Probation Flashcards
What had punitive control changed?
Shifted from social care to social control
What did Garland say punitive control did to the probation service?
made it ‘much more conflicted and much less secure’
What is the commercialisation of justice in probation?
- managerialism and the loss of some professional discretion
- failure of transforming rehabilitation and it’s ongoing consequences
What is probation work (community offender manager) since June 2021?
- all offenders on community orders
- all offenders on licence
- PSRs and parole reports
- breaches
- unpaid work
- OPBs and structured interventions
- victim liaison
- approved premises
How many people on all forms of supervision in 2022? what percentage where women?
- 241,000 people
- 8% women
What does the CJA 2003 s177 state?
community order
Penal welfarism/ probation supervision (up to 1980s)
- 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
Criminal justice/offender management (from 1990s)
- offender/offender manager
- probation qualification
- ‘Assess, protect, change’
- compulsion, statutory supervision
- rehabilitation as utilitarian
- national-level standardisation and required conformity with limited discretion
What values and ideals stayed the same between penal welfarism and criminal justice?
occupational culture continues to adhere to:
- ‘public sector values’
- ‘the probation ideal’
- ‘people work’
What changed in terms of probation and managerialism?
- statement of national objectives and priorities
- target setting, performance measurement and league tables
What did the national standards of 1992 do for probation?
- quality assurance: monitoring of standards
- consistency and accountability for any deviation
What did the effective practice initiative of 1998 do for probation?
- objective meta-analyses
- accreditation panels for approved interventions
What is ‘acting out’ by ‘toughening up’
- political rhetoric emphasises (public perceptions of) lack of ‘toughness’ of non-custodial punishment
What did the national probation service of 2001 do for probation?
- protecting the public: OASys (Offender Assessment System) and ‘matching input to risk’
- multi-agency public protection arrangements
What percentage of supervision orders are successfully completed?
3/4
What percentage of supervision probation reoffend within 1 year compared to prisoners?
- 56% probation
- 63% prisoners
What is invisibility in the CJS?
- little debate or public awareness of TR
- successes not news worthy, only ‘failures’
What did NOMS 2004 (National offenders management service): ‘end to end offender management’ breaking down the ‘silos’ entail?
- preventing dangerous offenders ‘falling through the cracks’
- new roles: offender managers and offender supervisors
- purchaser/provider split: commissioning of probation services
What was the aim of TR 2014?
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
what are the differences between the national probation service (NPS) and the community rehabilitation companies (CRCs)
NPS:
- probation qualifications
- civil servants
CRCs:
- ‘appropriate levels of training and competence’
- employees
What were the failures of TR?
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
What are consequences of the failures of TR?
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
What influenced probation to go from welfarism to justice models?
managerialist practices
Why was the expressive ‘toughening up’ of probation introduced?
in efforts to restore public confidence in community penalties
