Lord Ramsbotham said it best: “people are not things.” Yet the system keeps treating not only those on probation, but probation practitioners themselves, as if interchangeable parts in a failing machine, expected to absorb endless pressure with no regard for the human cost.
Probation cannot function when those doing the work are stretched, silenced, and sidelined. It cannot deliver safety or rehabilitation when leadership treats frontline expertise as optional noise. And it certainly cannot claim to value people while burning out the very professionals holding the system together.
We know what probation should be, we’ve said it enough times. They don’t. Our probation leaders refuse to step away from the narrow, risk-management, “public protection above all else”, “do what we say” mantra because it keeps their political masters satisfied.
Napo, Unison, the Probation Institute, the Probation Service, none of them truly hear us, and none of them amplify our voices or our calls for change. These issues have been raised repeatedly. So the real question isn’t “Do they know?” They do know. The question is: When will they finally act instead of pretending not to hear us?
********
Reading this, I felt the weight of every line — and also a need to widen the frame. Because the cultural shift you describe hasn’t just hollowed out frontline practice; it has reshaped the entire organisation, managers included. The expectation that instructions will be followed without dissent — a blend of prison-service command culture and civil-service compliance — has seeped into every layer. And once that takes root, genuine dialogue becomes almost impossible.
I don’t believe most senior leaders are uncaring or cynical. Many of them entered probation with the same values we did. I think they genuinely feel they are doing the best they can within the constraints they’re given. The trouble is they no longer see a viable path to steer a different course. Whether it’s fear of repercussions, lack of psychological safety, misplaced loyalty to authority above them, or simply exhaustion of their own — they feel as trapped as we do, just in a different room of the same burning building.
But that doesn’t make the consequences any less damaging. When leadership absorbs the culture of obedience rather than advocacy, the service loses its voice. When dissent becomes career-limiting, purpose becomes optional. And when leaders feel unable to challenge the direction of travel, the rest of us are left absorbing the fallout of decisions nobody truly believes in.
That is how a service with a soul becomes a service with a script.
You’re right: something fundamental has to change. But that change won’t happen through equipment, slogans or ever-tighter instructions. It will only happen when leaders — at every level — rediscover the courage to disagree, to push back, to name what is happening instead of managing around it. Probation didn’t decline because its values were wrong; it declined because its values were slowly silenced.
And until those who still hold those values — whether on the frontline or in management — can speak together rather than in parallel, the service will continue to drift, defended but not directed.
We don’t need heroes. We need honesty. We need leadership that listens, and leadership that dares. And we need a culture where protecting the ethos of probation is seen not as dissent, but as the most loyal act of all.
Reading this, I felt the weight of every line — and also a need to widen the frame. Because the cultural shift you describe hasn’t just hollowed out frontline practice; it has reshaped the entire organisation, managers included. The expectation that instructions will be followed without dissent — a blend of prison-service command culture and civil-service compliance — has seeped into every layer. And once that takes root, genuine dialogue becomes almost impossible.
I don’t believe most senior leaders are uncaring or cynical. Many of them entered probation with the same values we did. I think they genuinely feel they are doing the best they can within the constraints they’re given. The trouble is they no longer see a viable path to steer a different course. Whether it’s fear of repercussions, lack of psychological safety, misplaced loyalty to authority above them, or simply exhaustion of their own — they feel as trapped as we do, just in a different room of the same burning building.
But that doesn’t make the consequences any less damaging. When leadership absorbs the culture of obedience rather than advocacy, the service loses its voice. When dissent becomes career-limiting, purpose becomes optional. And when leaders feel unable to challenge the direction of travel, the rest of us are left absorbing the fallout of decisions nobody truly believes in.
That is how a service with a soul becomes a service with a script.
You’re right: something fundamental has to change. But that change won’t happen through equipment, slogans or ever-tighter instructions. It will only happen when leaders — at every level — rediscover the courage to disagree, to push back, to name what is happening instead of managing around it. Probation didn’t decline because its values were wrong; it declined because its values were slowly silenced.
