Then and now

Introduction

Change has been a consistent theme in the development of probation work since its inception at the start of the 20th century (King, 1969; May, 1991). This was also true of one particular decade in that century − the 1970s. The purpose of this article is to consider developments in that decade, explore analyses from literature, and compare and contrast those with my own experiences at that time while working in probation in a northern city. Whilst this material is ‘historical’ it also has relevance to present day probation work. The narratives of female, black, older, officers located in rural areas or other parts of England and Wales may have been very different. The present, selective ‘account’ is just one of many versions or ‘truths’ that have been, or could be provided, but has validity in its ‘lived experience’ (Burnett and McNeill, 2005).

As a new probation worker, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, one felt enthusiasm and a sense of faith in progress, with opportunities for creativity (Raynor, 1993). Such optimism and a desire to relish the work, carried one through and led to professional flourishing in the climate of the time (Seligman, 1991). Extensive emotional and practical support from colleagues was of particular significance − a fact that was later underlined by a host of studies (Collins, 2008) and many work colleagues were also friends with whom one socialized. A great deal was done to provide opportunities to consolidate learning within the first year of employment, with protected workloads, regular supervision and first year officer groups − a period known to be a crucial time for statutory workers (Gregory, 2007). Recently appointed probation officers were required also to attend three separate residential training weeks. The local service was generous in its provision of continuing professional development; for instance, secondment was available to a one year full-time post-qualifying programme for experienced workers. Hence such developmental opportunities provided by the national and local service would have been the envy of many workers in the early stages of the 21st century. Overall, the local service provided a very positive organizational context; the hierarchy and colleagues ensured that newly appointed workers felt accepted, valued and respected − significant elements that have been highlighted by a number of studies (Farrow, 2004; Robinson et al., 2013). Furthermore, office accommodation and administrative support was of a high standard, another aspect known to underpin the establishment, the maintenance of professional and organizational commitment, and helps to prevent high turnover rates in statutory work (Evans and Huxley, 2009).

Policy developments

Significant developments in probation policy occurred in the 1960s. For instance, the Probation Service took up responsibilities for after-care work and, following the 1967 Criminal Justice Act, became the Probation and After-care Service − a title that, in turn, was modified during the early 1980s. Furthermore, in the mid and late-1960s probation officers were first seconded to prisons and other institutions, thus becoming more closely aligned with the penal system (Haxby, 1978).

These developments took place around the time of my career as a probation student. However, I was not conscious of the ‘newness’ of after-care work, tending to accept this as an intrinsic, core task, to be undertaken. This seemed to reflect a tendency to accept given responsibilities associated with a role and the power of professional and organizational socialization. Also, the idea of applying for secondment to work in a penal institution was an option for probation workers, but in keeping with the questioning of removal of clients from the community to the ‘total institution’ − perhaps then the embodiment of ‘punishment’ − this was a role which was resented and resisted. It had limited appeal to many workers and involved tasks which might well have been undertaken by prison officers at the time and are now starting to be undertaken by some prison officers in the early years of the 21st century in Scotland.

The 1967 Criminal Justice Act had introduced parole, with much publicity, strict requirements for supervision and reporting back to the Home Office through the probation hierarchy. This was another example of closer alignment with the penal system that was once again resisted by many probation workers (Monger, 1972; Williams, 1995). As a practising probation officer one was conscious that this new task was to be given high priority, had ‘status’, and was associated with more responsibility. Labelling and language impacted upon individual practice; control connotations of the label ‘parole’ tended to predominate over social work values such as respect and individualization, which were clearly still present, but subsidiary to Home Office and agency policy requirements and protection of the public. However, with the passing of time, others have suggested that parolees were worked with in a very similar way to other clients (Williams, 1995). Significantly, by 1980 statutory after-care and other forms of supervision not requiring the client’s consent constituted a third of the service’s caseload, while between 1970 and 1980 the number of probation orders which required a client’s consent had dropped from 60 per cent to just over a quarter of probation officers’ caseloads (Home Office, 1981).

