Enforcement, Rehabilitation and Public Protection: Developments, Issues and Tensions Impacting on the Work of the Probation Service

Introduction Probation in England and Wales was formally established under the Probation of Offenders Act 1907. It was in this Act that the „release‟ of offenders into the community under the „control‟ of officially appointed probation officers was made a matter of statute (National Probation Service, n.d). This Act also clearly defined the duties of these probation officers; primarily to „advise, assist and befriend‟ offenders (Prison Reform Trust, 2006). This motto would come to personify what has commonly been referred to as the „treatment‟ phase or era of „penal welfarism‟ (Garland, 1985) which existed from 1907 up until the 1970s within the probation service. However, this motto has now been replaced by the more punitive „punish, help, change and control‟, thus suggesting a paradigm shift in which probation has moved from a humanitarian service towards that of a correctional one (Raynor and Vanstone, 2007). As such, it can be argued that the National Probation Service has, above all other agencies within the criminal justice system, undergone the most frequent and radical changes. It has been suggested that these have resulted in „depersonalisation‟, „deprofessionalism‟, and „responsibilisation‟ within a climate of „punitive controlism‟ (Burnett et. al., 2007). However, the extent to which this is true is a highly contested area. This article will examine this contested area by establishing the issues and tensions that have arisen from some of the more „recent‟ developments, in order to determine to what extent they have impacted upon the work of probation with offenders. This will be achieved through focusing on the outcomes of the „What Works‟ movement, and the emergence of risk assessment and risk management within probation.