And until those who still hold those values — whether on the frontline or in management — can speak together rather than in parallel, the service will continue to drift, defended but not directed.
We don’t need heroes. We need honesty. We need leadership that listens, and leadership that dares. And we need a culture where protecting the ethos of probation is seen not as dissent, but as the most loyal act of all.
*******
I agree. As a probation officer I am used to thinking in terms of culpability and the need for people to accept responsibility for their actions (or lack of action) but I don’t find that blame gets us very far. A lot of the comments on this blog tend to want to focus on blame. Whether that’s managers, unions, HQ, the Government or whatever. But pointing fingers won’t pull probation out of the nosedive it’s in. The real issue isn’t really who’s to blame - it’s that probation culture has drifted so far from rehabilitation that everyone feels boxed in, just in different corners.
In my experience most leaders didn’t come into this work to parrot a script. They mostly came with the same hope for a constructive, fair, humane and effective service. But a system built on compliance, fear and crisis-management squeezes the voice out of all of us. And while blame might feel satisfying, it only widens the cracks at the very moment the prison population is exploding, and community supervision is buckling under the strain.
We need something bigger than “who’s at fault.” We need a shared, evidence-led commitment to rehabilitation as the centre of gravity. Because sidelining rehabilitation while doubling down on control in the community isn’t a strategy — it’s a panic reaction. You can’t stabilise a collapsing system by tightening the screws on the only part designed to reduce harm.
Probation must stand for something clearer and braver: that change is possible, and public safety is built on enabling it. That requires honesty up and down the organisation, not silence. It requires leaders who listen and staff who feel safe to speak. It requires consensus, not camps.
I agree. As a probation officer I am used to thinking in terms of culpability and the need for people to accept responsibility for their actions (or lack of action) but I don’t find that blame gets us very far. A lot of the comments on this blog tend to want to focus on blame. Whether that’s managers, unions, HQ, the Government or whatever. But pointing fingers won’t pull probation out of the nosedive it’s in. The real issue isn’t really who’s to blame - it’s that probation culture has drifted so far from rehabilitation that everyone feels boxed in, just in different corners.
In my experience most leaders didn’t come into this work to parrot a script. They mostly came with the same hope for a constructive, fair, humane and effective service. But a system built on compliance, fear and crisis-management squeezes the voice out of all of us. And while blame might feel satisfying, it only widens the cracks at the very moment the prison population is exploding, and community supervision is buckling under the strain.
We need something bigger than “who’s at fault.” We need a shared, evidence-led commitment to rehabilitation as the centre of gravity. Because sidelining rehabilitation while doubling down on control in the community isn’t a strategy — it’s a panic reaction. You can’t stabilise a collapsing system by tightening the screws on the only part designed to reduce harm.
Probation must stand for something clearer and braver: that change is possible, and public safety is built on enabling it. That requires honesty up and down the organisation, not silence. It requires leaders who listen and staff who feel safe to speak. It requires consensus, not camps.
*******
The Wall
So, Chris is 45 years old, on ~£65k a year with civil-service terms & conditions, a decent pension lined up & looking to move up a tier. S/he joined probation in the mid-2000's, was fast-tracked into temp SPO when their manager popped his clogs, appointed SPO & kept moving up during the TR kerfuffle. S/he has therefore enabled TR as directed, expedited all hmpps recent commands & is regarded as suitable material for a significant promotion. S/he has suspended all past belief in the historical ethos to achieve personal career goals.
Its been a rough old journey for the past couple of decades, a lot has passed under the bridge, some relationships have suffered/ended & there are many commitments to fulfill, not least being the mortgage & the car loan & the bills.
How does s/he change their trajectory? They risk losing their career, their pension, any future references... but hey, they might discover a scintilla of loyalty. To what? To who?
