Thousands of offenders not wearing electronic tags, report says
Almost 9,000 people in England and Wales required to have an electronic monitoring tag did not have one, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has found. They are likely to include violent offenders and prisoners released from jail who need to be checked on. The NAO said, as of March 2026, prison authorities were reviewing around 8,900 cases of individuals recorded as having an active monitoring order but no tag.
However, the Ministry of Justice has disputed the figure, saying its own review puts the number of unmonitored individuals at 5,450. It said the NAO figure referred to the total number of cases they are checking to see if they need monitoring.
The NAO called the current system "inefficient".
Electronic monitoring, also known as tagging, is used in England and Wales as a way of monitoring curfews and conditions of a court or prison order.
Criminals and people deemed to pose a potential risk are sometimes fitted with an ankle tag so that their movements can be monitored. These individuals can include serious offenders such as rapists and murderers. There are three types of tags: curfew tags, location tags, and alcohol tags.
A total of 28,700 people were recorded as being tagged in England and Wales as of March 2026. The NAO said some of the 8,900 cases in its report would include people who were registered as being tagged by mistake. But it also said the real number of those slipping through the system could be "significant".
People can be identified as being "unmonitored" for a number of reasons. These can include errors in the system, refusal to wear a tag, a delay in the fitting of the tag, or an arrest where the tag is removed. But it can also include people who haven't been tagged when they should have been.
Responding to the NAO's report, the Ministry of Justice said: "Public protection is our priority, which is why we're investing £100m in electronic monitoring, tagging offenders before release for the first time and strengthening victim protections via new alert systems – all of which will help cut the number of unmonitored offenders."
The National Audit Office argues the current monitoring system is not fit for purpose.
"Electronic monitoring is central to managing pressures on prisons, but it is not working effectively, creating risks to public protection," NAO chief Gareth Davies said. "Improvements are required to ensure that those who should be monitored are monitored and that breaches are responded to effectively," he added. The report also says police and probation staff often lack information or capacity to respond quickly to breaches.
People tagged are placed under strict conditions as part of their punishment. This can include having to remain in a specific area or sticking to a curfew. If someone breaches their conditions, it can result in a formal warning, being taken back to court, or an immediate return to prison.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice announced plans to significantly expand electronic monitoring as part of the Sentencing Act 2026, which aims to ease prison pressures by managing more offenders in the community.
Thousands more prisoners may be released early from autumn this year as part of the new law. Reports suggest killers, rapists and sex offenders could be among them. Most will require tagging.
Several probation officers have told the BBC they are worried about how they will cope.
Probation officers are responsible for checking offenders are following the terms of their release from prison. This could include things such as wearing ankle tags or not taking drugs.
"The report makes clear we're overworked. And it's only going to get worse with more people set to do their punishment in the community," one probation officer said. "There aren't enough of us, and we have no idea how the government is going to make it work so that nobody is at risk. Because something bad will happen, someone who is dangerous and isn't monitored will kill someone," the probation officer added.
The NAO says that part of the problem is a shortfall of around 2,200 full time probation officers, which the government expects to reduce to around 1,500 by September of this year.
The watchdog also says even though the security contractor Serco - which manages the tagging system for the government - met its 95% timeliness target for tag fitting visits, "it was only successful in fitting tags on 62% of the individuals it visited within its two attempts".
In a statement, Serco told the BBC it had made "significant improvements" and was "tagging a record number of people" and "consistently" meeting key contractual measures, as recognised by the Ministry of Justice and NAO report. It added that efforts to fit tags "rely on us receiving the correct information" from relevant authorities and partners. "We attempt to fit a tag to every person who should be wearing one. Where, for reasons beyond our control, we are unable to do so, we report those breaches to the relevant authorities."
The NAO is calling on the government to improve data quality and management of the monitoring system. It added the government had been working with Serco to improve performance and reduce the backlog in fitting tags. Ministers estimate a further 22,000 people per year will need to be tagged from 2027.
"The government needs to improve the service's resilience and efficiency, otherwise expanding electronic monitoring risks wasting public money and puts public safety at risk", said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts.
