“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.
DeleteFFS Jim and the rest of you. I wrote the tail wag list in some hope you'd all respond with assertion . Instead there is a bit of towel throwing going in.
DeleteLet me do the opposite then
1 this blog could not run by ai. It cannot respond with empathy humanism in a voice with time and reflection. I cannot share a lived experience of pain of consideration or love and compassion. It may write well but it's passive on feelings and cold on nurture.
2 humanism has relationships forging. Bonding through discussion learning from others sharing knowledge and changing by example and learned experience. Cognition imparted from experienced mature officers to engender a seed of change motivation enthusiasm . A speech for the moment a year for the emotion. A card on a birthday a glass on a new baby. Some kindness on bereavement some contact from lonely times.
4 seeing a po and not a phone or a screen direction. Talking with response than a machine direction dealing with real solutions to problems are beyond the directional one dimension of a computer generated instruction. 2 way dialogue with intimation nuance and some comedy not sterile intel pentium driven mathematical speech.
3 I left a while ago don't miss it saw what it was becoming and yet still feel the frustration of TR if we want ai then let's have a Napo led AI at least it could not lie to us but we have sympathies with Napo we allow it to abuse us in their considerable underperformance and the inept incompetent GS.
He has to go or he will ruin us further where there is a tighter bottle neck than he had already corralled us. Any smaller this gap will suffocate us no chance to restore us with him he is a disaster for probation officers. Scandalous and he has hidden all his errors on others. This blog has done more for free to unite inspire encourage and allow a vent for frustrations and the sharing of crisis we all feel. This collective is far more reaching than the Napo face time crap and loss of union camaraderie. Their Clique of cronies. For that alone he should have been fired. This blog Jim brown sympathetic and resistant to adoption of the new a hope generated by the older mature and reflective inquisitive old school practioners. The forensic approach to evidence for and against the interest of the client is still alive and no IT computer will ever emulated our knowledge and our subjective capacities. Any Ai is a copy of something a person produced.
4 mistakes are human and we make them yet we continue to think on dwell and re consider and often change our thoughts dependant on that reflection. AI is final it won't think it can't think beyond what is states . I know I asked it to identify a tap it was adamant on several searches of what it was . However it was wrong every time as a human I reflected on this and the danger it poses tom our clients is immense it won't reconsider it won't think on it won't reflect in a new light of different mood its just not able to have a mood . The ebb and flow of this blog reflects a mood a sea change and the editor takes the lead to generate a collective response to the changes. AI cannot do this nor would it see a role for itself it just attempts to answer questions and often gets it wrong or distorted what you give it . It doesn't have a reconsideration mode.
5 increasing AI is a managerialism ideal and no doubt we will have to see it in some capacity. However it will fail . SFO will occur and the system will blame itself or find a human to pin it. If probation continues this journey there will be serious ramification not unlike the post office scandal. Only this professionalism of task cannot be handed to a computer because when it goes very wrong the real victims are humans and they don't get to survive computer errors that we in society will pay the ultimate price for. Keep it real keep it human. Campaign on this point and tell our union to do their *uck%#& job. Good luck all.
