Delivering desistance-focused probation in community hubs: Five key ingredients

Abstract

This article argues that probation is well placed to facilitate desistance when delivered in community hubs – community-based offices where probation services are co-located with other community-based provision. However, we highlight that hubs need to include certain key factors to maximise the potential for desistance. Using data collected through a piece of empirical research in six community hubs in England and Wales, we identify what factors make for a ‘good’ community hub as perceived by staff who work in them, those subject to supervision via a hub, and managers with strategic responsibility for commissioning hub services. We consider what it is about those factors which facilitate desistance-focused practice as outlined in McNeill et al.’s (2012) eight principles of desistance-focused practice. The five key factors identified in this study are the location of a hub, the hub’s physical environment, the extent to which services are co-located/produced, the cultural context of the hub, and the need for leaders to be innovative in the way services are commissioned. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for the National Probation Service as it takes over the work of Community Rehabilitation Companies in the coming years.

Who owns desistance? A triad of agency enabling social structures in the desistance process

“…The acknowledgement of the ‘conflicts as property’ (Christie, 1977) perspective means less intrusive models of criminal justice intervention may be realized (see, for example, McNeill, 2018) as parsimony in the design and delivery of probation services are considered. This would involve sharing some of the control formal criminal justice structures hold over the timing, location and range of services it supports (Albertson et al, 2015: Phillips et al, 2020a; Weaver, 2012). Informed by these findings, we suggest that commissioning criminal justice services adopt a meso-broker role for probation services into agency–desistance opportunities (Dowden and Andrews, 2004; Nugent and Schinkel, 2016) as a strategy towards supporting informal institutional and relational structures that are meaningful to probationers.…”

“…In order to ensure inter-rater reliability, the research team exchanged transcript sub-groups. The findings were written up into a report for HMI Probation (Phillips et al, 2020b) and a separate academic article highlighting principles of good practice (Phillips et al, 2020a). In the course of the analysis and writing process it became clear that, as institutional and relational structures, hubs were particularly well placed to affect structural impediments to desistance at the nexus of community, society and the individual.…”

Putting a face to a name: Telephone contact as part of a blended approach to probation supervision

“…Probation supervision, for the most part, takes place in probation offices. There is practice and academic debate about the way that the design of the office communicates the purpose of supervision (Phillips, 2014) and the extent to which probation buildings are fit for purpose (McDermott, 2016); there are also arguments, developed empirically and theoretically, that probation work is better and more effectively undertaken away from the office and in service users’ homes and communities (Bottoms, 2008; Coley and Ellis Devitt, 2020; Phillips et al, 2020b). There is much less discussion about the extent to which supervision must rely on face-to-face interaction.…”

The stories of eight women managed by a community rehabilitation company during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Reflecting on the work of Durnescu (2010) on the 'pains of probation', Covid-19 presented some opportunities to overcome previous obstacles that hindered rehabilitation. The importance of the probation office location has been regarded as key to overcome practical problems, which hinder engagement (Phillips et al, 2020;Ugwudike and Phillips, 2019). The participants welcomed the opportunity for telephone appointments as there was less interference in their home life, they did not have to re-organise their routine and for health and safety concerns.…”