The Ministry of Justice said the government inherited "a failing tagging system with record backlogs". "As this report shows we have worked hard to fix this, with install rates up by nearly 50% since 2024," it said. "This is in addition to our record £700m investment in probation, recruiting 2,300 trainee probation officers over the last two years, and recruiting a further 1,300 this year - making sure the Probation Service has the resource it needs to keep dangerous offenders under closer surveillance than ever before."
Friday, 10 July 2026
Thursday, 2 July 2026
Confidence Broken
I guess I should be paying more attention, but I seem to think we never covered this Guardian article from 19th June and I notice Napo are kicking up a bit of a row, no doubt with the fast-approaching AGM in mind.
Excessive probation workloads put public at risk in England and Wales, union warnsExclusive: Napo declares no confidence in probation service managers and threatens industrial action
The public is “at direct risk” from unsupervised ex-offenders because probation officers in England and Wales are being asked to cope with excessive workloads, a union has said.
As ministers prepare to release and monitor tens of thousands more prisoners this autumn, Napo’s executive has declared for the first time that it has no confidence in managers at the probation service.
In a worrying development for the government, the union is threatening to launch industrial action in three months’ time unless members receive increased support and pay.
The motion comes at a crucial time for the government’s plans to relieve pressure on the criminal justice system. From September, ministers will embark on the biggest expansion of tagging in British history so that up to 40,000 former offenders will be monitored by tags and overseen by probation officers – a 40% increase from the 28,000 currently on tags.
Last year, an official watchdog warned that the probation service had too few staff with too little experience and training, which it said left members of the public at risk. The public accounts committee found that longstanding staff shortages had left probation staff dealing with “excessive and unmanageable workloads”, with officers working at 126% of capacity for several years in some areas.
Tania Bassett, a Napo national official, said probation officers were unable to cope with the growing number of ex-offenders they were being asked to supervise, and many more people were ending up on the street.
“Excessive workloads and staff burnout poses a direct risk to the public with staff being unable to effectively manage the risk of their clients in the community,” she said. “Added to this is the shortage of accommodation, which will result in more people being homeless and therefore more likely to reoffend.”
Managers were trying to get rid of a tool that measures the workload each probation officer is being asked to cope with, a move that would hide the magnitude of the tasks they were being asked to perform, Bassett said.
“The loss of a workload measurement tool will leave staff, including managers, unable to see their workloads and therefore unable to evidence that they are overworked,” she said.
The Prison Service met only 26% of its targets for timeliness of appointments and delivery of services in 2024-25, down from 50% in 2022, according to the National Audit Office. The Ministry of Justice said that between 2023 and 2025, 31% of target probation appointments did not take place.
The MoJ said earlier this year that it would recruit 1,300 extra probation officers in the next year as part of a £700m investment by 2029, which included £100m for the tagging expansion by the end of this parliament. The department said “proximity monitoring technology” for domestic abusers and stalkers would be tested in a £5m pilot.
The union’s executive has voted for a motion that says a failure to address persistently high vacancy and staff sickness rates and removing a tool that measures workloads means that “the current position is untenable and cannot continue”.
It says: “[HM Prison and Probation Service’s] leadership has demonstrably failed in its duty of care to the workforce of the Probation Service, and this represents a reckless disregard for our welfare and professional integrity as well as the safety of our communities.”
James Timpson, the prisons minister, told MPs last week that the probation service was under severe pressure after disclosing that staff were each managing an average of 32 ex-offenders.
“It’s running too hot … we inherited a system that was broken, and we’re putting it all back together again. It’s going to take time,” he told the justice select committee.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We remain committed to working closely with trade unions to ensure our staff continue to get the support they need to cut crime and protect the public. We have full confidence in Probation Service leadership to deliver the necessary changes and improvements.”
--oo00oo--
Napo is pressing for urgent national action to tackle the workload crisis before it pushes probation staff any further to the brink. We are calling for immediate workload protections, stronger safety measures, a fair and jointly owned workload measurement tool, protected learning time, and meaningful partnership with the trade unions. These are practical solutions that put staff wellbeing, public protection and professional standards first.
