Being a probation officer is hell. Britain’s prisons are more broken than you know
An ex-case worker paints a picture of public servants doing a vital (and often horrifying) job, undermined by cuts in funding and staffing
A Murderer’s Guide to Cleaning sounds like a lurid thriller – until you read the subtitle, And Other Stories From My Life as a Probation Officer. In the book we meet characters such as Steve, who spent hours meticulously scrubbing the blood off the kitchen tiles after he killed his wife; Chantelle, who sang obscene songs through a speaker in her daughter’s playground; and Barry, a sex offender who… well, you don’t really want to know what Barry did.Steve, Chantelle and Barry are all real cases – with their names changed – whom Elizabeth Baxter tried to help as a probation officer. During her 25-year career, Baxter worked tirelessly with murderers, sex offenders, rapists, arsonists, fraudsters and burglars, seeing them at her office, in prison, at their homes or in court. The idea was to stop them reoffending, or to help get them a life outside prison. And she really loved her job.
But the fact is that probation officers don’t get a very good rap. “I wanted to raise the profile of probation officers,” she tells me now, over lunch at a restaurant in Kings Cross, “because they don’t get portrayed well or even accurately on television or film. I’ve never seen a good one, nor have any of my colleagues.” They are invariably portrayed as incompetent – “like Diane Pemberley in The Outlaws, or Janice in Back to Life, who just ate biscuits” – or simply as someone minor criminals report to in order to prove they are still wearing their ankle tag.
As of March 2025, there were approximately 5,636 full-time probation officers in the UK, responsible for supervising 241,540 offenders. Yet despite being an intrinsic part of the justice system, most people are barely aware of the work of the Probation Service, until something goes wrong. As Baxter says, “Things working isn’t very newsworthy, is it?”
A good probation officer is a cross between a counsellor, social worker, careers adviser and police officer. And the Probation Service, says Baxter, used to be “a quietly competent pillar of the criminal justice system”. It worked. All was going well until then-justice secretary Chris Grayling stepped in and part-privatised it in 2014. The service was split in two: one part remained in the public sector (the National Probation Service) and was responsible for high-risk offenders, and 70 per cent was privatised, creating Community Rehabilitation Companies – these contracts were primarily won by multinational companies, which would be responsible for supervising offenders deemed to be of low or medium risk. The change sparked near-universal condemnation.
Privatisation was a disaster,” Baxter writes. “Experienced officers were made redundant. Staff were overstretched and underqualified, risk assessments were not carried out properly, and the categorisation of high versus low-risk offenders was routinely muddled… To cut costs some junior staff were left supervising up to 200 offenders [instead of 60].” The previous regime of regular face-to-face contact with offenders was replaced by one phone call every six weeks. And inevitably, neglected prisoners are more likely to reoffend. The Ministry of Justice is now employing AI to “predict” the risk of reoffending.
The system was renationalised in 2021, but, Baxter says, it has never recovered. Poorly paid and overworked staff left in droves, and it was difficult to replace them. According to leaked official documents, the shortfall in staffing stood at 10,000 as of September 2023.
When the caseloads were manageable, Baxter felt she was really helping. “Manageable” was when she was full-time, with a case load of 30, could see offenders once a week and she “could really get [her] teeth into it”. Towards the end, she was working part-time and had 60 on her books. She had a breakdown and left in 2015.
Baxter says her new book is about “those halcyon days before privatisation, when officers had the time and experience to make a difference”. And in many cases, she really did make a difference. A measure of success was if her clients didn’t reoffend, but in some cases Baxter was able to achieve a lot more.
Stella, for example was charged with threats to kill, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage. She lived with a violent man with whom she was in an abusive relationship, and she had endured a rough upbringing: her mother was an alcoholic, her father died when she was 12. But after several meetings with Stella, Baxter could see she was “a good egg” with potential; in court, she pleaded for probation instead of a prison sentence. Stella received an 18-month probation order. Shortly after Baxter began working with her, Stella started volunteering with a women’s centre, then enrolled on a computer skills course, took GCSEs, got her first ever job (as a receptionist), got married and ended up training to be a social worker.
And there are smaller, less tangible successes. Sometimes Baxter was a lifeline – the only consistency in an offender’s chaotic world. Once, in the visiting area of a prison, she recognised a man who was there with both his father and his son. “Three generations of criminals and they were all inmates in the same prison,” says Baxter. “And I’d been the probation officer or youth offending team officer for all of them, at one time or another, and they said that I was the most consistent person in their lives.
“But they were all in prison – so I thought, ‘Well, it didn’t work then, did it?’ But they all said it had worked, because they were there for only minor offences; it could have been much worse. I felt oddly pleased – it was quite a strange feeling.”
Baxter’s entry into the probation service was not a conventional one. It happened after she was arrested for possession and supply of a class A drug. She was the only child of quiet, conventional, conservative parents. They read The Daily Telegraph, lived in a council estate and her father worked in the local factory. After Baxter left school, she became a dental nurse and moved into a flat with friends.
But her life changed one night after a party where she met two men who turned out to be drug dealers and persuaded her to steal some anaesthetic from the dental surgery where he worked. She was terrified by the idea but, feeling intimidated, took some out-of-date phials of anaesthetic and gave them to the men. A week later she was arrested.
