In prehistoric times probation officer training entry criteria in England and Wales were strictly governed under a social work framework. To qualify as a probation officer, applicants had to gain entry into a higher education program recognized by the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) to obtain the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work (CQSW), which included a specialised probation option. Undergraduate applicants needed standard university matriculation requirements (typically 2 to 3 A-Levels or equivalent) to enter a 3- or 4-year undergraduate degree combining a social science discipline with the CQSW. Graduates holding a relevant first degree (such as Sociology, Psychology, or Law) could apply for an accelerated 2-year postgraduate CQSW program. Mature applicants without a degree could apply for a 2-year non-graduate CQSW diploma if they could demonstrate the academic capacity to cope with higher education.
But... Academic qualifications alone were insufficient. Candidates were strictly vetted on their practical experience in social care, voluntary work, or the criminal justice sector.
While applicants were generally required to be at least 20 or 21 years old at the start of training, the Home Office actively encouraged mature applicants, frequently recruiting individuals in their late 20s or 30s who brought broader life experience to the role.
Tuition was funded and candidates would receive a salary/stipend while training. Candidates had to pass a competitive selection process managed by the Home Office, who funded the sponsorship. To this end selection panels evaluated candidates for specific core character traits, including personal resilience, strong communication skills, emotional maturity, and a core belief in rehabilitation. Background checks were also mandatory to ensure suitability for working within the court system.
The artifical thing inside my machine provided the following analysis of that old dinosaur shit:
Training Structure and Context
- Social Work Foundation: Training was firmly rooted in social work discipline and casework models rather than standalone criminal justice curricula.
- Core Philosophy: Officers were trained under the rehabilitative tradition to "advise, assist, and befriend," focusing on personal relationships and domestic/community context.
- Court Preparation: Trainees learned how to interview offenders and compile social background reports (pre-sentence assessments) to guide judicial sentencing.
For the uninitiated, "Duck and Cover" is the official method of personal protection against the effects of pretty much, including a nuclear explosion:
"A log, a large rock, or any depression in the earth's surface provides some protection. Close eyes. Remain facedown until the blast wave passes and debris stops falling. Stay calm, check for injury, check for equipment damage, and prepare to continue the mission."
Anon
*****
So when I started in probation over 10 years ago sitting in on two extremely rudimentary supervision appointments with 2 different officers and 2 different cases was sufficient training for me to go and manage a caseload of 30 cases of all different personalities and offences, ages etc etc.
In my 15 month training whilst managing 30 cases I had 2 day motivational interviewing training, 3 day DV training, 4 day sex offender training and that's it and then could manage the most complex cases. Now all these years later they are finally telling staff how they should talk to offenders, how they should respond,.. Its just a joke, an absolute joke!!!
I had imagined when I started my training I would be sitting in watching a qualified officer do intensive work with offenders with a range of personality types, learning styles and that I wouldn't even be allowed to speak to an offender for at least a year. Nope. 2 basic 15 minute supervision appts then off you go.. Basically you're qualified..no one gave a shit! No one gives a shit now - this training is all legal back covering whilst they destroy what's left of the smoking turd that is the probation Service in the uk.
Anon
Something I haven’t seen explained yet, either in all this training or elsewhere, is what happens when the existing caseload is migrated into the new tiering and supervision packages.
ReplyDeleteTake somebody four months into an order or licence. They’ve already had however many appointments their practitioner considered necessary under the current arrangements. They’re then reviewed, placed into one of the new tiers and that tier generates a maximum supervision package.
What happens to the contact they’ve already had?
Is it deducted from their new allowance?
Is the allowance recalculated pro-rata for the time remaining?
Does the new package effectively start from the point of transition?
Because those produce very different outcomes.
If the clock effectively resets, somebody who has already received intensive supervision could end up receiving considerably more contact than an identical case entering probation after implementation.
If previous appointments are deducted from the new maximum, somebody who has quite properly been seen frequently during the early months of their sentence could enter a new tier with very little ordinary face-to-face contact left.
And what happens to two otherwise identical cases where one PO has historically seen their person more frequently than the other?
This isn’t an obscure administrative question. We’re about to review and re-tier an existing caseload containing people at completely different points in their sentences, with completely different histories of contact.
Somewhere there must therefore be a transition methodology which determines how past supervision translates into future entitlement.
What is it?
And, rather more importantly, has anybody modelled the anomalies it could create?
