“Similarly, if probation is unable to develop a clear and credible identity, distinct from narratives around punishment, public safety, use of technology, cost-effectiveness, or custody alternatives, and to resist the urge to overpromise on risk management, public protection, and crime control, then it may continue to face the challenge of misrepresentation.”
Probation 2026 isn’t really a “parallel universe” anymore. It is reduced, forgotten, and often airbrushed out of existence in policy and public imagination.
This is made more urgent by the Sentencing Act, and expanded technological monitoring. Technology and AI are presented as solutions to efficiency pressures, managing caseloads, reducing admin, analysing data, increasing remote supervision. Used properly, these tools can support professional judgement and reduce bureaucracy.
But if probation is to be a sentence and agency in its own right, not just a cheaper alternative to custody or an extension of surveillance, then how can it rehabilitate people and improve practice when the focus shifts to security, tagging, remote monitoring, and efficiency metrics?
AI can process information and flag patterns, but cannot build trust, hold difficult conversations, exercise moral judgement, or navigate human realities that underpin change. If efficiency and security dominate, and probation does not define what must remain human and relational, technology then replaces relationships with surveillance tool.
The question is not whether technology has a role, whether it serves probation’s rehabilitative mission, or quietly reshapes it into something else. At that point, it is no longer simply misrepresentation; it is existential if being used to serve probation’s purpose by redefining it beyond recognition.
Anon
If traditional probation needed ai it would have compiled what it wanted from ai to make probation better. However we have not so ai is going to replace probation no question and the probation tail end can wah all it likes until finally and shortly there will be nothing probation left to wag about.
ReplyDeleteI think I've come to much the same conclusion and am seriously considering winding this blog up and accepting what was said on Friday's BBC radio 4's Free Thinking. All the public and politicians want is revenge. End of story.
DeleteJim,
DeleteI can understand the weariness in that conclusion. After years of writing, arguing, documenting and warning, there must be a temptation to step back and say: “What’s the point?” If the prevailing mood — as aired on Free Thinking — is that the public and politicians want revenge, then perhaps the honest response is simply to accept it and move on.
But from where I sit — retired, yes, but still profoundly attached to what probation once meant — I don’t believe it is quite that simple.
It is certainly true that political rhetoric increasingly trades in punishment. “Toughness” wins headlines. Nuance rarely does. Yet in over four decades of practice, I never found the public to be a monolith baying for vengeance. I found fear, yes. Anger, certainly. But also confusion, contradiction and — when given the space — a surprising appetite for prevention over spectacle. The appetite for revenge is often amplified; the appetite for effectiveness is simply quieter.
What troubles me more is not that politicians talk tough — they always have — but that we in probation risk internalising that narrative and conceding the ground. If we say, “All anyone wants is revenge,” then we effectively declare the rehabilitative project obsolete. And that feels less like realism and more like surrender.
Your blog has not been shouting into the void. It has been documenting — patiently, persistently — the slow re-engineering of a service away from relational work and towards managerialism and surveillance. It has provided testimony. And testimony matters, particularly when institutions are being reshaped in ways that future generations will struggle to understand without a record.
If you wind it up, I would understand. No one is obliged to carry the burden of bearing witness indefinitely. But I would gently suggest this: the moment when it feels most futile is often the moment when the record becomes most important.
Revenge may be fashionable. It may even be electorally useful. But probation was never meant to be fashionable. It was meant to be principled.
If those of us who still believe in that principle fall silent, then the narrative really does become “End of story.”
And I, for one, am not yet ready to concede that the story of probation — real probation — is over.
And by the way, you deserve a medal for your work on this blog overall the years!
Wow !!! Each and every word !!! I found myself staring at a blank page not knowing what to say but hoping that some-one will articulate the depth, intensity of feeling and hopefulness which has been expressed above and I hope mirrored by other comments through-out the day. You know only to well JB my views/feelings about your blog representing a bastion of hope and I agree you deserve a medal for providing a refuge and safe place for the hearts, minds and voices to be shared. Neither, am I willing to concede the deathknell of Probation and will continue in my own small way to keep on keeping on. Iangould5
DeleteI agree whole heartedly with Anons at 09:50 and 10:05 & remain grateful that JB has continued so resolutely - I have no idea who he is or how long he is physically likely to be able as well as willing to continue.
DeleteJust maybe rather than giving up altogether the Blog and email addresses can be handed on but not to me as a 77 year old who parctised from qualification in 1975 for just 28 years, which surprisingly was just spread across 4 decades, 2 centuries and 2 millenia.
Hi Jim I think it is time to call it a day. Probation as we knew it no longer exists. Once you accept that it is a relief. A old friend fondly remembered has died. You have mourned. Let it go and move on. You did your bit. When HMPPS want advice and inspiration they head to Texas the workforce has no voice. AI is very much in ascendancy with the aim of replacing Probation professionals with call centres and Tags. Is Probation even fit to call itself a profession- where is the independent professional association? Those who manage AI are the new bosses with all the power and the money. Who are they even and all others like the laughably named Chief Probation Officer are all froth, frills, and window gazers. How is this blog even relevant. It is wailing in the wilderness. We will all be slaves to the machine with everything we say and do will be recorded and scrutinised and scripted by the machine. We are living the Orwellian dream. Unions watch in bewilderment as the white heat of AI tools ⚒️ march on crushing them and drowning their feint cries in the relentless onward surge. At best we will have some oversight as rubber stampers. I would wrap it up now and admit defeat. Defiance was admirable but in the words of the late great Douglas Adam’s ‘We’ll see who rusts first!!!’ but then the Vogons destroyed the world and nothing much else mattered from that moment. It was good while it lasted. So long and thanks for the blog.
DeleteThe end of probation as we see it would seem to be on the horizon with every government wanting to reduce reoffending without suitably funding it, this has led to a hybrid situation whereby the techno advocates are in the ascendancy . As this is a service based on human interaction, it may disappear into the wilderness for a while but as Chris Patten, once said…..” If probation didnt exist, someone would have to invent it “.
ReplyDeletePrivatisation failed due to corporate greed, this current move towards technology will also stumble as it seeks to remove the magic that happens in the room, when relationships make a difference and unless you have been in the room and seen this happen,you wouldn’t t have a clue how such interactions can work….
I think we need to consider beyond social work and specifically probation regarding certain aspects and skills dying out - it is happening elsewhere - like with ancient crafts - stone wall building comes to mind and so does traditional local government management with officers really knowing their districts intimately in the way local newspaper reporters once did - although the practice maybe employed less the skills need to be retained and developed to take account of all the other changes that are inevitable throughout society(ies)
DeleteWithout genuine commitment from government to a service that purely provides rehabilitation rather than punishment and state sponsored retribution then the Probation Service no longer exists
DeleteThe absence of probation from the Radio 4 programme perfectly ,represents the fact that those who run the show don’t really know how the show is run …………
ReplyDeleteThe powers that be knew this AI takeover was coming. Elon Musk says AI will be able to do the most advanced surgery in just 3 years! Bottom line is they are not going to keep millions of middle-class people on welfare forever because AI has taken over their jobs. The convid jabs were only ever about depopulation and if you think that is so evil and they would never do that look at Gaza now and look at what is coming out in the Epstein files!
ReplyDelete