The introduction of Suspended Sentence Supervision Orders via the 1972 Criminal Justice Act was another example of the drift towards a more coercive role for the probation officer. However, other elements in the 1972 Criminal Justice Act and the Powers of Criminal Courts Act (1973) broadened the responsibilities of the service with the introduction and expansion of Bail and Probation Hostels, Community Service Orders and (then) Day Training Centres. The introduction of community service was an example of a specialization as, while the work would be co-ordinated by probation officers, it would be largely staffed by community service assistants. Most main grade officers had little involvement in the organization and operation of community service which, although providing an alternative to imprisonment and intended to reduce the prison population, was also a punishment with little emphasis on a social work helping relationship. The focus was on clients undertaking supervised practical tasks in the community such as cleaning and painting and decorating, which was an example of the probation service operating as a court based agency providing and resourcing another sentencing alternative for the judicial and penal system (Raynor, 1993).

Nevertheless, the development of community service received considerable positive attention in the national press. In the 1970s, rarely was any probation officer ‘blamed’ for any criminal incident involving clients on supervision. This seems to be a contrast to the position today when considerable publicity is given when offenders under supervision of probation workers commit further serious offences. Somehow the service is perceived to have a responsibility for ‘allowing’ this to happen and is much more prone to ‘trial by the media’. Therefore, it is now subject to more public scrutiny than was ever likely in the 1970s − which has resulted in more demands and pressure upon the service and its workers (Maruna, 2007).

Interestingly, probation officers in the 1970s were still providing another court-based service, although not linked to offending or a sentencing alternative, i.e. ‘Matrimonial ‘and Divorce Court Welfare Work − a paramount concern being the welfare of children, involving conciliation, access and custody issues, adoption, the provision of reports and supervision when separations and divorce occurred. This was another area of specialized work that later developed into a separate service as CAFCASS but at that time was an example of a social work service to the courts, rather than a sentencing option.

In the 1970s, the continued prominence of work with children, the development of prison-based work, after care work, community service and the decline of work with young people led to continual debates about what the probation service was all about, with questioning of its objectives, functions, roles and responsibilities. Various views were presented about whether it was a social work service, a court service, a correctional service allied to the wider penal system – or some combination of the three (for instance, Haxby, 1978). The Probation Officers’ Manual (Jarvis, 1969) and Boswell (1982) highlighted the lack of consensus around the goals of the service − ‘the lack of a universal sense of purpose’ characterized by highly autonomous professionals whose goals conflicted not only with each other but also ‘with powerful sections of the criminal justice system about means, ends, philosophy’ (Boswell, 1982: 60). In view of this lack of clarity about purpose, it is perhaps not surprising that the first consideration of probation service objectives and targets was evident in the mid/late-1970s and seen more prominently with the introduction of Statements of National Objectives and Priorities in the 1980s (Home Office, 1984).

The 1907 Probation of Offenders Act had noted a duty of the probation officer to ’advise, assist and befriend’ individual offenders. This individualistic, welfare based approach was widely influential throughout the 20th century, perhaps starting to become subject to challenge during the 1970s and 1980s (May, 1991). The Morison Report (Home Office, 1962: para. 9) saw the probation officer as ‘a social caseworker who is an officer of the court’, also with a role to protect society. My own experiences of probation work coincided with the view in the Morison Report. However, in the 1970s, I felt less aware of a role in protecting society, in stopping and reducing crime and offending (Davies, 1969), with commitment to the welfare and well-being of the ‘whole client’ seen as a priority, which May (1991: 169) had seen as a ‘binding ethos of the probation service’. At the time, perhaps inappropriately, offence focused work was much less prominent, with no real consideration or attention given either to risk or the rights of victims. A priority was providing a humane, caring service for clients, the importance of offering respect, acceptance of the person (if not the crime) alongside hope and belief that the client could grow both personally and socially and change (Biestek, 1961; Celnick and McWilliams, 1995). Belief in rehabilitation, the ability of individuals to grow through relationships continues to the present time, as seen in various studies of trainee, newly qualified and experienced officers (for example, Annison et al., 2008; Burnett and McNeill, 2005; Knight,2007; McNeill, 2006).