Baxter was suddenly faced with an offence serious enough to send her to prison. Before her court sentencing, she met the probation officer who had been assigned to write a pre-sentence report on her. His name was Mick, and he was a kindly man who could see how scared she was, and he told her he would recommend that she not be sent to prison.
The magistrate gave her a two-year probation order, and she reported to Mick regularly. He told her his was the most rewarding job in the world, and she decided to join him and became one of his “projects”. She enrolled at university and got the qualifications needed to join the Probation Service. Shortly afterwards, she was assigned her first murderer.
Steve” killed his wife after spending a day in the pub together. They had returned home drunk, had an argument, and he had grabbed the frying pan and beaten her to death with it. He cleaned up until the kitchen was spotless. Then he called the police. It was a first offence and he was sentenced to life with an 18-year tariff. Baxter was assigned to see him regularly, after his previous parole officer retired, and visiting him in jail for the first time, she asked him to describe what happened.
Steve was matter-of-fact and showed no obvious remorse about the murder, but went into great detail about the cleaning process, describing how he used Ajax and Flash spray, and made some Persil into a paste for the grouting on the tiles. Baxter noticed that his cell was spotless, too. She saw him regularly for three years. When pressed, he admitted that he regretted killing his wife but said that the relationship was toxic, and that he was relieved she was gone.
Baxter noticed how he never looked at her, that he hated loud noises, and she was struck by his obsession with cleanliness. She thought he might be autistic, and arranged for him to be assessed. She was right. “Of course, being autistic doesn’t mean someone will be violent, but the diagnosis provides context for his actions,” she says.
Steve ended up serving 21 years, three more than his 18-year tariff because, in Baxter’s words, “he didn’t do well in parole hearings – didn’t show any remorse”. When the next parole hearing came up, Baxter wrote in her report that it was due to his autism that Steve was not capable of displaying remorse in the traditional sense, and that she thought his risk of reoffending was low.
Steve got parole, but will remain on licence until his death. Baxter continued to see him for another eight years, making it 15 years in all that she worked with him. He gave up alcohol, never reoffended, and during their meetings continued to talk about cleaning. Baxter says he was the most boring man she ever met. “He’s 72 now and lives in a sheltered housing complex.”
Baxter says she has never felt physically threatened by any of her clients except once, when she was in court and a parole application was denied, and the inmate whispered in her ear, “I’ll kill you when I get out.” She says: “Occasionally when I was sitting across the table from a rapist I might feel uncomfortable, but you have to brush it aside.”
The threat is real for today’s probation officers, 76 per cent of whom are women: last year, a 35-year-old man, Ryan Gee, stabbed his probation officer, a woman in her 30s, during an appointment at the probation office in Preston, Lancashire. In January, Gee was jailed for life for the premeditated attack, with a minimum term of 16 years
Sometimes the job would get to Baxter, though. The worst way it manifested itself, she says, was a sort of paranoia; seeing potential sex offenders everywhere. She says: “In front of our house there’s a play area with a lovely tall hedge around it. Loads of kids play there, and I was constantly on the phone to the council, asking them to cut the hedge down in case there were paedos hiding in it. My husband would tell me not to be ridiculous, and I’d say, ‘It’s a safeguarding issue – that hedge shouldn’t be there.’”
Did the council cut the hedge down? “No, I think they thought I was a bit weird,” she laughs. “I hadn’t realised how strange my life was until I left.” She had a lot of therapy after she stopped working for the Probation Service; she thinks everyone....(missing)
Baxter is married with two children, and her husband is known as Tom in the book. She writes amusingly about him, particularly how he is the most untidy man she’s ever met. Has he read it? “Not yet. I just hope he’s not cross. He’s such a lovely man, but he does think he’s perfect.” She has just found out that the book is to be adapted for television. She will be involved in writing the script and is enjoying the idea of her husband “being publicly humiliated on telly”.
It was a really well-functioning service that has never recovered,” Baxter says. “Lots of experienced officers left. I think there were 14 in my office, and six of us went off sick and then left. So there is a huge deficit of experience now. It was catastrophic.”
If she could make changes, what would help?
“More staff is key. There is a recruitment drive going on now.” However, recruits are increasingly younger: you can now apply to become a probation officer from the age of 18 if you have five GCSEs. “I think it would really help to recruit older people. They used to come from all walks of life, with different backgrounds, some from university, some ex-criminals, some victims – all had a social conscience and wanted to help people. I would focus on recruiting people who want a second career.” The new intake, she says, is “lots of young white women. A friend of mine who trains them said nearly everyone is called Hannah or Emma”.
What makes a good probation officer? “Someone who listens and really takes it in. Because you might hear one story one week and then by the next it’s totally changed – you need to remember what they said so you can challenge the difference. “And somebody who isn’t too easily shocked. I think you need to be a bit cynical, and still think the best of people. Because I do believe people can change.”
