First off I want to mention another BBC Radio 4 programme I was listening to last night, Radical with Amol Rajan and this episode: Jamie Oliver: Obesity and Debt are Killing Britain
Jamie Oliver thinks diet-related illness and growing levels of debt are killing the country he loves. In this frank and open conversation, he tells Amol why we need to go further to help people understand the nutritional value of the food they eat. And although his campaign for the sugar tax brought significant change, Jamie says there is still more to do on school meals, breakfast clubs and food packaging. But Jamie’s mission doesn’t stop at food. He wants children to be taught how to manage their money and he also sets out a case for reforming education so it better serves children with diverse ways of learning. Reflecting on his own dyslexia, he emphasises the importance of giving every child the support they need to thrive.Now, what's this got to do with Probation and our predicament I hear you ask? Well, firstly it's worth listening to because Jamie goes on to talk about how many children are neurodivergent and many end up in the criminal justice system. But imagine a similar programme featuring a knowlegable person who is able to outline a radical way of fixing just as big a problem that we have. I don't think the radical plan would take much effort to knock together, but I suppose finding the voice might be.
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Any plan has to deal with this:-
This from Russell Webster back at the end of October:-
Indeed, the MoJ also published “Transparency Data” on the number of people released under the Standard Determinate Sentences 40% (SDS40) early release scheme yesterday which revealed that almost 40,000 (38,042) people were released from prison early in the 9 month period between 10 September 2024 and 30 June 2025 – all of whom, of course, were required to be subject to probation supervision. The accompanying data tables still exclude the one key piece of data that everyone wants to know – how many of people released early with minimal support are recalled.
However, we do know (from the OMSq) that 11,041 people were recalled on licence in this last quarter – an increase of 13% on the same quarter last year. There usually is more than one reason for recalling an offender on licence. Of recalls in April-June 2025, about 74% involved non-compliance, 36% involved failure to keep in touch, 23% involved failure to reside, and less than one quarter (22%) involved a charge of further offending.
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This collapse was not an accident. It was the result of political decisions. The workforce is depleted because ministers refused to resource it. Moral injury is endemic because leadership rewarded defensibility over truth. Recall culture spiralled because political optics were valued above rehabilitation. Reset and Impact exist not because they support staff, but because the service became structurally unable to deliver its core duties.
A real recovery plan means rebuilding staffing, restoring autonomy and dismantling the surveillance-first culture that now treats people on probation as risks to be contained rather than humans to be supported. Nothing changes until those facts are admitted by the people who created them.
If ministers want to claim they are easing caseloads, then they must fund the workforce, reduce unnecessary licence conditions, stop offloading risk downward and stop treating probation like an extension of the prison estate. Anything else is denial dressed up as reform.
Removing PSS without rebuilding the foundations is not recovery. It is political damage control masquerading as progress.
Unless those with power stop protecting their reputations and start repairing the damage they created, probation will remain a collapsing structure that punishes the people inside it more than the people it claims to supervise.
For the love of God get rid of PSS.
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PSS is one necessary fix, but it is the lowest-hanging fruit in a garden that has been left to rot. Scrapping it does not amount to reform. It simply removes one failing mechanism in a system that is failing everywhere. If those in power want to talk about a probation recovery plan, they must first confront why the service needs recovery at all.This collapse was not an accident. It was the result of political decisions. The workforce is depleted because ministers refused to resource it. Moral injury is endemic because leadership rewarded defensibility over truth. Recall culture spiralled because political optics were valued above rehabilitation. Reset and Impact exist not because they support staff, but because the service became structurally unable to deliver its core duties.
A real recovery plan means rebuilding staffing, restoring autonomy and dismantling the surveillance-first culture that now treats people on probation as risks to be contained rather than humans to be supported. Nothing changes until those facts are admitted by the people who created them.
If ministers want to claim they are easing caseloads, then they must fund the workforce, reduce unnecessary licence conditions, stop offloading risk downward and stop treating probation like an extension of the prison estate. Anything else is denial dressed up as reform.
Removing PSS without rebuilding the foundations is not recovery. It is political damage control masquerading as progress.
Unless those with power stop protecting their reputations and start repairing the damage they created, probation will remain a collapsing structure that punishes the people inside it more than the people it claims to supervise.
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The service officially needs 3,150 more staff to deliver a “basic” standard, and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) itself underestimated the need by about 5,400 staff. Disgusting!!!******
Staff lose an average of 13.2 working days to illness annually (compared to a national average of 5.7), with nearly 60% of these absences due to mental ill health. Get the f**k out and leave. You don’t deserve this and you can do much better. I have applied for other jobs. Leaving soon as I can. It’s going g to get worse.******
You’re right that it’s going to get worse, because none of the pressures driving sickness, burnout and collapse are being fixed. The workforce is shrinking faster than it can be replaced, and whenever someone goes off sick their work just gets dumped on everyone else. No wonder so many are looking elsewhere now, myself included.And the sentencing reforms won’t ease anything. A presumption against short custodial sentences sounds sensible, but in reality it means more people supervised in the community by a service that cannot safely manage the caseload it already holds. Organisations responding to the Bill have said openly that this will increase pressure on probation unless staffing and resources rise sharply, and the inspectorate has warned that expanding community sentences without capacity risks making things worse. Less prison time does not equal less probation work. It means more supervision, more admin, more risk and less time to do meaningful work.
Meanwhile, £700 million is being thrown at AI, tagging and “digital transformation” as if technology can substitute for a workforce that has been hollowed out. It is treated like a magic bullet, but it won’t build trust, it won’t support change and it won’t repair a service that has been systematically stripped of the basics required to function.
And through all this, the system still prioritises metrics and bureaucracy over listening, humanity and rehabilitation. Practitioners haven’t stopped caring. They’ve had the conditions for caring removed by people in power who treat connection as inefficiency.
It’s going to get worse because those with power refuse to confront the damage they created. Until they rebuild the foundations instead of managing the symptoms, the spiral will continue and probation will keep losing the very people it depends on to survive.
*****
What worries me more than anything is how numb we have all been forced to become. We are describing sickness, resignations, burnout, fear and moral injury as if they are just workplace inconveniences rather than signs that something fundamental has broken. Probation is not just strained. It is being hollowed out from the inside and everyone can feel it.At its best, probation has always been a profession built on belief. Belief in change, belief in humanity, belief that dignity matters even when people are at their lowest. But belief does not survive in a system that exhausts its workforce, strips out time, piles on pressure and refuses to acknowledge its own part in causing harm. When the conditions for dignity are removed, the dignity itself disappears. When purpose is crushed, people walk.
And here is the truth that cuts deeper than caseloads or processes. A service that cannot protect the wellbeing of its own staff cannot pretend to be protecting the public. Exhausted, depleted, morally injured practitioners cannot sustain safe practice. Losing experienced staff is not just an operational problem. It is a public safety crisis unfolding in slow motion.
What makes this so hard to swallow is that the people with the power to intervene still talk in managerial language while the service bleeds. They talk about innovation, transformation, efficiency and resilience as if this is a technical issue rather than a human one. It is not technology that keeps people safe. It is not dashboards or metrics that support rehabilitation. It is people. Skilled, steady, supported people.
And yet those very people are now leaving faster than they can be replaced. Not because they do not care, but because caring has been turned into a liability. Not because they lack resilience, but because resilience has been misused as an excuse not to fix what is broken. The workforce has not failed. The leadership has.
If the country genuinely wants probation to function, for staff, for people on probation and for public safety, then the conversation has to change. Not how do we squeeze more out of what is left, but how do we rebuild something worthy of the people who rely on it. How do we restore dignity, purpose and stability. How do we make it possible for staff to do the job the public believes they are doing.
Because if we cannot value the people who hold up the justice system, then we cannot claim to value justice at all.
*****
My most important take from Rutger's lectures thus far:"one hour of real human attention is not something you can easily automate."
I'd go further - one hour of real human attention is not something you can automate at all. Ever. Regardless of what ellenmusk or markysuckerbugs or peterevilthiel or any of the so-called 'techbros' say.
What so many people could do with - whether one-off, weekly, monthly - is one hour of real, face-to-face human interaction, where the attention is focused upon the client/patient/attendee, when people are listened to, are heard, are acknowledged as part of the conversation.
It boils my piss when, in so many interactions with others, people talk over, shout down, cut across, or otherwise make it clear all they want to hear is their own opinion, their own voice.
One of the skills I learned on my (yawn) social-work-based CQSW was listening. We had a (double yawn) 'counselling' unit to complete which involved an assessment of a recorded interview (with a student colleague, not a client) as part of the exam. For me, this was one of the most critical pieces of leaning I undertook - not just for the probation work, but for life.
As a university tutor I would simply go silent when students were more interested in themselves than in the subject at hand. On numerous occasions it took several minutes for them to realise I had stopped speaking & sat down. It only took a couple of sessions with each group before they started to listen & engage respectfully. Only then did the sessions come alive, with great questions from students who had listened & who appreciated those questions being heard & debated by their peers and the tutor.
The art of listening is an art; a dying art.
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Active listening, real human attention and the sense of being understood are at the heart of any rehabilitative relationship. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that the system has made it almost impossible for practitioners to offer the very thing that makes probation meaningful. People on probation haven’t become harder to work with. The system has become harder to work within.
The quality of training used to prepare practitioners to work relationally, creatively and reflectively. Over time that has been eroded and replaced with training geared toward risk management, defensibility and procedural compliance. New staff are being trained into a model where listening is optional but box-ticking is mandatory. Experienced staff are burning out under the weight of moral injury because they remember what the job should be and cannot deliver it under current conditions.
The pressure to meet performance measures at a pace that bears no resemblance to the reality of current caseloads strips out the ability to slow down, to think, to understand and to listen properly. Every minute is accounted for. Every task is timed. Every action must produce a metric. Humanity has no measurable output, so the system quietly removes the space for it. Practitioners aren’t choosing not to listen. The structure has removed the oxygen that listening requires.
And this is where accountability sits. It is not the workforce who decided that surveillance matters more than understanding or that throughput matters more than trust. It is leadership and ministers who redesigned probation into a machine that values compliance over connection and defensibility over truth. They created an environment where the things that actually help people change are treated as inefficiencies to be eliminated.
Active listening is still essential. The tragedy is that the people with power treated it as expendable. Until they stop protecting their own narratives and start rebuilding the conditions that make real work possible, the system will continue silencing both practitioners and the people they supervise.
The quality of training used to prepare practitioners to work relationally, creatively and reflectively. Over time that has been eroded and replaced with training geared toward risk management, defensibility and procedural compliance. New staff are being trained into a model where listening is optional but box-ticking is mandatory. Experienced staff are burning out under the weight of moral injury because they remember what the job should be and cannot deliver it under current conditions.
The pressure to meet performance measures at a pace that bears no resemblance to the reality of current caseloads strips out the ability to slow down, to think, to understand and to listen properly. Every minute is accounted for. Every task is timed. Every action must produce a metric. Humanity has no measurable output, so the system quietly removes the space for it. Practitioners aren’t choosing not to listen. The structure has removed the oxygen that listening requires.
And this is where accountability sits. It is not the workforce who decided that surveillance matters more than understanding or that throughput matters more than trust. It is leadership and ministers who redesigned probation into a machine that values compliance over connection and defensibility over truth. They created an environment where the things that actually help people change are treated as inefficiencies to be eliminated.
Active listening is still essential. The tragedy is that the people with power treated it as expendable. Until they stop protecting their own narratives and start rebuilding the conditions that make real work possible, the system will continue silencing both practitioners and the people they supervise.
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"It is of concern that there has been a sustained increase in the number of notifications of an arrest and charge for an SFO over the last two years. In the period 2023/2024 the figure increased from 478 to 770, and in 2024/2025 it increased further by 13 per cent to 872.
We have quality assured 90 SFO reviews this year, with 53 per cent of these rated as ‘Requires improvement’. In contrast, just 46 per cent were rated as ‘Good’, and one per cent as ‘Outstanding’. Disappointingly, these findings show no improvement from the previous year.
In last year’s SFO annual report we made 11 recommendations, seven of which were repeated from the previous year’s’ SFO annual report. It is discouraging to note that while HMPPS have taken forward some activity against most of these recommendations, the outcomes and their impact is still not clear."
Prison building boom to make streets safer
A prison building boom is underway across the country as the Government presses ahead with the biggest jail expansion programme since the Victorian era.
Then we have this just out from HM Probation Inspectorate:-
"It is of concern that there has been a sustained increase in the number of notifications of an arrest and charge for an SFO over the last two years. In the period 2023/2024 the figure increased from 478 to 770, and in 2024/2025 it increased further by 13 per cent to 872.
We have quality assured 90 SFO reviews this year, with 53 per cent of these rated as ‘Requires improvement’. In contrast, just 46 per cent were rated as ‘Good’, and one per cent as ‘Outstanding’. Disappointingly, these findings show no improvement from the previous year.
In last year’s SFO annual report we made 11 recommendations, seven of which were repeated from the previous year’s’ SFO annual report. It is discouraging to note that while HMPPS have taken forward some activity against most of these recommendations, the outcomes and their impact is still not clear."
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What Jones meant to write, but it got lost somewhere in Petty France:
"It is tedious to note that we have made eleven recommendations, seven of which were repeated from the previous year, yet despite HMPPS taking forward some activity against some of our recommendations, outcomes and their impact is still not clear. So unclear as to be invisible.
Thus it is of no surprise whatsoever that, in these tumultous times of new austerity, overflowing prisons & an overstretched probation service, there has been a sustained increase in the number of notifications of an arrest and charge for an SFO over the last two years.
We have quality assured 90 SFO reviews this year. One was okay. Inevitably, given the staffing crisis, the limited HMPPS response to previous recommendations & the general state of decaying morale within the probation service, these findings show no improvement from the previous year."
What Jones meant to write, but it got lost somewhere in Petty France:
"It is tedious to note that we have made eleven recommendations, seven of which were repeated from the previous year, yet despite HMPPS taking forward some activity against some of our recommendations, outcomes and their impact is still not clear. So unclear as to be invisible.
Thus it is of no surprise whatsoever that, in these tumultous times of new austerity, overflowing prisons & an overstretched probation service, there has been a sustained increase in the number of notifications of an arrest and charge for an SFO over the last two years.
We have quality assured 90 SFO reviews this year. One was okay. Inevitably, given the staffing crisis, the limited HMPPS response to previous recommendations & the general state of decaying morale within the probation service, these findings show no improvement from the previous year."
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The government's answer published 9th December 2025:-
Prison building boom to make streets safer
A prison building boom is underway across the country as the Government presses ahead with the biggest jail expansion programme since the Victorian era.
What struck me in Jim’s reference to the Jamie Oliver programme was the framing rather than the detail. From what’s described, the argument is not about individual failure but about systems that were never designed for how many people actually live, learn or process the world, and the predictable harm that follows. Education that struggles with neurodivergence, practical support stripped out, and help arriving too late are structural problems, not personal ones.
ReplyDeleteThat framing applies directly to probation. We supervise large numbers of people who are neurodivergent, traumatised or cognitively impaired, yet the systems they move through assume stability, memory, verbal fluency and compliance as standard. Probation talks about supporting difference and encourages practitioners to adapt their approach, but the conditions required to do that work properly are largely absent.
Supporting neurodivergent people is not about awareness alone. It requires time, continuity and flexibility. Longer appointments, predictable relationships and adjustments that are built into the system rather than left to individual goodwill. High caseloads, constant churn and rigid compliance driven processes mean people are still expected to function in neurotypical ways. When they cannot, the system treats that as disengagement rather than difference.
