Professionalism, Payment by Results and the Probation Service: A Qualitative Study of the Impact of Marketisation on Professional Autonomy

Abstract

This article utilises Foucauldian understandings of the sociology of the professions to explore how marketising reforms to probation services in England and Wales, and the implementation of a ‘Payment by Results’ (PbR) mechanism in particular, have impacted professional autonomy. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a probation office within a privately owned Community Rehabilitation Company, it argues that an inability to control the socio-economic organisation of probation work has rendered the service susceptible to challenges to autonomy over technique. PbR was proffered as a means to restore practitioner discretion; however, the article demonstrates that probation staff have been compelled to economise their autonomy, adapting their conduct to conform to market-related forms of accountability. In this sense, it presents the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms to probation as a case study of the impact of marketisation on the autonomy of practitioners working within a public sector profession.

Mainstreaming Functional Positions within Indonesian Bureaucracy: Half-Hearted Commitment to Professionalization?

“…This approach was introduced to give more power and voice to the public who had been positioned as passive objects of diagnosis, treatment, and expertise-based services provided by professionals (Tonkens, 2016). However, adopting this approach has reduced the autonomy of professionals working in the public sector, triggering protests and collective action (Bezes et al, 2012;Tidmarsh, 2021). This is exacerbated in the United States, where the high costs of attending university combined with low economic rewards make the option of working as a professional in the public sector unattractive (Carter, 2007).…”