ABSTRACT

A Chief Probation Officer has observed, quite rightly, that ‘the probation service has always been fiercely proud of its values and has fought to protect them in an often hostile “law and order” climate’. ‘Curiously’, he goes on, ‘there is no probation service statement of values … ‘ (Mathieson 1992: 146). This absence has meant that in its more proud and protective moments the service has repeatedly fallen back on ‘the social work ideal’, for which the phrase ‘advise, assist and befriend’ was once a kind of moral shorthand. From 1988 onwards, in particular, the service stridently proclaimed this ideal, drawn from a generic1 understanding of ‘social work’, to ward off the threat of the government's ‘punishment in the community’ strategy (Home Office 1988; 1990a; 1990b; 1991; see also Allan 1990), which was to culminate (initially) in the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) 1991, the imposition of National Standards in eight areas of probation practice, and a Three Year Plan (Home Office 1992b).2 In their subsequent belief that ‘punishment in the community’ was perhaps no more than a ‘public relations shorthand for controlling offenders, diverting them from further crime and enabling them to become responsible citizens’ (Mathieson 1992: 147), the majority of probation managers seem to have concluded that generic values could, and indeed should, be reaffirmed within the new policy framework.