Walking on Thin Ice: How and Why Frontline Officers Cope With Managerialism, Accountability, and Risk in Probation Services

Abstract

Probation officers (POs) operate in a high-risk environment. They are vulnerable to mediatic and political backlash and are confronted with managerial innovations that can conflict with their values. A thematic analysis of 29 interviews with Belgian POs reveals that classical coping mechanisms caused by time shortages, such as rationing and prioritization, are amplified by managerialism. POs also break rules which present limited meaningfulness and routinize offender control to alleviate pressure from accountabilities to both managers and the general public. The study demonstrates that managerialism and accountabilities to the managers, the public, and the politicians model coping mechanisms in high-risk environments.

How does technology‐based monitoring affect street‐level bureaucrats' behavior? An analysis of body‐worn cameras and police actions

“…In other words, video recordings alone may not be sufficient to address officers' implicit biases that are hard to disentangle objectively (Murphy, 2019). Another possible explanation can be drawn from the idea that bureaucratic institutions tend to employ technology in ways that align with existing conceptions of professionalism (Kerpershoek et al., 2016; Manning, 2008; Sabbe et al., 2021). Even though a bias‐free policing initiative was launched a year before body‐worn cameras were acquired in the New Orleans Police Department, racial equity might not have been fully integrated into the agency's shared understanding of professionalism.…”

Which Clients Inspire or Reduce the Trust of Street-Level Bureaucrats?

“…They are also frontline employees who often have long-term relationships with their clients, giving them time to determine their level of trust in them. Second, while studies have highlighted the impact of SLBs’ evaluations of their clients on their discretion in implementing policy (Davidovitz & Cohen, 2021c; Sabbe et al, 2020) this research explores the implications of various categories of clients, some of whom increase SLBs’ sense of vulnerability, risk, and hesitation in their work. Our investigation reveals that the expectations they form about their clients create the basis for how they evaluate them.…”

Neither the Magic Bullet Nor the Big Bad Wolf: A Systematic Review of Frontline Judges’ Attitudes and Coping Regarding Managerialization

“…The SLB theory was originally developed by Lipsky (1980Lipsky ( /2010) and has been used in numerous studies over the last two decades (Hupe, 2019;Nothdurfter & Hermans, 2018). Street-level bureaucrats are frontline public officials who interact directly with citizens while carrying out their duties and include social workers (e.g., Evans, 2011), healthcare service workers (e.g., Erasmus, 2014), teachers (e.g., Siciliano, 2015;Taylor, 2007), police officers (e.g., Cohen & Golan-Nadir, 2020) and correctional officers (e.g., Sabbe et al, 2021). To the extent that they work by the rules, they have a certain degree of discretionary power in their relationship with citizens and in decision-making as well as some autonomy in organizing their work.…”

“…Without such mechanisms, the work of these agents would not be sustainable (Vedung, 2015). Different types of coping mechanisms have been distinguished by SLB research, such as routinizing some tasks, i.e., providing identical services to all citizens (Tummers et al, 2015); rationing some services, for example, by reducing the effort allocated to face-to-face interactions as well as the duration of meetings with citizens (Sabbe et al, 2021; Vedung, 2015); taking shortcuts to save time (Brodkin, 2011); or prioritizing the simplest and fastest cases (Tummers et al, 2015).…”

“…The SLB approach is relevant in accounting for the impact of NPM-based reforms on frontline officers (for recent examples, see Hendrikx, 2021; Jacobsson et al, 2021; Nothdurfter & Hermans, 2018; Sabbe et al, 2021). The SLB theory has been used to analyze how street-level bureaucrats from the Norwegian Welfare and Labor Organization have come to grips with digitalization (Hansen et al, 2018) or to document the importance of frontline officials in the implementation of the strategic environmental assessment policy in Denmark (Kørnøv et al, 2015).…”