Thursday, 25 June 2026
Profession or Job?
A reader suggests "I want to propose a new thread."
‘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.
Saturday, 30 May 2026
Clueless and Uncaring HMPPS
Napo Opposes HMPPS Plans to Remove Access to the Workload Measurement Tool
Napo has strongly opposed HMPPS plans to withdraw practitioner access to the Workload Measurement Tool, warning the move undermines staff safety, workload management and employer accountability. This week HMPPS have advised staff of its plans to withdraw practitioner access to the Workload Measurement Tool (WMT), in advance of its removal in several months.Napo has not agreed to these changes
We have been made aware of several untrue and incorrect statements having been made by regional senior managers to the effect that Napo, and other trade unions, have agreed to this. We have not and will not agree to these plans. It is now for any individual who has made these statements – whether out of ignorance or malice – to urgently account to staff why they have done so, retract their comments and apologise to their colleagues.
In earlier discussions that took place with the trade unions, Napo representatives have clearly and repeatedly explained to HMPPS figures the hugely negative impact their plans would have on the staff involved, and more widely in the workforce.
During these exchanges HMPPS have admitted for the first time that for a significant period the WMT underestimates the workload of the staff involved. They have failed to publicly acknowledge this in their communications on the future of the WMT, making only vague, and frankly misleading, comments on its accuracy.
These plans completely disregard previous agreements made between the employer and the trade unions on staff safety and care. HMPPS appear clueless as to how they now intend to meet their legal duty of care to monitor and manage individual workloads, for ‘sentence management’ staff and all other employees. They cannot adequately explain how they plan to provide workload reductions for staff requiring these, for instance as reasonable adjustments or as facility time for trade union representatives.
Despite claiming to value the importance of staff and their wellbeing, HMPPS have completely failed to ensure that an adequate mechanism to monitor and manage the workload of staff. HMPPS claim to have been aware that the Workload Measurement Tool (WMT) under-reports on the workload of staff but has not communicated that to its employees. They tell us that they have known that this will become worse due to changes planned under the employer’s heavily criticised and under-delivering Our Future Probation Service (OFPS) programme have not yet made sufficient plans to have a replacement in place.
Napo have, for months, been calling on HMPPS to agree to the joint ownership of the Workload Measurement Tool (WMT), including on any future version of this tool, and for its application to as many other workers outside of ‘sentence management’ as possible at the earliest opportunity.
We believe this is the only way for staff to have any confidence on this issue, given HMPPS’s consistent inability to adequately protect us in this regard, and be open and honest with us. Napo will now include demands for positive change, and a completely different approach by the employer, in relation to workload measurement and management.
We will be responding to a letter sent by the employer yesterday after they had decided to enact these changes, regarding industrial action in response to their failure to resolve our longstanding workloads dispute.
Napo HQ
Thursday, 21 May 2026
Probation on TV
As the Probation Service in England and Wales continues on its outlier path of becoming part of the problem rather than any solution, here's a chance to see how they do things in Northern Ireland with a new BBC TV documentary series, all available on BBC iPlayer.
Childhood trauma common theme in documentary - Frampton
"I'm not saying without boxing, I would've been a tearaway or in and out of jail. But I know that because I did have boxing, it certainly helped steer me away from that," says former two-weight world champion Carl Frampton, reflecting on his recent dive into the world of probation.
He was speaking ahead of the release of a new documentary series which sees him go behind the scenes with the Probation Board for Northern Ireland. Probation officers supervise more than 4,100 people who are subject to a range of court orders and licences at any given time.
For the series, Frampton spent time with officers and those on probation, as well as hearing the stories of victims of crimes. "I just wanted to find out for myself what it's all about," he told BBC News NI.
It is the first time television cameras have been given this sort of access and the result is BBC NI programme Carl Frampton: On Probation.
Mental health issues
The former boxer previously presented Carl Frampton: Men in Crisis where he investigated why so many young men in Northern Ireland struggle with their mental health. It's unsurprising that his new documentary also explores the issue.
