A perpetual sense of crisis… how to spend the £40 million

This paper discusses the opportunity that has arisen from the injection of £40 million for the National Probation Service. Importantly, the funds have been allocated to promote the use of community orders and to contribute to alleviating the perennial crises facing the wider criminal justice system. It will be argued that the incessant policy and practice guidance has contributed to a shift in probation values thereby unwittingly contributing to current challenges. The funding therefore provides a space within which the probation service can again promote its rehabilitative ideals and draw on emerging evidence from the desistance literature, which, when incorporated into practice, will result in increasing positive offender compliance and reducing offending behaviour.