Th HowardJournal Val 31 No 4. Nov 92 ISSN 0265-5527

Caring Professionals or Street-Level Bureaucrats? The Case of Probation

Officers’ Work With Prisoners

BRIAN WILLIAMS Lecturer in Social Work (Probation), University o f Sheffield and

Probation O f f e r , South Yorkshire Probation Service

Abstract: Drawing upon recent consumer research, this article examines probation offuers’ work with prisoners in the light of the notion of ‘street-level bureaucracy’, andfinds that many of the policies and practices of the probation service seem designed to prevent a client-centred, personal approach. In fact, there is some dissatisfation with the bureaucratic nature of the service given by probation officers, and prisoners may be declining to become involved with the probation service because of this. Some modest changes in practice are suggested, in view of the recommendations of the Woolf Report and the likely changes resulting from it.

It is notoriously difficult to assess levels of ‘satisfaction’ with social work, but several studies note that clients tend to dwell on the level and quality of emotional support given by social workers rather than the degree of material change achieved (Cohen 1971; Fisher 1983; Fisher et al. 1984; Williams 1991). In the case of through-care work with prisoners, it seems that this message is not always heard. The bureaucratic needs of the probation service may in practice override prisoners’ expressed wish to receive a personal service. There are, of course, many prisoners who want no involvement with the probation service, or become involved with its staff only reluctantly (see Coker and Martin 1985)’ and what follows refers mainly not to their perspectives, but to the views of those who do decide to become involved with field or prison-based probation officers.

Until quite recently, prison officers’ role in through-care was ignored in the literature, and much that has been written about social work in prisons (SWIP) or shared through-care work has been preoccupied with administrative and prison management concerns (for example, Evans et al. 1988; Jepson and Elliott 1985, 1986; McDougall 1984; Nash 1988). This, and many of the practices of probation officers, will need to change in response to the Woolf Report (1991), the legislative responses to it and the National Standards on through-care.

Priestley (1972) has pointed out the difficulties faced by prison-based probation officers in dealing with what he called the ‘role strain’ inherent in their position: it is well-nigh impossible for them to remain credible with prisoners. They have to try to satisfy two very different managers, in the prison and probation services which have fundamentally contradictory

263

aims. It becomes harder still for prison probation officers to convince prisoners that their role is basically a caring one, when some of their daily work tends to identify them with the custodial function of the prison, and when they carry keys. Priestley concluded that the prison probation officer is typically viewed as ‘a rather impotent acolyte of the system they [the prisoners] despise’ (p. 225), and that many accept co-option by the prison system as a way of coping with ‘sole stain’:

They appear to be becoming more involved with running the institution than with meeting the needs of prisoners either collectively or individually. (p. 232)

A passing reference in an ex-prisoner’s autobiography confirms this:

there is the odd guy who will go to the welfare oflicer, but most guys have no confidence in him and see him as a screw without a uniform. (Boyle 1984, p. 137)

The Notion of Street-Level Bureaucracy

It helps to make sense of the behaviour of probation officers working with prisoners, if one refers to the sociological literature on ‘street-level bureaucracy’. This initially described welfare administrators in North America (Merton 1940; Hughes 1958, 1963; Prottas 1978) and was subsequently applied to social work there (Lipsky 1980) and in the UK (Howe 1986).

Merton (1940) argued that bureaucrats were trained to develop ‘blind spots’ which made it possible to deal impartially and impersonally with matters which were ‘of great personal significance to the client’ (pp. 562, 566). Developing this theme, Hughes (1958) noted that there was a contradiction, in a bureaucracy, between satisfying clients and efficient working. As he put it:

the workers deal routinely with what are emergencies to the people who receive their services. This is a source of chronic tension between the two. For the person with the crisis feels that the other is trying to belittle his trouble; he does not take it seriously enough. His very competencc. comes from having dealt with a thousand cases of what the client likes to consider his unique trouble. The worker thinks he knows from long experience that people exaggerate their troubles. He therefore builds up devices to protect himself, to stall people OK. (p. 54) In what follows, it will be argued that this process occurs in probation officers’ work with prisoners. Other writers have considered the implica- tions of Merton’s and Hughes’s studies for social work agencies. Lipsky ( 1980) noted that street-level bureaucrats may have a considerable degree of discretion, and that their individual, minor decisions may effectively create agency policy as it were on the hoof: as he put it: ‘when taken in concert, their individual actions add up to agency behaviour’ (p. 13). This, too, is an important insight when considering the work of prison and field probation officers. The lack of contact with many imprisoned clients seems to occur in this way: there is no need for a policy when pressure of work leads to low priority being given to this part of field probation officers’ jobs.

