Golden Age of Probation

Roger Statham

Description

The Golden Age of Probation is the first book on probation by those practitioners who became its leaders. A comprehensive account exploring culture, values and tensions. It looks at the dynamics of probation supervision and political dimensions, including the shift to a market-driven form of public service.

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 24 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908162816
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Golden Age of Probation
Mission v Market
Edited by Roger Statham
With a Foreword by Alan Bennett
Copyright and publication details
The Golden Age of Probation
Mission v Market
Edited by Roger Statham
ISBN 978-1-909976-14-6 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-908162-81-6 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-908162-82-3 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2014 This work is the copyright of Roger Statham. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by him in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned. The Foreword is the copyright of Alan Bennett © 2014.
Cover design © 2014 Waterside Press. Design by www.gibgob.com .
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Printed by CPI Group, Chippenham, UK.
e-book The Golden Age of Probation is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Myilibrary, Dawsonera, ebrary, and Ebscohost.
Published 2014 by
Waterside Press
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield-on-Loddon
Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone [phone]
E-mail [e-mail]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Contents
Copyright and publication details
Acknowledgements
Foreword
The Editor and Contributors
The Author of the Foreword
Dedication
Introduction: Probation — The Beginning or End?
Roger Statham
1. A Probation Officer in Coventry
Barrie Bridgeman
2. Probation: A Journey in Caring
Basil Hylton
3. A Road Well Travelled
Cedric Fullwood
4. Probation Memories
Colin Archer
5. A Home Office Perspective
David Faulkner
6. Remembering Probation in the Sixties
David Millard
7. Probation: An Earlier Life
Gordon Read
8. A Personal Probation Journey
Howard Lockwood
9. A View of Probation in the 1960s: From the Bottom
Jim Cannings
10. A Probation Memoir 1965 to 2001
John Harding
11. My Life in Probation
Michael Vizard
12. The Hat on the Office Door
Malcolm Lacey
13. From Wales to Durham and Back: My Probation Experience
Martin Jones
14. From San Francisco to Jordan: A Probation Journey
Mary Anne McFarlane
15. The Road From Wigan Pier
Mike Worthington
16. A Probation Journey within Teesside 1975–2005: Never Far from Home, Forever Striving
Peter Hadfield
17. My Probation Journey
Peter Warburton
18. From Stoke to Middlesbrough: A Probation Journey Through Industrial and Political Wastelands
Roger Statham
19. One Journey Across Four Decades of Probation: 1972–2010
Steve Collett
20. Seventies Probation
Sue Winfield
Index
Acknowledgements
Sincere and grateful thanks to all those in these pages who have managed to contribute to the writing of this book. It is the very difference of style and approach by each of them that has helped create a real evocation of the golden age of probation, which I trust will be sensed by all those that read it. Thanks also to the many other colleagues in the Association of Retired Chief Officers and Inspectors of Probation who in different circumstances might have added richly to the text. Over time, and during a long probation career, there have been many who have provided support, advice, and inspiration; there are reflections of them all in these pages and I remain indebted to every one.
Thanks to the Probation Chiefs Association for their work on probation’s legacy which provided the impetus for this book; and to Bryan Gibson for his patient counsel, in the process of putting it all together — the presentation of the book is a testimony to this.
Alan Bennett’s support and contribution simply could not have been anticipated at the outset. His backing for public sector probation and his concerns about market forces are beautifully expressed. I would like to record my very grateful thanks for his help.
Finally, thanks also to Wendy for her readiness to proof read endlessly, and to all my family for their patience when the blue mist descends, and I am lost in distraction.
Roger Statham
August 2014
Foreword
Probation belongs at a local level and profit should not come into it. The satisfactions of the Probation Service are not financial ones and nor should they be; they are the rewards of dedication and service. But because such values cannot be quantified this government prefers to believe they are out-of-date, and even that they do not exist. Profit is thought to be the only trustworthy motive and thus that probation can be farmed out to whatever agency thinks it can make it pay.
The remedying of misfortune, which is what probation is about has no more to do with profit than the remedying of disease.
Alan Bennett
The Editor and Contributors
After being a probation officer in Stoke-on-Trent in 1968, Roger Statham rose through the ranks to become chief probation officer for Teesside (formerly Cleveland). He has held various positions including chair of the Adventure Playgrounds Association in Stoke; the Local Review Committee at HM Prison Durham; the North-East Prison After-Care Society (NEPACS); the Social Policy Committee of the Association of Chief Officers of Probation and Continuing Care Review Panels of the National Health Service in Yorkshire. He was a member of the Parole Board from 1996 to 2000 and has written extensively about probation including as co-author of the two works mentioned at the end of his own story in Chapter 18 . He is Vice-President of NEPACS and joint secretary of the Association of Retired Chief Officers and Inspectors of Probation. This book contains contributions by 20 people with similar or associated backgrounds whose brief descriptions follow their own contributions.
The Author of the Foreword
Alan Bennett is one of the UK’s leading literary figures and after a lifetime of writing and performing has established himself as a national treasure. His acute insights into people and their interactions have provided a lasting legacy and he remains a trenchant social commentator. His mistrust of the market and belief in the value of public services provide a clarion call for all those who continue to believe that there is still such a thing as society.
Dedication
For Wendy, Jonathan, Sian, Katy, Ben, Rachel, Dom, Lucy, Alice and William.
To all probation staff past and present, who contributed to a public service often referred to as the jewel of the Criminal Justice System.
Introduction:
Probation — The Beginning or End?
Roger Statham
By the end of 2013 it was clear that, after decades of unpopularity, political forces were finally ensuring the end of the Probation Service in England and Wales. The notion of probation and the values it stood for seemed to resonate no longer with government and the public at large. Some of those, perhaps more appreciative of the wider significance that probation played in the dynamics of criminal justice, have fought a small rearguard action but to no avail. In 2014 as the new structure for probation emerges from the fettered imaginations of Ministry of Justice exercises, the political sop of retaining some kind of national probation service has a hollow ring given the parameters in which it is likely to operate. Sadly there does seem to be a lack of vision within Government and changes to probation do seem to be somewhat ad hoc and suggest problems lie ahead.
We should remember that the changes made by New Labour in 2001 when probation was effectively nationalised had already deprived it of an effective voice and shifted local accountability to national. It is axiomatic that both criminal and social justice essentially each have a local dimension; communities have different dynamics and in criminal justice terms sentencers do have to respond to local concerns. The ability of probation to be responsive in this way is slowly being lost, amid all the changes, and with it an important sphere of influence in the process of sentencing. It can only be hoped that the new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) can forge links with community organizations in order to provide the potential for local cohesion and long-term rehabilitation and reintegration that can help close the growing social divide in our modern world.
One bright note has been struck by the creation of a national Probation Institute which may yet help protect and sustain the values and skills nurtured in over a century of public service.
Amid the gathering gloom for those who believed in probation, there has been the sensing of the need to record something of its legacy. This aspiration has been reinforced by the realisation that much of the archive material in local services was being lost and indeed that there was little chance of much of it surviving; the Government apparently having little appetite for helping preserve probation’s legacy. If the tree of probation is to be felled then here is a chance to create some of the tree rings. These chapters provide a cross-section of probation history and in toto they give a unique insight into the last half of the 20th-century, as probation grew, developed and modified in response to social and political pressures. I think it fair to say that probation had a self-conscious aspiration to broker a position in society for the disadvantaged and particularly those that might be termed the criminal classes. Probation as a service has never lost its belief in rehabilitation and at its heart has remained person-centred.