Before answering the question as to whether value judgments are redundant within the NPS it is important to assess the extent to which the contemporary Probation Service is predominantly a law enforcement agency.
The origins of the Probation Service go back to the 19th
century, where members of the clergy would agree to take responsibility for
young offenders in order to prevent them entering the prison system. Such
charitable gestures gained official status in 1907 and thus in 2007 the
Probation service will enter its centenary year. However since its inception
how has it changed as an organization in terms of its value base and ideologies?
Throughout the early part of the 20th
century the Service worked under the umbrella of ‘advising, assisting and
befriending’ offenders, yet those unmotivated to reform were recommended for
prison. The 1970s however heralded a shift in thinking and a liberal philosophy
became paramount. Offenders were seen as victims of an uncaring society and as
a consequence the social work ethic was firmly applied to the work of the
service. A measure of this shift in the ideological base saw many Chief
Probation Officers banning the recommendation of imprisonment. Indeed this era gave
way to the needs of the offender presiding over the public’s right to be
protected. At this point in the Probation Service’s history the idea of its
role as a law enforcement agency holds little or no justifications.
The 1980s gave way to the just deserts
model as a framework for law enforcement, essentially an offence based
framework. From 1988 onwards the governments ‘punishment in the community
strategy’ did not comply with existing probation values, and according to
Bottom’s (1989) the role of the service would then be...
“To
effectively manage, within the community, using social work and
other
skills.”
Throughout the 1990s the
Probation Service was still resisting the call for a more enforcement lead
focus, and to an extent was said by many to have retreated into its social work
identity as a means of resisting government imposed control. However the
turnaround for the very ethos of the Probation service permeated in the
introduction of the 1991 Criminal Justice act, which aimed to involve the
service more in custodial sentences and stated that…..
“Community sentences are not simply alternatives to custody-they should
play
a full role in sentencing for offences that are not so serious.”
Further legislation (the
introduction of national standards in 1992, 1993 amendment to 1991 CJA/1998
C.S.A) and finally the 2001 Criminal Justice and Court Service Act (leading to
the nationalisation of the service) removed the stubborn resistance and transformed
the very philosophical nature of the Probation service. Instead the main aim of
the service became the protection of the public rather than the rehabilitation
of the offender, a reversal of the ideology held in the 1970s. This
transformation is neatly summed up by Paul Boetang (2000) who states that the
modern day NPS is ‘a law enforcement agency.’
Having chartered a brief history and identified
the fact the modern day probation service is indeed primarily a law enforcement
agency where, if indeed they do, would the role of value judgments lie. One
would define a value judgment as…..
“An assessment that reveals more about
the values of the person
making
the assessment than about the reality of what is said.”
(Hyper-dictionary 2003)
Ultimately the centralised,
modern Probation service runs along the lines that change in individuals and
change within communities can be ‘standardised and packaged and made to fit
government deadlines’ (Nellis 2002). This is amplified by the implementation of
national standards (1992) and above all the managerialist culture, which one
will discuss shortly. In such an environment can value judgments play any kind
of role within current probation practice, and if so to what extent?
Essentially for value judgments to play a role within the modern day service there needs to be an essence of ‘humanity’ within practice. The 5 aims of the modern NPS are summed up in A New Choreography (2001) as….
- Protecting
the public.
- Reduce
re-offending.
- Proper
punishment of offenders within the community.
- Ensuring
offenders awareness of their crime, in the victims of crime and the
public.
- Rehabilitation
of the offender.
The humanistic approach within these aims
lies at number 5, but according to Nellis (2003) one should view the list as ‘equal
segments bearing equal weighting,’ as opposed to a list with rehabilitation at
number 5. This is a view that can be further strengthened by A New Choreography
(2001), which outlines the aims and values of the modern service. Within its
pages there is a recognisable human element (Pp. 7), which consequently leads
to the possibility of using value judgments in practice……
“Under NPS supervision, offenders and the public will also know
that
they have been given a real chance to change and be restored.”
There is a recognisable
human element within the modern day probation service, and continued
development in that direction could culminate into a more humane Probation
Service and thus more scope for value judgments to be made by practitioners.
On the basis that the values of the
service still allow the human element to exist within practice, one could
conclude that value judgments are not redundant from the modern NPS. One would
suggest that the role of such judgments may have diminished since the
inception of the Service, but in the current service there is still room for
value judgments to be made. However that is not the end of the story as two
fundamental impacts upon the service, one within the present and one in the
future, look set to extinguish and humanitarian element to Probation practice.
What we must look at primarily is the role
that managerialism has played since its inception into the service, as according
to Nellis (2001) it is this that takes us towards a ‘less human’ service. For example, let us look at the accredited
programme's the Service offers. Simply because one group of practitioners
successfully completed a particular programme in terms of results it is the
governments belief that providing the manual is followed, success will be
achieved nationwide. This however assumes that should the offender fail than it
would be their fault. Again according to Nellis (2001)…..
“It takes too standardised a view of the
process of change (though this
may reflect managerialism), expects an
unrealistic commitment from
offenders in the early stages and prematurely threatens them with
enforcement”
The belief that change in individuals and
change in communities can be standardised and packaged, and made to fit
government deadlines reflects the overriding ideology in A New Choreography
: managerialism, the subordination of everything to the requirements of economy,
efficiency and effectiveness. The emphasis throughout is on structures and
systems geared to the achievement of pre-determined outcomes, not on people.