264

Lipsky also went on to develop the notion that public service workers might need to ‘stall people off by developing informal work-processing strategies, and that such strategies might be tolerated even though they were not in accordance with formally stated policies. He suggested that they:

are part of the informal agency structure that may be necessary to maintain the organisation, even though the procedures may be contrary to agency policy, (P. 19) This makes it easier to understand the gap between many probation services’ stated policies on the need for systematic through-care and their apparent tolerance of individual officers’ widespread inability or un- willingness to comply with such policies - an area which is likely to be exposed to increased scrutiny after the implementation of national standards on through-care, even if these are less prescriptive than those on the supervision of probation orders.

Applying the theory to the British scene, Howe (1986) also introduced the notion of ‘dirty work’, the idea that lower status client groups tend to be served by lower status workers, and that:

inequalities in the value placed on the work to be done act as a measure by which rising occupations might gauge what is worth pursuing and what is best left for others to do. (p. 30)

It may be that this offers a partial explanation of prison-based probation officers’ concern in recent years to shed unwanted ‘welfare’ work with prisoners and get prison officers to take it on, so that they can ‘hand over to other people some of the less skilled tasks which is [sic] loosely called welfare work’ (NAP0 1987, p. 6) and concentrate on training, manage- ment functions and groupwork with prisoners.

But Howe’s point is also relevant when we come to consider the neglect of through-care work by generic field officers: while they may not regard prisoners as lower-status clients, their Services may place less stress on monitoring this area of their work, or monitor it only by counting the number of contacts with clients, giving letters equal status to visits. If the agency is unlikely to be held accountable, it tends to supervise staff less rigorously and allow greater discretion about levels of involvement with some types of case: Howe ( 1 986) found that:

Discretion, particularly over the methods used, was greatest in situations where the outcome was not critically the concern of the agency or where matters, as currently understood, were not likely to present the organisation with too much uncertainty in terms of its responsibilities. (p. 126)

Here Howe is making a distinction between statutory and non-statutory cases, and the same applies to the strictly-supervised cases of parolees and lifers as against other prisoners, with whom workers are allowed much greater discretion. Where probation officers are under pressure due to high caseloads, this situation may combine with financial stringency to make it difficult to justify, or to get around to making, visits to far-flung prisons. Supervision of officers will be more stringent, however, where

265

high-risk offenders and those eligible for parole are concerned - although they may not begin to be seen regularly until after their first parole report has been completed.

Street-Level Bureaucracy in Action

In practice, these different manifestations of street-level bureaucracy may combine, They can each have an adverse impact on the service provided by probation officers, and together they can greatly reduce its value to prisoners.

Prisoners probably expect an insensitive approach, and may be agreeably surprised when they are treated with respect:

The lifers were, on the whole, pleasantly surprised to find their supervising officers were not as bureaucratic, or ocficious, as their long experience of institutions had led them to expect. (Coker and Martin 1985, p. 187)

But the notion that workers may develop ‘blind spots’ and routine ways of treating clients’ crises will be recognisable to many who work in this field. One aspect of this is the simple failure to probe for unmet needs. Prisoners are not generally very comfortable about the implications of needing help from outsiders, and will normally seek it from probation officers only when there is a relationship of some trust between them. There is some evidence that this kind of relationship develops by clients testing out probation officers’ willingness to assist with simple, practical tasks, and that trust can build up in this way (Williams 1991). What better way to avoid additional work, than to discourage the formation of such trust?

