Let me explain the predicament. Nobody speaks with authority for probation, and nobody listens to or recognises those who genuinely try. That’s the root of why probation is in the state it’s in.
We now have a growing industry of HMPPS “units”, effective practice, professional registration, workforce planning, policy, AI, yet none of it makes a single visible or positive difference to the service, its staff, or the people under supervision.
Recent events only highlight the vacuum: Timpson flopped at the Bill McWilliams Annual Lecture (why was he even there?). Gauke’s much-heralded sentencing review, and the Justice Select Committee’s “rehabilitation review,” both fizzling into a shambles. Rees entrenched the “big brother” dominance of prisons over probation, before quietly leaving the stage. Mahmood then crushed the “prison and probation” baton beyond recognition, only to drop it for Lammy (whose status Starmer just gave away in the cabinet reshuffle), who will now have no choice but to spend months fumbling it across the tarmac under political glare.
- MoJ / HMPPS: Deaf to voices from the probation frontline. Practitioners least of all.
- Probation leaders: Meek, heads in the sand, silenced by the system, or detached from reality.
- Napo and unions: Incompetent. Enough said.
- Criminology Academics: Too often caught up in their own research cycles and popularist narratives, speaking to each other more than to the service.
- Think tanks, charities, community agencies: No different, each with an eye on the next funding stream or contract, not on sustainable solutions.
- Probation Institute: Speaks well, occasionally elevates practitioner voices, but those voices vanish without impact. Inside probation, almost nobody listens.
The way forward?
Reading the Rademaker report alongside recent HMIP findings is sobering. If probation cannot get a grip on racism, bullying, and harassment, and continues to be rated universally inadequate (while probation senior managers and leaders remain silent), then the service is staring into a very bleak future (with a crass and dangerous looking Reform leader grinning back with a pint in hand).
While deckchairs are endlessly shuffled at the top, around 10,000 vacancies remain unfilled. And yet, the overriding national priority, the one thing managers insist on is ensuring every practitioner completes mandatory training and professional registration by the end of the month.
That is the true picture: a service on the brink, obsessed with bureaucratic compliance while neglecting its workforce, its purpose, its identity, and its integrity. Ignorant to everything positive the Probation Institute or anyone else has to say.
Anon
Reading the Rademaker report alongside recent HMIP findings is sobering. If probation cannot get a grip on racism, bullying, and harassment, and continues to be rated universally inadequate (while probation senior managers and leaders remain silent), then the service is staring into a very bleak future (with a crass and dangerous looking Reform leader grinning back with a pint in hand).
While deckchairs are endlessly shuffled at the top, around 10,000 vacancies remain unfilled. And yet, the overriding national priority, the one thing managers insist on is ensuring every practitioner completes mandatory training and professional registration by the end of the month.
That is the true picture: a service on the brink, obsessed with bureaucratic compliance while neglecting its workforce, its purpose, its identity, and its integrity. Ignorant to everything positive the Probation Institute or anyone else has to say.
Anon
“a service on the brink, obsessed with bureaucratic compliance while neglecting its workforce” - never a truer word spoken. So many units - data analysts, performance teams compliance teams ,death under supervision teams , complaints teams , learning and development teams (that don’t actually provide any training ) … all of these corporate units that make no real or visible difference to the workforce on the ground. Sentence management will continue to flounder until something is done as why would you want to work on the shop floor when you can move into a non operational team for the same if not more money and a fraction of the stress and responsibility. The ballot failed and we all know the pay offer will be peanuts and yet they will still scratch their heads and create another team no doubt to look into why retention is so poor in sentence management. Why can’t sentence management roles be given a pay uplift as that is where the shortfall is ? No one does this job as a vocation anymore so rightly or wrongly, pay that reflects the work done on the shop floor is the only way to start attracting more people and keeping them.
ReplyDeleteWhy can’t sentence management roles be given a pay uplift as that is where the shortfall is? Exactly. If they can pay probation staff in the NSD a band up and spend all that money filling unnecessary department, on R&R and glossy recruiting campaigns, that £700 million about to be spent on IT and EMS, then they can do the same for sentence management and pay the actual FRONTLINE probation staff an equivalent as pay rises or retention bonuses.