Reports, records and priorities

The demands from court reports continued throughout the 1970s. Research undertaken indicated such work could occupy a quarter of a probation officer’s time, with an average of 50−60 reports being produced by each officer per annum (Davies and Knopf, 1974). Officers were largely office based. Studies indicated that while they spent around a third of their time outside the office only about 10 per cent of that time was spent in ongoing work in clients’ homes (Davies and Knopf, 1974). Hence this evidence tends to undermine a myth that probation officers in the 1970s spent a great deal of their time ‘in the community’ doing ongoing work with clients. Despite considerable interest in, and opportunities to attend, community work courses and experiments with officers living and working in ‘detached’ ways in the community (Hugman, 1977), much of the work was undertaken through traditional office based interviews.

As a serving probation officer, court reports were perceived as a major, significant priority with an imperative to complete them within the required period. Reports in the 1970s included much detail about clients’ developmental histories and family backgrounds and what was seen as good practice then, would not be seen as good practice now (Celnick and McWilliams, 1995). Also, a study in the 1970s revealed that officers with very different beliefs and value orientations, such as ‘conservatives’, and ‘radicals’ tended to conform in writing their reports in very similar ways (Hardiker, 1979). Furthermore, the need to provide ‘objective’ information to the courts could militate against, or undermine, effective helping ‘social work ‘relationships, reflecting Haxby’s (1978) questions about the nature of the probation service existing ‘for offenders’ or to provide a general service to the courts, when service to the latter was seen as paramount.

To a less extent, the recording of ongoing work made substantial inroads into available time; it was often a subject for anxiety and concern. While some officers undertook recording work in a very organized manner, others did not. However, two interesting aspects of case recording in the 1970s were the influence of the underpinning features of psychosocial casework and the very limited attention given to users’ views. Psychosocial casework had links with ‘medical model’ thinking. ‘Diagnosis’ and ‘treatment’ had an overt and covert influence upon the ways in which records were used − or not used − in work with clients. The assessment section of the record contained initial and three monthly assessments of ‘treatment and progress’. These assessments tended to be the preserve of the probation worker; in my experience they were not openly shared with clients. Thus the probation worker held power in determining written plans and regular review of goals which seemed to be rarely shared with clients. There was a lack of openness; this being one reason for the lack of purposeful explicitness about mutual intentions and aims in partnership with clients in probation work. At the time, the significance of clear and open discussion of problems, setting tasks and shorter term work goals was only just starting to make an impact. This would develop much more explicitly following the expansion of task centred work and its implications for probation practice (Goldberg and Stanley, 1979).

Education and training

Education and training in the 1970s was undertaken in a variety of ways. For example, between 1966 and 1968 over a half of probation students undertook Home Office training, a quarter undertook courses in extra-mural departments, while around 20 per cent were postgraduates, and generically trained (Haxby, 1978). Haxby commented about divisions between those with a ‘specialized training’ and those with a generic social work qualification. This seemed to be of little significance during relationships with colleagues, other than that postgraduates were generally younger people, although I recall a comment made to me (generically trained) about ‘coming in through the back door’. Also the service appointed direct entrants − those without training − who comprised nearly a third of probation officers in 1971, but this proportion had dropped to 10 per cent by 1974 and in that year the first trainees were appointed (Haxby, 1978). Davies (1972) found the services in the Midlands and North of England had twice the proportion of the national average of untrained entrants. Hence some tensions were evident about the movement toward increased professionalization, the type of training, or lack of it.

Writers have criticized the content of training for probation work in the 1960s and 1970s, emphasizing the role of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic based interventions (for example, Burnett and McNeil, 2005). This would seem to be a misunderstanding and/or stereotyping of psychosocial casework (Hollis, 1965) which, in particular, encouraged support of clients’ strengths, suggesting a balance between working with individuals, families, groups and the community context. Biestek’s (1961) generic ideas on casework principles were also a strong influence. These individualized principles were criticized and expanded when applied to probation work, so that probation values by the 1990s were seen also to include facilitation of change, opposition to custody and oppression, commitment to justice and protection of victims (Deering, 2011; Williams, 1995).

