Abstract
This article uses archive material to show how a ’fully public’ probation service was created in England and Wales at the behest of central government and the Home Office between 1925 and 1936. It focuses on key themes in probation that have contemporary resonances – they include central control, financial controls, training and inspection – and shows how these contemporary concerns have their origins in this very specific time period.
Introduction
Anyone who has followed the relatively recent fortunes of probation in the United Kingdom will have been struck by the huge role that central government has assumed in both its policy and practice. This article will show how this major role traces its origins back to a very specific period in probation’s history when the Home Office re-created probation as a ‘fully public service’. This was achieved in a relatively short period of time (1925 to 1936) and it is a hugely significant, but often ignored, period in probation’s history.
Probation’s development in the United Kingdom has attracted some research, and two works stand out particularly: Vanstone (2007) and McWilliams (1983, 1985, 1987). Other histories such as King (1959) and Bochel (1976) tend to rather skirt over this key period. This article uses archive material from the National Archive, the Church of England Temperance Society (CETS) archive and contemporary writing from Probation Officers. The hope is to address the concerns identified by Bosworth (2001) when she argues that in historical research some voices are harder to hear than others, in particular those concerned with shaping and implementing policy.
That tends to be easier in contemporary work. For example, and staying on the probation, policy and practice link, Tim May’s (1991) detailed study of the probation service is based on lengthy observation, interviews and questionnaires. It happened to coincide with the huge changes in probation following the Home Office’s publication of Statement of National Objectives and Priorities for the Probation Service (SNOPs) (see Home Office 1984), Audit Commission Report (1989), the Criminal Justice Act 1991 and then the National Standards for the Supervision of Offenders in the Community (Home Office, 1992). May (1991) is unequivocal in his assessment of these changes and writes: ‘I have described a new environment at odds with the traditional nature and function of the probation service’ (May, 1991: 80) and later comments that the changes he has described ‘… have left the service in a state of flux regarding its purpose and peculiarly vulnerable to blinkered and politically inspired change’ (May, 1991: 177). The crucial point is that these changes have emanated from central government.
Worrall (1997), writing a few years later, identified the publication of the Statement of National Objectives and Priorities for the Probation Service (Home Office,1984) as the turning point in probation becoming ‘increasingly centralised’ (Worrall 1997: 66). She also discussed the Home Office review of probation officer training conducted by Vivienne Dews in 1994 which she saw as the ‘final onslaught on probation training’ (Worrall, 1997: 73). In February of the following year the requirement that Probation Officers should all hold a Diploma in Social Work was abandoned by the Home Secretary. Brownlee (1998), writing a year later, points out how National Standards (Home Office, 1992) led to much central government control over the day-to-day work of Probation Officers and their immediate managers. May (1994) writes:
Messages from the Home Office attempt to limit variations in the implementation of community penalties by issuing guidelines, and rules, using probation inspectors, introducing resource management information systems (RMIS) and cash limiting probation budgets in an attempt to pursue efficiency, economy and effectiveness in the probation service. (May, 1994: 872)
These themes of inspection, regulation, training of Probation Officers, financial controls all emanating from the Home Office seemed an integral part of the reality of probation from the 1990s. They form the very basis of probation in England and Wales right up to the present.
McWilliams’s final chapter of his four on the development of probation in England and Wales (see McWilliams, 1987) describes probation as having become little more than an instrument of government policy. However, his chapter on probation between the wars (see McWilliams, 1985) focuses on the professional aspirations of probation officers, an emerging belief in the psychological treatment and diagnosis of delinquency (heavily influenced by the work of Cyril Burt, 1925) and the gradual abandonment of religious zeal. This current work seeks to bring policy and political considerations into the inter-war period and show how probation practice was shaped by these and by the Home Office. It will show how changes between 1925 and 1936 in fact paved the way for the changes, 60 years later.
