Introduction

Gorman and colleagues (2006, p 21) define constructive practice as ‘a complex and dynamic process of intervention which is more artistic than technical, more creative than procedural, more collaborative than instrumental’. It certainly seems that in England and Wales, in policy terms at least, contemporary probation practice has in recent years predominantly resembled the latter rather than the former. Increasingly bureaucratic demands on front-line probation practitioners have reduced the availability of face-to-face contact with those under their supervision and displaced ‘the centrality of practitioners as agents of change with tools and procedures that are not sensitive enough to the multi-faceted nature of the cultures, practices and practitioners that they seek to change’ (Graham, 2016, p 164). Indeed, the official rationale for the wide-ranging restructuring of the probation service1 resulting from the recent Transforming Rehabilitation reforms (Ministry of Justice, 2013a) would, on the face of it at least, seem to recognise this through an intention to restore professional discretion and reduce bureaucracy with a view to enhancing innovation in front-line delivery. Our concern in this chapter then is to explore whether the changes brought about by the reforms will further serve to consolidate these dominant policy trends and, in Gorman et al's terms, continue to give primacy to the ‘technical, procedural and instrumental’.

The study

According to Graham (2016, p 67, emphasis added): ‘There is no point in conceptualising and analysing rehabilitation work merely as a technical and instrumental exercise if the workers involved make sense of it as a normative experience, incorporating affective labour and ideological dimensions’. As such, we were keen to focus on the impact of Transforming Rehabilitation on those front-line practitioners in our study in terms of their working environment and practices and how they mediated such wide-ranging changes to their working practices. Focusing specifically on the role of the newly created community rehabilitation companies (CRCs) in England and Wales, we will explore the potential impact of the shift ‘from the logic of the public good to the logic of the market’ (White, 2014, p 1002) with specific reference to the supervisory relationship, the scope for innovation, and partnership work.