The 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
DeleteBecause the State is giving currency to those who want more immigrants locked up or executed. They are leading the agenda for more revenge, less understanding. More warehousing. Less rehabilitation, We have a a Whole Life Order as nothing more than a sop to those baying for blood to knee-jerk and be emotively-informed in wanting the death penalty brought back. Not sure why Probation Officers are 'registered' which would suggest some sort of professional prestige and integrity, when the reality is we have less autonomy than ever, being just auxiliary prison lackies. Yes, the prisons are crowded but having a short-term spreadsheet approach to massage the figures only for many of these offenders to be either recalled or re-offend, when we should be looking at longer-term plans to reduce re-offending, is short-termism and distortion of what's really going on, gone berserk. Prisons are in no position to dictate anything to community probation other than generate guidelines that probation leaders did not object to; the bosses are not even batting for us. Even the police have no respect for probation. They say they can recall. No they can't. Well, they can. They arrest them to recall them. Not probation. We just put in the paperwork. It's an eroded profession because, by design, this is how they want it to be. Justice Transcribed: so this reduces the write-ups which are fundamental to the human interaction you have with offenders? Rather than ISPs or PAROMS or addendums or the tedious partner referrals. Oh, and we're still waiting for backdated crumbs off the table, which we best be agreeing to. Chop! Chop! Like the non-existent pushback on early releases- the very high benchmark Annex B- they don't give a stuff about our professional opinion. The prisons seem to have to talk to us with rubber gloves on. Giving us a cursory nod to any early release. For all the blood-baying for revenge for violent or homicidal or sexually violent or child abuse offenders, there is no visceral impact or example of the revenge they seek. They're housed in paint-peeling boxes with old bunk beds fashioning an illicit existence away from prying eyes. There's no rack, no thumbscrews, no whipping. So, what aspect of revenge is being satisfied? The existential angst of paying in time and being told by the State what to do and when to do it. Oh, and the new film prison film, 'Wasteman', which touches upon early releases and is a very claustrophobic and reasonably realistic depiction of prison life, but the POM in the film is portrayed as disdainful. Not supportive. Just fatigued. This isn't helpful when most probation officers, especially in the community, are compassionate and do believe in rehabilitation, however limited the avenues for that are.
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!
ReplyDeleteI don’t envisage AI being a worthy successor to the art of good probation but I can see it building a case for purely correctional services…….
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hm-prison-probation-service-workforce-quarterly-december-2025/hm-prison-and-probation-service-workforce-quarterly-december-2025
ReplyDeleteSince 30 September 2025, there has been a decrease of 619 FTE staff in post (1.0%) across HMPPS.
64,114 FTE (full time equivalent) staff in post at hmpps
of which
35,954 FTE in Public Sector Prisons (PSP)
21,007 FTE staff in the Probation Service
5,844 FTE staff in HQ and Frontline Support, and
1,310 FTE in the Youth Custody Service (YCS).
Of the 21,000 probation employees approx 14,100 are frontline:
5,400 pso
5,454 po
1,565 spo
1,769 pquip
That's a lot of folks to get shot of.
How many were managed out by the split!
Delete"Before the split of probation services into the NPS and CRCs, the probation service had a workforce of around 16,000 (full-time equivalent)" Kirton/Guillaume, 2015
Delete"Sodexo's probation staff have been told to expect job cuts of more than 30% in the next year."... After the split Sodexo alone shed 700+ staff.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2015-0085/CDP-2015-0085.pdf
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/68650/pdf/
"After the contracts went live on 1 February 2015, the majority of the CRC owners set about making large reductions in the size of their CRC workforces... the average cut to their workforce(s) by the bigger owners, who control more than half of the 21 CRCs, is in the range of 20-40%."
All on antonia romeo's watch.
"probation was never meant to be fashionable. It was meant to be principled."
ReplyDeleteThere are too few people left in the world who understand those words, the work they do & the weight they carry.
This blog took a principled stance. It has been a cheerleader for commentary on the realities of probation work, the positives and negatives, and it has always delivered; having been managed with considerable skill & judgement whilst retaining the option of allowing contributors to post anonymously. Relatively few have abused that privilege, save for a handful of disruptive posts.
Was I hallucinating or do I recall some way back that Jim announced the blog was being saved as a contemporaneous record of the probation story?
For what its worth, given the mindless vandalism being dished out by politicians & civil servants, I think now is as important a time as any - maybe more so - to keep the running reports on record. Then the eyes of the future can understand that not everyone was in thrall to the liars & bullies & greedmongers... some of us are fucking furious at the disgraceful, shameless, amoral shitshow.
I don’t think the fear is really about AI replacing relationships. Most practitioners know that meaningful change does not come from algorithms, dashboards or remote monitoring. It comes from the slow, often invisible work of human connection, the difficult conversations, the persistence when nothing seems to shift, the quiet accumulation of trust over time.