Probation’s indifferent start
The English and Welsh probation system traces its origins from the Church of England Temperance Society’s mission to the Police Courts in the mid 19th century and the arrival of the first Probation Officers in the Children’s Courts of London in early 1908 (see Bochel, 1976; McWilliams, 1983; Page, 1992; Vanstone, 2007). However, by the early 1920s probation was attracting a good deal of criticism from no lesser a person than the very influential Evelyn Ruggles Brise who, as Chair of the Prison Commissioners complained that probation required ‘drastic reorganization’. 1 Crucially, probation was not being used by the courts, despite the 1907 Act and the appointment of the first Children’s Probation Officers the number of orders made remained stubbornly even (see Home Office, 1922 and 1923).
The problems were sufficient for the Home Office to appoint a committee to review it. As far as it was concerned the new system did not need radical overhaul but simply to be placed ‘on a better footing’. 2 The Committee’s Report decided against paying officers from central funds as it may affect ‘the relationship he (the probation officer that is, even though most of the children’s probation officers were women) has been able to establish with the probationer, who looks upon him as a friend, not as an official.’ (Home Office, 1922: 7). The Report also noted, ‘(s)ome of these witnesses urged the need for higher educational attainments and more specialised training’ (Home Office, 1922: 13). This was rejected as ‘it is doubtful whether a probation service organised on the lines we consider desirable would provide opportunities or prospects which would usually attract candidates of university training’ (Home Office, 1922: 14).
A proposal by the Howard League that a new central authority to control the work of Probation Officers be set up was rejected. When the Report arrived at the Home Office for consideration the senior civil servant, Troup 3 responded:
It will not satisfy the Societies which desire to have a statutorily organised and state funded Probation System for the whole country, but I think that was a bad proposal on the merits, and in any case quite impractical in present circumstances. 4
The Home Office were determined to resist pressure to create a national system of probation which they would be responsible for organizing and the State responsible for funding.
Nonetheless the problems persisted and in the Criminal Justice Bill (1924), of which there were four drafts, there was a proposal to overhaul the organization of probation. The first, produced in February of 1924, included a surprisingly radical attempt to expand the probation system. It stated ‘There shall be a probation committee for every probation area’. 5 The emphasis is on the word ‘shall’. The original 1907 Probation of Offenders Act had been an enabling piece of legislation allowing courts to appoint Probation Officers; now it was to be compulsory.
During the second reading of the Bill in Parliament, in mid-1925, MPs made a number of objections. For instance, Sir George Hohler stated, ‘The setting up of these salaried officials will increase the charge upon the rates, which already press so severely upon the people’. 6 He went on to say, ‘I object to setting up this professional paid system, a sort of civil service of paid officials under the Bill’. 7 Other MPs made similar objections focusing on the increased expenditure implied by the new system. Sir J. Nall commented, ‘I venture to suggest that there is absolutely no need for this new expenditure from the public exchequer’. 8
The Missionary Societies had much support in Parliament, and during the debates the Home Secretary agreed to go away and review the part of the Bill which said that courts must appoint their own Probation Officers. The original had also said that the Secretary of State would set salaries and qualifications of Probation Officers. This was strongly objected to on the grounds that many of the smaller rural local authorities would not be able to fund their proportion of the costs of the newly appointed Probation Officers and in any event ‘the work has been done effectively by the church or chapel’. 9
A later version of the Bill proposed that agents of voluntary societies could act as Probation Officers and their salaries paid at least partially by the societies. The final debate on the Bill took place at the end of 1925 when again much of the debate focused on the power that the Bill took from local authorities. On this occasion the financial concerns of local government ‘to safeguard the interests of the rate payers’ 10 dominated and salaries were to be set locally.
