What lessons from TR have you personally satisfied yourself have been learned before another fundamental redesign of probation is implemented? Because this isn’t some interesting historical comparison. TR had an enormous financial cost, but it also had a human one. Experienced staff left. Professional identity was damaged. Services were fragmented. Practitioners spent years working through successive restructures before reunification attempted to put the service back together again.
And now, barely having recovered from one transformation, probation is being transformed again. Once again staff are being told about efficiency, technology, new models and releasing capacity. Once again the centre appears remarkably confident about what can be achieved. And once again the people expected to make it work will undoubtedly be thanked for their “hard work”, their “commitment” and their “resilience” when the reality on the ground becomes difficult.
Frankly, those words are wearing very thin. Resilience should not mean repeatedly asking a workforce to absorb the consequences of organisational decisions and then congratulating them for surviving them. Nor should “listening to the frontline” mean thanking staff for raising concerns before proceeding regardless.
This is why ministerial silence on probation is becoming increasingly difficult to understand. Probation is apparently important enough to carry a substantial part of the government’s answer to prison overcrowding and sentencing reform, but where is the political voice explaining what is happening to the service expected to deliver it?
Where is the Probation Minister explaining OFPS to the workforce and the public? Where is the acknowledgement of what happened under TR? Where is the assurance - backed by evidence rather than another set of comforting phrases - that the same mistakes are not being repeated? Because if an organisation can experience a failure on the scale of TR and, little more than a decade later, find itself using eerily similar language while embarking upon another fundamental redesign of probation, asking “what did you learn?” is hardly unreasonable.
Romeo was absolutely right about one thing in 2014: there are no prizes for believing your own hype. The financial and human cost of getting probation reform wrong doesn’t disappear simply because Whitehall has moved on to the next transformation programme.
So perhaps the question for HMPPS, the MoJ and the minister responsible for probation is no longer where is the institutional memory? It’s: what evidence is there that you learned anything at all?
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"Nor should “listening to the frontline” mean thanking staff for raising concerns before proceeding regardless."
That perfectly describes the attitude & approach in 1999 when, as the sun was eclipsed by the moon, a group met in London to discuss the findings of the first OASys paper-based pilot. Staff from prisons & probation sat around a large table while civil servants asked for their feedback. A number of legitimate &/or worrying concerns were raised by the staff. Those comments were acknowledged &, for the most part, immediately dismissed. There was an agenda.
The 'centre' had a plan & they were merely going through the motions so they could say they had consulted & piloted the project before imposing it across the board. It was cumbersome, it was repetitive, it was judgemental. It was a crude stick used to beat the person being 'assessed' into shape such that they would fit into the round or square hole. And so began a series of carefully choreographed impostions - NPSv.1, NOMS, Trusts, TR, HMPPS, reunification, reset, OFPS.
*****
I couldn't agree more that, looking back, OASYS signalled the beginning of the end for probation. We spend our lives servicing a badly designed system. The unrelenting lists of standards, feedback, audits, QDOs, shows me it isn't staff who are "doing it wrong" but the system itself is fundamentally flawed. And yet management have spent years of wasted time on this ridiculous endeavour, ultimately blaming the staff for incompetence rather than admitting it was their own for enabling such poor use of our time and resources filling it out with an ever increasing list of requirements and quality audit tools.
What I don't know is whether ARNS will sort this out...has anyone used it or seen it that can give us some reassurance that there is light at the end of the assessment tunnel?
*****
I don't think OFPS was based on staff consultation. Are we really saying that staff have genuinely supported and asked for reduced contact with people on probation as the key to unlocking the 25% workload reduction? Certainly if someone had asked me, I would have pointed to the duplication and unnecessary time spent completing OASYS...how easily could 25% of my time be saved if that system was completely redesigned and the unrelenting impossible standards underpinning it wripped up.
Think about the targets, the data, the measurement, the monitoring, the duplication and unnecessary tasks we are forced to complete on a daily basis. All this has been left completely intact while probation supervision has been diluted, reducing contact and cancelling any contact at all through a push for early termination motivated not by success but convenience, with one to one work replaced with a preset list of "conversations". Is this really what staff have said when asked for ideas about reducing unnecessary workload?