*THIS* is but one example (a hybrid of several people I know) of the obstructions that have to be overcome; layers of people who are embedded in the current structure, who are wedded to the current culture, who burned their boats years back & now feel they have no means of escape beyond completing their pre-ordained journey to retirement via the HMPPS script.
As they rose through the ranks they have been followed & underpinned by the new recruits, all schooled in the new reality, the way of hmpps.
The architects of the current structure have been planning & preparing the ground for this over decades; from 1980 onwards, if not before. Its been a political triumph to have finally unravelled those woolly jumpers, debagged those grubby do-gooders; to have grasped the probation nettle, uprooted it & burned it on the bonfire of inanities.
How proud they are that they've finally introduced a sense of decency & decorum, ambition & compliance; law & order, if you please.
A very experienced & highly regarded colleague from many moons past told me she had attended her university interview for social work-based training in a bit of a blur. Some kind of delay meant she had landed from her holidays shortly before the interview, so drove straight there in her jolly-holibobs kit (and explained this to the panel). She said there was a grim-faced "man from the ministry" in a very severe dark suit, starched shirt, mirror-shiny shoes sitting next the course tutor. At the end of what she felt was a good interview the man in the suit said words to the effect of "Thank you but if you can't be bothered to make the effort, we don't want your sort on this course. Goodbye."
She *was* offered a place, qualified with flying colours & went on to enjoy a highly regarded career. (I expect Martin is still lurking around in Petty France in a suit pocketing a handsome civil service salary).
The Wall
So, Chris is 45 years old, on ~£65k a year with civil-service terms & conditions, a decent pension lined up & looking to move up a tier. S/he joined probation in the mid-2000's, was fast-tracked into temp SPO when their manager popped his clogs, appointed SPO & kept moving up during the TR kerfuffle. S/he has therefore enabled TR as directed, expedited all hmpps recent commands & is regarded as suitable material for a significant promotion. S/he has suspended all past belief in the historical ethos to achieve personal career goals.
Its been a rough old journey for the past couple of decades, a lot has passed under the bridge, some relationships have suffered/ended & there are many commitments to fulfill, not least being the mortgage & the car loan & the bills.
How does s/he change their trajectory? They risk losing their career, their pension, any future references... but hey, they might discover a scintilla of loyalty. To what? To who?
*THIS* is but one example (a hybrid of several people I know) of the obstructions that have to be overcome; layers of people who are embedded in the current structure, who are wedded to the current culture, who burned their boats years back & now feel they have no means of escape beyond completing their pre-ordained journey to retirement via the HMPPS script.
As they rose through the ranks they have been followed & underpinned by the new recruits, all schooled in the new reality, the way of hmpps.
The architects of the current structure have been planning & preparing the ground for this over decades; from 1980 onwards, if not before. Its been a political triumph to have finally unravelled those woolly jumpers, debagged those grubby do-gooders; to have grasped the probation nettle, uprooted it & burned it on the bonfire of inanities.
How proud they are that they've finally introduced a sense of decency & decorum, ambition & compliance; law & order, if you please.
A very experienced & highly regarded colleague from many moons past told me she had attended her university interview for social work-based training in a bit of a blur. Some kind of delay meant she had landed from her holidays shortly before the interview, so drove straight there in her jolly-holibobs kit (and explained this to the panel). She said there was a grim-faced "man from the ministry" in a very severe dark suit, starched shirt, mirror-shiny shoes sitting next the course tutor. At the end of what she felt was a good interview the man in the suit said words to the effect of "Thank you but if you can't be bothered to make the effort, we don't want your sort on this course. Goodbye."
She *was* offered a place, qualified with flying colours & went on to enjoy a highly regarded career. (I expect Martin is still lurking around in Petty France in a suit pocketing a handsome civil service salary).
