This chapter looks at views about the extent to which working for the Probation Service had lived up to expectations, and had this not been the case, why might this be. This is then considered in the wider context of considering whether the ideal of the service is in the process of being actively unravelled by the government in a way that the values expressed in previous chapters will be unable to transcend.

Has the service lived up to expectations?

Not surprisingly perhaps, in the context of the (minority) view of a decline in values discussed in previous chapters, there was a clearly identifiable theme of the service only partly living up to respondents’ expectations. Of course, this may be the ‘norm’ among most occupational groups and it is probably unlikely that a similar question asked of other groups would differ in this regard. In particular, professional groups in the criminal justice system are in the midst of experiencing the effects of budget cuts across the public sector, as well as a significant amount of institutional change. A recent survey of prison officers, for example, found that 70% of prison officers regretted their choice of job and 50% were seriously considering leaving their job in the near future. The report on prison officer stress and work-related well-being noted that the profession suffered from higher levels of ‘psychological distress than other occupational groups including “emotionally demanding” professions such as the police and social work’ (Kinman et al, 2014: 3).

Our probation respondents were asked: ‘Has working for the service lived up to your expectations?’. Of those who responded (n = 959), some 38% said that the service had done so, but a small overall majority, 51%, said that it only partly had, leaving 11% feeling that it had not. Given that the category ‘partly lived up to expectations’ was an option, those choosing either of the other two presumably felt strongly that the service had/had not fulfilled their expectations. Similarly, given the significant changes to which the service has been subject in recent decades, it is not surprising that the largest number of respondents felt that it had only partly lived up to expectations. However, this is in contrast to earlier findings by Annison et al (2008: 264) among recently qualified probation officers, where the majority of respondents stated that their expectations were being met.