British Journal of Community Justice
©2016 Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield
ISSN 1475-0279
Vol. 14(1): 65-70
THOUGHT PIECE
'Thought Pieces' are papers which draw on the author's personal knowledge and
experience to offer stimulating and thought provoking ideas relevant to the aims of the
Journal. The ideas are located in an academic, research, and/or practice context and all
papers are peer reviewed. Responses to them should be submitted to the Journal in the
normal way.
TRAGEDY AND FARCE IN ORGANISATIONAL UPHEAVALS
FOR PROBATION: WHAT NEXT?
Paul Senior, Professor of Probation Studies, Sheffield Hallam University
Is this an unlikely scenario, circa 2011?
Government hiring a consultant in organisational and personnel management and
challenging them to:
“Map out a way of changing the entire organisational matrix of probation.
This is your brief:
• Undo the governance arrangements completely and create a bifurcated and
multiple ownership model using a range of companies with no experience of
running probation services
• As it worked so badly in 2001 when 17 chiefs were retired at a stroke losing
the leadership skills of a service at a time when a new national organisation
was created, repeat this tragedy as farce in 2014 so aim at, at least, 13 CEOs
leaving the Trusts as the new organisations are created thus decimating
leadership
• Create new arrangements which will downgrade the skills of its workforce,
create confusion over what is required to be a probation practitioner and
then squeeze funds to the extent that redundancy, low morale and sickness
escalates and the core of probation, its workers, are decimated, set against
each other and disillusioned.”
And yet this is just what has unfolded in the most farcical episode in probations' rich, if
turbulent, history of organisational change. The changes initiated by Transforming
Rehabilitation (TR) are maybe more disruptive than previous changes but there have been
plenty of changes since the steady state of 1970s and 1980s. For most of the last forty
years, probation has been a local public service managed via a variety of Probation
Committees (magistrates initially as the employers) and then Boards with a changing
65
Senior
relationship with its courts, local authorities, the region and the centre. At one time the
local authority also contributed to part of its budget, though the extent of local oversight
was limited as direction has always come from the centre. This gathered pace when
probation was projected ‘centre stage’ in the early 1990s and a more managed service
was required. Boards became more diversified to include representatives from business
and finance and the occasional academic. However, the funding requirements, controlled
by the centre, ensured increasing compliance to central direction, ultimately increasing
such control so that a National Probation Service was created in 2001. It was an
opportunity for influence and recognition for the distinctive work of the probation service
but which ultimately failed. A closer relationship with a more dominant partner, the prison
service, a succession of lack lustre national leaderships plus a submissive attitude to the
demands of government saw probation drift from its core ideals to a weak and divided
organisational arrangement lacking rationale, connectedness and a sense of direction. The
2001 version of the NPS did not last and another organisational shift brought Probation
Trusts, increased local engagement through Local Criminal Justice Boards and Community
Safety Partnerships, regional bodies and enhanced working partnerships with the police
and with the third sector. As we reached 2012 the Trusts were regarded, by the
government's own measures, as in good health and had become the first public
organisation to be awarded the ultimate business kitemark, the British Quality
Foundation’s 2011 Gold Medal for Excellence Award.
Now just four years later we have governance models which are predicated on survival
and ensuring the new Community Rehabilitation Companies at least break even. Many of
the CEOs who started the CRCs before ownership was transferred to a strange band of
catering, workfare, cleaning and security companies have now gone or been superseded
by senior managers from the owners. There is no continuity between the different
providers and less and less organic links with the new National Probation Service despite
originally sharing buildings and having a common IT language. Now many models prevail
and communication has become difficult.
Leadership is a difficult issue to get right. Too often the balance between management
and leadership is blurred. In 2001 there was a strong move to centralise probation policy
and practice and make all local areas dance to a new choreography (National Probation
Service, 2001). For the new director faced with a brain drain of 17 Chiefs, amongst which
were some of its most innovative thinkers and leaders, an administrative model prevailed
and the new chiefs were managers working on behalf of a target-driven centre. This did
not work well and as successive central leaders failed to resist the prisonisation of
probation local leaders began to emerge. The new Trusts arrived with a younger, more
female dominated leadership of the 35 Trusts which through its representative organ, the
Probation Chiefs Association (PCA), began to drive forward a new agenda. Evidence
showed it was performing well and innovating around such issues as Integrated Offender
Management (IOM), domestic violence, sex offenders, accredited programmes, desistance
agendas, the Offender Engagement Programme, etc. PCA as a fledging organisation, was
beginning to assert itself and give a voice, often a female voice, to the views of its
leadership in ways which approached the earlier more vocal ACOP in the recent past. Even
if you took the ultimate government measure of success, reducing re offending, it was
demonstrable on MoJ's own statistics that being on probation in the Trusts did help
66
Tragedy and farce in organisational upheavals for probation: what next?
reduce reoffending (MoJ Analytical Services, 2013). During the early TR debates, this
leadership was visible and articulated its dismay at the dismantling of the successful Trust
arrangements. However, the corporate silencing which was imposed by the MoJ
quietened that voice to a whisper and it felt that at that moment the leadership lost its
power to influence the changes. Indeed many faced with the uncomfortable job of making
TR work either resigned or were quietly invited to do so. Once again the leadership was
decimated and as the new arrangements emerged, it did so with a much less experienced
set of individuals, nervous about their futures whether as a result of their civil servant
status in the NPS or the insecurity of their future in the new CRCs. The voice of that new
leadership has been largely silent.
