Effective probation practice and NOMS
| Author | Hindpal Singh Bhui |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550505058306 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Effective probation practice and NOMS
Few criminal justice reforms have been as riven with uncertainty and confusion
as the creation of the National Offender Management Service. At a time when
the reform of public services is apparently evidence led, NOMS is an oddly non-
evidence-based creation, conceived and implemented in haste and without the
level of consultation that might have been expected. There has been much concern
in the probation service at the lack of detail on fundamental issues such as the
role of probation boards, the business case for NOMS, and the future role of
probation officers. The recent announcement that the NOMS chief executive – who
was widely regarded as bringing much needed credibility and coherence to the
new agency – is leaving eighteen months after taking up the position, is likely to
create further instability. As NOMS takes shape, bringing coherence to the new
structure will continue to demand organizational focus and energy. In this context,
there is a danger that some critical areas of probation knowledge and practice,
including conceptions of effective practice, fail to develop. A number of the articles
in this edition serve as a reminder of some of these areas and underline the
danger of reaching premature conclusions about effectiveness under such
pressure.
The value to probation and therefore to NOMS of constructive relationships is
the theme of Ros Burnett’s and Fergus McNeill’s ‘The place of the officer–offender
relationship in assisting offenders to desist from crime’. The authors encourage
cautious optimism about current developments in NOMS, and detect a renewed
focus on the importance of relationships and direct work with offenders in official
discourse. They argue that this bodes well for a desistance-focused paradigm of
probation practice, and for a broader conceptualization of evidence-based
practice in which the pursuit of ‘effectiveness’ does not entail the eclipse of the
human dimension of work with offenders.
Alyson Rees and Mark Rivett similarly seek to expand notions of effective
practice in ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought
contend’: Towards a variety in programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence.
They discuss concerns about the national roll out of Integrated Domestic Abuse
Programmes (IDAP), which they expect to signal an excessively prescriptive
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Probation Journal
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright © 2005 NAPO Vol 52(3): 219–220
DOI: 10.1177/0264550505058306
www.napo.org.uk
www.sagepublications.com
Editorial
01 Editorial (bc-d) 27/7/05 3:23 pm Page 219
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