Probation Journal

Opinion surveys routinely show that probation is neither well understood nor highly regarded by the general public. Media reporting may play a role in shaping public opinion, but studies which focus directly on the way the media report probation are very rare. The current study helps to address this gap by focusing on the way national newspapers covered probation during 2013, with a particular focus on how the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) consultation and the subsequent strategy were reported. The level of privatization and scaling back of the National Probation Service, which the strategy embodies, is arguably the greatest change to the delivery of probation services since the Probation Act of 1907. However, the current study shows that most of the potential risks identified by probation professionals and academics received little attention. Moreover, such reporting as there was came from a few specialist criminal justice reporters and was largely concentrated in the broadsheets. The general lack of media interest cannot be said to have caused the country to unquestioningly accept the dismantling of the national public probation service, but it has contributed to it and suggests that there will be little public appetite for the upheaval and expense involved in reversing the process.

This article describes life in a drug-treatment wing (a prison therapeutic community) in a Swedish women’s prison, and aims to analyse prisoners’ and prison officers’ relations and identities, through observation field notes and interviews with staff and prisoners. The studied prison has a drug-treatment programme based on Twelve Step Facilitation Therapy, with external therapists. Within the treatment wing, prison officers are abandoning the traditional staff identity for one of ‘co-therapist’. The female prisoner-identity is initially that of the ‘traditional prisoner’, but is often replaced by other situational identities such as the ‘conscious addict’ and the ‘good group-member’. In cases of frustration and threats in the wing, the more traditional identities might temporarily be ‘re-activated’. This might be a source of confusion and inner conflict, especially for the prisoners.

This article explores recent policy development and resulting tensions that emerge in a neo-liberal climate of widespread availability and use of alcohol and a parallel move towards the marketization of offender management. We argue that these trends threaten the quality of treatment and supervision offered to those whose alcohol use is linked to their violent offending and unduly criminalizes those behaving disorderly as a result of their drinking in the context of ever more coercive frameworks.

Recent reforms of the NHS and impending reforms of probation services threaten the healthcare of community offenders. This short report outlines responses of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and mental health trusts to recent freedom of information requests about directly commissioned healthcare in probation services. Few CCGs directly commission healthcare for probation and only six (out of 213) have ever commissioned health needs assessments. This contrasts sharply with prisons and police custody. Suggestions are made about how healthcare in probation might be improved drawing on models for the United States.

This practice note is intended to provide a summary of the experience of implementing a Psychologically Informed and Planned Environment (PIPE) in an Approved Premise (AP) from a clinical lead perspective. The article outlines the benefits, challenges and lessons learnt from the pilot and how the model has influenced practice within the AP. PIPEs are specifically designed environments supporting staff in developing an increased psychosocial understanding of their work. Learning has taken place in relation to the implementation of a community-based model and in driving service delivery for individuals with a diagnosis of personality disorder and, or, complex needs residing in an AP.