Remote probation by phone in France and Scotland during the 2020 lockdown
| Author | Martine Herzog-Evans,John Sturgeon |
| DOI | 10.1177/20662203211056545 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
Original Article
European Journal of Probation
2022, Vol. 14(1) 60–78
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20662203211056545
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejp
Remote probation by phone in
France and Scotland during the
2020 lockdown
Martine Herzog-Evans
Law faculty, laboratory CEJESCO, Universit´
e de Reims, Reims, France
John Sturgeon
University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, UK
Abstract
This paper is part of a wider investigation which explores what happened to probation
services in France and in Scotland during the national lockdown put in place as a response
to the Covid-19 pandemic. Qualitative interviews with 29 French and 27 Scottish
probation staff took place, the authors wishing to capture the lived experience of
practicing probation at this unprecedented time. Whilst the study captures the initial
disorientation of probation staff and a general lack of institutional and individual readiness
for lockdown, it also documents adaptability, creativity and an optimism for what
technology could offer state probation practitioners that is less visible in studies that were
carried out following the easing of lockdown restrictions. It shows that the ways in which
institutions and practitioners responded to the crisis was determined by institutional and
cultural heritage, professional values and management practice.
Keywords
COVID-19, France, Scotland, digital probation, probation, digital justice
Introduction
Whilst France and Scotland issued orders for their citizens to stay at home to prevent the
spread of the Covid-19 virus that would ultimately be responsible for millions of deaths
globally at roughly the same time (16 March 2020 in France and March 20th in Scotland),
the official discourse was poles apart. When announcing the lockdown, President,
Corresponding author:
Martine Herzog-Evans, University of Reims, 57 bis rue Pierre Taittinger, CS 80005, Reims 51100, France.
Email: martineeevans@gmail.com
Emmanuel Macron declared France ‘at war’and ‘in combat against this epidemic’(Le
Monde, 17 March 2020). This martial statement justified authoritarian and energetic
enforcement. The language of the Scottish leadership was less authoritarian with the
demand to ‘stay at home’taking the form of guidance (The Scottish Government, 2020).
Non-compliance with this guidance was enforced by a policing strategy of ‘Engaging,
Explaining, Encouraging, and (only where that failed), Enforcing’.
While in France and Scotland, as in the rest of the world, individuals and institutions
were caught out by events and entered the national lockdowns in a state of institutio nal
and personal disorientation, in both jurisdictions, probation services and their key partners
closed. Differences in the fundamental structures and approaches impacted on how these
institutions were able to respond. French probation is characterised by centralisation and
hierarchy and is part of the prison service which considers itself to be part of the State
security apparatus (Dieu, 2014) with a great number of lawyers recruited as probation
officers (hereafter POs) (Bouagga, 2012). In contrast, Scottish probation is located within
the 32 local authorities who carry an overarching duty to promote welfare (Sturgeon and
Leygue-Eurieult, 2020), and staffed by generically trained social workers.
In this study, we wanted to document how probation practitioners were coping with the
drastic changes in France and Scotland caused by the 2020 lockdown. We found that
practitioners adapted essentially by working from home and by using technology. Wealso
show that the very significant differences between the adaptation capabilities and mo-
dalities in both jurisdictions are rooted in distinctions relating to their professional
identity, their institutional organisation and the nature of their management.
We were fortunate to be able to conduct this unique study in the eye of the storm,
exactly during the lockdown imposed in both jurisdictions. This study also provides a
distinct contribution to the scarcity of studies of collaborative comparative probation
practice (Beyens and McNeill, 2013;Robinson and Svensson, 2013).
The literature
Two strands of literature were relevant to our endeavour: the emerging literature on
probation during the lockdown which has addressed remote supervision; and the less
recent literature pertaining to the use of technology, on the one hand, in the criminal
justice system and, on the other hand, in probation.
Regarding the emerging literature pertaining to remote probation during the lockdown,
at the time this paper was written, most authors have expressed rather negative views. Jane
Dominey and colleagues (Dominey et al., 2020) published a report in November 2020. On
the basis of an online survey with 79 POs followed by 12 semi-structured interviews with
some of them post-lockdown, the authors found that, like in France and Scotland, most of
the work done by their English and Welsh POs was performed via phone and texts but that
they mostly used video calls to interact with their colleagues or their managers. A number
of difficulties were raised. Firstly, for non-English speakers or those hard of hearing,
phone conversations were an issue. Secondly, these conversations did not allow to build
or maintain the relationship with probationers adequately. POs worried about the inability
to detect vital information because of the informal nature of phone calls, leading to
Herzog-Evans and Sturgeon 61
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