 Well, my name's Lorraine Gelswp. I'm Deputy Director of the Institute of Criminology and it gives me a very great pleasure to welcome you here to this 19th Bill McWilliam's Memorial Lecture. The Institute of Criminology has very long-standing and continuing interest in probation and community sanctions more generally. And so it's a particular delight each year to host this lecture. It's actually quite amazing that the lectures have continued into their 19th year from what began as a five-year initiative started by some of Bill's colleagues, Brenda, his wife and family, whom we particularly welcome today. For a number of years the lecture moved from institution to institution, but in 2008 the Institute agreed to host the lecture for a further five years. Well, here we are, some years on, but we're very pleased to host the lecture. And it's well worth my mentioning, I think, that the Institute has become something of a national repository for materials relating to the old probation trusts and the previous Association of Chief Officers of Probation. And particularly has become a national repository for NAPO material, National Association of Probation Officers material with representatives here today, which is very good. And there's a small exhibition in the atrium so that we hope you will look at that. The repository is a national resource so we welcome users of it via our librarian in the Institute of Criminology. Well, as many of you know, Bill McWilliams had a prestigious career as a probation officer, as a researcher and as a writer. He was a staunch advocate of the need for rigorous evaluation of probation practice and an equally staunch critic of the excesses of the management ideal. So the memorial lecture began as an attempt to keep alive this critical spirit. And it's in this spirit that the steering group, comprising family members, academics and practitioners, wanted a speaker again to stretch our thinking. So we're delighted that Vivian Geirin agreed to speak today. Vivian is director of the Irish Probation Service, which is an agency of the Department of Justice and Equality, providing offender assessment and probation supervision programmes to around 10,000 offenders in the community and in Ireland's 14 prisons. Vivian is also on the Parole Board, active in cross-border initiatives, south, north initiatives, and, indeed, president of the Council of Europe's Council for Penological Cooperation, amongst many other things. But that gives you a good flavour, I think, of his energy and interest. So Vivian is going to speak for 15 minutes or so, and then we're very pleased that Professor Rob Canton, distinguished professor in community and criminal justice from De Montfort University, will give a brief response, and one of the purposes of the brief response is to allow everyone else time to think of their questions for a following question and answer session. Rob himself has written widely on probation matters, human rights and probation, crime punishment and moral emotions. He's looked at the transfer of policy from one country to another, the delights and difficulties of that. He's also looked at consent and cooperation in probation, European rules and so on. So we're very grateful to him for agreeing to give a response. So we're aiming to have tea and further informal discussion at 4pm out in the atrium, and we hope that as many people as possible will be able to stay and engage in conversation at that point. But without further ado, may I please invite you to welcome Vivian Giran to talk to us under the title, Penal reform and probation in Europe, positive change of direction, nudges to the rudder or steady as she goes. Thank you very much. First of all thank you very much Lorraine for that kind introduction. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am absolutely honoured and delighted to be here today delivering the 19th Bill McWilliams Memorial Lecture. I want to thank the Bill McWilliams Memorial Committee and in particular Professor Rob Canton for extending the invitation in person to me and of course to Brenda McWilliams for all her help along the way since then. Thank you all for being here and I look forward to engaging further with you over the course of the afternoon. I'm conscious that a number of those who have delivered previous lectures are present here today as well as many other colleagues and friends so no pressure as they say. I am familiar with Bill's writings and especially his quartet of articles on the development of probation in Britain. Those articles are ones I have quoted many times and to which I return from time to time when I need to get in touch with the foundations of where we have come from in probation, a theme to which I will return later today. What I plan to do today is to consider the general state of play of probation practice in Europe and its place in and influence on the development of penal policy. I believe that is an important perspective as probation no more than other parts of the justice system cannot exist or be considered in isolation from each other and indeed from other jurisdictions and wider influences. While I cannot today consider every possible or conceivable angle of importance or relevance, I will consider matters from a number of perspectives and wearing two particular different hats, so to speak, as the head of the Irish Probation Service and as chair of the Working Group on Penalogical Cooperation of the Council of Europe, the PCCP. For those of you who may not be familiar with the structure of such Council of Europe bodies, the Council for Penalogical Cooperation, the PCCP, is a working group of nine experts all from different countries from the fields of probation, prisons and related areas. The nine members are elected as vacancies arise from nominations made from the 47 Council of Europe Member States and meet at least four times a year in Strasbourg, France. Members' terms of service are for two years renewable for a further two years. I was nominated by Ireland and elected to the PCCP at the end of 2013 and I was elected by the group as its chair from the beginning of 2016, a position I will hold for two years with the possibility of renewal for a further two years. The PCCP is the group that has produced a range of practice standards and guidelines in the probation and prison fields, for example the European probation rules, prison rules, rules on electronic monitoring on juveniles, foreign