Senior Management need to stop dressing this up as strain, transition or reform. Probation is in visible systemic failure, and the continued silence from those with the power to intervene now amounts to state negligence.
ReplyDeleteThis is not a blanket attack on all managers. Many are trapped in the same machinery of impossible demands, reputational risk management and political cowardice. But that reality does not excuse the fact that harm is being absorbed at the bottom while truth is filtered out before it ever reaches the top.
We now have a workforce showing every recognised marker of institutional collapse: widespread moral injury, extreme sickness absence, and accelerating loss of experienced staff. That is not a resilience issue. That is a system issuing a distress signal, and it is being deliberately ignored.
At the same time, practitioners are being loaded with rising legal exposure, personal risk and expanding security functions such as searches, enforcement and control, without corresponding pay, status, authority or protection. This is not professional development. It is unmanaged role expansion with catastrophic consequences.
The contradiction at the heart of probation is now openly acknowledged while being actively sustained. Rehabilitation is still invoked in language, but containment, optics and political defensibility dominate in practice. That tension is being paid for daily by the workforce and by those under supervision.
And above all of this sits a political class that simply rotates through office while doing nothing to stabilise probation, nothing to rebuild professional sustainability, and nothing to confront the consequences of keeping it permanently tethered to a failing prison system. When Justice Secretaries can preside over this level of deterioration without consequence, the dysfunction is no longer individual. It is structural.
Unions, too, must be challenged here. Representation that documents harm without forcing structural change becomes part of the containment strategy rather than a barrier to it.
When only practitioners are making noise, one conclusion becomes unavoidable: the human cost is being treated as administratively acceptable.
You cannot hollow out a workforce through sickness, burnout and attrition, load it with coercive power, and still pretend public protection is being strengthened.
This is not reform. This is managed collapse.
Probation provides a very damaging environment for those employed in the service. However, for many of those subjected to supervision it's just as painful and damaging. In many cases supervision become counter productive.
DeleteI refer particularly to the 12mth and under cohort that were ensnared by TR. There is really nothing probation can do for this group, and since TR they have only found themselves on the merry go round of perpetual release and recall. For this group post sentence supervision is akin to a community based IPP sentence. They represent a significant proportion of the 3000 recalls every month, swelling the prison population, and creating perpetual churn for both prisons and probation, only to be released again a few weeks later, ofen homeless, but certainly to the same circumstances, with the added complexities have having to jump through the same hoops as they've previously tackled with regard to registering for housing, benefit claims etc, etc.
The reality is it's costing a lot of money and resource to create unnecessary problems. The 12mth and under group need to be removed from automatic post sentence supervision. Its the last part of TR that hasn't been reversed.
I'm in total agreement with annon 08:58, but I do wonder if its only 'practitioners making noise' now? There has been two very serious assaults on staff with weapons very recently, and it's a sobering and very serious and concerning thought, but perhaps those being supervised are starting to make noise too?
A view fom across the table found in Inside Time.
https://insidetime.org/comment/outside-voices-this-system-is-broken/
'Getafix
You’re absolutely right about the TR cohort. It became a recall factory and a community-based IPP in all but name, and everyone in power knew it. Yes, automatic post-sentence supervision is now being rolled back, but only after years of human churn, wasted millions and swelling prison numbers. And you’re also right that the noise is no longer only coming from practitioners. When people on probation start making it too, through crisis, resistance or violence, that is the system speaking through those it is failing.
DeleteWhat replaces post-sentence supervision is not less control. It is more community supervision, more licence conditions, more tagging and more enforcement under a different badge. If probation continues to operate as the soft arm of the prison service, these reforms will not ease caseload pressure, they will not restore morale, and they will not reduce harm for the people trapped inside the system.
Reset and Impact sit squarely inside this problem. They are being sold as intelligent prioritisation, but what they really represent is the formal withdrawal of meaningful supervision in response to workforce collapse. For staff, they become another performance demand layered onto exhaustion and moral injury. For people on probation, they mean being left under legal control with minimal support, then recalled when predictably things unravel. That is not rehabilitation. It is managed risk disposal.
