Editorial: A Decade of Reflection (2013)

I have had the privilege of being the joint editor of this journal, first with the late Brian Williams and then Jean Hine since its inception in 2002. I feel proud therefore to be writing this editorial on the completion of the tenth volume of this journal. We were never quite sure that we would get this far and, at the same time, achieve and maintain the quality and diversity of contributions which we have managed. We have done this without a commercial publisher but with the goodwill and support of academic colleagues from De Montfort and Sheffield Hallam, administrative excellence in getting the journal from conception to published form from successive Hallam Centre for Community Justice Administrators, and the good advice and counsel of our Advisory Board. It is though somewhat unnerving to be promoting a journal committed to exploring the positive contribution of community justice for over a decade when one of its key constituents, the probation service, has suffered unprecedented levels of attack, and now stands on the verge of extinction or at least severe constriction in the face of the current, seemingly ideological, assault by the current government. Any review of the last 10 years would have to note that probation itself was not entirely lacking in responsibility for what happened to it when the National Probation Service was created in 2001. The loss of the voice of probation in the demise of ACOP, the simultaneous retirement of 50% of its leadership, the increasing difficulty the trade union at NAPO faced in remaining at the decision-making table, and the willingness of the new probation leadership to passively accept a series of managerialist and target-driven outputs left it vulnerable to attack. Practitioners became more office-bound and struggled to maintain their historic connections with local communities. The centre usurped the bottom-up developments of 'what works' to impose a programme of CBT delivery which was ill-conceived in its scope and execution, and threw the champagne out with the cork in allowing some of the traditional essence of probation--case management, relationships, continuity of care, pro-social modelling--to be lost in the pursuit of bureaucratic targets such as breach statistics, risk assessment completions and programme completions. This distorted organisational priorities, as all target-driven reforms have a tendency to do (and Payment by Results is no less a target-based mechanism with all the likelihood of 'gaming the system') and most disturbingly threatened the very essence of what probation is about. It is therefore somewhat surprising, though gratifying, that the resilience of probation practitioners has remained and its voice has been re-kindled to articulate a coherent, evidence-based and robust defence of probation against the precepts suggested in the government paper 'Transforming Rehabilitation'. NAPO has continued, often as a lone voice, throughout the decade with a robust media presence which has produced challenging and thought-provoking analyses of practice. The setting up of the Probation Chiefs Association (PCA) and its work alongside the Probation Association (PA) has begun to produce a more coherent and robust defence of probation, though whether it is too little too late, only the outcomes emerging from government in May 2013 on the future arrangements for the delivery of community sentences will ultimately answer that question. The promotion of a probation register and Probation Institute by the PCA may act to defend probation as an occupation and we will watch this development with interest. In the last few years the growth of social media has produced an immediacy to this strongly articulated defence of probation practice drawing on the insights of academic, researcher, practitioner and manager contributions, allowing an instant replay of thoughts through linking newspaper and academic articles, extensive blogging, campaigns, reports by think tanks and Penal lobby groups and just the reflective exchange of ideas. …