‘Twenty year stretch’: a probation officer's view from the front line

Abstract

Abstract I have just left the Probation Service after nearly 20 years ‘stretch’ as a front-line probation officer. On my last day, I was asked to see an ‘offender’ reporting to the office for a colleague. Peter (not his real name) looking very much like one of the gasworks gang (for readers of the Beano!) remarked when I informed him that I was leaving the Service, ‘I can see you are old school because you treated me like a person not an offender’. This personalist perspective was underlined some time ago when I occasioned on Mark Johnson's searing autobiography Wasted (2008) which very much captures the central point of this article. That in using the term ‘offender’ we describe what the person has done, not what they necessarily have become. This ‘underside’ vignette is apposite and significant in that it chimes in well with how even in the briefest interactional moments aiming to make a positive difference in the complex emotional process of change, needs to remain firmly rooted at the forefront of pro...