Restoring probation: A declaration of independence
| Author | Philip Priestley,Maurice Vanstone |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550519863485 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Comment piece |
Comment piece
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Restoring probation:
2019, Vol. 66(3) 335–347
ª The Author(s) 2019
A declaration
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550519863485
of independence
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Philip Priestley
Independent scholar, UK
Maurice Vanstone
Swansea University, UK
Abstract
In light of the 2019 announcement by the then Secretary of State for Justice, David
Gauke, that the probation service is to be re-nationalised, this paper reflects on what
forms a more radical restoration might take. In essence, the paper makes a case for
probation to be re-constituted as a moral enterprise; an independent agency based in
the community, staffed by skilled and idealistic but pragmatic practitioners and
managers, and informed by evidence of what is most likely to help people lead
offence-free lives.
Keywords
evidence-based practice, practice skills, practitioner qualities, probation, public ser-
vice, re-nationalisation, values
The process by which an individual desists from offending is invariably difficult to
unravel and understand, and encompasses a whole range of personal and con-
textual changes. These will vary from person to person, but the one essential element
common to all is an ability to learn from mistakes and failure while building on
success. In recent years successive governments have demonstrated a lack of that
ability, but at the time of writing the news that David Gauke, the Secretary of State
for Justice in England and Wales, is intending to re-nationalise the probation service
Corresponding Author:
Maurice Vanstone, Swansea University, College of Law, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK.
Email: Mtvanstone@gmail.com
336
Probation Journal 66(3)
offers the hope that lessons have been learned from the failure of the Transforming
Rehabilitation reforms. The government’s proposals, outlined in its response to the
Strengthening Probation Consultation (Ministry of Justice, 2019), are premised on
the idea of what they describe as a ‘mixed market’ allowing for ‘a continued and
significant role for the voluntary and private sector’ (p. 10) in the delivery of unpaid
work, the provision of accredited programmes and resettlement work. Alongside a
model that is driven still by an ideological affinity for privatisation there are a
number of positive ideas in the document, for example the recognition of probation
as a profession underpinned by a register of qualified practitioners, but while
acknowledging these we believe that now is an opportune moment to consider what
alternative shape a probation service should take in order to recover its former
respected position in the criminal justice system of England and Wales. That
recovery may be difficult, but in this paper it is argued that if the service is to make a
positive contribution to people’s efforts to desist from offending, the effort should
be made not to simply restore the service to some imagined golden age but to
re-establish it within a new, informed configuration. In what is offered as a contri-
bution to thinking about that restoration, this paper will delineate the merits of public
service, explore its moral basis, re-assert the principle of consent to supervision,
present a case for the relocation of probation and the severance of its administrative
link to prisons, advocate its re-constitution as an evidence-based learning organi-
sation, describe the qualities of the effective practitioner, re-affirm the relevance of
vocation, and offer some ideas for future development.
The public sector, public service and idealism
Against the background of the failure of privatisation the case for the reinstatement
of the probation service as an autonomous public sector agency, uncoupled from a
nostalgic past, and focused on the reduction of harm caused by crime is incon-
trovertible. The creation of the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) in
hindsight can be seen as an example of the sometimes regressive nature of ‘prog-
ress’ (Pratt, 2005), and because of that regression the need to re-invigorate notions
of public service (as opposed to public services), vocation, motivation, genuineness,
commitment – and unashamedly, idealism – is heightened. However, in contrast to
the nature of the decision-making that precipitated probation’s fragmentation and
demise, the ideas put forward in this paper have been assembled through a process
of scrutinising evidence and what can be learned from the past.
The roots of public service lie in late 19th-century awareness that, although
quality of provision might form part of the motivation of private enterprise, invari-
ably the interests of the provider come first, whereas with public service the over-
riding principle was that the benefit of the recipient was paramount (Trevelyan,
1946). While it might be thought this principle was cemented by the post-1945
creation of the Welfare State we recognise today, antipathy towards it has a longer
history than is often assumed. Gard (2012) refers to parliamentary debates in the
1920s in which concerns were expressed about taxpayers having to foot the bill for
the salaries of probation officers; and Marsh (1964) chronicles political
Priestley and Vanstone
337
interpretation of public services as being a burden on the taxpayer during the
1950s and 1960s that stimulated searches for ways of relieving that burden. It is
hardly surprising, therefore, that this view of public services has been dominant
across the political spectrum, in particular since the 1980s, and that privatisation in
this sphere has become acceptable, as evidenced in debates about its prospect in
the probation service in which some reasoned that it was not necessarily negative
(Matthews, 1990).
This is precisely why it is important to shift the emphasis from ‘services’ to ‘ser-
vice’, and to visualise the future of new probation through that particular prism. By
way of caveat it is important to acknowledge that we do not have a complete and
formulated plan for undoing the damage done to probation over many decades, but
in elaborating the discussion of values in probation work we evince essential
properties of a renewed service in terms of its expressive meanings and its instru-
mental operations – in other words, what the organisation stands for, and how it
goes about translating its purposes into action. Expressively we define re-founded
probation as an essentially moral enterprise; instrumentally we cast it in the form of a
‘learning organisation’.
Probation as a moral enterprise
Even a cursory reading of its origins confirms the ethical dimensions of probation’s
abrupt departure from the punitive excesses of late 18th and early 19th-century
criminal justice. Judges on both sides of the Atlantic – Peter Oxenbridge Thacher in
the US (Grinnell, 1941–2) and Matthew Davenport Hil in England (Vanstone, 2004)
– supported the use of release on recognisances for juveniles and for adults convicted
of less serious offences. Religiously motivated individuals like John Augustus in Bos-
ton, Massachusetts, and temperance ‘missionaries’ in the United Kingdom developed
the values and practice that eventually became the statutory service of modern times.
Probation established itself as an approach that forthrightly rejects punishment and
espouses instead one based on respect, co-operation, and personal assistance as
engines of change towards active and positive citizenship – a theme we have
developed elsewhere (Priestley and Vanstone, 2010). We cal now for a re-formed
probation predicated on values that reflect its history as well as contemporary realities
and future ambitions; a probation that renounces the managerial orientation of recent
years and goes forward ‘working with people, developing their personal capacity
and enhancing their social capital,’ in what Burke and Collett (2010) refer to as a
‘human and moral enterprise’.
In the past 30 years probation’s moral antecedents have been undermined by a
deliberative neoliberal onslaught designed to prevent the re-emergence within
criminal justice of a social work function committed to helping people. Amongst
other acts of semantic vandalism, probation was re-defined as...
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