Making an Impact: Napo's AGM 2005

The Value Base of a Probation Service of the Future

Speech given at Napo Conference 15 October 2005

By

Martin Wargent

Anyone who picks out core values lays themselves open to criticism for the ones they missed out. I’m going to unashamedly take my first three (from a total of four) from a speech that my association commissioned from the economist Will Hutton. We have also done some work on values and Will Hutton gave us three that underpin how probation should work in the public realm.

In the light of the Charles Clarke letter that you have, we have to look at these values against the looming reality of contestability. It would be pleasant to have the morning discussing philosophy and values and ignoring the real world, but we can’t. Values should inform us and guide us but not everyone is susceptible to their charms. The issue that we have to deal with one way or the other is contestability opening up criminal justice work to privatised provision. The issue from day one of NOMS was privatised provision. As NOMS has withered and failed to deliver – its only real legacy is privatised provision.

It’s just not true that life is one damn thing after another – it seems like the same damn thing – over and over. Privatise the probation service. People with more intelligence than me saw that the moment the Carter report came out. It’s what No. 10 wants, the PM wants, the PM’s ex-BBC adviser wants and they want it quickly. They want it now.

What values can we lay out?

Hutton’s three are:-

Universality
Equity
Accountability.

They are about publicness.

Publicness, says Hutton – is the great Enlightenment idea, the great joyous moment when Europe escaped the tyranny of having to think within the precepts of Crown and of Church. It’s the public space where what is true is exposed by debate, by the free exchange of ideas between men and women, where truth and evidence matter.

What a tremendous idea. That’s where you and I work – the public realm – a thing to be very proud about.

What underpins publicness?

Three Values

(1) Universality – something in the public realm that is available to everyone. In the Criminal Justice world, the same sentencers, offender assistance, same level of advice to courts, the same training, the same standards everywhere. Contestability – crudely done – blows that away. Do not believe those who tell you a mixed economy is necessarily good for probation. Those people don’t understand markets which are volatile and unstable. Competition is about being unstable.

Markets are where the strongest dominate, by-pass regulations, change the product and use whatever influence is available to enlarge the profitable and do away with the non-profitable. We can’t criticise them. This is how they must be – and some civil servants think they can control this. They don’t even understand it for what it is. When private provision arrives – universality in probation goes.

(2) Equity - as soon as private provision enters, charging policies shut down access. Equity says all must be treated alike, every student, passport applicant, every offender. But not if you come with a high or low price tag. Funding will flow towards high profit work. It’s so obvious I’m ashamed to be saying this.

(3) Accountability – we must have mechanisms of accountability that are not simply market transitional. In the Clarke letter ROMS are central they let contracts so local governance disappears and business-like trusts arrive. Boards with local people are abolished. For accountability to be real, we must have:

• Reliable, sound, honest in formation.
Not partial, not touting for business.

• Proper financial reporting.
Not hiding true costs.

• Planning for need – not commodifying and selling a product.

• Proper monitoring – by bodies with real power.

• Public voice in governance. Not centralising.

All these are essential for a public body – more especially a criminal justice agency.

The evidence is from health, railways, water, electricity and roads and (I put this mildly) not one of these is enhanced by private involvement.

We must fight for proper debate; we have a duty as public servants to so. We know from letters that HO is planning to curtail debate and say when challenged ‘we’ve been discussing this since 2004’. This is not proper. We know the Home Office is committed already to a plan and is not intending any consultation to affect it. That is not proper government. We have to continue to believe in the free exchange of ideas in the public realm where evidence matters. We know that contestability has been costed as a shadow exercise at £2m – but not costed beyond. This is frankly amazing. We know the Home Office admits privately to more layers of bureaucrats, and extra burdens on staff. There does need to be a business case, a rigorous, fully evidenced, professional comprehensive business case. Anything less will underline the flimsiness and the uncertainty that we have experienced through NOMS.

