A What Works Centre for Probation: Challenges and possibilities

Abstract

The What Works Movement in the UK Government has seen the establishment of 12 centres to focus on evidence-based policy in different domains. In this paper, we present the challenges and opportunities posed by a What Works Centre (WWC) for Probation, based on our prior experience of establishing WWCs in other areas. Although there are legitimate and substantial challenges to some of the methodological approaches of ‘What Works’, we conclude that Probation is in an unusually strong starting position for such a centre to thrive.

What works in promoting ‘what works’? A comment on Sanders, Jones and Briggs

“…The recent proposal of a 'What Works Centre for Probation' published in this Journal (Sanders et al, 2021) is a welcome discussion-starter, but it needs to be considered in the context of the long history of attempts to promote 'what works' in probation. Research on the effectiveness of probation in Britain goes back at least to the 1950s (for example Radzinowicz, 1958) and it is important to understand its successes and particularly its failures, to see what new initiatives should try to avoid.…”

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This short article is a comment on the recent proposal of a What Works Centre for probation (Sanders, Jones and Briggs, 2021). Any new 'What Works' initiative needs to be informed by the patchy and uneven history of research on the effectiveness of probation in England and Wales.

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