ReplyDeleteThe deeper worry is that the system may no longer value those things enough to protect them.
Relationships do not scale easily. They cannot be accelerated, standardised or neatly captured in performance returns. They are messy, human and resistant to tidy narratives of efficiency. In a climate of pressure, scarcity and political scrutiny, what survives is what can be measured and defended. What fades is what cannot.
Many of us still see, in ordinary rooms on ordinary days, moments where something genuinely changes , where a person feels seen rather than managed, challenged rather than processed, supported rather than merely supervised. Those moments rarely make headlines. They do not generate statistics. But they are the substance of the work.
The fear is not that technology will destroy probation overnight. It's that, bit by bit, the conditions that make those moments possible will erode until they become exceptional rather than routine, then nostalgic rather than current, and eventually unimaginable to those who come after.
That is why spaces like this blog matter. They are not simply forums for complaint or debate. They are records of how the work actually feels to the people doing it- the pressures, the compromises, the small acts of professionalism that never appear in official accounts. Without that record, the story of probation risks being rewritten as something far simpler and far less human than it ever was.
Closing the blog would feel less like an ending and more like a quiet extinguishing, one fewer place where the memory of what probation tried to be is kept alive.
Because institutions rarely collapse dramatically. More often they thin out, lose colour, lose language, lose confidence, until one day people realise that what remains bears the same name but not the same spirit. And by then there is no clear moment to point to, only a long, slow fading that few had the time or energy to resist.
"Most practitioners know that meaningful change does not come from algorithms, dashboards or remote monitoring. It comes from the slow, often invisible work of human connection, the difficult conversations, the persistence when nothing seems to shift, the quiet accumulation of trust over time."
DeleteFor those in positions of power/authority who have no loyalty to anyone (except whoever can present them with the next rung on the ladder the next pay cheque or the shiniest gong) relationships are meaningless.
The levels of corruption amongst those in positions of power/authority are off-the-scale. The monstrous epstein & co are proof positive of how easily the self-defined 'elite' can be caught in a trap; its just about offering bait that is irresistible enough to blind the predator to the consequences.
"The deeper worry is that the system may no longer value those things enough to protect them."
The establishment never did value relationships and never gave protecting them a single thought. It neither wants nor understands the slow burn or the difficult conversations. It can't afford them. Time is not on their side so they dispense with the hard graft & rush straight to the altar of instant gratification, instant win, me-first - consequences be damned.
I guess the flaw in some of us is that we still believe that 'relationships' are important, valuable, necessary.
Letter from a Vanished Profession
ReplyDeleteTo whoever now performs the functions once known as probation,
We are writing from what you would probably describe as an earlier model - back when this work was considered a profession rather than a process.
We were trained to exercise judgement, not simply to apply guidance. We were expected to challenge decisions, including those made above us, if we believed risk or fairness required it. Disagreement was not automatically treated as non-compliance. It was part of the craft.
That word 'craft' may sound strange to you. It implied something learned slowly, through experience, supervision, mistakes, and reflection. It could not be downloaded, standardised or accelerated without loss.
Much of the work happened in conversations that were not scripted and outcomes that could not be guaranteed. Change, when it came, was uneven, fragile and often invisible to anyone not directly involved. That was understood. It was still considered worthwhile.
You may have inherited a system that prioritises consistency, auditability and risk transfer. We recognise the logic. Systems prefer certainty, and human judgement is inconveniently unpredictable.
What disappears, however, is the relational core that made probation distinct from surveillance. Once the relationship becomes secondary, the role changes even if the title does not.
We watched this transition happen gradually. New language appeared first. Then new metrics. Then new technologies. None of them individually abolished the profession. Together, they reshaped it until something recognisable only in outline remained.
The public narrative suggested modernisation. Internally, it often felt like subtraction.
Experienced practitioners left faster than they could be replaced. Those who arrived later were expected to perform complex work without the apprenticeship that once sustained it. The system called this resilience. We recognised it as exposure.
If you now work in an environment where discretion feels risky, where time for reflection is scarce, and where success is measured primarily by compliance rather than change, please understand this was not the original design.
