Probation in Scotland: Past, Present and Future

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Probation in ScotlandPast, Present and Future

• Dr Fergus McNeill
• University of Glasgow
• F.McNeill_at_sccjr.ac.uk

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Why remember?

• a historically tutored memory may help us to
  realise that the centralised, highly managerial,
  and potentially short-lived future into which the
  service is being drawn is not the only or the
  brightest future that it might have had
  (Nellis 2001, p35 - on the service south of the
  border).

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Five probation eras

• 1905-1931
• From punishment to supervision
• 1931-1968
• From supervision to treatment
• 1969-1991
• From treatment to welfare
• 1991-1997
• From welfare to responsibility
• 1998-onwards
• From responsibility to risk

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1905-1931 From punishment to supervision?

• Linked to public concern about the excessive use
  of custody for fine-defaulters
• in view of the admittedly demoralising influence
  of imprisonment, the serious consideration of all
  was demanded concerning the welfare of the
  community (City of Glasgow 1955, p9).
• 43,000 people were received into prison for fine
  default in 1904 (16,000 from Glasgow alone) at
  the rate of 800 per week
• The comparable national figure in 2004-5 was
  6,098

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The Glasgow probation trial

• Bailie John Bruce Murray
• Travels in the USA
• Chief Constable appoints 6 plain clothes
  Detective Sergeants and 3 women officers
• To receive instruction from magistrates in
  suitable cases
• To make enquiries into the offenders
  circumstances and offences
• To observe and supervise the offender
• By 1919, there were 11 Police-probation officers
  and 5 women officers
• Diversion then of a sort, but

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Probation and the policing of family life

• According to one probation officer in 1925, It
  often happens that a child is put on probation
  and the probation officer has to shoulder the
  whole family There is frequently a reacting
  benefit to the other members of the household and
  a higher sense of responsibility introduced into
  the home. It is frequently found that there is a
  laxity of parental control in the home and the
  visits of the probation officer tend to
  strengthen the control (Mahood 1995, p59-60).

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Probation and the policing of family life

• Probation officers and rescuing children from
  vicious homes
• Mary Hill, the first female probation officer
  claimed that a good probation officer is the
  best sort of person to look after the child who
  has gone wrong, not the parents who might make
  light of the offense It was acknowledged that
  when the probation system broke down, which was
  often the case, blame lay on the continued
  failure of parents. In these cases a residential
  school was the best place to send on probation
  children from vicious homes (Mahood 1995,
  p68-9).

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Probation and the birch

• Whipping should also be ordered as an additional
  penalty in cases of serious misbehaviour or
  repeated convictions
• (Chief Constable of Edinburgh, 1925)

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Probation and the birch

• A boy gets into trouble because he has not
  learnt to adapt himself to the life of the
  community. What is needed is that he should be
  re-educated, and the probation system was devised
  for this purpose. A brief experience of pain
  cannot alter a boys point of view or teach him
  how to direct his energy or control his impulses.
  All it can do, and unfortunately often does, is
  to make the boy a swank and prove to his
  friends that he is tough. Vanity makes him
  repeat his offence (Winifred Elkin, Howard
  League for Penal Reform, Glasgow Herald, 28th
  October, 1937).
• Birching was formally abolished in the Criminal
  Justice Act 1948, section 2, which applied in
  Scotland as well as elsewhere in the UK.

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1931-1968From supervision to treatment?

• The prohibition of police-probation in the 1931
  Act
• The effects of the war
• Feminisation
• A service for juveniles?
• Practice approaches
• The Boys Brigade lobby versus scientific
  social casework

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1969-1991From treatment to welfare?

• Kilbrandon report (1964)
• 1970s Neglect of CJSW
• The sick man of the criminal justice system
• Hibernation during Nothing works?
• 1980s Pressure for change
• Community service innovation
• Prison overcrowding, riots and suicides

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1991-1997From welfare to responsibility?

• The National Standards and 100 funding
• The responsibility model
• the responsibility model recognises both that
  offenders make active choices in their behaviour
  and that choice is always situated within a
  persons social and personal context in the
  supplement to the Standards (SWSG 1991b) we find
  a practice model premised on the view that,
  through social work intervention which promotes
  individual responsibility for behaviour together
  with social responsibility for alleviating
  adverse circumstance, offending will be
  discouraged (Paterson and Tombs, 1998, p9)
• Reducing use of custody by providing credible
  (effective) alternatives

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1998 onwardsFrom responsibility to risk

• New post-release supervision responsibilities
  (Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings Act, 1991)
• A Commitment to Protect (1997)
• The Steven Leisk case (1997)
• Cosgrove, MacLean, the Criminal Justice Act 2003
• The RMA and MAPPA
• The Colyn Evans case (2005)

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The use of probation in Scotland
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No grounds for complacency
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No grounds for complacency

• Houchin (2005)
• Half of the prisoner population give home
  addresses in just 155 of the 1222 local
  government wards in Scotland
• The overall imprisonment rate for men in Scotland
  is 237 per 100,000 for men from the 27 most
  deprived wards the rate is 953 per 100,000
• Of the 53 wards most represented in the prison
  population, 35 are in Glasgow, 8 in Edinburgh, 3
  in Aberdeen and 2 in Dundee. Royston is the
  worst ward in Scotland in terms of imprisonment
  rates
• About one in 9 young men form our most deprived
  communities will spend time in prison before they
  are 23

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Recent developments

• Management of Offenders Act 2005
• Community Justice Authorities
• National Advisory Body
• National Strategy for Offender Management
• 2007 election and SNP minority government
• Public not private
• Detain the dangerous, treat the troubled
• Tackle the 3 ds drink, drugs and deprivation
• Penal reductionism and rehabilitation are back!
• Devolution, punitiveness, trust and bipartisan
  politics?
• Full circle?

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The past and the future

• The reasons why Scotland first needed probation
  endure
• The prison population is too high and that harms
  all of us offenders, victims and communities
• The current reforms need penal reductionism (not
  penal expansionism) to be at their heart
• While inequality persists and is implicated in
  criminality and criminalisation, there exists a
  duty to assist offenders in their rehabilitation,
  but
• Rehabilitation in and of itself is neither
  morally nor politically sufficient the
  commitment must be to restoration for offenders,
  victims and communities this means the
  provision of real opportunities for offenders to
  make good to society and the commitment of
  society to make good to offenders
• Making good, as a reciprocal process between
  offenders and society, is what probation (at
  its best) has stood for and should continue to
  stand for.

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References

• For more details of the history of probation in
  Scotland, of current developments and of criminal
  justice social works possible futures, see
• McNeill, F. and Whyte, B. (2007) Reducing
  Reoffending Social Work and Community Justice in
  Scotland. Cullompton Willan.