And are we now going to be passively brow beaten once again to bring in yet another "model" we don't support, or am i wrong and staff are really supportive of a probation service that spends the vast majority of its time "assessing" in the most unimaginably laborious and ineffective way possible while implementing absolutely nothing at the end of it? Are staff not as angry as I am that out of all the things that could have been cut, contact was seen as the most unnecessary and dispensible element of our role?
******
And once again probation/government have increased punitive control measures by applying them to all, whether they are needed, worthwhile or necessary. In my mind this (inadvertently) changes the culture of probation officers by both seeing all as more dangerous than they really are, and diluting any remaining critical analysis or professionalism that used to be needed to determine who needs these monitoring tools at all or for whom they are necessary and proportionate.
And are we now going to be passively brow beaten once again to bring in yet another "model" we don't support, or am i wrong and staff are really supportive of a probation service that spends the vast majority of its time "assessing" in the most unimaginably laborious and ineffective way possible while implementing absolutely nothing at the end of it? Are staff not as angry as I am that out of all the things that could have been cut, contact was seen as the most unnecessary and dispensible element of our role?
******
And once again probation/government have increased punitive control measures by applying them to all, whether they are needed, worthwhile or necessary. In my mind this (inadvertently) changes the culture of probation officers by both seeing all as more dangerous than they really are, and diluting any remaining critical analysis or professionalism that used to be needed to determine who needs these monitoring tools at all or for whom they are necessary and proportionate.
Round and around we go……individuals promoted to the top table decide how to manage a challenging group of individuals with nothing more than ‘ an idea’ or the Grayling method….’I know it will work’……this will likely continue until the cold dead hand of central control is wrenched from the throat of a service struggling for identity………..seeing people less for supervision and somehow expecting a more positive outcome……what could go wrong and when it does…….who’s going to carry the can?
ReplyDeleteUnsurprisingly, I have felt the same way for a while, Impact had none, the Reset wasn't, and now ET and progression will be removing cases that still need support from the only support they were getting. Our professional judgment is ignored, belittled and stomped on for the sake of 'progress' that really is more of a regression.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what I cannot get my head around.
ReplyDeleteIf somebody had genuinely asked me where 25% of my capacity could be released, seeing the people I supervise less would have been nowhere near the top of my list.
Start with OASys. Start with duplication. Start with endless recording requirements, audits, countersigning, data collection, quality exercises and processes that seem to exist largely to provide assurance upwards rather than improve the work being done with the person sitting in front of me.
There is your capacity.
Instead, somehow we’ve arrived at a solution where the bit of probation that is actually probation — knowing the person, building a relationship, noticing change, challenging behaviour, supporting rehabilitation and using professional judgement — becomes the expendable bit.
That’s extraordinary.
We are simultaneously being told that probation must manage more risk in the community, that electronic monitoring will generate better intelligence, that practitioners need to identify changes in behaviour earlier and that public protection is the absolute priority.
And the answer is to see people less?
How exactly am I supposed to notice a subtle change in somebody I barely see?
A GPS trail might tell me where somebody has been. An actuarial score might tell me what statistically similar people have done. OASys might give me page after page of assessment.
None of them tells me what I can sometimes tell after ten minutes sitting opposite somebody I’ve actually got to know: something has changed.
That’s professional practice. And apparently we’ve decided that’s where the efficiency saving should come from.
Meanwhile the machinery surrounding practice remains. The targets remain. The recording remains. The auditing remains. The checking remains. The measuring remains. The bureaucracy remains.
So I would genuinely like HMPPS to publish the consultation evidence behind this.
When practitioners were asked how to release capacity, how many said “let me spend less time with the people I supervise”?
How many said reduce OASys? How many identified duplication? How many asked for fewer meaningless administrative requirements? How many said give us functioning systems, proper support services and the professional discretion to decide where our time is best spent?
Because “we listened to staff” is very easy to say.
Show us what staff actually said.
And if practitioners overwhelmingly identified bureaucracy rather than supervision as the problem, explain why the bureaucracy survived while practitioner contact was cut.
Because otherwise this isn’t frontline-led reform.
