“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!
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
AI-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"