Search

In 2021, HM Inspectorate of Probation published a long awaited and highly critical report – Race equality in probation: the experience of black, Asian and minority ethnic probation service users and staff. The inspection upon which it was based was conducted in the Autumn of 2020 and was therefore set against the background of the death of George Floyd in the United States, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement laid down a challenge on many levels, stating that black, Asian and minority ethnic people must be accepted and respected as equal citizens and nowhere is this more urgently needed than within the operation of the criminal justice system. However, its follow up report (HM Inspectorate of Probation 2023) reported being disappointed in the lack of progress made by the Probation Service in addressing the issues raised in its earlier report. The article seeks to move beyond the conclusions and recommendations of the Inspection report using the lens of Critical Race Theory to engage in a discussion of systemic racism in society. To do this we have used three levels of analysis – macro, meso and micro – to situate contemporary probation within the wider structures of a post-colonial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ministry of Justice's Consultation Paper – Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence – launched by Justice Secretary David Gauke in July 2018, represents a revisionist view of the recent history of the probation service in which many of its assertions are incoherent, disingenuous and disconnected from the lived realities of both those who offend and local communities having to deal with the impact of austerity on local services. In addition, the consultation process itself is disingenuous in that it presents the failure of the Transforming Rehabilitation initiative as one of technical oversights and misjudgements that can be put right through a series of relatively minor adjustments. Answers to the 17 consultation questions, however insightful and helpful they may be, will do nothing to deal with the underlying difficulties of Transforming Rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, the UK government published plans to radically reform resettlement provision for released prisoners via a Through the Gate scheme to be introduced as part of its Transforming Rehabilitation agenda. Under the scheme, 70 of the 123 prisons in England and Wales were re-designated ‘resettlement prisons’ and tasked with establishing an integrated approach to service delivery, seamlessly extending rehabilitative support from custody into the community. This article utilises a case study of one resettlement prison to critically consider the implementation of these new arrangements. Drawing on insights by prisoners, prison staff and other key stakeholders, it argues that instead of enhancing resettlement, Through the Gate is actually enhancing resentment with Transforming Rehabilitation appearing to accentuate, rather than mediate, long-standing operational concerns within the prison system. The article argues that unless there is a significant renewal of the structures, processes and mechanisms of administering support for addressing the rehabilitative needs of prisoners, the current operational flaws within Through the Gate provision risk deepening the sense of a penal crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the recent partial privatisation of probation services in England and Wales from the theoretical perspective of legitimacy. Drawing in particular on Beetham's (1991) work, we argue that the question of legitimacy in respect of privatised probation services is a complex one which requires attention to the multiple - and different - perspectives of key stakeholders or constituencies in the probation field. We argue that in the probation context there are five key stakeholder groups: the general public; offenders and victims; ministers and civil servants; sentencers; and probation employees and their representatives. We consider what is known about the perspectives of each of these groups in turn, before concluding that privatised probation services need to be aware of both the legitimacy deficits they face and the complex dynamics likely to be involved in its cultivation with these different constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2014 approximately 54 per cent of the total probation service workforce in England and Wales were transferred to the newly created Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) as part of the government's plans to establish a market for offender management services. This marked the beginning of one of the largest and most significant migrations of criminal justice staff from the public to the private sector in England and Wales. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of the formation of one of these CRCs through to the period immediately following the transfer into private ownership. The authors discuss the key features of this migration which are identified as 'splitting and fracturing', 'adapting and forming' and 'exiting or accommodation'. It is contended that this development not only has significant implications for the future of probation services but also provides a unique example of the impact on an occupational culture of migration from the public to the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After some 30 years of using probation as an object of neoliberal economic and ideological thinking in order to redesign the delivery of what was a long established locally accountable public service, a radically new delivery landscape has been fashioned within the criminal justice system of England and Wales. Whilst much of the ideological and practical leg work had been undertaken by New Labour during their three terms in office (1997−2010), further conceptualization and meaning to what a Rehabilitation Revolution might look like was quickly taken forward by the incoming Coalition Government from May 2010 in the guise of the Transforming Rehabilitation project. Offender rehabilitation and public protection now face some severe challenges in the form of fragmentation, local accountability, communication, staff morale and occupational status and culture. As Transforming Rehabilitation receives a further injection of momentum from the Prime Minister, David Cameron, in his February 2016 vision for the future operation and role of prisons, we are left to ponder where this leaves probation in the context of reducing resources and increasingly scarce social provision and welfare benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Transforming Rehabilitation agenda represents a radical departure in the way that rehabilitative services are delivered in England and Wales. Under the proposed changes, the existing Probation Trusts will be replaced by a significantly smaller National Probation Service dealing with the rump of high-risk public protection cases. The supervision and delivery of services to those offenders assessed as low and medium risk will be contracted to a range of providers on a payment by results basis. In this introduction to the special edition of the European Journal of Probation, the authors trace the policy developments that have extended the scope of the privatisation of state services in England and Wales. They then consider the values underpinning these developments and the potential impact on probation work before finally exploring the ways in which the current debate over the future of the probation service in England and Wales are being constructed and responses to this crisis shaped. This is organised into four interrelated arguments – the evidence response; the implementation response; the media response and the reclaim response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, the UK government announced a scaling back of changes enacted under the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) agenda introduced in 2013. In doing so, it seemingly reversed key criminal justice policies surrounding the management and supervision of those subject to penal and community sanctions, which had drawn fierce criticism due to its financial and systematic failings. This article speaks to a small but growing body of literature concerned with the professional damage induced by this failed 'rehabilitation revolution' for practitioners (see Robinson et al., 2016; Millings et al., 2019b; Tidmarsh, 2019), through a sharpened focus on a small group of actors brought into the sector through out-sourcing and sub-contracting. Our findings are primarily based on observational and semi-structured interviews conducted with 11 staff employed by a Voluntary Sector Provider (VSP) working in a Category B resettlement prison during this period of profound change. Through the lens of emotional labour theory (Hochschild, 1983) we identify three themes; operational legitimacy ; practice proficiency ; and professional well-being - to make sense of VSP worker's experience of policy reform under Transforming Rehabilitation. In doing so we contend that working in such fraught conditions, and the excesses of emotional labour involved, can potentially compromise both the integrity and efficiency of service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]