The architecture of a probation office

Methodology

The data on which this article is based were collected through a six-month period of observation in a probation office in 2010. The research was focused primarily on how probation practitioners interact with offenders, colleagues, and policy with a focus on compliance, discretion, managerialism, rehabilitation and risk management. In addition to − and as part of – this, I observed how the layout of the building creates, affects and perpetuates particular ways of working with offenders. Therefore, this research is a case study; the reliability, replicability and validity of which ‘depends in large part on how far the researcher feels that these are appropriate for the evaluation of case study research’ (Bryman, 2004: 50). As such, what I describe is not likely to, nor is it intended to, reflect the situation across the country. Rather, the intention is to present a theoretical explanation of how the physicality of a probation office affects probation practice. Nevertheless, some of the features of this office are typical of probation offices across the country: the CCTV, the locked doors between the waiting room and the office space, the protected reception space and the private interview rooms with panic buttons (cf. Mawby and Worrall, 2011).

The research was conducted in an office which covers, in terms of its geographical remit, one half of a large city in the north of England, and houses six offender management units (OMU). The office underwent a complete refurbishment several years ago and therefore the interior was designed specifically for the purpose of probation in the early 21st century. The OMUs are arranged across two floors: the specialist services of Unpaid Work and Victim Services are based downstairs with the ‘generic’ OMUs upstairs. The lower storey of the building also houses administrative staff, reception, a waiting area and interview rooms.

The office as a reflection of policy

In a speech to the Napo Centenary Conference, Senior (2012) described how, when he joined probation in 1978, he would spend his mornings doing administrative work in the office, before spending afternoons on his ‘patch’ seeing clients, talking to local organizations, schools, parents, previous clients and so on. Whilst he was conscious of not wanting to paint a naively rosy picture of probation in the 1970s, it was clear that the office played a much more limited role in his work than is the case now where practitioners allegedly spend 75 per cent of their time in the office, in front of a computer (Justice Committee, 2011).

In their work on probation occupational cultures, Mawby and Worrall (2011) describe large, open-plan offices as one of the ‘artefacts’ of probation culture and this was the case in this particular research. Budgetary pressures have forced Trusts to make savings in relation to overheads, and a large building which covers a whole or half of a city has a clear advantage in terms of achieving economies of scale. Bottoms (2008) highlights the service’s property strategy in which the National Probation Service ‘rationalized’ its estate to make it more attractive to public−private partnership or private finance initiative. This has, according to Bottoms (2008), had an important impact on the way in which the service engages (or, rather, does not engage) with its local community. That said, budgetary pressures cannot be held solely responsible. Probation work now involves more office- and computer-based work such as OASys and the greater use of offender behaviour programmes has led to a preference for larger offices because smaller, field offices are simply no longer required. As Bottoms puts it: 'if a consequence of that investment [in programmes] is a more office-based probation service, so be it' (Bottoms 2008, 162). On the other hand, the very nature of there being fewer offices raises important questions about providing fair access to an inevitably greater number of offenders who live further away from these larger offices. How does the service expect an offender with childcare needs to cope with the extra time taken to attend appointments, and how do offenders who find it difficult to travel by public transport experience the extra travelling time that is created by these changes? In this respect, Durnescu (2011) has explored the ‘pains of probation’, finding that offenders’ experiences of getting to appointments impact on how ‘painful’, and thus punitive, offenders perceive their sentence. One of the punitive aspects of a community sentence is the deprivation of liberty that is imposed on offenders through having to attend appointments (Home Office, 1990) but is it fair for policies of ‘rationalization’ to create ‘more punishment’ for those offenders who have, in all likelihood, suffered more than most in terms of gaining access to public services and opportunities?

Thus the move towards larger offices might be seen as reflective of, or at least integral to, probation’s retreat from the community and has resulted in the service becoming less engaged with the communities it engages. The reason behind this shift stems from the rise of managerialism as well as privatization. This raises an issue for the service’s future in which the government has relaxed some of the ways in which it measures the service − through the 2011 (Ministry of Justice, 2011) revision to national standards, for example − but is simultaneously ramping up its intention to privatize the service (Ministry of Justice, 2012a, 2012b).

