What is Probation For? - Part 1
Our research is exploring the impact of years of structural reforms, including part-privatisation and its reversal, on probation in England and Wales. Over the past three years we have been interviewing people working in the Probation Service at all different levels and people from outside agencies such as the police and courts, who work with probation. Virtually all describe a service and a workforce under pressure. Staff working in community teams report high workloads and feelings of pressure to meet the multiple demands of the role. The decision to bring probation back into the public sector under one national organisation, the Probation Service, has been broadly welcomed. However, as we have progressed through the research we have been coming up against a more fundamental question, prompted by the data we have gathered and our peer researchers – What is Probation for?
For some people, the answer may be clear – probation’s function is to protect the public. While others strongly believe that probation is a service whose purpose is to promote rehabilitation. Of course, these two aims don’t have to be incompatible, but the different opinions and experiences of probation do say something about the complexity of the job and the way in which probation practice has changed over the years. In order to explore these broader questions – What is Probation For? and What Should Probation be For? - we have been holding a series of workshops with different people who have experience of probation. These workshops have been co-designed by the peer researchers involved in the Rehabilitating Probation project, who were keen that we go back to look at these fundamentals and try to envisage what probation should be for. Our last workshop took place in Liverpool John Moores University in June, where we brought together a group of people with diverse experiences of probation to consider these questions. During the day we undertook activities which included a speculative exercise where participants sought to envisage a probation service in the future. We were grateful to have the input of Dr Emma Murray from LJMU, who has pioneered some of these speculative activities, for this session. We are also grateful to all of the participants who contributed on the day.
We will be producing a report based on the workshop sessions in due course. We are also working with the Prison Radio Association on a podcast series, based on this work. Paula Harriott and Phil Maguire, the hosts of the Secret Lives of Prison podcast, attended LJMU to speak to workshop participants, and recorded the first episode of the series on the day. You can listen to it here: The Future of Probation – Part 1