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Unpaid work in the unified probation service
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MoJ evaluation of unpaid work in the unified probation service

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Process evaluation

Last week (12 September, 2024), the MoJ published a process evaluation of unpaid work in England and Wales. This was a large scale study undertaken by Tom Jackson, Rachel Crorken, Sheenik Mills, and Carla Ayrton. The study took place throughout 2023 and included a total of 102 interviews with: people on probation (25), beneficiaries (6), probation staff (62), and members of the judiciary (9); six focus groups with unpaid work staff; and ethnographic observations of 18 unpaid work projects.

The evaluation was designed to assess what works in the delivery of unpaid work following the unification of the probation service and the £93 million investment to aid unpaid work delivery following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Context

Since reunification, there has been significant focus on getting the number of unpaid work hours delivered each year back to pre-pandemic levels. The chart I have reproduced below from the report highlights the decline of unpaid work hours delivered during the Covid-19 pandemic, decreasing from 5.3 million in 2018/19 to 1.4 million in 2020/21. Subsequently, Covid-19 recovery efforts led to a sharp rise in the number of unpaid work hours delivered, reaching 4.7 million in 2023/24.

Identity and purpose of unpaid work

All staff interviewed, believed the purpose of unpaid work is first and foremost a punishment, but it must also have elements of reparation in which people on probation give back to the community. Overall, staff were confident that unpaid work was meeting its aims as a punishment, which they viewed as the time people on probation give up attending their order. Staff also thought that unpaid work met reparative aims by ensuring that work carried out benefits the wider community.

Perceptions on whether unpaid work is rehabilitative were mixed. Staff explained how unpaid work can be rehabilitative for some individuals by providing an opportunity to learn ‘soft’ and practical skills. However, the rehabilitative potential of unpaid work was not applicable to everyone and was dependent on employment status, the type of project, and the individual’s willingness to engage with rehabilitative efforts.

The experiences of people on probation

People on probation identified relationships with supervisors as an important factor that affected their experience of unpaid work. A good relationship with a supervisor could encourage them to return and attend projects led by the same supervisor. Meaningful projects could increase compliance by encouraging people on probation to return to projects they believed had value. These were usually described as projects that would have benefits for the local community, and/or where people on probation had the opportunity to learn new skills, particularly if they thought these could lead to employment.

Many people on probation brought up communication issues they had with probation practitioners. These communication issues could make completing hours of unpaid work difficult either because their unpaid work hours were not set up in time or because people on probation could not contact probation to discuss issues they had with attending projects, making it hard to re-arrange hours.

Many interviewees felt that wearing high-visibility vests, with unpaid work branding, caused them to experience unnecessary stigma and shame which could have negative impacts on their mental health. People on probation and supervisors thought, in particularly public areas, having to wear the branded high-visibility vests could impact compliance.

Delivery of unpaid work

Supervisors explained how their role can go beyond delivering the court order of getting people on probation through their unpaid work hours by additionally providing people on probation with support and advice to uphold a duty of care.

Poor enforcement of unpaid work was described as a key barrier to compliance, with unpaid work staff blaming under-prioritisation of unpaid work and disjointed communication. However, unpaid work staff did acknowledge the high workload of probation practitioners in the under-prioritisation of unpaid work enforcement. Staff also explained the longer it was between sentencing and induction, or induction and placement, the harder it was to re-engage an individual and motivate them to begin their unpaid work requirement.

Many staff were enthusiastic about Education, Training and Employment (ETE) and the opportunities it can offer people on probation, but highlighted barriers and challenges they face in its delivery. For example, staff wanted to introduce in-person ETE classes to support people on probation who struggle accessing the online portal but were unable to do so due to budget constraints.

Judicial views

Members of the judiciary believed unpaid work served its purpose as a punishment with the opportunity to rehabilitate well. However, most judges could not comment on the ‘true’ effectiveness of unpaid work delivery as they have no information on the journey of people on probation unless they return to court.

Judges were not enthusiastic about the use of ETE within unpaid work, with some suggesting it risks overlapping with rehabilitative activity requirements, and ETE takes away from the punitive intentions of the sentence.

Conclusions

Despite unpaid work commonly being referred to as “the face of probation”, staff still perceive unpaid work as the “poor relation” in the probation service, as it continues to be under-prioritised compared to other requirements. Additionally, the role of unpaid work supervisors was perceived to be undervalued by probation practitioners. This was thought to impact delivery through poor enforcement of multi-requirement orders and disjointed working relationships. 

Staff perceived the bureaucracy of operating in the public sector to be a barrier to the delivery of unpaid work. For example, barriers in the procurement of tools resulted in incorrect or poor-quality equipment.

Despite the study including observations of a number of unpaid work projects in action, there are no researcher perspectives included in the report. I was hoping for some objective assessment of how well unpaid work is delivered in a unified probation service beset by chronic understaffing.

The data suggests a massive improvement in the number of unpaid hours delivered but there are no clear conclusions about the current quality of unpaid work.

This is disappointing since the MoJ rarely promotes any work done by the probation service other than unpaid work which, as staff told the research team, remains very much the Cinderella of the service.

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