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Doing Probation work: Identity in a criminal justice occupation

Doing Probation work: Identity in a criminal justice occupation. Rob C. Mawby and Anne Worrall. Doing probation work. ‘Doing probation work’ is demanding physically, mentally and emotionally How do probation workers and managers make sense of these demands?

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Doing Probation work: Identity in a criminal justice occupation

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  1. Doing Probation work: Identity in a criminal justice occupation Rob C. Mawby and Anne Worrall

  2. Doing probation work • ‘Doing probation work’ is demanding physically, mentally and emotionally • How do probation workers and managers make sense of these demands? • Under what conditions do they feel they do their best – and worst – work? • What sustains/ rewards and what debilitates?

  3. The study • ESRC funded, 20 months, 2010-2011 • Supported by Probation Chiefs Association • Small scale and reflective • 60 interviews completed: • 26 current PSOs, POs, SPOs (PWs) • 10 Trainee Probation Officers (TPOs) • 16 Chief Officer Grades (COs) • 8 former & retired probation workers (FPWs) • North and South-East England locations

  4. What it was not • Evaluation of the effectiveness of probation work in general or programmes in particular • Observation of what probation officers do (as opposed to what they say they do)

  5. The square of probation work Source: Mawby and Worrall (2013) Doing Probation Work, London: Routledge

  6. Backgrounds and motivations • Lifers • Peter – public school educated with a strong sense of duty and a structural understanding of society • Second careerists • Bill – a former merchant seaman with transferable skills and a strong desire to ‘make a difference’ at a personal level • Offender managers • Gemma – with a degree in law and criminology and a strong sense of victim empathy

  7. Time and place • Daily routines • Tyranny of the computer • Typical days • Buildings – swamps, crocodiles and barricades • Home visits • Different places • Prisons • Approved premises • Unpaid work

  8. Changing relationships • Courts - from federation to co-ordination • Prisons - from co-operation to merger • Police - from mutually suspicious communication to federation • Media - (mis)perceptions and (mis)representations

  9. Responses to turbulent conditions

  10. Diversity and different voices • Religion • Union • Ethnic diversity • Feminisation

  11. Cultures, nostalgia and the future • Features of cultures • Motivations, artefacts, job satisfactions, meanings and (re)presentations • Nostalgia and the narrative of decline • Not hankering after a golden age but making sense of the present • Search for stability, predictability and reassurance at times when one’s own values are being challenged by change • Implications for offender management

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