There is a deep presumption, embedded in the British public sector as a whole,
that firm direction and tight regulation are the only ways to bring about
change quickly - the time-scale being largely derived from electoral cycles -
and no sense whatsoever of the human costs and possible wrong-headedness of the
enterprise.
Among recent academics there is little
evidence to suggest that corporate managerialism will erase the humanistic
drive of the Probation Service. However Saiger (1992) suggests that
managerialism emphasises hierarchy and the obedience to implement and follow
policies and procedures-which in essence is coercive. This is enforced by the
view that authorisation, routinisation and surveillance would ultimately lead
to the depersonalisation of those on the receiving end (Bauman 1989). In
deriding the qualities of autonomy, self determination and discretion
managerialism is on this basis incompatible with the traditional approach of
social work values and the humanitarian assumptions that underpin it.
What of the effect of managerialism on employees rather than offenders. It reduces
their discretion - this much is understood - but it also reduces the range of
empathic human qualities they can bring into play. It affects senior managers
no less than front-line staff, the former passing instructions and pressures
down to the latter. It reduces them all to minions, tilting away from the idea
of creative management and creative practice towards the obedient carrying-out
of policy and procedure. Evidence has already emerged that many public sector
managers no longer feel able, in highly regulated working environments, to give
expression to the values that brought them into the profession in the first
place. That many practitioners feel the same is also well documented, and it is
not unreasonable to characterise this as a process of dehumanisation, with
likely deleterious consequences for the quality of work with offenders.
Clifford Shaw's, a famous American probation officer, critical view of
"the old probationary and social work methods" is even more apt for
some of the newer ones:
Essentially the practitioners contract with the service
is now a purely calculative, financial one (Walker 1991); personal
commitments will gradually be eroded by management demands to implement the
prevailing policy. It is because the expression of humane values within the
criminal justice system ultimately resides with practitioners that Rutherford (1993) believes its
absence will produce ‘apathy, and ultimately, violence in the control agencies
involved.’ “The effect has been one of a
regulatory culture in the probation service which imprisons practitioners, and
indeed managers themselves, in a hierarchy of policies, guidelines and
monitoring arrangements which rob lower level staff of the last remnants of
discretion, turning them-more than they have ever been before-into competent
functionaries.
This essay highlights the negative impact
of managerialism on the service in terms of altering the underlying ethos of
the service. Subsequently this evidence alone suggests that the days of the
practitioner exercising value judgments are numbered. Of course there have
been suggestions that continued managerialist driven approaches could in the
longer term lead to an increased human element resurfacing within Probation
practice, highlighted of course by the content in A New Choreography (2003). However one fails to
see such a u-turn ever emanating, particularly in the light of the merger
between the Prison and Probation Service.
In 2003 the former Director General of the
Prison service, Martin Narey, was appointed by the Government as the new
Commissioner for Correctional Services. This man was seen to be an important
cog in bringing the Prison and Probation Service’s together by breaking down
the cultural divides between the two organizations. The result would be a fully
fledged correctional service offering efficiency and combined punishments to
offenders (i.e. custody plus). Such a merger can be summed up neatly in a quote
by Harding (2003 Pp. 372)….
“The Probation Service is in danger of
being swallowed up by the
Prison leviathan.”
Such a merger will
accelerate the loss of the Probation Service’s traditional social work
identity, which provides the arena for value judgments, and turn it into a
pure law enforcement agency.
To conclude one would say that within the
modern day probation service there is indeed room for value judgments to still
be made by practitioners. When reviewing the history of the Probation Service
it is clear to see that its core values and philosophies have changed
dramatically since its inception in 1907. However despite the shift there is
still a humanitarian element (as illustrated in the aims of the Service) and
through this humanitarian element there is room to exercise value judgments.
However although the changing values of the service have not greatly impeded on
the human element of the Service, the concepts of managerialism and bureaucracy
mean…….
“personal commitment will gradually be
eroded by management demands
to
implement the prevailing policy.”
Nellis (1995 Pp. 189)
This will ultimately lead to the
dehumanisation of the modern day NPS. The future holds little relief for the
traditionalists, as the merger of the Prison and Probation Service’s will
extinguish the last remnants of humanitarianism within, and as a consequence
value judgments will cease to be no more.
References……
Leach, T. (2003) ‘Oh my
country, how I leave my country.’ Some reflections on a challenging Probation
Service.
The Journal of Community and
Criminal Justice Vol 50 (1)
London: NAPO
Nellis, M. (1995) ‘Towards a
new view of probation values.’ In Hugman & Smith – Ethical Issues in Social
Work.
London: Routledge
Nellis, M. (2002) ‘Towards a
more humane probation service.’
www.humancity.org/hci/HCI.nsf/
A New Choreography-An
Integrated Strategy for the National Probation Service (2001-2004)
Home Office: London
Harding, J. (2003) Which Way
Probation? A Correctional or Community Justice Service?
Probation Journal.
London: Sage
Nash, M. (1998) Managing
Risk-achieving protection? The Police and Probation Agendas.
International Journal of
Public Sector Management. Vol 11. No. 4
Portsmouth: MCB University Press
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