Social Work Ideologies in the Probation Service

Summary The research described in this paper was an attempt to exploresome aspects of social work ideology in the probation service.We were particularly interested to identify the extent to whichprobation officers subscribed to certain ‘treatment model’assumptions about criminal behaviour. The project was designedas a small-scale study in depth of probation officers' socialinquiry practices. The data-collection methods used for thiswere a combination of depth interviews with probation officerswho also completed self-administered questionnaires. We foundthat some probation officers appeared to subscribe to ‘treatmentmodel‘ ideals more than others, but that all probationofficers were treatment orientated towards some of their casesand not to others. Their treatment preferences seems to relateto the seriousness of the offender's criminal history and personalproblems and the recommendation that was being made. Some ofthe implications of these findings for social work practicewere discussed.     

The Objectives of the Probation Service

Summary Two kinds of objective are identified: an organizational objectiveconcerned with efficiency, and a functional objective concernedwith the effectiveness of the service. Increasing responsibilitiesin respect of social enquiry work, parole, after-care and prisonwelfare have been absorbed remarkably smoothly during the 1960s,and even the inevitable administrative changes have been lessdisruptive than might have been anticipated. Any discussionabout the 'effectiveness' of the probation service highlightsthe need to clarify its purposes and its functions. It is arguedthat, although most officers would accept that their primaryfunction is and has traditionally been that of exercising oversightover the offender on behalf of the court and the community,there are unmistakeable signs that pressure will be broughtto bear on the probation service to adopt a more treatment-orientatedapproach. The switch to such a correctional role is bound todisturb the organizational objectives of the service, and raisequestions about the place of casework theory in the trainingand supervision of probation officers     

Perceptions of Staff Supervision in the Probation Service

Summary This study collates and comments upon the views of main-gradeprobation officers in West Yorkshire on the subject of staffsupervision. It shows that a majority of officers hold positiveopinions about supervision, provided that it is related to assistingthem in their main task of helping clients. The use of supervisionas a means of administrative control over standards of workis acceptable only to a minority of officers. The article includesa detailed analysis of the content of officers' own definitionsof supervision from which many examples are quoted. It showsalso the degree of importance accorded to supervision in relationto other probation officer and senior probation officer functions.     

Quality Assurance, Pre-Sentence Reports and the Probation Service

Correspondence to Dr Peter Raynor, Applied Social Studies, University of Wales, Swansea, Wales SA2 8PP. Summary During the months immediately preceding the implementation ofthe 1991 Criminal Justice Act the Home Office commissioned astudy of quality assurance and quality control procedures usedby probation services in their work on social inquiry reportsand in their preparation for the change to pre-sentence reports.This paper summarizes the results of that study, which includeda survey of current practice in probation services and the developmentof a quality control instrument for assessing the quality ofpre-sentence reports. It is emphasized that the views expressedin this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily thoseof the Home Office.     

Keeping the Probation Service Whole: The Case for Discretion

Summary The function of the probation service has been the discretionarymanagement of the tension between control and care. There wasa time when officers could make these discretionary decisionswith relative confidence, but structural pressures, togetherwith the decline of the correctional/treatment model have madethis more difficult. This has led to arguments for the separationof control and care functions. A recent attempt has been madeto re-instate the correctional/treatment model and this is discussedbut found to be unconvincing. The author presents his own argumentfor retaining discretion and describes how he believes it shouldbe managed.     

Using a Reconviction Predictor to Make Sense of Reconviction Rates in the Probation Service

Correspondence to John Wilkinson, Research Officer, Inner London Probation Service, Lansdale House, 57 Buckingham Gate, London SW1E 6AJ. Summary Reducing offending is a main aim of the probation service, butfew mechanisms exist to monitor how this is achieved. This paperdescribes how information about reconvictions can provide routinefeedback about effectiveness in combating offending. Using areconviction predictor, outcome, in terms of reconviction rate,can be evaluated against predicted outcome. A predictor wasvalidated for use in Inner London using case records. Informationwas obtained retrospectively about offenders at the start oftheir probation orders, and about subsequent reconvictions overthirteen months of probation. The predictor was found to haveconsiderable predictive power. The predictor was piloted forroutine use by probation officers, and a customized versionof the predictor was developed. The research is now moving intoa third stage, of developing an end of probation order returnwhich will supply information about reconvictions. Issues relatingto the use of reconvictions as a performance indicator, aondquestions of implementation, are discussed.     

