Speaking with one voice? Probation as a profession and One HMPPS

In August 2022, the Ministry of Justice announced further changes to the configuration of prison and probation services under the banner of One HMPPS. All probation services have been brought under the ambit of HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPSS) since the renationalisation of services in June 2021, following the row back on Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. This has involved significant upheaval for staff and services, with the added burden of this taking place in the unprecedented context of the pandemic. One may be forgiven for thinking that the dust would be allowed to settle before further reforms are enacted. The official announcement regarding the scope and ambition of One HMPPS referred to changes to the leadership structure of HMPPS, including the appointment of a Chief Executive Officer and a Director General, and the integration of prison and probation leadership at this senior level. However, some are sceptical about whether integration will stop there. The Probation Institute issued a strongly worded statement expressing concerns about the direction of travel amid fears that probation services would be subsumed within a larger prison system (Probation Institute, 2022). Past readers of the journal will find echoes with some of the concerns raised at the time of the establishment of the National Offender Management Service (NOMs) (see e.g. Robinson and Burnett, 2007). One of the issues raised by the Probation Institute is the place of the probation professional within HMPPS and indeed within the wider civil service and the capacity of professionals to articulate their voices and to be heard within these wider structures. The issue of the professional voice of probation has also come to the fore in criticisms of recent changes to the Parole Board rules made by Justice Secretary Dominic Raab following the publication of the government’s Root and Branch Review of the Parole System (MoJ, 2022). These include a new test regarding the transfer of indeterminate prisoners to open prison conditions; the introduction of public parole hearings and changes to recommendations made by HMPPS report writers to the Parole Board. This means that probation staff are no longer allowed to provide recommendations or views on a prisoner’s suitability for release or transfer to open conditions in the reports that they provide to the Parole Board. Editorial The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice