Rehabilitating Probation: Strategies for Re‐legitimation after Policy Failure
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | GWEN ROBINSON |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12398 |
The Howard Journal Vol60 No 2. June 2021 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12398
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 151–166
Rehabilitating Probation: Strategies
for Re-legitimation after Policy
Failure
GWEN ROBINSON
Reader in Criminal Justice, School of Law,University of Sheffield
Abstract: This article draws on insights from the organisational studies literature to make
sense of the recent history of probation in England & Walesin the aftermath of the failed
TransformingRehabilitation (TR) reform programme. It considers that recent history as
a crisis of legitimacy, necessitating active strategies of re-legitimation aimed at recovering
from reputational damage. It argues that top-down plans to restructure the service will
only go so far in this endeavour: the expanded National Probation Service must also
be prepared to engage in legitimation work on its own behalf. However, this is likely to
be challenging for a number of reasons that include the mixed constituency of external
stakeholders whom probation seeks to satisfy, and important questions of identity, agency,
and voice.
Keywords: legitimacy; organisational studies; probation; reform; Transform-
ing Rehabilitation (TR)
On 11 June 2020, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland announced a
dramatic change to the government’s plans for the further reform of pro-
bation services in England & Wales, following the ultimate failure of the
Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) programme implemented in 2014/15
(Ministry of Justice and HM Prison and Probation Service 2020). Buckland
explained that the future outsourcing of significant chunks of probation
work (namely unpaid work and structured interventions) to the tune of
contracts worth £280 million would not be going ahead as planned. In-
stead, responsibility for these areas of work, as well as the management of
all those subject to probation supervision, would fall to the (public sector)
National Probation Service (NPS) from June 2021. This policy U-turn
was explained with reference to the disruptions to probation services
caused by Covid 19, which threatened to delay the reform implementation
timetable and prolong instability in the probation system. For many in and
around the probation field, Buckland’s announcement will have been very
welcome, if unexpected, news. While not amounting to a wholesale accep-
tance of TR as an instance of policy failure (Annison 2019), Buckland’s
151
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2020 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol60 No 2. June 2021
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 151–166
announcement, nonetheless, signalled a greater expansion of the NPS
than had been envisaged, the reunification of the majority of probation
workers into a single organisational entity, and a significant reduction in
the reach of the private sector into probation work.1It remains the case,
however, that probation has suffered a crisis of legitimacy in the wake of
the TR reforms: a crisis that is essentially uncontested (for example, see
Beard (2019) for a full account of the emerging official critique of TR).
That crisis has both internal and external dimensions: that is, it concerns
both the self-image of the service and its workforce, and the perceptions
of external audiences and stakeholders.
The focus of this article is the latter, external dimension of legitimacy,
which regularly features in political discourse as a problem of ‘confidence’
in probation (for example, Ministry of Justice 2018, 2019). It considers the
challenge ahead for probation in terms of rebuilding its external legiti-
macy, as well as the journey so far. It does so by drawing on insights from
the organisational studies literature, pertaining to the strategies that organ-
isations typically deploy to secure, maintain, and (of special importance for
the present discussion) rebuild their legitimacy in the eyes of important ex-
ternal constituents. While the topic of legitimacy has come to be recognised
by criminological scholars as of great theoretical and practical significance
in a number of domains (including in relation to the co-operation of prison-
ers with custodial regimes and of citizens with the police – for example, see
Bottoms and Tankebe (2012)), criminologists have, to date, tended to draw
upon literature and concepts from the disciplines of psychology and/or
political science. Thinking about the legitimacy and legitimation of crimi-
nal justice organisations (which are neither individuals nor political actors)
suggests, however,that there may be insights to be gained from the organi-
sational studies literature, which has largely been ignored by criminologists
to date. In this article it is argued that insights from this literature are, in-
deed, very useful for making sense of recent developments in the probation
context, as well as in thinking about future strategies that might help re-
habilitate probation.2They are also useful in highlighting some particular
aspects of the present day probation service in England & Wales that need
to be understood and taken into account when thinking about strategies
for the re-legitimation of this particular organisational entity. These are is-
sues of agency, identity, and voice, and of the multiple stakeholders in and
around probation work. Where the kinds of organisations which feature
in the organisational studies literature are typically corporate entities with
clearly-defined external constituencies (or ‘customers’) and relatively au-
tonomous, agentic leaders, the probation service today diverges markedly
from this characterisation. Acknowledging these differences, it is argued,
opens our eyes to some of the particular challenges that face probation as
it seeks to recover legitimacy in the wake of TR.
The article begins by setting out some key concepts from the organi-
sational studies literature, and in particular the seminal work of the US
sociologist, Mark Suchman. This is followed by an account of TR and its
aftermath which applies the concepts described by Suchman and others
to make sense of the recent history of probation (post-TR) as a crisis of
152
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2020 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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