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People with learning disabilities have a number of vulnerabilities which makes the process of probation difficult for them to cope with without further support. This paper looks at ways to improve this support and demonstrates ways in which services can be developed to meet clients' needs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the role in offender mental health for the probation service described in policy translates into practice through exploring staff and offenders’ perceptions of this role in one probation trust. In particular, to examine barriers to staff performing their role and ways of overcoming them.

Qualitative secondary analysis of data from semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 11 probation staff and nine offenders using the constant comparative method.

Both staff and offenders defined probation’s role as identifying and monitoring mental illness amongst offenders, facilitating access to and monitoring offenders’ engagement with health services, and managing risk. Barriers to fulfilling this role included limited training, a lack of formal referral procedures/pathways between probation and health agencies, difficulties in obtaining and administering mental health treatment requirements, problems with inter-agency communication, and gaps in service provision for those with dual diagnosis and personality disorder. Strategies for improvement include improved training, developing a specialist role in probation and formalising partnership arrangements.

Further research is required to explore the transferability of these findings, particularly in the light of the recent probation reforms.

This is the first paper to explore how staff and offenders perceive probation’s role in offender mental health in comparison with the role set out in policy.

Following the ‘Sarkozy’ era (2007–2012), France has engaged in ‘zero-tolerance’ policies, which have brought an increasing number of people into the criminal justice system (CJS). In an already extremely impoverished CJS, these policies have led to serious financial problems and have made an already existing prison overcrowding problem worse. Consequently, the CJS has gradually opted for a McDonald (Ritzer, 2019; Robinson, 2019) type of offender processing, whether in prosecutor-led procedures (representing roughly half of all penal procedures: Ministry of Justice, 2019) or in the sentencing phase (Danet, 2013). A similar trend has been found in probation and in prisoner release (in French: ‘sentences’ management).

The prison and probation services, which merged in 1999, have since then been in a position to benefit from the 1958 French Republic Constitution, which places the executive in a dominant position and notably allows it to draft the bills presented to a rather passive legislative power (Rousseau, 2007) and even to enjoy its own set of normative powers (‘autonomous decrees’ – Hamon & Troper, 2019). By way of law reforming (2009, 2014, and 2019 laws), the prison and probation services have thus embraced the McDonaldisation ethos. Their main obsession has been to early release as many prisoners as possible in order to free space and to accommodate more sentenced people. To do so, the prison services have created a series of so-called ‘simplified’ early release procedures, where prisoners are neither prepared for nor supported through release, where they are deprived of agency and where due process and attorney advice are removed. Behind a pretend rehabilitative discourse, the executive is only interested in efficiently flushing people out of prison; not about re-entry efficacy. As Ritzer (2019) points out, McDonaldisation often leads to counter-productive or absurd consequences. In the case of early release, the stubborn reality is that one cannot bypass actually doing the rehabilitative and re-entry work. I shall additionally argue that not everything truly qualifies as an early release measure (Ostermann, 2013). Only measures which respect prisoners’ agency prepare them for their release, which support them once they are in the community, which address their socio-psychological and criminogenic needs, and which are pronounced in the context of due process and defence rights truly qualify as such. As it is, French ‘simplified’ release procedures amount to McRe-entry and mass nothingness.

This study aims to investigate the views of commissioners, providers and criminal justice staff on how effective current health-care provision is at meeting the health needs of people on probation. Understanding perceptions of what constitutes effective provision, where barriers are encountered and where improvements could be made is an important step towards improving access to care for this hard-to-reach group.

The research was part of a wider study. This paper focusses on findings from case studies conducted via semi-structured telephone interviews with 24 stakeholders in a purposive sample from six geographical areas of England. Interviews were conducted by researchers from a variety of backgrounds and an individual with lived experience of the criminal justice system. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Participants provided examples of effective health-care provision, which largely involved multi-agency partnership working. It was apparent that there are many barriers to providing appropriate health-care provision to people on probation, which are underpinned by the complexity of this population’s health-care needs, the complexity of the health-care landscape and problematic commissioning processes.