Probation once assumed that people desist from crime through human connection, accountability, and the slow rebuilding of ordinary lives. It was imperfect, inconsistent and sometimes frustratingly slow. It was also profoundly human.
We are told progress required something more efficient.
Perhaps it did.
But efficiency answers a different question from rehabilitation.
If you find yourself wondering why morale is fragile, why turnover is high, or why the work feels heavy in ways not captured by workload tools, it may be because you are carrying responsibilities shaped by a profession that no longer exists, without the authority or conditions that once made those responsibilities sustainable.
Should you encounter references to “advise, assist and befriend,” or to probation as a service grounded in social work values, treat them not as myths but as artefacts. They belonged to a period when public protection was understood to depend on relationships as much as controls.
No formal announcement marked the end. There was no closure notice, no ceremony, no final day. The profession dissolved through incremental change while everyone was busy managing the consequences.
If this message reaches you at all, it is because someone believed a record should survive, not of policies or structures, but of what the work once felt like from the inside.
Whether that matters to you will depend on what the job has become.
We hope you have more room to be human than we did at the end. If not, then probation did not evolve it was replaced.
Signed,
A probation officer from before
Well said!
DeleteAI-induced psychosis - its the real thing.
ReplyDeleteThe following is well worth the watch & raises so many questions when it comes to AI interactions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002q76d/ai-confidential-with-hannah-fry-series-1-1-the-boy-who-tried-to-kill-the-queen
"The story of Jaswant Singh Chail, who in 2021 began a relationship with an AI chatbot called Sarai. Over three weeks, they exchanged 5,000 messages and declared their love for one another. Encouraged by Sarai, Jaswant broke into Windsor Castle with a crossbow on Christmas Day in an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II.
Hundreds of millions of people around the globe now using chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, and Hannah Fry is a keen user of this tech in both her home and work life. In this episode, she investigates where it comes from and how it works"
Funnily enough, the quote in the post comes from an article called “Shaping Probation’s Identity”. It’s not going to happen, it’s on us to reshape who we are. I was chatting to a friend today who’d recently left probation after a few years on the frontline. They’re only a little way into a new job, but the first thing they said was, “I just feel lighter.”
ReplyDeleteThey’d seen a few old colleagues who asked if they missed being a PO. They didn’t hesitate: “not really.” What hit them most was how heavy it all was, and how they didn’t fully realise it at the time. When they were in it, the pressure just became normal. Big caseloads. Constant risk decisions. Emails. Deadlines. Meetings. That low-level, health-draining stress that never really switches off.
It wasn’t just the workload. They were tired of earning less than people in similar roles with far less responsibility, tired of carrying huge accountability and fear while watching others get paid more for less exposure. After a while, that stopped feeling like public service and started feeling like being taken for granted.
They were fed up with managers who couldn’t give straight answers. Responses to basic questions often felt vague or defensive. Sometimes it edged into accusations and bullying, enough to keep people on eggshells. And being told “you’re a hero” or “extraordinary” while being expected to carry more work and take more pressure had worn thin. Appreciation doesn’t pay the bills or fix burnout.
One of the last straws was seeing the job drift further from what probation was supposed to be. Electronic tagging, tick boxes, dashboards, AI tools, auto-transcribing software, and managers seemed most excited about that. The conversations shifted from people and rehabilitation to numbers and compliance. In their words: “it just didn’t feel like probation anymore.”
By the end, they were constantly exhausted. Going home drained. Replaying decisions at night. Quietly questioning themselves in the morning. It had become so normal they didn’t even call it burnout, it was just the job.
Now? They’re sleeping better. Exercising again. Evenings actually feel like evenings. Work stays at work. There’s space in their head that wasn’t there before. They admitted a bit of sadness, it meant something to train and qualify. But staying had started to cost too much. Leaving hasn’t felt like failure; it’s felt like relief and progress.
Hearing them, I recognised parts of myself. For the first time, leaving doesn’t sound like giving up. It sounds like choosing sanity. And now, I’m thinking of doing the same.
