Transforming Rehabilitation: Probation practice, architecture and the art of distributions

Abstract

This article explores probation practice through the architecture and arrangement of a probation office led by a Community Rehabilitation Company. It presents findings from an ethnographic study of a probation office in a large city, combining observations of the research site with data derived from interviews with 20 members of staff. Drawing on Foucault’s art of distributions, the article highlights how the managerial dynamics of recent decades have filtered into the physicality of the office to influence probation practice. It argues that probation practice under Transforming Rehabilitation can be situated along a managerial continuum, as standardized, computer-based work has become further entrenched within the office.

The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

“…Such changes to ‘probation’ terminology were also apparent in Tidmarsh’s (2019, 2020b) study of a CRC: changes to staff job titles, from ‘probation (service) officers’ to ‘(senior) case managers’ were intended to emphasise coordination of services rather than direct working with offenders, a shift that resembles the discourse and objectives of New Labour’s ‘offender management model’ (Robinson, 2011). Staff lamented, but reluctantly accepted, a mode of practice dependent upon the (further) outsourcing probation work to the voluntary sector (Tidmarsh, 2019b, 2020).…”

“…However, anecdotal evidence gathered through inspection reports of individual CRCs has shown ‘substantial reductions’ (HMI Probation, 2019a: 74) in staffing. Even in CRCs where no frontline practitioners have been made redundant, cuts to administrative staff numbers have increased the clerical burden on the former (Tidmarsh, 2019). According to HMI Probation (2019a: 74), ‘56% [of staff] in CRCs tell us that they find their workloads unmanageable.’ Indeed, Walker et al (2019) attribute a rise in sickness absence to an increase in the pressures of work since TR .…”

“…While direct comparisons between the public and private sector are difficult, in large part due to differences in the risk profiles of their respective caseloads, the intensification of this audit culture (Power, 1997) to monitor providers’ performance since TR nonetheless stands in direct contrast to the Coalition government’s criticism of ‘overly bureaucratic inspection regimes’ (MoJ, 2010: 82) in previous decades. Here, the relative stability of the NPS’s funding when compared to the CRCs (and the voluntary sector) has shielded it from the ‘penal accountancy’ (Tidmarsh, 2019) of the PbR mechanism - that is, the financial consequences of a failure to meet performance targets.…”

“…These organisations are disproportionately larger - in terms of income and staff – than many of those external to supply chains, who still accept referrals from probation (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2018a). This demonstrates how CRCs and the NPS employ such services whilst avoiding financial obligations to commit to their delivery (Clinks, 2018; Tidmarsh, 2019). PbR contributes to this instability, not least because of the legal costs incurred in the negotiation of such contracts (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2018b).…”

‘If the cap fits’? Probation staff and the changing nature of supervision in a Community Rehabilitation Company

“…I cannot stress how much we miss our admin and the impact that's had on our workload because we're doing all the admin. (Rhonda, Case Manager) As such, although the CRC's share of the total caseload is down, extra administrative responsibilities have contributed to greater workload pressures (see Tidmarsh, 2019).…”