"It sometimes affects the way they behave," he said, adding that the "vast majority" of the service users he spoke to "have had some sort of issues with their mental health". While meeting service users, Frampton found many to be "friendly".
"I think the common denominator that I noticed anyway was trauma during childhood for the majority of them and having bad upbringings and maybe parents who were abusive and maybe abandonment issues or whatever.
"When you hear their story and you hear everything that's gone on in their lives as they were growing up, it kind of makes you feel sorry for them," he added. "I felt a lot of sympathy for them.
"You're not really surprised that they have involvement in the judicial system afterwards as they grow up into adults." Working on the show highlighted the influence boxing had on him.
He said he came from a "rough area" in north Belfast with a lot of "bad influences around", but he was very lucky that he had good influences around him such as his parents and boxing coaches.
He said he thinks the documentary will "give people a bit more of an understanding actually what they do in the probation service, and what their aim is really".
Frampton added that probation was "obviously a lot cheaper" than a custodial sentence.
"So they're trying to change people's behaviour, try to get them on the straight and narrow and maybe get them back into work and just become a somewhat normal citizen."
Main object is 'rehabilitation'
Frampton said he got to know "some of the service users and some of the probation officers".
"Something that I noticed was the relationship that the service user actually has with the probation officer," he said. When there is a good relationship then the service user will "get the absolute most" out of it, according to Frampton.
Childhood trauma common theme in documentary - Frampton
"I'm not saying without boxing, I would've been a tearaway or in and out of jail. But I know that because I did have boxing, it certainly helped steer me away from that," says former two-weight world champion Carl Frampton, reflecting on his recent dive into the world of probation.
He was speaking ahead of the release of a new documentary series which sees him go behind the scenes with the Probation Board for Northern Ireland. Probation officers supervise more than 4,100 people who are subject to a range of court orders and licences at any given time.
For the series, Frampton spent time with officers and those on probation, as well as hearing the stories of victims of crimes. "I just wanted to find out for myself what it's all about," he told BBC News NI.
It is the first time television cameras have been given this sort of access and the result is BBC NI programme Carl Frampton: On Probation.
Mental health issues
The former boxer previously presented Carl Frampton: Men in Crisis where he investigated why so many young men in Northern Ireland struggle with their mental health. It's unsurprising that his new documentary also explores the issue.
"It sometimes affects the way they behave," he said, adding that the "vast majority" of the service users he spoke to "have had some sort of issues with their mental health". While meeting service users, Frampton found many to be "friendly".
"I think the common denominator that I noticed anyway was trauma during childhood for the majority of them and having bad upbringings and maybe parents who were abusive and maybe abandonment issues or whatever.
"When you hear their story and you hear everything that's gone on in their lives as they were growing up, it kind of makes you feel sorry for them," he added. "I felt a lot of sympathy for them.
"You're not really surprised that they have involvement in the judicial system afterwards as they grow up into adults." Working on the show highlighted the influence boxing had on him.
He said he came from a "rough area" in north Belfast with a lot of "bad influences around", but he was very lucky that he had good influences around him such as his parents and boxing coaches.
He said he thinks the documentary will "give people a bit more of an understanding actually what they do in the probation service, and what their aim is really".
Frampton added that probation was "obviously a lot cheaper" than a custodial sentence.
"So they're trying to change people's behaviour, try to get them on the straight and narrow and maybe get them back into work and just become a somewhat normal citizen."
Main object is 'rehabilitation'
Frampton said he got to know "some of the service users and some of the probation officers".
"Something that I noticed was the relationship that the service user actually has with the probation officer," he said. When there is a good relationship then the service user will "get the absolute most" out of it, according to Frampton.
"I just didn't really understand what a probation officer's role was. I thought they were maybe going to be kind of old battle axes and, cracking the whip all the time, but that wasn't the case."
"Obviously, if they stepped out of line, there was repercussions as well," Frampton added. "But the main objective is to rehabilitate people, and that's what they're trying to do."
