Probation Officers Still Social Workers?
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058903600202 |
| Date | 01 June 1989 |
| Published date | 01 June 1989 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Probation Officers
Still Social Workers?
Twelve years ago Robert Harris, now Professor of Social Work at
Hull University, wrote an influential and widely noted article
’The Probation Officer as Social Worker’, arguing that it was
increasingly difficult to reconcile correctional
control and caring help within the work of
the Service and advocating a separation of
functions. We
invited the author to
reconsider his arguments and see if
’POSW’
retains any relevance in the
changed world of 1989.
eing invit-
must add, probation officers) which is
ed to write
part of the unspoken background to the
this arti-
present Green Paper controversy. In
cle sent
this sense, though much of POSW is
~~~~~..~ ~ ~
me
back
probably best forgotten, some of it at
to
re-
least is actually rather topical.
r e a d
°
POSW
Our Foreign Past
>
. ~_’~y for the
’The past’, wrote L P Hartley, ’is a for-
fIrst time
~
eign country’, and 1977 now seems a
in
many
strange and distant land. Mr Callaghan
and
years,
was Prime Minister, preparations were
some of what I
afoot for the silver jubilee celebrations
read surprised me. I had not remem-
and the Probation Service was seeing
bered much of the argument, but it in
off the proposals for increased control
fact foreshadowed significant parts of
being given to probation officers set
the 1988 Green Paper Punishment,
out in the 1974 Advisory Council
Custody and the Community, which
Report Young Adult Offenders. There
has caused such a flurry in the dove-
was no
reason to anticipate the substan-
cotes. Indeed both POSW and the
tial political and economic changes of
Green Paper advocate punishment in
the ensuing decade which have impact-
the community for broadly similar rea-
ed so profoundly on the Service,
sons, and POSW in fact sets out in
rendering dated a number of assump-
some detail the background of the mis-
tions which form the basis of POSW. At
52
trust of probation orders (and, one
a more personal level I was working in
Tottenham as a probationofficer and at
tangle help from control is ubiquitous
Brunel University, lecturing in crimi-
in Western Europe’. Conversely, the
nology and social worn The funding of
paper was mauled by Bottoms and
my
joint appointment was coming to an
MeWilliams
3 who (probably rightly)
end, and I was hoping to obtain a full-
called it ’crude and cavalier’ and (a lit-
time academic post. POST which was
tle
harshly,
perhaps)
internally
written at great speed in the 1976
contradictory (a comment which
Christmas vacation, was the article I
caused me to abandon forever the
needed to have published if I was to
practice, ingrained since primary
have any chance of success; but it was
school, of finishing my work with a
also written as quite an urgent state-
rhetorical flourish). A more telling crit-
ment of a problem for the Probation
icism was that of David Howe
who
Service which had been crystallising in
challenged the notion that ’social work’
my mind as I both did and taught the
as an activity could be held to exist out-
job.
side the context of agency practice.
Today the world is tougher and the
social work is what social workers do,
rules for succeeding in it have changed.
and to argue that some things social
I have changed too, of course, and the
workers do are not social work is to
aspiring lecturer of the 1970s is now a
make an analytical error. I now largely
fairly senior academic, a member of his
accept this view.
local probation committee, fatter as
m
· .,
well as older and prone, to the irrita-
tion of many around him, to seeing
The argument of POSW was as follows:
things in an exasperatingly complicated
in the decade or so before 1976, the
way. Doubtless these changes bring
Probation Service had undergone sub-
losses as well as gains, and I can cer-
stantial changes of scale and function.
tainly say, with Wordsworth, that ’The
The Service was no longer small, its
things which I have seen, I now can see
tasks were no longer marginal and
no more’. In this sense POSW, though
uncontroversial as it assumed supervi-
in parts naive, has about it a directness
sory responsibility for increasingly
which helps it cut quickly to the heart
serious offenders in respect of whom a
of a difficult issue. What it fails to do,
legitimate public interest existed. At
like much juvenilia, is, having got into
the same time,...
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