Just as education cannot serve children using models never designed for them, probation cannot work safely or humanely while ignoring human variability. Until the service is built around how people actually think and cope, claims about supporting difference will remain rhetorical, and the same people will continue to be recycled through a system that was never built with them in mind.
I. This country where vape shops out number Holland and barrat 50 to 1 phone shops. Survive by there shed loads highs streets are non recognisable from my youth I'm not surprised there is an agenda to see us all ill NHS dependant when we should all be living like they did post war. McDonald's should be evicted for a start.
DeleteOne thing I think we don’t talk about enough is how much neurodivergence among people on probation is likely to be undiagnosed. Many have spent their entire lives navigating the world in ways that make sense to them, often without knowing why they struggle with certain expectations. Those ways of coping don’t disappear just because someone is placed under supervision.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone has adapted over years to survive in a world that doesn’t work for them, expecting them to suddenly operate in a neurotypical way is unrealistic. Change for neurodivergent people is rarely quick or linear. It usually requires understanding, consistency and trust built over time. Without that, instructions feel confusing, pressure feels overwhelming and non compliance becomes almost inevitable.
Supporting change in these circumstances isn’t about issuing clearer rules. It’s about building relationships where people feel safe enough to understand themselves differently and try new ways of coping. That takes time and continuity. When supervision is rushed, fragmented and compliance driven, the system unintentionally sets people up to fail.
If we want probation to be effective and safe, we have to recognise that many people are not choosing to be difficult. They are navigating life differently, often without language or diagnosis to explain it. Until the system can work with that reality rather than against it, we will keep misreading difference as defiance and wondering why outcomes don’t improve.
The discussion about SFOs often focuses on individual decisions rather than the conditions in which those decisions are made. Risk is not managed safely through process alone. It relies on time, continuity and informed professional judgement. When caseloads are high and contact is fragmented, practice becomes defensive and recall becomes the default response. That may reduce organisational anxiety, but it does little to reduce long term risk.
ReplyDeleteAs probation has shifted toward enforcement and containment, compliance has increasingly been treated as safety. But compliance is not the same as stability. Without the space for relational work, risk is managed superficially rather than meaningfully. SFOs do not happen because practitioners care too little. They happen when the system makes caring work difficult to sustain.
If we want fewer serious harms, we have to fix the conditions in which risk is managed, not just scrutinise the decisions made inside a broken system.
In following this debate we can’t ignore the United Kingdom has an enduring fixation with building more prisons and sending more people to them. Yet prison could quite feasibly be reserved for those who commit serious violent or sexual offences, or for truly prolific offenders. Doing so would free up enormous capacity, and the billions currently poured into expanding the prison estate could be reinvested into probation, community sentencing, and community services. Of course, it’s unlikely to happen. Karl Marx would remind us that the relationship between the economic base and the superstructure ensures that the rule of law, and by extension the prison system, plays a central and grossly manufactured role in protecting the economy, the bourgeoisie, and the owners of capital.
ReplyDeleteBut amid all the debate, an obvious question goes unasked: Why are probation Approved Premises and youth offending services consistently rated outstanding, while probation sentence management is not? https://hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/news/impressive-eden-house-approved-premises-in-bristol-rated-outstanding-following-inspection/
The answer lies in their focus: rehabilitation, resettlement, trauma-informed practice, direct access to services, and crucially, low caseloads. In ongoing discussions about capacity, overcrowding, and system pressures, we often ignore these simple, practical measures that could deliver immediate and meaningful improvements.
Instead of centring the conversation solely on reducing the prison population without strengthening community support, or spending millions on AI and large-scale IT reform, we should start with the basics: providing mobile phones, food bank vouchers, guaranteed access to housing and benefits advice, and simple digital tools for people leaving custody or serving community orders. Alongside IT upgrades for staff, why not prioritise staff to client ratios, probations potential role in directing community services and accessible apps and tools that help people on probation understand licence conditions, track appointments, and navigate essential services?
I recently read this submission to the Justice Committee’s inquiry, Rehabilitation and resettlement: ending the cycle of reoffending, which contains several powerful ideas for reframing the national conversation:
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/132400/pdf/
It’s unclear how much of it influenced the final report (probably none), found here but I’ll pick out a few points as it was the only submission I saw from probation:
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8678/rehabilitation-and-resettlement-ending-the-cycle-of-reoffending/publications/
Continued
Central to effective rehabilitation is high-quality probation supervision, something that depends on real investment in practitioner training and accessible, reliable resources. To unlock this potential, the Probation Service must be funded to ensure that staff genuinely have the time, skills and tools to support people with complex needs. A return to the social work-based training that historically underpinned probation would not be difficult, and the benefits would be immediate. It’s not difficult or expensive to top-up existing qualifications either.
DeleteFor those who in the eyes of the courts genuinely need to be imprisoned, and there are many, effective rehabilitation means ensuring that every sentenced and remand prisoner receives a meaningful induction and consistent support that addresses past, present, and future needs, housing, employment, health, literacy, addiction, and maintaining positive relationships, access to useful programmes and interventions not tick-box stuff. That support should be continuous, from custody to community. The existing network of probation offices and hostels is well-placed to do this, if properly resourced.
In the community, people leaving custody or under supervision should receive prioritised access to substance misuse treatment, employment services (including immediate access to vocational training and paid work), and mental health support. This requires genuinely direct access from the point of conviction or release, not weeks or months later, by which time engagement has often broken down. Local authority housing teams must be placed under a compulsory duty, not a discretionary one, to provide accommodation. Removing the priority/non-priority distinction would establish a clear, consistent obligation to house all who need support.
Looking ahead, the probation strategy should be shaped by those who understand it best: frontline practitioners and the people who have successfully completed supervision and desisted from offending. Their insights are invaluable in creating approaches that work in practice, not just in policy documents.
Supervision itself should be reinstated as a full, standalone community sentence, similar to earlier Probation Orders, Supervision Orders, or Community Rehabilitation Orders, without any requirement to add punitive elements. For individuals who spent time on remand, Post-Sentence or post-release Supervision could be voluntary, without the shadow of breach or recall. PSS is not inherently the problem; it simply needs to be proportionate to the sentence and designed to support any short-term sentences that remain after the implementation of the sentencing review were all tired of hearing about, rather than operating as the current anomaly with it’s dystopian enforcement policies.
Additional enhancements could include:
• More reliable and user-friendly electronic monitoring technology.
• Community Payback that directly builds employability through real skills, qualifications, and meaningful work.
• Expansion of probation hostels, ideally several in each area, brought back in-house and closely integrated with probation offices, to provide safe, supported transitional accommodation and reduce homelessness-related risks.
• Renewed commitment to the historic ethos of probation supervision: “Advise, Assist, and Befriend”, or whatever more fitting mantra we can think up to replace monitor, control, punish!
This is just the start we need, it’s not rocket science. Ultimately, meaningful rehabilitation is not achieved through technology, legislation, or sweeping structural changes alone. It requires practical support, accessible tools, stable foundations, community partnership, and a careful recommitment to the relational heart of probation practice.
If only probation, HMPPS, MoJ would take this on board. The sentencing review, the justice committee, they didn’t and won’t listen to practitioners.
DeleteWhy would they no complaints and the unions are silent so no problems.
DeleteThe direction of travel is hard to ignore. Faced with rising pressure, the government response has been to expand prison places and invest heavily in technology and monitoring, while continuing to avoid meaningful investment in the people who actually make the system work. That is a political choice, not an inevitability.
ReplyDeleteMore prison places and more technology may manage numbers and risk on paper, but they function largely as sticking plasters. They do not rebuild probation capacity, reduce churn or create the conditions in which rehabilitation and risk reduction happen in reality. Without a stable, properly supported workforce with time and professional space to work relationally, these measures simply contain problems rather than resolve them.
It is tempting to point to other countries with lower reoffending or imprisonment rates, but those comparisons need care. We cannot lift another society’s model and drop it into ours. Different levels of inequality, welfare support and social cohesion matter. But what does translate is this: systems that perform better invest in people and relationships, not scale and surveillance.
This goes deeper than rehabilitation as a concept. It is about what we choose to value. At present, we are investing in infrastructure and control while allowing the human foundations of the justice system to erode. As long as people remain the cheapest and most expendable part of the system, failure will continue to be managed rather than prevented.
The games up the battle is lost the majority of people employed in probation are punitive and right wing it is purely another branch of control and anyone who is vulnerable needs to be steered away as if does nothing to help anyone who doesn’t arrive on time ,nod politely and listen to a 20 something poorly educated criminology graduate tell you how risky you are for shoplifting
ReplyDelete100 percent sadly went that way a long time back . There are two or three camps . The older group rapidly diminishing think they are still doing old work but they are not there is no time for that . The recents like punishment control and ego driven power they are the most pathetic group. The. Third are management ready to dictate whatever direction told to them. They simply don't care as long as shut don't land in their desk and they get to boss people around.
DeleteInnovator Award – Splink Team, Ministry of Justice:
ReplyDeleteSplink is a free open-source software package for deduplicating and linking large datasets, supporting the government’s National Data Strategy. Originally created to link MoJ datasets lacking a shared unique identifier, Splink enables more accurate reoffending data and cross-system analysis, overcoming challenges of duplication and siloed data. Since its first release in 2020, Splink has been downloaded over 12 million times and adopted by central government departments, local authorities, NHS bodies, charities, universities, and international organisations including the UNHCR, EMA, and governments in Germany, Canada, Australia, and Chile. It works on datasets 1,000 times larger and 100 times faster than alternative software, with a positive match rate rising from 83% to 92% at MoJ. Splink has improved data quality across key government assets, including the census, Demographic Index, Business Index, NHS patient data, and justice datasets. The software has delivered significant cost savings, avoiding licensing fees and contractor costs estimated at over £2 million per year, with wider government savings likely in the tens of millions.
Excellence in Delivery Award – BOLD Programme – North Essex Probation Delivery Unit Case Information Dashboard, Ministry of Justice:
The Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) programme created a digital system for probation officers which brings together holistic information from across prisons, probation, and police into a single unified view of an individual. As a result of this work, over 70% of probation practitioners said that it made a positive impact on their way of working and enabled them to make evidence-based decisions. Tentative evaluation findings indicate a 17-minute reduction in time spent preparing for an appointment with an offender, saving over 33,000 hours of time per annum (equivalent to approximately £1m in savings) for the North Essex Probation Delivery Unit. The proportion of probation practitioners reporting that they had confidence in having a good understanding of an individual’s needs from using this tool increased by 40%, and over two thirds of users reported high confidence in assessing risk of offenders.
More Awards for IT!! Is that what we really need?
DeleteI think the way people contrast “old school” probation and newer staff often misses what is really going on. This isn’t primarily about individual values or attitudes. It’s about what the service now trains people to do, what it rewards and who it promotes.
ReplyDeleteNewer staff are entering a probation service that is far more compliance and enforcement driven than it once was. Training, performance measures and organisational anxiety prioritise defensibility, escalation and process. If that is what people are taught and assessed on, that is how they will practise. Not because they are punitive by nature, but because those behaviours are presented as safe and correct.
It’s also important to be clear about who is moving into management. Increasingly it is not highly experienced practitioners, but newer staff, sometimes with very limited frontline experience, who progress quickly. That progression is rarely based on demonstrated skill in working with people or managing complexity. It is based on the ability to navigate civil service interview frameworks, evidence the right competencies and align with the current direction of travel.
Those frameworks do not meaningfully recognise experience, relational judgement or the skills required to support human change. Experience counts for little if it cannot be translated into the right language on paper. The result is leadership selected for compliance rather than competence, which then further shapes practice around targets, control and defensibility.
This helps explain why morale continues to deteriorate. Experienced staff feel unheard and undervalued. Newer managers are placed in positions where they must enforce systems they did not design and may not fully understand. Practice narrows, discretion shrinks and the same patterns reproduce themselves.
So when people say probation has changed, they are right. But the change is not mainly in the people. It is in the system they are trained into, promoted within and expected to survive.
Very insightful comment thank you. It is indeed systemic. Calls for individuals to resist are naive, it’s gone way beyond that. Can we point to a model somewhere in the world that we want to emulate or sell to those with the power? There are pockets of what I would consider old school probation work in places but sadly feel the world has moved on from what many of us would like the service to be. We have firmly gone down the road of commissioning specific services and monitoring their performance. Social workers wherever you go are on a production line. An assessment is done a service is commissioned. Case closed then pops up again when another assessment needs doing. The old school social work model of having a long term caseload and supporting people to change has gone apart from in very niche specialist areas. In these areas jobs rarely come up. Social workers considered too expensive. Much cheaper to commission a support worker to try and do the work. I don’t like the model. I would say commissioning is killing us. But look at the NHS we are going further down that road at the moment there is no appetite to move away from it.
DeleteWe’re getting Gauke’s sentencing review - hey ho!
DeleteI recognise this pattern in parts of the service, though not everywhere. Increasingly, progression can depend less on depth of practice and more on the ability to demonstrate alignment with centrally defined competencies. Skills that are harder to evidence on paper, such as judgement, relational work and managing complexity over time, can carry less weight than they should.
DeleteThis shows up at times in who is asked to provide oversight. In some cases, people move into management roles where they are required to scrutinise or sign off decisions about offences and risks they have not personally worked with. Oversight without lived practice tends to become procedural rather than professional. Decisions are judged against policy and process because there is no experiential reference point, which can leave practitioners feeling second guessed by people who have not had to sit with the complexity themselves.
I don’t see this as an individual failing, and there are many capable and experienced managers who do the role well. But where progression is decoupled from practice and experience is not treated as a prerequisite, it has consequences for confidence, trust and morale across the service.
I posted this before but it disappeared. I’ve now read the MAPPA report “Voice of the Practitioner” in guest blog 107, and it confirms what practitioners have been saying for years. Not seen anything like this before in a MAPPA report. It’s correct, it’s not just a failure of leaders listening — it’s a failure of policy. Only policymakers can make the legislative and structural changes this work urgently requires.
DeleteThe report is clear:
“probation practitioners must be empowered to provide timely and prioritised access to essential resources. These include accommodation, education, training, employment, healthcare, and addiction support, which are critical lifelines for individuals transitioning from custody or under community supervision.
A key challenge also lies in the absence of adequate enabling legislation, which restricts probation’s ability to directly access or commission vital services. These include emergency and move-on accommodation, mental health provision and addiction support, and operational resources including supporting journeys for individuals on release”
This is not a knowledge gap. It’s a political one. Without enabling legislation and direct access to resources, probation is being set up to manage risk without the tools required to reduce it.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69032d5a92779f89baa51fb3/Bedfordshire_MAPPA_Annual_Report_2024_to_2025.pdf
I’m not convinced the answer lies in pointing to another country and saying “do that”. Different societies have different levels of inequality, housing stability, welfare support and trust in institutions. We can’t lift a probation or social work model from elsewhere and drop it wholesale into England and Wales and expect it to work in the same way.
ReplyDeleteWhere international comparisons are useful is in showing that systems are shaped by choices. In places where outcomes are better, services tend to be organised around continuity, professional discretion and long term relationships rather than transactions, commissioning cycles and throughput. That isn’t about national character. It’s about design.
So when we ask what model we want to sell to those with power, I don’t think the answer is a nostalgic return to an idealised past, or a rejection of accountability. It’s a clear articulation of what is lost when services are organised primarily around transactions rather than relationships.
In practical terms, a different direction would mean fewer handoffs, fewer commissioned silos and more responsibility held by practitioners over time. Smaller caseloads where complexity is high. Professional judgement trusted rather than constantly second guessed. An acceptance that meaningful change is uneven and slow, and that systems designed for speed and volume will always struggle with complex human need.
