Guest Blog 107

Probation: An Extension of the Prison?

Against the backdrop of the recent attacks on Probation Officers in Oxford and Preston, we expected credible and meaningful safety measures to finally be put in place, like visible security personnel in every probation office, the kind used by virtually every other public-facing organisation. Instead we’re told:

“Probation officers will be given self-defence training, bleed kits, body-worn cameras, knife arches and metal-detecting wands.” 

If HMPPS applied the same principles to itself that it routinely applies in Serious Further Offence investigations, security measures would have been implemented across England and Wales the moment the Preston incident occurred. Instead, the consequences of systemic inaction and leadership failure are being handed back to us to manage. We are already responsible for supervising, rehabilitating and supporting people with nowhere near enough resources; now we are apparently expected to search, scan and physically protect ourselves as well. Probation is being dragged in two fundamentally incompatible directions at the same time.

Let’s not pretend otherwise: this service has been reshaped into a top-down bureaucracy obsessed with enforcement, metrics, referrals and compliance. That is the inevitable product of an increasingly authoritarian leadership culture within HMPPS, one reinforced by a workforce that lacks diversity in age, race, gender, thought, and credible professional experience. This is hardly surprising when probation remains a chronically underfunded and underpaid profession, if we can still call it a profession at all.

But the latest expectation, that probation practitioners will function as security guards or de facto prison officers, is a profound and dangerous misstep. Yes, some staff thrive in the current enforcement-heavy culture because it aligns with their preferred approach. But suggesting this represents the whole profession is fiction. Many probation officers did not join to search, scan or restrain people. They did not sign up to be enforcers, monitors or “risk managers” in the narrowest sense. They entered this work to help, support, and guide, and many are still offering thoughtful, trauma-informed, principled support every single day. That reality simply doesn’t fit the image being imposed from HMPPS, endorsed by the Chief Probation Officer, the Justice Minister, & Co.

We also need honesty about the wider context of poverty, violence, drug markets, knife crime, housing insecurity, racial divisions and acute mental health crises, which now permeate every corner of the UK. Probation offices are not insulated from this landscape, nor should we pretend that turning practitioners into quasi-security staff has anything to do with addressing it. The reality is simpler: the country is in crisis, the justice system is fractured, and probation is being forced to absorb the fallout with inadequate staffing, unmanageable workloads, poor leadership, and no professional security support.

It is devastating to imagine that the colleagues attacked in Oxford and Preston were almost certainly offering support at the very moment they were harmed. Every serious threat I have faced in this job has emerged during attempts to help, not confront. No knife arch or body-worn camera would have prevented those moments. Many of the people we supervise are in crisis, traumatised, or navigating health, justice and community services, that have already failed them. When people are imprisoned without meaningful rehabilitation or support, or pushed through courts without regard to their needs or humanity, the outcomes are predictable. The probation officer becomes the one who absorbs the consequences.

To be absolutely clear: nothing justifies the attacks on probation practitioners, but the government’s response is the wrong one. Probation offices need actual security: properly trained personnel, clear protocols and modern safety systems. That is not controversial, it is common sense. We also need access to functioning support services: mental health care, housing pathways, addiction treatment, crisis provision, employment support. Without these, probation becomes the default service for everything the rest of the system is unable, or unwilling, to deal with. Ironically, I recently read this perspective in a quietly published 2025 MAPPA report outlining the “Voice of the Practitioner” 

Every day, people enter probation offices seeking help we do not have the means to offer, others expecting decisions that may be devastating. Probation offices and probation practioners are not perfect, but transforming them into an extension of the prison, with metal detectors and practitioners trained to physically intervene, is dangerous and completely out of step with “what works”. There is no shortage of insight, research and professional expertise pointing toward a better model. Much of it has been shared, published and lived. Much of it has been ignored.

Despite the dire findings of the HM Inspectorate of Probation over the past decade, there is evidence of probation working as it should, although I’d rarely describe it as “magic”: This from the Probation Institute. But this is not universal. It is clear that the public and political narrative about probation urgently needs to change. This from Revolving Doors charity.

And we have been repeatedly told that our once world-renowned probation service is now an international “outlier”, and it’s identity drastically needs to be shaped and changed. 'Outlier England' published in July on this blog. 

Fixing this is not complicated. We could upgrade probation qualifications to the standard of social work tomorrow, restore professional status, and pay salaries that reflect the responsibility of the role as referenced by 'Important Read - Part Four' of an article by Prof Rob Canton re-published on this blog. 

We could even restore the ethos of probation’s past, because that worked too and we could actually listen to those with lived experience; there are credible voices who know what support, supervision and reform look like when they work. 

Responsibility for fixing this crisis lies squarely with senior probation leadership, HMPPS and the Justice Minister. For starters, they could easily divert a chunk of that £700 million hoarded for tagging and AI that won’t improve frontline outcomes. Secondly, our unions should be collectively demanding urgent safety measures, the immediate separation from HMPPS, and not quietly accepting the further conversion of probation into a poorly paid, deprofessionalised service that is being dragged into being a low-status enforcement arm of the justice system dressed up as “public protection” and “risk management”.

As we continue to process the shocking attacks in Oxford and Preston, we have to accept they may not be the last. We have waited years for meaningful action to keep staff safe and to recognise the real value of our work. What we are being offered is superficial, performative and dangerously misguided. Some will relish the opportunity to wield search wands; others will walk away. The rest of us will carry on doing what we always do: absorbing the consequences of decisions made far above us, quietly working, quietly worrying, quietly waiting… for safety, for change, for pay, for leadership, for a way out… just waiting.

Probation Officer