What appeared to be the underlying complexities of Hollis’s psychosocial casework ‘techniques’ seemed to be hard for myself and others to understand and apply in actual practice. I found post initial training linked to the ideas of Rogers (1961) and Truax and Carkhuff (1972) based on empathy, genuineness, non-possessive warmth and later, challenge, to be more thoroughly tested empirically. They were also more appropriate skills to learn and apply to actual practice. The significance of these ‘core conditions’ has been highlighted again, more recently, by McNeill (2006).

Finally, from a political perspective, it is also significant that in 1968, the ‘year of political revolution’, students at the university where I undertook probation training took over, and occupied, the university’s main administrative building. We, the probation students, did not participate as we were undertaking a practice placement!

Models of intervention, practice and research

In the 1970s most probation orders were for two years or longer (Haxby, 1978) and after-care licences were often for long periods, so that much of the statutory work undertaken ‘fitted in’ with a psychosocial model, which was generally seen as long term work, with the emphasis on building up trust, working through problems, the identification of the client with the worker and a gradual ending process (Hollis, 1965). At an extreme, the idea of a ‘corrective emotional experience’ with the worker acting as a parental substitute was seen as helpful for some clients, who could be seen as ‘fixated’ at early developmental stages (Reiner and Kaufman, 1959). This model of long-term helping did seem appropriate for those clients who were seen to take time to ‘mature through’ criminal activities after graduating from probation, young offenders and adult penal institutions and after-care licences. As a worker, one tried to provide a positive experience with a reliable, dependable, attachment figure, while the significance of ‘maturation’ has been incorporated into more recent desistance developments by Maruna (2001).

Whatever the faults of so-called casework models, they did place tremendous emphasis on respecting the uniqueness of the individual. To claim that there was ‘general agreement on the importance of unconscious factors’ seemed to be excessive, as did claims that the approach led to people been treated as objects (Davies, 1969: 6). ‘Objectification’ more likely occurred because of the heavy workloads, the many demands on the probation service staff, ‘routine’ organizational practices and procedures that could sometimes inadvertently categorise and label clients so that they received particular or less attention, as seen in the contrast between work with parole and voluntary after-care ‘cases’. The latter were rarely discussed with SPOs; the individual officer was not directly accountable to a court or institution beyond the probation service. It is interesting to note that the current controversial moves to contract out and privatize pieces of probation work in part relates to prisoners serving shorter sentences who are not subject to statutory orders.

Research into casework effectiveness in the 1970s in the USA was producing mixed findings (Fischer, 1976). Also criminological and penology research had highlighted the ineffectiveness of a variety of rehabilitation programmes, including the impact of probation (Brody, 1976; Home Office, 1969; Martinson, 1974). However, Sinclair (1971) had found links between lower rates of offending and absconding with the quality of regimes provided in probation hostels, while Shaw (1974) illustrated that prisoners having weekly contact with prison based probation officers shortly before release were significantly less likely to be reconvicted during a two-year follow-up period, especially ‘introverts’, those said to be ‘more neurotic‘ and less involved in criminal sub-cultures, although Fowles’ (1978) study did not confirm these findings. Thus some research challenged the slogans that ‘Nothing Works’ and assertions about the ‘Death of Rehabilitation’.

In experiences of probation practice in the 1970s it became clear that it was important to appreciate, and respond to, needs for practical help. One learned quickly through ‘practice wisdom’ the significance, for example, of facilitating access to financial aid, work with benefits and debts, travelling along with relatives to visit clients in penal institutions, ensuring that whenever possible one was available for clients at, and after, court for crisis oriented work. Geoffrey Parkinson (1977), a long-serving main grade probation officer was an ‘alternative down to earth voice’ who in various journal articles emphasized the importance of helping clients commit less serious crime, and in providing access to, and giving, material help such as money.

Lipton et al. (1975) in a major review of the effectiveness of ‘treatment’ in correctional institutions in the USA found that work with immediate problems such as housing, employment, income and health was important, being associated with a reduction in recidivism. A study of clients in a Day Centre in England and Wales by Raynor (1981) produced similar findings, as did research into the needs of homeless offenders released locally. The city service where I worked responded positively. The local service had provided ‘traditional’ casework help by probation officers in a Homeless Offenders Unit − with office based provision and hours. Following on from the research the service then introduced additional provision via ancillary support, who met prisoners upon their immediate release from prison aiming at providing help with accommodation, links to financial provision and initiating searches for work. Hence this was a good example of research influencing local policy and practice. The need for practical, material help and environmental improvement has been a repeated, persistent theme through to the present day (Farrall, 2004).

