Attitudes and beliefs of trainee probation officers: A ‘new breed’?
| Author | John Deering |
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550509354671 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright © 2010 NAPO Vol 57(1): 9–26
DOI: 10.1177/0264550509354671
www.napo.org.uk
http://prb.sagepub.com
Attitudes and beliefs of trainee
probation offi cers: A ‘new breed’?
John Deering, University of Wales, Newport
Abstract As part of their attempts to re-package probation supervision as ‘punish-
ment in the community’ and concerned with risk assessment and the protection of
the public, recent Conservative and Labour governments abolished social work
training for probation offi cers and, over the last 10 years have sought to recruit
trainees from a wider base than previously and train them in these new objectives.
This study looks at the attitudes of two cohorts of trainees over a range of issues
and concludes that they may be more ‘traditional’ in terms of these attitudes than
government may have wished.
Keywords attitudes, punishment, purposes of probation, rehabilitation, risk,
training, values
Introduction
Since the 1991 Criminal Justice Act (1991 CJA), when the probation order be-
came a sentence of the court, rather than an alternative to a sentence, successive
governments have been trying to alter the image, policies and practices of the
probation service. One of the ways in which government aimed to bring about
such changes was via the training of probation offi cers. The longstanding system
of social work training was abolished in 1994, to be replaced by the Diploma in
Probation Studies (DiPS) from 1998 and further substantial changes are now in
the pipeline. The DiPS was intended to recruit trainee probation offi cers (TPOs)
from a wider (and implicitly ‘non-social work’) base and prepare them for the new
government agenda for the service of the assessment and management of risk and
the management of offenders to ‘protect the public’, rather than a broader, more
traditional aim of rehabilitation. This article is based on empirical research with two
cohorts of probation trainees and looks at their values and attitudes, considering
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whether or not they are part of a ‘new breed’ of trainees who ascribe to this new
agenda for the service.
Literature
Before considering the views of TPOs in this study, it is necessary to consider the
debate about the values and purposes of the probation service that have been the
subject of conjecture and argument since its earliest beginnings. Most recently,
theories of late modernity place the criminal justice system in a time of change
and perceive amongst the general population growing levels of insecurity and
intolerance of crime and offenders (see, for example, Garland 2001; Pratt 2002).
Along with government policies, these developments are seen as contributing to
an increasingly punitive system that imprisons increasing numbers of offenders
and emphasizes punishment and the management of offenders in the community,
rather than to attempt their rehabilitation. For these reasons, along with a loss of
faith in rehabilitation, the probation service is described by many as becoming a
law enforcement agency and its practitioners changed into ‘control workers’ (Rose,
2000).
However, such broad social movements described above should not be regarded
as determinist and policy remains the prerogative of governments exercising real
choices (Bottoms, 1995; McAra 2005). Throughout the 1990s these choices were
exercised in the direction of toughness, both because of an apparent belief and
attachment to such approaches as correct, but also due to ‘populist punitiveness’,
the tendency of the major political parties to try to curry favour with the elector-
ate, which is perceived as wanting an increasingly punitive criminal justice system
(Bottoms, 1995), although the extent to which the public hold such punitive views
is contested, as is the whole notion of an identifi able ‘public opinion’. Some studies
reveal that individuals can favour community-based rehabilitative work with offen-
ders to overcome personal diffi culties and problems, rather than the use of custody
(see, for example Roberts and Hough, 2005; Roberts et al., 2003). Alongside this,
the service had come under political pressure throughout the 1990s, being often
regarded as soft on crime and ‘on the side of the offender’ (Newburn, 2003: 150).
Much of this pressure manifested itself in successive versions of National Standards
and other policy directives intended to reduce practitioner discretion and empha-
size the government’s intended new direction for the Service. Indeed the 2000
version of National Standards introduced changes to make breach proceedings
more likely and stated clearly that:
We (the Probation Service) are a law enforcement agency. It is what we are, it is
what we do. (Home Offi ce, 2000)
Further references to the need to make community sentences tough and about
punishment were forthcoming from government and the Criminal Justice Act 2003
described the creation of new range of ‘tough alternatives’ for less serious offenders.