I’m sure the answer is waiting for me somewhere in the mandatory learning.
Possibly immediately after the question asking me to subtract 15 from 23.
I sometimes wonder when exactly “professional development” became “mandatory e-learning”.
ReplyDeleteTwenty or thirty years ago, development meant something rather different. Training involved experienced practitioners in a room discussing actual practice. You listened to people who knew things you didn’t. You argued about cases. You heard different interpretations. Someone challenged your reasoning. Occasionally you left thinking differently from when you arrived.
Over the years we appear to have made remarkable progress.
We no longer need all that expensive conversation, reflection or exchange of professional experience. We have modules.
Lots and lots of modules.
There are slides to click through, cartoons to look at, reassuringly uncomplicated scenarios and knowledge checks to establish that the nation’s probation practitioners remain capable of basic arithmetic.
Complete enough of them and apparently this constitutes CPD.
The irony is that probation now talks more loudly than I can ever remember about “professionalisation”, while providing some of the least professionally demanding development I can remember receiving.
Perhaps that’s simply the modern definition of a profession: increasingly complex responsibility accompanied by increasingly simplistic training.
I used to come away from training with questions.
Now I come away with a completion certificate.
Progress, presumably.
Well I come away from it with a tick on the spreadsheet of those checking if I’ve done it, which means one less email demanding to know if I’ve done it.
DeleteScreen shot it !
ReplyDeleteAll the training in the world, whether good quality or shite wont fix a system thats completely broken.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ft.com/content/4ba62ec5-8f81-4c39-a2f7-be9408844079?syn-25a6b1a6=1
'Getafix
Thanks 'Getafix - Have sorted it:-
DeleteThe number of offenders recalled to prison in England and Wales has reached “crisis” levels and could undo efforts to free up space through the government’s early-release scheme, the head of the probation watchdog has warned.
Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation, told the FT that the service was “seriously understaffed and under huge pressure”, and as a result officers had grown excessively cautious about offenders being kept out of prison and potentially committing further crimes.
Probation officers ordered the return of 13,193 released offenders to prison in the first three months of the year, 31 per cent higher than the same period in 2025.
Many staff at charities working with offenders believe that heavy workloads have made officers risk-averse and prone to recalling offenders for minor, technical breaches of their release terms.
“There’s a crisis in relation to recall, which I think needs a long, hard look to understand what is happening,” Jones said.
He added: “You’ve not seen any significant change in further offending that would justify [the increase in recalls]. What it comes down to is a probation service that’s feeling the pressure, particularly the fear of serious further offences.”
Probation officers are charged with supervising many offenders who have been released from prison as well as many people serving non-custodial sentences.
Jones said prison overcrowding and the consequent decline in the amount of rehabilitative and educational work in prisons were contributing to the current challenges.
“The reality is what we have at the moment is a broken custody system where not enough work is taking place in prison to get to the heart of why people are in prison,” Jones said.
The Ministry of Justice said the present government was rebuilding the probation service after inheriting “a system under significant pressure following years of under-investment and disruptive, unsuccessful reforms”.
DeleteIt added: “Less than one in seven offenders in custody are on recall, and it is a vital tool to keep the public safe, but we are reforming the length of time people spend on recall to reduce the prison population.”
Jones said the answer to the challenges was for the service to focus on managing the highest-risk offenders in the few months after their prison release when there was the highest risk they would commit further offences.
He also said the system needed to return the focus on recalls to protecting the public, rather than focusing on strict compliance with licence conditions.
However, Jones acknowledged that there remained a high risk the service would struggle to cope with the looming increase in its workload.
“I’m trying to avoid being overly alarmist,” he said. “But there’s a serious risk that things will go wrong in a service that’s seriously understaffed and under huge pressure.”
Ministers on Tuesday reappointed Jones, who took office in March 2024, for a second term in the role running until April 2030.
Jones said prison overcrowding and the consequent decline in the amount of rehabilitative and educational work in prisons were contributing to the current challenges.
“The reality is what we have at the moment is a broken custody system where not enough work is taking place in prison to get to the heart of why people are in prison,” Jones said.
The Ministry of Justice said the present government was rebuilding the probation service after inheriting “a system under significant pressure following years of under-investment and disruptive, unsuccessful reforms”.
It added: “Less than one in seven offenders in custody are on recall, and it is a vital tool to keep the public safe, but we are reforming the length of time people spend on recall to reduce the prison population.”
