Rehabilitating Probation: Strategies for Re‐legitimation after Policy Failure

Abstract

This article draws on insights from the organisational studies literature to make sense of the recent history of probation in England & Wales in the aftermath of the failed Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reform programme. It considers that recent history as a crisis of legitimacy, necessitating active strategies of re‐legitimation aimed at recovering from reputational damage. It argues that top‐down plans to restructure the service will only go so far in this endeavour: the expanded National Probation Service must also be prepared to engage in legitimation work on its own behalf. However, this is likely to be challenging for a number of reasons that include the mixed constituency of external stakeholders whom probation seeks to satisfy, and important questions of identity, agency, and voice.

Can probation be rehabilitated?

“…Inherent in that narrative is an acknowledgement of reputational damage caused by TR, which has stemmed in part from stakeholders’ uncertainty about the different responsibilities and competence of probation's former constituent parts: the NPS and the CRCs. Probation exists in a criminal justice field with multiple stakeholders and partners (Morgan, 2003; Robinson, 2021), chief among whom in the Ministry of Justice's eyes are sentencers and the public, in whom it says the probation system must ‘command confidence’ (Ministry of Justice, 2018, p.9). Once again, unification does not offer a ‘magic bullet’ as far as achieving that goes.…”

“…Now that it is more fully embedded than ever before in the structures of government, it is perhaps more in the shadows than at any time in its past. If an important aspect of rehabilitation is the achievement of recognition on the part of significant others, then questions about communication, visibility and voice come to the fore (Robinson, 2021). There is a fundamental problem with the idea of looking-glass rehabilitation as far as probation is concerned: how can an organisation's accomplishments or recovery be recognised, when it is so little seen or heard?…”

“…The primary focus of the (now) many official reports which have examined the impacts of the TR reforms has been the outputs and/or outcomes of probation work and the resounding failure to deliver the enhanced, more effective services that were promised. However, I think there has been deeper and less tangible damage: both outwardly in respect of probation's reputation and standing in the criminal justice and wider social fields; but also inwardly, or internally, within the service itself (Robinson, 2021). Building on my own and others’ research, I will suggest that probation should be understood as a post‐traumatic organisation .…”

Regulating criminal justice: The role of procedural justice and legitimacy in the inspection of probation in England and Wales

“…Transforming rehabilitation (TR) had significant implications for the legitimacy of probation in relation to both ‘the self-image of the service and its workforce, and the perceptions of external audiences and stakeholders’ (Robinson, 2021: 152). Although criminologists have tended to focus on the legitimacy of criminal justice institutions from the perspective of the general public or people who are subjected the powers that criminal justice practitioners wield, Robinson et al (2017) point to ‘five key stakeholder groups: the general public; offenders and victims; ministers and civil servants; sentencers; and probation employees and their representatives’.…”

A necessary but painful journey: Experiences of unification in a probation service region

“…The reconfiguration of probation into a single organisational entity within the planned 12-month timescale was undoubtedly ambitious, both in terms of its scale and complexity, ‘with 113,000 cases and over 7000 staff from 54 separate organisations needing to be transferred, alongside the harmonisation of different operating models, cultures and processes’ (Johal and Davies, 2022: 10). As such, the proposal to unify probation services heralded another fundamental change to the probation occupational field as old structures gave way to new ones, geographical boundaries were re-drawn and new reduced contracts for the provision of specific interventions were re-negotiated (Robinson, 2021). These developments also took place against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic that had forced the service to adopt remote working and had subsequently created significant backlogs in the provision of unpaid work and accredited programmes (see Dominey et al, 2021; Phillips et al, 2021).…”