It’s a predetermined capacity target looking for somewhere to make the cut.
Well because the PO structure thinks it can do all the jobs at all levels these decisions are all made by your own qualified group so what makes you complain they know what the job needs.
DeleteThanks for this post and also the other contributions. So what do we do? I agree as a first step we need to see the published consultation upon which the OFPS measures have been based and exactly what staff consultation was completed to inform these measures...perhaps we should all agree, to collectively and courageously ask these questions at the next all staff call? And bombard them with evidence from this post that we do not support the measures they are bringing in to reduce capacity....as well as raising the same concerns with the unions who were supposedly consulted on these plans. Are we really saying the unions, who are supposed to represent our collective voice, supported proposals to reduce or cease contact time with people on probation while leaving intact all the other meaningless elements of our role they said they were going to reduce?
DeleteI cringe every time I hear or read “Our Future Probation Service” (OFPS).
DeleteWhich part is “ours”?
The part that took two years to give us the lowest pay rise it could get away with, keeping probation as a pretty poorly paid job?
The part that failed to keep us safe, failed to implement adequate security and failed to ensure even basic working conditions?
The part that told us it would switch off the WMT so we couldn’t see a percentage rating of how overworked and overwhelmed we are?
The part that told us we’d spend 25% less time with people on probation, and more time staring at tagging and surveillance software?
The part that told us to cheer for AI transcription because it would give us more time to spend with people on probation, while telling us to use that additional time to stare at tagging and surveillance software?
The part that told us to complete a mountain of tasks in less than three months to prepare for the early release of thousands of people from prison?
The part that told us to do more for less, while living in constant fear of SFO blame processes, watching experienced colleagues fall apart and leave, inexperienced trainees on substandard training programmes take on responsibilities they shouldn’t, and those complicit in all of the above being applauded and promoted?
The part that continues to tell us that £700 million will be spent on probation and 1,500 new staff, but can’t tell us how much of that money is actually going towards staffing and resources, when we’re getting it, how it’s going to support us on a daily basis and if it’s already been spent?
The part that didn’t ask us if spending £700 million on tagging, IT and AI contracts helps someone on probation find housing or employment, or how we’ll cope while these 1,500 trainees take 15 to 27 months to qualify, if they can even attract 1,500 since the pay is so poor.
So perhaps someone could send a memo to our CPO or the new Justice Minister to say that until probation staff are properly consulted, properly paid and properly treated, the Probation Service will never be “ours”.
@13:36 But that rather assumes that because somebody making a decision is, or once was, a qualified PO, the decision therefore represents what frontline practitioners believe the job needs.
DeleteIt doesn’t.
The question I’ve asked is a very simple one: what did frontline practitioners actually say when they were consulted about OFPS?
If reducing face-to-face contact, changing supervision arrangements and releasing 25% practitioner capacity genuinely came from practitioners themselves, then publish the consultation evidence and I’ll happily accept that.
But “qualified people higher up the structure decided it” isn’t the same thing as frontline consultation, and it certainly doesn’t mean practitioners should stop questioning those decisions.
In fact, I’d argue the opposite. If professional judgement means anything, qualified practitioners should be able to challenge a model they believe risks weakening the very work they were trained to do.
And there is something rather ironic about saying “they know what the job needs” while apparently suggesting that those currently doing the job shouldn’t complain.
We know what the job needs too. We’re doing it.
That’s rather the point of this entire discussion.
Both today’s blog and the comments of which no doubt there will be many, more richly and poignantly deserve to be read by ALL those to whom it is quite clearly addressed. Courageous, heartfelt, bold and profound words from those working at the coalface. Heartfelt thanks to ALL those contributors who seek to protect the Probation Ideal and what is both felt and believed to be sacrosanct to keeping alive both the spirit and soul of Probation. Im hugely proud of ALL those seeking to inform and indeed fight with integrity and humanity which is YOUR HALLMARK. I maybe long retired but like many others who contribute to this blog very much with you in thought, spirit and indeed prayer too. I have shared this blog with my MP and hope many of you will too. I hope someone is ‘listening; iangould5
ReplyDeleteThe future appears to be already written.
ReplyDeletePublished a few hours ago, here's the answer, here's the fix!
