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Rehabilitating Probation

Rehabilitating Probation: Rebuilding culture, identity and legitimacy in a reformed public service is a three-year (2022-2024) ESRC funded research project that aims to examine the implementation, experiences and consequences of a significant and unprecedented programme of public service reform that has brought formerly outsourced probation services back into the public sector.

Learn more about the project and the research team

Latest Research

ArticlesReportsResources
Report
3 September 2024
What is Probation For? - Part 2
The project team have been hosting a series of workshops exploring the question - What is Probation For? In a podcast series recorded with the Prison Radio Association you can hear from some of those who took part.
Report
30 July 2024
What is Probation For? - Part 1
The project team have been hosting a series of workshops exploring the question - What is Probation For? We have also been recording a podcast series with the Prison Radio Association.
Article
5 June 2024
Can probation be rehabilitated?
An article based on Professor Gwen Robinson's Bill McWilliams memorial lecture that considered the recent past, present and potential future of the service through the lens of a central concept in probation work: namely, rehabilitation.
Report
19 February 2024
Probation Leaders Event - February 2024
Rehabilitating Probation Project emerging findings featured at event for Probation Leaders
Article
10 January 2024
Whose confidence? Regional leaders’ perspectives on building confidence in a reconfigured probation service.
Our paper draws on interviews conducted with Regional Probation Directors (RPDs) in England and Wales to focus on the question of whose confidence matters and what are the challenges when building confidence from the perspective of those leaders.
Article
1 November 2023
Making Good?: A Study of How Senior Penal Policy Makers Narrate Policy Reversal
Our paper draws on interviews with senior national policy participants to provide a narrative reconstruction of the unification of the probation service in England and Wales
Report
25 October 2023
Regional Directors of Probation Workshop - October 2023
The project research team hosted and delivered an input to a Regional Probation Director's Organisational Development Workshop in October 2023
Article
10 July 2023
A necessary but painful journey: Experiences of unification in a probation service region
In this first paper, published in the Probation Journal, we report on frontline probation practitioners’ reflections, one year after unification, of living through a period of profound organisational change.
Report
14 June 2023
25th Annual Bill McWilliams Lecture with Professor Lol Burke
Article
13 April 2023
Researching Probation Unification
This brief article published in the most recent issue of Probation Quarterly presents an overview of some of the themes emerging from interviews with probation practitioners in the first year following unification of probation services.