Jones said the answer to the challenges was for the service to focus on managing the highest-risk offenders in the few months after their prison release when there was the highest risk they would commit further offences.
He also said the system needed to return the focus on recalls to protecting the public, rather than focusing on strict compliance with licence conditions.
However, Jones acknowledged that there remained a high risk the service would struggle to cope with the looming increase in its workload.
“I’m trying to avoid being overly alarmist,” he said. “But there’s a serious risk that things will go wrong in a service that’s seriously understaffed and under huge pressure.”
Ministers on Tuesday reappointed Jones, who took office in March 2024, for a second term in the role running until April 2030.
Sorry theres a lump in the middle I just can't get around the oaywall.
ReplyDelete'Getafix
Jones seems to be the ONLY establishment voice... mcewens export strength, farrar, kte, et al are stubbornly silent. God only knows which unreconstructed numbskull designed & implemented this "probation rebuild" programme of primary school colouring books. Who dare hold their hands up & t
ReplyDeleteake ownership?
As no one individual has stepped forward to defend this puerile attempt at ‘training’, you can deduce that they are ashamed of it and are totally dumbfounded at the growing backlash that they don’t know what to do about it!
ReplyDeleteMartha Blom Cooper
DeleteCannot assume anything. As for the job training it's all you need for the role in today's working office. All that 2 year minimum a levels and maturity is for the birds. Group discussion and dynamics not worth a bean most of it was in the pub in the 80s. As for a diploma in SW as it was anyone could have completed the relaxed no rigorous training absolute doss.
Deletehttps://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2021/09/probation-house-style.html
Deletealso:
"HMPPS created the CJL Course Design Framework, which establishes the underlying academic, vocational, and learning standards for the national training model."
"Martha Blom-Cooper joined the Legal Aid Agency from HM Prisons & Probation Service where she had established and led the strategy function. Martha began her Civil Service career as a forensic psychologist working in prisons. She subsequently worked in a range of operational delivery, transformation and strategic roles across prisons, probation, courts and the Parole Board."
(slight detour): Sir Louis Jacques Blom-Cooper QC (27 March 1926 – 19 September 2018) was a British barrister, judge, and legal scholar renowned for pioneering advancements in public and administrative law, as well as his advocacy for human rights and penal reform.
"Ostling Training was founded in 2001 by Mark Ostling, a former Probation Officer and Staff Development Officer with more than a decade of frontline experience. Since then, we have worked with HM Prison and Probation Service, the Probation Institute, and international organisations, delivering transformative programmes in high-pressure environments.... We design and deliver training for probation services, prisons, and voluntary agencies. Programmes focus on motivational interviewing, pro-social modelling, groupwork skills, and managing risk — equipping staff with evidence-based tools for safer, more effective outcomes."
https://skillsforjustice.org.uk/case-study/moj-probation-officers
https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/procurement/ocds-h6vhtk-0504cd
And finally, possibly a repeat link?
https://revolving-doors.org.uk/the-probation-services-culture-needs-to-change-if-we-want-it-to-work/
Anon 08:34 Always interesting to revisit past blog posts especially as it confirms the significance of trying to copy and paste material rather than rely on links. The link to the Insight Blog no longer works of course!
Deletehttps://www.itv.com/news/central/2026-09-10/whistleblower-public-at-risk-of-violent-criminals-in-broken-probation-service
ReplyDelete'Getafix
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/prison-and-probation-services-in-england-and-wales/
Delete'Getafix
The House of Lords is scheduled to debate the following motion on 17 September 2026:
DeleteLord Farmer (Conservative) to move that this House takes note of the state of the prison and probation service in England and Wales.
Key points
Parliamentary committees have highlighted pressures across prison and probation services in England and Wales. The evidence suggests issues such as prison overcrowding, staff shortages and rising probation workloads hinder the rehabilitation of prisoners, public protection and justice system performance.
A key finding from parliamentary scrutiny is that prison and probation services are being required to manage growing demand with constrained operational capacity. The prison population was nearly 87,000 on 7 September 2026, with the useable operational capacity being around 89,000. The population is projected to reach 100,000 by March 2030. Over 248,500 offenders were on probation in December 2025, a 3% rise since the previous year.
Government reforms are focused on creating additional prison places and introducing earlier release on licence for some offenders. Other policies include investment in probation staff recruitment and the expansion of public protection measures such as electronic tagging and drugs testing.