During the Parliamentary debates there was an undercurrent of concern about the power of central government. The Missionaries and their commitment to missionary zeal and character as a means to reform offenders became identified with an anti-officialdom or anti-centralism. Probation Officers therefore became increasingly identified with central government and the Home Office in particular. In 1926 the Home Office produced a set of rules for probation that were circulated to all Magistrates. Along with the requirements set out in the legislation the Rules also include an instruction that the Probation Officer should meet with the person on probation weekly for the first month of the order and meetings afterwards should be dependant on the conduct of the probationer. 11
The Act and the Rules led to a great deal of correspondence between the Home Office and various local authorities around the country. Prior to the 1925 Act probation outside of London had largely been in the hands of local magistrates with the occasional circular or guidance to magistrates from the Home Office. Much of the new correspondence with the local authorities focused on the arrangements for the payment of Probation Officers which was now the responsibility of the new Probation Committees made up of local magistrates from the combined Petty Sessional Divisions. The Treasury also had concerns about the expense of the new scheme. For instance in correspondence with the Home Office the Treasury wrote, ‘no extravagant scales would be allowed for persons with University qualifications (should there ever be any)’. 12
The move to a ‘fully public service’
Within a few years of the passing of the Criminal Justice Act of 1925 there were only 16 petty sessional divisions with no Probation Officer; however only 255 officers were full time compared to 456 who were part time (Home Office, 1928). Of those officers many continued to be at least partially financed by the C.E.T.S. and similar organizations (see Home Office, 1928). Writing nine years later the Magistrate Leo Page wrote that ‘the justices complied with the letter of the law, as they were bound to, but evaded its spirit by appointing persons utterly untrained and, in some instances, perfectly incompetent and unsuitable’ (Page, 1937: 296).
The number of probation orders made also increased, by 1925 they had risen to 13,838 (Home Office, 1925) Two years later the Home Office stated that 15,094 were placed on probation of which 6357 were juveniles (Home Office, 1927). The number of orders made had hovered around the 10,000 or 11,000 mark since soon after the 1907 Act until 1921 (see Home Office, 1923). However it was not until 1925 that there was evidence of any sustained and significant increase in the use made of probation.
Meanwhile, the varied organization of probation around the country was brought to the attention of the Home Office when they took on the coordinating of the combining of probation areas. For instance in Nottinghamshire in 1926 the Magistrates Courts around the county were quite happy to combine to form a Probation Area except in Newark where they objected to appointing a full-time Probation Officer on the grounds of expense. The Home Office file notes curtly ‘(I)t has also been in every way a backward and inefficient place’. 13 There was sufficient concern at the Home Office for a senior official to be sent to Nottinghamshire to meet with Magistrates after which the area was combined despite the objections in Newark.
Matters become sourer in Bury where the Bury Times of 4 May 1929 reported the appointment of a full-time Probation Officer ‘contrary to the wishes of both the Borough Magistrates and the Finance Committee’. 14 The paper went on to report a council meeting where one member stated:
The Home Office called the tune regarding the salary, the magistrates had to make the appointment, and the Council had to pay the piper; without any voice in the appointment or the salary to be paid…Those who paid the piper should have some voice in the tune. 15
The Council decided to appoint their own Probation Officer with the salary and superannuation arranged by themselves. The Local Clerk to the Justices wrote to the Home Office relaying the decision and noting, ‘(I)f this is allowed then the sooner the Probation Rules are scrapped and the better’. 16 The decision was reversed when the Home Office pointed out that doing so would mean that they would not get the Home Office grant towards the payment of the officer’s salary. 17
In Devon there were also problems when the Home Office sent a draft Combining Order to Magistrates in the County. The Magistrates in Exeter objected and an article appeared in the local Express and Echo stating:
It would appear from the draft scheme that the Home Office does not agree with the majority and is disposed to insist upon the appointment of paid officers. The draft scheme is elaborate, and somewhat complicated, … but at best it would appear that the County of Devon must be prepared for substantial outlay for probation work. 18
Magistrates in the small Devon town of Great Torrington wrote to the Home Office saying that they had had one probation case in the last four years and did not see the point of a salaried officer and that ‘the effect of the order will cause unnecessary expense to the Local Authority’. 19 In Stanborough and Coleridge they objected to paying for officers as they were able to use the services of School Attendance Officers or the local vicar for probation cases so ‘there is no necessity for the appointment of a permanent staff of Probation officials’. 20 Other magistrates’ courts in the county wrote making similar objections. The Home Office were not sympathetic and noted:
… all base their antagonism on a love of the present system. As it is precisely to uproot that system that the order is formed, opposition of this kind should clearly be disregarded. 21
This is not entirely true, as most of the objections to the appointment of Probation Officers were based on the expense of the scheme. In all, of the 30 areas affected in Devon, 16 did not reply to the Home Offices proposals, nine agreed and five objected. In 1929 a Combined Area was formed.