That’s why reviews like Gauke’s risk missing the deeper issue. Sentencing thresholds and eligibility matter, but they sit on top of a delivery model that is already fragmented and overstretched. Without addressing how probation and related services are structured, resourced and incentivised, reform will rearrange the furniture rather than fix the room.
If the world has moved on, it has moved toward systems that are easier to manage from the centre, not toward ones that work better for the people they are meant to serve.
The cumulative insight of individuals abandoning the front line as soon as practicably possible for management, is as has been pointed out part of the ‘problem’ ,such as it is…….its all designed to abandon the concept of rehabilitative probation to replace it with punitive management…..in preparation for One hmpps Correctional services……
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that sits underneath a lot of this is how stagnant probation now feels as a profession. Progression is oddly narrow. There are routes upward, but very few that deepen practice or recognise expertise. If you want to stay working with people, build skill and judgement over time and feel more competent rather than just more senior, the opportunities are limited.
ReplyDeleteOngoing professional development doesn’t really fill that gap. Training often feels basic, risk focused and disconnected from the realities of complex casework. There’s little investment in advanced practice, reflective learning or genuine specialism, which leaves people carrying increasing responsibility without feeling better equipped to do the work.
The pay disparities raise similar questions. Why are practitioners in some specialist or centrally prioritised roles placed on higher bands with smaller caseloads, while frontline staff manage large numbers of equally complex and risky cases for less pay, despite holding the same qualifications and accountability? How is complexity being defined, and whose risk is being counted?
From the frontline, the work doesn’t feel less demanding or less skilled. It’s just less visible and harder to reduce to neat frameworks. When that is matched with lower pay, limited development and few progression routes that value expertise with people, it’s hard not to wonder what kind of practice the organisation is really trying to encourage.
It starts to feel less like a profession you grow within and more like a role you pass through, and that shift has consequences for morale, retention and the quality of work probation is able to offer.
Probation was once a respected profession with clear progression and credibility beyond the service. That has been decisively dismantled. The dilution of qualifications, the removal of social work, and chronic organisational failure laid bare by repeated, damning HMIP reports have hollowed out the role. As a result, it is no surprise that former probation officers are now undervalued by external employers.
DeleteManagement has actively contributed to this decline, maintaining an unspoken expectation that staff remain at the operational ‘coalface’, prioritising retention over development. This is compounded by entrenched institutional racism, which continues to restrict progression and silence challenge. Together, these failures have deprofessionalised probation and wasted its workforce.
Many probation officers view promotion to SPO as an unattractive, even undesirable, step. Similarly, a significant number of SPOs see progression to the next internal management tier as an equally unappealing prospect.
There is no opportunity for a Probation Officer to increase their academic knowledge unless they pay for it themselves. There is a lack of understanding within the managerial levels that if you want to retain high performing staff then you need to provide them with the challenges that they crave. The ‘noddy’ online training dished out every few years is neither stimulating or knowledge forming, it is the results of a lack of foresight of those in charge of training and the QDO’s who just pander to box ticking exercises. OAsys has regular new tick boxes added and the RMP is so prescriptive that the use of experience and professional judgement is challenged by the new managerialism who do not have the experience or knowledge themselves. The quality of countersigned OAsys that I see on a regular basis when someone else goes off sick or maternity shows exactly why the inspectorate have a field day in ripping PDU’s to pieces.These managers feel challenged from those operational staff who deal with the face to face challenges of supervising offenders on licence and community penalties, preferring instead to sit in their offices on teams making ridiculous policy decisions. I regularly sit in ‘team’ meetings bewildered by the roundabout of changes and the ‘good ideas’ club. There has also been the rise of the not what you know but who you know that offers opportunities to progress. The inspectorate releases ‘good practice’ publications written by people with no academic integrity or research based qualifications, it is embarrassing. Success Profiles do not look at knowledge or experience, just if you can fit your story into the format. The Probation Service is an absolute joke destroyed since 2014 and not a service I would encourage anyone to join as the quality of training delivery and supervision is shocking.
ReplyDeleteCan’t disagree with any of that.
DeleteThere are ‘good practice’ publications by practitioners but they tend to be ignored by probation, justice, HMIP and all the rest.
Although HMIP probation published this recently which is well worth a read.
Embracing the views and perspectives of those with lived experience
This report was kindly produced by David Honeywell, highlighting the need to fully embrace the views and perspectives of those with lived experience of the criminal justice system.
https://hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/document/embracing-the-views-and-perspectives-of-those-with-lived-experience/
I’m hesitant to add this, but as someone working as a QDO I think it’s important context. A lot of the frustration about training and professional development is justified, but it risks oversimplifying where the problem actually sits.
DeleteQDOs don’t have the freedom people often assume. Like practitioners, we are required to deliver what is asked of us. Content, formats and priorities are centrally defined and heavily constrained by time, resources and risk appetite. The emphasis is on consistency, assurance and evidencing completion, not on deep, reflective or academically rigorous development. That isn’t because those things aren’t valued locally, it’s because there is very little permission to prioritise them.
Many of us would welcome richer learning, space for critical thinking and genuine investment in expertise. But QDOs operate under the same compliance driven pressures as the rest of the service. We are measured on delivery and alignment, not on whether training meaningfully transforms practice over time. Deviating from that comes with risk.
So while criticism of box ticking training is fair, it’s important to recognise that QDOs are not the architects of this model. We are part of the same system, working within the same constraints. If probation wants a skilled, confident and reflective workforce, that permission has to come from the top. Until then, training will continue to mirror the wider managerial logic shaping the service
If you are a qualified probation officer you are needed on the front line at the moment, we are in an emergency situation and need all hands on deck….
DeleteIf being a qualified PO automatically means you should be on the frontline during periods of pressure, then the same expectation would apply across the board, including to managers and others with professional qualifications. Taken to its logical conclusion, that would strip out supervision, oversight, training and support functions altogether.
DeleteThe real issue isn’t which individuals should be redeployed, but why probation is perpetually operating in crisis mode instead of addressing workload, retention and capacity in a sustainable way.
I apologise Ive posted this on the wrong blog Could JB delete the previous one
ReplyDeleteOff topic Public Accounts Committee Transcript 1st Dec 25
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/16853/pdf/
Whilst awaiting the Committees report/recommendations which would be worth keeping track of, they make for very interesting reading . Numerous suggestions HMPPS are listening and they are looking to reduce workloads by 25%.. I’m assuming that is within contractual hours. They are introducing following consultation with staff new IT systems and digital tools which will significantly reduce time spent at your screens . They were challenged about staffing and retention and lead the Committee to believe this is being actively addressed and there are signs of improvement. They are going to ensure that staff have proper space for learning/training. They are confident that they now have a firm grip on staffing required for sentence management and so much more. I was struck by the interventions/challenges of Lloyd Hatton and if he is someone’s MP do please invite him to read this Blog . Why this might be important going forward, I guess for Transparency and Accountability purposes . It has already been suggested that maybe some-one from the Probation or indeed NAPO may want to make a submission to any future Justice Liaison Committee meetings. Im intrigued and will try to access the submission from the Academic Forum having recently read Making Probation a Hope Based Organisation iangould5
How this will probably work, Ian, is this. All reports and referrals will continue being moved onto a single digital platform so activity can be standardised, monitored and timed. A new risk assessment tool will be introduced, relying heavily on tick-boxes to speed up completion rather than improve professional judgement. The case recording system will be adapted to include AI copilot transcription.
DeleteOnce recording, referral and recommendation processes are fully digitised, they can be streamlined and time-limited. In theory, this reduces the time spent on individual administrative tasks. In practice, it will not reduce caseloads. As with previous “efficiency” drives, these time savings will simply be absorbed by higher caseload expectations.
We have seen this before. When OMiC was introduced under the E3 efficiency measures, it was sold as a way to reduce community caseloads and significantly lower WMT. The reality was the opposite. Workloads increased, risk was displaced rather than reduced, and probation staff were expected to carry out resettlement planning with even less time available than before.
The same dynamic is now repeating itself. With reduced use of custody, the removal of PSS and its partial replacement with licence supervision, caseload numbers will rise. Overall workload, complexity and risk will increase accordingly. Digitisation does not remove work, it simply makes it easier to measure, justify and then add more of it. It also turns professionals into robots completing monotonous tasks.
If the Justice Committee, the sentencing review team, HMIP Probation and policymakers genuinely wanted to address workload pressures, they would confront the one issue that is consistently avoided: a clear, enforceable cap on probation caseloads, or a defined maximum for what a probation caseload should be. They’d also be helping identify what quality hands on work with people in prison and on probation actually is, not how to speed it up.
Thank you 17.11 for your helpful and informative response. I genuinely don’t know if this is helpful but HMPPS are clearly advising MP’s these measures have and will make a difference. I guess what these blogs evidence is that this is not what is being experienced or indeed expressed on the ground . Somehow and in some way this needs to be feedback either via the Union or possibly Probation Institute or maybe an Academic Institution/Forum Ive just read this and maybe they could become more of a voice. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/151136/pdf/
ReplyDeleteNone of those academics work in probation. That’s part of the problem.
DeleteThere are a number of pracademics about with substantial experience in Probation however this blogs commenters have a poor record in supporting them. The Probation Institute is probably the best bet at present currently led by the very eminent Professor Lorraine Gelsthorpe who also leads the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge. Probation could not hope to have a better academic heavyweight on their side. Stop whingeing and get behind the leaders dedicated to positive change. Probation is a divided profession that spends a lot of time and energy attacking anyone that try’s to build anything or campaigns for change. Join and help support the change you want to see.
DeleteI don’t think this can fairly be dismissed as “whingeing”. What’s being expressed here is sustained, thoughtful challenge, much of which has existed for years and has often gone unheard. The problem hasn’t been a lack of voices, it’s been a lack of listening.
DeleteSupport for leaders or academic institutions doesn’t require uncritical alignment. A healthy profession should be able to hold respect and challenge at the same time. Many of the issues being raised here are not abstract or ideological. They are about daily practice, workload and the erosion of professional judgement.
It’s also worth asking what “join and help support the change you want to see” actually means in practice. Support implies participation, dialogue and influence. What many people describe instead is change that is decided elsewhere and delivered downward, with limited scope for frontline experience to shape outcomes.
Blogs like this exist precisely because many people don’t feel safe or able to speak openly elsewhere. When challenge is sidelined or reframed as negativity, people retreat to the few spaces where honest discussion is possible. If probation is serious about change, it needs to treat critique as evidence of engagement, not division. Otherwise we risk repeating the same pattern of talking about reform while those closest to the work continue to feel unheard.
“There are a number of pracademics about with substantial experience in Probation however this blogs commenters have a poor record in supporting them.”
DeleteThe claim that practitioners have a “poor record in supporting pracademics” gets it backwards. Practitioners have engaged with academic work when it has been grounded in reality and prepared to challenge power. What’s been lacking is consistent academic support for probation practice when it mattered most.
Where were these voices during TR, E3, Unification, OneHmpps and the damage that followed? For the most part, they were absent, or carefully non-committal, while the service was dismantled.
A bit of PSO experience, or a probation career that ended decades ago, does not equate to understanding the realities of probation today. And where an academic’s current link to probation is through delivering training to PQiPs or managers, the silence becomes even more striking. They are either best placed to speak out and choose not to, or constrained by a clear conflict of interest. Either way, it tells its own story.
Too many academics and pracademics operate within a closed system that rewards access, funding and influence over challenge. They sell theories, cultivate relationships, and rarely issue clear, public opposition to government policy.
And when Cambridge is cited, let’s be honest: it hosts the Probation Journal editor and delivers master’s programmes to probation leaders. Institutions embedded that deeply are unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them. The last PJ editor is also heading a project in Wales probation or elsewhere. Time and time we see these, followed by a write up in the PJ that’s great for their cvs but doesn’t help ours.
The Probation Institute is no different. By its own description it is “a charity and cannot be political”, which largely explains its limited willingness to challenge government policy. Little has changed since it was described as “the lipstick on the TR pig”.
Probation doesn’t need safe critique or academic hedging. It needs people with influence to say plainly that government policy has repeatedly damaged the service. If they won’t, practitioners are right to ask who these voices are really speaking for, because it isn’t probation.
For balance, it’s fair to say the Probation Institute has enabled a small number of articles that genuinely speak up for probation and challenge current thinking. Some have been shared here, and without the Institute they would likely not have been published at all.
DeleteThe Probation Journal once fulfilled this role; it rarely does now in my opinion although I rarely read it. If the Probation Institute were prepared to take more risks, with its current editor, it could become a real voice for probation.
Anon 11:27 I've always supported the Probation Institute from the beginning and Prof Paul Senior's involvement, however I'm not a member and everytime I espouse them and their efforts, I'm shot down. Hey ho.
DeleteReading the recent comments together, what stands out is how consistent the themes are across different angles. Whether people are talking about training, HMIP findings, digitisation or management oversight, the same pattern keeps appearing.
ReplyDeleteProfessional judgement is being squeezed by systems designed for standardisation, measurement and speed. Training becomes about completion rather than development. Digital tools promise efficiency but mainly make work easier to monitor and expand. Oversight increasingly focuses on process compliance rather than depth of understanding. None of this is accidental. It reflects what the system now prioritises.
What’s striking is that many of the proposed solutions don’t address that core issue. Better tools, new platforms and revised frameworks are presented as answers, but they rarely come with enforceable caseload limits, protected time for learning or serious investment in expertise. Without those, efficiency gains are simply absorbed into higher expectations and greater pressure.
That gap between what is being reported upwards and what is being experienced on the ground is becoming harder to ignore. Blogs like this matter because they expose that disconnect. If policymakers genuinely want to understand why morale, retention and confidence remain fragile, they need to look less at new mechanisms and more at whether the system still allows professionals to practise with depth, judgement and integrity.
Depth judgement and integrity has not been happening for 10 years all this suggestion anyone id still delivering good practice as was is just dreaming.
DeleteI agree to a point. The system no longer supports depth, judgement or integrity in any consistent way. But I don’t think they’ve disappeared entirely. Where good practice exists now, it tends to survive despite the system, not because of it, and it takes far more effort to sustain while wading through layers of metrics, process and scrutiny.
DeleteThat’s part of the problem. When good practice requires exceptional effort rather than being the norm, it becomes fragile and uneven.
Mmm at a push I make few judgements open for personal interpretation. The oasys driven recoding leaves me fed up to cold brain freeze. The narratives are all guided in making decisions. These are all now couched in a limited set of expectations based on Standard input. Any boundary pushing choices i may want to think about and then feel I'm constantly second guessing what the risk to me would be if it goes wrong. I feel like looking for some easier ways to help but I gave up on the risk to be supportive it's become too worrisome what if later on in my mind so to spare myself that tension I do nothing and instead feel frustrated I am too scared to really engage to male any difference. I am used to this tension now but hate the job change.
DeleteThat comment really captures something important. When systems make the personal cost of judgement feel too high, the safest option becomes doing less rather than doing better. That isn’t about lack of care, it’s about self protection.
DeleteA culture where people are afraid to engage deeply because of how decisions might later be scrutinised is one where risk isn’t reduced, it’s displaced. Over time that erodes confidence, satisfaction and the very purpose of the work.
Anon 08:59 - This says it all I think:-
ReplyDelete"Blogs like this exist precisely because many people don’t feel safe or able to speak openly elsewhere. When challenge is sidelined or reframed as negativity, people retreat to the few spaces where honest discussion is possible. If probation is serious about change, it needs to treat critique as evidence of engagement, not division. Otherwise we risk repeating the same pattern of talking about reform while those closest to the work continue to feel unheard."