The fourth value that I would add is integrity. There are two strands to its meaning. One is about wholeness, soundness, being undamaged, not in unconnected parts. The other is simply about honesty.

Whoever advises the Home Secretary about the future of probation has not seemed to grasp the first meaning of integrity. The proposals you have seen are like someone grabbing at solutions, cobbling ideas together to reach a deadline. The service of the future as suggested will not be sound, or whole, but broken down into ‘commodified’ parts.

NOMS planning acts like a barometer for telling us the future and like a barometer there’s a vacuum at the top. A vacuum where ideas about proper structure, integration and evidence should co-exist. Time and again we see social problems being tackled through vast expenditure on changing structures and administration, a pointless exercise.

So these are my four values.

Universality
Equity
Accountability
Integrity

I want to go back to the issue of accountability and involving people in local governance – which we now see the Home Office intends to abolish. Unlike the rest of the public sector where the citizen’s voice and consumer choice are the issues – probation is set to be a centralised, civil service run organisation with a totally artificial market. Local people who are our customers will not govern probation or make choices, regional civil servants will. Sentencers who make choices – by local people for local people – are being taken out of governance and the accountability system. As your General Secretary often says ‘you couldn’t make it up’. Well, this week there is enormously important research news. The Magistrates’ Associations and PBA run a project where local community groups are given sentencing information. 65% of the public who initially favour a prison sentence vote for probation supervision. 89% who undertake this work say their confidence in probation supervision increases. That’s why localism, local governance, local involvement matter.

Ultimately of course it’s not down to us. Others take decisions and Parliament must decide. But if it all seems too much, if the political power plays seem too strong, if we’re tempted to think that globalised marketising of public services is too strong a force - then we have to go back to the values that underpin our work. We must make out the case for integrity in Criminal Justice – the weaknesses and the lack of values in the NOMS case may yet cause it to unravel.
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The Future of “the Probation Ideal”

Mike Nellis
Presentation to Napo AGM, Llandudno,
15th October 2005

We need justice, we need liberty, and we need as much solidarity as can be reconciled with justice and liberty. But we also need, as much as anything else, language adequate to the times we live in. We need to see how we live now, and we can only see with words and images which leave us no escape into nostalgia for some other time and place. (Michael Ignatieff (1984) The Needs of Strangers. Chatto and Windus

Changes in punishment are almost certain not to arise from a simple one dimensional effect. The forms of punishment employed by a society at any one moment are shaped by a variety of interests and intentions. They arise in response to what must often be antagonistic considerations, including the framework of law, what is technologically possible, what seems desirable or necessary in the light of the apparent problem of crime, what society is willing to accept and pay for. Why one method of punishment loses favour over time and gives way to another is a complex question because penal methods evolve within a larger social and cultural context. (John Beattie (1986) Crime and the Courts in England 1660 -1800. Oxford University Press. p470). (Rob Canton pointed this out to me)

Developing technology so that it performs quite different functions from the one for which it was originallly intended is the standard path of technological advance. The steam engine, developed for pumping water out of mines, revolutionised land and sea transport. The internal combustion engine, developed and still used for land transport, made possible powered flight. The personal computer was developed for the home, but its main economic impact has been in the office. ... The video camera was developed for use by the television industry but has become an important tool for security. .... Changes in the cost of existing technology, coupled with changes in society, will make the world in 2020 feel quite different, often in surprisng ways. (Hamish McRae (1995) The World in 2020: power, culture and prosperity - a vision of the future.Harper Collins . p167)

The Probation Service is in crisis -
cliche or truth?
The original NOMS plan would have absorbed probation into a new organisation;
contestability/purchaser-provider split would then fragment probation into unrecognisable pieces.
it has not happened yet –
because of NAPO/PBA resistance
..... but it still might & this would be a tragedy :
NOMS = improving control from the top, not improving quality of ground level services.
contestability = privatisation and technological transformation.

In 1999 Cordell Pillay set out to modernise Napo/ probation values - all credit to her - this event is a continuation of something that she had the wisdom to see was needed.