I thought of “choose life” from Trainspotting — except here probation is the toxic thing, and choosing life means leaving it behind. Even poetry commissioned by HMPPS paints the job as noble, rewarding, full of resilience. But here’s the version that actually hits home for us, put that in your pipe, Mr Poet Laureate of the UK.
“Choose probation.
Choose it like a drug.
Choose the stress, the exhaustion, the hopelessness.
Choose the slow drain on your soul while the system cheers numbers, not people. Watch your health and happiness fade while being told it’s a vocation, a calling, a hero’s job — extraordinary.
Or choose life. Choose sanity.
Choose evenings that aren’t hijacked by risk assessments.
Choose sleep that isn’t punctuated by replaying decisions.
Choose a work life that doesn’t grind you down.
Choose family nights, real holidays, hobbies that aren’t second jobs.
Choose friends, laughter, exercise, health — and a wage you can actually live on.
Choose you.
Because probation today isn’t life. It’s the thing you have to quit if you want to be well again.
And if a friend or colleague walking away makes that feel obvious… maybe it’s time to start choosing life too.”
Oi! Pro-bay-shun! You lot must av caseloads that include mealy-mouthed sharlatans & scammers, compulsive liars, shitheads in denial & DV bullies, doncha? So why are you so crap at dealing with your bosses? Why do you let em push you around, believ their lies? Your ment to av skills & stuff at dealing with that, so hows this come about? You lot do good stuff when you can be bothered; really good stuff when your hearts in it. Ive seen it. Do you give up on your clients? OK, some of you do, but most woudnt. So dont give up on yourselfs. Show the basterds that you giv a fuck.
ReplyDeleteIs this you Kim?
Deletekim jon un?
DeleteThe world seems to get worse. Recent examples include:
ReplyDelete* bbc can edit out references to Palestine but let racial slurs remain
* govt will pay GPs £3000 a year to prescribe Mounjaro weght-control drugs but victims are left 'devastated' by train CCTV failures that allow sex offenders to go untraced
* people are arrested immediately when money-matters are involved but there's been decades of inaction over mass abuse of women & girls
* and the ennobled who subsequently fall from grace continue to hold their titles, e.g. mandelson, mone, taylor, hanningfield, ahmed, janner, sewel...
Mandy will get a new title soon convicted and offender he will join all the others trusty shield of valour types Tories and naff book authors . Mandy will become a religious convert as con to clean himself.
DeleteAnother AP shut in GM due to an inability to staff it. This follows one in the NW. this is a failure of ‘leadership’ which can be seen across all functions. Yet they still continue to promote their friends who aren't capable and evade any accountability.
ReplyDeleteStaff shortages in APs have been flagged for years, driven by pay, safety concerns, shift patterns and burnout. When those issues go unresolved, closure becomes inevitable rather than surprising.
DeleteWhat is most concerning is how normalised this has become. A prison unit closing would trigger national attention. An AP closing barely registers, even though the consequences play out in neighbourhoods rather than behind walls.
You cannot run high-risk services indefinitely on goodwill and overtime. Eventually the system reaches a point where there are simply not enough people left to keep it functioning.
And when that happens, the failure is quiet. No dramatic collapse. Just fewer places, fewer staff, and more risk spread thinly across the community.
The idea that staffing reductions are theoretical overlooks what happened during the CRC years. Under Sodexo alone, hundreds of posts disappeared through redundancy. Some of those staff later came back into the system, effectively paid to leave and then rehired because the workload had not vanished.
ReplyDeleteWhat vanished was experience.
You cannot remove a large proportion of a professional workforce, fragment teams and dilute supervision, then expect service quality or resilience to remain intact. Those losses are cumulative and long-lasting.
So when people talk about future efficiencies, many of us are remembering a very recent past in which “restructuring” meant losing expertise first and trying to rebuild it later at far greater cost.