A Murderer’s Guide to Cleaning: And Other Stories From My Life as a Probation Officer by Elizabeth Baxter (Oneworld, £18.99) is out on April 16
An ex-case worker paints a picture of public servants doing a vital (and often horrifying) job, undermined by cuts in funding and staffing
A Murderer’s Guide to Cleaning sounds like a lurid thriller – until you read the subtitle, And Other Stories From My Life as a Probation Officer. In the book we meet characters such as Steve, who spent hours meticulously scrubbing the blood off the kitchen tiles after he killed his wife; Chantelle, who sang obscene songs through a speaker in her daughter’s playground; and Barry, a sex offender who… well, you don’t really want to know what Barry did.Steve, Chantelle and Barry are all real cases – with their names changed – whom Elizabeth Baxter tried to help as a probation officer. During her 25-year career, Baxter worked tirelessly with murderers, sex offenders, rapists, arsonists, fraudsters and burglars, seeing them at her office, in prison, at their homes or in court. The idea was to stop them reoffending, or to help get them a life outside prison. And she really loved her job.
But the fact is that probation officers don’t get a very good rap. “I wanted to raise the profile of probation officers,” she tells me now, over lunch at a restaurant in Kings Cross, “because they don’t get portrayed well or even accurately on television or film. I’ve never seen a good one, nor have any of my colleagues.” They are invariably portrayed as incompetent – “like Diane Pemberley in The Outlaws, or Janice in Back to Life, who just ate biscuits” – or simply as someone minor criminals report to in order to prove they are still wearing their ankle tag.
As of March 2025, there were approximately 5,636 full-time probation officers in the UK, responsible for supervising 241,540 offenders. Yet despite being an intrinsic part of the justice system, most people are barely aware of the work of the Probation Service, until something goes wrong. As Baxter says, “Things working isn’t very newsworthy, is it?”
A good probation officer is a cross between a counsellor, social worker, careers adviser and police officer. And the Probation Service, says Baxter, used to be “a quietly competent pillar of the criminal justice system”. It worked. All was going well until then-justice secretary Chris Grayling stepped in and part-privatised it in 2014. The service was split in two: one part remained in the public sector (the National Probation Service) and was responsible for high-risk offenders, and 70 per cent was privatised, creating Community Rehabilitation Companies – these contracts were primarily won by multinational companies, which would be responsible for supervising offenders deemed to be of low or medium risk. The change sparked near-universal condemnation.
Privatisation was a disaster,” Baxter writes. “Experienced officers were made redundant. Staff were overstretched and underqualified, risk assessments were not carried out properly, and the categorisation of high versus low-risk offenders was routinely muddled… To cut costs some junior staff were left supervising up to 200 offenders [instead of 60].” The previous regime of regular face-to-face contact with offenders was replaced by one phone call every six weeks. And inevitably, neglected prisoners are more likely to reoffend. The Ministry of Justice is now employing AI to “predict” the risk of reoffending.
The system was renationalised in 2021, but, Baxter says, it has never recovered. Poorly paid and overworked staff left in droves, and it was difficult to replace them. According to leaked official documents, the shortfall in staffing stood at 10,000 as of September 2023.
When the caseloads were manageable, Baxter felt she was really helping. “Manageable” was when she was full-time, with a case load of 30, could see offenders once a week and she “could really get [her] teeth into it”. Towards the end, she was working part-time and had 60 on her books. She had a breakdown and left in 2015.
Baxter says her new book is about “those halcyon days before privatisation, when officers had the time and experience to make a difference”. And in many cases, she really did make a difference. A measure of success was if her clients didn’t reoffend, but in some cases Baxter was able to achieve a lot more.
Stella, for example was charged with threats to kill, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage. She lived with a violent man with whom she was in an abusive relationship, and she had endured a rough upbringing: her mother was an alcoholic, her father died when she was 12. But after several meetings with Stella, Baxter could see she was “a good egg” with potential; in court, she pleaded for probation instead of a prison sentence. Stella received an 18-month probation order. Shortly after Baxter began working with her, Stella started volunteering with a women’s centre, then enrolled on a computer skills course, took GCSEs, got her first ever job (as a receptionist), got married and ended up training to be a social worker.
And there are smaller, less tangible successes. Sometimes Baxter was a lifeline – the only consistency in an offender’s chaotic world. Once, in the visiting area of a prison, she recognised a man who was there with both his father and his son. “Three generations of criminals and they were all inmates in the same prison,” says Baxter. “And I’d been the probation officer or youth offending team officer for all of them, at one time or another, and they said that I was the most consistent person in their lives.
“But they were all in prison – so I thought, ‘Well, it didn’t work then, did it?’ But they all said it had worked, because they were there for only minor offences; it could have been much worse. I felt oddly pleased – it was quite a strange feeling.”
Baxter’s entry into the probation service was not a conventional one. It happened after she was arrested for possession and supply of a class A drug. She was the only child of quiet, conventional, conservative parents. They read The Daily Telegraph, lived in a council estate and her father worked in the local factory. After Baxter left school, she became a dental nurse and moved into a flat with friends.
But her life changed one night after a party where she met two men who turned out to be drug dealers and persuaded her to steal some anaesthetic from the dental surgery where he worked. She was terrified by the idea but, feeling intimidated, took some out-of-date phials of anaesthetic and gave them to the men. A week later she was arrested.
Baxter was suddenly faced with an offence serious enough to send her to prison. Before her court sentencing, she met the probation officer who had been assigned to write a pre-sentence report on her. His name was Mick, and he was a kindly man who could see how scared she was, and he told her he would recommend that she not be sent to prison.