The Carter Report, on which the National Offender Management Service (NOMS)
is based, declared the need for more demanding community sentences (Carter,
Deering ● Attitudes and beliefs of trainee probation offi cers 11
2003) and a succession of policy papers made similar assertions (Home Offi ce
2004a; Home Offi ce 2004b, Home Offi ce 2006a, Home Offi ce 2006b). When
the National Probation Service for England and Wales (NPS) was created in 2001,
its aims were set out as: protecting the public; reducing re-offending; proper punish-
ment of offenders in the community; making offenders aware of the effects of crime
on the victims and the public; rehabilitation of offenders (Home Offi ce, 2001), thus
clearly establishing rehabilitation at the bottom of the list of priorities.
Alongside these broader developments, the service’s social work training had
been abolished by the Conservative government in 1994, although being regarded
as generally fi t for purpose by stakeholders (Ward and Spencer, 1994). Although
training based in higher education was revived by the Labour government elected
in 1997, the new DiPS was removed from social work training, partly in order for
it to attract a wider range of recruits than had previously been the case (Cavadino
and Dignan, 2002: 141) and to concentrate on the incoming government’s new
aims for the service of:
Protecting the public and reducing crime through effective work with offenders.
(Straw, 1997)
Governments rarely openly refer to underpinning ‘values’ and it is therefore
necessary to infer these from their polices. From the above, it is perhaps reasonable
to conclude that recent government values around criminal justice and the probation
service have encompassed a reduced attachment to inclusion and rehabilitation and
an emphasis on management and punishment. The values of the service have, of
course developed and changed in the last century or so, although it can be argued
that the balance between care and control has remained fairly consistent (e.g. see
Raynor, 1985), with the latter to the fore in recent times. The activities of the police
court missionaries from the 1870s have been characterized as ‘rescuing souls’
(e.g. see May, 1991; Whitfi eld 1998) but there has been a debate about whether
it was altruism, a religious concern to save souls or merely a way to control the
drinking classes and thus shore up the status quo (Vanstone, 2004a). More recently,
in the wake of ‘nothing works’ (Martinson, 1974), Bottoms and McWilliams (1979)
concluded that probation’s purposes should include the reduction of crime via
appropriate help and the provision of alternatives to custody. Nevertheless, the
‘values’ debate continued to encompass rehabilitation and at the end of the 1980s,
McWilliams and Pease argued that that rehabilitation of offenders was a ‘moral
good’ which prevented punishment becoming no more that state-sponsored venge-
ance (McWilliams and Pease, 1990: 15).
By 1995, probation values were seen by one commentator at least as: oppo-
sition to custody; opposition to oppression; commitment to justice for offenders;
commitment to the client’s right to confi dentiality and openness; valuing of clients
as unique and self-determining individuals; aim to ensure that victims and potential
victims are protected; belief that ‘purposeful professional relationships can facilitate
change in clients’ (Williams, 1995: 12–20). Since then and given the changes in
government thinking outlined above, Garland has warned of the collapse of the
‘solidarity project’ which he saw as leading to a more divisive criminal justice sys-
tem and society (Garland, 1996). In response to offi cial emphasis on protecting
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the public, Nellis has argued that service values should be based upon the notions
of restorative justice, community justice and human rights, regarding the emphasis
on public protection as meaningless without a ethical dimension based at least in
part in human rights, as it could lead to an authoritarian service (Nellis 2002a,
Nellis 2002b, Nellis and Gelsthorpe, 2003) which does whatever is necessary
to ‘protect the public’, something echoed by Robinson and McNeill (2004). More
recently, he urged the service to recognize that reducing crime and the fear of crime
in ‘crime-blighted communities’ would need to be a priority (Nellis, 2005), echoing
the left-realist arguments of Young and others (Young and Matthews, 1992).
From different viewpoints, Harding argues for the probation...
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