In a comparison which would horrify many probation oficers, one man illustrated this:

It’s the same as, I dunno, if I was on the out, the Social Security gaffs. They will give something in the end, providing you ask for it. But if you don’t know what you’re entitled to it, you can’t ask. And that’s what you seem to get off the probation office, you know. They tell you absolutely nothing, and then tell you after the event, you should have come to us, we could have done something. (quoted in Williams 1990, p. 229)

The issue of information is central: prisoners frequently complain that they are not told what services probation officers can provide (McWilliams and Davies 1972; Corden et al. 1978, 1980; Hardwick 1987, p. 78; Casale 1989, p. 58; Casale and Plotnikoff 1990, p. 41; Williams 1991, pp. l o w ) , or how the parole system works (Morris and Beverly 1975, pp. 83-6; Coker and Martin 1985, p. 181; Williams 1991, p. 107), and even basic matters like financial hardship and families’ entitlement to assistance with the cost of visits are often not discussed by probation officers, which is likely to lead to further difficulties (Davis 1992, p. 81). It seems that probation officers frequently assume that their new clients know what to expect of them, or otherwise that they neglect to provide this information as another workload-limitation strategy.

This is not to suggest that all prisoners are as discontented with the probation service as the informant quoted above: many, indeed, speak of

266

probation officers as friends or as very helpful professionals. But it appears that bureaucratic ways of working are very common and very off-putting. Several studies have found, however, that at least some prisoners take seriously the notion of probation officers as befrienders. Some actually said that their officer was ‘more a friend than a probation officer’ (Oxfordshire Probation Service 1990, p. 1 I ) , that ‘I respect him a lot, he is more of a friend’ (Coker and Martin 1985, p. 191), or that ‘a probation officer outside shouldn’t be a probation officer, he should be classed as a friend’ (Williams 1990, p. 229). Interestingly, quite a few long-term prisoners seem to choose to maintain contact with former probation officers on a friendly basis, and they do not regard these as official contacts with the probation service (Williams 1990, p. 230). This is unfortunate, when the original job description of probation officers exhorted them to ‘advise, assist and befriend’: it is almost as if the adoption of the befriending role is becoming somewhat furtive in work with prisoners.

Overall, probation officers viewed the relationship primarily as functional, but with personal features, whereas most lifers saw it as personal with functional aspects and they invested it with individuality and privacy. (p. 195)

It seems that an important difference in probation officers’ and prisoners’ understandings of the nature of the relationship is identified in these studies, and that more explicit negotiation may be needed by officers on first meeting new clients in prison. As it is, unrealistic expectations may not be tackled, and potentially helpful relationships may be soured.

Surprisingly, little has been written about what kind of professional relationship is appropriate for probation officers working with prisoners. According to Coker and Martin:

The dominating position of the notion of ‘relationship’ in the ideology of social work has its genesis in psycho-analysis and the desire to professionalise social work. Its survival lies in its popularity with social workers rather than its proven utility to the clientele of the social work profession. This is not to deny the importance of relationships, but merely to raise a critical question about their primacy. (p. 176)

This view was congenial to the present writer on first reading: there was doubtless too much preciousness and sentimentality about the social work relationship at one time. But prisoners insist on introducing the notion of relationships when asked what they want from probation officers (Williams 1990, pp. 245-59; Haines 1990, pp. 31-3). To quote only one (typical, but particularly articulate) interview subject:

In my opinion the main responsibility of the P O is to encourage the client to self- sufficiency, thus serving the best interests of both client and society. Personally I will discuss my initial problems such as housing and employment and ifa good bond isformed I would be willing to discuss future problems which the PO could help with. (quoted in Williams 1990, p. 249, italics added)

Despite the widely-held view that pre-release contact does nothing to increase the levels of take-up of voluntary after-care, it may well be that

Coker and Martin (1985) in their study of lifers, noted that:

26 7

the quality and potency ofwork undertaken with prisoners is improved by forming a relationship with clients while they are in custody. As one study put it:

After-care, i t is suggested, is a misnomer which has been literally interpreted and which has done far more harm than good. To the offender, any would-be helper who arrives on the scene after sentence is all over, arrives at precisely the time when he wants help least. (Monger el al. 1981, preface)

Unfortunately, despite the change of name to through-care soon after this was written, the legacy of ‘after-care’ remains powerful.

