Reunified probation. All aboard the ‘justice fleet’

Abstract

Probation services in England were re-unified and brought back into public ownership on 26 June 2021, following the privatisation and division of services that took place under Transforming Rehabilitation. Probation in Wales had already been brought fully under the public ambit in December 2019, following the collapse of the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC), which had operated there. The re-unification of probation services has been welcomed across a range of quarters, from trade union bodies and parliamentarians to the probation inspectorate. However, many who have welcomed the decision have also noted the heavy toll that years of disruption have had on probation services in England and Wales. A disruption that has been particularly marked in the impact on the probation workforce.We have previously published articles in the journal about the significant effects of Transforming Rehabilitation on staff across probation services both in the lead up to and following the implementation of the reforms. For instance, Phillips et al.(2016) documented the feeling of 'relentlessness' amongst staff who experienced the move towards the supervision of primarily 'high-risk' cases in the National Probation Service (NPS). In a practitioner response, Lee (2017) observed the need for enhanced supervisory supports, particularly to address the emotional impacts of working with high degrees of trauma among service users. A Special Issue of the journal marking the fifth anniversary of Transforming Rehabilitation (Volume 66, Issue 1, 2019), included an article by Walker et al. (2019), which documented the stresses and workload pressures experienced by staff in CRCs and the NPS, and which for some, led to their decision to leave probation work altogether.Further coverage in the journal has charted the vagaries of implementation, for instance through foreseeable difficulties in Payment by Results (Albertson and Fox, 2019) and the casting aside of smaller local voluntary services under the behemoth of large-scale procurement processes (Corcoran et al., 2019). Meanwhile in more recent years, we have published some of the areas in which practice innovation had been taking place and where some staff articulated a sense of excitement about the potential for the probation role. It is clear therefore that reunification will mean different things to staff depending on their position and experiences to date.

‘Pushed from above and pushed from below’: Emotional labour and dual identities amongst senior probation officers in England and Wales

“…With reunification of public and private sector probation providers in 2021 the PS is in another period of upheaval, and the messy world of SPOs as middle managers becomes further magnified (Tidmarsh, 2022). Reunification has obliged SPOs to supervise frontline probation practitioners subjected to divergent working practices and must, along with frontline staff, begin ‘adapting to working within a newly structured service, while the process of recovery from [COVID – 19] pandemic continues’ (Carr, 2021: 308).…”