Blogs like this don't exist there is only this blog and it is unique . Anything else like this let me know .
DeleteAnon is all that protects individuals thankfully it provides a truth of what some are reporting as stated sometimes Rae to raw even for the publisher. Pulling down where it may inflamed is ok. However anyone contributing as well as they do and the heartfelt and the clever stuff is not worth a carrot. The moj employers won't listen unless there is a real case of action. While your official representation is silent on your issues you simply don't have any. Lawrence has to do the job he is supposed or let's try and hold him and the dishonest secretive non functioning Napo to formal account. A certifications officer complaint . The fact they have no annual motions to work to this year then no office no staffing paid full time issues need a real and lawful inquiry. The contract to the members is broken and the NEC must be tasked to account to members via branch national collective inquiry motion. Get this underway and Lawrence will get gone. Give the means to the officer to get rid . Lawrence after 5 years could not tell us the average starting rate of a po. Nor did he understand the difference between community and custody probation supervision. We have a a real problem and it's costing us our careers the role and we pay for this extinction.
If there is a genuine concerted effort to depose Lawrence, it should be combined with rule changes to ensure that we are never in the position again where someone who is handsomely paid to represent the interests of members fails to do so without recriminations.
DeleteIndeed but whole the elected lay officers have all generally been assisted into a role they have no effect in they cannot hold him to account. Napo selected duds every time based on women or grading and that's the foolishness you need trade unionists not pos to run a union. This is what we have. There was a time Chris Pearson held Lawrence up for all to see at AGM. However the AGM voted to change the rules to let him off having broken them all so off the hook he was rather than have him held to account. Chris Pearson lost faith with Napo after this and he was a good guy just didn't have the Lawrence support group weighed up. He is the lynch pin to all our problems and I'm fed up with his ability to remain free of accounting for his inability. The officers group should deal with him or all resign . This continual support is like Boris Johnston's operation big dog. Lawrence has no bite no talent just bark. It's time to call him out as he stayed. All officers resign and the crisis then ensues to get a new leader in role. We need intelligence not this clown probation has far too much history and continued need for social justice than one idiot putting us to the guillotine.
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj69w7kezdzo
ReplyDeleteViolence against women and girls is a "national emergency", the home secretary has said, as she announced plans to set up specialist rape and sexual offence investigation teams in every police force in England and Wales by 2029.
Violence against women and men is such a big priority the government - yet men who are violent to women are amongst those who can be released from prison early. You couldn't make it up!!!!!
Deletelords, hansard 3 dec 2025
ReplyDeleteLord Keen of Elie (Con): Does the Minister agree that the concept of us imprisoning individuals on the grounds of a perception that they may commit a crime at some indeterminate point in the future is utterly anathema to our whole system of criminal justice?
Lord Timpson (Lab): Our expert probation staff who manage the risks in the community are experts in determining the risk that offenders pose, including IPP offenders. It is therefore their professional judgment and their decision whether they recall someone or not.
_______________________________________________________
really?
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/deputy-prime-minister-speech-at-the-openai-frontiers-conference
ReplyDeleteThe Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy MP spoke at the OpenAI Frontiers Conference about partnering with OpenAI and cutting admin time for frontline staff.
"The Probation Service is currently trialling something called Justice Transcribe, one of the AI Exemplars sponsored by the Prime Minister, built by the Government’s very own leading AI engineers.
It records and transcribes probation officers’ conversations with offenders automatically, cutting hours of work to transfer handwritten meeting notes into digital systems.
That means probation staff can spend more of their time doing the things only humans can do: Working with offenders to protect the British public, person-to-person, face-to-face, eye-to-eye.
In fact, eighty percent of officers surveyed said it improved engagement with offenders, making it easier for them to read important changes in body language and tailor their approach.
This kind of technology frees probation officers to do the things they signed up for: Changing lives, cutting crime, protecting the public.
We’re really privileged to have Anna and Charmain here with us today, two probation officers already using AI.
When we asked Anna and Charmain how AI is transforming their day-to-day work, they were really clear that it means they can be more present with offenders. Thank you both for your service to our country, let’s show them our appreciation.
I think their testimony demonstrates the power of AI: Handling the routine tasks at lightning speed, so that people can take their time over what really matters.
Today, I am thrilled to announce an expansion of Justice Transcribe: The Ministry of Justice will equip a thousand more probation officers with this technology so that they can be more human, not less.
We estimate that using AI in my department can save around 240,000 days of admin every year, the equivalent of freeing up around one thousand members of staff in our frontline workforce.
I’m proud to say that, driven by its broad partnership with the UK Government and with the Ministry of Justice specifically, OpenAI is expanding its UK data offer by introducing data residency, giving British customers and developers the option to store their data on servers right here in the UK."
Sounds like a script from a hollywood disaster movie
Sept 2025:
DeleteDavid Lammy Deputy Prime Minister, The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
"We are determined to back our hard-working probation staff by investing up to £700 million by the final year of the spending review, and an initial £8 million in technology to reduce administrative burdens. We will also recruit 1,300 trainee probation officers in the next year."
i.e. OpenAI will pocket the cash.
Also:
"My hon. Friend (andy slaughter) and I did a lot of work together while the Probation Service was decimated by a badly botched privatisation that ruined such an incredible service. He is right that we will need to recruit more officers. The £700 million that we found is essential, and I will be looking closely at the allocations over the coming months."
"decimate" - to reduce by 10%... Dayviiid, probation was reduced by over 30% as a result of the tr project that so many labour MPs did NOTHING about.
As for the Lammy Review:
"Recommendation 31: The MoJ should bring together a working group to discuss the barriers to more effective sub-contracting by CRCs. The working group should involve the CRCs themselves and a cross-section of smaller organisations, including some with a particular focus on BAME issues."
"Recommendation 32: The MoJ should specify in detail the data CRCs should collect and publish covering protected characteristics. This should be written into contracts and enforced with penalties for non-compliance."
Endorsement.
He's been outspoken against privatisation of the land registry & NHS, but probation? Only post-tr as far as I can see: "tories were warned", "told you so", etc.
“We are determined to back our hard-working probation staff by investing up to £700 million.”
DeleteIf that were true, probation staff would see it in their pay. They don’t.
Where is our 25% pay rise? Even that wouldn’t make a dent in £700 million.
The reality is this: not a single probation officer, probation services officer, administrator or receptionist will see a penny of that money.
Everyone knows where it’s really going, on contracts, consultants, IT platforms, licences and “transformation” schemes that make life harder, not easier.
Government hides behind the language of “investment”, and probation leaders nod it through, while frontline staff are left underpaid, overworked and blamed when the system fails.
This isn’t backing probation staff. It’s spending money around them, over them, and without them, then having the nerve to call it support for “hard working probation staff”.
Piss off !!
Yes your right I agree. I don't hear a word lammy say though because we can all see a thicko when they jump out . Over paid over promoted provided for as as the worst example of special accelerated help looks like. The problem is it shows. It will mean more women will be brutalised or murdered. We know partners commit the worst crimes while women and children do the running away. These problems need more resources directly. Womens refuges compromised and it's the men that need the control. We may not see the pay I don't doubt but what we never see is any professional response from Napo to these pr stunts. In my day we had a professional committee that was hot on it with immediate response to all media. Harry fletcher was contributing with his nurtured network of specialised officers and there was balance of what these proposals would mean on the ground for staff. Guess what not a word from useless Napo . Nothing as usual Lawrence do the job your paid for or fu#@ off will you.
Delete"Today, I am thrilled to announce an expansion of Justice Transcribe: The Ministry of Justice will equip a thousand more probation officers with this technology so that they can be more human, not less."
DeleteDavid, that is one fucking creepy skincrawling statement from the ai speech bot in the marketing dept at techbros inc.
"so they can be more human" - did you really say that? seriously?
How about giving the 7,500 or so struggling frontline probation staff a straight £5k pa rise across all grades? That's less than the average "bonus" the useless mofos at hmpps get for utter failure, delivering nothing but misery, crisis & catastrophe.
That might *actually* help the hard working probation staff feel "more human" without having to worry about cost of living, to eat, to stay warm.
And what will that cost you? £40million? £50million tops with oncosts? That's only a fraction of the £700million budget you magicked up for your special de-humanising project, and an even smaller fraction of the cash gifted to the privateer grifters during those tr years. Seeing as the previous govt refused to claim that cash back, maybe you could stand by your claims of "backing the hard working probation officers" & re-balance the books?
"Today, I am thrilled to announce an expansion of Justice Transcribe: The Ministry of Justice will equip a thousand more probation officers with this technology so that they can be more human, not less."
ReplyDeleteYes that's another cracking statement to go with that recent MoJ press release:-
"Prison building boom to make streets safer"
I can sense a festive competition evolving.........
https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/ministry-of-justice-moves-to-teams-phones
Delete'Getafix
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has begun the roll out of the Teams Phone solution to its staff, and is planning to sign a contract for a new Justice Video Service early next year.
DeleteIts Justice Digital team has outlined the plans in a blogpost on the progress of the voice, video and integration (VVI) elements of its Evolve portfolio of workplace technology projects.
This includes breaking up the services within VVI into small, more specialist chunks under different contracts.
Evolve Voice has involved a move away from using fixed cable desk phones to Microsoft Teams Phone to enable staff to work from different sites working with integration partner Insight Direct.
So far, the solution has been made available to over 900 users across 50 sites, and MoJ has signed contracts with Specialist Computer Centres to supply and maintain the devices needed, such as Teams certified handsets, and manage the infrastructure.
All of MoJ’s users are expected to migrate to the solution by the end of 2027.
He also reported that the BT has completed the installation of the cloud based Genesys contact centre solution across all MoJ’s eight organisational units.
mired in acronyms & even more bullshit
Delete"MoJ is planning to upgrade its on-premise video systems with a new cloud based solution under a Justice Video Service contract."
justice digital
vvi
evolve portfolio
genesys
And even more contracts signed to 'save money':
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has agreed on a contract with Atos IT Services = £58.5million
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has retained Harris Computer Corporation for the support of NOMIS = £21.3million... this is three years after the digital team at HM Prison and Probation Service indicated that there is a long term plan to replace NOMIS due to poor performance
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has announced a big expansion in the use of electronic monitoring to keep track of offenders = backed by a new investment of £100 million
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has agreed on a 10-year, £163 million contract with Vodafone for wide area network (WAN) services
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has launched an innovation challenge aimed at combating the threat of drones to prisons... it will provide successful applications with £60,000 each over 12 weeks to develop proof of concept solutions... govt is already investing £10 million on anti-drone measures for prison
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has signed management consultancy Baringa Partners = £18.3 million for the Synergy Programme
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has awarded data products company Modular Data a new contract to support, maintain, and enhance the HM Prison and Probation Service Data Hub = £9.9million
* Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has agreed on a contract with CGI IT to provide a digital service desk function = £35million
* The Evolve Video project will complete the disaggregation of VVI. A new Justice Video Service contract is due to be signed in early 2026
_____________________________________________
MoJ: "As we move into 2026, our tech strategy has four ‘pillars’ and the changes we’ve made have laid the foundations for them"
Also MoJ: "They will operate within a capability model consisting of five pillars"
______________________________________________
MoJ seeks tech for ‘prison outside a prison’
https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/moj-seeks-tech-for-prison-outside-a-prison
______________________________________________
and loads more crap here:
https://mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/
forgot to add up - the above contracts alone total £half-a-billion; not much chance of a pay rise then
DeleteCalling a transcription tool a way to make staff “more human” says a lot about how the problem is being framed. A workforce crisis is being treated as a technical one.
ReplyDeleteNo one is against better IT. But technology doesn’t create humanity in a system that strips people of time, stability and professional space. At best it saves minutes. More often, those minutes are simply converted into higher expectations and tighter monitoring.
What’s striking is how readily money appears for tools, platforms and surveillance, while pay, caseloads and retention remain “too difficult”. If the aim is to support humane practice, the most effective interventions are well known and consistently avoided.
You can digitise the work, but you can’t automate trust, judgement or morale.
How can you make a human more human . Oh add a digital tool called ai which is never going to be human. Are we all mentally ill in some way . If the management want a more human workforce free us of it ai computers . Let reign relationships of social value replant the infrastructure that people matter and allow us to return to tied and proven methods of engagement will result in positive change or just pretend the machines are better thinkers . Oxymoron and lammy your the moron part. We are all had it.
DeleteYes ok a bit of reality probation staff are a mixed bag and some regulation and direction is overdue given the way some of them have behaved in the past.
DeleteWe've been regulated and directed to death over the last 10 plus years and it has got worse and worse, that's the point . And every large organisation is a mixed bag numbnuts, we're humans not robots
DeleteToo many corrupted by authority too many bullies too many favoured to much crap fished onto other good people. Too many complaining staff too many self important way to many selfish expectations entitled staff . Long drawn out self righteous complaints inquiries bullshit. Not going back to that crap are we now you do as your told work your days get held to account for sickness abused and required to deliver some uniformity . Good news .
DeleteRevisiting this paper from 2016 may help the discussion going on.
ReplyDelete"The essence of probation."
Its a lengthy read, but seems even more relevent today then 10 years ago.
https://mmuperu.co.uk/bjcj/articles/the-essence-of-probation/
'Getafix
At the ‘conversation with Paul Senior’ event in January 2016 at Kendal the group had to go back to first principles to test out a basic proposition – whether probation, however it is defined, has a place in 21st century responses to crime and any societal attempts to rehabilitate, reform, reintegrate and/or restore offenders back into communities. If we could agree the core principles of what constitutes ‘probation’ and also understand and articulate the boundary issues, would most societies driven by human rights and equality of opportunity for all its citizens inevitably seek to create some form of probation? This was the proposition. This has been seen to happen for instance in recent years in Eastern Europe where the limitations of a penal system based just on imprisonment has led to the creation of services in the community akin to probation. Or is an opposite proposition equally possible that there is nothing universal about probation and we are seeing its death knell in the UK? The changes wrought by Transforming Rehabilitation have suggested that the very future of probation is at risk. Commentators have talked about the death knell of probation (Senior, 2014); questions of legitimacy attendant upon privatisation (Deering & Feilzer, 2015); or the most radical change since it was introduced a little over a century ago (Newburn, 2013). This is the core question at the heart of this paper, is there a future for probation and, if so, what defines its essence?
DeleteAlso worth a read:- https://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2021/10/probation-reflections.html
DeleteToday is ‘Thoughtful Tuesday and most certainly the above shared by ‘Getafix and JB are very thought provoking indeed. Wishing all those across Probation a kind and good day . Long May this discussion, reflection and dialogue continue. IanGould5
DeleteProf Paul Senior don’t just write, reflect and recommend on probation himself, he enabled others to do the same.