‘Rhetorical offers of help’ are another type of ‘blind spot’. Several studies note that prisoners frequently complain of unkept promises by field probation officers (Kingston 1979, p. 40; Williams 1990, pp. 226-9) and by prison-based probation officers (Shaw 1974, p. 52; Williams 1990, pp. 332-6), while others have noted that many prisoners would like more visits from field probation officers than they receive in practice (Bottomley and Liebling 1989, p. 12). The most frequent kind of unkept promise was an expressed intention to visit, which never came to anything:

I just kept getting letters from people saying that they were now my probation otlicer, and that they’d hope to see me soon. Nobody ever did, but I had five people said that they were. (quoted in Williams 1990, p. 226)

It also seems to be quite common for prisoners to be told that they will be seen by a probation officer within a certain period of their reception, and for these meetings to be delayed or not to take place at all (Oxfordshire Probation Service 1990; Casale 1989, p. 72). Prisoners seem to become quite cynical about these rhetorical offers of help, and about the apologies with which many probation officers’ letters to prisoners begin. There seems often to be a gap between probation officers’ intention and their performance, and the impression left with clients is one of indifference, even cynicism.

Ex-prisoners have also complained of what they saw as half-hearted offers of help upon release, which they did not feel inclined to take very seriously (Boyle 1984; Peckham 1985), and this may be another ‘blind

Prisoners, especially those serving long sentences, are probably more likely to remember and to dwell upon such failures to carry out professional commitments than are clients at liberty in the community. From the officers’ point of view, rhetorical offers of help in letters to prisoners are probably often a response to pressure of work, and many probation officers fail to monitor their own performance in respect of such things as visits to prisoners, which are easily postponed and can in practice be postponed repeatedly until the need for them has passed. It also appears that in some probation services, monitoring of officers’ work concentrates on whether purposeful work with prisoners is planned, without much emphasis on monitoring whether such plans are ever carried out: plans can always be amended in subsequent case records in the light of hindsight.

spot’.

268

Letters which are impersonal (or even standardised, as happens in some areas) are another source of complaint about bureaucratised ways of working. Some prisoners are convinced that they get the same letter as their field officer’s clients in other prisons: asone said: Nobody’s important enough. He’s obviously got too many people on his books. It’s just a case of every month or so, somebody gives him a list and he writes out a long load of letters to these people, wishing ’em all well, I’ll be in touch, all the rest of that sort of nonsense. (quoted in Williams 1990, p. 199)

A quarter of the prisoners interviewed for this study complained in one way or another about the letters they received from field probation officers.

Prisoners, particularly those serving long sentences, often feel that they are treated bureaucratically when a new officer first visits. Rather than allowing a natural conversation to develop, some field probation officers seem to take literally the official encouragement to work in an offence- centred way, and dive straight into discussion of the client’s offences - often very sensitive material for discussion on an open visit. It may be that this is done in an attempt to set the parameters of a relationship with a new client, but it is experienced by some prisoners as insensitive:

it’s annoying having someone coming up to you and saying, well, why did you do this? Why did you do that? Not being funny, I. . . they’ve got the records there, they can read the records, I mean I try and forget this now I’m in here. Every time I get a new probation officer I’ve got to repeat myself all over again and start remembering what I done and it, that to me, really, y’know I detest it. (quoted in Williams 1990, p. 232) One wonders whether field officers are unconsciously avoiding excessive demands from clients by this history-taking ritual: a first visit involving such an irksome discussion may make prisoners unlikely to solicit further contact in some cases. Or it may be done to make clear the officer’s objectivity and professionalism in the face of distasteful offences. This is not to suggest that probation officers should not engage, sometimes in considerable detail, in discussion of prisoners’ offending behaviour, but to question the appropriateness of attempting to do so within a few minutes of first meeting the client. Another possible explanation is offered by research into lifers’ views on probation supervision after release: The researcher’s impression of the probation officers was that they were well meaning and wanted to help the lifers’ resettlement, but their training and the traditions of social work predisposed them to categorise people as cases and partially inhibited a more relevant response to the lifer’s desire for dignified independence and recognition of his capacity for self-control. (Coker and Martin 1985, p. 235) A similar area of concern for prisoners is the sudden call-up, out of the blue, to see a probation officer about a parole or other report. This kind of contact is widely seen as occurring only in the context of bureaucratic demands, and is unlikely to be perceived as arising from concern about the client as an individual. It is particularly unfortunate that about a third of probation services restrict officers’ voluntary contact with prisoners

