Privatising Probation: The Death Knell of a Much‐Cherished Public Service?

Published date01 December 2016
Date01 December 2016
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12179
AuthorPAUL SENIOR
The Howard Journal Vol55 No 4. December 2016 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12179
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 414–431
Privatising Probation: The Death
Knell of a Much-Cherished Public
Service?
PAUL SENIOR
Emeritus Professor of Probation Studies, Sheffield Hallam University,
Sheffield
Abstract: The probation service has showed a remarkable facility to reinvent itself over a
century of turbulent, but sustained, history. This 16th Bill McWilliams Memorial Lecture
will explore the ethos underpinning that survival as the service faces its potential frag-
mentation, and even dismantling, given the government commitment to privatise much
of its current business. If the institution of probation collapses, is there still an important
place for probation skills and in what institutional forms will this be reconstructed? Can
a hopeful scenario for the future be garnered from the current policy imperatives? Does
it matter? And if it matters, how can a vision be created which builds on that history in
concert with partners from all sectors? This lecture will reflect on these themes in a policy
framework which is fluid, uncertain, and deeply challenging.
Keywords: probation; change; privatisation; transforming rehabilitation
I am very honoured to be given this opportunity to deliver the 16th Bill
McWilliams Memorial Lecture having had strong connections to Bill whilst
he worked as research officer in the South Yorkshire Probation Service. It
is a privilege to be here.
The one thing you could say about probation with absolute certainty is
that change is a constant in the probation service:
even a cursory glance at the recent literature of the probation service suggests that
change of a fairly substantial order has always been a dominating feature of its
existence.
Who said that? Well it was Bill McWilliams in 1981 (pp.97–8). Since then
change has been, and still remains, a feature of the way in which probation
does business. We no longer can look at the probation service as simply an
organisation that is here to advise, assist and befriend; in some respects it is
now badged as enforcement, rehabilitation and public protection, perhaps
a long way from advise, assist and befriend.
The title of my lecture was deliberately chosen; we have been here
before, we have worried about the end of probation on many occasions,
414
C
2016 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol55 No 4. December 2016
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 414–431
maybe too many times, maybe we have cried wolf on occasion. Is this time
fundamentally different? Are we facing something which is fundamentally
going to destroy the probation service as we know it? And if it is different
now, in what ways is it different? The title poses a key question: ‘Is the
probation service much cherished?’; I believe it is. Does the retention of
a national probation service challenge the notion that probation is disap-
pearing? Are we really just scaremongering, and the probation service will
continue? In what other ways might the institution of probation be pre-
served? That will be, in essence, where I am taking this lecture. I want to
look at what is the ‘institution of probation’, how it has grown up, how it
functions and how it can be preserved, and in what ways? Does it matter,
and to whom? Well, I will leave that question for discussion at the end.
I think it matters, I dare say quite a few people in this audience think it
matters, for some out there it does not appear to matter. And, of course,
I will try and answer the question I posed in my title: is this probation’s
death knell? We have, of course, been here before:
the death knell of rehabilitation was seemingly sounded by Robert Martin-
son’s (1974) influential ‘nothing works’ essay, which reported that few treatment
programs reduced recidivism. (Cullen and Gendreau 2000, p.109)
In 1974 we talked about the death knell of rehabilitation. I started work
in probation in 1975, and the very first NAPO newsletter I received had
the title ‘The death of the rehabilitative ideal’. I did not think I would be
in a job for long. However, we seemed to recover from those down days
in the 1970s and through the 1980s. And then when ‘punishment in the
community’ moved centre stage:
the move to the operation of a punitive service in the community marks the death
of the traditional humane, helping and caring Probation Service which was one of
the country’s greatest contributions to civilized penologicial thinking throughout
the world. (Probe 1992)
The NAPO action members’ magazine, Probe, here declares probation
gone. And then, just in February 2013, Mike Teague (2013) said:
after 105 years of world class rehabilitative intervention, the probation service in
England and Wales is about to be effectively dismantled, may not quite amount to
probation’s death knell, but it will be a qualitatively different service.
When I first started in probation I needed concepts and ideas to help me
make sense of the world I found myself in, and it was through meeting
people like Bill McWilliams, and others, that I drew on such concepts of
reflective practice and this notion of a ‘constructively critical culture’. Bill,
as research officer in the South Yorkshire Probation Service, promoted this
with passion, he said:
the objective is to create an organisational culture in which the official goals and the
operational goals become one, this is far from easy but is most likely to be achieved
in a culture which places high emphasis on healthy and constructive criticism.
(McWilliams 1980, p.12)
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2016 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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