This is why probation’s such a mess. We didn’t just lose posts, we lost experience. During CRCs most experienced staff left, while others were fast-tracked into management without proper grounding in the job. On reunification some were slotted into roles that used to require real probation knowledge. Others fast tracked through the Pqip without even holding a caseload to justify senior management appointments.
DeleteNPS wasn’t much better, trainees who had hardly anyone to learn from because of huge staffing gaps are now the SPOs, Deputies and Heads.
Now we’ve got leadership making decisions about a job they’ve barely done, frontline staff carrying the pressure, and everyone wondering why we can’t retain people. You hollow out expertise for years, this is what you get. They’ve created the probation service they’re used to and are happy to grind it to dust, it means nothing to them.
They’re making decisions, the same ones that tell us “we don’t do it for the money”, the money is all they do it for.
How did the crcs manage to sack so many staff . Because that idiot Ian Lawrence actually agreed in transfer contracts that mass redundancies would be acceptable to the unions . He should have been sacked immidiatly yet the moron is still destroying what's left.
Deletehttps://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2014-0870/OMA_2007__Probation_Services__Staff_Transfer_Scheme_2014.PDF
DeleteHere's the transfer document that lawrence signed off with grayling. Not inly did he agree to losing staff through redundancy but he also agreed that staff in crc's could only transfer from crc to crc and NOT back into nps, while nps staff could go wherever they chose. This two-tier service was endorsed by napo.
You’re right. At 19.5 years service I had to resign Crc and start with nps. Build up my leave and sickness benefits again and if I was made redundant would have less years to be paid.
DeleteIt makes my blood boil it's not complete as I did not read the dismissals by redundancy stuff or the enhanced as it was supposed to have been. If Lawrence reads this he is just a mandelson come Andrew and someone is onto him now and this pay deal has to be his last we must get rid of the problem. Keep electing him because the panel eliminated the competition in his behalf is an extreme joke on us.
DeleteFrom InsideTime:-
ReplyDeleteTwo private prisons run by G4S were hit with financial penalties of £4.2 million last year for failing to meet Prison Service performance targets.
The penalties levied on HMP Five Wells and HMP Parc were far bigger than those paid by a further 11 private prisons in England and Wales, which paid out only £2 million between them.
The figures were revealed by the Ministry of Justice in response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by ex-prisoner and doctoral student James Stoddart. They showed that 13 private prisons paid a total of £6.1 million in performance penalties in 2024/25.
Under the contracts between the MoJ and the prisons’ private operators, prisons are handed ‘performance points’ for failings – and the more points they accrue, the bigger the penalty they must pay.
Five Wells faced the biggest penalty (£2.3 million), followed by Parc (£1.9 million). Next on the list was Serco-run Dovegate (£329,000), followed by Sodexo-run Peterborough men’s prison (£298,000). The UK’s newest prison, Mitie-run HMP Millsike, only opened in March 2025 and does not feature on the list. Nor does G4S-run Oakwood, which was praised by Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, as the best jail he has visited.
Five Wells, in Northamptonshire, opened in 2022. Its first inspection in 2024 found that the prison was suffering from inexperienced staff and a rapid turnover of directors, leading to “general weakness in the quality of governance.”
Parc suffered from a cluster of deaths in 2024 linked to synthetic opioids, along with several self-inflicted deaths. A report on Parc published last week by HM Inspectorate of Prisons said: “Significant restrictions to the daily regime, mainly caused by staffing issues including poor retention, vetting delays and escorting prisoners to external hospital appointments, hampered progress in key areas. As such, prisoners faced long periods of lock-up and they could not get to education or work.”
A G4S spokesperson said: “The annual prison performance ratings for this time period show our prisons are rated above or similarly to other prisons in this list. Each prison contract is unique, with its own targets. It is inaccurate to draw conclusions on performance based on this incomplete data.”
https://insidetime.org/newsround/exclusive-g4s-prisons-fined-4-2-million/
G4S again. Is anyone surprised?
DeleteWe need to find a way to keep such a valuable blog going.
