It’s time.
It’s sitting across from someone without a screen between you and actually listening.
It’s knowing their history because you’ve supervised them for months, not just skimmed a case note five minutes before the appointment.
It’s noticing when something feels off before it shows up on a risk tool.
It’s being able to challenge them honestly because there’s enough trust for them not to shut down or walk out.
It’s the conversations that don’t fit neatly into drop-down boxes. The bits that never make it onto a dashboard but are exactly where change happens.
It’s also professional judgement. Making decisions based on experience and instinct as well as policy. Having the space to think, not just process.
When I started, engagement meant relationships. Now it too often means logging a contact, updating different systems and proving you spoke to someone for 30 minutes.
That’s not engagement. That’s admin with a pulse.
Real engagement takes continuity, time and trust. Three things the current model systematically squeezes out.
So when management talk about “meaningful engagement”, most of us just hear another slogan for “do more with less”.
Because you can’t build trust at speed, and you certainly can’t automate it.
Anon
"This is so true...sadly the organisation has prioritised other things over this. Over the past ten or so years the organisation has focused on how to complete OASYS, audits of these, data collation, policy dictats, written case records, audits of these records, how things are recorded and measured....meanwhile nothing is really said about how to actually do the job...how to use relationships to good effect and the research which supports this or the skills and professionalism it requires to do it well.
ReplyDeleteAnd what makes me really sick is when finally addressing workloads what was the first thing that was cut? Relationships. RESET and impact pretty much disposed of the relationship, flippantly seeing this as the expendable element. Nothing else was changed...the ridiculous amount of time spent feeding the OASYS machine being the obvious one....huge amounts of money ploughed into data systems like MPOP and the recall portal.
Why was there not a mutiny when they literally cut what matters, left bureaucracy untouched and we all waved this in without blinking an eye."
Helping support the work we have is one thing, but doing ourselves out of a job with Justice Transcribed (Justice denied?) It will soon go the way of the Home Office FNO obligation of going to an anonymous office, with a security guard from G4S, and punching in a code or a piece of cardboard or plastic to show that you've attended. The powers that be should or probably do look at this website, but the heads are in the sand and they'd rather come up with ideas that supposedly stave off being redeployed and give them the integrity that has been completely wiped out from probation as a job, as a profession and a purpose. It's all about prisons because the majority want more put there. But we don't have capacity, but the prisons and national guidelines favour them to the point of not being able to challenge it as community probation. This adversarial, inequitable dynamic is something that needs to be addressed. I'd rather not work in a prison where my office is a makeshift cell and i'm subject to the same rules around mobile phones and where I'm able to instruct, tell or ignore with surety any issues community probation may have. This dynamic is another reason why we're a dumping ground not a service that is valued for our experience and risk assessing- usually far more acute and insightful than the prison's. If you don't have money or don't want to spend it, then at least change the guidelines- that cost relatively little money.
ReplyDeleteThe managed demise of the ‘relationship’ was part of the move towards us segueing into a correctional service in which rules are rigid and relationships are the ‘do as I say’ variety rather than trying to find a collaborative approach to a problem. Justice transcribed is a tool for the SFO inspectors not for officers and penalties for not using will surely follow……..how to do the job is not covered in the training and is part of what you acquire along the way, as is us stop pretending that we know everything and we are not always right! The surpressed glee when a difficult case has been recalled is always a failure , yet I now see managers with little experience applauding this!
ReplyDeleteThe relationship was what separates us from Senior Managers with little experience in the front line and what gave us a unique insight into how and why a criminal act took place…….to first dilute, then sideline, before discarding this relationship is evidence that those decision makes at the top do not understand how, what or why probation is…..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wx2dz2v44o
ReplyDelete"The onslaught of AI slop - which he defines as fake, unconvincing videos and pictures, made quickly - is now unstoppable. Tech companies have embraced AI."
asked ai to iffer a view on accuracy of ai transcription:
Delete"AI transcription typically achieves 90-95% accuracy in ideal, clear audio conditions, but often
drops to 80% or below in noisy, real-world scenarios with accents, jargon, or multiple speakers. While top AI tools are highly effective for quick drafts and indexing, they rarely match human transcription's 99% accuracy for legal or critical needs"
Has the cobbler or any of the cheerleaders for ai tools discussed if ai transcripts are admissible in legal proceedings? Are the texts in probation systems identified as ai transcribed? If not, that surely has to be problematic?
