Probation Values for the 1990s

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Abstract
The task of re‐assessing probation values assumed a new urgency when even its own Chief Inspector (Chief Inspector of Probation 1994, p. 4) complained that the probation service (in 1993) was still ‘clinging to its welfare ethic and had not fully integrated the notion of punishment in the community into its repertoire’. But the way forward is not easy. Those who seek to re‐affirm social work values, (to which welfare is supposed to be central), against the punitive inclinations of the Home Office, do so without regard to the limitations which the new managerial culture in the service ‐ benevolent corporatism ‐ imposes on the expression of personal care and concern. The ‘social work’ school have also, repeatedly and perversely, failed to draw on normative debates within criminology which have prim a facie relevance to the future of the probation service. It will be argued here that a more criminologically sophisticated value‐base, built around the linked notions of anti‐custodialism, restorative justice and community safety will serve the probation service better than a simple restatement of ‘the welfare ethic’, and, by developing its role as a community justice agency, provide it with a means of resisting a wholly punitive identity.

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