Rolling back one failed mechanism while entrenching surveillance, enforcement and withdrawal of support simply redistributes the same damage across a wider population and calls it reform.
All that changes now is the branding of the machinery that breaks both staff and those supervised.
Outside Voices: This system is broken
DeleteThe National Probation Service is the government department responsible for ‘managing offenders’ in custody and the community, with an annual budget of £1.5 billion.
When I say ‘managing’ I use this term loosely, as effective management models are collaborative and subject to independent review. What I should say is, the government department responsible for dictating to offenders in custody and the community, an organisation which self-polices and often blames someone else when things go wrong. (Great model for prisoners, right?)
In over a decade of engagement with the Probation Service, I have seen the good, the bad, and the institutionally inept. There are, of course, good people within probation working hard in a broken system to make a difference. Here comes the ‘but’: in my experience, they are not the majority. I’ve had at least 14 probation officers, and I can honestly say that only three were genuinely there to make a difference. The rest were concerned with doing the bare minimum, with a pure indifference to the consequences of their actions. Hardly a surprise, when the system is so broken it will take anyone into its employ and call them a professional.
I’ve seen the 12 editions of my copy-and-pasted OASys reports produce over-inflated risk scores, affecting my chances of recategorisation, sentence progression, and parole, and resulting in excessively restrictive licence conditions. Probation officers change every year or two, so offenders have little consistency, and are constantly having to re-explain their lives. How is a professional and rehabilitative relationship supposed to be fostered and maintained under such circumstances?
As if to evidence my point, only last month, two weeks prior to my (cancelled) parole hearing, my most recent community offender manager (COM) told me “I think I’ve used out-of-date information and over-inflated your risk.” This same COM put in writing in my parole dossier that she wanted my (non-operational, civilian) prison offender manager (POM) to carry out “direct surveillance” on who I associate with, and “search my cell and my mail”, while accusing me of having “organised crime gang” links – all without any evidence to justify this. This resulted in my POM contacting my COM to say that what had been requested would be unlawful, and the prison would not do it.
This is the reality faced by many offenders in a broken system that is hidden from the public – underfunded, under-resourced, and understaffed. It helps no-one and is dangerous. It is not a mere topic of debate – it is our lives, our futures, our day-to-day. Probation needs investment, transparency, and collaboration – not lack of accountability, neglect, and political point-scoring.
V Lynch the Auditor is the pen name of a serving prisoner
What is described here is exactly what system collapse looks like on the ground: churn, inflated risk, copy-paste OASys, unlawful requests, and life-changing decisions being taken on rotten data. There is no denying that poor practice and indifference exist, but what this testimony exposes is not just individual failure. It is institutional design failure. High turnover, defensive risk culture, political pressure and chronic understaffing manufacture the very behaviour described here.
DeleteThis is also why Reset, Impact and the wider sentencing reforms being sold as “supporting staff to manage caseloads” are, frankly, a joke. They do not reduce demand. They redistribute risk. For staff, that means legal responsibility without the time or relational control to manage it safely. For people on probation, it means shrinking support under expanding surveillance and an ever-present threat of recall. That is not workload management. It is liability management.
For those under supervision, this translates into control without consistency, restriction without stability, and liberty shaped by administrative fear rather than truth. For staff, it deepens moral injury, professional erosion and burnout. Both are being harmed by the same structural failures.
This is not an outlier account. It is a warning about what this system now produces as standard.
I said this before so here it is again there is no professional work. There is no delivery of our social values or supporting people through crisis it's all signed post to nothing. The intention to turn us into monitoring is clearly described above. If we do not heed this position now and deal with napos lack of intelligence by investigation and redirection we are lost. .
DeleteGuess what? No-one who has any influence or access to the levers that need to be pulled gives a shit about probation.