I personally struggle with the logic of creating more routes to recall people back to prison whilst at the same time trying to free up space.
Available capacity stands at around 1800 places. Early release scheme hopes to free up a further 1500 places. Recall figures however exceed 50,000 in the last year.
My maths are not great, but I just can't see how they hope to achieve anything.
https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/fixing-the-prison-and-probation-crisis
'Getafix
DeleteFixing the prison and probation crisis
The Government is taking action to keep the most dangerous offenders locked up, expand prison capacity and strengthen protections for victims and the public.
This Government inherited a prison system in crisis, putting the public at grave risk. Prisons were on the brink of collapse, with capacity dangerously close to being exceeded. That’s why the Government is taking decisive action.
1. The Government is building new prison places. By 2031, there will be more prison places than ever before
This Government has already built around 3,200 new prison places and aims to create 14,000 by 2031, giving communities confidence that those who pose the greatest risk will be locked up.
We are also speeding up the deportation of foreign criminals, saving money for taxpayers and protecting the public from dangerous offenders. Over 11,700 foreign criminals including murderers and rapists have been removed since July 2024.
2. The Government is making changes to sentencing so that prison places are used for the most dangerous criminals
The most dangerous offenders must be locked up for a long time. That will not change.
We are introducing reforms to prison release arrangements through the Sentencing Act 2026 which change the amount of time offenders will spend in prison. However, over 18,000 offenders serving life and extended sentences, murderers and those serving sentences for rape and serious sexual child and grooming offences, are completely excluded from these changes.
For offences with sentences of 12 months or less, there will be a presumption against custodial sentences in favour of community sentences – including unpaid work, electronic monitoring tags, curfews and exclusion zones. Courts will still be able to send offenders to prison when there is significant risk of harm to the victim or public.
3. The Government is improving the monitoring of offenders when they are released from prison
Prisoners who are released will not be free and can be recalled to prison at any time if they step out of line. Victims will have a say over tough new restrictions on offenders leaving prison.
A record £700m investment going into probation by 2028/29, which has already helped us hire 1,000 new trainee probation officers, will enable 1,300 more to be added by March 2027.
It also means we can ramp up the electronic tagging of offenders on release from prison, with nearly all offenders tagged and subject to curfews and exclusion zones to keep victims safe.
Rape and certain child sex offenders will now face tighter controls than ever before after leaving prison, with more intensive probation supervision and a mandatory condition that will give constant access to their location via a GPS tag.
We are also expanding other protections including chemical suppression for sex offenders, random drug testing, and bans from driving, pubs and events such as football matches.
4. The Government is improving support for victims
The Government is introducing a stronger package of support for victims, including increased and improved contact to all affected victims.
This will be supported by a £10m boost for victim support to fund extra local frontline services for victims to get trauma-focussed support.
This is on top of the largest ever investment into specialist services that offer practical and emotional support to victims and witnesses. Over half a billion pounds of funding over the next three years will help charities and others deliver support like counselling and advice on attending court.
A dedicated victim helpline will be available by October for all those affected by the reforms to provide emotional support and practical guidance.
The order of priority & language is essential to understand that nothing has changed in downing street or whitehall for decades & decades:
Delete"As Home Secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s government from 1979 to 1983, Willie Whitelaw pursued a hard-line law and order agenda. He is best known for introducing the "short, sharp shock" policy for young offenders and embarking on major prison-building programs to tackle rising street crime."
michael howard: "Prison Works": Argued that keeping serious and persistent criminals behind bars reduces crime rates through incapacitation and deterrence.
Deterrence and Detection: Advocated for an across-the-board approach focusing heavily on measures to catch and punish lawbreakers rather than relying solely on social or economic explanations for crime.
Rejection of Fatalism: Maintained that rising crime is not an inevitable fact of modern life and can be reversed with political will.
the bliarweasel project: "Tony Blair famously defined his approach to law and order with the 1993 political slogan: "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." This dual strategy balanced strict enforcement and punishment for offenders alongside social interventions addressing poverty, lack of opportunity, and family breakdown" - sadly he unleashed tough on criminals but failed to deliver when it came to "the causes of crime", viz- "The government policy under Tony Blair has been one of relentless attack on our civil liberties; the expansion of new police powers, the introduction of new offences, and harsher penalties with longer custodial sentences – all of which has been matched by an increased weakening of the safeguards in the criminal justice process."
