John Deering - Probation Practice and the New Penology

Practitioner Reflections

JOHN DEERING
University of Wales, Newport, UK

First published by 2011 Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright John Deering 2011

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Deering, John, 1956 Mar. 26-

Probation practice and the new penology : practitioner
reflections.
1. Probation--Government policy--England. 2. Probation-
Government policy--Wales. 3. Probation officers-
England--Attitudes. 4. Probation officers--Wales-
Attitudes. 5. Criminals--Rehabilitation--England.
6. Criminals--Rehabilitation--Wales. 7. Recidivism-
England--Prevention. 8. Recidivism--Wales--Prevention.
9. National Probation Service for England and Wales.
10. Great Britain. National Offender Management Service.
I. Title
364.630942-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Deering, John, 1956 Mar. 26-

Probation practice and the new penology : practitioner reflections / by John Deering.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-0140-7 (hardback)

1. Probation--England. 2. Probation--Wales. 3. Criminals--Rehabilitation--England.
4. Criminals--Rehabilitation--Wales. I. Title.

HV9346.A5D44 2010
364.630942--dc22

2010040098

ISBN 978 1 4094 0140 7 (hbk)

This book is based on a series of interviews with probation staff between 2005-06. I would like to record my thanks to all those respondents who gave of their time to talk in detail about their job and how they felt it could and should be done.

The original study was undertaken as part of a doctoral thesis and I would like to thank Professor Mike Maguire whose inspiration and enthusiasm was invaluable and made all the difference. Also with grateful thanks to Dr Jonathan Evans and Dr Kirsty Hudson for their help and support.

Some of the material in the book appeared in a previous, prcis version in Deering, J. (2010) The Purposes of Supervision: Practitioner and Policy Perspectives in England and Wales in Offender Supervision: New Directions in Theory, Research and Practice, edited by F. McNeill, P. Raynor and C. Trotter. Cullompton: Willan.

Sections of in the book appeared in an earlier version in an article published in the Probation Journal: Deering, J. (2010) Attitudes and Beliefs of Trainee Probation Officers A New Breed? Probation Journal, 57(1), pp. 9-26 and in the introductory section of Brayford, J., Cowe, F. and Deering, J. (2010) What Else Works? Creative Work with Offenders. Cullompton: Willan.

I am grateful to both publishers, Willan and Sage for agreeing to the publication of these materials.

John Deering 2011

Since 1907 and its legal inception, the probation service and probation practice has been in a state of change. Some of this has been changes to practice driven by a curiosity amongst practitioners about how to develop more effective ways to help reduce re-offending by and promote the rehabilitation of people who have committed offences. This has been in the main via trying to assist individuals address and overcome a range of personal and structural issues and problems that have been seen as being at the root of their offending, as well as addressing antisocial attitudes and behaviour. This help has, it is argued here, been generally offered in a humanistic manner, but has usually been with the ultimate aim of reducing re-offending and not simply for its own sake.

However, changes that have taken place in recent decades have been, in the main, driven by government and management and been about trying to change both the ethos and working practices of the service in rather different directions. Famously, until the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) 1991, probation officers were required to advise, assist and befriend those subject to probation, which was itself not a sentence, but an alternative and an opportunity to reform. However, the 1991 Act made the probation order a sentence and a means by which the service was supposed to deliver punishment in the community. Since then, both Conservative and New Labour governments have sought to toughen up the service and to move it away from help and rehabilitation, to punishment, offender management and the protection of the public via the assessment and management of risk, although it is also the case that a reduced commitment to rehabilitation has been retained. Some of this has involved the downplaying of the importance of the individual relationship and the therapeutic process that it was intended to engender and the promotion of offender management with interventions delivered to address the behaviour, rather than the person as well as some assistance with problems such as drug misuse, unemployment, accommodation etc. Throughout the 1990s and into the new century, these interventions were backed up by a toughening enforcement regime that aimed to ensure that if an individual did not take advantage of the service offered then punitive sanctions would follow. One of the other phenomena of recent decades has been managerialism, which has pervaded the public sector generally. In probation, it has sought to influence and control practitioner behaviour via National Standards, monitoring and audit towards these new aims for the service. However, it has perhaps not been clear to what extent these initiatives have been successful in terms of the transformation of the attitudes and actual practices of probation practitioners and it is these areas upon which this book attempts to throw some light.