A prison probation officer's lot is not a happy one
Laura Pope, an HMPPS researcher, has published findings from a qualitative case study approach exploring Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) in four male closed prisons in the latest edition of Probation Quarterly. Her article presents a summary of the views and experiences of 16 probation practitioners working as prison offender managers (POMs) and Heads of Offender Management Delivery (HoMD). Ms Pope organises her findings into three main themes reflecting how probation staff articulated their understanding, and experience of Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) delivery in their respective prisons.
Disconnection
Probation staff accounts revealed a strong sense of disconnect from both their community counterparts and their colleagues in prison. POMs described being uncomfortably sat in the middle of two distinct and separate professional organisations – in no man’s land. As one POM described it:
‘we are the dog with two masters.’
POMs described being ‘forgotten about’ by probation where information flows to support probation staff working in prisons were considered non-existent. They also felt training and policy updates were community-focused, with a lack of recognition of the nuances of the probation role in prison.
The sense of disconnect was further compounded by the ongoing tensions with the Community Offender Manager (COM) role and the demarcation of responsibility for cases. POMs perceived their knowledge of the men they were case managing to be far superior to COMs, yet their decision-making on supporting cases was often side-lined or overridden by the COM when views did not align.
Organisational tensions
Probation staff described a prison-wide lack of understanding around risk and sentence management and a perceived misalignment between overarching prison and probation priorities, a view also shared by senior leaders across the four prisons. Ultimately the join up between custody and community was considered inadequate and handovers, whilst seen as an OMiC design strength, were in reality experienced as a practice weakness.
Ms Pope describes how the cultural dichotomy between prisons and probation effectively placed staff into two opposing groups.
‘The culture and ethos of probation is very different to prison. Prison staff ensure compliance to GOOD [Good Order & Discipline] and there is the rub as we focus on rehabilitation and risk.’
Feeling like an outsider in prison was another key contributor to POMS feeling disconnected and unsupported. The sense of exclusion was greater in certain prisons, where particular tensions were evident in the working relationships among staff working in Offender Management Units (OMUs).
Outcomes
The emotional and psychological toll felt by probation staff was evident in the research. Staff shortages and increasingly unmanageable caseloads were placing huge pressures on POMs and they described feeling a heavy weight of responsibility.
‘I wake up and am filled with dread. I can’t do my job so what is the point in me coming in. Can’t go in and spend time with the men as I have four parole reports to do. Now I don’t know who my cases are.’
This was linked to a growing discomfort among POMS on the decisions and ‘trade-offs’ being made in their prioritisation of tasks and the immediacy of men’s needs which often resulted in decisions made to prioritise resettlement over risk-based activity.
Probation staff, including HoMDs, spoke openly about the role having changed to respond and react to current pressures within the service, rather than it being the role, they had initially applied for and been trained to carry out. It was clear that probation staff were stressed and unhappy at not being able to offer a good quality of service to people in prison who they felt they were letting down.
Conclusion
Ms Pope describe how these pressures and limitations led to POMs feeling deskilled and devalued. They felt a diminishing sense of responsibility, whereby their professional opinions were perceived to be sidelined, intensifying friction between their community peers and hampering their own ability to exercise professional discretion.
Many POMs spoke about losing credibility and responsibility when moving into a prison-based role. The notion of value for probation staff was intrinsically linked to their professional identity. They described a loss of identity through a combination of factors including diminished responsibilities, and a lack of support and recognition from their prison and community counterparts, and a system misalignment between national and local policies and the OMiC framework.
Despite a host of top level strategies and policy decisions such as ONE HMPPS, it is clear that the cultural differences between prison and probation staff persist with a significant impact on the quality of service delivery to people in prison and on release.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
