes. The Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (Home Office, 1984) required local services to draw up their own plans within parameters set nationally. 1989 saw the first National Standards (for community service), with a full set promulgated in 1992 in support of the implementation of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. Changes in funding formulas from 1992 tightened the screw of control and enabled central government to mould policy and practice.
While the Home Office had increasingly been seeking to exercise a more immediate control, in its assault on probation as social work it was able to exert a direct influence on training. The overall qualifying framework and curriculum had (since 1971) been overseen by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, on the basis that probation officers needed the same generic training as (other) social workers. Yet qualifying courses for probation officers in universities and polytechnics had to be approved by the Home Office, who also ‘sponsored’ students with (relatively generous) remuneration.
Concern began to be expressed that the distinctive knowledge required by staff was overlooked or suppressed, vanishing in a generic curriculum (Coleman, 1989). In response, the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work was replaced by the Diploma in Social Work in 1991. The new curriculum required much greater involvement from the agencies which were to employ their staff at qualification. ‘Streams’, including a probation stream, were devised to ensure that suitable knowledge was imparted. But they remained streams within a generic curriculum, still regarded as fully relevant to all social workers. Even though the probation stream came to be called the ‘jewel in the crown’ in social work education (Marsh and Triseliotis, 1996: 203), the government persisted in its concerns about over-genericism. It is likely there was also a suspicion that it was during their education that attitudes were shaped, perhaps including those that made staff inimical to the government's vision of probation as community punishment. If the ethos were to be changed, there had to be an altogether different approach (Dews and Watts, 1994). A social work qualification would no longer be required.
Political contest in this area intensified in the mid-1990s as parties competed for the claim to be ‘the party of law and order’ (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998). While promising to be tough on the causes of crime as well as on crime itself, as it came into government in 1997 New Labour did little to disturb the policy trajectory for probation. Punishment in the community would still be the watchword. And as the government moved quickly to set up a qualifying university education for probation officers, it was made clear that social work departments should not apply to deliver it.
Connotations of caring associated with social work, then, were still unwelcome. The administration seemed especially preoccupied with terminology. Probation service users had traditionally been referred to as ‘clients’, an established term for users of social services. But the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (1998) averred: ‘We agree wholeheartedly with the Home Secretary's comments regarding the language used in relation to community sentences; in particular we deplore the use of the term ‘client’ to describe criminals who are serving sentences.’ (paragraph 152) The word ‘offender’ was now insisted on. ‘Deplore’ is a strong word and it is worth pondering why the Committee and the Home Secretary (Jack Straw) were quite so vehement. Most plausibly, their aversion rested not on the precise denotation of the word so much as its connotations: offenders are to be condemned and punished; clients are entitled to service and to respect. Seeking ever more punitive credibility, other changes in terminology followed. After-care was to become resettlement; the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 changed Community Service into Community Punishment; the venerable Probation Order was renamed a Community Rehabilitation Order.
By 2008, Mr Straw, now the country's first ever Minister of Justice, congratulated himself 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.’ (Mulholland, 2008) There was little (party) political objection to this kind of stance. Still, the year before, at a service celebrating the centenary of the 1907 Probation of Offenders Act, the Bishop of Worcester reflected: ‘“Clients” have become “offenders” it seems; and “offender” slides easily from being a statement of fact – that a person has committed an offence or some offences – into an assertion of identity; they like the publicans and sinners of the gospel reading become a social class, a “them”.’ (Worcester News, 2007). Some words can help to sustain a protective dignity without which people may be ‘distanced and so pushed outside the boundaries of the moral community’ (Glover, 1999: 337). Language matters and is one of the principal ways in which the meanings of punishment are conveyed. To be the agency of punishment in the community, probation had to end its association with social work and the lexicon of penal policy rewritten.
Rob Canton
(to be continued)