269

(Williams 1990, p. 172): in many of these areas, the restrictions include prohibiting visits to prisoners before they first become eligible for parole, making it inevitable that the first probation visit received by these prisoners will be in connection with a report. Pressure of work makes it likely that prison-based probation officers will also have to concentrate upon seeing men about reports required for various purposes by the prison. This is likely to reinforce the common view that these officers are inextricably part of the prison bureaucracy (Priestley 1972).

Any probation officer’s got a lot of ground to gain with me. Anybody, because on my last sentence [. . .] no probation officer came near me until I was going up for parole. No outside probation officer came to me until I’d got parole, and no inside probation officer called me up unless they wanted to do a review. And I used to say to them, what are you calling me up here for? I don’t know you: how can you do a report on me? (Quoted in Williams 1990, p. 334)

The danger is that probation officers are seen as treating important landmarks in prisoners’ lives as routine events, and thereby devaluing the client as an individual. If they feel that they are treated bureaucratically, prisoners are unlikely to build up any trust in prison- or field-based probation officers.

Similarly, the probation service may overlook the needs of prisoners in its quest for efficiency. Some areas have reorganised through-care provision so that it is provided by specialist teams, and this may indeed improve efficiency - but it has been suggested that it also removes many field probation officers from contact with prisons and prisoners, when they should perhaps be increasingly ‘getting embroiled with prisons’ (Liebling 1989).

But the allocation system in at least one county’s probation through- care team is organised on a geographical basis, so that almost every time a prisoner is moved, a new through-care officer is allocated. This obviously makes it difficult for a continuous relationship to build up between officer and client, and some other criterion of efficiency is clearly being given priority. In a service where most probation officers already change jobs every two or three years, this makes sustained work very difficult. Lifers are especially likely to have to build relationships with a number of probation officers, two or more being the norm (Coker and Martin 1985, p. 177). Long-term prisoners and those whose behaviour or attitude are troublesome in the eyes of the prison service in particular suffer from this problem, although they are arguably most in need of a constant figure. In a few areas, lifers remain with the officer responsible for them even if s/he moves to other duties, and this is warmly welcomed by some prisoners at least (Williams 1990, p. 235). In one county, chief officers even continue to hold lifer cases, having retained them on promotion.

As one prisoner put it:

Good Practice It seems that some of the administrative mechanisms which have been developed to deal with increasing through-care caseloads are not well

2 70

designed from the point of view of encouraging the befriending role of probation officers. Some of the problems outlined above could be avoided by the use of alternative administrative methods.

For example, the well-established technique of contract-setting might avoid some of the misunderstandings between probation officers and their prisoner clients. This was first suggested a good many years ago (Kingston 1979) and the idea seems just as valid today. Prisoners do need to know something about the purposes of probation involvement, and in some areas a leaflet is used. They also appreciate some information about the officer’s ways ofworking, and how often slhe is likely to write, visit the prisoner, and contact the family or others outside. From the consumer research, it seems that such contracts are not made explicitly enough at present .

Probation officers might do well to sharpen up their techniques in this area of work before formal contracts are imposed on them: the thrust of the Woolf Report (1991) is towards greater ‘consistency of treatment’ in the interests ofjustice and of treating prisoners with respect (paras. 1.185, 14.39), and the recommendation that all prisoners serving over twelve months have both a contract and a sentence plan is likely to be implemented in the near future.