There is a substantial Home Office file relating to the creation of a Combined Probation Area for Warwickshire, which opens in 1929 and finally closes in 1942 when a Combined Area was created. 22 Here the Home Office had a very useful ally in Mr LE Stephens the Clerk to the Court at Leamington Spa. Despite his best efforts a Committee of Magistrates formed to look at the matter of Combining decided against it. 23 Objections were based on the expense of the scheme and concerns that a full-time officer would have to cover such a large area that they would not have sufficient local knowledge. The matter dragged on for over ten years until a Combined Area was formed in 1942.
In Flintshire the debate also continued well into the 1940s as the local magistrates courts objected to having to appoint male and female full-time probation officers as ordered by the Home Office, rather than continuing with their own part-time and unqualified officer. 24 Matters reached such a pitch that in 1941 the Home Office sent Doris Rosling, who was the Probation Inspector at the Home Office, to seek to persuade local magistrates of the benefits of full-time Probation Officers. Magistrates in Flint remained unconvinced and wrote to the Home Office:
In particular I have to report that such officers would not be able to effectively personally supervise all cases committed to them in this County, and moreover they would have insufficient knowledge of local conditions, which in the opinion of my Justices is essential for the proper discharge of the duties of probation officer. 25
The Home Office was unimpressed and made the Combining Order on 24 October 1941.
Treating the young offender
As these organizational changes were being made new approaches to the treatment of crime were beginning to attract the attention of those working in probation. Bailey’s (1987) detailed survey of youth crime policy from 1914 to 1948 makes much of the Report of the Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders (Home Office, 1927) and its influence on the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act. He continues: ‘the most significant contribution to the genesis of the 1933 Act in these years was made by the permanent officials of the Children’s Branch’ (Bailey, 1987: 110). The retirement of Edward Troup in 1922 and HB Simpson 26 in 1925 from key positions at the Home Office led to the appointment of new senior officials. The work of Cyril Burt was the type of approach that seems to have caught the spirit of the time. His hugely influential book The Young Delinquent was published in 1925 and at this time he was Psychologist to the Education Department of London County Council. It is the influence of Burt that McWilliams (1985) discusses in his essay on probation between the wars.
An enlarged probation system had been created but The Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders was to define its methods. In the introduction, after the assertion that reformation of the offender should be the prime objective of the courts, the Report makes a very interesting and new assertion regarding the twin concerns of delinquency and neglect of the young. It states:
The two problems are closely connected and can conveniently be dealt with together, because neglect and delinquency often go hand in hand, (…) there is little distinction in the character of the young person concerned or in the appropriate method of treatment. (Home Office, 1927: 6)
This mirrors the approach of Burt who had argued in 1925 that delinquency was simply a response to the quality of a child’s environment, the proper response to which was to address the environment of the child. The Committee also gave consideration to the training of Probation Officers, it states:
While character and personality are the most essential qualities, and it is also necessary for a probation officer to have some practical knowledge of the conditions of life of those among whom he will work, the breadth of view afforded by a liberal education is equally desirable if the best results are to be obtained. (Home Office 1927:59)
This was a perceptible shift from the position taken by the 1922 review of Probation Officers’ training (Home Office, 1922), a mere five years earlier. In a further allusion to the direction that the probation system was taking the Report comments:
… it is essential that the Home Office should take a more active part than it has done hitherto in probation work and should satisfy itself as to the manner in which it is being carried out. (Home Office, 1927: 62)
The Home Secretary at the time of publication was the Conservative William Joynson Hicks. He had been Home Secretary at the time of the passage of the Criminal Justice Act of 1925, and had spoken in Parliament to defend the need for the missionary spirit amongst Probation Officers. In 1927 he spoke at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Probation Officers and said:
First and foremost of all, we want to see a probation officer in every court in the land…. I am most anxious not to let that (i.e. missionary) spirit depart out of probation work… I want you to deal with the souls of these people. 27
These views seem closer to an older version of probation rather than the emerging professional and trained officer envisaged by the Report of 1927.