national prisoners, dangerous offenders and many others. The current work programme includes drafting guidelines and a handbook on addressing in prisons and probation, radicalisation to violent extremism, revising the European rules on community sanctions, a job we're undertaking with our resident expert Rob Canton and work on producing a Council of Europe white paper on prison overcrowding and more information about all of that is available on the Council of Europe website. I am equally conscious of the context within which I speak, that is, in the cradle of European probation, not a term I use lightly and a jurisdiction in England and Wales that has undergone considerable change in criminal justice policy terms and on how probation work is organised and delivered, as well as in terms of its position in Europe. The wider issue of the United Kingdom's position in the European Union will of course be decided by the British people in the coming few days and I do not propose to dwell on that issue at all here today. In what I have to say I will use the literature insofar as I can as evidence for what I say but I also intend to use my own subjective observations in relation to a number of issues. So, what I propose to do is in four parts. First, I will describe how I perceive the current situation in relation to probation and penal policy. Secondly, identify some current and emerging trends and issues. Thirdly, identify what I see as some of the strengths and resources as well as some of the threats that face us if we are to make what I see as progress in the future. I will then finish up with some general conclusions and related remarks. I will try to follow these through some sort of reasonably logical process but have to point out that there will be considerable overlaps. The divisions between past, present and future or between different policies and related phenomena are not by any means clear cut. Let me start with one of my own observations. On the 30th of January this year, just a couple of days after I received the invitation to do this lecture, when I was already starting to consider its topic and theme, I saw a tweet from John Ben Gunn, the British consultant, writer and campaigner who served 32 years in prison for murder and who uses the Twitter handle at prisoner Ben 1. The tweet posed the question, is there a quiet political consensus growing for penal reform? The tweet grabbed my immediate attention as it echoed something I had been pondering for the previous year or more. Gunn's question on Twitter elisted just a few responses but they were broadly in agreement that as one Twitter responded, counterintuitively I think and hope the answer is yes. Soon after that I saw an article that asked whether noticeable recent and current changes in penal policy were in reality just nudges to the rudder. And a short time after that I came across and read a journal article by Byrne Patavina and Taxman that sought, quote, evidence of a global rehabilitation revolution. These and other prompts of which I had taken notice seemed to represent to me at least possible straws in a positive wind, indicators of some discernible movement towards a new belief in offender rehabilitation and some practical, albeit small signs of a movement across various jurisdictions and regions, away from punitiveness towards more than emphasis on and a belief and an action in strengthening support for offender rehabilitation. I also wondered what, if any, influence probation as a profession, a practice and an organisation had on all this and what the impact would be by and for probation at all sorts of levels. If such a movement for penal reform were indeed underway. In considering this and in terms of what I would speak about today I am aware that my heart is very much in probation but my head is conscious that I need to look more widely than where my heart is. I am also conscious that for a number of you you may hold a perception that neither penal policy nor probation has remained steady let alone advanced but has rather been in a state of decline or reverse for some time now, particularly in England. I would ask you to hold on to that belief if you hold it and at the same time come with me on a journey to some other places before coming to any conclusions. I want to use some aspects of the recent situation in Ireland as an illustration of different elements in criminal justice policy making and what can influence it. In 2014 the Minister for Justice Francis Fitzgerald TD published the report of the Penal Policy Review Group of which I was a member and which had deliberated over the previous two years. The report of the group is very positive, urging reduced use of imprisonment, more community based sanctions and particular focus on a number of categories of individuals such as women, young people and those caught up in gang related offending. There is now a high level implementation group of which again I am a member as well as a number of other working groups focused on implementing recommendations from the Penal Policy Review. At the time of writing this paper however Ireland is possessed of one big story as far as crime and offending is concerned. This relates to a violent feud between two rival Dublin gangs. Since late 2015 this feud has claimed seven lives all lost through shootings carried out in public places. One at a boxing tournament weigh in in a city hotel involving two perpetrators disguised as police officers and one man involved dressed as a woman. Another killing carried out on the street in an inner city neighbourhood was in fact a case of mistaken identity resulting in a completely innocent and unconnected young man being gunned down. A big part of people's fear right now is that there is no end in sight to all of this and I wonder where will it all end. Some of the key protagonists involved are in fact based outside Ireland in the south of Spain for example further complicating police investigations. The upshot of all of this is a huge focus and pressure on the police and indeed the minister to be seen to respond in a robust and effective way. There has been talk of saturation policing in your face patrolling and the like. Some have called for stronger legislation internment without upending trial and that the army should be called in to help patrol certain neighbourhoods. It can appear while all this is going on that virtually no other types of offending exist or at least that