Probation, Technical Compliance and the ‘Drowning’ of Hope

Hope and optimism are central to processes of reform. However, in the context of the dramatic restructuring and reorganizations that the probation service in England and Wales has undergone in the past decade, there are questions over the extent to which such hopes are realizable. We seek to explore the concept of hope in transforming individual’s lives away from engagement in crime. Via an analysis of interviews that were co-produced with people with experience of probation and undertaken with practitioners, those who have been supervised, and those on ‘the edge’ of the criminal justice system, we find that peoples’ hopes can be categorized as deep or institutional hopes. We argue that many probationers and staff members’ ‘deep’ hopes were ‘drowned’ by bureaucratic, managerial and risk-focussed cultures. There was evidence that probation staff wanted to instil a sense of hope in those that they supervise but that the current regime does not easily facilitate the creation and fulfilment of such hopes. We conclude by identifying ways in which probation could—given adequate resources and structures—become a more hopeful process for people under supervision.