The magistrate gave her a two-year probation order, and she reported to Mick regularly. He told her his was the most rewarding job in the world, and she decided to join him and became one of his “projects”. She enrolled at university and got the qualifications needed to join the Probation Service. Shortly afterwards, she was assigned her first murderer.
Steve” killed his wife after spending a day in the pub together. They had returned home drunk, had an argument, and he had grabbed the frying pan and beaten her to death with it. He cleaned up until the kitchen was spotless. Then he called the police. It was a first offence and he was sentenced to life with an 18-year tariff. Baxter was assigned to see him regularly, after his previous parole officer retired, and visiting him in jail for the first time, she asked him to describe what happened.
Steve was matter-of-fact and showed no obvious remorse about the murder, but went into great detail about the cleaning process, describing how he used Ajax and Flash spray, and made some Persil into a paste for the grouting on the tiles. Baxter noticed that his cell was spotless, too. She saw him regularly for three years. When pressed, he admitted that he regretted killing his wife but said that the relationship was toxic, and that he was relieved she was gone.
Baxter noticed how he never looked at her, that he hated loud noises, and she was struck by his obsession with cleanliness. She thought he might be autistic, and arranged for him to be assessed. She was right. “Of course, being autistic doesn’t mean someone will be violent, but the diagnosis provides context for his actions,” she says.
Steve ended up serving 21 years, three more than his 18-year tariff because, in Baxter’s words, “he didn’t do well in parole hearings – didn’t show any remorse”. When the next parole hearing came up, Baxter wrote in her report that it was due to his autism that Steve was not capable of displaying remorse in the traditional sense, and that she thought his risk of reoffending was low.
Steve got parole, but will remain on licence until his death. Baxter continued to see him for another eight years, making it 15 years in all that she worked with him. He gave up alcohol, never reoffended, and during their meetings continued to talk about cleaning. Baxter says he was the most boring man she ever met. “He’s 72 now and lives in a sheltered housing complex.”
Baxter says she has never felt physically threatened by any of her clients except once, when she was in court and a parole application was denied, and the inmate whispered in her ear, “I’ll kill you when I get out.” She says: “Occasionally when I was sitting across the table from a rapist I might feel uncomfortable, but you have to brush it aside.”
The threat is real for today’s probation officers, 76 per cent of whom are women: last year, a 35-year-old man, Ryan Gee, stabbed his probation officer, a woman in her 30s, during an appointment at the probation office in Preston, Lancashire. In January, Gee was jailed for life for the premeditated attack, with a minimum term of 16 years
Sometimes the job would get to Baxter, though. The worst way it manifested itself, she says, was a sort of paranoia; seeing potential sex offenders everywhere. She says: “In front of our house there’s a play area with a lovely tall hedge around it. Loads of kids play there, and I was constantly on the phone to the council, asking them to cut the hedge down in case there were paedos hiding in it. My husband would tell me not to be ridiculous, and I’d say, ‘It’s a safeguarding issue – that hedge shouldn’t be there.’”
Did the council cut the hedge down? “No, I think they thought I was a bit weird,” she laughs. “I hadn’t realised how strange my life was until I left.” She had a lot of therapy after she stopped working for the Probation Service; she thinks everyone....(missing)
The final chapter of the book is titled “What probation is like now”. Though Baxter left the service more than 10 years ago, she spoke to current probation officers for their experiences on what conditions are like today. “With little public interest,” Baxter writes, “it is beholden to the whims of the political party of the day, and has been subject to regular, sweeping changes. Today, it’s limping along, chronically understaffed, hollowed out, and increasingly unsafe.”
It is poorly paid, comparatively. The starting salary for a 37-hour week as a probation officer is £26,474; marginally above the equivalent of minimum wage, £24,454. She shows me a graph recording overall public sector pay increases from 2010 to 2024: for health workers it is 32 per cent, local government 35.7 per cent, police 39 per cent, and for the probation service, 11 per cent.
It is poorly paid, comparatively. The starting salary for a 37-hour week as a probation officer is £26,474; marginally above the equivalent of minimum wage, £24,454. She shows me a graph recording overall public sector pay increases from 2010 to 2024: for health workers it is 32 per cent, local government 35.7 per cent, police 39 per cent, and for the probation service, 11 per cent.
It was a really well-functioning service that has never recovered,” Baxter says. “Lots of experienced officers left. I think there were 14 in my office, and six of us went off sick and then left. So there is a huge deficit of experience now. It was catastrophic.”
If she could make changes, what would help?
“More staff is key. There is a recruitment drive going on now.” However, recruits are increasingly younger: you can now apply to become a probation officer from the age of 18 if you have five GCSEs. “I think it would really help to recruit older people. They used to come from all walks of life, with different backgrounds, some from university, some ex-criminals, some victims – all had a social conscience and wanted to help people. I would focus on recruiting people who want a second career.” The new intake, she says, is “lots of young white women. A friend of mine who trains them said nearly everyone is called Hannah or Emma”.
What makes a good probation officer? “Someone who listens and really takes it in. Because you might hear one story one week and then by the next it’s totally changed – you need to remember what they said so you can challenge the difference. “And somebody who isn’t too easily shocked. I think you need to be a bit cynical, and still think the best of people. Because I do believe people can change.”