The Ideology, Policy and Practice of Adult Probation Service in Israel

Summary This paper presents the findings of a study that sought to identifythe dominant characteristics of the Adult probation servicein Israel. An examination of the professional ideology of probationofficers, the policy and the practice of the service indicatedthat the probation service in Israel tends to emphasize theintra-psychic treatment model. According to this model, crimeis rooted in psychological causes and thus the goal of probationis to generate intra-psychic change in the offender. As such,probation officers are primarily engaged in therapy aimed atidentifying the individual pathology of the probationeer andat treating it. This model of probation differs significantlyfrom that which characterizes probation services in the UK andthe USA. Various explanations are offered for this.     

Towards "the Field of Corrections": Modernizing the Probation Service in the Late 1990s

The Probation Service in England and Wales has been caught up in the New Labour government's broader programme of "modernization". In a document more radical than anything produced under the previous Conservative government, New Labour has proposed that the Service be brought under centralized control, that its name be changed to reflect its new primary purpose of public protection, and that it be brought into closer structural alignment with the Prison Service. This paper discerns in the case made for centralization and the need for closer ties with prisons an authoritarian impulse which is deeply at odds with the Service's own local traditions, and questions whether the undoubtedly necessary process of modernization must take the form being proposed by the government.     

A Changing Service: The Case for Separating 'Care' and 'Control' in Probation Practice

Summary Change has heightened contradictions inherent in the probationservice's functions. The effects of this on officers' behaviourare described and a new conceptualization of the relationshipbetween care and control is offered. It is argued that modelsof possible future developments for the service must addressthe impact of work function and work context on practice, andan example of an alternative approach to the future is provided.     

Concepts of Risk in Relation to Organizational Structure and Functioning within the Personal Social Services and Probation

The main argument of this paper is that personal social services, including probation, at both a policy and practice level are increasingly focused on issues of risk. We postulate that risk assessment, risk management, the monitoring of risk and risk-taking itself are rapidly becoming the dominant raison d'être of such agencies, thus supplanting ideologies of meeting need or welfare provision. In turn they have become key to priority setting and rationing, the basis for organizational rationales and structures, the central focus for professional activity and accountability, and measuring quality. Thus an analysis of risk as an organizing principle offers fundamental insights into the rapidly changing nature and organization of statutory social work and probation. There is very little literature that focuses on risk across the spectrum of services. Risk analysis, as such, is most developed in the criminal justice and child protection fields. However, the mental health literature, being centrally preoccupied with notions of dangerousness, is quickly adopting risk terminology. Apart from work on elder abuse, literature on child welfare and community care has been framed in terms of need, issues of risk only coming to the fore around potential admission to residential care. We contend that as issues of rationing and accountability become more dominant, so do concerns with risk. Thus we predict the extension of notions of risk as central organizing principles throughout the social services and probation.     

Probation and Social Exclusion

The paper begins with a brief discussion of the value of the term "social exclusion", before drawing on quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interview) evidence to suggest that young people on the caseload of the probation service are, in general, excluded from the full range of social goods. The basis of this exclusion is not only in poverty and unemployment, but in social and personal insecurity, lack of access to the benefits of education and training, and housing and health problems. It is argued that despite their exclusion these young people have predominantly conventional hopes and aspirations, and that there is therefore no reason to believe that a programme for their social inclusion and reintegration would be doomed to fail. The paper then reviews some aspects of present practice in probation which may tend to increase rather than reduce the exclusionary pressure on those with whom the service works, by stigmatizing and marginalizing them through a narrow focus on their offending. It concludes by suggesting strategies for more inclusionary and integrative practice in the areas of anti-custodialism, restorative justice and reintegrative shaming, community safety, and help with access to education, training and health services. The paper considers what local inter-agency structures are needed to support intensive work on offending, and sketches some characteristics of a probation service committed to social inclusion.     