The mental health of the probation officers is also highlighted in the documentary. "What they're having to deal with and the stories they're having to hear every time," explained Frampton.
While his professional career was boxing, Frampton said he enjoys presenting. "I'm not a reporter, I'm not a journalist, so I feel like I get a little bit more out of people, and they can maybe trust me a wee bit more and share more information a little bit freely, and I'm not gonna judge them. "I just wanna hear their stories, so I'll keep doing it as long as they keep asking."
The full series of Carl Frampton: On Probation will be available on BBC iPlayer from Monday 18 May.
"Obviously, if they stepped out of line, there was repercussions as well," Frampton added. "But the main objective is to rehabilitate people, and that's what they're trying to do."
The mental health of the probation officers is also highlighted in the documentary. "What they're having to deal with and the stories they're having to hear every time," explained Frampton.
While his professional career was boxing, Frampton said he enjoys presenting. "I'm not a reporter, I'm not a journalist, so I feel like I get a little bit more out of people, and they can maybe trust me a wee bit more and share more information a little bit freely, and I'm not gonna judge them. "I just wanna hear their stories, so I'll keep doing it as long as they keep asking."
The full series of Carl Frampton: On Probation will be available on BBC iPlayer from Monday 18 May.
Thursday, 30 April 2026
Words Matter
I watched both speeches and I've read a lot of reflections on them, but I think this is the best so far:-
There was a quiet gravity to his presence, a kind of composure that didn’t demand attention so much as earn it. His words were measured, deliberate, and carried with them the weight of history without ever feeling heavy-handed. It wasn’t just the content of the speech, but the cadence, the restraint, the sense that each phrase had been considered rather than performed. Before I knew it, I wasn’t skimming, I was listening. Fully. It’s rare, in this era of noise and urgency, to encounter a moment that feels both dignified and unhurried. Whatever one’s views, there was something undeniably compelling about witnessing a speaker who understands not only the power of language, but the responsibility that comes with it.
The Architecture of Language
What struck me most watching King Charles III stand before Congress wasn’t just the content of his speech, it was the reminder of what language sounds like when it is treated with respect. Full sentences. Complete thoughts. A measured cadence that doesn’t lurch from grievance to grievance like a drunk driver weaving across lanes. It was, quite simply, the sound of someone who understands that words are not just noise, they are instruments of meaning, responsibility, and, occasionally, wisdom.
And in that moment, the contrast with Donald Trump wasn’t subtle, it was seismic.Charles spoke of alliances not as transactional leverage, but as living commitments. He invoked NATO not as a protection racket, but as a shared defense of democratic stability. He referenced Ukraine not as a bargaining chip, but as a moral obligation. And when he turned to the climate crisis, he didn’t reduce it to a punchline or a hoax, he framed it, correctly, as a systemic threat to prosperity, security, and the continuity of life itself. This is what leadership sounds like when it is informed by history rather than inflated by ego.
Meanwhile, Trump stood beside him, physically present, intellectually absent, delivering his usual slurry of half-formed thoughts, superlatives without substance, and that unmistakable whiny bloviation that has become his linguistic signature. Listening to him after Charles is like following a symphony with a kazoo solo. One man builds an argument; the other builds a grievance. One understands that words carry weight; the other uses them like confetti at a rally.
What made Charles’s remarks particularly striking was their subtlety. This wasn’t a scolding, it was something far more devastating: a polite, impeccably delivered reminder of what America used to be. When he spoke of checks and balances, rooted in the legacy of Magna Carta, he wasn’t just offering a history lesson, he was holding up a mirror. When he said, “America’s words carry weight and meaning… the actions of this great nation matter even more,” it landed less as praise and more as a challenge. A nudge, perhaps, but one delivered with the kind of elegance that makes it impossible to dismiss.
I couldn’t help but think of Barack Obama in that moment. Not because Charles is Obama, or Obama is Charles, but because both men understand the architecture of language. They know how to construct a thought, how to guide an audience, how to elevate rather than inflame. Listening to them reminds you that rhetoric, when done properly, is not manipulation, it’s illumination. It clarifies. It connects. It aspires.