Although probation staff used to see offenders in private offices, this practice has been superseded by dedicated interview rooms separate from the office space. Some of the drivers behind these changes are clear. Demand for services to be accessible to offenders with diversity needs mean that all interview rooms must be accessible to offenders with mobility issues; asking them to navigate busy ‘working’ offices may create difficulties for them in this respect. This may explain, in part, the introduction of dedicated interview rooms that are located on the ground floor as well as the redevelopment of the building itself. The health and safety agenda has had a huge impact on probation practice in general (participants who had been in the service for many years spoke about how they used to see clients without telling colleagues where they were going, and admitted that similar behaviour today would undoubtedly be perceived as dangerous), and so it is reasonable to accept that there has been a similar impact on probation offices. Thus, the service makes widespread use of CCTV, panic alarms and escape doors to protect its workers. Whilst there is a need for the service to provide a safe environment for all users of the building, we need to consider the image that this presents to offenders: as soon as one enters the building it feels as though one is under surveillance. On my first visit to the office I sat in the waiting room and tried to imagine what it might be like to sit there as an offender and made the following observation:

The screen which the receptionist sits behind looks impenetrable and there are two cameras attached to the walls. There are several notices informing offenders that inappropriate behaviour would not be tolerated. It feels like I'm being watched. (Fieldnotes, 19 October 2009)

I interpreted this as indicating that offenders cannot be trusted, a particular concern when practitioners stressed on regular occasions that trust is key to the professional relationship they endeavour to create with offenders. Of course, it is not necessarily the case that the building reflects individual practitioners' attitudes to offenders, but 'first impressions are lasting impressions' (Smith and Mackie, 2000: 92).

However, the waiting room was not only about surveillance. The waiting room contains about 15 metal chairs around the edge of the room. There are three toilets, a baby changing room and a water machine. The walls are painted a light blue colour and are adorned with posters detailing the service’s responsibilities to offenders, motivational posters encouraging people to change, and advertisements of the different services on offer. The impact of the offender management model in which probation practitioners are brokers of services and act primarily to refer offenders to appropriate services is plain to see. Similarly, the posters on the walls reflect the influence of concepts such as motivational interviewing and a widespread emphasis placed on the importance of motivation by participants.

That the waiting room is not completely sterile and functional suggests that probationers are not seen merely as members of a group who need managing but are individuals who have basic needs beyond reducing their offending through the provision of a toilet, for example (it is interesting to compare this with the local jobcentre where ‘clients’ were not allowed to use a toilet or drink water in the building). That offenders are seen as acceptable recipients of advertising also suggests a move towards seeing the offender as a ‘customer’ and/or service user. This could reflect the theory that the increasing visibility of Community Payback might be justified on the basis of a ‘new market state’ although in this circumstance it is offenders instead of the community who have some element of ‘consumer choice’ (Bottoms, 2008: 155). The posters and generally amenable state of the waiting room might also be reflective of former Director General of NOMS Phil Wheatley’s recent use of the term ‘service user’ in relation to offenders (James, 2010). ¹

As well as the waiting room and interview rooms, the lower storey of the building housed administrative staff, the unpaid work team and the victim liaison team. Although there was a move away from specialist probation staff towards generic caseloads held by practitioners after the implementation of the Offender Management Act 2007 (Raynor and Vanstone, 2007: 74) it seemed that there was still an element of specialization present in the office with little communication between these teams (see below). Arguably, the presence of a victim services unit reflects the ‘remarkable return of the victim to centre stage in criminal justice policy’ (Garland, 2001: 11) whilst a dedicated unpaid work team might be seen to reflect the emphasis placed on this disposal as a means of engaging with the community. There were logistical reasons for the team being separate: the numbers of offenders reporting on a daily basis meant that using the main door would result in congestion and confusion. However, that so many offenders are engaged in unpaid work speaks of the importance placed on this policy by successive governments.