The establishment of a probation training scheme
Following these major changes in probation’s management and a growing interest in new methods of working with offenders it is perhaps not surprising that the issue of Probation Officer training should emerge. The experienced social worker and academic Elizabeth MacAdam (1925) had advocated a system of university-based training for Probation Officers and now took the idea to the Home Office. On 8 December 1925 she and colleagues representing the Joint University Council for Social Studies (see Yelloly, 1980) met with Sidney Harris 28 at the Home Office. They proposed that the 2-year social science diploma, which she had described (MacAdam, 1925), should be used as a basis for probation training. At the same time, HH Ayscough (Secretary of the Central Church of England Temperance Society) contacted the Home Office advocating a training scheme based on a combination of the CETS short training programme used for the new Police Court Missionaries and the Diploma in Economic and Social Science run at the London School of Economics. The Home Office file also includes correspondence from the Magistrates Association expressing concern at the religious element of the course proposed by Ayscough. 29
Training of Probation Officers was discussed by the Advisory Committee on Probation and After Care, which sat at the Home Office, and which Harris chaired. This was the Committee set up following the 1922 review of probation (see Home Office 1922). At its meeting in November of 1929 he commented:
For some time I have not felt satisfied that we are getting the best material for the probation service… it is important for the future that we should attract to the probation service persons of adequate education and experience as well as of suitable character and temperament. 30
At the meeting held on 20 February 20 1930 Harris proposed an ‘experimental’ scheme for the training of Probation Officers.
Records show that there were 31 initial applicants for the training scheme, of which it was commented that it was a ‘rather disappointing field’, and, ‘As one expected the women applicants are far superior to the men’. 31 A Selection Committee drawn from the Probation Advisory Committee met at the Home Office on 3 October 3 1930 at which it was agreed that one man and two women be appointed. The Home Office persevered, and by August of 1931 eleven trainee probation officers had been appointed. In April 1932 the Home Office wrote to many of the Petty Sessional Divisions around the country seeking their views on the training scheme and of the 145 who replied that 17 were opposed to the scheme. It also appeared that most courts were still recruiting their own Probation Officers or using the local agents of the CETS to act as Probation Officers. 32 However, in 1933 there was the first contact from courts seeking to recruit from the officers who had been through the new scheme. Thus, the particular training scheme introduced was only one option available and by no means the most inevitable, it also appears to have encountered very real difficulties.
Probation practice in the 1930s: A mixture of old and new
Arguably, the most widely read publication amongst Probation Officers was Probation, the Journal of the National Association of Probation Officers. Vanstone’s (2007) work includes a more detailed discussion of its contents; however, he notes the range of methods used by Probation Officers at the time.
The first edition of Probation included an article by the experienced magistrate William Clarke-Hall in which he writes that a Probation Officer ‘must possess that quality so entirely indefinable, the quality of personality’. 33 In the same edition of the Journal, there is an article titled the ‘Technique of probation’, in which the author states that, ‘Probation Officers might compare themselves with doctors’. 34 The two appear contradictory as one harks back to the old approach of the Police Court Missionaries, whereas the other reflects the ‘new psychology’, ‘professional’ and ‘expert’ view of probation.
The second edition included an editorial which stated:
The NAPO believes most emphatically that the religious spirit is essential to the best probation work and welcomes accordingly members of all religious denominations. 35
Meanwhile, many of the early editions of the Journal included articles written by Dr Charles Burns, who worked at the Tavistock Clinic, in which he confesses a debt to the work of Cyril Burt. These articles have titles such as, ‘The psychology of the criminal’, and in one he describes the importance of Probation Officers taking into account the interplay between environment and personality, by environment he means the home. 36 Virtually every edition of Probation in the following year, 1931, included an article from somebody working at the Tavistock Clinic. One article focused on hysteria, 37 another described the causes of crime and stated, ‘the first cause is mental defect’. 38
There is little reference to the work of Freud and other psycho-analytical approaches which were being applied to offenders by this time. For example Hamblin Smith (1922) was adapting it in his work at Birmingham Prison and Edward Glover (1960) and Grace Pailthorpe (1932) were establishing the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency (later the Portman Clinic). This branch of psychology was to attract much more attention immediately after the war. In the meantime it was clearly other elements of a psychological discourse that were attracting attention in probation circles.