The involvement of prison officers in shared welfare work is clearly increasing, and the forthcoming legislation in response to Woolf is likely to accelerate this. The desire among governors to enhance the role of prison officers is not new, but it has been greatly encouraged by the Woolf Report (1991, paras. 1.180-182) and by the ‘Better Jobs Initiative’ which anticipates proposals in the White Paper (Home Office 1991).

As Roger Shaw (1984) pointed out long ago, successful shared work depends upon the development of trust between prison and probation officers, and one way to build this up is through joint training which takes place outside the prison. Another is the very experience of working together (pp. 5-6). The Criminal Justice Consultative Council and its local counterparts will provide more opportunities for such consultation. The recent development of prison-based bail information schemes has added to the momentum in this respect, and Woolf also commends this development, which has now been selected for additional Home Office funding, and the white paper proposes national coverage as funds permit. It also advocates the extension of personal officer schemes (Woolf Report 1991, para. 10.94; HomeOffice 1991; Williams 1992).Asignificantminority of the prisoners themselves, however, are at best ambivalent about discuss- ing personal matters with prison officers, and existing schemes seem to take little account of this (Jepson and Elliott 1985, p. 65; Shaw 1974, pp. 47-8; Williams 1991, pp. 57-8). It is difficult to see how shared working can go much further without this problem being addressed, and there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that black prisoners in particular are less likely to seek help with personal problems if their applications are screened by uniformed staff - although more research is needed to establish the facts (Williams 1991, p. 57).

The evidence is that in their dealings with probation officers, prisoners

27 1

value honesty, experience and understanding, reliability, courtesy and a relationship which makes thr service given feel personal (Williams 1991; see also Coker and Martin 1985, pp. 188, 234). This is clearly very different from the present practice of through-care. Honesty by probation officers involves making a clear contract with clients in prison, and for inexperienced staff this might need to encompass an acknowledgement of their lack of knowledge about the prison system (although in the long term this will improve, at least to some extent, as CCETSW Paper 30 is implemented by social work courses which train probation officers (CCETSW 1991)). It also iiivolves clarity about how much chance individuals have of getting parole, and acceptance that simply sticking with them and consistently supporting their parole applications without raising false hopes may be all that can be done unless the current, cautious climate concerning the granting of parole changes.

Prisoners’ concerns about the inexperience of some field probation officers in long-term through-care could be addressed by targetting training more carefully. It would not be unduly difficult to ensure that appropriate training was given before, or soon after, individual officers were allocated work with prisoners serving long sentences. In the case of lifers, some form of preparation is certainly needed, and many counties also have lifer support committees where officers can discuss cases with colleagues without feeling that their work is being assessed by senior staff for evaluation purposes. The provision in the 1984 Home Office guidance circular on supervising lifers offers one means of introducing new staff to this work, in the form of the requirement that a back-up officer be named. This allows otherwise experienced probation officers to begin working with lifers by familiarising themselves with a colleague’s case and taking responsibility for post-release supervision in the absence of the main supervising officer (Home Office 1984a). I t is not always implemented at present .

Reliability is largely a mattcr of organisation by individual probation officers. I t is also, though, connected with appropriate training. For example, people who have not worked with prisoners before, cannot be expected to understand the relative urgency of apparantly routine requests for someone to contact people from whom they have not heard. This experience might be obtained during a prison placement, but this is somewhat haphazard, and training in work with prisoners ought to cover issues like the changes in people’s understandings of time when institutionalised (Cohen and Taylor 1972, pp. 86-1 1 I ) , and like the specific indignities and loss of self-determination suffered by prisoners (Williams 199 1 ) .

Courtesy to prisoners involves keeping them informed. One of the causes of prisoners’ depression is a feeling of helplessness, of everything having been taken out of their hands, and professional social workers ought to be sensitive to this and act accordingly. T o give a trivial example, it is polite to write and announce any planned visit to a prisoner, and to write again if the arrangements have to be changed. Given what we know about how time drags for people serving long prison sentences, and how

272

different their perspectives on time can be from our own, we should be prepared to write frequently to report progress on any lengthy enquiry or task being carried out on their behalf (see Hardwick 1987, p. 85). More importantly, courtesy requires keeping to any commitments made in letters or on visits: one of the most common causes of uncomplimentary views expressed about field probation oficers is unkept promises, as we have seen.

