Pubdate: Fri, 07 Aug 1998 Source: Guardian, The (UK) Contact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Author: Decca Aitkenhead GIVING PROBATION A NEW NAME IS FINE. AS LONG AS THEY DON'T CHANGE THINGS It was the mark of Michael Howard that when he was Home Secretary he spoke wistfully of persuading ex-soldiers to sign up as probation officers. It is, likewise, characteristic of this new Labour Government to have misgivings about the probation service, and to propose, as a solution, to re-brand it. Yesterday, a Home Office minister announced some suggestions for a new name, such as the Community Justice Enforcement Agency. Ever sensitive to charges of Labour spin-doctoring, he vehemently denied that this was just a cosmetic exercise. Oddly enough, on this occasion one might hope that this is exactly what it is. Official thinking behind the change of name is straightforward enough. Ministers believe the public regard probation officers as woolly liberals - "limp wristed folk in jumpers", as one penal expert put it to me yesterday - - who use taxpayers money to nanny criminals instead of punishing them. Probation orders and non-custodial penalties like community service are considered a joke, and offenders sentenced to them are routinely described by an indignant press as having got off "scot free". If we change the name, goes the logic, we will make the probation service sound tougher. The media will take it seriously. The public will be reassured. Courts will thus be more willing to hand out non-custodial sentences, the work of probation officers will be respected and thus more effective. Ergo, the credibility problem is solved. This sounds precisely like a cosmetic exercise, but a perfectly sensible one nonetheless. There were other proposals yesterday which will make fundamental changes to probation. The service is currently split into 54 different areas, each run by individual committees; there is no single agency speaking for the service, or directly accountable to the Home Secretary. Proposals to create a unified national agency with a director general, split into 42 divisions to correspond with police and Crown Prosecution Service areas, make some obvious sense. Similarly, plans to create closer relations between prison and probation staff should help rationalise what can be a muddled system. Absent from yesterday's report was any suggestion that the probation service be merged with the prison service. This omission was not for want of consideration; Jack Straw has taken the idea very seriously indeed, not least because this is what they do in his favourite real-life think tank, the United States. There, the Department of Correction deals with prison and probation - and one need only consider America's prison population to see what a uniquely unsuccessful arrangement that is. It is said in the City that there is no such thing as a merger, only take-overs. In this "merger", it is not difficult to see which service would have been taken over. Happily, the idea has been rejected. The very fact that it was taken seriously at all, however, gives grounds for some concern about the motives behind the other proposed changes, not least those for changing the name. The Government says it wants the probation service to sound tougher - but there is much evidence to suggest that it rather likes the idea of really making it much tougher, too. Jack Straw has made no secret of his impatience with the probation service. He has, for example, dismissed Harry Fletcher, the highly regarded spokesman for the National Association of Probation Officers, as a relic from the 70s. Last year he delivered a blunt and public command to the service to improve: "The probation service should not be following an agenda which is separate from the communities you serve," he warned. He is reported to lament that the service is not in uniform. In this Home Office report, particular attention is paid to the ageing legislation which still directs probation officers to "advise, assist and befriend" offenders. This is not what the courts expect of probation officers, the report tuts, and even less what the public expects; anyway, it's also anachronistic, and should be done away with. Like Clause Four, it might only be symbolic - but it's the wrong kind of symbol. It may indeed be only symbolic, and the probation service has spent the past 10 or 15 years getting "tougher". But symbols are important, and we should have one agency in the criminal justice system which does believe offenders can be rehabilitated, and by means other than draconian penalties. The public may believe that prison works, and that little else does - but after all they've heard from Tory home secretaries in the past two decades, this is hardly surprising. It is perhaps the task of a Labour Government to persuade them that this is not necessarily the case. There was a term used in the 70s to describe a harsher probation service, and it was "screws on wheels". If the Government wants probation officers to be more like screws on wheels, it should be asked to reveal the amazing services to crime prevention with which the prison system can be credited. Britain's prison population is growing faster than anywhere else in the EU; three quarters of young men released in 1994 were reconvicted within two years; half were put back behind bars. The Home Office seldom asks whether we are getting value for money from prisons. Prison very rarely works, but probation often can. To make it work, however, the service must employ people equipped to take on the chaotic and frequently disappointing task of keeping offenders from ending up back in court. This may well mean, among other things, assisting, befriending and advising. Obviously its job is to protect the public. That's the whole point of it. But protecting the public in the long term is best done by convincing offenders to stop breaking the law, something more easily achieved by a partial ally than just another hostile envoy of authority. If the Home Office wants to change the probation service in order to inspire public trust, and give the courts the confidence to use its services, then it's an excellent plan. If it wants to reassure the tabloid press, such spin-doctoring is entirely welcome. But if a new name means the start of a new service, this is a worry. One must hope that this is simply another great example of a new Labour triumph of style over substance. - ---