As the 1930s progressed, the articles appearing in Probation continued in a similar vein but with one or two new developments detectable. One of the key speakers at the 1932 Conference was the London Juvenile Court Magistrate Basil Henriques who stated:
But if this non institutional training (i.e. probation) is to be effective, it must be in the hands of thoroughly skilled and properly trained officials.… The scientific treatment of the offender is the basis upon which probation must be worked today. 39
The phrase ‘trained officials’ to describe Probation Officers is important and it is one that was to emerge more and more as the decade wore on.
In the meantime, Elizabeth MacAdam continued to advocate her own brand of social work training, this time to the NAPO Conference of 1936 when she stated:
… it must be remembered that the object of the course is not to cram a man or woman with the details of everything that he may ever want in his future work but give him a background of knowledge and understanding and a thoughtful approach to his responsible duties…. 40
By then, of course, her programme of social work training had been adopted by the Home Office for their Probation Officer training course.
Even as these developments were taking place the religious influence in probation continued to be powerful. For instance at the NAPO Sussex Branch Summer School of 1936 a motion was passed by all the officers attending that ‘the religious element is essential in probation work’. 41 The fact that Sidney Harris from the Home Office, who had just been instrumental in ousting CETS from probation (see below), was also present did not seem to affect the officers.
CETS ousted
The issue of what was known as ‘dual control’, where many officers were jointly funded (and controlled) by religious societies and the state, was being increasingly criticized. These criticisms were not new but they were now made, as we shall see, by Home Office officials.
The Departmental Committee on the Social Services in the Courts of Summary Jurisdiction was appointed in 1934 and reported in March 1936 (Home Office, 1936). Bochel describes its report as ‘the blue print for the probation service for the next quarter of a century’ (Bochel, 1976: 150). Its beginnings were far more modest; it began life as a review of the work of Probation Officers in the matrimonial courts. When Sidney Harris was appointed Chair of the Committee and the rest of the Committee including the Earl of Feversham (Chair of NAPO) were appointed the Committee took a much wider view of its role and reviewed the whole of the work of the probation service.
When the London Police Court Mission were notified of the Committee’s appointment they suspected that something was afoot and noted in their annual report that year:
It was disappointing to us to find that apart from the Chairman, who holds a neutral position, there was not one of the Committee who had ever been known as a friend of the Police Court Mission. 42
Their concerns centred on the role of the missionary spirit and voluntary element in probation. They also commented:
It would be almost incredible that an undertaking which has become part and parcel of our national system of administering justice should be brought to an end in favour of a purely official public service. 43
The Report went on to note that the Police Court Missionaries had been around for 58 years and by 1934 there were 64 Missionaries working in the Police Courts of London and Middlesex. The Report for 1936, the year the Home Office Committee finally reported, noted that the number of Missionaries had increased to 81, 44 reinforcing that the London Police Court Mission was still vital to probation and that it was an expanding organization.
When the Home Office Committee reported it noted:
… personality by itself is not enough. It must be reinforced by the knowledge and resources which the trained social worker possesses. (Home Office, 1936: 58)
It then went on to outline a programme which included: social administration, industrial conditions and organizations, the work of the child guidance clinics, psychological methods, court practice and procedures and various statutes (Home Office, 1936: 132–133). There was only passing reference to the training course which the Home Office had already set up and operated since 1930, criticisms of which were noted. The solution to these criticisms was the appointment of a Central Training Board at the Home Office to recruit and supervise the training of all Probation Officers.
The Report also took the radical step of proposing that probation be now a ‘fully public service’ (Home Office, 1936: 103). It also proposed a Home Office based system of Probation Inspectors be appointed. It commented:
We recommend that the Secretary of State should be given a general power of inspection to satisfy himself that a reasonable standard of efficiency is being maintained before Government Grant is paid. (Home Office, 1936: 153)
The mission element of probation was thus finally abandoned. It seems it was primarily administrative concerns based on organization, training and funding which dominated the Report of 1936 and which led to this shift.
