‘Can Probation call itself a profession in 2026 or is it just a job?‘
I would argue it is now no longer a Profession if it ever was. The profession died when the service was assimilated by the Civil Service which is a Profession that contains professions such as Policy, Project Management etc but Probation or Prison Officer are occupations not professions. If for instance we were all members of professional institutes that licences and regulated our practice then it would be a different matter. Licences to practice are meaningless if given by the sole employer of a job role who would never employ someone unless they had relevant qualifications or were working towards a relevant qualification. Being a professional involves not only having:
A Specialised Body of Knowledge: Access to the occupation is barred without extensive, highly specialised academic training and intellectual instruction. It cannot be learned through a brief apprenticeship or casual trial-and-error.
A Social Contract and Public Trust: Professions are granted a degree of monopoly and status by society because they provide a vital public service (e.g., healthcare, justice, structural safety). In return, they are expected to prioritise public welfare over pure commercial gain.
Autonomy and Self-Regulation: True professions largely govern themselves. They establish their own professional bodies (such as a Bar Council, Medical Board, or Engineering Council) that set entry requirements, define standards of practice, and handle disciplinary actions.
An Enforceable Code of Ethics: Professions maintain strict, formalised ethical frameworks. Violating these codes does not just look bad-it can result in a tribunal stripping the individual of their licence to practise ("striking off" or disbarment).
Monitored Standards of Entry and CPD: Entrance requires passing rigorous, objective assessments. Once inside, members must usually demonstrate Continuous Professional Development (CPD) to maintain their legal or formal right to practise.
In short, an occupation becomes a profession only when it moves from a job anyone can try, to a regulated discipline that requires a licence, an oath, and a high level of public accountability with professional indemnity. How is Probation then more than just an occupation and in fact more like a profession? If anything it looks less like a profession than it has ever done. We are at best pseudo civil servants specialising in working with offenders but on less money.
A Specialised Body of Knowledge: Access to the occupation is barred without extensive, highly specialised academic training and intellectual instruction. It cannot be learned through a brief apprenticeship or casual trial-and-error.
A Social Contract and Public Trust: Professions are granted a degree of monopoly and status by society because they provide a vital public service (e.g., healthcare, justice, structural safety). In return, they are expected to prioritise public welfare over pure commercial gain.
Autonomy and Self-Regulation: True professions largely govern themselves. They establish their own professional bodies (such as a Bar Council, Medical Board, or Engineering Council) that set entry requirements, define standards of practice, and handle disciplinary actions.
An Enforceable Code of Ethics: Professions maintain strict, formalised ethical frameworks. Violating these codes does not just look bad-it can result in a tribunal stripping the individual of their licence to practise ("striking off" or disbarment).
Monitored Standards of Entry and CPD: Entrance requires passing rigorous, objective assessments. Once inside, members must usually demonstrate Continuous Professional Development (CPD) to maintain their legal or formal right to practise.
In short, an occupation becomes a profession only when it moves from a job anyone can try, to a regulated discipline that requires a licence, an oath, and a high level of public accountability with professional indemnity. How is Probation then more than just an occupation and in fact more like a profession? If anything it looks less like a profession than it has ever done. We are at best pseudo civil servants specialising in working with offenders but on less money.
Poor Police is the role
ReplyDeleteThen you agree Probation is no longer a profession. Psychologists working in Probation call themselves a profession and and some cases see themselves as having more professional authority than Probation Officers who used to be officers of the court and produce a wider range of reports and act as guardian ad litem etc. Nowadays it is just a job anyone with a basic education could do. Do those working in job centres or as drugs workers consider themselves to be members of a profession? It is not listed as a distinct profession for government purposes as we are civil servants. That is our profession not Probation. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/confirming-identity-countersignatory-and-digital-referees/confirming-id-referees#recognised_professions
DeleteYou cannot be a profession if all of your members are in the civil service and bound by the civil service code, it's simply not possible. A profession must be able to debate and critique policy. We are censored by our policies and are not allowed to do so.
ReplyDelete“We are at best pseudo civil servants specialising in working with offenders”
ReplyDeleteWith all the ai, directives and targets forced upon probation I don’t think we are “specialising” in anything any more.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: The current Home Office proposals for probation officer recruitment and training are but another example of that approach, based on prejudice and simplistic stereotypes of social workers, probation officers, magistrates and criminals. An example of the Home Secretary's thought processes is the speech that he made last week in which he said:
ReplyDelete""Retired Army officers … understand the need for discipline and they won't stand any nonsense. That's exactly what offenders need!"."