ReplyDeleteThose with a voice that counts are against the probation ethos-that-was, are all for prisons, for control, for risk management , protection of the public & have (vested interest) enthusiasm for tech-based solutions.
I find it beyond belief that 20,000 people i.e. the probation workforce, are regarded as nothing more than compliant cogs in the machine that processes the 250,000 people ordered to attend probation appointments.
This social engineering model requires cogs that turn effortlessly & within small tolerances. Cogs out of tolerance, that do not keep the machine running smoothly must be discarded and replaced, whether they're misshapen or broken or worn out.
Equally the end product should ideally be consistent.
Having introduced increasingly strict quality control systems for the machine itself, hmpps must now focus on improving the end product, ensuring far fewer below par products are released into the public arena.
One unique selling point that many govts have used is protecting the public, most easily achieved by ensuring the faulty products don't enter the public arena, i.e. quarantine. The quickest solution is to build more prisons & warehouse those faulty goods before putting them back into the processing machine.
The existing investment (financially & politically) in this measure-every-shit QC mechanistic approach has been so vast that unravelling it & returning to the Luddite cottage-industry is impossible. The vested interests mean many people with "skin in the game" are utterly opposed to change.
Probation has been reduced from artisanal to anal.
Yet another example of the level of contempt in which the little people, the worker ants, the frontline grunts are held... while the callous abusers in the chumocracy continue their rise to stardom:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dy73zp7qno
Former Warrant Officer Michael Webber, 43, was jailed for six months after he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting Gunner Jaysley Beck... who was subsequently found hanged at Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire in 2021.
Complaints were made to The Attorney General's office asking for a review under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme, but this has now been rejected.
Solicitor General Ellie Reeves [yep, sister of chancellor rachel] said: "After careful consideration, I concluded this case could not be properly referred to the Court of Appeal."
"[webber] A man in a position of authority targeted a young woman half his age, a teenager, someone who trusted the system she served."
Webber, who wrote a letter of apology to Gunner Beck, was later promoted.
"It sends a devastating message to every young woman serving today that their lives and safety are worth less than a man's career"
I keep hearing despair from my colleagues. They don't think anyone who can make things better is either listening or bothered. It's like shouting in the wind they say. But I think the comments here are worse than that. They're actually reporting a collapse.
ReplyDeleteA workforce that’s carried the service through every crisis is now breaking. HMIP says the system is failing, staff are being injured, and leadership looks out of touch. Security gadgets won’t fix a service that’s haemorrhaging experience and hope. If ministers don’t rebuild probation :- retaining experience, real support for staff and real autonomy, then more violence, more burnout and more avoidable tragedies are inevitable. This is the warning — ignore it at your own risk.
I'm not ignoring you the level of debate has been tame on here as some do not seem willing to really let go of the reigns. It is worse and I tone it down a lot have to try constant reminder than belligerence. A while back when I had something more about myself I pursued most issues. In those days it was tolerated. Then as I paired down my details I took up particular issues. And I learnt a lot but when I scaled into the corruptions of buying on service activity it ricocheted around as they scurried. Long before that though when discouraged inquiry they would pull an aside chat saying it's a dead issue leave it we are blowing out anyway. The problem is they always say that so I carried on anyway collecting trophy's and sorting out the continued decline. It's always later than you think so heed that post above. Get your stupid incompetent union to do it's job.
DeleteEverone wants someone else to fix the problem. Its someone else's duty, responsibility for this shit but it isnt mine. I.'m at the coalface and I'm suffering.
ReplyDeleteYou keep on wearing it, keep on accepting if., then frankly you deserve what you have.
If you don't resist, you're complicit
Yes yes yes yes 1735 spot on same message to those who have been royally paid for years Napo where in the hell is your spine. Get out of your hiding place start writing some press get the attack mounted and take some action against moj health and safety negligence on all fronts.
