This year’s Napo AGM and conference agreed “Napo will work in collaboration with the Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice: Welsh Probation Development Group in investigating models of Probation governance and practice that encompass localism and decentralised control. Napo will publish and promote the findings of this collaboration.”
Su McConnel of Napo Cymru said: “This work is crucial for Probation in Wales. Neither Napo nor the WPDG is arguing for devolution for its own sake. Nothing the WPDG have proposed would not, broadly, be applicable to English regions. We are taking the opportunity to build an alternative evidence based model of a restored effective model for Probation, and communicating this to a wide audience”.
With Napo campaigning since 2019 for “Out of the Civil Service, separate from Prisons”, Wales saw the publication of reports from The Thomas Commission on Justice in Wales, The Williams Commission on the Constitution of Wales, The Gordon Brown Report to UK Labour “A New Britain”.
All of these specifically recommend the devolution of Probation in Wales. UK government included this in their manifesto. Welsh Government commenced planning for this. Signs are that progress towards this will be slow, with a tentative first step of devolving commissioning of services to probation under discussion at government level.
So in Wales there is a lot of discussion about what a future devolved Probation Service might look like. Napo has collaborated with the influential Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice, specifically its Welsh Probation Development Group (WPDG) which last year published a set of papers “Towards a Devolved Probation Service in Wales” .
Ella Rabaiotti, convenor of the WPDG says: “We’re delighted to collaborate with Napo to explore approaches for more localised probation governance and practice. By combining expertise from academics, former and current practitioners, we can help shape proposals for change together. We will shortly be releasing our latest briefing and look forward to further discussions with Napo members”
Ian Lawrence, Napo’s General Secretary says: “We welcome this collaboration with Napo and salute the commitment of the WPDG to harness the voice of practitioners and their union in its work.”
You can find papers published by WPDG here: Publications 2024 and Publications 2025
3 responses
But “leading academics” do not work in probation.
Why not use “leading” probation practitioners instead!
That’s the whole point of this collaboration! Most if not all of these academics have been probation practitioners, and are committed to involving current practitioners in this work. Refreshing!
No, I’m afraid I don’t find it refreshing. We’ve seen a steady wave of academic involvement since Transforming Rehabilitation through to unification and beyond — more than a decade now — and probation hasn’t changed for the better. As I’ve said before, let’s set aside those who left the service years ago or never worked in it at all. The real learning should come from current practitioners, and the service should be led and designed from within.