Deletehttps://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2025/09/sobering-reflections.html?m=1
•didn’t
DeleteI knew Paul Senior well as a friend and colleague. He dedicated himself to our profession as a precedents and to the Probation Institute as his retirement project. He reached out to the blog but was taken aback by the vehemence of some of the reactions and comments. Looking back on it I think it was a shameful attack on one of our own. Some of his last messages to me were to encourage efforts to oppose unwelcome developments that led to his last writings about probation and to lament the fact that in a time when we should all have been united some seemed determined to be disparaging of their own profession and seemed more focused on picking fights with each other than using every means to bring pressure to bear on those in power. Publicly undermining and dismissing entire organisations that actually have a seat at the Probation negotiating table or are considered key stakeholders in shaping policy is a serious failing on our part or some might say deliberate sabotage of the checks and balances that exist. The probation profession should be ashamed of how it has treated those who truly tried and are trying to support the profession. Stop attacking those who support us. We have a divided HQ that kowtows to ministers, unions we have not supported, an institute we have not properly supported and tried to discredit people who have often given freely of their time and energy to try to save and preserve the profession . We have poor mainstream media engagement not because no one speaks up but because they see disconnects and division to the point we are just any other disgruntled workers in a government department rather than as a profession. We have been abandoned by our natural allies and friends as irrelevant has beens who see us as a lost cause obsessed with scoring own goals and launching personal attacks on easy targets - a sure sign of an occupation in terminal decline. Even if certain unpopular leaders were removed who would stick around to be denigrated. Good people have walked away from us as toxic. Judy McKnight and any other previously lauded chair or leader wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole these days.
Deletehttps://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/694024f9adb5707d9f33d7a4/2025_12_16_-_Recall__v12_.pdf
ReplyDeleteRecall, review and re-release of recalled prisoners
Mandatory requirements and guidance for prison and probation staff involved in the recall, review and re-release of recalled prisoners.
Updated today... the torture never stops.
AI can now create better versions of people now so offenders will literally be able to chat with an AI version of their PO. At first they may resent chatting to a computer but when they realise that the AI version has so many more empathetic skills, interpersonal skills, infinite time to spend with them, knowledge, resources and can fill out forms for them in seconds, can speak to them in their native tongue, engage in indepth discussion about any topic they are interested in they will soon their change their minds and happily come to the office to chat to an AI PO...
ReplyDeleteBeen said already long time back yet now your seeing it come in no one is objecting strategically . It's too late Napo won't do the job you need as a union.
DeleteNever too late mate come on let's get some traction going.
DeleteJust had a conversation in the pub, and I quote,
ReplyDelete"Probation have become like parking attendents,, they don't care what reason you happen to have parked there, what the circumstances are,, you're getting a ticket anyway!"
'Getafix
Brilliant
DeleteIts not brilliant at all; its fucking tragic.
DeleteOn a shakespearean level of tragedy its 11.
Decades of effort reduced to "you're getting a ticket anyway".
An ethos, a vocation, a career path dismantled in the blink of an eye by a series of overblown egos, puffed up politicians & their collective greed, wrapped up in an explicit trend towards fascism that's as plain as the cowardly yellow pocket stuck to your windscreen.
The reading of the being more time humane to service users is being misunderstood. My view is that the comment was that ai would release practitioners to have more time to use with the service user . Meaning more human time than any further ai expansion of our humanity approaches to working with people. Any other misperception of this situation is wrong.
ReplyDeletePeople must realise AI is going to take over most jobs, especially in the west where most jobs are cognitive based and behind a screen, that it is not practical or sustainable for governments to keep billions of people on welfare indefinitely....the convid jabs were given to cull the global population because the powers that be knew this was coming for a long time and planned for it...
ReplyDelete"the convid [sic] jabs were given to cull the global population because the powers that be knew this was coming for a long time and planned for it... "
DeleteSerious question: Do you work in a probation role?
I’m not opposed to AI or better technology. Used properly, it can reduce some of the most tedious administrative work. But what’s being sold here isn’t a tool, it’s a narrative, and that’s where the problem lies.
ReplyDeleteAutomatic transcription might save minutes, but probation’s crisis is not caused by slow typing. Practitioners lack time to think, time to listen and space to build relationships. Those are not technical problems and no amount of software will fix them.
We’ve seen this before. Efficiency gains are promised, and any time saved is immediately absorbed into higher caseloads, tighter performance targets and more scrutiny. Work doesn’t reduce, it expands. Digitisation makes that expansion easier to justify and easier to monitor.
What’s striking is how readily money appears for platforms, licences and partnerships, while pay stagnates, caseloads remain unmanageable and retention continues to slide. If this investment were really about supporting humane practice, it would show up in salaries, enforceable caseload limits and protected professional space, not just another system layered onto an already stretched workforce.
AI can support probation work. It cannot replace judgement, continuity or trust. Dressing technology up as a way to make staff “more human” feels less like insight and more like marketing.
I would much rather see legislation that properly values probation staff through decent pay, terms and conditions than this performative, headline-friendly attempt to lump us in with “law enforcement officers” who “take off a uniform.” Probation is not the police or the prison service. Conflating the three is either ignorance or political convenience.
ReplyDeleteThis is classic “tough on crime” posturing: symbolic punishment-led politics dressed up as protection for workers, while ignoring the reality of chronic underpay, poor terms and unsustainable workloads in probation. It is the complete opposite of the evidence-based, preventative approach that actually makes communities safer and the opposite of what has been argued repeatedly here. Lammy clearly didn’t read the Open Letter or Guest Blog 107.
Killers who target police, prison and probation officers to get whole life orders - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/whole-life-order-prison-david-lammy-lenny-scott-b2885457.html
This result means ordinary Unison members are at long last taking charge of our union
DeleteLet's hope Ben priestly takes heed for doing nothing for probation staff alongside nafo.
What do they do all day when they are not saving probation? Do they publish their diaries?
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3wdv7rg67o
ReplyDelete- Left-wing candidate beats Starmer ally
- Andrea Egan has been elected as the leader of Unison
- Ms Egan, who was expelled from the Labour Party three years ago, beat the union's current general secretary Christina McAnea, an ally of the prime minister.
"We’re not going anywhere until HMP Bronzefield accept an ambulance transfer for Qesser to get the emergency healthcare she urgently needs."
ReplyDeleteSeems one of the hunger strikers, Qesser Zuhrah, is seriously unwell & its believed sodexo @ hmp bronzefield + lammy are refusing to provide an ambulance or urgent medical care.
This is how hmpps & their agents treat anyone who they see as 'problematic'.
Not really that situation has been created . I would want an ambulance to be traveling to an emergency before Uber rolling to self inflicted. Also there are plenty of private ambulance services let the cause fund it. With people dying waiting for stressed ambulances or laying in one till a bed comes free in a hospital this is just another outrage to many people .
Deletegoodness me, what a state this country is in: covid was used to cull the global population because of the rise of AI & we should let peaceful protesters die in prison? Oh dear...
DeleteIf your in prison is because of something criminal. If you decide to peacefully protest that's a matter for them. The people in this country feel poorer subjected to massive restrictions on liberty what we can say think or do. Pay huge taxes and have to see people on the streets drug addicts and police in offices instead of on the streets. The monitoring of facial cameras traffic phones and everything else costs an absolute fortune and yet we have no health no dentistry and sit in the cold with fuel at record hi. Most people think nowadays diversity is a weakness and cost more than it could ever contribute. At this time of Christmas people are looking inward less charitably and veterans on the streets homeless disabled should all be looked at first as a priority anything else is falling off the popularity equality radar no doubt this will upset the genteel but there is a wider alternative view that some of this money should be redirected to those that have a right not some other countries conflicts . Oh dear indeed.
Delete1334 I read you have no idea on priorities and allocation of resources to appropriate need. 1416 no agreement with you either essential services have been shrunk it was called austerity it's here to stay.
ReplyDeleteits worse than at first feared... "austerity is here to stay" - except that it isn't true for everyone, is it?
DeleteCertainly not for those with indecent wealth, those with handsome salaries & bonuses that dwarf most probation salaries, those who have scammed & lied & stolen from the public purse to line their own pockets at the expense of everyone else.
Of the SCS staff employed by HMPPS 2024/25:
57 senior civil service staff received £80,000+ each year, some with bonuses on top.
35 of those earned over £100,000 a year
2 earned over £150k
£55,000 was paid out in bonuses to 3 people
All had/have very generous pension pots.
664 hmpps exit packages were agreed at a cost of £27.2million
242 cost between £50k & £100k
35 cost in excess of £100,000
a further 4 cost in excess of £150,000
"essential services have been shrunk" - yep, to ensure the chumocracy lives the life it chooses.
Yet another ‘Theatre of Dreams’ Teams from the Probation Operations Directorate POD should it not be rebranded as Prophet of Doom? The ivory tower vision is a great self back slapping performance.Their success list is a lot longer than mine, I must be missing something, better flash up Co-pilot for an explanation.
ReplyDeletehttps://www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lvwkpdg0yo.amp?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17659881062271&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
ReplyDeleteI don't recall seeing this in the recent sentencing bill.
Deletehttps://www.gov.uk/government/news/life-behind-bars-for-police-prison-and-probation-killers
'Getafix
The emergency worker element is already enshrined in law:
Delete"An MP has secured a ministerial meeting to discuss urgent action to protect probation officers, after a constituent told him she was "frightened for her safety at work".
Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock Calum Miller said in the House of Commons that the probation officer told him her colleague in the Oxford probation office had been stabbed multiple times by somebody under their supervision three weeks ago.
Miller called for the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 to be extended to probation officers."
"We will do everything we can to keep our probation officers safe," Lammy said.
DeleteThere you go a missed opportunity to set the health and safety for staff in train. Napo could should read this blog. They could have insisted to see the report condem the failing management and taken legal advice to action to immidiatly ensure staff office protections. There was a list done on the blog it was ok. Instead nothing from Napo and a liberal MP comes to help us. You couldn't make this up.
DeleteThere are some folk who do their best to do our profession down by constantly posting things like ‘not a word from Napo or the PI’ and they are not members of either and sometimes not even POs or ever done anything for the profession . Then when Napo or the PI say or do anything publicly it is shot down. Try supporting their efforts. How exactly are those organisations going to be perceived by others if we treat them with contempt ? They are diminished through lack of our support and discouragement hardly motivates them. We will never achieve reform by attacking our representatives and supporters. Jim has always supported both the Probation Institute and the TUs and anyone else that supports the profession. We should do likewise and refrain from perpetuating criticisms and negativity. Unity is strength The real villains are not our TUs and the PI but rather those who seek to divide us and manipulate the narrative. Do you seriously think that there are not people paid to use every means to sow seeds of doubt and keep us divided including using social media. It works well enough to thwart industrial action and ensure we never have a strong negotiating position regarding pay. Think about it.
DeleteYour deluded Napo and the. Pi are exactly why we are derided. The pi a grayling Wannabees nuisance of older egos.
DeleteNapo well Napo has a record of zero achievement and compliance you need to stop misleading we need radical overhaul or face the new regime as set to get worse.
08:52 How exactly will you achieve radical overhaul by undermining the only people who speak directly to the employers and decision makers? Napo is one of three unions that are recognised and the other two unions UNISON and GMB Scoop are much bigger and have far greater resources. It puzzles me that all the ire is directed at Napo that has been much undermined by the probation workforce the majority of whom are not members of a union. Lawrence and Cockburn have done everything the dwindling membership have asked of them. They voted not to strike and the other two unions didn't even have the stomach to suggest it. Encouraging union membership and getting more active as a member is surely more likely to bring about change than ranting from the sidelines. I left Probation some time ago as it is no longer worthy of the name and certainly not the proud service I joined. It is not the only service that has declined and gone the dogs. We are living in crap Britain where the likes of Farrage sit in our Parliament. All those I know who left are happier and in many cases better off financially. In the words of my SPO ‘If you think it’s all shite then leave’ She had my resignation by the end of the day. I started in a new job two weeks later and felt a lot better.
DeleteAndrew Bridges speaking to the Justice Committee on rehabilitation is a must-watch. Although there to discuss APs, he clearly set out what is really impacting probation practice and what’s needed on capacity and caseloads. Set this against the nonsense we often hear nowadays from unions, or the weak, cautious language from the Probation Institute and so-called probation academic, and the contrast is stark. Calm, measured and using every opportunity to advocate for probation, it was a reminder of Napo at its best. He could easily have been the author of Guest Blog 107 and the discussions that followed, it was that on point and that helpful.
ReplyDeletehttps://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/2a1f84fa-aced-4864-9528-9b51b3e772c7?in=14:38:52
Andrew is of course an active Fellow of the Probation Institute. Well done Andrew https://www.probation-institute.org/probation-institute-fellows/andrew-bridges
DeleteMy next door neighbour is a member of the Labour Party, that means nothing either. But imagine the potential impact if the probation institute also spoke truly about what probation needs instead of it’s “we’re a charity we can’t be political” stance.
Delete08:06 That was the positions year ago but things have changed.
Deletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lvwkpdg0yo.amp
ReplyDeleteAn MP has secured a ministerial meeting to discuss urgent action to protect probation officers, after a constituent told him she was "frightened for her safety at work".
DeleteLiberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock Calum Miller said in the House of Commons that the probation officer told him her colleague in the Oxford probation office had been stabbed multiple times by somebody under their supervision three weeks ago.
Thames Valley Police confirmed the case is linked to the attempted murder charge of a man in Oxford in November. It did not previously disclose the victim's occupation.
The Probation Service said it would "always push for the strongest punishments against perpetrators".
Miller called for the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 to be extended to probation officers.
It already covers prison and custody officers.
In response, Justice Secretary David Lammy confirmed that the Prisons Minister would meet Miller for a discussion.
He also pointed to a government announcement made the previous day confirming that murders connected to a police, prison or probation officer's current or former duties would carry a whole life order starting point, ensuring offenders face the harshest possible sentence.
"We will do everything we can to keep our probation officers safe," Lammy said.
Miller said securing the meeting was "a welcome step, but what matters more is action".
"Probation officers are on the frontline of public protection, yet they are excluded from the protections that rightly apply elsewhere in the justice system," he said.
"My constituent came to me because she is scared for her safety at work."
He added that extending the Assaults on Emergency Workers Act to probation officers "would be a clear and long overdue step towards parity between these crucial service workers".
TVP confirmed that the victim had been discharged from hospital.
Thanks for sharing Calum Miller MP's comments. Please see some resources below I hope will be helpful.
This is our up-to-date spokesperson line and guidance on the Oxford attack. I hope you appreciate we are limited in what we can say because of the ongoing police investigation.
A Probation Service spokesperson said: "Police are investigating an attack on a probation officer in Oxford, and our thoughts are with the member of staff, their family and their colleagues.
"We will not tolerate assaults on our hard-working staff and will always push for the strongest punishments against perpetrators."
How about the next time Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock Calum Miller is in the House of Common they call for probation officers and all staff to get a long overdue 25% pay rise. And keep the emergency worker legislation and stronger punishments, instead put a security guard in every office.
DeleteNearly 40 Labour MPs have warned the prime minister they are not prepared to support proposals to limit jury trials.
DeleteIn a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, the MPs, largely but not wholly from the left of the party, say the plans are "not a silver bullet" to reducing the backlog in trials.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93w771g14go
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3enzk2dwl9o
ReplyDelete'Police turned me from victim to offender'
That article is deeply troubling because it exposes a fundamental unfairness in how power operates in the system. A young person reports being assaulted and ends up sanctioned for violence he did not admit to, did not understand and was misinformed about the consequences of accepting. That is not justice. It is compliance secured through imbalance of knowledge, authority and fear.
DeleteWhat makes this worse is that the burden of error falls entirely on the individual, not the institution. The resolution sits quietly on a record, potentially shaping future opportunities, while the original harm goes unresolved. Even when the mistake is acknowledged, the damage to trust is already done.
This matters for probation because we deal daily with the downstream consequences of exactly this kind of process. People arrive on supervision having “agreed” to outcomes they did not fully understand, often under pressure, often without real choice. Behaviour rooted in fear, self protection or confusion is then managed as risk or non compliance.