Charles called the U.S.–U.K. alliance “one of the most consequential in human history,” and he’s right. But alliances, like language, require maintenance. They require honesty, consistency, and a shared understanding of reality. You cannot sustain them with slogans, tantrums, and a worldview that reduces every relationship to a deal to be won or lost. What Charles offered in that chamber was more than diplomacy, it was a reminder. A reminder that the world is watching. A reminder that leadership still has a vocabulary, even if we’ve forgotten how to speak it. And perhaps most painfully, a reminder that somewhere along the way, we traded eloquence for noise, clarity for chaos, and principle for performance. And the silence that follows that realization?
That’s the loudest indictment of all.
Michael Jochum
Author, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition
Monday, 27 April 2026
AI is Coming
For the 28th Annual McWilliams Probation Lecture on 14th July 2026, Professor Melissa Hamilton will speak on 'Artificial Intelligence in Probation: Opportunities, Risks, and Responsible Use'.
Melissa Hamilton is a Professor of Law & Criminal Justice at the University of Surrey and a Surrey AI Fellow with the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence. She holds a Juris Doctorate (law) and a PhD in Criminology and is a member of the Royal Statistical Society, International Corrections and Prisons Association, American Psychological Association, and the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals.
Her research is interdisciplinary and focuses on the use of AI and related technologies in criminal justice, sentencing practices, interpersonal violence, and trauma-informed approaches to legal and correctional decision-making. Before entering academia, Melissa worked as both a police officer and a prisons officer, experience that continues to inform her research and teaching.
Melissa’s work has been published across law, social science, and criminal justice journals. She also regularly contributes to public and professional discussions through print media, radio and television broadcasts, and online platforms including blogs and podcasts.
The respondent is David A Raho. David is a PhD researcher in Law and Criminology at the Institute of Law and Social Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University, investigating AI Maturity Models, AI Cultural Readiness, and the comparative adoption of artificial intelligence in probation and rehabilitation services across England & Wales, Brazil, and Japan. He has extensive frontline experience as a Probation practitioner spanning nearly four decades and now works as a member of the AI Team at HMPPS HQ. He has contributed to publications on the use of technology in Probation for both CEP and the UN, and is a member of the UNESCO expert network on AI and a Tutor at the University of Oxford on AI Governance. He is both a Fellow and a Trustee of the Probation Institute and a proud Napo member, having previously served as a Branch Chair in London and also as a National Vice Chair.
This event will be held at the Institute of Criminology in the lower ground floor seminar rooms.
Lunch will be served at 1pm. The lecture will begin at 2pm. Tea will be served at 3.45pm.
Please register for in-person attendance here.
Please register for online attendance here.
Melissa Hamilton is a Professor of Law & Criminal Justice at the University of Surrey and a Surrey AI Fellow with the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence. She holds a Juris Doctorate (law) and a PhD in Criminology and is a member of the Royal Statistical Society, International Corrections and Prisons Association, American Psychological Association, and the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals.
Her research is interdisciplinary and focuses on the use of AI and related technologies in criminal justice, sentencing practices, interpersonal violence, and trauma-informed approaches to legal and correctional decision-making. Before entering academia, Melissa worked as both a police officer and a prisons officer, experience that continues to inform her research and teaching.
Melissa’s work has been published across law, social science, and criminal justice journals. She also regularly contributes to public and professional discussions through print media, radio and television broadcasts, and online platforms including blogs and podcasts.
The respondent is David A Raho. David is a PhD researcher in Law and Criminology at the Institute of Law and Social Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University, investigating AI Maturity Models, AI Cultural Readiness, and the comparative adoption of artificial intelligence in probation and rehabilitation services across England & Wales, Brazil, and Japan. He has extensive frontline experience as a Probation practitioner spanning nearly four decades and now works as a member of the AI Team at HMPPS HQ. He has contributed to publications on the use of technology in Probation for both CEP and the UN, and is a member of the UNESCO expert network on AI and a Tutor at the University of Oxford on AI Governance. He is both a Fellow and a Trustee of the Probation Institute and a proud Napo member, having previously served as a Branch Chair in London and also as a National Vice Chair.