Thus far I have attributed the separation of waiting rooms and interview rooms to the health and safety agenda, budgetary pressures, as well as a residue of the experimentation in specialization. However, a more cynical explanation may come from the criminological literature in which offenders are increasingly 'othered', even if they do not pose greater extant risk (Garland, 2001). Thus it might be feasible to argue that the health and safety agenda masks a deeper fear of offenders which has begun to permeate the physical space in which probation is practised. The probation workers with whom I spoke would, I expect, disagree with this notion. However, if we take the argument from the literature on prison architecture − that prison buildings reflect broader penal ideologies − it is an idea which should not be dismissed out of hand. Indeed, the office was redeveloped only a few years after Paul Boateng's assertion that probation is 'a law enforcement agency' and that harsher punishments and more stringent enforcement was the key to enhancing the service's legitimacy (Robinson and Ugwudike, 2012). Thus it is feasible to postulate that the view of offenders was underpinned by their designation of offenders primarily as risk posers and that the building was designed to support this attitude.

The open plan office

All office areas are behind fob controlled doors so that no offender could (or should) ever be in these areas. This means that staff are able to speak confidentially about clients. Because of the nature of the office areas, one might argue that the office is the ‘back stage’ of probation work: ‘the back region will be the place where the performer can reliably expect that no member of the audience will intrude’ (Goffman, 1969: 116). The office areas represent, therefore, ‘a zone of total confidentiality’ which is clearly advantageous when dealing with sensitive data relating to offenders, victims and witnesses. However, this heightened level of confidentiality allows staff to be dismissive and sceptical of offenders’ situations with little chance of them being overheard. It must be noted, however, that these utterances were often done casually and in a jocular manner. This way of talking about an institution’s clientele in confidential areas is not only seen in the context of probation. Both Waddington (1999) and Crawley have observed that the use of humour in criminal justice institutions, with Crawley arguing that ‘humour is palliative’ (Crawley, 2004: 419). On the other hand, such talk can be conceived as malign, as in the Macpherson Report which states that ‘the police canteen can too easily be [racism’s] breeding ground’ (Macpherson, 1999: 6.17). It is imperative, therefore, to decide whether the architecture of probation encourages potentially malign attitudes towards offenders. One practitioner suggested that this aspect of probation culture errs on the side of benign: ‘It’s about stress relief, I don’t see it as a problem’ (Fieldnotes, 10 February 2010) whilst another stressed that it is not canteen culture:

… we tend to come across as a bit blasé − it is not canteen culture − it is not that strong but there is a degree of a sense of us and them developing …. We can come across as being flippant but we aren’t. (Probation officer, interview)

Nevertheless, the architecture of the building, and the fact that staff are so secure and separate from their clients enables and perpetuates this way of working. Herein lies a dilemma for architects and policy makers: how to make a building secure and safe for all of its users, whilst also enabling fruitful and positive attitudes towards offenders to be created. It would be unrealistic to allow offenders access to practitioners' offices in the context of data protection but this strict separation might be something that needs addressing.

The open plan nature of the office makes communication between members of staff easy and efficient, and collaboration was a distinctive feature of the work observed. This idea contrasts with the idea of the probation officer as ‘technician’ who must simply follow the rules and tick the boxes (Bailey et al., 2007). However, the design of the office also created tensions: for example, practitioners are increasingly being encouraged to work with offenders in prison by use of a telephone conference call and the noise in the office would make this difficult. The increased use of technology in the probation service which stems from resourcing issues (it is costly in terms of time and money to do a prison visit) is therefore being affected by the use of this open plan, collaborative design.