Views differ on whether expanding prison capacity would improve the current system. Several stakeholders argue that sustainable reform also requires greater investment in areas such as rehabilitation and support services.
The public is at risk of violent criminals because of underfunding in the probation service, a whistleblower has told ITV News Central.
DeleteA probation officer working in the Midlands says she fears staff shortages and mounting workloads are leaving dangerous gaps in the system designed to protect the public.
'Sofia' - who cannot be identified for fear of losing her job - claims some officers are doing the work of three people.
She warns lessons from previous serious failures - like the Killamarsh murders where four people were killed by a man on probation - have not been learnt.
In September 2021, Damien Bendall killed his pregnant girlfriend, Teri Harris, and her three children, aged 11-13-years-old, at a house in Derbyshire.
When he was on probation for a previous crime, he had said he would kill them if his relationship "went bad".
An inquest at Chesterfield Coroner's Court in October 2023 heard that an officer fitting an electronic tag on Bendall did not report the comments.
Sofia describes Bendall's case as a "perfect storm of missing so many opportunities to safeguard potential victims".
"Once he was sentenced, he was allocated to an inexperienced, relatively newly qualified probation practitioner," says Sofia.
“I have seen newly qualified officers carry risk that they shouldn’t have, because they just simply do not yet have the competence and the experience. So, what happened in Bendall’s case - it could happen again.
"It’s really a luck of the draw at this point." warns Sofia.
In another case, convicted sex offender Leroy Campbell raped and murdered nurse Lisa Skidmore in Wolverhampton in 2016.
Campbell had been released from prison just four months before the violent attack, having been locked up for 17 years for burglary and indecent assault.
An independent review later found his supervision was inadequate, putting Ms Skidmore, other women and the wider public at undue risk.
Management oversight was one of the concerns raised by the case. Sofia thinks this remains a serious issue in the service.
“That’s an area that’s not been addressed since then. And if anything, many of us in the probation service feel like management oversight has just reduced more and more.
“As a practitioner, you might hold 40, 50, 60 cases. You have all that information in your head. So, your manager’s role is to come in and see the bigger picture, see what’s being missed. But that’s still not necessarily happening.”
Understaffed and under pressure
Ministry of Justice data shows there is a shortage of probation officers in the Midlands.
The East Midlands is short of 101 officers, and there are 132 fewer in the West Midlands than required.
However, the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO) says that the above figures are "deceptive" because large numbers of the workforce are on long-term sick leave.
Three-quarters of those are due to mental health, says NAPO.
“Some of my colleagues are carrying the workload of three people," says Sofia.
She adds: "Currently, within teams in the West Midlands, there are offices operating at 30-50% of their required staffing level. There are hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime just to keep up with the basic needs of service users and the basic public protection tasks."
'Broken system'
DeleteSofia feels the issues in the probation service are not easy to resolve.
“There’s not one thing that would fix this broken system. It took 15 years to break it, so it can’t be fixed overnight."
She feels more staff would be the first step to alleviating pressure on her colleagues, who are working extra hours without overtime pay.
"Despite doing all this extra work, tirelessly working to keep this service afloat...they're struggling to put heating on in the winter, they're struggling to feed their families. That shouldn't be the case.
"Nobody comes into the public service to get wealthy, but people should have the ability to live their family life without the trauma, stress and burnout. And with sufficient salaries to keep them going.
"Some of our staff fall below minimum wage, especially when pay deals are delayed," says Sofia.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: "This government is rebuilding the Probation Service after inheriting a system under significant pressure, following years of underinvestment and disruptive, unsuccessful reforms.
“Our record £700m investment in probation funding and community punishment is giving staff the resources they need to manage offenders safely in the community – including world-first restriction zones, a presumption all prison leavers will wear a tag, curfews and new bans from pubs and public events.
“We also have robust processes to ensure the most serious offenders will always be managed by experienced and highly skilled fully qualified probation professionals."
Training designed by a psychologist, says it all
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/sep/11/app-tracks-south-korea-stalkers-in-real-time
ReplyDeleteWhether you agree or disagree with Tags, at least the Korean system appears to be properly resourced for Probation staff.
Pqip nonsense no academic input at all
ReplyDeleteMartha Blom Cooper: "Establishing and leading Our Future Probation Service portfolio to ensure the Probation Service can meet demand and improve performance" (Linkedin). Fingerprints all over the crime scene.