DeleteHear hear! This is spot on. Probation isn’t short of ideas or reviews, it’s short of leadership, honesty, and the courage to put staff and service users first. Until that changes, we’ll keep sinking under the weight of our own bureaucracy.
ReplyDeleteProbation is already dead, what we’re watching now is just the corpse being shuffled around to keep up appearances. The frontline knows it, the public will pay for it, and those in charge don’t care. At least Rt Hon Lammy wont hide the racism problem.
ReplyDeleteIndeed I fear your only saying what is most likely.
DeleteLammy on race he speaks unwisely addressing a black meeting he lead a shameful pledge to call for financial reparations. Absolutely bonkers .
ReplyDeleteThe first blog is encouraging . Sadly the upper controllers are all moving through . The 15 or so regional directors have acos who all have little or no knowledge of very much. Saying the unions are incompetent is true and wrong for us. We need a professional union why are stuck with unions like this.
Would be interesting to see the reaction if this was sent anonymously to the all-staff probation email address....
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree. Figures like Bob Turney and Bill McWilliams once championed the practitioner’s voice, actively shaping probation’s identity and advocating for a rehabilitative approach over punitive measures. Their efforts were instrumental in promoting a probation model rooted in support, reintegration, and human dignity. That activity has all disappeared, similar with these recent ideas about shaping identity and emphasising rehabilitation over punishment.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.probation-institute.org/news/shaping-probations-identity
Similar stories
ReplyDeleteA Life of Justice, Joy and Uncompromising Principle
https://napomagazine.org.uk/jil-cove-a-life-of-justice-joy-and-uncompromising-principle/
A View from the Frontline
https://napomagazine.org.uk/the-concept-of-professionalism-in-probation-a-view-from-the-frontline/
This tribute to Jil Cove has been written by Helen Schofield, a long-time colleague, fellow activist and friend.
DeleteHelen reflects on Jil’s extraordinary life: from her early days as a nurse, to her influential role in the probation service and trade union movement, to her political fire in the heart of Spitalfields. Jil’s story is one of courage, compassion and conviction and the legacy she leaves behind is one that continues to inspire.
Jil Cove died on 9th July after a struggle with COPD. Jil was clever, funny, beautiful, brave and exceptionally politically astute.
I met Jil the day I joined the probation service – twenty something, following my Home Office training at Bedford College. We shared the top floor of the office in Grays Inn Road, also with Roj Holmes – in a split office in which initially Roj had the clock and I had the phone! We had a trojan senior probation officer but most of us recall that Jil was the real power. She influenced my career in many ways but most of all by persuading me that I should not only join the probation trade union Napo immediately but quickly take a local official role…..and the rest as they say…..is our shared history as Jil became a much loved chair of the trade union and I followed.
This article published in Spitalfields Life in 2011 recalls Jil in her own words:
“I trained as a nurse in Brighton and then applied to do midwifery at the Royal London Hospital. My mum came with me for the interview and there were drunks lying on the pavement all along Whitechapel, and she said, “You can’t come here!” but that was why I was attracted to it. I was working here in 1957, when the Windrush came over, and I worked alongside the first influx of black nurses.
After a couple of years, I was advised to give up nursing because I had a slipped disc, so I decided to try to become a probation officer and I got to know a psychiatric social worker at the Toynbee Hall in Commercial St where they had an outpost of Grendon Underwood prison – for inmates with personality disorders. At that time, the building where I live now was for ex-prisoners coming in and going off into the world, and she had a flat there but she needed a back-up to keep an eye on things, and I’ve been here ever since.”
Jil’s influence extended beyond the probation service into the local Labour Party in Spitalfields, where she left no one in any doubt about her views. It’s an interesting reflection that Jil very well understood the cultural differences between local politicians and the significantly increasing Bengali politicians. Jil had no qualms throughout the eighties and nineties in explaining about democracy, safety and justice to many local politicians. Jil organised against the redevelopment of Spitalfields Market but was eventually gracious about the commercial arena that replaced the old market.
In the early nineties, Jil persuaded me to leave my two young boys with their dad for a weekend in Derbyshire for the International Women’s Weekend in the company of an amazing group of women who have also been hugely influenced by Jil and in turn influenced her….sometimes sober, always noisy! This lovely group continues to meet to celebrate International Women’s Weekend and we are all feeling her loss deeply.
