Abstract
Welcome to the first issue of the journal for 2021. The last year has certainly been momentous and many will have been happy to ring in the new year. However, the start of this year looks to be turbulent as COVID continues to impact widely on all aspects of society. On 1st January the United Kingdom officially left the European Union following the Brexit referendum and the end of the transition period. A ‘no-deal’ scenario was avoided when an agreement between the EU and the UK was reached at the last minute, but the future ahead is uncharted, and even Brexit advocates were predicting a ‘bumpy’ period as adjustments take place to the new rules. 1 At the time of writing also, the different nations of the United Kingdom have entered into a further lockdown as cases of the virus continue to escalate placing unprecedented pressures on health services. The situation is the same across many countries, and while the promise of widescale vaccination is on the horizon, the return to a semblance of normality still seems like some distance away.
Like all sections of society, probation services have had to adapt to public health restrictions. This has entailed reduced face-to-face contact and an increased reliance on remote supervision. In England and Wales, the public health crisis has coincided with another major reform of probation services, which is due to be delivered this year. This will entail the disbandment of Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) formed under the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms, and the movement of all probation supervision into the National Probation Service (NPS). Some services will still remain contracted out to private, voluntary or statutory providers, but this proportion will be relatively small when compared with the scope of privatisation under TR. The coincidence of the public health crisis which necessitated the implementation of an ‘Exceptional Delivery Model’ by probation services, alongside further widescale reforms, is aptly described by the House of Commons Justice Committee, which has been considering the impact of COVID on the probation system, as a ‘huge undertaking’ (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2020a: 4).
The ‘Exceptional Delivery Model’ was implemented in England and Wales during the first national lockdown in March 2020. This entailed the cessation of some activities including unpaid work, and the prioritisation of face-to-face contact with those assessed to be highest risk. The adaptions were necessary in the context of an unprecedented crisis but there is evidence that the adoption of the model was variable across different providers and that staff experienced strains in managing caseloads remotely, particularly in light of increased workload and staff shortages (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2020a): Covid-19 has exacerbated already present staffing issues within the probation service. Low staffing levels and high case-loads present challenges during the current pandemic, given that in addition to existing vacancies, around 2,000 staff (about 20% of the total) are off work due to COVID-19 each day. (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2020a: 4)
Following the easement of the restrictions during the latter part of last summer, HMPPS published a Roadmap to Recovery, which included plans to restart programmes and some unpaid work. This was in the context of a significant backlog, and a recognised need to priortise certain cases. The long waiting lists of accredited programmes have necessitated the development of ‘alternative delivery formats’ for these programmes, including 1:1, and face-to-face small group delivery. Guidance on these alternative modalities was issued in August, but it is unclear what impact this has had (if any), on the significant backlog of people waiting to undertake programmes (House of Commons Justice Committee, 2020b).
At the same time courts are experiencing significant backlogs. This has impacted on referrals to probation, including for pre-sentence reports. Across England and Wales there was a 72% decrease in commencements of new orders and a 76% decrease in the number of PSRs between April and June compared to the same period in the previous year (HMIP, 2020). Actions on enforcement have also declined, as many courts were closed for significant periods. Part of the next challenge will be dealing with the backlog when courts process these cases. The Institute for Government and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy have calculated that the government will need to spend an extra £55–110 million a year for two years to resolve the courts’ backlog (Pope et al., 2020). Inevitably, all of these issues will be exacerbated by the latest phase of lockdown restrictions which will necessitate more court closures, the scaling back of face-to-face contact by probation services and further adaptations to service delivery.
Probation services internationally have faced similar challenges and have had to respond accordingly. The Confederation of European Probation (CEP), have been documenting some of the impacts on practice in a range of accounts, many from practitioners, published on their website (see: https://www.cep-probation.org). Some familiar themes are apparent – including the fact that technology has facilitated contact in a way that was not previously envisaged, and that some find that this medium enables engagement in different ways. Indeed, we are probably all experiencing this phenomenon in different aspects of our lives. One of the questions posed is what might be the potentially longer-term ramifications of the changes to our work and daily lives? It seems likely for instance that greater recourse to technology will become more routine, and that work will be potentially less rooted in fixed places.
However, what is also evident from an increasing body of evidence is that while the pandemic has impacted all parts of society, its effects have not been felt equally. This is most starkly visible in differential mortality rates, where age, gender, ethnicity and occupation are shown to be important variables, and also in relation to access to resources including the basics of food, housing and income (Office for National Statistics, 2020a). The impacts of the digital divide are particularly apparent in terms of access to education. The evidence is clear that school closures disproportionately disadvantage vulnerable children and compound inequalities, and the effects of these are likely to have longstanding impacts on children’s health and wellbeing as well as on their educational attainment (Armitage and Nellums, 2020). There is also evidence that incidences of domestic abuse have increased during the pandemic (Office for National Statistics, 2020b).
A Scottish study which has explored the impact of lockdown on a range of groups who had experiences of inequality, exclusion and marginalisation including: refugees and people seeking asylum, people who experienced domestic abuse and sexual violence; those with disability and long-term conditions, and people with criminal justice involvement has reported that the pandemic has exacerbated the impacts of inequality among these groups (Armstrong and Pickering, 2020). The suspension or truncation of services had particular effects for people with criminal justice involvement (Gormley et al., 2020). For people in prison the effects of being locked in cells for almost the entire day, with little opportunity for engagement with others or activities was harshly felt. This was compounded by the suspension of family visits. People under community supervision had variable experiences of the suspension of in-person meetings; some welcomed these, while others missed the connections and supports provided by their criminal justice social worker. Some specific restrictions on people’s activities while under supervision, like restrictions on internet usage as part of licence or sentence conditions, pose particular difficulties in terms of access to information. Many people described feeling stuck in limbo with people experiencing lockdown as ‘both traumatising and punitive’, for both themselves and their families, compounding their everyday lived realities (Gormley et al., 2020: 66).
The immediate and longer-term effects of the pandemic will continue to resonate throughout 2021. We hope to be able to document some of the impacts and challenges on people and practice in the journal, and we invite contributions on this topic and others. Please see details of article types and submission guidelines on the journal’s website, and please feel free to get in touch if you have an idea you would like to discuss. This issue of the journal contains a number of interesting contributions on a diverse range of topical issues including an article by King and Crisp on the conceptualisation of ‘success’ among people serving Indeterminate Public Protection (IPP) sentences. Readers of the journal will be familiar with the continued legacy of these sentences, which were abolished in 2012. However, the legislation was not retroactively applied, meaning that significant numbers of people are still subject to these sentences and as such are living in limbo. The issue also includes attention towards military veterans in an article by Moorhead, who proposes a model for understanding the military experience in the context of offending and transitions. The importance of decision making in probation, particularly in relation to enforcement, and the parameters within which professional judgement and discretion apply is considered in an article based on empirical research by Nikartas and colleagues. We hope you find this issue of the journal stimulating and we wish you all the best for the coming year.