Fragmenting probation

Inter-agency work

The study found considerable variety of inter-agency work, with probation supervisors reporting differences in its extent and depth. Supervisees were most positive about inter-agency work that was well-coordinated, where there was no duplication of input and where they did not have to keep explaining themselves to new people. Supervisors stressed the importance of communication, information exchange and mutual understanding between workers from different agencies. In cases where joint work was difficult, supervisors tended to attribute this to the shortcomings of partner agencies or workload pressures within the probation service. The research suggested that the quality of joint work depended on a combination of effective administrative processes (including adequate information technology), facilitating organizational cultures and amenable staff. It therefore supported the findings of other studies of partnership work in criminal justice (Dawson et al., 2011; Senior et al., 2011).

The study also provided empirical support for the idea that joint work is improved when staff are based in the same building. Supervisors saw co-location as leading to improved inter-professional relationships and to more effective, informal and honest communication. They had a probation service-centred view of inter-agency working and, as a consequence, tended to assume that co-location should happen at the probation office. Only a couple of supervisors, both drawing on experience of being seconded to other agencies, considered the possibility of delivering probation services from the premises of partner organizations. Supervisees valued the practical benefits of co-location, including the saving of time and money. They too were generally content that this should happen in a probation office, although a few supervisees argued for the benefit of seeing keyworkers in a community rather than criminal justice setting.

The study found that supervisees perceived their supervision as comprising a number of separate strands rather than as an integrated whole. For the majority (all but five of 38) this did not lead to an experience that was muddled or confusing, although it could lead to repetition and duplication. In part, this was because supervisees were clear that their probation supervisor was the lead worker for the community order and the person to whom they would take problems and questions. Supervisors too saw themselves at the centre of the order. Although they were not weaving the separate threads of the community order into a single experience, they were actively holding the various strands together. This research, therefore, offers some reassurance that increasing the use of providers does not necessarily lead to ineffective fragmentation and, for supervisees, an experience of pass-the-parcel supervision (Robinson G, 2005; Ugwudike, 2013). That said, it identifies that the quality of the offender manager’s co-ordinating role plays a crucial part in the coherence of the supervisee’s experience.

Legitimacy and enforcement

A key finding from the research was that a significant part of the legitimacy of community sentences, in the eyes of supervisors and supervisees, stemmed from the relationship between the probation supervisor and the sentencing court. Probation supervisors saw themselves as accountable to the court for the management of the order, and this included a sense of responsibility for the contribution made by keyworkers from other agencies. Supervisees viewed the demands and requirements of their community orders as legitimate because they saw them as the practical consequence of a legitimate court order. The relationship between sentencing court and supervising officer was important in creating and maintaining this legitimacy, which existed even in cases where supervisees felt that they had been dealt with harshly by the police or at the point of sentence. The close identification of the probation supervisor with the sentencing court limited the extent to which the legitimacy of the community sentence could ebb away (McNeill and Robinson, 2013).

Supervisees were prepared to comply with the order because they viewed the instruction to comply as reasonable and wished to avoid the possibility of enforcement action and a return to court. This compliance could be formal rather than substantive (Robinson and McNeill, 2010), but for supervisors it made space for work intended to build motivation for change. Some supervisees made no distinction between different elements of their order; they viewed all elements as court-ordered and therefore not negotiable. But other supervisees took a different view, complying (at least formally) with the demands of their probation supervisor while seeking to negotiate their way around other requirements of the order. For this group of supervisees, keyworkers from other agencies were not seen as embodying the legitimacy of the sentencing court in the same way as probation supervisors.

Quality of relationships

The importance of relationships, between worker and supervisee and between worker and worker, emerged throughout the research. Supervisors tended to identify relationships as tools, as a means of engaging involuntary clients (Trotter, 2006) and as a way of improving joint work with keyworkers from other agencies. That said, although supervisors were clear that relationship building was not an end in itself, they did speak a great deal about the need for quality relationships. The elements of a good relationship between supervisor and supervisee were identified (by supervisors) as: honesty on the part of the supervisor, the expression of empathy, the creation of trust, respect for the supervisee and the demonstration of genuine interest in the supervisee’s life and circumstances.

Supervisors also pointed to the importance of the quality of their relationships with keyworkers from other agencies. The supervision process captured in the study depended on a network of relationships, not simply a supervisor/supervisee dyad. From the perspective of the probation supervisor inter-agency work was improved if the workers involved knew each other and communicated informally. Personal interaction between staff was as important as formal systems and processes.

The relationships between the supervisors and supervisees in this research were usually quickly built and short lived. They are better described as friendly and helpful rather than deep and therapeutic. Having been assessed as low or medium risk the supervisees were allocated a modest amount of time because they were not identified as priority cases. Nonetheless for supervisees the interest and care demonstrated by supervisors and keyworkers was a crucial part of the community sentence regime.