It is no secret that Jil despaired of the 21st century version of the Probation Service which she had loved for so long. She would tell fascinating stories about her lads in Camden Town where we worked. Jil practised “radical non intervention” – as often as possible – proving the importance of believing in people whilst they grow and change! She was proud to have only taken three individuals back to court in her long career as a probation officer but she was ever watchful and firm. If the Probation Service of the future can retain a fraction of Jil’s compassion and commitment it will survive and fulfil her ambitions.
We will celebrate Jil’s life at a giant picnic later this Summer – just as she did for her beloved friend George.
Helen Schofield
Jil Cove: A Life of Justice, Joy and Uncompromising Principle
DeleteJil Cove, who died on 9th July, leaves behind a legacy of fierce compassion, political clarity and deep commitment to the probation service, her union, and her community. A former chair of Napo and lifelong activist, Jil’s sharp wit, courage and belief in people left a mark on all who knew her. We remember her not only for what she stood for, but how she lived—joyfully, defiantly, and with love.
By Napo HQ
A bit more from the Spitalfield's Life article:-
Delete"In all the twenty-five years I worked in probation, I only took three people back to court for non-co-operation. You saw them for half an hour a week and you were supposed to influence them. My policy was radical non-intervention – I didn’t interfere with them and they didn’t interfere with me, but I was always there if they needed help. I think one of the things that me and my friends who worked together in the service for all those years valued was that we were left alone, but we had a small budget to do things – even as simple as getting a cat speyed.
One poor man, he was convinced the neighbours were sending sinister rays through the walls and ceiling, so we bought baking foil and helped him line the flat with it and it worked, it calmed him down. I remember one family in particular, the dad was a forger, the boys committed offences and the daughters would get pregnant, but somehow the mother held it all together – the kids were immaculately turned out and I always wondered how she did it. Another of the guys I worked with had done a lot of really nasty offences, a real tough nut. He was doing his A levels in prison and I visited him, and he said he’d just read the Diary of Anne Frank and it made him cry. It was November, and I said I wouldn’t retire until he got parole, and he got out next June. He’d never been to the theatre before so I took him to see Julius Caesar – you saw how you could change someone’s life and that’s what made it worthwhile. It was a nice job and I wouldn’t have left, but there was change towards a more punitive approach. In those days you could actually do social work. At my leaving party at The Water Poet, I got so drunk I was drinking pints of vodka and gin, and then they took me home and I drank half a bottle of rum."
That almost reads as if it was written by Tailgunner Parkinson in either the Guardian or "New Society" - what a loss that was when it closed - but I guess there was not enough money in the sales for the publisher. It is a while since I read any of Spitalfields Life - an excellent blog who at times got away from Sopitalfields itself up to the eastern end of Bow Road where I last did Court Duties at Thames Magistrates' Court probably in 1997 - almost another lifetime.
DeleteI have now done a search and found it was from Jill Cove - a colleague from ILPS who I admired and a socialist like Stan Renshall at Page Moss, in Huyton - somehow it was the inspiration of folk like that which had one striving to do one's absolute best.
The Gentle Author has published some wonderful photographs of Jill Cove.
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/01/15/jil-cove-spitalfields-resident/
About the sentence review, shambles is an understatement.
ReplyDelete“The Bill also introduces a presumption that prison sentences of a year or less will be replaced with tougher sentences in the community that better punish offenders and stop them reoffending.”
“Publishing the names and photos of those subject to an unpaid work requirement will demonstrate to the public that justice is being delivered and increase the visibility and transparency of community payback.”
From Bluesky:-
ReplyDelete"A lot of truth in this although maybe a bit harsh on academia and unions. There are some more positive developments, HMIP has become more improvement focused and reflective for example. I don't think many in the service, know what they are there for. Time to relaunch police court missionaries?"
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ec3ce97a1716758c54691b7/t/68b9cfce92b3d60bab4e7942/1757007823310/The+Sentencing+Bill+2025+PI+September+2025.pdf
ReplyDeleteResponse to the draft Sentencing Bill.
Every effort needed to amend this bill which is very disappointing and includes proposals for naming and shaming individuals on unpaid work which are just simply dangerous!
From Twitter:-
ReplyDelete"When I worked in probation I was known as the one who would say something. They loved that for a while until they realised I wasn’t to be contained by their toxic, bullying tactics. If you think for yourself and stand up to the SLT your days are numbered."