Furthermore, it was clear that individual, office based interviews had clear limitations in the routine, rather mechanical check-up contacts offered in standardized probation practice involving ‘reporting’ work, particularly with younger clients − many of whom did not want to talk, resented authority and regular appointments. They were much more likely to respond to informal contact such as shared social and sporting activities and ‘out-door pursuits’ − an influence of ‘Intermediate Treatment’ at the time, which stipulated participation in residential or ‘camping’ weekends as a condition of statutory supervision orders for young people.

Studies of ‘average caseloads’ in 1970 stood at 51 for men and 43 for women and in 1976 at 39 for men and 35 for women (Haxby, 1978). In the 1970s in the city office where I worked many experienced officers had prestige and were held in esteem, for their ability to cope with heavier than average caseloads, with this being seen as a ‘badge of courage’, even if little active work was undertaken with many ongoing clients. Workers would claim they could do so much more, if only they had more time and smaller caseloads.

However, the findings of the IMPACT studies in the late 1970s illustrated that lower caseloads and intensive supervision made very little difference to rates of offending and reconviction. This was one of the factors that led to reappraisal of the effectiveness of probation work (Folkard et al., 1976). Those in a control group who had ‘low personal problem totals’ and ‘moderate to high criminal tendencies’ actually ‘did better ‘and had fewer reconvictions under less intensive supervision, while those in the experimental group who ‘did better’ reported ‘high personal problems totals’ and ‘low criminal tendencies’ (Raynor, 1993). Previously little consideration had been given either to the impact of environment, the personality characteristics of the client, or to the ‘therapeutic qualities’ of the probation officer. Little attention had been given also to the stage of change clients were at (Prochaska and Diclemente, 1994), while conscious use of social learning theory and cognitive behavioural approaches was in its infancy (Jehu, 1967).

However, as Raynor (1993) has noted, research studies made little immediate impact on probation officer practice in the 1970s. There was an emphasis on the brief conclusions of research rather than the detail. Possibly very few officers read about, or had much knowledge and understanding of, the importance, implications and evaluation of research and evidence-based practice for their day-to-day work. However, teaching and learning about research methods is now well established on qualifying courses. In the 1970s developing learning about research methods tended to be the preserve of a few who attended relevant post qualifying courses.

Generally, from the early/mid-1970s onwards, broader ranging interventions were encouraged and evident. Systems thinking (Pincus and Minahan, 1973) had been making an impact on the practice of recently trained workers, encouraging resource finding and interventions at levels beyond the individual client, for instance, work with couples, families and groups, common needs and concerns of clients, influencing and changing the policy of one’s own agency and developing links with other agencies. This was seen locally, for example, in family therapy and in group work with young offenders released from penal institutions. However, attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions were less clear. Also efforts were made by city contemporaries who had recently qualified, to come together in informal, collective meetings to apply pressure to change agency policies and procedures by producing alternative policy documents and influencing staff meetings. Furthermore, radical social work (for example, Bailey and Brake, 1975; NAPO Members Action Group, 1976) was also starting to make an impact on the local service. NMAG, a national radical collective of probation officers linked to NAPO, in its publications encouraged team work and collective efforts to fight for, and achieve, change and a better service for clients. However, not all probation workers were of a radical perspective. Perhaps amazingly, two older, experienced probation officers in the city where I worked stood as Conservative candidates! Furthermore, the ‘early years‘ of radical probation work were characterized by a concentration on class based analyses, poverty and unemployment, with a tendency to neglect social divisions such as ‘race’, gender, age, sexuality, disability, religion and language, which became much more prominent in later years.

