Probation isn’t just someone you sign in with once a fortnight. HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) runs the Probation Service, and its work splits roughly into four areas.
Advising the courts and the Parole Board. Before someone is sentenced, probation often writes a pre-sentence report assessing their risk and circumstances, which the court reads before deciding on a sentence. For anyone serving a life sentence, an IPP, or a long determinate sentence, probation also prepares the reports the Parole Board uses to decide whether it’s safe to release them, and what licence conditions to attach.
Supervising people in the community. This is the day-to-day work most people think of: managing everyone serving a community or suspended sentence order, and everyone released from prison on licence. Every person is risk-assessed (using a tool called OASys) and allocated a level of supervision to match – someone assessed as high risk of serious harm will be seen far more often, and may be managed jointly with police and other agencies under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), than someone on a low-level community order.
Delivering the requirements courts and the Parole Board set. That includes running Unpaid Work (“Community Payback”) placements, group programmes aimed at changing offending behaviour, and working with partner services on things like drug and alcohol treatment, domestic abuse programmes and mental health support.
Resettlement. Probation (often working with prison-based resettlement teams before release) helps people sort out somewhere to live, ID, benefits, and a route into work or training – the practical things that make reoffending far less likely.
If someone doesn’t comply with what’s required of them, it’s also probation’s job to act on it – from a warning, through to breach proceedings back in court, or a recall to prison for someone on licence.