The point of probation: On effectiveness, human rights and the virtues of obliquity
| Published date | 01 November 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895812462596 |
| Date | 01 November 2013 |
| Author | Rob Canton |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
13(5) 577 –593
© The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1748895812462596
crj.sagepub.com
The point of probation: On
effectiveness, human rights
and the virtues of obliquity
Rob Canton
De Montfort University, UK
Abstract
Policy debate assumes the point of probation is to administer community punishment, reduce
reoffending and protect the public. Dominant punitive and instrumental understandings of
probation’s work have regarded the human rights of offenders as of secondary importance or
even as obstacles to attaining these objectives. This article argues that, on the contrary, policy and
practice should be grounded on human rights rather than on direct endeavours for effectiveness. It
advances a personal and ethical understanding of probation and, considering probation’s principal
tasks of enforcement, rehabilitation and public protection, argues that a respectful professional
relationship is indispensable, though threatened by punitive and instrumental approaches. The
concept of obliquity – the idea that some of our most important goals are best achieved indirectly
– can explain how a personal approach can turn out not only to respect ethical entitlements, but
indeed to be more effective in the terms that probation sets for itself.
Keywords
Ethics, human rights, obliquity, penal policy, probation
This article argues that contemporary policy debates in England and Wales understand
and value probation for its punitive and instrumental achievements and potential. The
point and worth of probation are taken to be its punitive capacity to deliver punishment
in the community or (and/or) its instrumental achievements in administering (or some-
times commissioning) rehabilitative interventions to reduce reconviction or working to
protect the public from further serious offending. It is envisaged that probation could
and should do better in these respects, but the idea that these constitute its worth and
purpose are bedrock assumptions shared by most commentators. I shall argue that there
Corresponding author:
Rob Canton, De Montfort University, Hawthorn Building, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.
Email: RCanton@dmu.ac.uk
462596CRJ13510.1177/1748895812462596Criminology & Criminal JusticeCanton
2012
Article
578 Criminology & Criminal Justice 13(5)
are other ways of asserting the worth of probation. After an introduction reflecting on
probation’s earliest history, there will be an account of the way in which punishment
and crime reduction became the taken-for-granted point and purposes of probation.
Against these ways of valuing probation, the priority of an ethical approach to policy
and practice, specifically a grounding in human rights, will be advanced. The personal
dimensions of probation work, obscured or suppressed by punitive and instrumental
priorities, will next be explored. These ideas are then applied to some of the hard reali-
ties of practice – enforcement, rehabilitation and public protection. It will be suggested
that punitive and instrumental approaches have achieved less than is sometimes claimed
and that even (perhaps especially) in the toughest cases, a personal and ethical approach
should be the starting point. The article concludes by exploring the concept of obliquity
and uses this to explain how an ethical approach, while its priority does not depend on
its contingent outcomes, can turn out to be more ‘effective’ than a direct pursuit of what
works.
Introduction: Why Probation?
One story about the origins of probation in England and Wales begins with the letter from
Hertfordshire printer, Frederic Rainer, in 1876 to the Church of England Temperance
Society in which he despaired of the court’s inevitable resort to punishment: ‘Offence
after offence and sentence after sentence appear to be the inevitable lot of him whose foot
has once slipped. Can nothing be done to arrest the downward career?’ (Vanstone,
2004: 1). Rainer famously proposed a ‘mission’ to the police courts and these missionar-
ies are often regarded as the first probation officers in England.
Rainer asserts hope against pessimism, rejecting inevitability and the impossibility of
change. Note that there is nothing in his words that seeks to absolve people from respon-
sibility for the wrongs they have done or even to repudiate punishment as a proper
response to crime. Indeed many penal reformers have been stern in their way, although
they have rejected cruelty, squalor and punishment without end and urged a response to
offending that respects dignity and decency and affirms both a belief in the possibility of
change and a determination to try to provide the required support. These are ethical val-
ues and expressive – in the sense that they draw attention to what probation says and
represents in and through its work.
These historical reflections are not an attempt to establish some essentialist position
about probation’s ‘true’ purpose. Institutions do not have purposes over and above the
purposes that people may set for them and these may change. But history is a reminder
that some modern bedrock assumptions – that probation is or should be punishment, that
its purpose is to reduce the incidence of re-offending and to protect the public – have not
always been part of probation’s self-awareness and are neither self-evident nor incontest-
able. On the contrary, for almost the whole of the 20th century, probation was instead of
punishment. Now, however, the Offender Management Model (National Offender
Management Service, 2006) incorporates punishment into each tier so that punishment is
to be the experience of all those under probation’s supervision. Again, while probation
officers have no doubt always worked to try to help people not to offend, the worth of
their work was not assessed in this way and indeed there were no serious attempts in
To continue reading
Request your trial