Probation

Question 1

What had punitive control changed?

Answer 1

Shifted from social care to social control

Question 2

What did Garland say punitive control did to the probation service?

Answer 2

made it ‘much more conflicted and much less secure’

Question 3

What is the commercialisation of justice in probation?

Answer 3

• managerialism and the loss of some professional discretion
• failure of transforming rehabilitation and it’s ongoing consequences

Question 4

What is probation work (community offender manager) since June 2021?

Answer 4

• all offenders on community orders
• all offenders on licence
• PSRs and parole reports
• breaches
• unpaid work
• OPBs and structured interventions
• victim liaison
• approved premises

Question 5

How many people on all forms of supervision in 2022? what percentage where women?

Answer 5

• 241,000 people
• 8% women

Question 5

What does the CJA 2003 s177 state?

Answer 5

community order

Question 6

Penal welfarism/ probation supervision (up to 1980s)

Answer 6

• client, service user/probation officer
• social work qualification
• ‘Advise, assist, befriend’
• consent, voluntary supervision
• rehabilitation as humanistic: social justice
• localised and individualised practice, independent from the central government

Question 7

Criminal justice/offender management (from 1990s)

Answer 7

• offender/offender manager
• probation qualification
• ‘Assess, protect, change’
• compulsion, statutory supervision
• rehabilitation as utilitarian
• national-level standardisation and required conformity with limited discretion

Question 8

What values and ideals stayed the same between penal welfarism and criminal justice?

Answer 8

occupational culture continues to adhere to:
- ‘public sector values’
- ‘the probation ideal’
- ‘people work’

Question 9

What changed in terms of probation and managerialism?

Answer 9

• statement of national objectives and priorities
• target setting, performance measurement and league tables

Question 10

What did the national standards of 1992 do for probation?

Answer 10

• quality assurance: monitoring of standards
• consistency and accountability for any deviation

Question 11

What did the effective practice initiative of 1998 do for probation?

Answer 11

• objective meta-analyses
• accreditation panels for approved interventions

Question 12

What is ‘acting out’ by ‘toughening up’

Answer 12

• political rhetoric emphasises (public perceptions of) lack of ‘toughness’ of non-custodial punishment

Question 12

What did the national probation service of 2001 do for probation?

Answer 12

• protecting the public: OASys (Offender Assessment System) and ‘matching input to risk’
• multi-agency public protection arrangements

Question 13

What percentage of supervision orders are successfully completed?

Answer 13

3/4

Question 14

What percentage of supervision probation reoffend within 1 year compared to prisoners?

Answer 14

• 56% probation
• 63% prisoners

Question 15

What is invisibility in the CJS?

Answer 15

• little debate or public awareness of TR
• successes not news worthy, only ‘failures’

Question 16

What did NOMS 2004 (National offenders management service): ‘end to end offender management’ breaking down the ‘silos’ entail?

Answer 16

• preventing dangerous offenders ‘falling through the cracks’
• new roles: offender managers and offender supervisors
• purchaser/provider split: commissioning of probation services

Question 17

What was the aim of TR 2014?

Answer 17

to ‘encourage competition, innovation and efficiency’:
- ‘payment by results’ to encourage innovation in rehabilitation
- statutory supervision for 12 months min
- ‘resettlement prisons’ and renewed focus on ‘through the gate’ services

Question 18

what are the differences between the national probation service (NPS) and the community rehabilitation companies (CRCs)

Answer 18

NPS:
- probation qualifications
- civil servants

CRCs:
- ‘appropriate levels of training and competence’
- employees

Question 19

What were the failures of TR?

Answer 19

underperformance of ‘two tier’ and ‘fragmented’ services
- no pilots to test feasibility
- higher than predicted NPS caseload (which lead to staff burnout and lack of efficiency)
- experienced CRC staff felt de-skilled
- inexperienced CRC staff gave some poor supervision
- CRCs sometimes ‘gaming’ the system for financial reasons
- CRCs not as profitable, or innovative as anticipated

Question 20

What are consequences of the failures of TR?

Answer 20

probation service severely understaffed:
- ongoing recruitment but retention difficulties
- high sickness rate for stress

‘excessive workloads’: inadequate supervision:
- delays in assigning offenders to a named PO/COM (probation officer/community offender manager)
- failure to ensure appropriate release conditions
- incorrect assessments of risk, offending seen in isolation
- ‘lack of professional curiosity’
- failure to recall to prison promptly

Question 21

What influenced probation to go from welfarism to justice models?

Answer 21

managerialist practices

Question 22

Why was the expressive ‘toughening up’ of probation introduced?

Answer 22

in efforts to restore public confidence in community penalties

Question 23

What made re-offending more likely in TR?

Answer 23

part-privatisation and managerialism