Dear Mr Jones,

We’ve all read your cry for help on behalf of probation. And yes, it must be heard. But I can’t help wondering, who exactly are you talking to? Because frontline probation officers don’t need reminding how bad things are, and the public doesn’t really know what we do. We live it every day, as do those in prison and on probation needing our support. What we don’t hear from you is where the buck actually stops.

And perhaps you find that hard to say, where that buck stops, since the top table of HMPPS and the Ministry of Justice changes hands quicker than a brown envelope in the back room of a casino, or a foil packet in a back alley.

Here’s the reality for probation: when you conclude there are “failings in public protection,” we get the blame. When you warn of “further serious failings without urgent reform,” we get the blame. When you say staff “don’t understand enough about risk,” we get the blame.

You cannot in one breath acknowledge the government’s repeated press release that probation is under immense pressure, “with hard-working staff burdened with high workloads,” and in the next follow the same approach implying those same officers should have done more. That contradiction and the consequences lands squarely on us, along with the endless actions, tick-boxes, briefings, and unpaid overtime that follow.

Your own reports already spell it out: probation is broken. Years of privatisation, de-privatisation, restructuring, pay freezes, devalued training, and haemorrhaging expertise have left the probation service in pieces. The role of the probation officer itself has been twisted to serve prisons and political headlines. At times, we play second fiddle to the police, social services, and charities. Some days, probation staff aren’t even sure what probation is meant to be anymore.

And yet, strangely, your reports still praise probation leadership. How is that possible when every probation region is rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement”? Leadership cannot be doing well if the service is collapsing on their watch. Name me one probation leader who has spoken out honestly about any of this, just one.

Meanwhile, on the frontline, caseloads of 40–80 people (many seen weekly) have become standard. We deal with bulk prison releases with no notice. Policy shifts without consultation. SFO reviews and HMIP inspections breathing down our necks. Professional registration and standards piling more weight on our backs. All of it with fewer staff, less time, insulting meagre pay “increases,” and not a single voice championing us.

We are tired. We’ve had the same conversations in staff rooms, with unions, on this blog, at the Probation Institute, with the Prison Reform Trust, even with your own inspectors, about probation pay, conditions, pressures, identity, recruitment, retention, discrimination, probation’s subservience to prisons, and the relentless scrutiny. A colleague in Preston was almost murdered, and still nothing changes.

Instead, we get the same political theatre: Gauke’s fag-packet sentencing notes. Timpson’s novelty rehabilitation speeches. Endless reviews that lead nowhere. Another Justice Secretary talking tough on punishment, tagging, and “public safety.”

The reality? Frontline probation will see none of the £700m “promised,” nor the benefit of the thousands of recruits that never arrive. And as every probation officer knows and will have told your inspectors from Northumberland to Newquay, what people actually need is housing, addiction support, access to healthcare and jobs. Tagging, political soundbites, sabre-rattling, and Ai solve none of that.

Working in probation today feels like a mix of an abusive relationship, Stockholm Syndrome, and a forgotten cold-war system. We’re told to do more with less. To patch up the failures of the entire Criminal Justice System. To JFDI and shoulder the problems and risks when things go wrong. All while our pay stagnates, our professional status collapses, our role evaporates, and literally nobody wants to hear our opinions when we probably hold the best solutions.

So yes, Mr Jones, probation needs urgent reform. But if you are truly crying for help, then cry about this, not at us, but for us. Probation officers deserve a voice unfiltered by inspections, politicians, or “leadership” spin. We know the realities, we carry the risks, and we’re the ones left to pick up the pieces when policy fails. If there is to be a cry for help, let it come from the people trying against all odds to do the job.

Anon (Probation Officer)