ReplyDeleteIf Ms. Blom Cooper is indeed the architect of OFPS, would she care to say if something similar would be suitable for training forensic psychologists or is their pseudo science so much superior to the work undertaken by probation staff
ReplyDeleteSo the secret is out, surprise, not a qualified probation officer, doesn’t look like she has any offender/prisoner focused profile, more of an HR background so does not understand the job we do, has probably just spoken to others in her department so no real probation knowledge there. The demeaning attitude reflected in the ‘ alleged training’ just stinks of the typical I know more than you do. Guess what, you don’t and never will! Unfortunately they gave the role to a psychologist and not a practicing one either, not a name I would associate with the HMPPS psychology probably similar extremely limited understanding of risk in the community like a lot of the gibberish I see in PRA’s prepared by trainee psychologists for parole boards. At least we can point the finger in the direction of psychology when Cloud Cuckoo Land Productions fails miserably.
ReplyDeletenb: prison psychologist danny clarke was responsible for oasys... go figure!
DeleteThe Offender Assessment System: an evaluation of the second pilot
DeleteP. Howard
Published 2006
Psychology, Law
The Offender Assessment System (OASys) is a structured clinical assessment tool used by adult correctional services in England and Wales. It was developed to assess offendingrelated needs, likelihood of reconviction and risk of serious harm. Offenders are assessed at pre-sentence stage, at the start of most community and custodial sentences and at regular intervals during the sentences. These assessments aid effective management of offenders and targeting of interventions designed to reduce reconviction. OASys was rolled-out nationally from 2001 to 2004. By November 2005, around 870,000 assessments had been completed on 370,000 separate offenders. This Findings reports from the second OASys implementation pilot run between November 1999 and April 2000.
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20110201130324/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/r278.pdf
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20110201130324/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/r278.pdf
Delete"Alcohol misuse, emotional well-being and thinking and behaviour did not appear to predict reconviction when offenders’ other needs were statistically controlled. However, the use of statistical data does not fully control for factors outside OASys that could influence reoffending and these results should be treated with some caution."
https://statewatch.org/news/2025/april/uk-over-1-300-people-profiled-daily-by-ministry-of-justice-ai-system-to-predict-re-offending-risk/
"Over 20 years ago, a system to assess prisoners’ risk of reoffending was rolled out in the criminal legal system across England and Wales. It now uses artificial intelligence techniques to profile thousands of offenders and alleged offenders every week. Despite serious concerns over racism and data inaccuracies, the system continues to influence decision-making on imprisonment and parole – and a new system is in the works.
The Offender Assessment System (OASys)
OASys was developed by the Home Office through three pilot studies. It was then rolled out across the entire prison and probation system in England and Wales between 2001 and 2005 to manage and assess over 250,000 people every year. The system has been in place ever since.
According to His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), OASys “identifies and classifies offending related needs,” and assesses “the risk of harm offenders pose to themselves and others.” It uses machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence (AI) through which a computer system ‘learns’ from data inputs to adapt the way it functions.
“From these assessments, sentence plans are drawn up within OASys to manage and reduce these risks,” HMPPS says, making it possible to “help target interventions, making them more effective, and contribute towards reducing reoffending and protecting the public.”
Official assessment of accuracy and bias
An official evaluation of the risk scores produced by OASys found discrepancies in accuracy based on gender, age and ethnicity. The study found that:
“Relative predictive validity was greater for female than male offenders, for White offenders than offenders of Asian, Black and Mixed ethnicity, and for older than younger offenders. After controlling for differences in risk profiles, lower validity for all Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups (non-violent reoffending) and Black and Mixed ethnicity offenders (violent reoffending) was the greatest concern.”
This means that OASys scores were disproportionately less accurate for racialised people than white people, and especially so for Black and mixed-race people.
The same study concluded that: “Among all offenders, actual (proven) reoffending was significantly below the predicted rate”.
The Ministry of Justice told Statewatch in response to a freedom of information request (pdf) that “the HMPPS Assess Risks, Needs and Strengths (ARNS) project is developing a new digital tool to replace the OASys tool.”
An early prototype of the new system has been in the pilot phase since December 2024, “with a view to a national rollout in 2026.” ARNS is “being built in-house by a team from [Ministry of] Justice digital who are liaising with Capita, who currently provide technical support for OASys.”
Capita, one of the UK’s biggest outsourcing companies for the public sector, has held the contract for managing electronic tagging services in the UK since 2014. The company is also supplying a growing number of UK police forces with COSAIN, a social media surveillance tool, for monitoring activists."