As the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said in her powerful speech, he should realise that it requires considerable expertise, knowledge of psychology, sociology and experience in the field to be an effective probation officer.
Lord Bancroft: The report says that the service needs to recruit mature people with a breadth of experience... and records that the majority of the 1993 entrants were over the age of 30 and 42 per cent, had previous careers in a wide variety of occupations... It is repeatedly implied that the diploma in social work course is not all that relevant to the needs of the modern probation service. That is manifestly untrue.
Lord Walpole: My experience is that about 40 per cent. of those who come before the courts and are convicted need help, not punishment. That is when I turn to the probation service. Indeed, I have turned many times to the local probation service in Norfolk where I have received the most enormous help. I have not found the social services to be something airy-fairy. It is obvious to me that probation officers need a strong social service attitude. It is also obvious to me that what is most important is, as the right reverend Prelate said, the relationship between probation officers and their clients... The work of probation officers must be based on mutual respect, fairness and commitment to both helping their clients and getting them into a frame of mind such that they want to help themselves. That is what the training is supposed to be about. That work must be kept quite separate from punishment. Punishment is not the job of the probation service. Under that heading, perhaps I should add that tagging has nothing to do with the probation service either.
The Earl of Mar and Kellie: I have done offender work in Scotland for many years, serving, among other tasks, as a probation supervisor, a social inquiry report writer, a community service by offenders supervisor, a prison social worker, an aftercare licence supervisor and a project worker on an intensive probation project—that is, a 20-day group work project run by SACRO. I should confirm that probation work in Scotland is incorporated in social work departments and is not a separate service. However, we have separate offender specialists within our one-door approach to social care... I attended an experimental three-year diploma in social work course in Scotland, following a year as a community service volunteer... I went to 16 different supervised practical placements during those three years, covering youth clubs, social work departments, residential homes and a Borstal... I was very keen, but far too young [not quite 20 years of age] ... I am glad that the age of entry to social work courses has been raised. Experience of adult life is an essential prerequisite to effective social work, as is knowledge of the many different cultures and lifestyles of our citizens. Secondly, I am glad to have had a broad social policy education which includes economics, sociology, psychology, the organisation of central and local government, housing, education, health, leisure and recreation, among other things... criminal justice social workers need to be knowledgeable about how our society organises itself. Only with that knowledge base will they be able to help offenders to keep to the terms of their orders...
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1995-04-05/debates/b24530f4-debf-42f8-b1b5-d6f8d3431e69/ProbationOfficersRecruitmentAndTraining
I think the defining feature of a profession isn’t just a register, a licence or a professional institute. It is trust in professional judgement.
ReplyDeleteA doctor is expected to exercise clinical judgement. A solicitor exercises legal judgement. A social worker exercises professional judgement. Their employers can set policies, but they are not expected to abandon their expertise simply because a target or spreadsheet says otherwise.
Probation once operated in much the same way. We were trained to assess, analyse, challenge, motivate and exercise discretion. We were expected to justify our decisions, not simply follow a prescribed process. Professional judgement was valued because every individual and every case was different.
What has happened over the last decade is the gradual replacement of judgement with compliance. Risk tools, mandatory processes, performance targets, scripted interventions, centralised instructions and endless assurance activity have steadily narrowed practitioners’ ability to exercise independent judgement. Increasingly the question isn’t “What do you think is the right professional response?” but “Have you followed the process?”
That is the hallmark of an occupation becoming bureaucratised rather than professionalised.
The irony is that when something goes wrong, HMPPS still expects us to carry the accountability of professionals. Serious Further Offences, complaints, inquests and inspections all focus on the decisions made by individual practitioners. Yet those same practitioners are given progressively less autonomy over workloads, resources, priorities and even how they practise.
You cannot have it both ways. Either trust practitioners to be professionals or accept responsibility for reducing them to administrators working within centrally prescribed systems.
For me, probation didn’t stop being a profession because it joined the Civil Service. It stopped feeling like one when professional judgement became subordinate to process, targets and organisational self-protection.
The saddest part is that many of the people entering probation today have never experienced what genuine professional autonomy looked like. They are being trained to work in a system where compliance is rewarded more than critical thinking, and that should concern everyone who cares about public protection.