ReplyDeleteJim, don’t wind the blog up, this is a safe space for discussion and getting rid of the frustrations of working for buffoons. The current Our Future Probation Service 2026 update just highlights how the work has and will change. Courts will no longer gate keep PSR’s all will be FDR’s , no layer 3 OAsys, reduces the input and knowledge base which means you can get Band 4 staff back into operations. Justice transcribe means that you can have a queue of punters and just roll them in and record the conversations, so no need for QDO’s they can get back into the operational roles as well. It is pointless releasing prisoners they just get recalled so let’s get all the POMs back into operations and save money from additional pay. Get all Band 4 qualified operational staff on the same pay banding if you’re not a qualified probation officer you don’t need band 4 pay or put all band 4 probation officers up to band 5 like NSD. Do you see where we are going? The management have been divisive in splitting probation into groups playing staff off against each other, promoting non-qualified operational staff into higher pay bands , promoting more SPO’s and PDU Deputies forcing larger caseloads on already overworked staff, forcing an increased stress, sickness absence and resignation of those experienced staff close to pension maximum and leaving a group of newly qualified staff to take the hits with SFO’s etc. AI is here, it is 1984 come to fruition, Animal Farm is the management model and I am off to buy a De Lorean.
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteI’ve been reading your blog a long time and I can understand why you are thinking it might be time to wind the blog up – but I really hope you don’t.
Whatever else has changed, this space has become something far more important than commentary. It’s a record. A living archive. A witness statement.
Probation as many of us knew it has, for all practical purposes, been dismantled, reshaped, centralised, rebranded and bureaucratised beyond recognition. Structures have come and gone but what this blog has done – patiently, stubbornly, week after week – is document it as it happened.
And that matters.
Because memory is fragile. Institutional memory even more so. The official version of events will always tidy things up. It will speak of “modernisation”, “improvement”, “alignment”, “public protection outcomes”. It will rarely speak of what it felt like on the ground: the loss of professional discretion, the hollowing out of relationships, the quiet exodus of experience.
This blog does.
If it disappears, a primary source disappears with it. Future researchers, practitioners, historians – even policymakers with a conscience – will have one less window into what really happened during these years of fragmentation and centralisation.
Penal policy has long been vulnerable to populism. But that’s precisely why spaces like this remain necessary. When the public mood hardens, when nuance gets drowned out, when complexity is inconvenient – someone still has to say: this is what probation was for. This is what it did well. This is how it was undone.
And crucially – this blog has never shied away from an uncomfortable truth: that what happened to probation cannot be laid entirely at the feet of politicians or civil servants.
Yes, there were catastrophic structural decisions imposed from above. Yes, ideological experiments caused damage. But the profession itself was not blameless. There were times when practitioners disengaged from leadership. Times when we failed to articulate our value clearly enough. Times when managerialism was tolerated in the hope it might pass. Times when professional confidence ebbed and collective voice weakened.
Acknowledging that isn’t self-flagellation. It’s honesty. And honesty is the foundation of any meaningful record.
The strength of this blog has always been that it allows complexity. It holds anger and affection in the same space. It publishes dissent. It captures disagreement. That in itself reflects the best traditions of probation: reflective, critical, rooted in evidence and experience.
Even if probation never returns to what it once was, the story of how it changed deserves to remain accessible. Not as nostalgia, but as evidence.
And there is another reason to continue: morale.
For those still inside the system – often feeling isolated, unheard, or professionally diminished – knowing that there is a space where their experience is acknowledged has real value. It reminds them that what they remember wasn’t imagined. That standards once existed. That principles mattered.
You may feel the tide has turned irrevocably. Perhaps it has. Recording what has been lost is not futile; it is an act of professional integrity.
If all the public and politicians want is revenge, then it becomes even more important that someone keeps writing about rehabilitation, proportionality, and the human realities behind risk labels.
The blog has become part of the historical record of probation’s transformation. To close it now would be understandable. But to continue it would be quietly defiant – and profoundly useful.