Probation and Social Justice

Correspondence to: David Smith, Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YL, UK. E-mail: d.b.smith{at}lancaster.ac.uk or Maurice Vanstone, Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, Wales, UK. E-mail: m.vanstone{at}swansea.ac.uk Summary The paper considers the past and potential contribution to socialjustice of the probation service in England and Wales, withinthe context of the service's complex origins and tradition,in which humanitarian and disciplinary concerns have long co-existed.The paper explores the service's connections with processesof categorization and governance of the dangerous, and its alignmentwith the ‘psy’ disciplines in developing its claimsto professional expertise. The implications of the recent reassertionof the centrality of psychological understandings of offendingand its prevention, in the form of cognitive-behavioural programmes,are discussed, and the circumstances in which the movement for‘effective practice’ can and cannot contribute tosocial justice are discussed. The paper then explains the groundsfor believing that a concern with social justice entails a commitmentto crime prevention at a level beyond that of direct work withknown offenders, and explores the potential of restorative justiceas a means of achieving a reintegrative and participatory approachto community safety. The paper concludes with a discussion ofthe service's successes and failures in anti-discriminatorypractice, and the feasibility of a social justice agenda inthe current policy context.     

Probation Training and the Community Justice Curriculum

Summary In England and Wales the Diploma in Social Work was supersededby the more specialized Diploma in Probation Studies in 1997/98as a basic qualification for probation officers. It combinesacademic and practical learning in the form of a two-year undergraduatedegree and a twelve-module National Vocational Qualification(NVQ). There was considerable professional opposition to thisat the time and opinion remains mixed as to how justifiablethe change was, and how successful it has been. This articleseeks to defend the principle of combining the academic andthe practical but, via a critique of two recent commentarieson the Diploma in Probation Studies, questions whether the ideaof academic teaching on a professional qualification has beenadequately conceptualized and implemented. It argues againstteaching that is governed uncritically by the protocols andproblematics of pure academic disciplines, and insists uponthe use of material which is selected and tailored to the intellectualneeds of working probation officers. It outlines a better conceptualizationof what a ‘community justice curriculum’ might looklike, based in part on the approach taken to probation trainingat the University of Birmingham.     

Probation and Social Work

The paper considers the representation of probation themes inthe British Journal of Social Work (BJSW) since the early 1990s,and reviews developments in probation policy and practice sincethen, with a focus on the relationship between probation practiceand social work. It argues that emerging research evidence supportsthe view that effective probation practice is likely to be informedby values and skills that are recognizably within the traditionof social work, and concludes that despite pressures to abandonsocial work as a basis for probation practice, it is not obviouswhat the alternative could be.     

Work Satisfaction in Probation and Social Work

Correspondence to Professor Martin Davies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ. Summary The design and preliminary development of a research instrumentintended to provide comparable measures of work satisfactionwithin different social work settings is described. The resultsof administering it to two separate samples of social workersand probation officers are presented. It appears that probation officers feel themselves more highlyregarded by members of the general public and are less likelyto say they are badly paid; they enjoy more job autonomy; rathermore social workers tend to feel alienated at work, but mostbelieve that they have better chances of career advancementthan is the case in the probation service. There are broad similarities between the two work settings sofar as work with clients and attitudes towards colleagues areconcerned; it is argued that the emergence of these similaritiesis methodologically reassuring because it suggests the stabilityof the data overall, and therefore increases the likelihoodthat the findings regarding agency differences are a valid reflectionof social reality in each setting.     

Probation Practice, Effectiveness and the Non-Treatment Paradigm

Correspondence to Dr Peter Raynor, Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies, University of Wales, Swansea SA2 8PP. Summary This paper reports interim and largely positive results fromthe continuing evaluation of ‘Straight Thinking on Probation’,a substantial intensive probation programme in Mid-Glamorganbased on the work of Robert Ross et al. (1988) in Canada. Thepotential effectiveness of this type of programme is then discussedin relation to the influential model of the probation service'srole advanced by Bottoms and McWilliams in their 1979 ‘non-treatmentparadigm’. Are such programmes ‘treatment’,based on a model of offender pathology and therefore in conflictwith the paradigm, or are they ‘help’, based ona model of empowerment? An attempt to answer this question alsorequires consideration of how far the ‘non-treatment paradigm’was itself a response to perceived ineffectiveness requiringrevision in the light of new evidence. It is argued that suchrevision need not threaten the underlying moral philosophy ofthe paradigm.