Introduction

This book aims to provide analyses, descriptions, and suggestions for what might constitute the best of probation practice within the realities of an English & Welsh Probation Service, now essentially organised as part of a centrally controlled and managed civil service. As a new structure emerges from the ruins of the failed Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, the future organisation for probation practice will reflect regional structures of management control and accountability including the commissioning of a range of interventions from the private and voluntary and community sector, ultimately for direct delivery to individuals at the local level. Notwithstanding the momentous political and policy failures of Transforming Rehabilitation, probation staff across the public and private providers, often in partnership with the voluntary and community sector, have continued to deliver innovative and effective supervision to and with individuals in trouble. In this book, the authors of the individual chapters (a paring of a practitioner with an academic) have been asked to reflect upon the setting within which they work and/or research and to identify what is currently good and what needs to be developed. The authors have been required to work to a specific framework for their analysis and prescriptions. By locating chapters in practice settings rather than individual issues or supervisee groups, the book will provide a wide-ranging overview of current probation practice. In this introductory chapter, the approach is outlined in greater detail, providing the overall conceptual framework provided for authors. This draws substantively but not exclusively on three recent publications – Delivering Rehabilitation (Burke and Collett 2015), Reimagining Rehabilitation (Burke, Collett and McNeill 2019) and Pervasive Punishment (McNeill 2019). It is hoped that this approach will provide coherence to the overall book and a unifying vision for the future of probation practice.