When systems prioritise speed, disposal and throughput over fairness and understanding, probation is left to enforce decisions that were flawed from the start. That is not just unjust for individuals, it actively undermines engagement, legitimacy and public safety.
That case shows how pressure and process can override fairness long before probation becomes involved. A victim leaves carrying a sanction he did not admit to or properly understand, because compliance was easier than challenge.
DeleteProbation does not undermine justice by enforcing such outcomes. It becomes the point at which their consequences surface. Earlier decisions are treated as settled fact, regardless of how they were reached, and supervision is left to manage the fallout.
When speed and closure replace understanding, legitimacy quietly drains away. What follows is enforcement without trust and predictable failure.
“It’s been 334 days since Napo submitted its pay claim to probation leaders.”
ReplyDeletehttps://napomagazine.org.uk/334-days-on-where-the-probation-pay-campaign-stands/
Napo doesn’t publish comments it doesn’t like. Reps can’t, or won’t, answer basic questions. Probation “leaders” say nothing either. So I’ll ask this here, because this seems to be treated like a secret. Please pass on to Napo and it’s General Secretary, Ian Lawrence.
What pay rise has Napo actually asked for? What percentage increase?
What has the government offered so far?
What percentage increase?
Why is there such a delay, and why has it taken 334 days to get nowhere?
We’re repeatedly told that a union is only as good as its members. If that’s true, then Napo is demonstrably worse than its members. By its own account, it has waited 334 days without securing a response. It balloted members in August, arguably the worst possible time, when many staff are on leave and disengaged.
In contrast, look at what probation staff and former practitioners are doing without union leadership. I scan this blog and see Guest Blog 107 directly challenging probation leaders and ministers, a probation officer speaking from the heart. I read an Open Letter to probation leaders, again speaking truth plainly. I watched Andrew Bridges, former probation officer and HMIP inspector, give compelling evidence to the Justice Committee on why caseloads and resources are crippling probation practice:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/2a1f84fa-aced-4864-9528-9b51b3e772c7?in=14:38:52
I read similar contributions from an SPO who also submitted written evidence to the Justice Committee. I read a retired SPO describing how he is personally lobbying MPs on probation’s behalf. I read the anarchist comments, the thoughtful analysis, the intelligent pleas, all echoing what is said daily in probation offices across the country.
If any of these people are Napo members, then Napo is clearly not as effective as its membership. It is so ineffective that it speaks to a prison magazine, Inside Time, or socialist oriented newspapers nobody reads about the probation crisis while doing little to resolve it:
Once again, this union, Napo, formerly the National Association of Probation Officers, has spent 334 days waiting for a response and then informs members, exactly one week before Christmas, that there will be no pay rise for now. !
That isn’t strategy. That isn’t leadership. And it certainly isn’t representing the urgency facing probation staff. I won’t even bother ask what’s it doing about getting us security guards in each office!
❤️
Delete12:12, this is the claim as broadcast to members in February of this year. I think I predicted at the time ( on this blog) that NAPO would settle for 2%. Oh, how optimistic that seems today.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.napo.org.uk/sites/default/files/JTU%2002-2025%20Probation%20Pay%20Claim%202025_0.pdf
2% is pathetic. Compare that to doctors received the largest pay rises of any public sector employees over the last three years - totalling nearly 30%.
DeleteI made reference (again on this blog) earlier in the year about the BMA, Birmingham bin workers and one other group of workers who were taking industrial action in support of their terms and conditions only to be poo-pooed by the one person who responded.
DeleteSometimes there needs to be pain before gain.
Silence creates frustration, not unity.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, staff safety is being framed almost entirely through punishment after the fact. Whole life orders and emergency worker status may satisfy a political narrative, but they do nothing to prevent harm before it happens. Safe buildings, security, manageable caseloads and time to assess risk properly would do far more to protect staff than retrospective sentencing announcements.
What people seem to be reacting to here is a pattern. Pay is delayed, safety is symbolised, and responsibility is deflected. When unions and leadership are cautious or opaque in that context, members will inevitably look elsewhere to be heard. That isn’t division for its own sake. It’s what happens when urgency on the ground isn’t matched by urgency at the top.
Who remembers this http://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2021/02/who-is-to-blame.html
ReplyDeleteWhat that 2021 post reminds us of is how long this blame culture has been embedded, and how little has really changed. The shift described there from examining systemic failure to isolating individual culpability did not happen by accident. It was designed. Management Oversights, action plans and post-hoc compliance checks became tools not for learning but for liability management.
DeleteAlison Moss’s experience matters because it exposes the asymmetry. When something goes wrong, scrutiny travels downwards. Policy, resourcing, workload, training and political decisions remain largely untouched, while individuals closest to the work are left exposed. That is not accountability. It is scapegoating.
The question “who is to blame?” has never been answered honestly. Successive governments reshaped probation, hollowed out experience, inflated caseloads and narrowed professional discretion, then acted surprised when tragedies occurred. Responsibility was never going to land upwards.
Seeing this resurfaced now alongside current debates about SFOs, enforcement and reform feels depressingly familiar. We are still operating in a system that prefers procedural reassurance and individual blame over confronting structural risk.
Until that changes, probation will continue to carry responsibility without power, and individuals will continue to pay the price for failures that were designed into the system.
Very well said my friend. Both insightful and to the point. That is the reality we are working in.
DeleteAlison Moss’s book was a damming portrayal of collusion, pulling ranks and the sheer blame culture is something that has not changed. In fact made worse since TR. the fight continues for those victims of SFO’s who were poorly supervised not because of malpractice by a probation officer but because of structural weakness in the system. The important element missing was the supervisory relationship.
Delete“334 days. No offer.
ReplyDeleteIn our final pay podcast of 2025, Ian Lawrence and Ben Cockburn speak candidly about the stalled pay claim, the truth about the 12% ask, and why member engagement will shape what happens next.”
Napo on X. Pathetic!
What Napo are effectively saying is that while members’ subscriptions have continued to be spent, it is now 334 days since the pay claim was submitted and there has been no offer. Reframing the issue around “member engagement” or restating the 12% ask does not alter the outcome: the process has delivered nothing. If pay was truly a priority, it would have been a demand backed by leverage; instead, there appears to be none. Merry Christmas.
Deletehttps://napomagazine.org.uk/probation-pay-2025-the-latest-position/
DeleteNot good enough from Napo.
Deletelammy & the cobbler are committed to openai
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd6xz1jv4ezo
"Former chancellor George Osborne joins OpenAI"
oh. so what's this nonsense about a chumocracy?
The themes running through these comments are not accidental. Whether the issue is SFOs or pay, the same pattern repeats itself. When something goes wrong, responsibility flows downwards. When processes stall or fail, accountability dissipates.
ReplyDeleteAlison Moss’s case exposed how blame culture operates after tragedy. The current pay dispute shows a similar dynamic. A clear ask is made, months pass without an offer, and the narrative shifts towards member engagement rather than leverage or outcome. Different issue, same structure.
At the same time, political attention and funding continue to gravitate towards technology, partnerships and reform language that sound decisive but leave fundamentals untouched. Supervision quality, pay, workload and professional space remain unresolved.
The pattern is clear: responsibility without power below, power without consequence above, in a system that protects itself first and fails those asked to hold its risk.
I hope a few will read the piece shared by 13.22 which has been posted on NAPO X and Facebook and if able comment and then share with your MP. I acutely aware that it may not make any difference but, the only certainty is to do nothing. Iangould5
ReplyDelete334 days and no offer, no movement, no outcome. We already know the employer is the problem, but representation is judged by results. This is not good enough from Napo.
DeleteThe flim flam man Ian useless Lawrence. Just ask him did Napo pay his pay increase this year or not. Also why in the hell does he take a raise when his job is to negotiate ours. Last when we got paid historically it was only then napos pay talks could follow.
DeleteYou have no industrial muscle Thats why the employer treats you with contempt , docile 20 something poorly educated , non politically aware criminology graduates who live at home won’t be in the union or would cross the picket line , the rebate in general about ethos and practices is useless over the years due to rubbish training focused on process and the punitive culture the service is dominated by those who are risk obsessed punitive and uncaring I am a defence solicitor and every day I see requests to activate Pps or ssos for the homeless mentally ill for the most silly infringements , Psrs are useless and recommend jail for everything , if you want to help people get another job
ReplyDeleteAnd there's absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that @09:40 is most definitely a defence solicitor. Well done @09:40. You go girl.
DeleteCuts both ways.
DeleteEvery day I see defence solicitors and barristers turning up unprepared, barely having read the papers, telling clients “it’ll be fine” while having no grip on the risks or consequences and pitching them against probation officers. I’ve watched some literally read from PSRs in court because probation has done the actual work. Others try to cosy up to magistrates or parole boards, briefing against probation behind the scenes.
Some are arrogant and inexperienced, fresh out of the LPC. Others have been around so long they seem detached from what the law even says now. And most talk about “rehabilitation” only where an invoice can be raised, not where long-term change or public safety is involved.
When jury trials were suspended — silence. When legal aid was cut — outrage. That says a lot.
So no, we’re not on the same side. But lazy caricatures don’t fix a broken system. And frankly, this doesn’t read like it’s coming from a practising solicitor at all.
The last few comments attack the solicitor why oh why. This blog sometimes fails to manage itself with the nonsense of a contained debate will bring about change no no no it won't. The employers know that your current union secretary won't do anything so they don't need to. It is also a fact that by doing nothing they save a mint. The later is correct in what's said yet instead of looking to see what that means how probation is perceived you all attack the well place comments. The discussion groups MP massaging and the nonsense there may be a some fray is a washout and has been peeled down this route for a long time stop it. What should happen is at the least all staff get monthly update on what Napo are doing where are their reports to members from committees where are the guoldlines and entitlements list Napo don't do anything and in it's dysfunction the membership are not mobilised not centered and not respected. Pay will come at some stage but if your not directing the toy box conductor your not going to move anything yet while your stuck constipated with that useless turd you are vulnerable to the moj and it's in criticised position. Napo are not working for you Napo are just not working.
DeleteNapo are not working for you
Delete- We know
Bravo the defence solicitor for telling it as it is.
ReplyDeleteHardly!
DeleteRead the psr ? Not if they want their clients locking up they don’t psrs say nothing positive just negative i read one the other day saying a shoplifter posed a high risk of ‘harm’ to shops !
DeleteWhen we wrote psr a long time ago it was strictly known that we were not allowed to recommend custody.
DeleteI remember this too, but it wasn’t universal. I recall similar “rules” around suspended sentences and breaches, and more recently interference around parole and recall recommendations as well. Practice on PSRs differed by area, and practitioners should never have been told what to write. The better approach has always been to set out the impact and relevance of all sentencing options and, where one is clearly the most suitable, say so and let the court decide.
DeleteRegularly see solicitors reading from psrs.
Indeed you are right and I recall that too however much of our practices changed alongside the pressures stemming from London. As soon as a prince change occured it rippled. London's mistakes always wave outwards and we all fell over because of them and the assertions .
DeleteLaw and the LPC are high quality professional qualifications not the PQIP correspondence course run by the university of Skegness
ReplyDeleteYes the same PQiP correspondence course that many people with high-quality law degrees sign up to complete. That rather defeats your point, but yes… round of applause.
DeleteNo does not. Criminology degree isn't a valuable qualification it will only be if some limited behavioural work. It needs a frame to work in . Pquip of no use in the toilet even.
DeleteNot law degrees from proper universities
ReplyDeletehttps://insidetime.org/newsround/approved-premises-managers-defend-high-rate-of-recall-to-prison/
ReplyDeleteBreach breach breach like Daleks
ReplyDeletebleat breach bleat breach bleat breach - dalek sheep?
Deletemerry xmas & happy new year, esp to iangould5 (who seems to be a pretty nice chap) & givin' it up for jim brown, who's patience has been tested to the max but who's determination is greater than anyone might have guessed.
ReplyDeleteAs it was mentioned I was just skimming through the book by Alison Moss, Senior Probation Officer, SFO's - Who Is To Blame? It was covered here at the time https://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2021/02/who-is-to-blame.html?m=1
What struck me was the reality of this statement;
“Hardly ever, if ever, are the higher levels of probation managers held to account.”
Thanks for everything keep contributing to the prison population here’s your 1%thanks lament
ReplyDeleteSimply wanting to wish Jim Brown and all those who both read and contribute to this blog a happy, kind and safe Christmas. Especially, all those who will be working across the festive period. Special thanks to JB for his relentless and heartfelt efforts and for ALL your continuing endeavours. Iangould5
ReplyDeleteThanks Ian! Happy Christmas.
DeleteWhat we can look forward to courtesy the cobbler & co as private prisons companies take it to the next level in usa
ReplyDeletehttps://theintercept.com/2025/12/19/ice-bounty-hunters-location-surveillance-geo-group/
"ICE Hires Immigrant Bounty Hunters From Private Prison Company GEO Group - BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of for-profit prison company GEO Group, will help ICE pinpoint the locations of immigrants.
The deal illustrates a strategy of vertical integration within GEO Group, which has found a growing line of business operating for-profit immigration detention centers under the second Trump administration. In this case, the corporation stands to be paid by the federal government to both find immigrants and then to imprison them.
Shares of GEO Group, which donated to both Trump’s reelection campaign and his inaugural fund, spiked following his 2024 victory. Trump’s return to office has proven fortuitous for GEO Group: The president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” earmarked $45 billion for jailing immigrants."
https://insidetime.org/ray-says/a-night-to-remember-a-year-to-forget/
DeleteA night to remember, a year to forget
DeleteIt is New Year’s Eve at the North Pole. As the wind whistles through his long white beard, an old man walks along a long, straight, road. In one hand he carries a long handled scythe, in the other an hour glass. He turns to walk down a path towards a small cottage, seeing smoke winding out of the chimney stack.
He approaches a small gate, and on it he reads a hand written notice. “Push off” it says in red letters. He pauses, but knows it cannot be aimed at him, so walks through, towards the front door. He can tell the house is occupied because he can hear a man and woman quietly talking, whilst Brahms Requiem plays sadly and mournfully in the background.
As he reaches the front door, ready to enter, he sees another sign, in large capital letters. “Go away. You cannot come in.” Again, clearly not for him, because he is Old Father Time 2025, and just about to join his long-term friends Father Christmas and Justitia, Lady Justice. They will have a couple of small drinks and a long conversation about the year that has gone, and the one to come, as his last hours on earth tick away until Baby Time 2026 shows up. They have met every year for as long as anyone can remember, and that is why he is here.
He opens the door, and walks in. Santa and Justitia look around. Santa looks furious. Justitia hisses: “Didn’t you read the signs? ’Push off. Go away, you can’t come in’. What did you think they meant?” Time is amazed. “Why don’t you want me here? You met all my predecessors, 2024. 23. 22, and so on, year after year. Why don’t you want me? Have you two got any reason you want to be alone? Father Christmas is a married man, Mrs Santa Claus and all that. Are you up to something frisky? That could be misconduct in a fairytale office.”
Father Christmas is furious. “Frisky?” he splutters. “Who the hell can feel frisky now after the year you have given us? Twelve months of absolute misery, and you think we are getting frisky. We just don’t want you around. You have spent 364 days causing problems, messed everything up, and now come here for drinks and a few laughs. Well, ho ho ho off.”
Justitia looked up. “Hang on Santa baby. You told me you had left your wife and invited me round for a bit of fun. Were you lying?” Father Christmas’ face goes as red as his large coat. He whispers to her. “Not at all, I am yours forever, but we better keep it quiet and think of the elves. Just let us get rid of Dad Time, his life will end in a couple of hours, and at least enjoy the last night of his disastrous reign. Let us not be too rude to him, and maybe he won’t tell anyone.”