A Murderer’s Guide to Cleaning: And Other Stories From My Life as a Probation Officer by Elizabeth Baxter (Oneworld, £18.99) is out on April 16
And what’s wrong with younger people applying to train as probation officers. It’s actually offensive to say young people do not have a “social conscience”, or that all current probation officer trainees are “called Hannah or Emma”.
ReplyDeleteI won’t be reading this exaggerated fictional rubbish by a relatively invisible probation officer who actually left probation over 10 years ago. I’m sorry, as a probation officer I just cannot support this or books like it. There’s a growing trend of “ex probation officers” (usually ones that jumped ship or were not very good) writing books about probation, and it raises serious concerns about respect for client confidentiality, honest and ethical standards.
Someone was always going to do something like this at some point, but it is still disappointing to see what feels like a lack of regard for the potential harm written into these pages.
By the author’s own account she left the probation service over 10 years ago, yet these fictionalised practice stories drawn from old memories are now being presented in a way that blurs professional boundaries, and it’s likely to prompt even tighter confidentiality expectations for the rest of us.
It also leaves a bad taste that something so sensitive is being packaged as a commercial product at £18.99 a copy. What we’re seeing is an ex-probation officer claiming authority while potentially straying into ethical grey areas around client confidentiality, all wrapped up in what feels like a cash-driven publication.
Nothing wrong with younger people training as probation officers, but you do need an overall mix of age, sex and background experience which has been disappearing as the role loses pay and credibility. The author didn't say young people do not have social conscience, rather it was cited as a quality in the context of people who entered late in their careers, or with differing backgrounds eg ex criminals.
ReplyDeleteI think she did say that. Typical “I’ve been doing it for 25 years” attitude. How about live and let live!
Delete“However, recruits are increasingly younger: you can now apply to become a probation officer from the age of 18 if you have five GCSEs. “I think it would really help to recruit older people. They used to come from all walks of life, with different backgrounds, some from university, some ex-criminals, some victims – all had a social conscience and wanted to help people. I would focus on recruiting people who want a second career.” The new intake, she says, is “lots of young white women. A friend of mine who trains them said nearly everyone is called Hannah or Emma”.
Definitely a preponderance of Emma’s and Hannah’s nose deep in their social media feeds. The result is the profession is overwhelmingly feminised and not taken seriously. They have no interest in Trade Unions or the profession. Quite interested in receiving high pay for less work. When I visit a Probation Office now it feels like visiting a university seminar on crime where the clients are seen as other. Goodness knows what the punters think. I remember in the 80s and early 90s probation had a much better mix of people some of whom like me were young graduates but in awe of the considerable amount of experience around. Many had been teachers and social workers but also musicians, drugs workers, ex offenders, retail managers, police officers, civil servants and ex military. Amazingly that eclectic mix of people worked and were generally held in high regard by clients mainly because they respected the rehabilitative ideal. Nowadays the lines are blurred. I read with interest Professor Nellis’s article in a previous post and I thought about the fact all this surveillance and AI that is now accepted would not have been for moral and ideological reasons back then. There would have been fierce debates and concerns raised up the chain. I am still in touch with a few brave ex colleagues holding out despite the flack and they tell me the youngsters cannot be bothered to think about what they are doing, how, and why - they don’t see the point in questioning anything.
Deleteforthcoming TV adaptation? Lots of Emma’s and Hannah’s to pick from for leading roles … Emma Stone, Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Emma D'Arcy, Hannah Waddingham, Hannah Einbinder, Hannah Dakota Fanning …
ReplyDeleteflim flam, misdirection & faux outrage. Many people write books based upon their life experiences, many change names to protect identities (with varying degrees of success) & most fiction books are based upon real-life events or offer social commentary. Do we condemn Len Deighton or Michael Dobbs or Ken Loach for bringing stories to the reader/viewer? And being published in close proximity to acheson's words in the same paper, it raises the profile of probation in a positive way... maybe even offering some leverage in the pay dispute? (although its doubtful the unions will grasp that concept).
ReplyDeleteI'm just grateful that baxter has raised the following important & unfiltered messages (all of which have appeared on this blog, which is a great, albeit niche, read). She's managed to elevate them into the public domain via a mainstream journalist in a mainstream newspaper. Its more than the fucking unions have achieved, and how much do you give them every year in subs? More than a single £18.99 payment, I'll wager.
* the fact is that probation officers don’t get a very good rap. “I wanted to raise the profile of probation officers”
* despite being an intrinsic part of the justice system, most people are barely aware of the work of the Probation Service, until something goes wrong.
* the Probation Service used to be “a quietly competent pillar of the criminal justice system”. It worked. All was going well until then-justice secretary Chris Grayling stepped in and part-privatised it in 2014.
* Privatisation was a disaster... Experienced officers were made redundant. Staff were overstretched and underqualified, risk assessments were not carried out properly, and the categorisation of high versus low-risk offenders was routinely muddled
* inevitably, neglected prisoners are more likely to reoffend. The Ministry of Justice is now employing AI to “predict” the risk of reoffending.
* Poorly paid and overworked staff left in droves, and it was difficult to replace them.
* “With little public interest... Today, it’s limping along, chronically understaffed, hollowed out, and increasingly unsafe.”
* It is poorly paid, comparatively... She shows me a graph recording overall public sector pay increases from 2010 to 2024: for health workers it is 32 per cent, local government 35.7 per cent, police 39 per cent, and for the probation service, 11 per cent.
