Thought Piece 5

It’s almost impressive how much spin can be wrapped around numbers this bad. We’re told to feel reassured.

“Investment”
“Transformation”
“Technology”
“Opportunity”

Meanwhile HM Inspectorate of Probation has just reported that less than half of cases are meeting the standard to keep people safe. Less than half. Apparently that’s what “rebuilding the service” looks like now.

• Two thirds staffing.
• SPO shortages.
• AP beds full.
• Pre-release planning collapsing.
• Reset disrupting risk work.
• Early releases dumped on already stretched teams.

But don’t worry, we’ve got AI transcripts and tagging contracts. Because nothing says public protection like a laptop and an ankle bracelet.

The language is the giveaway. “Difficult choices will need to be made.” Translation: 

• cut contact, 
• script supervision, 
• move people through faster and hope nothing blows up.

It’s not reform. It’s rationing. They’re not strengthening probation. They’re shrinking it and calling it innovation. And the real insult? This is all being sold as a success story, while the people actually doing the job are told to clap for 4% and be grateful. If this is what £700 million buys, I’d love to see what underfunding looks like!

• You can’t run public protection on PowerPoint slides and pilots.
• You can’t replace experience with “digital solutions.”
• And you can’t collapse standards to under 50% and still pretend the system is fine.

This isn’t transformation. It’s a slow managed decline with better PR.

Anon

--oo00oo--

Yup, and the following is just cringeworthy bollox:

"While sufficient work to keep people safe was not evident in enough of the cases we inspected, following the region’s inspection in 2024, we also saw strategic progress in strengthening public protection work, improved staff accountability and engagement, and a commitment to building a culture that supported learning and psychological safety."

Riddle me this, Jones: how the fuckity fuck fuck can "sufficient work to keep people safe was not evident" be construed as "strategic progress in strengthening public protection work, improved staff accountability and engagement, and a commitment to building a culture that supported learning and psychological safety."

It's word salad; it's meaningless drivel... it's a sequence of non sequiturs throughout. But t'was always thus in HMI probation reports, with areas/OMU's scoring teen% yet leadership rated as strong. Gotta protect that pension pot (and the gong they promised if you behave).

Anon

--oo00oo--

It’s the classic inspection paradox, isn’t it. “Work to keep people safe not sufficient in most cases”…but somehow also…“strategic progress, strengthened protection, psychological safety, positive culture.”

If this were any other profession, failing in over half of cases would be called what it is:failure. In probation it gets translated into management poetry. Because admitting the obvious, that the service is under-resourced and unsafe, would mean confronting the people who control the budget. So instead we get paragraphs of soft language and “green shoots”. It’s not analysis. It’s cushioning.

When less than half of cases meet the required standard, that isn’t “progress”. That’s a red warning light. But red doesn’t look good in a ministerial briefing, so we get beige.

Anon

--oo00oo--

"It’s not analysis." Fucking too right... Jones' lukewarm fudge would have been dismissed out of hand by a judge.

I know I'm reaching back in time here, bear with me... if such equivocal nonsense had ever been submitted to a court in a full PSR (remember them, peeps?) the judge/magistrate would have had a dickie fit. On one occasion the Crown Court liaison PO told me "the judge asked me to tell you to make your bloody mind up. He's adjourned the case for a week to allow you time to have a good, hard think & re-submit something of value." Those were the days when a report would be read in advance by the sentencing judge and the CCLO quizzed about any discrepancies or outlandish proposals.

I dread to think what passes as a report these days.

Anon