What sort of relationship do prisoners want with probation officers? The answer varies, of course, but there is a surprising degree of consensus among those prisoners who do want probation contact. The probation service is in a position to offer a personal service to people trapped in an impersonal system. The consumer research suggests that befriending is taken seriously by many potential clients, and that they also welcome small gestures like handwritten letters, Christmas and birthday cards, holiday postcards and some degree of willingness to discuss officers’ personal interests and home life, as part of a natural conversation, where appropriate (Grimsey 1974, p. 86; Williams 1991, p. 80). Many more feel that it is impertinent of prison-based and field probation officers to assume that they can prepare parole reports on the basis of a single, brief interview, and they are surely right to believe that such reports carry more weight if they are written by someone who has known the subject for a reasonable period of time - preferably for long enough to be able to comment on changes in the prisoner over a period since their initial incarceration.

Probation service policy about through-care varies widely (where it exists). Much of it is bureaucratic in tone, concerned mostly with procedural matters and lacking in value statements. The response to the Home Office (198413) Statement of National Objectives and Priorities in many areas was to accept its implicit downgrading of work with prisoners without demur (Lloyd 1986; Williams 1990), despite ACOP’s forceful comments on the draft SNOP paper (ACOP 1983). In practie, probation officers often put bureaucratic considerations before the need to provide a personal service. Work with prisoners is processed by ‘stalling them off, to such an extent that postponing engagement with individuals turns into a bureaucratic policy. We exercise the discretion not to provide a caring service. If Woolf is to be implemented, the ideal of befriending may need to be rehabilitated, and publicly owned by the policy makers. This will only happen if befriending is consistently practised at street level, and thus restored to the culture of probation practice. For this to happen, priorities would have to be reconsidered - but the Criminal Justice Act 1991 requires no less.

References Association of Chief Officers of Probation (1983) Comments on the Draft Note by

the Home O@e, ‘Probation Service in England and Wales: Statement of National Purpose and Objectives’, London: ACOP.

Bottomley, A. K. and Liebling, A. (1989) ‘Throughcare for young offenders in custody’, Prison Service Journal, April, 9-12.

273

Boyle, J. (1984) A Sense of Freedom, London: Pan. Casale, S. (1989) Women Inside, London: Civil Liberties Trust. Casale, S. and Plotnikoff, J. (1990) Regimes f o r Remand Prisoners, London: Prison

Reform Trust. Central Council for the Education and Training of Social Workers (1991)

Requirements and Regulations f o r the Diploma in Social Work (Paper 30, 2nd ed.), London: CCETSW.

Cohen, A. (1971) ‘The consumer’s view: retarded mothers and the social services’, Soda1 Work Today, I , 39-43.

Cohen, S. and Taylor, L. (1972) Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-Term Im~risonment, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Coker, J. and Martin J. P. (1985) Licensed to Live, Oxford: Blackwell. Corden, J. et al. (1978) After Prison, York: Department of Social Administration

and Social Work, University of York. Corden, J. et al. (1980) ‘Prison welfare and voluntary after-care’, British Journal of

Social Work, 10, 7 1-86. Davis, A. (1992) ‘Men’s imprisonment: the financial cost to women and children’,

in: R. Shaw (Ed.), Prisoners’ Children: What Are the Issues?, London: Routledge. Evans, R. et al. ( 1988) Prisoner Wcljare and Social Work Procedures: A n Evaluation of the

Shared Working Scheme at Stocken Prison 1985-88 (DPS Report Series 1 No. 30), London: Home Ofice Prison Department.

Fisher, M. (1983) ‘The meaning ofclient satifaction’, in: M. Fisher (Ed.), Speaking of Clients (Social Services Monographs), Shefield: Joint Unit for Social Services Research, University of Shefield.

