‘If the cap fits’? Probation staff and the changing nature of supervision in a Community Rehabilitation Company

Abstract

This article explores the changing nature of supervision in a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) following the Transforming Rehabilitation ( TR) reforms to probation services in England and Wales. Based on an ethnographic study of an office within a privately owned CRC, it argues that TR has entrenched long-term trends towards ‘Taylorised’ probation practice. This is to say that qualitative and quantitative changes to the complexion of practitioners’ caseloads since TR reflect a decades-long devaluation of the probation service and its staff. The decision to allocate most qualified practitioners to the National Probation Service means that Case Managers (i.e. probation service officers) now supervise offenders who would historically have been supervised by Senior Case Managers (i.e. probation officers). This loss of expertise has been exacerbated by administrative staff redundancies at the office. The result is an increasingly standardised and fragmented mode of working within the CRC in which the majority of services are now delivered by the voluntary sector.

Give Them Money: An Illustrative History of Forms of Reimagined Rehabilitation in Probation Practice in England and Wales

“…Despite these positive signs, it is difficult to ignore Bottoms's (2008) assertion that in recent years probation has become ‘invisible in high crime, high deprivation areas’ (p.160). Combined with the hollowing out of the Service generally, the de‐professionalisation of the Community Rehabilitation Companies and the ideologically driven process of fragmentation and privatisation, its invisibility has created structural impediments to the fulfilment of that vision (Deering and Feilzer 2017; Tidmarsh 2020; Williams and Durrance 2018). The government's strategy for women that followed the Corston report illustrates the point (Corston 2007).…”

The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

“…The assertion that unqualified personnel are capable of monitoring and supervising offenders, not just in unpaid work but also in the crucial area of motivating offenders to desist from crime -which requires skills that experienced probation officers take years to acquire -is quite frankly fanciful and misleadingly disingenuous. (Fitzgibbon and Lea, 2014: 35) While this view reflects badly, and perhaps unfairly, on the work of many probation service officers, it nonetheless suggests that radical changes to the structure of the service present a continuation of a managerial pursuit of 'efficiencies' through cheaper labour (Gale, 2012;Tidmarsh, 2020b). Such allocation has contributed to the view that the NPS are the 'elite' (Robinson et al, 2016: 168) organisation in a 'two-tier and fragmented' (HMI Probation, 2017a: 6) service.…”

“…Such changes to ‘probation’ terminology were also apparent in Tidmarsh’s (2019, 2020b) study of a CRC: changes to staff job titles, from ‘probation (service) officers’ to ‘(senior) case managers’ were intended to emphasise coordination of services rather than direct working with offenders, a shift that resembles the discourse and objectives of New Labour’s ‘offender management model’ (Robinson, 2011). Staff lamented, but reluctantly accepted, a mode of practice dependent upon the (further) outsourcing probation work to the voluntary sector (Tidmarsh, 2019b, 2020).…”

“…While this view reflects badly, and perhaps unfairly, on the work of many probation service officers, it nonetheless suggests that radical changes to the structure of the service present a continuation of a managerial pursuit of ‘efficiencies’ through cheaper labour (Gale, 2012; Tidmarsh, 2020b). Such allocation has contributed to the view that the NPS are the ‘elite’ (Robinson et al, 2016: 168) organisation in a ‘two-tier and fragmented’ (HMI Probation, 2017a: 6) service.…”

Desistance from crime and probation supervision: Comparing experiences of English and French probationers

“…This article offers to address these gaps in the literature, by providing a cross-national comparison of English and French desisters’ experiences and perspectives of probation supervision. Since much is already known on the design and evolution of probation in England and Wales (Robinson, 2016b; Tidmarsh, 2020) and its impact on desistance processes (Farrall et al, 2014; King, 2013; Segev, 2020; Shapland et al, 2012), it is assumed that the readership is familiar with the English context of this research. For this reason, the relevant background information will be given only about the French context before a discussion on assisting desistance and the value of cross-national comparative work.…”