Sorry for giving an opinion. What I may pay in subs is my business, thanks.
DeleteSpot on. Probation is almost unseen and unheard, this is refreshing.
DeleteApologies for expressing an opinion too, but critiquing privatisation while publishing paid narratives about vulnerable probation clients (priced at £18) raises a serious ethical question around confidentiality and consent. One example of this kind of work who seemed to crack that dilemma is Going Straight by Bob Turney.
ReplyDeleteI’m sure it’ll be an interesting read for some, and probably a nice little earner too after 25 years of abysmal probation wages!! I think everyone will be writing a book now!!
Btw - not all “recruits” are “young white women”, without “social conscience” or “named Emma and Hannah”. C’mon let’s do better than that!!
I have mentored many young females with excellent inter personal skills and I have asked for their guidance when clients talk about Love Island or Instagram….we learn from each other all the time and the good probation officer also accepts that no one knows everything and that sometimes we are wrong…….
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgkv1x149eo
ReplyDeleteNottingham is one of a small number of crown courts running "blitz" hearings, where dozens of cases are pushed through in a day, with the aim of tackling massive court backlogs.
During the one day I sat in Nottingham's court nine, the judge handed down ten sentences - four of which were for sex offences.
From this month, the government is expanding the use of blitz courts as part of a package of measures to try to get through caseloads in England and Wales.
The money will come from £2.7bn of government funding for courts and tribunals for this financial year...
Back at Nottingham Crown Court, the cases kept coming. Next was a married father-of-five who had shared intimate images of a Muslim woman he had sex with and later tried to blackmail. The court heard that he threatened to share naked pictures of her in a hotel room to her family if she did not continue to sleep with him. ''You are 44 years old," said the judge. "These offences are mean, manipulative."
Handing him a two-year suspended jail sentence, he added: "You've escaped jail by the skin of your teeth."
the judge passed sentences for drug offences, public disorder and theft.
While addressing prosecution and defence barristers, Judge Auty KC said some of the cases should not have ended up in Crown Court and could have been resolved by magistrates, resulting in earlier pleas, swifter justice and less pressure on the system.
I appreciate the concerns raised about confidentiality, commercialisation, and generalisation. These are legitimate professional considerations.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as a matter of professional social work values, I would gently suggest that the intensity of the criticism risks missing a more important point.
The core ethical principles of our profession include a duty to challenge injustice and to speak out when systems are failing. The author has done precisely that, albeit in a popular format rather than an academic or policy paper. Her central claims – chronic understaffing, real-terms pay erosion of 11% vs 32-39% for other public services, the damaging legacy of part-privatisation – are not fictional. They are verifiable.
On confidentiality: while caution is always warranted, many practitioners have written fictionalised accounts based on experience without breaching ethical standards, provided identifying details are sufficiently anonymised. It is not inherently unethical to write such a book. The question is whether the author has taken reasonable steps to protect identities. None of the comments provide evidence that she has not.
On the generational point: the observation about younger, less diverse intakes is not necessarily an attack on young people. It is a concern about diminished experiential diversity in a role that historically benefited from it (including former offenders, older career-changers, and those with lived experience of trauma or the justice system). That is a legitimate workforce planning observation, not an ageist dismissal.
If we wish to defend probation as a profession, we would do well to focus our strongest criticisms on the systemic failures the book highlights – not primarily on a former colleague who has, however imperfectly, brought those failures into public view.
INTIFADA
Telegraph is on a roll.
DeletePrison violence rise fuelled by lack of experienced staff
Prison officers have served up to five fewer years than at any time since 2010, figures show
Violence is surging in British jails as prison officers are less experienced than at any time in the past 15 years, ministers have been warned.
Prison officers have served up to five fewer years than at any time since 2010, according to analysis of government figures.
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA), which represents staff, said it was “deeply alarmed” by the figures, which it called a “warning siren” for the wider criminal justice system.
Grahame Morris, a Labour MP and chairman of a cross-parliamentary group on justice, said the loss of experience could lead to more violence in jails.
He said: “The prison service is haemorrhaging experience, with officer resignation rates through the roof.
“Austerity cuts over a decade ago saw a quarter of prison officers forced out, triggering a vicious circle of violence and collapsing experience.”
The figures showed that there were 22,067 prison officers in full-time equivalent employment at the end of 2025. The total length of experience among staff in the prison service was 213,125 years. This meant that, on average, they had 9.7 years of experience.
This is a sharp fall compared to December 2010, when there were 24,501 full-time equivalent prison officers who had 329,353 years of experience. This equated to 13.7 average years of experience.
Even when officer numbers dipped to their lowest level in the 15-year period, at 17,796 in 2014, those officers had 65,000 more years of experience than current members of staff.
Violence goes up, morale collapses
Mr Morris, who represents Easington, County Durham, said: “As prison officer experience goes down, violence goes up – and as violence goes up, morale collapses, more officers leave and experience falls still further.
“We need to break this vicious circle by investing in our most precious resource, front-line prison officers.”
He said officers needed to be paid properly and allowed to retire at a “fair and reasonable age”, otherwise the Government would be failing workers.
Prison officer numbers are higher now than at times over the past five years, but the years of service by those staff have continued to decline.