The separation of certain services

Robinson (2005) has described some of the problems with specialization in the 1990s and early 2000s which resulted in offenders being treated as 'portable entities', a fragmented service and low morale. Although there is a rationale for keeping unpaid work and victim liaison officers separate from generic offender management, the physical separation appeared to exacerbate some of the concerns raised by Robinson. 'The victim’ was remarkably absent during fieldwork and I observed an assumption that victims’ needs would be dealt with by others. Similarly, there was little cooperation between unpaid work staff and generic offender managers, notwithstanding brief discussions about particularly complicated situations. Rather, each practitioner would receive an attendance sheet for their offenders each day and this served to fulfil the majority of communication between the two teams. Moreover, it was rare to see an unpaid work officer or victim liaison officer in the waiting room and the only notices pertaining to either service informed offenders of their right to bus fare reimbursement when attending unpaid work. This physical split, therefore, might be seen to hinder the absorption of the victim into probation practice although, arguably, policies around disclosure which prohibit practitioners from contacting victims may be a greater barrier. It was clear that unpaid work was seen as separate to offender management and the rehabilitative work from which practitioners gained most job satisfaction. The office served to reinforce this attitude. This is problematic because evidence suggests that where unpaid work activities can be tied into improving offenders' skills the offender has a greater chance of reducing their offending (Rex et al., 2003) and the physical separation appeared to reduce the potential of this happening. Additionally, practitioners emphasized the importance of victim awareness in supervision sessions but this specific work did not appear to be backed up by a broader image of the service being there for victims. Again, the building appeared to militate against a consistent 'performance' or definition of probation.

The interview rooms

In the context of seeing the office as the back stage of probation, the areas in which practitioners interact with offenders become the 'front stage': the offender is the audience of practitioners' actions. To express this in Goffman’s terms is useful because the front stage ‘functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance’ (Goffman, 1969: 32). Thus, what happens in this arena defines, or at least contributes to the definition of, probation for the offenders themselves. When in the front stage, staff are friendly and polite to offenders (although the nature of the job requires people to be firm and challenging at times). I would often see staff greet people in the waiting room even if they were not on their caseload and there was an air of mutual respect and, in many respects, a casual tone to encounters here. Moreover, offenders appeared to act in a way that suggested that this was 'their' space: I witnessed former prison cell mates greet each other after a period of separation, friends arrive together and talk whilst waiting to see their officer and so on. However, as soon as offenders and practitioners enter dedicated interview rooms, the mood of the interaction turns to 'business'. Whilst some offenders, and some practitioners, engaged in limited small talk, discussions in interview rooms were overwhelmingly dictated by what the practitioner wanted to get done during the session: whether this was a quick check up on the offender's progress, a full OASys review or a discussion about progress on a programme. The very act of crossing the threshold of a dedicated interview room meant that the offender was moving into the practitioner's space. One might argue that the dedicated interview room is intended to be a shared space for all users of the building but this was not the case: practitioners had clearly colonized these spaces.

In line with health and safety advice, offenders are directed to sit at the end of the desk allowing the practitioner easy access to either door. Although this is about protecting the worker, it can also be interpreted as the practitioner exerting their control on a client in much the same way as Whyte describes a waitress’s or teacher’s actions, ‘so there is never any question as to who is in charge’ (Whyte, 1946: 132−133, cited in Goffman, 1969: 23). The setting, therefore, helps a practitioner to ‘get off on the right foot’ and sets the tone for future interactions (Goffman, 1969: 23). Goffman argues that ‘the initial definition of the situation projected by an individual … has a distinctive moral character’ (Goffman, 1969: 23–24). If this initial interaction is reflective of the power differential between the two parties, it raises the potential for tension between the way in which many participants want to treat offenders (with respect and equality) and the way in which the design of the building (in conjunction with health and safety advice) makes them act.

The office as front stage

However, we can also see the office as the front stage of probation practice. Offenders are not the only audience for whom practitioners 'perform'. As noted above, collaboration was a key feature of the work which I observed. However, at times, an approaching manager would result in changed behaviour from practitioners. This would most often lead to practitioners stopping what they were doing, and turning back to their computer screens, making the practitioner complicit in creating a definition of probation where the computer is a key and consistent prop. As mentioned above, changes in policy have meant that probation offices are now densely populated with computers, and practitioners spend a considerable amount of their time using them. Indeed, computers are so critical to their work that when the computer system 'goes down', practitioners are unable to do anything productive. Sometimes, they would take the opportunity to do physical filing but a more common response would be to engage in idle conversation. Even so, an oncoming manager would result in attempts to look busy, even if little could be achieved by doing so. In this way, practitioners present a definition of probation to managers that is both computerized and busy. Despite many participants expressing concern at the amount of time they spent in front of a computer, it was clear that this aspect of their role had been quietly internalized. The permeation of the computer was critical to this performance, and it would be impossible without the broader environment of the open plan office.