Now we have burn'em & co:
1. The Government is building new prison places. By 2031, there will be more prison places than ever before "HUZZAHH!"
2. The Government is making changes to sentencing so that prison places are used for the most dangerous criminals "LOCK'EM'UP"
3. The Government is improving the monitoring of offenders when they are released from prison "MAKE THE PUNISHMENT LAST AS LONG AS POSSIBLE"
4. The Government is improving support for victims
A serious point can be made here whereby prioritising & elevating the victim's status whilst confabulating it with the means or severity of the punishment is not healthy. It runs the risk of making the victim a 'legitimate' target (in the eyes of the perpetrator) & potentially places the victim in greater peril, e.g. if the victim can be silenced then the punishment might be less harsh. The victim's voice is undoubtedly important, but the justice system should be the arbiter of punishment, not the volume, articulation or skill of the victim's opinion. Similarly I would argue that the imposition of victim work upon the probation service was, again, a big mistake. It has led to some terrible conflicts of interest.
And there it is again.
ReplyDeleteThe Government’s shiny new “Fixing the prison and probation crisis” page tells the public that prisoners released under these reforms “can be recalled to prison at any time if they step out of line”, that nearly all offenders will be electronically tagged, and that short sentences will increasingly be replaced by community sentences.
Who exactly does Government think is going to manage all of this?
Because every one of those policies creates work for probation.
More people managed in the community. More licence supervision. More electronic monitoring information. More curfews and exclusion zones. More potential breaches. More decisions about whether behaviour represents escalating risk. And, inevitably, more recall decision-making.
Then comes the reassurance: £700m and recruitment.
Except read the Government’s own words carefully. The investment has apparently helped recruit 1,000 new TRAINEE probation officers, with another 1,300 to be added by March 2027.
We have literally just been discussing Millsike, where the Government accepts that having physical capacity isn’t enough because inexperienced staff require time to develop the skills and confidence to operate safely.
Apparently probation works differently.
And Getafix raises another rather obvious problem.
Government is desperately trying to create prison capacity while simultaneously creating more routes through which people in the community can be recalled back into those same prisons.
Meanwhile OFPS is supposed to release 25% of probation capacity by reducing the amount of professional supervision some people receive.
Which part of this is the coherent strategy?
More people in the community. More tagging. More surveillance. More potential breaches. More recalls. Less practitioner contact. An inexperienced workforce being recruited at pace. And a WMT that’s about to disappear.
Yet the Government page presents all of this under the wonderfully reassuring heading:
“Fixing the prison and probation crisis.”
From the frontline it looks rather more like moving the crisis out of the prison gate and expecting probation to carry it.
And when that doesn’t work, I suspect we’ll hear the same thing we always hear:
“Lessons will be learned.”
Perhaps somebody could try learning them before this time.
https://www.channel4.com/news/whistleblowers-say-probation-system-headed-for-disaster-because-of-early-release
ReplyDeleteWhistleblowers say probation system headed for ‘disaster’ because of early release
DeleteBy Amelia Jenne
The controversial policy of releasing thousands of prisoners early to free up prison places has already sparked criticism from both senior police officers and victims of crime.
Probation officers are also coming forward to warn that they don’t have the capacity to deal with such a big increase in caseload and that the plans are a “disaster waiting to happen”.
We hear from whistleblowers in the service and from families for whom the worst has already happened.
In a statement, the Ministry of Justice told us that protecting the public was their top priority.
It said that the government has invested £700 million in probation, including recruiting nearly 1,400 new probation officers and tagging a record number of offenders.
(there's some video to go with these few words)
They cannot fully staff the prison spaces rhey have now. Dire conditions for staff in working environments controlled by inmates..
ReplyDeleteCompletly off topic, but with the new football season kicking off today, its worth noting that Romeo's 'transfer' wasn't a free one!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/aug/18/civil-service-chief-got-record-500000-payout-after-starmer-dismissal
'Getafix