Probation officers – friend or foe?

Probation officers – friend or foe?

By: Charles Hanson - HMP Blantyre House

Lifer Charles Hanson looks at the modern role of probation and how it has become more punitive and bound up in bureaucracy.

The general perception of the public, and certainly the media, is that probation officers fit into the category of those who are more concerned with offenders than their victims. Veritable ‘do-gooders’ dressed up as concerned officials of the criminal justice system and, as befitting do-gooders, likely to be seen as making excuses for criminal and anti-social behaviour whilst actually achieving very little in response to the public’s concern over crime.

Whilst the probation service offers little to allay the public’s fear over crime and provide for public protection, neither does it achieve anything significant in reducing offending behaviour or attitude change in ex-offenders. Record numbers of released prisoners are subject to licence conditions and many will be recalled to prison by probation officers for non-criminal misdemeanours. These can include failing to keep an appointment; failing to notify changes of address; domestic disputes with a partner or alcohol/drug consumption. Even for uttering a difference of opinion with the probation officer and whatever is perceived by that individual as ‘behaviour likely to increase the risk of re-offending’, which is at best a subjective judgement.

In stark contrast to the former culture of probation work, which saw its role as assisting and befriending offenders towards leading non-criminal lifestyles, it is now common practice to hear offenders refer to probation officers by such non-endearing terms as ‘the enemy’, ‘the filth’, ‘the odd lot’ ‘the Gestapo’, and other uncomplimentary adjectives. Indeed, those who put people in prison are very much part of the state apparatus which seeks to penalise the mentally disordered, the unemployed and unskilled, the homeless, and those who have been excluded from and have no stake in society through poverty and lack of opportunity. They find themselves in prison warehouses and the consequential revolving door of offending is therefore seen as being the natural disposal of the unwanted. You couldn’t make it up.

It is noteworthy that as probation officers become less concerned about an offender’s social standing, inclusion and rehabilitation and being more punitive and bound up in bureaucracy (which some offenders equate with vindictiveness), anyone entering many probation offices for the first time cannot help but be aware of security measures more in keeping with a prison. CCTV, PIN number locks on doors for staff, door entry and intercom systems, strengthened glass which separates callers from probation staff and receptionists, and waiting room chairs bolted to the floor. What therefore could have led to such a shift in policy that probation officers now see themselves almost under siege and fearful that they have had to resort to such measures?

The answer lies somewhere between many ex-offender’s perceptions of probation officers as being firmly camped on the other side of the fence with the very system which excludes them, to ‘fitting-up’ offenders with comments and remarks allegedly made which then find their way into adverse reports and the forming of opinions which wouldn’t be out of place in works of fiction, yet form the basis of the notions of risk and further oppression.

There is also perhaps some currency in the notion that probation officers are all too ready to rely on hunches and guesswork in risk assessment rather than evidence, and what they lack in evidence they are astute at inventing or fabricating to bolster a higher risk score. This remains common practice to assuage the public’s demand for retribution.

The decision taken by probation, prison governors and managers that probation policy and coercion could be compatible remains reprehensible, whatever the reasoning. It has led to disadvantaged ex-offenders being sentenced and coerced by the use of threats into cognitive behaviourism courses whether they like it or not and taught to think differently against their will, which is all part of the current approaches applied by probation staff but which are measures that have failed miserably in spite of very selective evidence and so-called ‘research’ that probation officers rely on to promote such interventions.

To be labelled a criminal, and the effects of ‘labelling’, is widely known amongst psychologists as a start in the process whereby probation officers look not for the positives in an ex-offender’s life, and what is needed to encourage and support, but where the whole process focuses on all the negatives and the past. Clearly, a disgraceful re-offending rate of those released from prison (and again this only applies to those who are caught), a shambolic prison system, and a cavalier approach by probation staff to the recall of offenders; the enforcement of ‘tough cure’ just has not worked.

Releasing ex-offenders in the condition in which they were originally caught - but just a bit more battle hardened - is a sad indictment of the present policies of both the Prison and Probation Services in dealing with offenders; but does the Government really care, let alone the Prison and Probation Services? It seems not.

Sound-bites and rhetoric are empty of meaning until given effect, and with public protection being the main focus of probation officers it is something at which they fail miserably.

It was former Home Secretary Michael Howard who argued that ‘prison works’; proposing even more draconian measures for prisoners and ex-offenders - a stand bitterly opposed by the more liberal commentators including the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), whose members have since gone along in some way with that philosophy and to which they seemingly hang their collective hats on.

Anthony Goodman of Middlesex University, in the Probation and Offender Management Handbook, argues that … ‘there now exists a probation crisis of confidence because the superficial nature of probation supervision is patently failing to protect the public; with the Government now signalling its intention to rely on the voluntary sector to supervise ex-offenders going on to argue that one day the centrality of knowing, understanding and working constructively with the offender will have to be reintroduced and social work with clients reinvented’.

Government proposals to cut the budget to the Probation Service by an estimated 20% and the need to make efficiency savings has already led to wholesale redundancies across many probation areas, with many no longer recruiting trainees; and the response from NAPO? They maintain that such cutbacks will result in an extra 300,000 crimes a year, with a ‘knock on’ effect on the Prison Service who are also to be affected with major plans to cut back on middle management (Governor grades). It is not clear exactly how NAPO arrived at such a high figure of increased crimes (more guesswork) for it seems to suggest that they have faith in their own ability to reduce crime when in fact the reverse is shown to be true; although if recalling people to prison for failing to keep appointments, or being seen to have a difference of opinion with one’s probation officer should count, thus filling up our penal dustbins for non-criminal activity, then this goes some way towards demonstrating how ex-offender’s lives are not being turned around and the public not being protected; unless of course they subscribe to the stated views of Michael Howard that ‘prison works’.