Welcome Diversity
| Published date | 01 September 1991 |
| Author | Bill McWilliams |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455059103800315 |
| Date | 01 September 1991 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
146
Welcome
Diversity
Bill
McWilliams,
Cambridge
Institute
of
Criminology
Although
Probation
Work
was
publish-
ed
in
1981,
it
had
been
long
in
gesta-
tion
and
was
very
much
a
book
of
the
1970s.
It
is
difficult
to
remember
now
the
keen
anticipation
with
which
this
book
was
awaited,
but
it
certainly
was.
The
NAPO
Members
Action
Group’s
’Working
Document’
(remember
that?),
was
becoming
dated
and,
interesting
though
the
general
social
work
texts
of
the
left
were,
they
could
be
no
substitute
for
our
own
radical
state-
ment.
When
it
came,
Probation
Work
certainly
fulfilled
its
promise.
It
was
an
ambitious
book
which
made
bold
and
uncompromising
claims.
’Our
ex-
perience’
of
the
problems
encountered
in
probation
practice,
Hilary
Walker
and
Bill
Beaument
said,
’leads
us
to
believe
that
other
explanations
are
un-
satisfactorily
superficial
and
inade-
quate.
Only
a
marxist
perspective
can
illuminate
the
connections
between
our
work
and
crucial
economic,
struc-
tural
and
political
issues’.
At
the
time
of
Probation
Work’s
publication,
it
was
possible
to
discern
three
schools
of
thought
in
the
Proba-
tion
Service:
the
management
school,
the
radical
school
(which
this
book
came
to
personify),
and
the
personalist
school.
The
least
organised
of
these
and
then
seemingly
the
weakest,
at
least
in
terms
of
grand
designs,
was
the
personalist,
and
yet
is
still
persists
as
a
real
influence
in
the
Service.
That
school’s
insistence
that
the
mainspring
of
probation
action
should
be
the
enhancement
of
individual
persons
in
existing
society
seemed
tame
in
com-
parison
with
managerialist
claims
to
the
manipulation
of
the
aggregate
phenomenon
of
offending
and
the
pro-
duction
of
social
control
systems.
The
personalists’
focus
on
the
individual
also
incurred
criticism
from
the
radicals.
As
Walker
and
Beaumont
put
it:
’a
total
concern
for
the
client
is
held
at
the
expense
of
a
more
balanced
ap-
proach’,
and
they
advocated
’a
shift
away
from
the
position
of
unqualified
support
for
clients
towards
a
more
rounded
concern
with
crime
in
so
far
as
it
is
a
problem
for
the
working
class’.
’.
The
rise
and
rise
of managerialism,
triumphantly
sweeping
the
radical
school
aside,
has
meant,
ironically,
that
part
of
the
radical
agenda
has
been
achieved,
but
not
in
the
manner
desired.
The
total
concern
for
clients
has
greatly
diminished
(although
it
still
heads
the
personalist
agenda),
but
con-
cern
for
the
problems
of
an
under-
class,
whose
membership
is
growing
at
an
alarming
rate,
has
not
increased.
The
effects
of
the
co-option
of
desert
theory
by
the
right
are
proving
as
calamitous
as
predicted
and
the
process
of
penalisation
of
the
Probation
Service
is
gathering
pace,
aided
to
a
substan-
tial
degree
by
the
conversion
of
proba-
tion
into
another
tariff
sentence.
The
publication
of
Probation
Work
was,
in
retrospect,
an
important
event.
It
marked
a
diversity
of
opinion
in
probation
thought
which,
alarming
though
it
may
have
seemed
to
some
at
the
time,
was
infinitely
preferable
to
the
dull
monotone
which
now
per-
vades
every
pronouncement.
As
Will
Fern
might
say
today,
’don’t
set
punish-
ment,
punishment,
punishment
afore
us
everywhere
we
turn’.
A
Home
Of-
fice
official
has
recently
suggested
that
it
will
take
fifteen
years
to
change
the
culture
of
the
Service.
The
changes
envisaged
(moving
decisively
towards
corrections)
are
likely
to
be
radical
in-
deed,
but
I
doubt
very
much
that
the
authors
of
Probation
Work
will
wel-
come
them.
The
question
is,
of
course,
when
did
the
fifteen
years
begin?
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