GIVING PROBATION A NEW NAME IS FINE. AS LONG AS THEY DON'T CHANGE THINGS

It was the mark of Michael Howard that when he was Home Secretary he spoke
wistfully of persuading ex-soldiers to sign up as probation officers. It is,
likewise, characteristic of this new Labour Government to have misgivings
about the probation service, and to propose, as a solution, to re-brand it.
Yesterday, a Home Office minister announced some suggestions for a new name,
such as the Community Justice Enforcement Agency. Ever sensitive to charges
of Labour spin-doctoring, he vehemently denied that this was just a cosmetic
exercise. Oddly enough, on this occasion one might hope that this is exactly
what it is.

Official thinking behind the change of name is straightforward enough.
Ministers believe the public regard probation officers as woolly liberals -
"limp wristed folk in jumpers", as one penal expert put it to me yesterday -
who use taxpayers money to nanny criminals instead of punishing them.
Probation orders and non-custodial penalties like community service are
considered a joke, and offenders sentenced to them are routinely described
by an indignant press as having got off "scot free".

If we change the name, goes the logic, we will make the probation service
sound tougher. The media will take it seriously. The public will be
reassured. Courts will thus be more willing to hand out non-custodial
sentences, the work of probation officers will be respected and thus more
effective. Ergo, the credibility problem is solved.

This sounds precisely like a cosmetic exercise, but a perfectly sensible one
nonetheless.

There were other proposals yesterday which will make fundamental changes to
probation. The service is currently split into 54 different areas, each run
by individual committees; there is no single agency speaking for the
service, or directly accountable to the Home Secretary. Proposals to create
a unified national agency with a director general, split into 42 divisions
to correspond with police and Crown Prosecution Service areas, make some
obvious sense. Similarly, plans to create closer relations between prison
and probation staff should help rationalise what can be a muddled system.

Absent from yesterday's report was any suggestion that the probation service
be merged with the prison service. This omission was not for want of
consideration; Jack Straw has taken the idea very seriously indeed, not
least because this is what they do in his favourite real-life think tank,
the United States.

There, the Department of Correction deals with prison and probation - and
one need only consider America's prison population to see what a uniquely
unsuccessful arrangement that is. It is said in the City that there is no
such thing as a merger, only take-overs. In this "merger", it is not
difficult to see which service would have been taken over.

Happily, the idea has been rejected. The very fact that it was taken
seriously at all, however, gives grounds for some concern about the motives
behind the other proposed changes, not least those for changing the name.

The Government says it wants the probation service to sound tougher - but
there is much evidence to suggest that it rather likes the idea of really
making it much tougher, too.

Jack Straw has made no secret of his impatience with the probation service.
He has, for example, dismissed Harry Fletcher, the highly regarded spokesman
for the National Association of Probation Officers, as a relic from the 70s.
Last year he delivered a blunt and public command to the service to improve:
"The probation service should not be following an agenda which is separate
from the communities you serve," he warned. He is reported to lament that
the service is not in uniform.

In this Home Office report, particular attention is paid to the ageing
legislation which still directs probation officers to "advise, assist and
befriend" offenders.

This is not what the courts expect of probation officers, the report tuts,
and even less what the public expects; anyway, it's also anachronistic, and
should be done away with. Like Clause Four, it might only be symbolic - but
it's the wrong kind of symbol.

It may indeed be only symbolic, and the probation service has spent the past
10 or 15 years getting "tougher". But symbols are important, and we should
have one agency in the criminal justice system which does believe offenders
can be rehabilitated, and by means other than draconian penalties. The
public may believe that prison works, and that little else does - but after
all they've heard from Tory home secretaries in the past two decades, this
is hardly surprising.

It is perhaps the task of a Labour Government to persuade them that this is
not necessarily the case.

There was a term used in the 70s to describe a harsher probation service,
and it was "screws on wheels". If the Government wants probation officers to
be more like screws on wheels, it should be asked to reveal the amazing
services to crime prevention with which the prison system can be credited.
Britain's prison population is growing faster than anywhere else in the EU;
three quarters of young men released in 1994 were reconvicted within two
years; half were put back behind bars. The Home Office seldom asks whether
we are getting value for money from prisons.

Prison very rarely works, but probation often can. To make it work, however,
the service must employ people equipped to take on the chaotic and
frequently disappointing task of keeping offenders from ending up back in
court. This may well mean, among other things, assisting, befriending and
advising.

Obviously its job is to protect the public. That's the whole point of it.
But protecting the public in the long term is best done by convincing
offenders to stop breaking the law, something more easily achieved by a
partial ally than just another hostile envoy of authority.

If the Home Office wants to change the probation service in order to inspire
public trust, and give the courts the confidence to use its services, then
it's an excellent plan. If it wants to reassure the tabloid press, such
spin-doctoring is entirely welcome. But if a new name means the start of a
new service, this is a worry.

One must hope that this is simply another great example of a new Labour
triumph of style over substance.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett