A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about probation reform and how decades of change have left us with fragmentation and fragility. I was pleased that so many people read the article and was starting to scope out a new topic for the next one. Then a chance early morning phone call on a train took things in a different direction.
It was so early in the morning that I was looking forward to recapturing my dream from the night before. Instead, I was drawn to the sound of a stentorian voice talking into an iphone further down the carriage.
He worked in finance. I inferred that from his own description of himself as a ‘bean-counter’ at the ‘risk-averse edge of risk aversion’ – his words not mine. And as the fence posts and railings outside morphed into an indistinguishable blur as the train pulled away from the platform and gained speed, I sensed an unlikely symmetry between the train journey and the telephone conversation being broadcast across the carriage. That conversation was also moving at ever increasing velocity past its own staging posts across a financial landscape: inputs, outputs, outcomes, risk-based investment choices, and top and bottom lines.
Opting to take advantage of this symmetry, and deciding to convert this somewhat noisy challenge into an opportunity, I abandoned my dream catching, reopened my previous blog, and started viewing it through a financial lens.
When engagement falls and costs climb, energy and investment gravitates to the inner workings of services and systems: staffing, referral processes, assessments and contractor accountability. Whilst this kind of investment is understandable, it can’t address all the root causes of attrition, many of which lie below the service boundary. This then begs the question: who holds responsibility for the root causes and consequences that criss-cross underneath the boundary, and who has the clout and machinery to intervene?
The way power is distributed and devolved through a system dictates how decisions are made and who gets to make them. The way money flows through it determines the direction in which leaders’ eyes are pointed: what receives attention, and what doesn’t. If responsibility for what lies on the boundary, and underneath it, isn’t properly thought through and aligned on, it remains no one’s responsibility. Yet because of the damage it causes, somehow it becomes everyone’s responsibility. Amid this confusion, the opportunity for real change gets lost, not because people don’t care but because the levers for action are unclear.
Systems take time, attention and resources to heal and to achieve their full potential. It occurred to me as field upon field of rapeseed shot past the train window (and this was something my fellow bean-counting passenger would no doubt understand) that beans need fertile soil, a warm atmosphere, sunlight, space and regular feeding and watering to achieve high yields, just like systems.
As I highlighted in my earlier blog, fertile ground for learning, development and creativity already exists at the edges of the justice system. But this fertile ground lies largely dormant. Stakeholder groups get frozen out, debates about these boundaries often cast more heat than light on what’s really happening, and few individuals or organisations have the time or resources to tend to the border.
Against this backdrop, there’s something to be said for investing in heating and lighting at the system boundary. A warm atmosphere thaws relationships. Light reveals what’s really going on from new and different perspectives. Interactive spaces turn shared experience into scalable propositions – co-designed, co-produced, and co-delivered – and new ways of working that can be reshaped, replicated, and released into the mainstream. Framed this way, investment in heating and lighting feels fundamental. It creates the conditions for everything else to work.
In the context of sentence-led rehabilitation and the well-documented findings that participation drives conversions, sustained engagement drives completions, and compliance drives fewer recalls and reconvictions, by nurturing these outputs relationally, stronger cross-cutting outcomes become possible. These cross-cutting outcomes are also far-reaching: fairer access to information, treatment and support; more continuous care; better health and well-being, and safer and stronger communities.
In system terms, investing in alignment of perspectives, space for innovation, and dissemination of learning enables programmes, models and methodologies to be tried, tested and, where appropriate, to be taken to scale. Yet that’s not where the story ends. There is more to systems work than stakeholder engagement, co-design and co-production, and scaling.
As I lingered on this point momentarily, it put me in mind of an interesting debate I once took part in about the distinction between ‘blue sky’ and ‘blue soup’ thinking. I was introduced to the idea that whereas blue sky thinking has no bounds, blue soup thinking is contained within a safe framework that ensures roles and responsibilities are respected and protected, and lasting relationships can develop.
Relational infrastructure – a term used in urban planning, organisational theory and elsewhere – provides the plumbing and wiring that connects systems and services to the people and communities they serve. Strategies, plans and action steps are configured in ways that build networks of trust, support, shared purpose and collaboration from the centre to the boundary and back again. They create channels that allow communication to flow freely, feedback loops that enable people to feel the impact of their involvement in real time, and processes that ensure decisions are aligned on, owned and shared.
Market-driven partnerships don’t always stand upon this sort of relational infrastructure. They were built for transactional purposes not for shared ownership, long-term impact, and solidarity. Typically, in these partnerships, communication, feedback and learning are subcomponents of commercially sensitive strategies, agreements, and operating frameworks and, for that reason, are inaccessible to all but a tight-knit exclusive group. Whilst this form of exclusivity makes sense from a commercial perspective, it doesn’t meet the requirements of a system that needs safer neighbourhoods, healthier populations and more prosperous communities.
Ultimately it is for leaders – including policy makers, commissioners, service providers, and donors and investors – to decide whether the boundary is to be treated as infrastructure that is worthy of investment, stewardship, and strategic attention. Without this commitment at the highest level, the opportunity for real change will remain largely out of reach: outcomes will continue to stall, costs will continue to rise exponentially, and systems will continue to break down.
As I contemplated this point, I wondered whether it goes some way to explaining why, given its profound history and obvious potential, the probation system is breaking down at the edges.