Delete"Napo where in the hell is your spine?"
DeleteI asked the omniscient ai thingy about the probation service/napo spine, and here's the answer:
"The traditional pay spine system in the UK Probation Service has not been entirely removed, but rather fundamentally reformed and simplified to a system of shorter pay bands and competency-based progression"
So perhaps we can deduce that napo's spine hasn't been *entirely* removed, just re-formed & simplified?
So I asked the thingy about simplified spines:
"A simplified spine generally refers to a case involving a relatively common or straightforward issue that can often be addressed with less invasive, single-level procedures"
And I thought hey!, that sounds about right viz. the level of activity performed by napo.
If you stand for it, then you deserve what you get.
DeleteIt's as simple as that.
Indeed allmthose reading this should be writing to branch chairs with a motion to have the general secretary called to account for zero proper action on the current crisis. In the old days McKnight would have had a campaign out the doors of parliament long ago and immidiatly at that stabbing. Let alone two. Mr Lawrence is showing his incompetence for the in his complicit duplicitous silence. Napo do the job we are paying to do or Lawrence please get lost so we can get a real leader in who will fight the causes than be hanging around hoping for an mbe . Go go quick.
DeleteOff topic but important.
ReplyDeletehttps://news.devon-cornwall.police.uk/news-article/de91a86e-ead5-f011-9d8a-6045bdd24049
The idea that probation is collapsing because frontline staff “don’t resist enough” is a comforting fiction. It lets the people with real power off the hook. This system is not failing because practitioners lack courage, it is failing because those with the authority to change direction have chosen, repeatedly, not to. The architecture crushes dissent, absorbs challenge and punishes anyone who dares to stick their head above the parapet. Calling that “complicity” is not analysis. It is victim-blaming dressed up as toughness.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, Napo’s inaction deserves anger. But the real question isn’t where the union’s spine went, it’s why a government department can preside over a decade of workforce collapse, moral injury, violence, burnout, recalls, unlawful practice and public-safety risk without being forced to answer for any of it. That isn’t a “spine” problem. That’s a power problem.
Meanwhile, Reset, Impact and the sentencing reforms are being sold as relief for staff, but they exist for one reason, which is to compensate for a government that has gutted the service to the point where it can no longer deliver its own mandate. They don’t reduce caseloads; they ration supervision. They don’t support people on probation; they strip away the little support that remains. They don’t help practitioners; they expose them.
So if we’re going to talk about who “deserves what they get,” let’s be honest. It isn’t the frontline workforce. It’s the political leadership and senior machinery that built, defended and doubled-down on a model that everyone can now see collapsing in real time.
If blame is going to land anywhere, it should land where the power sits and not on the people already carrying the consequences.
What comes to mind is a ship that’s been holed below the waterline by its own captains. The crew keep being told to bail harder, shout louder, show more spirit — as if the problem is their lack of effort rather than the gash the bridge keeps widening.
DeleteProbation isn’t sinking because practitioners won’t resist; it’s sinking because those steering the vessel have charted a course straight into the rocks and refuse to change direction. Reset, Impact, sentencing “reforms” — these aren’t lifeboats, they’re buckets handed to a drowning crew to make it look like action.
If responsibility is going to be pinned anywhere, let’s pin it where the rudder actually is. The people on deck aren’t the ones who broke the ship — they’re the ones still trying to keep it afloat.
Using the holed ship theme I thought I would have a go. It's not Simon Armitage but here it is:
ReplyDelete++++++++
The ship was once a steady thing,
oak-ribbed and salt-wise,
kept afloat by hands that knew
the weather and the tides.
But captains came with sharper pens
than sense or seafarer’s skill,
and carved new charts that led us on
to rocks they claimed were hills.
They told the crew to bail the flood,
to stand up, shout, obey—
as if the breach beneath our feet
was ours to keep at bay.
They called our fear “complacency,”
our warnings “lack of spine,”
while widening the wound they made
below the waterline.