This event will be held at the Institute of Criminology in the lower ground floor seminar rooms.
Lunch will be served at 1pm. The lecture will begin at 2pm. Tea will be served at 3.45pm.
Please register for in-person attendance here.
Please register for online attendance here.
Thursday, 16 April 2026
An Explanation
It goes deeper than probation as a service. What we’re really seeing is the result of society and government failing people earlier and earlier, and those failures being funnelled into the criminal justice system. When housing, mental health care, education, youth services and addiction support are stripped back, people don’t disappear, they fall forward. By the time probation meets them, the harm is already layered and entrenched.
Probation was originally built on the principle of advising, assisting and befriending because it recognised that reality. It needed people with life experience, emotional intelligence, credibility and the confidence to exercise judgement. That model naturally attracted practitioners motivated by understanding people and working with complexity, not just enforcing rules.
The current model is based on something else entirely. It treats social failure as individual non-compliance and manages risk through restriction, surveillance and recall because meaningful support has been hollowed out elsewhere. In doing so, it reshapes who the service attracts and retains. Experience becomes inconvenient. Judgement becomes risky. Longevity becomes expensive.
Instead, the system now favours staff who can tolerate high throughput, follow process, meet targets and apply rules consistently, even when those rules don’t improve outcomes. That isn’t a criticism of individuals, it’s a consequence of design. When discretion is discouraged and autonomy removed, the role no longer rewards depth or experience, it rewards compliance.
Younger people are arriving already failed by multiple systems, and probation inherits the responsibility without the tools to repair the damage. When outcomes don’t improve, the response is tighter control rather than upstream investment.
Probation hasn’t just lost its original purpose. It has been deliberately reshaped to absorb social failure while presenting enforcement as solution, and in the process it is transforming both who the service is for and who it wants working in it.
Probation was originally built on the principle of advising, assisting and befriending because it recognised that reality. It needed people with life experience, emotional intelligence, credibility and the confidence to exercise judgement. That model naturally attracted practitioners motivated by understanding people and working with complexity, not just enforcing rules.
The current model is based on something else entirely. It treats social failure as individual non-compliance and manages risk through restriction, surveillance and recall because meaningful support has been hollowed out elsewhere. In doing so, it reshapes who the service attracts and retains. Experience becomes inconvenient. Judgement becomes risky. Longevity becomes expensive.
Instead, the system now favours staff who can tolerate high throughput, follow process, meet targets and apply rules consistently, even when those rules don’t improve outcomes. That isn’t a criticism of individuals, it’s a consequence of design. When discretion is discouraged and autonomy removed, the role no longer rewards depth or experience, it rewards compliance.
Younger people are arriving already failed by multiple systems, and probation inherits the responsibility without the tools to repair the damage. When outcomes don’t improve, the response is tighter control rather than upstream investment.
Probation hasn’t just lost its original purpose. It has been deliberately reshaped to absorb social failure while presenting enforcement as solution, and in the process it is transforming both who the service is for and who it wants working in it.
Anon
Sunday, 12 April 2026
Read All About It 2
Thanks to the sterling efforts of 'Getafix, our star contributor, we can now read that Daily Telegraph article about the forthcoming book publication and TV adaptation. (I think there's just a small bit missing):-
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
Saturday, 11 April 2026
Lament for Seasoned Instinctive Judgment
Thanks go to Ian Gould, another long term blog supporter, for pointing us to the Daily Telegraph again for a strongly-worded piece yesterday. Is it too much to hope the paper is on a mission?
The public will pay the price for Britain’s toxic empathy towards criminals
Once the hard moral hinge between custody and liberty, our probation service is now compromised by sentimentalism
Britain’s probation service has become a tragic monument to well-intentioned ruin – a system where compassion without competence has curdled from virtue into vice.