What is clear is that to caricature the 1970s as an era dominated by psychodynamic casework is inaccurate, inappropriate and misleading. A multitude of theoretical underpinnings and probation practices were present in an ever-changing era. Few ‘grand narratives’ dominated actual practice; some ‘grand narratives’ had influence, but a plurality of approaches was evident, provided by officers with a variety of personal styles linked to age, gender, type of training and experience. They used a kaleidoscope of intervention methods that varied in attempts to build upon strengths and resolve particular client problems.

Organizational changes

In organizational terms a significant trend post-1972 was the organization of many smaller probation areas into larger units following local government organization. My city service became part of a wider county area. Previously almost all main grade probation provision had been located in two city centre offices, but the headquarters of the new service moved some 15 miles away. This led to some fragmentation in the presence, the accessibility of many of the upper hierarchy. Later in the 1970s, the city offices largely decentralized. The two city centre offices, previously located within two minutes’ walk of each other and the courts, became reconfigured into patch or area-based teams, which were generally much more accessible to clients, but tended to inhibit larger scale collective action at a local level by probation officers.

Traditionally there had been a long history of autonomy for the ‘main grade’ officer − another significant aspect of work in the 1970s. This was seen, for example, in the latitude available for, and individual interpretations about, action for breach proceedings − to the extent that some officers instigated several breach proceedings, while others rarely did so (Pearson, 1978). Hence, a greater emphasis on justice, fairness and equality of provision for courts and clients was required and necessary; subsequently standardization of these procedures was introduced, although perhaps becoming too inflexible and punitive (Drakeford, 1993).

Accountability to, and the role of, the middle manager − the Senior Probation Officer (SPO) − also developed further in the 1970s. Traditionally the role had been conceived of in rather modest, limited, ways. SPO tasks were to undertake work with clients, supervise and advise on the work of a probation officer, and allocate ‘cases’, with more emphasis on sensitivity and insight into the ‘casework’ task in the 1960s and early 1970s (Butterworth, 1972; Home Office, 1962). The probation service had operated a professional-administrative model of organization, but this was changing (McWilliams, 1992). Between 1960 and 1975 the proportion of SPOs rose from 14 per cent to 23 per cent, with the 1970s characterized by the beginnings of increasing surveillance and control of the main grade worker (Haxby, 1978). The probation hierarchy had also expanded further in 1966 with the establishment of Assistant Chief Principal Probation Officer grades (ACPPO); by 1974 their numbers had increased fourfold (Haxby, 1978). The development and expansion of these middle and upper management posts helped to develop career opportunities, but also placed more emphasis on a hierarchical structure, with the upper echelons through to the Deputy and Chief/Principal then being largely dominated by males, in contrast to the present gender balance in probation management.

In my own experience there was a tendency, in some instances, for probation officers to ‘split off’ SPOs into a ‘them’ and ‘us’ situation, partly because by definition most SPOs had different functions, were usually more experienced, more closely assimilated into, and identified with, the organization, while probation officers tended to be either less experienced, or experienced officers who either did not want to be and/or were not thought to be suitable for middle management appointments. In the city office SPOs generally seemed to encourage the probation officer’s traditional autonomy, rarely interfered with the day-to-day ‘casework’ of the individual officer, concentrating on ‘enabling’. An atmosphere of collegiality still seemed to prevail, but the practices of individual SPOs locally varied, with some exercising much closer surveillance and control functions, accompanied by increased resentment from the main grade probation officers in those teams.

In 1972 the Butterworth Report (Butterworth, 1972) had commented on the development of the suspicion of SPO and ACPPO management roles. It also endorsed a more managerial approach, which in turn increased probation officer interest in NAPO as a trade union (Beaumont, 1995). By 1980 there was said to be reduced organizational status for the probation officer (Mawby, 1980). Also in 1980 the Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) had advocated a move away from ‘management… enabling probation officers to practise their social work skills… [towards identifying] the tasks which society requires of the service… [and] to develop ways of discharging these responsibilities more effectively’ (JNC, 1980: 19). The Home Office Working Party (Home Office, 1980: 25) noted rather ruefully that it was ‘almost inevitable that, in a service that has evolved from a simple and almost entirely individual basis of working, to a complex and sophisticated operation… feelings will arise about the curtailment of initiative’.

