Life on the risk list: My time on probation

Sean Bw Parker

I was on probation from 2018 until 2026. My main findings from this experience is that the experience you have in this bizarre process is entirely dependent on your probation officer (henceforth PO). Sadly, I had ten different POs over these years. Almost entirely female dominated, the focus is entirely now on ‘risk’, a long way from the ‘hand to hold on release’ which probation was originally set up for over 100 years ago. This ‘risk’ is monitored by something called an OAsys report, which is updated after meetings.

Two of these ten POs were men, the other eight women, and the ‘churn’ was unbelievable to witness. In prison the POs generally monitor progress and how the prisoner is doing; on the out, they are there to make sure they keep on the straight and narrow. Many people on probation appreciate this oversight, recognising there is something in them that needs this kind of support; but there are many who don’t, who found themselves on probation for a number of reasons requiring neither ‘rehabilitation’ or scrutiny.

It is counter-intuitive for POs to endlessly monitor their charges according to a risk criteria based on police or court records, when those records may have been fabricated or otherwise manipulated. This is the probation service ‘cleaning up’ after the individual has been put through the wringer of a broken justice system. When this purgatorial waste of time is put to the PO, their training is to say ‘we need to treat you based on the findings of the courts’ - which is the victory of Starmer-era bureaucracy over the humanistic founding principles of probation in Britain.

Many new staff are now being recruited on a ‘trauma informed’ basis, with government materials seemingly quite proud of this fact. What this in effect means is that people who consider themselves to have been victims of certain kinds of crime in the past, tried or untried, are getting themselves into positions of judicial power in order to either ‘protect society’ as they see it, or quietly carry out some institutional revenge. So while nine of my POs may have been objective, care-focussed professionals of the old school, I counted at least one or two who had a specific animus against the crime of which I had been convicted.

This suspicion was confirmed when I ordered a Subject Access Request (SAR) on all notes about me and my case: it made for illuminating reading. While all the POs were reasonably polite to my face, any complaints I made about the system were minimised and even ridiculed, in notes going back years.

Early on in my time on probation in the community I surprised my (trauma informed?) PO by being offered a job as the editor of an industrial trade magazine. Having done editorial and copywriting before my conviction, I had used my time inside on Tor Times, the Dartmoor prison magazine, and got myself a Proofreading and Copywriting certificate from The Writer’s Bureau, following a course I had pursued in the evenings.

It’s difficult enough to get such a job without a criminal conviction, my family and friends were very proud of my ‘progress’, but when I told my PO she said I would have to disclose about the convictions - even though they hadn’t asked or mentioned it at interview or afterwards. I did disclose, and the manager promptly withdrew the trial offer. What I knew then applies now: if people in positions of authority hear about a conviction straight away, they will respond in this recoiling way. If the person on probation is given four or five months to becomes ‘known’, a more open and honest conversation about the conviction can be had. Sadly, in my case this excellent opportunity was immediately extinguished by ‘trauma informed’ probation practices.

Just before this happened, in another early probation meeting I reported that I had been in contact with a well known justice reform campaigner, and had done some media interviews and podcasts about my own case. The next week I had two new, extra conditions added to my licence - not to be in contact with people with certain criminal convictions (how would I be able to know that?), and not to talk in the media about my case. The reason given was that complaints had been received, but I could find no evidence of these complaints in the SAR.

A year or so into my time on probation in the community I made a new friend via social media, who came to visit me once, staying overnight. She was splitting up with her partner at the time, and he accessed her phone while she was sleeping after she got home, investigated who I was, and reported it to probation. Without being asked, I was sent a ‘Notice Not To Recall’ (to prison) letter, and given another licence condition requiring me to take polygraph tests, even though I had disclosed to the friend as a matter of course (and we weren’t ‘romantic’ anyway.)

I complained about this, and was then in a months-long struggle session with probation about the legality of polygraph tests - which don’t measure ‘lies’, just emotional responses.  Still, being on probation in the community is a good incentive for people to behave well while inside, and despite an intense start, other POs were excellent, professional, understanding etc, and my time eventually came to a more peaceful, less scrutinised end.

As a result of these sanity-testing, counter-intuitive experiences, I am determined to push that people consistently maintaining innocence be released with NO licence conditions, only having them added if, after proper investigations, there can be proved there is a real ‘risk’ factor. Because as it stands, while there are good people within probation, it suffers from a ‘victory of bureaucracy’ over humanity. While people like Lord (James) Timpson  - who replied to none of my emails - may say ‘all cases are judged on an individual basis’, probation is very much failing to ‘hold the hand’ of the released prisoner.

By Sean Bw Parker

Sean's latest book about his experiences is Magnolia Graffiti. It is available as Paperback or Ebook here: Magnolia Graffiti: Amazon.co.uk: Sean Bw Parker Books

First published in Inside Time: Inside Time – the weekly online National Newspaper for Prisoners & Detainees