Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- one Complexity theory: an overview
- two Risk, attractors and organisational behaviour
- three Why do people commit crime? An integrated systems perspective
- four Complexity and the emergence of social work and criminal justice programmes
- five Child protection practice and complexity
- six Youth justice: from linear risk paradigm to complexity
- seven The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: a case study in policing and complexity
- eight Intersecting contexts of oppression within complex public systems
- nine Complexity theory, trans-disciplinary working and reflective practice
- ten Probation practice and creativity in England and Wales: a complex systems analysis
- eleven Responding to domestic abuse: multi-agented systems, probation programmes and emergent outcomes
- twelve Complexity, law and ethics: on drug addiction, natural recovery and the diagnostics of psychological jurisprudence
- thirteen Constituting the system: radical developments in post-Newtonian society
- Conclusion
- Index
ten - Probation practice and creativity in England and Wales: a complex systems analysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- one Complexity theory: an overview
- two Risk, attractors and organisational behaviour
- three Why do people commit crime? An integrated systems perspective
- four Complexity and the emergence of social work and criminal justice programmes
- five Child protection practice and complexity
- six Youth justice: from linear risk paradigm to complexity
- seven The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: a case study in policing and complexity
- eight Intersecting contexts of oppression within complex public systems
- nine Complexity theory, trans-disciplinary working and reflective practice
- ten Probation practice and creativity in England and Wales: a complex systems analysis
- eleven Responding to domestic abuse: multi-agented systems, probation programmes and emergent outcomes
- twelve Complexity, law and ethics: on drug addiction, natural recovery and the diagnostics of psychological jurisprudence
- thirteen Constituting the system: radical developments in post-Newtonian society
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The Probation Service in England and Wales occupies a unique role in the delivery of criminal justice, with probation staff having multiple roles, including being agents of public protection and enforcement, as well as promoters of rehabilitation and looking after the needs of the victims of crime. To fulfil these roles, the Probation Service has always worked across boundaries and, as argued by Gough (2010, p 21), this position ‘has made effective working relationships essential with sentencers, police and prison officers, and a whole host of organisations in the voluntary and community sector’. This chapter will explore the changing nature of probation practice in England and Wales through a critical analysis of the multiple and complex roles of practitioners, and examine whether it is possible for practitioners to maintain these roles in a state of ‘superposition’ (see later) or whether they are, in fact, contradictory giving rise to unintended and damaging consequences. This analysis of the work of the Probation Service will identify three levels of system, which are complex and adaptive in nature (while acknowledging from a realist and general complexity perspective that all complex systems are nested (fractal) in nature, and that the boundaries of any system are unclear, and also that any system or subsystem has influence beyond what the boundaries may be): the policy system, the organisational system of the probation trust and the individual practitioner–probationer relationship. In this discussion, I want to explore the creative and novel solutions that can be found at ‘the edge of chaos’ through engaging in necessary, just and virtuous relationships with probationers, which draw upon a realist understanding of the relationships between determinism, order for free and emergence. A key focus for the chapter is that some of the tools and concepts and ways of working that are already familiar in criminal justice and social work are sensitive to working with complexity. In that sense, this approach represents an evolution rather than a revolution.
The policy context
The 2010 establishment of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government in the UK has seen the beginnings of changes in social work, child protection and probation practice after the centrally driven national service framework approach of the New Labour governments (1997–2010).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Applying Complexity TheoryWhole Systems Approaches to Criminal Justice and Social Work, pp. 199 - 220Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2014