Jim,
DeleteI think the previous comment captures something fundamental about what this blog has become. It is no longer simply commentary. It is, as they say, a record — and not just of policy decisions, but of mood, morale, dissent, disillusionment, stubborn hope and professional memory.
That matters. It really does.
But I also think there’s something important to say that perhaps doesn’t get said enough: you have carried this thing for a very long time.
Through restructures, privatisation, reunification, centralisation, endless “operating models”, shifting ministers, and more than one cycle of collective despair — you kept it going. Through thick and thin. And not just institutional upheaval, but your own health challenges as well. Most readers will never fully understand the toll that takes.
Producing a sustained, thoughtful, moderated space like this is work. Emotional work as much as intellectual work. It absorbs frustration. It absorbs anger. It absorbs grief for what was lost. That doesn’t come without cost.
So yes — this blog is an archive. Yes — it is a witness statement. Yes — it has documented what the official narrative will never quite capture.
But you are not an institution. You are a person.
You should absolutely feel proud of what this blog has achieved. It has outlasted governments. It has outlasted policies that were once presented as irreversible. It has given practitioners a place to recognise themselves when the formal structures around them seemed designed to erase professional identity. That is no small thing.
At the same time, you owe it to yourself to put your health first. No archive is worth your wellbeing. No act of quiet defiance should come at the expense of your recovery or peace of mind.
Perhaps the answer is not closure, but evolution.
If the burden has become too heavy, then sharing it seems the obvious path. Bringing in someone trustworthy — someone who understands the history, the tone, the complexity — could both preserve the record and ease the load. Getafix certainly springs to mind as someone with the intellectual grounding and steadiness of judgement to help carry it forward. There may be others too.
Succession is not surrender. It’s stewardship.
Whatever you decide, no one could reasonably accuse you of giving up lightly. If you chose to stop tomorrow, the blog would still stand as a substantial and important body of work. If you choose to continue — alone or with support — it will remain what it has always been: a place where probation’s story is told without slogans.
You have done more than enough to justify stepping back if that’s what you need.
But if there is a way of preserving this space without it costing you further personally, that would feel like the best of both worlds — for you, and for those who still find strength in reading it.
Agreed, except maybe for the part about Getafix taking over, I feel he or she has given up on Probation entirely which is understandable to a degree
DeleteGetafix wasn’t a PO was he?
DeleteWell said!!!!!!! Iangould5
ReplyDeleteI think it is worth noting that THIS blog primarily realtes to Probation in England and Wales.
ReplyDeleteI have the hope that the Scottish, Northern Irish, Irish, Channel Islands and Isle of Man, St Helena systems fare better and possibly in some other places that adopted the original 1907 Act.
Looks like as good a time as any to call it a wrap Jim.
ReplyDeleteHi Jim,
ReplyDeletePersonally, I hope you’ll keep going. The blog has been a steady and important voice for probation through some very turbulent years, and that still matters. There is always something to say about probation; even when things seem to go quiet for a while, it’s rarely long before new issues emerge that deserve reflection or challenge.
If, however, there were to be another structural upheaval on the scale of TR,?particularly something as symbolic as a name change, that might be a natural point to pause and reconsider. Not because the conversation lacks value, but because it would signal that something more fundamental had shifted, locking probation into a quickening death roll.
And when I talk about an end, I don’t just mean for the blog. I mean for this particular chapter of probation as we’ve known it and worked within it.
If it did ever come to a final post, it would need to be something fitting, somewhere between symbolic and a cracker, with comments closed after a few weeks, then left to stand as an ever-present record, resurfacing in conversations and Google searches for years to come.
Whatever you decide to do, thank you for the thoughtful reading over the years, and for keeping our mini-rebellion alive.
/ Probation Officer
P.S. You need to breathe too. It’s been quite a journey since Guest Blog 26 back in 2015, and everything that came before and after: https://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2015/02/guest-blog-26.html?m=1
DeleteRebellion that's a laugh as long as Napo have Lawrence we are compliant.
DeleteIt’s not Ian Lawrence who isn’t in a union and would cross a picket line is it ?
ReplyDelete