Following the publication of the Report, the Home Office monitored press reactions and noted that it was ‘interesting, and even remarkable that they are without exception favourable’. 45 However the CETS did object in their Annual Report for that year:
In our opinion the great success of the Mission and of the probation system in the past, is that its workers have been drawn into the service by a deep sense of vocation and a conviction that they were doing essentially religious work. Being appointed by a religious and voluntary society, the ‘missionary spirit’ orientated all their work. 46
A Sub Committee was set up to consider the Home Office Report which met on 7 May 1936 and was clearly angry seeing the ‘mission ideal under threat’. 47 Sir Edward Troup, who was by this time Chair of the London Police Court Mission, felt strongly enough about the issue to write to the Home Office including a copy of the minutes of the meeting. The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the Home Office asking that they receive a deputation, saying that ‘(t)he object of the Deputation would not be to criticise the recommendations of the Report’. 48
The deputation attended headed by the Archbishop on 24 November 1936. Further meetings took place and a deputation of the London Police Court Mission attended at the Home Office on 5 January 1937. This one included the former Home Secretary Joynson Hicks. It is ironic to note that two old Home Office stalwarts were lobbying hard at the Home Office on behalf of the CETS. Nonetheless, the Home Office did not relent and a Home Office Minute quoting the Home Secretary, Samuel Hoare, notes:
He is satisfied that the system under which candidates for the probation service are nominated, so far as the adult courts are concerned, by the London Police Court Mission, can no longer be defended and that there is need to bring the whole of the probation staff under unified public control. 49
By late 1937 the Church of England Temperance Society noted ‘we must expect the Home Office to take over the employment of all our Missionary Probation Officers in the Metropolitan Courts in the near future’. 50 Thus within a year of the publication of the Report substantial changes in the organization of probation were well underway.
Not long after the publication of the Report, Sidney Harris was promoted to Assistant Under Secretary at the Home Office and a new Probation Branch was created at the Home Office on 26 January 1937. Its first Principal was BJ Reynolds 51 who had in his department one Deputy Principal, one Chief Clerk, two Clerical Officers and a Probation Inspector. The day after the creation of the Department Sidney Harris delivered the Clarke-Hall Lecture where he reiterated many of the themes included in the 1936 Report. His lecture makes regular reference to probation as a public service and Probation Officers as skilled professionals (Harris 1937). Probation could now no longer be left to the whim of individual or groups of magistrates or religious societies; it was to be controlled by central government via the Home Office.
The final Report of the Children’s Branch to concern itself with probation was published in January 1938 (Home Office, 1938). It was very concerned that there was ‘a good deal of unevenness throughout the country in the use of different methods of treatment’ (Home Office, 1938: 27) and suggests that ‘those courts which make relatively little use of probation might take judicial note of the fact that the busiest and most experienced courts use it freely’ (Home Office, 1938: 34). The creation of a national system of probation to counteract this was now well underway and it was a reflection of the Home Office’s exasperation with magistrates’ failure to deal with the issue.
The new Probation Branch created at the Home Office also had amongst its staff a Probation Inspector. It is doubtful that one individual would have made a lot of impact but the principle of Home Office inspection of probation was a new and significant departure. Ironically, the first Inspector was Doris Rosling, a former Police Court Missionary at Old Street Police Court in London.
Conclusion
Thus by the time the Second World War broke out the Home Office had created a state ran, largely state financed, secular and social work trained system of Probation Officers. That social work was based on a broad liberal education and influenced strongly by a branch of psychology typified by the work of Burt (1925). Ideas like calling, character, religious zeal and good influences were ousted from the service. In roughly 12 years the whole probation system; its finances, organization and methods had been radically reformed by central government.
The similarities with recent changes in probation policy and practice, precipitated by the publication of SNOPs in 1984 are remarkable. By using archive material we can see how issues dominating contemporary probation, such as inspection, curbing discretion of offices, central control, financial control, training and even methods have their roots early in probation’s development. We have been able to see a ’messier’ history of probation. We have also seen some of the detail of the political controversy, detail that would be taken for granted by those working in probation today.