The moment you refuse to be silenced or moulded into their culture of fear, you’re marked out. Probation should value integrity and independent thinking, yet those qualities are treated like threats. Alternatively, become “one of them” and you’ll go far!
DeleteThis started when the recruitment process changed and independent out of the box thinkers were passed over in favour of corporate clones so those at the top could continue in their unassailable positions and bestow their wisdom to new starters……..
DeleteI don't think if you even try and become like them it helps. You have to be in clique and it's got so bad you now have to be attractive enough to those in high positions to get a promotion. It's become a vile, despicable service run by sociopath and creeps!
DeleteTotally I had the glass ceiling while idiots reign across everything. More than one way to skin a rabbit tho .
DeleteWhere exactly are the £700 million and 2,000 probation officers we keep hearing about,tucked away with the unicorns? If the government is serious, surely fair pay has to be the starting point.
ReplyDeleteLast week I moved around a few offices . No big deal I quietly pass through places use a terminal and leave. Despite this wandering use of various offices I have never seen a full office an a Friday. It seems to me at this moment that most staff work a four day week and at least hours in a day as possible so more pay for what exactly. I would argue more pay attached to productivity and managed keystroke monitoring. This is the way forwards if you really think pay is the issue.
DeleteWhatever is left over from tagging everyone is likely to be spent on abacus!
Deletehttps://insidetime.org/newsround/how-long-does-it-take-to-count-seven-prisoners/
How long does it take to count seven prisoners?
DeleteIt’s a common complaint of prisoners that officers come up with inaccurate headcounts, leading to everyone being locked in their cells while the count is done again.
But one jail has set a new low – when staff tasked with counting seven prisoners came up with the incorrect total of four, and spent the next two hours trying to get it right.
The incident occurred earlier this year at Downview women’s prison, and is revealed in the annual report of the prison’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), published last week.
In a list of occasions where staff failed to get basics procedures right, the IMB points to “a roll reconciliation in January 2025, where staff had given a roll of four prisoners – the correct roll was seven prisoners. A standfast roll took two hours, with three separate counts, to process the correct number.”
Among 17 examples of basic failures at Downview listed in the IMB report, others include:
basic operational information being incorrect or routinely not distributed;
health and safety guidance not followed;
welfare checks not carried out;
incorrect timing records provided by staff for an emergency visit by the Fire Service;
limited access to clean bedding, with not enough sets available;
prisoners being unlocked incorrectly;
a lack of available forms as required by prisoners on wings;
first aid kits being incomplete;
closed visits facility not in working order for visits;
prisoners being routinely brought late to video social visits, resulting in reduced visit time;
parcels for prisoners going missing after they were sent in by family or friends;
failure to adequately stock the prison shop.
In one case described by the IMB, a prisoner had to wait for two months to have a telephone number added to her PIN account so that she could call it. In another case, a woman described as “volatile” was working in hairdressing with access to sharp implements – but when the IMB asked to see the required risk assessment form, it was found to be missing.
Another example was described by the IMB as “a member of security staff forgetting to report suspected serious criminal activity in the prison to the police (which we were told was reported some months later, but we have not been provided with evidence of that)”.
The IMB commented in the report, which covers the 12 months from May 2024 to April 2025: “One of the prison’s five key priorities for 2024-2025 was cited as to ‘develop a more positive culture’. Despite positive staffing numbers throughout the reporting period, we often saw basic operational processes not being followed by staff, many of which impacted on outcomes for prisoners.”
Following a death in custody at Downview, according to the IMB, an entire staff training session focused on a basic aspect of the prison officer’s role – “how staff should unlock prisoners in the mornings with the use of a greeting and an emphasis on checks that the prisoners were still alive”.
To anon 10:47 with regards to you not being happy not to see a full office on a Friday, so what? Maybe it suggest efficient use of time and other staff knowing how to get work done at home instead of wandering around trying to catch the eye of management so they think youre useful. Or you could argue that if the Government's own (hidden) research states we need at least another 10000 officers to do the job, then the officers currently managing the Pops are the most productive part of the civil service as we are doing the work of 2.4 Officers without the actual pay! I compress my hours into 4 days, if that hadnt been allowed I'd have left, having 3 days off is the only thing keeping me sane.