“The Probation Ideal”
non-punitive/ rehabiliative
caring to control/ controlling to care
scepticism about imprisonment
anti-oppressiveness.
this is a tradition worth defending, but recognise
a) a community dimension has been lacking
b) restricting liberty and threatening worse is always punitive in some degree.

but - how to defend it in the 21st century ?
how to modernise on your terms?
how to articulate values that resonate with the mood of contemporary Britain?

A Sketch of “Reinvented” Probation Values

community safety

COMMUNITY
JUSTICE

restorative justice hostility to custody

a) the overarching ideal is the creation of safe, convivial and inclusive communities
b) restorative justice seeks to balance the needs, rights and interests of victims and offenders
(effective rehabilitation is encompassed within restorative justice)
c) the democratic ideal - maximising liberty for maximum possible numbers of people +
achieving desistance (teaching skills for and pathways to crime-free lifestyles)
requires use of imprisonment as penalty of last resort.
i) limit criminalisation/imprisonablity
ii) promote ‘community prisons” - local with strong community links

anti-oppressiveness surely encompasses
a) reducing crime an d fear of crime in crime-blighted communities
b) challenging unnecessary use of prison.
so refocus the field.
think of the fields of community penalties/ offender resettlement and community safety /crime prevention as a single sphere of operation/ a single administrative entity

stand explicitly for non-violence
much of what you already do is about violence reduction - weave it into your public image
and become publicly known for:
a) understanding & narrating why violence occurs
b) your skills in challenging it

in our centenary year - rediscover “temperance” - tho’ you’ll need a new, modern word for it!
pick a fight with the commercial interests behind
the “booze, brawls and blades” culture
(choose serious enemies and get noticed)
don’t let the police monopolise
moral concern about this.

work with - but maintain a separate identity from - the police (Mike Nash’s issue):
the civilianisation of the police - the incorporation of probation functions - remains underexplored

respect and promote diversity - but not a “categorism” which intensifies a sense of “otherness” - empathy is precious.
“we are all more simply human than otherwise” (Harry Stack Sullivan)

accept the inevitable involvement of technology in community supervision and offender rehabilitation - but argue the ethics of it.
present forms of electronic monitoring (EM) may not survive - not punitive enough
the extra degree of control EM gives
is too small to be viable
but will something worse replace it?
so should Napo make full peace with EM?
should not probation run EM - as it does in mainland Europe - rather than the private sector ?

sometimes, think “places not cases” -
(Todd Clear)
focus on high crime/high resettlement neighbourhoods
adopt community development strategies

be prepared to change your vocabulary - be attuned to public moods and intellectual currents
and develop a language that enables you to participate - never sound wilfully or inadvertently
old-fashioned & nostalgic .
change words and names to preserve
and reinvent traditional ideals
eg rename probation “community justice”

be future-oriented
the politics of “community justice”
will remain defensive for the forseeable future.
these are dark times - preventing the worst from coming to the worst is noble and worthwhile.
but alongside this:
map possible & probable futures and articulate preferable ones , to avoid
a) being taken by surprise
b) becoming merely reactive to gov t initiatives
+
find, learn from, inspire and educate allies in
a) penal reform network
b) trade union movement
c) academia (not just via training)
d) arts and media

and Napo itself?
you will not have Judy McKnight, Cordell Pillay and Harry Fletcher forever.
you must find a new generation of leaders from among the brightest and the best of you:
people with a taste and a talent for serious penal politics - who can do 3 things:
a) articulate a compelling new vision
b) win political respect
c) carefully manage the tensions between being
a professional association and a trade union.
above all
Napo needs an immensely competent, intellectually sophisticated, politically astute
local membership who will work to
a) preserve an important social ideal &
b) simultaneously create a service you won’t be ashamed to work in -
it is your future that is at stake here , so
“if not you who, if not now when? “ (Primo Levi)

I’d be interested in any comments on this
mike.nellis@strath.ac.uk