Reset, Impact, “reform” songs
rang out across the deck—
fine words to mask the simple truth
that the hull was now a wreck.
Buckets passed as lifeboats,
and orders barked as hope,
each one a way to shift the blame
to those just trying to cope.
But still the crew stood vigil,
lanterns trembling in the spray,
patching planks with nothing but
their duty and their day.
For they were not the authors
of this slow, avoidable decline—
just the last souls still believing
they could keep the vessel fine.
If justice has an anchor,
let it drop where power sits;
let the reckoning reach the quarterdeck,
not those who bear its hits.
For ships don’t fall to silence
or to sailors’ lack of fight—
they founder when their leaders
sail them blind into the night.
Much better than the poet laureate!
DeleteShocking waste of money on a staff love in .
ReplyDeletehttps://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/civil-service-awards-2025-winners-announced
Don't see any winners at MoJ.
DeleteA Plan for a Probation Service Recovery
ReplyDeleteSo here’s my starter for ten. It's not perfect - but then I'm not paid to think:
1. Rebuild Purpose Before Performance
Probation has been pushed so far into metrics that the mission has blurred. The service needs a restated purpose — written with, not imposed on, frontline staff. A modern charter of practice. A commitment that professional judgement is not a nuisance but the core skill the public depends on. And a recognition that autonomy isn’t a luxury; it’s what keeps people safe.
2. Stabilise the Workforce
Nothing changes until caseloads change. That means enforceable caps, emergency relief teams, and a three-year recovery plan that focuses on retention, recruitment, protected training time and genuine psychological safety. If staff can’t speak up without fear, the system can’t learn.
3. End the Command-and-Control Reflex
The prison-service mindset has seeped deep: obey, don’t question, deliver the target at all costs. Flatten the hierarchy. Retrain leaders to coach rather than dictate. Protect whistleblowing. And start valuing managers who listen, not those who silence.
4. Stop Pretending Prison Expansion Is Progress
If building thousands of new cells is your headline achievement, you’ve admitted failure. Probation’s recovery depends on shifting investment away from incarceration and into community supports: women’s centres, young-adult interventions, housing partnerships, restorative options. More prison is not more safety — it’s more of the same mistakes.
5. Put Communities Back in the Frame
Recreate regional probation boards that involve courts, local authorities, voluntary organisations and people with lived experience. Give regions power to commission what their communities actually need, not what a template says they should want. Make probation visible again — not as a bureaucratic shadow, but as a neighbour, partner and problem-solver. I’m that desperate I’m even starting to think putting probation under the regional Mayors might be a good idea (accepting that some of them will likely be Reform).
6. Cut Bureaucracy Before It Cuts Us
Review every mandatory form, template and process. Scrap what doesn’t directly improve safety or rehabilitation. Fix the digital mess so staff aren’t duplicating work across systems. Free the time that has been swallowed by audits and command emails.
7. Put the Evidence Back in Charge
Create an independent evidence centre, insulated from political heat. Require proper research reviews before new policies land. Bring back research roles inside the service so staff can innovate and evaluate rather than firefight and hope.
8. Repair the Bond With the Courts
Courts need to see probation again — in person, not at the other end of a duty line. That means embedding staff in courtrooms, restoring time for proper pre-sentence reports, and rebuilding a shared sense of justice between judiciary and probation.
9. Real Accountability, Not Empty Praise
Inspections shouldn’t applaud leadership while delivery collapses. Create transparent oversight of senior leaders. Publish meaningful data on staffing, caseloads, reoffending and SFO learning. Stop blaming practitioners for structural failure.
10. Build a Long-Term Political Settlement
Probation cannot survive policy lurches driven by headlines. A cross-party Probation Futures Commission could secure a 10-year settlement — stable funding, evidenced direction, and annual parliamentary scrutiny. The public deserves a service built on safety, not soundbites.