Wait until they hear about palantir!
It astounds me that, despite the knowledge, talent, experience and expertise that exists within probation, the profession and its practices are so consistently designed and shaped by people who have very little to do with the actual practice of probation.
DeleteImagine law, social work or even the police accepting this as normal. Imagine people who had never qualified as lawyers or social workers, or who had never walked the beat, routinely telling those professions how they should practice and introducing the latest “new” ways of doing their jobs.
Yet probation seems to lap it up. We have become remarkably accepting of being told how to do our own job by people who have never actually done it. This isn’t simply a consequence of the modern Civil Service structure or the Civil Service Code. It was happening long before either existed in their current form. The deeper problem is that probation has repeatedly surrendered professional authority over its own practice.
For a profession with a 100 year history and such a wealth of frontline knowledge and expertise, that should be a far more uncomfortable truth than it appears to be.
As the clock ticks on my probation career (not a social worker qualified probation officer) I grow ever more despondent about what legacy I will leave those following me. I look at the quality of PSR’s, parole reports, OAsys, sentence plans(by the way the new ones are a complete joke ) and realise that the professional standards that we previously adhered to are sinking fast. There is a lack of industry and focus on the work and I am sick of colleagues who will not go try their best to speak with a punter before they recall him. Recall bingo seems to be the new game now closely followed by enforcement bagatelle. Why? Because we are not allowed to develop our own profession it is all done by external people, some of the academics have made a meal ticket out of probation theories, the four pillars for instance! Academics sitting in their universities away from the real world dreaming up projects to get funding and then sell it to those at the top with no knowledge and then it is made mandatory learning so that if something goes wrong you can be hung out to dry. An SFO occurs and watch everyone from SPO up retreat into their offices and leave the officer to deal with the SFO team those with largely limited experience of punters because they did not really want an active career in offender management. It is always the PO’s fault, not the lack of management oversight because they do not have the professional knowledge and experience to provide it, just to bully weaker staff and then try to manage those who stand up to them out of the team or service. In a few years everyone will be in Serco uniforms, with welcome to probation badges on, ‘Hi, my name is Bruce’ and the punter issued with yellow and red cards to display during sessions prescribed by AI. You can only really effectively assess someone’s risk by sitting with them discussing their behaviour and linking in with other organisations. Tick box probation does not deliver. Last one out switch the lights out.
DeleteIt's like something you would write as an appendix to your degree or masters thesis but then you actually start working in the service and you think to yourself 'I can't believe I wrote that pile of crap, I didn't have a clue!!'
ReplyDeleteIt's cute how she thinks people are going to bother to put a tag on someone with only a few days left or that EM will give a shit... She's definitely away with the fairies, probably too many glasses of red developing notions of herself!
ReplyDeleteShame really as her father, if I have the right person, was an eminent Barrister who fought for many of the rights prisoners today take for granted.
DeleteCan anyone think of another 'profession' which, having spent decades developing an ethos & core strategy to successfully "advise, assist & befriend" the most reviled in our communities, meekly & naiively surrendered itself to the whims of corporate moral nihilism?
ReplyDeleteAnd so here we are; stripped of any & all capacity to achieve meaningful outcomes, slaves to the unrealistic diktats of 'the centre', pawns to be sacrificed for the benefit of the kings & queens who hide in the shadows.
Once we've set aside our bruised egos & broken hearts, we need to accept that there are real people who have truly lost something vital as a result of this shameful, farcical dismantling of the only organisation that addressed the unspoken distaste for the criminal classes.
Who? Have we forgotten already?
Those sent by the courts to be assisted by the probation service. Yep, the punters, clients, cases, pops, old lags, crims, offenders, etc etc.
I'm certain the courts (for the most part) really believe that sentencing someone to be supervised by the probation service will involve them receiving assistance in addressing the reasons for the behaviour/s leading to an appearance in court.
I'm equally certain that the courts are complicit in being gravely misled. For decades successive governments of this country have shown no inclination to facilitate true 'rehabilitation';, despite a vague nod in the .gov.uk declaration:
"The Probation Service is a statutory criminal justice service that supervises offenders serving community sentences or released into the community from prison.... it protects the public, assesses risks, works to reduce reoffending & offers help and information to victims of crime."
Rehabilitation = Hard and expensive to achieve………Solution = Phase it out under the guise of a new way of working = Our Future Probation Service
ReplyDelete