DeleteSwitch a couple of cells on what I can see is not just nuance. If I triggered some time checks on attendance lunch coffee and chat breaks so called professional inquiries I would see a full office shortly after. You naivety to not appreciate time sheets reawakened and subsequently key stroke monitoring software tied to the phone and browsers will illustrate staff are not at desks long enough. Not doing the recording in timely ways roll backs whatever. Light an no touch attendance Fridays should be restricted on a time concession only and I know productivity and better casework will follow. Look ahead the tools are there to catch up with slackers and that's going to be busy sorting out improvement plans . The one key thread will be to do the alloted contractual hours doing the job. The second will be no disciplinary action at this time for inaccurate time recording. Good luck with your position it is what's unfair to all other staff.
DeleteFor Probations sake I hope they don't let you write Court reports, I developed a headache just trying to read the first few lines of your gibberish...
DeleteI think the Tagging company have just awarded themselves 700 million in bonuses and the 2000 new Probation officer were immediately moved to SPO grade to help monitor ISP and Part B targets...
ReplyDeleteA separate topic but why aren’t probation officers paid the same as social workers? An experienced “senior” social worker/practitioner is around £50k and experience is reflected in pay more so. They still hold cases. NOTHING has been done to incentivise experienced staff to stay. It’s so important to have proper experience on the frontline so that all these “new trainees” have a wealth of experience to actually learn from. In my area some offices are largely full of staff with under 5 years experience. That is nothing when you consider how complex our work is and how long it takes to get a truly grounded understanding of how everything works.
ReplyDeleteSome are jumping into srniormanagement after 2 and 3 years, then into operations roles and Heads of Courts after only being a manager for the same amount if time. All because they have the right accent and are a Yes person. You don't know Jack s*** in the short space of time. The while service is a joke full of sociopathic leaders driving everyone else into the gutter!
DeleteWhy do you think they want experienced staff to stay. The signs point in the opposite direction.
DeleteI’m just going to cut across this conversation, and I do love how this blog is a conversation:
ReplyDeleteProbation is a traumatised profession. The trauma is huge: organisational, personal. There can be little recovery while a death by a thousand cuts continues to be inflicted. To wit, A New Choreography, TR, HMPPS and now the (largely) disgraceful Sentencing Bill. Why the persistent mood on this blog is of searing anger, and nihilism.
It seems like everything and everyone is hell bent on erasing the identity, the contribution, the social role, the profession of Probation as it was founded
I was struck by a comment by an inspector, it might have even been The Inspector of probation, on some seminar or other, that he was made suddenly aware of the real impact of TR on staff by the literally visceral reaction of individual probation staff when it was mentioned.
Its so hard, so dam hard, to envisage a way out of this pain and social cost.
Ranting at the dying of the light is no solution, or even healthy if momentarily cathartic. Regrouping might be a thing. Your previous blog post sparked some vitriolic comments about the Probation Institute. The next posted a statement by its President extolling just what we would want the conversation about Probation practice to be about. The PI response to the Sentencing Bill was absolutely on point.
So if regrouping in the trenches requires a cup of tea and a reappraisal of where our best bets, and best comrades are, I’d suggest the PI is shaping up. Napo is our Union. Unison is there. Howard League is definitely onside. There are others. Look for the common purpose, not the deficiences or differences.
Would anyone care to share other groups and organisations that are aligned?
This “cup of tea and common purpose” line is exactly the problem. Napo, Unison, the PI and others haven’t brought much to the table. The only real common ground between them is failure, a decade of failing to stop probation being reformed to death. They couldn’t stop TR, they haven’t stopped the current crisis, and they’ve left frontline staff exposed to appalling pay, unbearable workloads and a service on its knees.
DeleteProbation’s common ground is not cosy chats or vague talk of comradeship, it’s the brutal reality that the profession has been systematically dismantled and ignored. Suggesting the answer is to “regroup in the trenches” with the same organisations that have consistently failed is just recycling weakness.
Calls for “unity” are nothing more than a fig leaf to hide impotence. If these bodies had delivered, probation wouldn’t be in this state. Pretending otherwise just papers over the cracks while the whole structure collapses.
They cannot even be bothered to make a formal pay offer, nevermind give us the pay uplift we deserve for the work we do. The service died a long time ago and is being given the "Weekend at Bernie's" treatment.
ReplyDelete