Ironically the review of research initiated by the MoJ (MoJ Analytical Services, 2013) which
drew on the good practice highlighted above suggested the following four characteristics
should be at the centre of the new organisational arrangements:
•
•
•
•
Skilled, trained practitioners;
Well-sequenced, holistic approaches;
Services and interventions delivered in a joined-up, integrated manner;
Need for high quality services. (Senior, 2013)
I posed this question rhetorically in a blog concerning these aspirations in 2013:
’High quality services? Where can we possibly find a public service with top
quality kite mark awards, reductions of up to 10 per cent in reoffending
from community orders, a highly trained and motivated staff group,
delivering integrated holistic services in cooperation with voluntary and
private providers? Is this why we are seeking new providers? Wait, these
criteria are met by an organisation in existence – probation trusts. So it
makes sense to rip them in two, give it to providers with aspirations but
little track record.’ (Senior, 2013)
If the farce of diminishing the leadership was enough to impact on probation, it is a
further tragedy that the organisational changes have wrought an existential crisis at the
heart of the probation profession. This is discussed elsewhere in this volume (see Worrall
et al.) which interrogates the impact on the occupational culture; here it is sufficient to
note the warnings from voices rising above the parapet to reveal a sorry tale of the
disestablishment of the Probation ideal. It can be summarised emotionally as
confrontational, demoralising and divisive. In practical terms the status of probation
officer has been diminished, particularly but not exclusively, in the CRCs; colleagues have
been set against each other as they work for different organisations; communications
have been made more complex and IT systems have proliferated without positive
interconnected outcomes. At the time of writing, redundancies, sometimes as much as 40
per cent, are likely to be implemented! Training arrangements within the CRCs are
undermined and practice is often being devolved to PSO equivalents in both NPS through
E3 (NPS, 2016) and in the various models of the CRCs. There are, nevertheless, examples
of good practice across the country, maybe in spite of rather than because of the
67
Senior
arrangements. The future of probation as a profession is threatened by these changes yet
skilled, trained practitioners were at the heart of the research evidence quoted above
(MoJ Analytical Services, 2013). One voice picked at random from Twitter sums up the
crisis:
'#probation fast becoming a concept, not an institution/public service NPS
th
enforcement and CRCs failed business.' (@sadSPO, 5 March 2016)
140 characters says it all. The profession is under threat.
So, above are insights into the changes, below are some of the fears and hopes expressed
at the conversation in Kendal.
Fears
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Commodification of emotional labour (see Knight et al. in this volume);
Individualist, oppressive, competitive environments;
Silos will be created with no common language to ease communication;
Individual CRCs will be amalgamated for the needs of efficiency thus breaking local
links even more;
Loss of expertise/local community links following abolition of trusts. Where is the
link with courts in CRCs?;
Management becomes procedural not professional;
Commercial imperatives are prioritised at the expense of best practice;
The mantra becomes low cost service for maximum profit;
Workforce no longer expects to stay in probation for life - short term work then
move on;
New managerialism defines training, then practice, of managers.
Hopes
• Freed of National Standards this will release the creative potential of CRCs;
• Mobilising the creativity of people to manage change; historically probation staff
are resilient;
• Will become more outward looking, the profession of probation expanding to
include not just direct probation staff but all working in community rehabilitation
and community justice including third tier organisations;
• Creative new way of managing in the changed structure;
• Strong confident leaders who can communicate the meaning and purpose of
probation to the public and politicians;
• Strong occupational cultures regardless of diverse organisational contexts
buttressed by an independent voice for the profession, the Probation Institute.
The future of a recognisable probation institution is at risk given the organisational
changes, arguably more invasive than previous attempts. Bifurcation of delivery means
that integration of services for the individual service user is threatened. The deskilling of
qualified Probation staff is a product of where an individual was placed in the
reorganisation and not any assessment of their skills and knowledge. This threatens the
68
Tragedy and farce in organisational upheavals for probation: what next?
professional confidence, independence and creative potential of probation staff, an
integral part of delivering the always difficult role of probation. The need for effective
leadership is compromised by the bifurcated arrangements. Perhaps it is prescient to
speculate that when further organisational changes arrive, they may well seek to undo
some of the consequences of this farcical and tragic organisational transformation.
69
Senior
References
MoJ Analytical Services (2013) Transforming Rehabilitation: a summary of evidence on
reducing reoffending. MoJ.
National Probation Service for England and Wales and the Home Office Communication
Directorate (2001) A New Choreography: An Integrated Strategy for the National
Probation Service for England and Wales. Strategic Framework 2001 – 2004.
National Probation Service (2016) E3 Blueprint.
Senior, P. (2013) Risky and fundamentally misguided. Blog. Available at:
http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/risky-and-fundamentally-misguided#.
Accessed 09/03/2016.
70