He turns to the old man, points him towards a seat, asking: “OK then. What good have you done?” Dad Time pauses for a second: “Well we did finally see the last of the Royal family member formerly known as Prince, didn’t we?” The other two nod. That is certainly a hit with them. He continues: “And apparently, according to President Trump, eight major wars which no one had heard about have ended, thanks entirely to him. The ones people had heard of that were on his list, unfortunately seem to still be going on. He is apparently a worthy winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, whatever it is, with luck never to be heard of again.”
Justitia replies. “I suppose that is true, but for me it has been a dreadful year. Start with the court system. It is getting worse. People are stuck on remand for years, and the waiting list is growing. It is unfair on victims, and unfair on those locked up in jails.”
Santa speaks. “But apparently they are gaming the system by wanting to appear in front of juries.” Justitia looks at him with pity. “Don’t be a silly Santa. How are you gaming the system if you are going to end up behind bars while you wait years for your trial?”
She carries on: “The Justice Secretary, a passionate believer in juries in the past as they protect people from injustice, now wants to cut back on them, but it is all a bit confusing. He first wanted to scrap juries for even more trials, now is only scrapping it for some, then he says that actually there will still be lots of juries left, and that his department have not yet assessed the savings in time and money that will be made and won’t tell anyone what those are until the Bill arrives in the Spring. Whenever people are asked, jury trials are very much loved by the public. So getting rid of them makes no sense at all, politically or practically.
Delete“Then he confused me even more. For years people who really know, former judges, former justice secretaries, campaign groups, say that the reason prisons are so overcrowded is not because of people on short sentences, but because sentences got longer and longer. They also point out that someone about to commit a nasty and serious crime will not stop and think ‘Best not do this because instead of the 25 years I will be inside if I get caught, I might be there for 30.’ It does not work like that. So what does he announce just before Xmas? That there will be even longer sentences for some major crimes. Please make it make sense.
“As for prisons, the system is still in a terrible state, and the Government policy seems to be to cross their fingers and wait for AI to solve it. Well, I am quite good at using Chatbots now, and so I asked, ‘can you and AI fix the justice system?’ and it answered that they were going to enter that in their AI best Christmas joke of the year competition. Employ top quality admin staff, or the information being loaded into the AI system will be wrong and then they are totally and utterly screwed. Talking about being totally and utterly screwed, what do you reckon we are going to do next, Santa?”
Father Christmas is going rather red again at this hint, but composes himself and replies: “I get puzzled too. The Government has a Prisons Minister who knows what he wants to see and understands how the system works, but things are moving very slowly. The Justice Secretary has been a great advocate for ending unjust laws such as Joint Enterprise, and the Prime Minister said in Parliament very recently IPP is unfair, but nothing happens. I actually believe that they know what is needed, but are afraid that the media will tear them apart if they make positive changes. But if you are opposed by a reactionary political party, and there are a couple of those about, you do not beat them by trying to be more reactionary. Reactionary people will vote for the meanest group they can see, and meanwhile the people who want fairness and justice for all, will walk away from you too. Very strange politics.
“I would like to see the Government promoting the wonderful things people who have left prison actually do with their lives, not just earning a living or being with their families, but in supporting others leaving jail. There are so many of these in the world outside, quietly working away in their own time to stop others getting into trouble. Rarely mentioned in the papers, but if someone reoffends perhaps because they are homeless and cannot get work, it is everywhere. When I read that mince pies in HMP Bronzefield are evidence of a luxurious lifestyle, I despair.”
Santa and Justitia look at Old Father Time, who is by now asleep as his life is coming to an end as it gets near midnight. They feel a little guilty at having blamed him for a lousy 12 months, but not excessively guilty. After all, it was pretty lousy. They know Baby Time 2026 is on his way in an Uber, and think that for 2027 they might all be replaced by AI anyway, so they look at each other, hold hands, cuddle, and creep quietly into the bedroom. Justitia turns to Santa, smiles sweetly, and asks, “Do you want me to put my blindfold on tonight?”
There is no more to say, and certainly nothing more I wish to describe, apart from to wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our readers.
Happy Christmas 🎄 to you too Jim and happy blogging in 2026. I think we probably take your blog for granted a bit but many of us certainly appreciate all your efforts and would really miss the connection and ability to vent somewhat if it wasn't there. All the best and have a good break. We will see you on the other side once the sprouts and Christmas pudding is digested!
ReplyDeleteAnon 12:55 and all readers and contributors - many thanks for coming along on the journey despite all the tribulations and technical issues especially with bloody Virgin! I'm very happy to report that my oncology consultant rang me on Friday to say the most recent PET scan shows no sign of disease and I remain in full remission. I'm blessed that I discovered a lump early and the brilliant NHS were able to treat me both speedily and successfully. Happy Christmas and hopefully see you resume our journey in 2026.
DeleteCheers, Jim
Great news.
Deleteyaaaay!!!
DeleteGreat news for you Jim. Enjoy a happy Christmas and a joyful new year.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Jim and you will probably never know how many people this little blog of yours has helped over the years…..a heartfelt thank you !
ReplyDeleteThis:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-thematic-inspection-on-the-quality-of-services-delivered-to-young-adults-in-probation
is hmpps' response to a report published in Sept 2024:
https://cdn.websitebuilder.service.justice.gov.uk/uploads/sites/32/2025/05/The-quality-of-services-delivered-to-young-adults-in-the-Probation-Service.pdf
No doubt lessons will be learned... eventually?
Let’s not even pretend this is complicated. It isn’t. And HMPPS will learn nothing, because the Probation Service is being deliberately run to fail.
DeleteI don’t need to read HMPPS’s latest “response” to know exactly what it contains: vague commitments, recycled buzzwords, pilots, new IT, AI hype, and a refusal to address the single issue HMIP has repeatedly identified. Caseloads are unsafe and unmanageable and must be capped at an agreed number. Full stop. No algorithm, dashboard or “Workload Management Tool” can replace time, thinking and professional judgement. WMT, Prioritisation Frameworks, Caseload Management Support and every other number-crunching initiative are not workforce or workload planning, they are institutionalised denial.
Probation has also been systematically de-professionalised, from TR through Unification, OMiC, Probation Reset, FTR48 and whatever rebrand comes next. Instead of investing in professional standards, HMPPS has invented cheaper substitutes: “registered probation officer” status, endless mandatory training, downgraded officer training, stripped-back risk assessments and reports, and box-ticking competence frameworks that insult anyone who understands probation practice. If quality genuinely mattered, every probation officer and senior probation officer would be funded to obtain, upgrade or top-up to a recognised social work qualification: DipSW, CQSW/CETSW or an MA in Social Work, with annual registration to the Social Work Council. But HMPPS does not want a confident, highly qualified workforce. It wants one that is compliant, docile, replaceable and silent.
Pay tells the same story. Probation staff manage prolific offending, serious harm, safeguarding, domestic abuse, sexual offending and public protection every day. Yet they are paid less than comparable professionals. This is not an oversight by HMPPS or the Ministry of Justice. It is a choice.
The claim that “there is no money” is a straight lie. HMPPS has just burned around £700 million on tagging, AI fantasies and repeatedly failing IT contracts. There is always money for technology, consultants and contractors. There is never money for probation staff.
The unions have failed too, Napo, Unison and GMBScoop. A probation workforce drowning in risk, blame and impossible workloads should have unions on a war footing. Instead, we get inertia, muted statements and managed decline. Months after serious incidents in Preston and Oxford, there are still no security guards in every probation office. This was raised loudly and clearly, yet still ignored. I’ve read Guest Blog 107 multiple times and the Open Letter, shared with colleagues, passed to union reps, sent to my MP, yet here we still are
https://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2025/12/guest-blog-107.html?m=1
Then there are the so-called “friends of probation”. The Probation Institute, the Butler Trust and similar bodies need to stop congratulating HMPPS for crumbs while inspection after inspection describes a service that is unsafe, overstretched and ineffective.
HMIP has been crystal clear. The failures are structural, not individual.
This is not about lessons learned. It is about choices made. And until caseloads are capped, professional qualifications restored, pay fixed and staff properly funded, every “response” from HMPPS will remain exactly what it is now: another exercise in disrespect, denial and failure.
The only way to fix probation now is to break it up and make it the responsibility of local authorities as a welfare service and give all the punishment stuff to the police. That’s not likely to happen so our goose is cooked.
DeleteNo chance. That would be the death of probation. Youth services would take the 18–25s, while prolific and MAPPA offenders dumped into police-led “offender management”, and everyone else sold off to the highest bidder.
DeletePartnering with police and prisons, and becoming civil servants is the worst thing that has ever happened to probation. It stripped probation of its purpose, its voice, and its professional spine.
Probation can exist as a national service which is what it should be. Take it out of HMPPS and the civil service, let it stand alongside the MoJ but not within it, similar to HMIP. It’d work but only if those inside probation particularly our so-called leaders, decide what probation actually stands for. Until then, it will continue to drift, hollowed out by structures that were never designed to support rehabilitation.
We’ve already been here. Earlier this year there was a serious, well-argued publication on “shaping probation’s identity” which I thought signified a turning point for the PI. It raised a few eyebrows, then was ignored, and quietly forgotten just like everything else that challenges the current direction.
For a while I thought unions were going to stand up for us too. Wishful thinking at best, alas we remain far up the creek without a paddle and in a boat taking on water.
Season greetings
2211 spot on been saying the same for years if probation can be saved you need a radically different union leader a new approach a union challenging approach not the lay over dog tickle my tummy idiot. If your union is not taking the case forwards in a fight there is no case being made. Get rid of the sponging lap dog try and find a real dog with proper teeth.
Delete09:32 I think you mean this. Thanks for that. Skip to the conclusion and “Vision for the future” - sums it up pretty well.
DeleteShaping Probation’s Identity https://www.probation-institute.org/news/shaping-probations-identity
Festive greetings to all!
09:32 Too many vested interests for that to happen with a comfortable director group. Lammy is a lame duck who performs badly with slow witted aggression. Not the sharpest tool in the box by a long straw but with an uncanny knack for self preservation that unfortunately does not involve an playbook that includes any move that would involve smart decisions strategy and insight. You would have to give him the Ladybird version and read it to him repeatedly. Unfortunately no one around him would want to do it whilst their job is secure.
DeleteComment of the year above, will things change? Not a chance as stated above this is a managed decline to herald the introduction of Correctional Services, UK……..to all of its architects I say…..’Merry Christmas ya filthy animals’
ReplyDeleteAnon 22:11 sums it up. Things will change, but not for the better. They never do. A top up course to CQSW for qualified probation officers is easier and cheaper than you’d think. Never understood why they send managers on courses for those criminology masters at Cambridge or the rest of us on that pointless eLearning when a top up to social work would bring far more value.
DeleteWe’re already braced for the sentencing review and the structural “reforms” coming in 2026. As usual, this won’t be done with us, but done to us, and done over.
The people actually doing the work will have no say. Probation will drift on for another year, pulled from pillar to post, weakened by poor management, a muted professional voice, and the near-total absence of competent union representation.
Merry Christmas Jim and All.
Seasons all everyone acknowledges absent capacity absent union action absent union critique non existent union research. Napo dysfunction why is there no converted efforts to correct the failed Napo and it's leader.
DeleteAfter more than a decade of entrenched dysfunction, the idea that changing the General Secretary would somehow rescue Napo is fantasy. This is a union with branches across England and Wales, yet for over ten years not one has mounted a serious, sustained challenge or offered credible leadership while probation has been systematically hollowed out and attacked at local, regional and national levels.
DeleteThis failure is not personal, it is total. Absent capacity. Absent action. Absent critique. Absent research. What remains is a trade union that has watched its members be done to and done over, and called that representation.
The dysfunction and incompetence go far beyond the General Secretary, they are embedded throughout the structure. Napo reps in my region range from absent to shocking. When rot is this deep, you don’t prune, reform or reshuffle. You burn it down and start again.
Sorry to read this although rebellions were mounted with incredible able reps and some case Napo were out manoeuvred and massive internal problems arise. There was the certification officer case whereby Napo leader supported abuse of and failing of the Napo rules. He should have gone for that alone. I read on here he changed the rules at an AGM to cover his own back. Members buy into his incompetence lies and scandal. However it's is down to the leadership. Weak dishonest cowardly decisions are all made to ensure Napo staff get pUd and not do the job. Napo had an active national reps system to protect staff very well. Now this has been absorbed by Napo staff to give them something to do. Napo is homeless and you pay that secretary 10k almost pcm. That is ridiculous for what you get. Noted above. If the leader produced a monthly report on all activities you would currently get a blank sheet of paper. If you asked him to report a diary sheet it would list some phone calls and odd Tele meet but generally Napo have 15 staff sat at home they don't meet to save travel cost they don't run campaign no training with elected reps . Yet the function quality duties tasks and activities all dysfunctional. The only reason Lawrence survived is because some of the canny didn't want to pay home a 250k clause on dismissal or redundancy. Napo AGM changed the wrong rules. When Napo had it chance it elected wannabe diplomacy than a action taking capable others and that is where Napo voted for it's own decline. Napo needs unionists not pos to manage it's bureaucracy grade snobbish gaff s all the way through last 15 years at least. Sack Lawrence we can rebuild his salary alone could do some for members. Nothing but a con his time has to come. As the role has changed the need for Napo has declined given the direction.
DeleteWhat the young adults inspection and the subsequent response really underline is not a lack of insight, but a refusal to act on what has been known for years. The issues identified are familiar: unsafe caseloads, inconsistent relationships, limited professional space and a system that struggles to meet the developmental, trauma-related and maturity needs of young adults.
DeleteThe response follows a well-worn pattern. Findings about practice are translated into refreshed frameworks, governance arrangements and implementation plans, while the structural conditions that shape practice remain untouched. There is still no serious engagement with enforceable caseload limits, protected relational time or the level of training and professional autonomy required to work effectively with this cohort.
Young adults simply expose the system’s weaknesses more quickly. When supervision lacks continuity and depth, outcomes deteriorate fast. That is not a failure of staff understanding or effort, it is the predictable result of a service designed around throughput and compliance.
Until inspection findings are allowed to force structural change rather than feed another cycle of managed response, probation will keep learning the same lessons while delivering the same failures.
The idea that probation could be “fixed” simply by moving it again misses the point. Probation has been reorganised, relocated, unified, privatised and reabsorbed for over a decade, and none of it has addressed the core failures because those failures are not accidental.
ReplyDeleteProbation is being run in a way that makes effective work impossible. Caseloads are unsafe, time is stripped out, professional judgement is overridden by process, and enforcement is prioritised over rehabilitation. Those conditions are a choice, not an inevitability, and they would follow probation wherever it was placed.
We are repeatedly pointed towards professional registration, action plans and representative bodies as signs of renewal. But professional status without power changes nothing. Registration without enforceable caseload limits is cosmetic. An institute without influence becomes marginal. A union that cannot exert pressure or secure outcomes leaves staff exposed, not supported.
Until caseloads are capped, expertise genuinely valued and practitioners given the authority and time to work properly with people, structural reform is just theatre. It allows those in power to look busy while avoiding the one thing that would actually change outcomes.
Move probation, rebrand it, or reposition it. Unless the conditions change, the outcome will not
Can't just rebrand that's the defeat. I don't think we can bring the current staffing over either. It's doomed most likely but because there is no longer a professional union it is quite clear they gave us away from terms and conditions to function roger Lawrence and most of the inept corrupted and stupid pretence of the polite elected officials . A real bunch of thickos and took all the good professional staff down the tubes because none of them had anything about themselves bar thinking about themselves . Inexperienced nobodies they sunk the professional role and ruined many lives opportunities to get straightened out in refine before it's too late . Absolutely disgusted with them. They know who they are. Complacent tossers.