Improvements are needed to provide appropriate and accessible health care that meets the needs of people on probation, thereby reducing health inequalities. These include shared targets, improved funding, clearer pathways into care and giving probation a voice in commissioning.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of commissioner, provider and criminal justice staffs’ views on the effectiveness of current health-care provision at meeting the health needs of people on probation.

In this chapter, I analyse the implementation of the reform to the regimen of alternatives to prison in Chile which occurred in 2013 and how the reform affected how punishment is conceived and translated into practice by professionals supervising probation and community services. The findings suggest the reform that led to the new ‘substitutive sanctions’ also introduced a new risk-oriented-managerial culture that has permeated how punishment is currently enforced and envisaged by supervision professionals; a situation that has been deepening over the years, not only through practice, but also via on-going training that has helped to generate the emergence of ‘cultural’ capital that distinguishes supervision professionals from the larger organisation. This has been combined with a rapid expansion in the use of substitutive sanctions, especially probation and ‘partial reclusion’ that can aptly be analysed under the ‘mass supervision’ premise.

This article presents the key findings of an investigation into minority ethnic prisoners' knowledge and perceptions of the Probation and Prison Services in the east of England. The first part of the article puts this study into disciplinary context by examining relevant and topical research and debate about minority ethnic service users' experiences and treatment within the criminal justice system. Most notably perceptions and opinions of minority ethnic service users are limited. However accounts of discrimination and racism within elements of the criminal justice system provide a useful springboard to understand and collect much awaited data in this area. The final part of the article summarises the key findings of this investigation and goes on to make useful recommendations to the service providers in terms of developing and establishing effective race relations in the shape of policy development, consequent action and for further investigative studies of this nature.

The use of mental health treatment requirements (MHTRs) has not proven to be successful at meeting the mental health needs of the probation population in the UK, largely through underuse of the requirement or lack of available services. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper investigates a method of meeting those needs without the use of MHTRs by embedding third sector services within the probation environment.

Results indicate a significant impact after a six-month follow-up in symptomology across measures of depression, anxiety, general distress and social functioning; also indicated is a significant result on recidivism, with 74 per cent of participants committing no further offences in the 12 months following treatment.

These results represent the only evaluation of embedded, third sector mental health services in a probation environment in the UK, and highlight a further need to embed specialist mental health services within the probation environment and generalise that practice to other forms of service structure and therapeutic methodology.

Beginning in February 1973, an experimental course was run by Durham University Business School for Durham Probation Service. The course was an innovation as far as the Business School was concerned, as no member of staff had extensive experience in the teaching of management concepts to members of a social service department. Similarly, experience of this type of management course was, for Probation Service personnel, very limited. A feature of the course was the composition of the participant group from the Probation Service. The entire top management strata were to attend, together with the area groups of Senior Probation Officers. Figure 1 illustrates the upper organisation structure of the service.

The provision of supported housing is vital to the work of the National Probation Service as it seeks to reduce re‐offending and protect the public. Supporting People offers an opportunity for Probation to play a key role in developing supported housing services locally. Probation's experience in contracting for supported housing services for offenders means it is well placed to contribute to the work of the Supporting People team. There remain many issues to be resolved. Only recognition of the legitimacy of offender needs within Supporting People and in wider housing allocation and management policies will make Probation's investment in the process pay off.

The numbers of psychologists employed in HM Prison Service have doubled in the past three years to over 600 staff. HM Prison Service is the largest single employer of applied psychologists. With a governmental focus firmly on ‘joined up’ services in the criminal justice field (Boateng, 1999), the launch of the National Probation Service (NPS) in April 2001 has set the scene for closer partnership working between the two organisations. There has not historically been a national structure for the employment of psychologists in the probation service. With the creation of the NPS and an increased emphasis on partnership working, a national integrated role for psychologists is ripe for development. This presents both organisations with some significant partnership challenges and opportunities (Towl, 2000).