Prison assaults in England and Wales have reached record levels, with 10,568 attacks on staff in the year to March 2025, a 7 per cent increase annually and a 254 per cent rise since 2010.
Mick Pimblett, deputy general secretary of the POA, said staffing levels made it harder to run safe prisons.
He called for the introduction of a long-term workforce plan to recruit and retain more staff. The Commons justice select committee called for a 15-year plan in a report published in November 2025.
Warning for the entire justice system
“This is not simply a workforce statistic, it is a warning siren for the entire criminal justice system.
Cont..
“For years, the POA has been clear: you cannot run safe, stable and rehabilitative prisons on a foundation of inexperience, high turnover and chronic understaffing.
Delete“Experienced officers are the backbone of our prisons. They are the ones who de-escalate violence, mentor new recruits, maintain order on the landings, and uphold the professional standards that keep both staff and prisoners safe.”
oncerns about safety follow incidents in the past year, which included three prison officers suffering life-threatening injuries after they were attacked at HMP Frankland near Durham. The officers had hot cooking oil thrown over them and were stabbed. Manchester bomb plotter Hashem Abedi pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder in 2025. The case continues.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “This Government inherited a prison system in crisis, with significant staffing shortages and officers working in challenging circumstances.
“We have taken immediate action to fix a broken system. Prison officer salaries have been boosted to over £37,000, resignations are at their lowest level in four years and we are at 93 per cent of our staffing target for front-line officers.
All our prison officers are extensively trained, motivated and ready to deliver our priority of punishment that works to cut crime."
'Getafix
In 2024 I thought there was finally some hope of the country being run in a less calamitous fashion, "lessons learned" & all that.
DeleteAlas not, and I'm sick to the back teeth of this response to everything that's fucked up:
* A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “This Government inherited..."
While true, it wasn't just the actions of the previous tory shitshows that contributed to the shameful inheritance.
Labour did their utmost to ruin the justice system under the pretext 'tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime' via CDA1998, followed by new choreography/nps, noms, OMA2007, trusts... not only putting probation in a straight jacket but also running the prisons system into overload. The tories & their complicit chums finished the job by choking the life out of probation, zipping up the body bag & replacing it with a doppelganger.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7cc70040f0b6629523bc15/story-prison-population.pdf
If you were concerned about the extent & fluidity of police powers:
Deletehttps://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2026/04/14/proposed-new-police-powers-a-draconian-threat-to-the-right-to-protest/
Those powers were voted through by this govt last night:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026-04-14/debates/0DF5A391-3E99-4413-867B-A878BEE4648F/CrimeAndPolicingBill
I think it's wrong and misleading to keep pushing privatisation as the moment that destroyed probation. TR caused terrible damage to the service in many, many ways.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it was the removal of the social work requirement that set probation on the road to becoming an agency of enforcement rather then rehabilitation.
It was the creation of NOMs in 2008 that cemented probation with the prison service.
Privatisation was a complete and utter disaster, but probation had already been dismantled and broken long before TR.
'Getafix
Your absolutely wrong getadfix . Once the local boards were dissolved by tr chiefs put off their lights for the last time the divide to conquer was achieved. Local board control was the last line of probation and getting that structure back from the central control cannot happen. They have all the tools they need to forget probation as it is now run by prisons estate and the police . Both national control authorities . It is a bit basic point this out to you as you have highlighted many things in the past but my hands are in the air on your assesment.
DeleteAnon at 10:41 On the contrary, many including myself I think would say 'Getafix is still very much on the money. Social Work is still being practiced covertly by the remaining 'oldskool' officers. Oh and by the way, why not get the handle right? It's 'Getafix. Basic aspect of respect.
Deletea pedant writes:
DeleteNOMS was created in 2004 as the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) by combining parts of both of the headquarters of the National Probation Service and His Majesty's Prison Service with some existing Home Office functions.
On 1 April 2017 NOMS became Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). The new Agency is re-focusing our work to support operational delivery, reform offenders and keep the public safe.
Coincidentally 2017 was when the nao slated the tr experiment, so it helped that the previous body didn't exist anymore so no-one could be held accountable for the whole shitshow.
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Investigation-into-changes-to-Community-Rehabilitation-Company-contracts.pdf
Probation trusts in England and Wales were established under the Offender Management Act 2007 to replace local probation boards, with the first trusts coming into effect on 1 April 2008.
an australian's memo to trump - couldn't let it go unread - delete if/as required JB:
ReplyDelete"You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything. They’re just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker’s stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn’t moved in 15 years. You’ve got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn’t attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you’re calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
«NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.» When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn’t even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clye0jr8wpxo
DeleteChris Mason: How Lammy and Vance's unlikely friendship is being leveraged
"David Lammy, who spends a fair amount of his time overseeing prisons in England and Wales as justice secretary [mason overegging that one &, as usual. no mention of probation], is also the deputy prime minister and has flown to Washington to meet America's Vice-President, JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in separate meetings at the White House.
Each meeting lasted around 45 minutes.
The talks focused on the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine.
You might reasonably expect these meetings to involve the foreign secretary, the job Lammy used to do before the role was given to Yvette Cooper.
But no, it is Lammy's relationship with the vice-president the government has sought to leverage.
The unlikely friendship between the deputy prime minister and the vice-president began when Lammy was an opposition MP and Vance had just been elected to the US Senate.