Once the hard moral hinge between custody and liberty, probation is now compromised by what might be called fatal sentimentalism: the belief that kindness can substitute for control; self-discipline is oppressive; and that bureaucratic ideology can redeem lost public trust. The result is predictable and too often deadly – offenders released into communities not because they are safe, but because the machinery meant to protect us no longer believes it has to.
The late, unlamented experiment of merging probation with prisons was sold as reform. In truth, it was an annexation. The culture of seasoned instinctive judgment that once defined probation was submerged under the bureaucratic sludge of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service.
The probation officer, once the clear-eyed guardian of moral authority, has been rebadged as a “rehabilitation practitioner”, a title designed to soothe rather than safeguard. Ideological management theories have supplanted hard-earned craft. The new catechism demands unconditional empathy, a “trauma-informed” gaze for every offender, and a reflexive suspicion of anything that smells of retribution for harm done.
The damage did not begin with the current branding. Under the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), a Blairite construction, known colloquially as the “Nightmare on Marsham Street”, probation was already being pulled away from its roots in local knowledge. Later the ruinous “Transforming Rehabilitation programme”, led for a time by Antonia Romeo, the new Cabinet Permanent Secretary, completed this ideological vandalism.
Dreamed up in Whitehall and executed with breathtaking incompetence, it fragmented a coherent probation system into public and private silos with conflicting priorities, before being abandoned in the face of mounting evidence of failure. Profit was pitted against prudence, frontline expertise drowned in contracts and targets, and the ancient professional identity of probation was smashed. Its collapse was as predictable as its conception was reckless. Though the scheme has now been formally scrapped, its corrosive legacy endures in a service still struggling to remember what it is for.
I’ve seen this syndrome metastasising inside our prisons too. Ministers and mandarins preach about “rehabilitative culture” in establishments you’d hesitate to house livestock in – violence rampant, green staff overwhelmed and basic order barely clinging on. When ideology outpaces reality this much, catastrophe is close behind. And probation, the fragile bridge between our feral jails and the public realm, is now collapsing under the same delusions.
The watchdogs have been barking the alarm for years. Inspectors’ reports describe a probation workforce that is often well-meaning and sometimes impressive, but terrifyingly under-prepared for the offenders they supervise. They emerge from training steeped in therapy-speak and empty slogans about “believing in change”, yet many have never confronted a manipulative career criminal, or managed a volatile offender under pressure. In this vacuum of experience, risk assessments become box-ticking rituals. Offenders learn the script of contrition, the service duly records “progress”, and the cycle rolls on, until another tragedy drags the policy euphemisms into the headlines.
Probation has always needed heart – understanding what drives offending is part of the craft – but that heart must beat inside a ribcage of hard realism. Accountability is not cruelty. Retribution, properly understood, is society’s signal that wrongdoing has meaning and consequence. When probation loses that principle, it ceases to be justice and becomes social work with potential body counts.
The first step in recovery is honesty. The service must admit that it has lost its ethical backbone and professional confidence. We need to reclaim the language of responsibility and risk – not as relics of a punitive past, but as foundations of any credible public service. Training must return to first principles: risk management, proportionate enforcement, sound judgement, and deep knowledge of criminal behaviour. Senior leadership must be chosen for front-line competence, not ideological orthodoxy or “lived experience”.
Above all, probation must divorce itself from prison governance. The fiction that a single “correctional service” can simultaneously protect the public, manage custody, and engineer rehabilitation has crippled both arms. Probation belongs in local communities, as a professional service rooted in justice, truth-telling, and operational integrity. Not as a satellite of prisons, nor a branch of social care. The best probation officers (and somehow we have retained some brilliant practitioners) know this in their bones.
A probation service so stripped of confidence, experience and principled judgement, cannot be patched up with another review or a new “values framework”. It needs wholesale reconstruction: rigorous professional training, unapologetic public protection as its central creed, and leadership unafraid to confront the sentimental dogmas that have hollowed it out. I’m aware of how battered the service feels with endless, often fatuous, reinventions. But until we find the courage to perform this radical surgery, more innocent people will pay the price for the state’s fatal confusion between mercy and naivety.
Professor Ian Acheson is a former prison governor and senior official with the Home Office
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