On Probation

Probation
1. The release of an offender from prison on condition of good behaviour under supervision.
2. A period of training and testing a new employee.

So says the Little Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, which I sometimes refer to, perhaps nostalgically, rather than resorting to Google. The second definition can be loosely applied to the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK. When the two political parties came together after the General Election of 2010, no political party had a clear majority and the coalition was seen as breaking the mould of British politics. Will it work? Well to a certain extent it's on probation. It is, of course, an anathema to the political ideologists who see clear distinctions between left, right and middle-of-the-road politics and believe a fudged combination of two or more competing political philosophies will never work. The counter to that argument is that societies are best managed by the people with the requisite skills and experience, regardless of the colours of their political rosettes.

The coalition government took the reins of power at a time when the UK, in common with many other parts of the world, was suffering from debt-driven economic woes to which the newly-formed government's response was a menu of austerity measures. In simple terms, the country is spending more than it earns and therefore has to tighten its belt particularly in the area of public expenditure. The latest target is privatising probation (definition '1' from the dictionary) through outsourcing many of the existing services. Although reduction in re-offending rates has been cited as the reason for change, cost savings will probably be high on the priority list and if the truth be known, could well be the real motivation for change. Now I am not an expert on probation services but I have a good friend who is, having spent much of his working career as a probation professional. So over the years I have gleaned an appreciation of some of the salient features of the organisation. My current interest is the business model that the 'probationary' government is intending to implement for its probation services, because my long commercial career has been largely responsible for my avid interest in business models - sad isn't it?!

I am strongly of the opinion that any business is a complex system with inputs, outputs and relationships between them that are not always easy to understand. Indeed organisations evolve and do not always behave in ways that were originally intended. Stafford Beer is credited with introducing the acronym POSIWID - the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. As an example, the UK's Probation Service's 'purpose' is what it does and if that is not in accord with what society expects of it, then it will have to change. But let's take a step back because the Probation Service is a system within a much bigger system, i.e. society and its role in the community would be totally redundant if there weren't criminals! So isn't the government focussing on the symptom rather than the underlying problem? If there were no offenders then re-offending rates, would no longer be a consideration. Clearly my utopian fantasy is unlikely to become a reality but the point I am making is that only by considering the totality of the problem can we visualise a model that is likely to have a purpose which is more closely aligned to what we would desire in a perfect society. So if the 'probationary' government believes that carving up the Probation Service into a large outsourced entity and a much smaller insourced bit, is a step towards solving the nation's criminality problems, so be it. Personally I believe the 'probationary' government is perpetuating outdated business models that have failed miserably in other areas of the public sector. Someone once suggested to me that one sign of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expecting a different result! By repeating the 'offences' of previous governments, surely the 'probationary' (it's moved from definition '2' to definition '1') government is re-offending..........return to jail or plead insanity?!