ReplyDeleteBreach recall breach recall exterminate exterminate 1% dr
ReplyDeleteSo in another part of the world probation is part of the corrections union . Despite government attempts to move them out thanks to committed union members and staff they have managed to crush such attempts . You may ask why have the done this and what is the benefit well you are at the bargaining/ head table . Whilst many from the jail side know little about the work probation does they know that they are all in it to secure the best agreement for everyone including probation staff. The result salaries are the equivalent ( if UK probation salaries had been indexed to inflation) to just over 55000 pound for top grade probation officers and health safety is taken extremley seriously with no compromises. The truth is that if you are not in the weeds with strong committed union members you will be treated as Probation has been. If what was not already known or you did not really know probation has been so let down by this union. If change is to come one of the first steps is to find people that can strongly represent probation on the core issues of pay/ workload and health and safety and if this is not NAPO then who is it ?
ReplyDeleteIt was Napo until we got stuck with Lawrence. The poa do a different role but their union reps are strong able and will challenge and threaten action if things are not sorted properly they instruct and offer courses of action to their staffing to decide. Most of all they analyse and change the direction of management. Lawrence just hides takes 10k a month why would he rock his own boat and be a real leader he just wants the cash. He is an idiot.
DeleteWishing all those reading this blog a happy and hope filled New Year. Very best wishes for ALL your endeavours in 2026. My MP has responded to my 4th email and will write to the Minister about issues and concerns raised. I hope to be-able to feedback their response. Previously, NAPO advised letters received (August) from members MP’s were all very similar. The same rhetoric I guess. Ive continued to challenge the party line and hopefully introduce a deeper conversation about direction of travel. Im also trying to re-establish contact via X with those MP’s I’ve connected with during my campaigning days for children in care. So far, Ive had five positive responses. Ive made those MP’s aware of this blog, Napo’s social media and X account. I do invite you to write to your MP about what matters to you and if any MP is willing to support Probation do let me know. Iangould5
ReplyDeleteSo another update without any real news other than the CBF section. Each of the increments within the 2 year pay deal are very different rises per pay grade and per year, so this will be a complex calculation to work out. If you happen to have had one of the better % jumps this final time, it will really eat into the headline % of what you get - whatever that may be. Eg the ‘new’ band 4 top paypoint of 42k is up 5% from the 40k point. If we are offered 5%, it could be you’ve had your lot! They love to make everything as complex as can be and it’s smoke a mirrors. The previous multi-year deal cited the already agreed pay point rises in the % offerings and people bought it as a new rise. They are doing the same again it appears. And agin, who are the ‘relevant government ministers’ who make this decision?
ReplyDeleteKim Thornden-Edwards writes to probation staff regarding an update on the 2025 to 2026 pay award.
We have submitted a business case seeking approval for a pay offer for probation staff that goes beyond the standard limits set out in the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance (the framework that sets parameters for government pay awards).
I believe this is necessary to appropriately recognise the exceptional contribution you make every day and to ensure your pay remains both fair and competitive within the sector.
Our commitment to advocating for your interests remains unwavering, and we will continue to press for the best possible outcome.
As Lord Timpson stated in his all staff call on Wednesday 17 December 2025 we are “having daily conversations” around agreeing this pay award.
What happens next?
All pay business cases across government go through a rigorous approval process. This process takes time and involves careful consideration of multiple factors, such as ensuring any pay award represents good value for taxpayers while appropriately recognising staff contribution
The final decision rests with the relevant government ministers, who will consider a range of factors before making a decision. We cannot guarantee approval, but we are committed to making the strongest case possible.
Once a decision is made, we will engage with our trade union colleagues to commence negotiations and make a final offer. Trade unions will then consult committees/members on the final offer.
You can see the various stages of the pay process in our previous update on probation pay.
Competency-based framework (CBF) pay progression
I want to clarify that any pay award will take into account both a headline percentage increase and the competency-based framework progression payments already made in June 2025. This means the total pay award comprises both elements combined.
Our commitment to you
I know pay is a priority for you, and I continue to make the case for our workforce. I will update you as soon as I can share more information about the outcome of this process.
I understand this period of uncertainty can be frustrating, and I appreciate your patience while we work through the approval process.
Once a decision is made, I will work hard to ensure that staff receive their pay award as soon as possible, and it will be backdated to 1 April 2025.
Thank you,
Kim Thornden-Edwards
Chief Probation Officer
I’ll be honest, I’m not holding out for anything meaningful here. Read plainly, this isn’t a pay update at all. It’s an explanation of why nothing may happen, wrapped in warm language.
DeleteThere’s no figure. No commitment. No guarantee. What is clear is that any so called headline pay award will be offset by the CBF progression already paid in June. For some people, that means the “award” could be zero. That’s the only concrete information in the entire message.
Everything else is process. Business cases. Daily conversations. Relevant ministers. Patience. It’s the same script we’ve seen before, where responsibility floats upwards and the outcome is managed long before it’s announced.
So when this eventually lands and we’re told it’s the best that could be done, none of this should come as a surprise. Kim’s letter is already preparing the ground for that moment.
For Band 4 POs already at the top of the pay band, this wording is pretty revealing. If you were at the ceiling, you didn’t receive CBF progression in June because there was nowhere to move. That means any eventual headline percentage would apply to you in full.
DeleteMeanwhile, colleagues lower in the same band who did receive progression will see that counted against any “award”. So people doing the same job, carrying the same risk, will end up with very different outcomes depending purely on where they happened to sit on the scale.
That’s not accidental. It’s a way of controlling costs while still claiming a pay rise has been delivered. It also deepens pay compression and leaves experienced Band 4s stuck at the ceiling with no progression and no real recognition.
I’d genuinely like to know how this is landing for others, because the way this is being framed feels less like a pay award and more like a quiet reshuffling of who loses out this year.
Its astonishing that some 20,000 staff (give or take the lickspittles & collaborators who've had special treatment) have accepted such shit pay arrangements for so long. Is it 3 pay rises in 16 years? And none meeting any cost of living increases.
Delete"It’s a way of controlling costs while still claiming a pay rise has been delivered."
Its also a very effective way of controlling staff per the 'old school' adage of "treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen". Hmm, what does that remind you of?
It has been said by many here over the past decade or so that probation staff are the victims of a massive power imbalance, i.e. an abusive relationship that they can't, won't or are otherwise disabled from disengaging with that relationship through (predominantly) financial & emotional abuse, aka shit pay & bullying.
Are you the same people who deliver programmes intended to effect change in perpetrators of abuse in relationships and reduce risk of harm to others?
Domestic Violence Programmes
Building Better Relationships (BBR) - A programme for perpetrators of violence and abuse... BBR aims to increase understanding of motivating factors in domestic violence, reduce
individual risk factors linked to violence and develop pro-social relationship skills
Community Domestic Violence Programme (CDVP) - A programme aimed at reducing the risk of domestic violence and abusive behaviour ... by helping perpetrators change their attitudes and behaviour and to reduce the risk of all violent and abusive behaviour in the family.
Healthy Relationship Programme (HRP) - A prison based programme for men who have committed violent behaviour in an intimate relationship. The aim is to end violence and abuse against participants' intimate partners. Participants will learn about their abusive behaviours and be taught alternative skills and behaviours to help them develop healthy, non-abusive relationships.
Cognitive Skills Booster (CSB) - Designed to reinforce learning from other general offending programmes (ETS, Think First and Reasoning & Rehabilitation) through skills rehearsal and relapse prevention.
Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) - Addresses thinking and behaviour associated with offending through a sequenced series of structured exercises designed to teach inter-personal problem solving skills.
Make the connections - empty promises, jumping through ever smaller hoops, withholding pay, lies, making examples of staff, catastrophising in order to punish... while the privileged few in control pocket bonuses & very healthy packages, and are never held to account for their failings as 'leaders'.
Its no accident that the mysterious invisible chief probation officer has temporarily appeared in written form in advance of an imminent decision that will be nothing short of further & increasing levels of abuse, i.e. you'll get fuck all AND you'll be blamed for it.
Wakey! Wakey! Get Organised!
The reason that comparison lands is because the dynamics are familiar. Opaque decision making, withheld reward, endless delay and repeated instructions to be patient are all things practitioners are trained to recognise and challenge in other contexts.
DeleteYou don’t need malicious intent for harm to occur. A sustained power imbalance, combined with uncertainty and lack of agency, is enough on its own to erode trust and morale. Pay arrangements that are complex, offset and endlessly deferred reinforce that imbalance, especially when risk, scrutiny and workload continue to rise.
The irony is uncomfortable. Many of us deliver programmes designed to help people recognise unhealthy patterns of control and responsibility shifting. When similar patterns appear structurally in our own working lives, it should not surprise anyone that engagement collapses.
The hollow, self-congratulatory words of doom from an invisible woman:
Delete* We have submitted
* I believe this is necessary
* Our commitment
* we are “having daily conversations”
* We cannot guarantee approval
* we are committed to making the strongest case
This is a weird one:
* we will engage with *our* trade union colleagues
"our" trade union colleagues???
Although, to be fair, the whole thing does sound like its been written in collaboration with napo/lawrence, having that 'I/me/we' vibe in the midst of a 'sometime/maybe/never' timescale:
"I know pay is a priority for you, and I continue to make the case for our workforce. I will update you as soon as I can share more information about the outcome of this process."
Why can't the lying thieving arseholes just come clean - there's money for prisons & tech, but not for you lot because its only a matter of months before AI can do your job & we can't afford any more eyewatering severance packages... the govt's got enough willing volunteers from the chumocracy, there won't be owt for you lot.
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/civill-service-job-cuts-voluntary-exits-5000-to-leave-government-cat-little
In 2024 to 2025, the figures include the costs of departures for HMPPS staff members leaving under a voluntary departure scheme... Voluntary departure schemes also ran in 2023 to 2024
Deletehmpps exit payments for 23/24 = £45.3million (~840 staff)
hmpps exit payments for 24/25 = £27.3million (~660 staff)
The New Years Honours list is about to be published. Any guesses as to which of the ‘outstanding leaders’ will feature?
ReplyDeleteYou couldn’t make it up.
Francis Edwin STUART Head of Employee Relations, HM Prison
Deleteand Probation Service. For Public
Service
Charlotte HODGES Principal Forensic Psychologist, HM
Prison Isle of Wight, HM Prison and
Probation Service. For services to
Rehabilitation in a Prison Setting
Dr Wyn Gwilym JONES Prison Director and Governor, HM
Prison Fosse Way, HM Prison and
Probation Service. For Public Service
Nicola MARFLEET Lately Governing Governor, HM Prison
Woodhill, HM Prison and Probation
Service. For Public Service
Kim Marcelle QUAINTRELL Head of Reducing Reoffending, HM
Prison Winchester, HM Prison and
Probation Service. For Public Service
Thanks 09:20.
DeleteSome of the awards are to people ‘on the tools,’ and make some sort of sense if you accept the need for an honours system.
An award to the head of employee relations raises an eyebrow here.
Looking at the honours list, the issue isn’t individual recipients. It’s the pattern. Recognition continues to flow upwards and inwards, while those carrying the daily operational risk remain largely invisible.
DeleteAt the same time, frontline staff are told there is no money, no flexibility and no certainty, only patience and restraint. That contrast speaks volumes about where value is perceived to sit in this system.
If this really is about recognising contribution, I’d be interested to know how others read the message being sent here, because from where I’m standing it feels remarkably consistent.
It’s disgusting
DeleteHonours for sitting in the ivory tower while the minions get waffle about a measly pay rise. It’s the usual yearly kick in the teeth.
Deletehttps://www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article/transforming-hmp-ashfield-how-serco-and-the-ministry-of-justice-delivered-change-through-collaboration
ReplyDeleteIf you are a minister or senior leader responsible for probation pay, understand this clearly: this is not landing as reassurance or goodwill, and it is certainly not being received with gratitude. It is landing as further evidence that the profession is exhausted and undervalued. Year after year you delay, dilute and disguise pay decisions, rebadging progression as reward and hiding behind process while workloads, risk and responsibility climb relentlessly. Staff are not grateful for this. They feel insulted by it. You take a workforce dealing daily with violence, safeguarding, sexual harm and public protection and tell them to be patient, resilient and professional while you continue to underpay them and then congratulate yourselves for “advocacy”. If this level of erosion were happening to people we supervise, it would be challenged as damaging and abusive. When it is done to staff, it is reframed as restraint. The result is not appreciation, loyalty or engagement. It is attrition. Experienced practitioners are leaving quietly because they have finally accepted what your actions make plain: this profession is not valued by those who control it. That loss of skill, judgement and stability sits squarely with you, and no amount of careful wording will change that.
ReplyDeleteYea yea all wordy complaining. You get paid what the job is worth mainly administration. Ai or IT deliver most of the matrix type algorithm decision making and pso grade do the same trudge. As management we don't need upty pay hungry staff claiming they eat brain cells by massive thinking assesment time when we all know that is not true and even before it you could never get a consistent approach to metering out justice or fair treatment. Half the staff over sympathise and miss identify problem offenders. The others want to jail them. Some of them still scruffing around the office in shorts flip flops and unkempt hair . Liberal leftism and wonky eyed approach to causation of crime blaming the socio factors than the bad in front of them. Weak managers there because they couldn't do the work but can tell staff what do while claiming to have a skill set. We the management are fed up with running a service that has so much free radical running through it nothing got done properly. We control the input out put now because you lot let everything go. Early hours home late in reading papers all morning . Home visits taking all day. Expenses claims like a holiday list and then doing some evening reporting as a hardship with overtime claimed. You people have a great job easy pension terms massive holiday awards free pay six months sick leave and you all like a bit of that for a sore toe aching back duvet day sulk workforce. No longer can the burden of your do nothing agency be funded like this no results recidivism remaining high on all you meddle with and harking on it takes time a maturation process. We have stripped out youth crime family courts and saved them from your intransigence. Next we will dictate supervision as a parole control and early release where tagging has gaps. In the meantime have a nice new year and remember it won't change so get used to it or find a better job elsewhere because those of you leaving we don't need anyways.
DeleteThis isn’t a management perspective, it’s a bad-faith rant dressed up as authority. Reducing probation to “mainly administration”, sneering about flip flops, duvet days and “liberal leftism”, and dismissing professional judgement as indulgence isn’t critique, it’s contempt. It avoids the argument because it can’t answer it.
DeleteIf you genuinely believe probation is just algorithmic box-ticking that can be stripped of skill, discretion and time, then you’ve described exactly why the service is haemorrhaging experience. That worldview didn’t expose a problem, it created one. When judgement is replaced by control and throughput, outcomes don’t improve, they become brittle and dangerous, and then staff are blamed when the cracks show.
The spite is the giveaway. Real managers don’t need to caricature sickness, pensions or supposed laziness to justify decisions. That language signals insecurity, not leadership. And the claim that stripping out expertise has “saved” anything while reoffending, churn and serious harm persist would be laughable if the consequences weren’t borne by the public and frontline staff.
If this is trolling, it’s transparent. If it’s sincere, it’s an indictment. Either way, it explains far more about the state of probation than it refutes.
If that was an attempt to bait, it was clumsy. If it was genuine, it explains the retention problem better than any workforce report ever could.
DeleteLiberal leftism ? Don’t see much of that in the service !
ReplyDelete