At the same time, much has been written about ‘job crafting’ (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001), street level bureaucracy, manipulation of policies and resistance by grass roots workers (Cheliotis, 2006; Lipsky, 1980; Pearson, 1978). Hence, each individual officer tended to apply and interpret laws, policies and objectives slightly differently, making their own adjustments in practice, while Lynch (1976) found three quarters of probation officer interviewees said they operated outside the framework of their employing organization. This holds true in the present century. Thus the probation officer works in, but not entirely for, the probation organization with rehabilitation ideals and some capacity for independent decision making remaining prominent, albeit to a more limited extent than it did in the 1970s (Robinson, 2002). In the early years of the 21st century, ‘an enduring commitment to social welfare principles that historically underlined probation practice can be observed, despite policy conditions’ (Ugwudike, 2011: 45). Work by Robinson and Burnett (2007) and Deering (2010) confirmed this continuing commitment. Therefore, probation officers in the 1970s, and now, resist policy provision and use alternative strategies to struggle to maintain commitment to favoured professional values (Deering, 2011; Gregory, 2010).

The end of the 1970s

An alternative model was emerging at the end of the 1970s − ‘a non treatment paradigm’ (Bottoms and McWilliams, 1979). This concentrated on four aims - the provision of statutory supervision of offenders, providing help to them, diverting offenders from custody and reducing crime, suggesting an emphasis on shared assessments and open discussion of mutually collaborative tasks, rather than ‘treatment’ and ‘diagnosis’, with client needs as the basis for action. Hence there was movement away from aspects of ‘medical model’ thinking, negative labelling and limited choice, while giving more recognition to the importance of the environmental context (Bottoms and McWilliams, 1979). NAPO (1981) also produced an alternative document, providing guidelines for policy and practice, with an emphasis on campaigning for reforms in criminal justice, reductions in custodial sentencing and practice informed by a social work focus on the problems and needs of offenders. Raynor (1993) criticized these models for neglecting the needs of the criminal justice system at the expense of those of offenders and social work; also for paying insufficient attention to evaluating the effectiveness of interventions. However, the 1970s ended with a Thatcherite government established, the introduction of the then relatively new key terms − Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness − that permeated the language of provision of services to offenders for years to come, alongside moves to neo-liberal approaches and privatization proposals that have also become a ‘norm’.

The future policy focus was to be on establishing a law and order agenda with less emphasis on rehabilitation and the welfare of clients (generally termed ‘offenders’ by the mid-1980s), more emphasis on public protection, risk, the individual responsibility and choices of offenders and questioning of the effectiveness of the role and management of the probation service. There would be a concentration on financial restraint, managerialism, targets, objectives, inputs and outputs in a way that had not been evident in the 1970s. Probation was moving further down a punishment road, eventually to become part of a National Offender Management Service (Jordan, 1996; Walker and Beaumont, 1981).

Conclusion

In the 1970s, despite several innovative developments, with some community based experiments and less formal ways of working, changes in government policy, increases in the amount of penal institution based and after-care work and community service meant that probation was moving away from a helping, social work type role, becoming more assimilated into the criminal justice and penal system. Individual probation officers had enjoyed considerable professional autonomy, but there was movement towards clearer accountability both to the probation organization, government policy and to clients. Client work needed to be more purposeful, and specific, with more overtly shared aims, joint partnership about goals, review of goals and evaluation with clients within the requirements of statutory supervision.

In my experience in the 1970s, probation workers enjoyed excellent accommodation, generous administrative support, numerous opportunities for ongoing professional development, extensive practical and emotional support from colleagues and collegial style assistance from middle and upper management. Workers had a strong belief in, and commitment to, providing a humane, respectful, caring service to helping clients through establishing and using a relationship, accompanied by a belief that change was always possible. Although these laudable intentions were sometimes frustrated when placed within the demands of political and environmental pressures, organizational procedures and routines, this is a legacy which has been widely and fully recognized again in present day probation work. Working with clients within the criminal justice system will always involve tensions and critical questions but, ultimately, optimistic values, a commitment to collective working, respect for offenders and the belief in potential for change, are essential underpinnings to effective work within the demands of the political context of probation work and the controlling and technical aspects of assisting those involved in offending.