Enter the ‘Polibation Officer’

Abstract

The rise of public protection to the top of the international law and order agenda in recent years has had a major impact upon criminal justice policy. The increasing focus of the concept of dangerousness upon a specific and narrow band of offenders has facilitated a punitive penal agenda which has served a useful political purpose in many countries. In the UK the public protection issue dominated the last years of John Major's Conservative Government and was used repeatedly by Home Secretary Michael Howard to create distance between the Government and the Opposition. The Labour Party, in not resisting the agenda, merely served to encourage its escalation, a situation only becoming challenged well over a year into office. This paper examines the effect of the public protection debate on agency practice and focuses on the police and probation services in particular. It considers a merging of aims and objectives between the two services within the public protection field, a merger which has severely challenged traditional ways of working and cherished values. The strength of the political climate, and the need to avoid being blamed for potential calamity, has meant that this developing merger has been relatively trouble-free and unopposed. To a certain extent it has perhaps gone further than even the Government intended and certainly leaves the door ajar for a considerably revamped probation service to emerge.