https://www.farrer.co.uk/news-and-insights/a-critical-eye-on-ai-evidence/
"The occasionally dubious accuracy of AI-generated transcripts creates an evidential difficulty for the courts – to what extent can contemporaneous AI-generated transcripts be assumed to be accurate?
if a separate recording of a conversation or meeting has been made and retained, then the AI-generated transcript can be checked for accuracy against that.
The best way to counter that risk is for parties to check and correct AI-generated transcripts in real time, and to make a record showing that this has been done. Not only is that good practice which ensures that written records are as accurate as possible, but it could also help convince a court later down the line that the transcript is accurate and should be relied upon as good evidence. These checks are particularly important where a transcript records the more important conversations that have taken place."
Can't see evidence of time-saving here. On the contrary, it doubles the time & effort.
Once again, well done hmpps!
consider an interview room at a probation office:
Delete"80% or below in noisy, real-world scenarios with accents, jargon, or multiple speakers."
multiplicity of regional accents
slang terminology
probation jargon
people talking over each other
mumbling
arguments
language translator - or is ai going to do that too?
After parties have checked and corrected AI-generated transcripts in real time, (does that include the interviewee?), do the police sweep up the transcripts as evidence?
Will interviewees, already suspicious of probation, simply refuse to engage? Or lie because they fear their words will be twisted, edited & used out of context to prosecute further offences? Or contribute to children being removed? Or lead to eviction?
Does ai have to swear an oath? Or will its edits/hallucinations be regarded as admissible regardless?
What does this mean for miscarriages of justice?
No mention ai will not need interpreters ai does all the languages needed today.
DeleteIf I were on probation and you sat tapping on their laptop or recording and transcribing me on their phone, I’d be saying very little. Organisations have an obsession with recording everything nowadays. Any meeting I goto and it’s asked if ok to record I say “no, it is not ok”.
ReplyDeleteWhich poses an interesting dilemma re-consent... time was when those with potential for probation supervision (all formats) had to give consent before being sentenced, until Michael Howard's Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 did away with all that 'woke' nonsense:
Delete"Removal of General Consent: The Act, with provisions taking effect around late 1997/early 1998, stipulated that consent was no longer required for a community order to be imposed, except where the order included a requirement for treatment for mental condition.
Previous Law: Before this change, an offender's consent was generally required for the court to pass a community sentence.
Breach and Resentencing: While consent to the order itself was removed, failure to comply with the terms of a community order (a breach) allowed the court to revoke the order and re-sentence the offender, which could result in a custodial sentence.
Psychiatric Treatment: Consent remained necessary if the community order imposed a requirement for treatment for a mental condition."
No doubt lammy et al will bring in some new law or amendment that makes it compulsory to have probation interviews/sessions recorded, stored & available on the hmpps systems (ai transcript, video) and that refusing to co-operate means jailtime.
Every “innovation” seems to move us further away from professional work and closer to a kiosk model. Tag them. Scan them. Log them. Record them. Prove contact happened. Move on.
ReplyDeleteThat isn’t supervision. That’s attendance monitoring.
It might tick a ministerial box, but it does nothing to build trust, challenge behaviour or support change. It just makes probation look like a cheaper, outsourced extension of custody.
We keep being told this is modernisation. It looks a lot more like downgrading.
The AI point worries me for exactly the reasons people are raising.
ReplyDeleteIf it’s 80–90% accurate in real world conditions, that’s not a small margin of error when you’re recording risk disclosures, safeguarding information or potential breaches. That’s the difference between “I did” and “I didn’t”.
So now staff either blindly trust a flawed transcript or spend extra time checking and correcting it line by line. Which means no time saved at all.
We’re being sold this as workload reduction. It looks more like surveillance plus extra admin.
And it absolutely changes the dynamic in the room. If someone feels recorded and monitored, they talk less, not more. That kills “meaningful engagement” before it even starts.