Fisher, M., Newton, C. and Sainsbury, E. (1984) Mental Health Social Work Observed (National Institute of Social Work Social Services Library No. 45), London: George Allen and Unwin.

Grimsey, B. (1974) ‘The importance of letters to prisoners’, Probation Journal, 21, 85-6.

Haines, K. (1990) Afer-Care Servicesfor Released Prisoners: A Review of the Literature, Cambridge: Institute of Criminology, University of Cambrige.

Hardwick, D. J. (1987) Afercare, Birmingham: PEPAR. Home Ofice (1984a) Guidelines on the Through-Care and Supervision of L q e Sentence

Prisoners (Circular 55/1984), London: Home Office. Home Ofice (1984b) Probation Seruice in England and Wales: Statement of National

Objectives and Priorities, London: Home Ofice. Home Ofice (1991) Custody, Care and Justice, Cm. 1647. Howe, D. (1986) Social Workers and Their Practice in Welfare Bureaucracies, Aldershot:

Hughes, E. C. (1958) Men and Their Work, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press. Hughes, E. C. (1963) ‘Good people and dirty work’, Social Problcms, 10, 3-10. Jepson, N. and Elliott, K. (198.5) Shared Working Between Prison and Probation

Jepson, N. and Elliott, K. (1986) ‘A study of shared working between prison and

Kingston,R. (1979) ‘Through-care: the client’s point of view’, Probation Journal,

Liebling, A. (1989) ‘Temporary release: getting embroiled with prisons’, Howard

Lipsky, M. ( 1980) Street-Level Bureaucracy, Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services,

Lloyd, C. (1986) Response to S N O P , Cambridge: Institute o f Criminology,

274

Cower.

Oflccrs, London: Home Oflice Research and Planning Unit.

probation officers’, Prison Service Journal, J u h , 5-8.

June, 38-43.

Journal, 28, 51-5.

New York: Russell Sage Foundlition.

University of Cambridge.

McDougall, C. (1984) ‘Shared welfare work in prison: a time for reappraisal? (unpublished paper, Psychology Department, Acklington Prison).

McWilliams, W. and Davies, M. (1972) ‘Communication about after-care: an assessment of prisoners’ knowledge of the after-care services’, British Journal of Social Work, 1, 381-407.

Merton, R. K. (1940) ‘Bureaucratic structure and personality’, Social Forces, 17, 560-8.

Monger, M. et al. (1981) Throughcare with Prisoners’ Families, Nottingham: University of Nottingham Department of Social Administration and Social Work.

Morris, P. and Beverly, F. (1975) On Licence: A Study of Parole, Chichester: Wiley. Nash, M. R. (1988) ‘If it can happen here. . .: shared working at Albany Prison’,

Prison Service Journal, January, 11-14. National Association of Probation Officers ( 1987) Community-Based Through-Care:

The Case f o r Withdrawal of Seconded Probation Oflcers from Prisons, London: NAPO. Oxfordshire Probation Service Research and Information Unit ( 1990) ‘Survey of

prisoners’ needs at H M P Oxford’ (mimeo, Oxfordshire Probation Service). Peckham, A. (1985) A Woman in Custody, London: Fontana. Priestley, P. (1972) ‘The prison welfare oflicer: a case of role strain’, British Journal

of Sociology, 23, 221-35. Prottas, J. D. (1978) ‘The power of the street level bureaucrat in public service

bureaucracies’, Urban Affairs Quarterb, 13( 3). Shaw, M. (1974) Social Work in Prison (Home Office Research Study No. 22),

London: HMSO. Shaw, R. (1984) ‘Shared work in a local prison: a matter of trust’, PriJon Service

Journal, July, 4-10, Williams, B. (1990) ‘Probation work with long-term prisoners in a dispersal

prison’ (unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Leicester School of Social Work). Williams, B. (1991) Work with Prisoners, Birmingham: Venture. Williams, B. (1992) Bail Information: An Evaluation of the Scheme at HM Prison

Woolf Report (1991) Prison Disturbunces, April 1990, Cm. 1456.

Date submitted: January 92 Date accepted: March 92

Moorland, Bradford: Horton.

275