The Brian Williams Memorial Prize 2009--Winning Paper: The Social Construction of Probation in England and Wales, And the United States: Implications for the Transferability of Probation Practice (Report‪)‬

Introduction Probation in England and Wales, and the United States (hereafter, US) share similar origins: they both owe their early existence to two philanthropists (John Augustus and Matthew Davenport Hill) in the mid-nineteenth century and both stem from similar forms of judicial reprieve. Now, probation services in both countries combine corrections with punishment in the community and exist in neo-liberal countries which have increasing rates of imprisonment and an emerging 'culture of control' (Garland, 2001) (1). However, the structural origins of the two services contain subtly important differences which are interconnected and interdependent and so I start from the position that if the culture of a country can have an impact on the delivery of punishment, as shown by Melossi (2001) and McAra (2005), then the culture of an institution may also have similar long-lasting effects. This line of thought has important consequences for the implementation of standardised probation practice so I begin by outlining the origins of each service before drawing attention to the main differences in their development, including the role of religion, the different time periods over which the services developed and resultant political climates. The article is, of sorts, a 'history of the present' (Foucault, 1979) in that I am trying to use the history of two different probation services to 'identify the historical and social conditions upon which they still depend' (Garland 2001:2) so I then look at differences between the two services in the early twenty- first century focusing on varying levels of: unity and fragmentation; client-centredness and client-management; professionalism and training; and accountability and argue that these stem from their differential origins. Finally, Berger and Luckmann's (1971) Social Construction of Reality and Jones and Newburn's (2006) argument that the agency of individuals has an impact on the outcome of a process of policy transfer leads me to discuss how the origins of different probation services must be considered in light of globalisation and the rise of Evidence Based Practice (hereafter, EBP) and initiatives which attempt to increase the transferability and standardisation of probation practice.