Last summer the vice-president and his family stayed with Lammy at his grace and favour home, Chevening, in Kent, during a summer holiday visit to the UK."
Note: "Under the terms of the Chevening Act, the prime minister has the responsibility of nominating a person to occupy the house privately as a furnished country residence. This person can be the prime minister, a minister who is a member of the Cabinet, a lineal descendant of King George VI or the spouse, widow or widower of such a descendant.
The Canadian high commissioner, the American ambassador and the National Trust all have remainder interests in Chevening in the unlikely event that none of the others requires the house.
The usual nominee is the Foreign Secretary. Under special arrangements with the board of trustees, the house is also available to the Secretary of State for International Trade and was available to the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union."
As I suspected, probation steeped in feminist academia, is highly prejudiced against sex offenders and this one so moronically uninformed she thinks paedophiles may be hiding in hedges near playgrounds. I'm sorry to be harsh but this is why we need more men in the service who tend to be far more rational.
ReplyDeletesox.
Unfortunately very true in my experience and is a similar situation with DV perpetrators
ReplyDelete"Men (...) tend to be fay more rational"...why we need feminist academics. And representatives.
ReplyDeleteHowever, speaking as a feminist, and female probation officer, policy and practice guidance around sex offenders is even more dictated by hysterical tabloid press than it is for all offending categories. There is absolutely no space for rational discussion, in professional or political life. I tried once, on the subject of the institutionalised infringements of human rights of RSOs and was temporarily a Pariah myself.
I wholeheartedly agree with 07:49 and once attended a conference in Manchester about how RSOs rights were not only infringed but eroded…..it was clear that there was no political drive to address this and that as part of Just Desserts argument no-one,not academics (in the real world) senior managers and especially Police wanted to address this in any way and it was that point that I realised that there is a shadow management programme taking place in which RSOs have few rights and that they should be grateful for being in the community……this is driven by the total fear of any agency wanting to be seen showing any compassion for this group. This is now being amplified by the number of ex police joining the Parole board wanting to ensure that RSOs continue to be punished long after sentence…
ReplyDeleteYour not alone it's full of ex aggressive police attitudes to keep penalising some of that bleeds into everything we do.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/15/trainee-prison-staff-new-mentor-scheme-england-wales-enable
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lbc.co.uk/article/prisoners-freed-mistake-government-last-year-5HjdXm6_2/
ReplyDeletelammy oct 2025: "in the year to March 2025 there were 262 releases in error from prison.New data my Department published today shows that from April to the end of October this year, there were 91 releases in error from prison."
Deletelammy nov 2025: "I am today announcing that there will be an independent investigation by Dame Lynne Owens... Her report will highlight points of failure and make recommendations to help prevent further releases in error, which have been rising year on year since 2021—from an average of nine per month in 2023 to 17 per month in the period spanning January to June 2024."
dec 2025: "Justice Secretary David Lammy has said a further 12 prisoners have been accidentally released in the past three weeks, two of whom are still at large."
So that was 262 in 12 months to March 2025, approx 21/month; and 103 from April to November 2025, approx 12/month.
16 Dec 2025: "Following the release in error of Hadush Kebatu from HMP Chelmsford, the Deputy prime minister took immediate steps to make the processes that take place when a prisoner is released more robust. This includes implementing a clear checklist for governors to determine that every step has been followed the evening before any release takes place."
Now...
"Data showed that 179 inmates were freed "in error" by the Ministry of Justice between April 2025 and March 2026."
That's another 76 in 4 months, i.e. since lammy "took immediate steps to make the processes that take place when a prisoner is released more robust".
Its all going swimmingly. Clearly where vance goes his best mate lammy follows:
* meets pope, pope dies
* supports orban, orban loses
* robust processes, even more releases in error
Indeed David moron lammy blames junior staff for all early release errors what a piece of shit.
ReplyDeletea chilling warning about the AI stuff from the man who is regarded as "the grandfather of AI":
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002stym
(the whole series is pretty damn good).
Everything is Fake and Nobody Cares
DeleteJamie and his AI companion Jimmy Botlett become increasingly difficult to tell apart as they bring you the final chapter of this story - featuring Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, who now wishes he'd thought harder about the consequences. Plus we hear claims that an engineer is building something rather frightening at one of the big AI companies. But what's true, what's fake, and what does any of it say about what's happening to all of us, right now?
for those who remember the rutger bregman lectures, here's his most recent account of events:
ReplyDelete"Less than 24 hours before broadcast, the BBC called me and said: we’re editing a line out of your lecture.
The line? That Donald Trump is ‘the most openly corrupt president in American history’.
Here’s what happened. The Daily Mail had claimed my entire first lecture was an anti-Trump rant — a lie — and splashed it on the front page. The White House director of communications instantly labeled me a “rabid anti-Trump individual.” And the BBC, one of the most respected media institutions in the world, decided that was enough. They called me and asked how I’d feel about removing the line. I told them: not good. They removed it anyway.
The great irony: my lecture was about exactly this. About the cowardice of universities, corporations, law firms, and yes, media networks that know what’s right but choose silence. About institutions bending the knee to power while telling themselves they had no choice.
The BBC even told me the line wouldn’t have been a problem a month ago. I think they meant that as reassurance, but it sounded like a confession. This wasn’t legal caution, it was capitulation."