The involuntary status of the supervisee is a significant feature of probation supervision. Engaging involuntary clients, motivating them towards substantive compliance and persisting with them throughout the period of the court order emerged as distinctive probation service contributions, part of the service’s operational philosophy (Hardiker, 1977). Supervisors sometimes spoke about this explicitly, but they also spoke about it implicitly as they described doing their job in ways that were in line with principles of effective practice for work with involuntary clients (Trotter, 2006), for example by using strategies like role clarification, goal setting, humour, openness, empathy and perseverance. The fact that many supervisees also perceived supervision in this way suggests that probation supervisors were, as they asserted, putting this approach into practice at least some of the time.

1. Ensuring good quality inter-agency work with all agencies contributing to community supervision, including the National Probation Service (NPS)

The TR reforms have changed the inter-agency landscape in two important ways: by introducing competition for contracts and by creating the CRC/NPS split. CRC supervisors work in an environment that is more political and less straightforward than that of their probation trust predecessors; well-coordinated inter-agency work brings benefits for supervisors and supervisees but may be increasingly hard to deliver.

Joint work between the CRC supervisor and keyworkers from other agencies is complicated by the creation of a market for probation services. CRCs have to position themselves to win future contracts and generate outcomes that trigger payments. In an environment of payment by results organizations may be reluctant to attribute success to inter-agency endeavour. Agencies that are confident to share information and data with public sector providers may be wary about sharing it with private providers, particularly if they anticipate competing with that provider for future work. The CRC supervisors interviewed by Robinson et al (2015) expressed anxiety about maintaining inter-agency links with workers from other agencies who viewed the CRC as ‘second class’ probation and no longer part of the public sector criminal justice system.

TR creates a critical new inter-agency relationship, between CRCs and the NPS. There are a number of early indications that suggest that this new partnership, between CRC supervisors and NPS officers, is fragile (HMIP, 2015). Information exchange is difficult and tensions about tasks and responsibilities are evident. Co-location, although advocated in early policy documents (Ministry of Justice 2013) and supported by this research, is not the emerging norm.

Creating good quality inter-agency work should be a priority. It is a concern that early indications suggest that this is often not happening in practice.

2. Maintaining the legitimacy of community sentences

The relationship between the CRC supervisor and the sentencing court is not the same as the relationship between a probation trust supervisor and the sentencing court. CRC supervisors are not officers of the court; they (like the keyworkers in this research) operate at one step removed. This weakened bond between court and supervisor threatens the supervisee’s sense of the legitimacy of the sentence.

CRCs and courts need to establish a dialogue. While it is not the role of CRCs to advise courts or to lobby for business, it is important that staff working in two key parts of the criminal justice system know about the priorities, constraints and processes of both organizations. In order to pass sentence and communicate clearly with defendants, sentencers have to know what a CRC-supervised community sentence involves. In order to exercise the authority of the court, CRC supervisors need to understand the legal framework within which they operate.

3. Maintaining a focus on the quality of inter-personal interactions

CRCs should maintain a focus on the quality of inter-personal relationships between supervisor and supervisee and also between supervisor and other workers (including those from the NPS). These relationships play a vital role in creating community orders that are perceived as helpful and encourage supervisee compliance (both formal and substantive). Again, there are early indications that CRC supervisors face particular challenges: these include increased caseloads, operating models that depend on routine reporting and the use of automated monitoring systems.

This research supports the argument that supervisees should have a consistent supervisor with whom they meet on a regular basis; this face-to-face contact is important and brings benefits. If reporting arrangements become more cursory, it is unlikely that supervision will offer anything that supervisees perceive as helpful or engaging. Supervisor/keyworker interactions are important too and CRC prime providers should build as much stability as possible into their contracts with organizations in their supply chain, allowing supervisors to develop familiarity with and trust in keyworkers from other agencies.

4. Recognizing the status of the supervisee as an involuntary client

This research found commitment to and experience in work with involuntary clients to be a distinctive probation service contribution, and this is something to be sustained in the new post-TR world. Workers transferring from probation trusts to CRCs may function as ‘culture carriers’ (Mawby and Worrall, 2011) bringing a philosophical commitment to work with involuntary clients, but given the multiplicity of factors influencing the development of CRCs this is not sufficient to ensure that this key approach to supervision becomes embedded in the new organizations. Training programmes for CRC supervisors needs to include the skills, knowledge and values needed for work with involuntary clients (including input on role clarification, pro-social modelling, problem solving and relationship building (Trotter, 2006)).