whatever exists is not so important. It can also serve to amplify the calls for more punitive responses to offending in general as being the only ones that are going to be effective and the only ones worth having. In terms of what are seen as adequate responses these are seen on a spectrum that starts with the police, moves through prisons to courts and so on with it being some way down that spectrum before the probation service or other agencies, much less community based organisations are seen as having any role to play. In saying all of this I want to get two things out of the way. First the penal policy can be formulated in a most considered and evidence based way but that formulation can be chewed up by the emotion of the response that may be seen as being called for in certain situations of perceived crisis. Secondly David Garland stated 15 years ago that for much of the 20th century probation was a core institution of criminal justice extensively used in the vanguard of penal progress it was often regarded as the exemplary example of the penal welfare approach to crime control. He went on to say that in today's 2001 criminal justice world probation occupies a position that is more conflicted and much less secure. Over the last 30 years probation has had to struggle to maintain its credibility as the ideals upon which it was based have been discredited and displaced end of quote. Garland's statement may well be true in relation to Britain. I am not so sure it is applicable in other jurisdictions in Europe or elsewhere for various reasons. As far as Ireland is concerned it is definitely not the case in my view. In fact I have been hearing since I joined the Irish probation service almost 30 years ago that probation is not and never has been given its rightful place on an equal footing and status and accorded the same respect as sister organisations such as police and prisons. I have to say I don't concern myself with that view so much anymore. There are I believe at least two reasons for that. First of all we in probation do not do what we do just to be respected, recognised or awarded. We do what we do to create and add public value in the sense that Moore suggests that public services quote must produce something whose benefits to specific clients outweighs the costs of production. And they must do so in a way that assures citizens and their representatives that something of value has been produced. In essence in the model put forth by Moore in this way the criminal justice system and its constituent parts in their own respectively unique ways must be seen to contribute to the public value of creating safer and fairer communities. I always emphasise the qualitative separateness and uniqueness of the different components of the justice system including probation and the fact that it is the adding together of those unique and separate ingredients that produces the real public value of safer communities. Equally I have long let go of the need to feel that probation is seen to be valued and respected as much as prisons or police or courts or whatever. Probation is never going to be as big, as high profile, as expensive as our sister organisations. We just need to accept that and move on. We need at some level to get over ourselves. Secondly while I always advocate the view that community sanctions such as probation and community service should be seen as sanctions of first resort in their own right. The reality is that for the individual victim of crime or the community feeling threatened and besieged by violent organised gangs the prison as the most punitive sanction available will always be viewed through the lens of hurt vulnerability and desire for revenge as the only yardstick to measure just punishment. And in fairness whether considered from an individual's or a community's perspective, when we feel threatened by violent crime or criminals we want the police to intervene and protect us and we want the offender or offenders put in prison to avenge and protect us. It is similar I believe to the health scenario where when we have a serious illness we want the most technically skilled surgeon to take the disease away we will consider sometime later whether we need the occupational therapist or the social worker. While I still smart somewhat at descriptions of probation or community service as alternatives to imprisonment the reality is that in terms of our history and the reality of practice that is what we are alternatives to custody. Just as incarceration had become an alternative to something else the death penalty so probation came into being because of and as an alternative to the harsher sanction of imprisonment. On the subject of imprisonment there are currently over 10.35 million people in prisons around the world and this figure may even be as high as 11 million if statistics for some countries not already supplied or included for various reasons were incorporated in the figures. Over 3 million of these are being held on remand. There are some very interesting trends and sub trends apparent in these statistics. While the overall global prisoner population is up by almost 20% since 2000 the number of incarcerated females has increased by over 50% over the same period. The increase for males as a separate category is 18%. The statistics merit some further exploration however and for example the overall prisoner population in the United States has declined slowly but steadily since 2008 and is recently down to 2.2 million from a previous high of 2.3 million. There are not comparable statistics available in relation to global probation or community corrections populations. Nevertheless comparative statistics space one and two in respect of both prison and probation populations respectively across the Council of Europe Member States are published annually by the University of Lausanne on behalf of the Council of Europe. There were just over 1.6 million people in prison across the 47 Council of Europe Member States at the end of 2014 the latest figures available. And this was down from almost 1.7 million the previous year which in turn was down from a little over 1.7 million in 2012. At the end of 2014 there were 1.2 million persons under probation supervision across the Council of Europe Member States and this is down from a high of a little over 2 million. The ratio of probation to prison population in Europe is now around 1.3 prisoners for every probationer. The overall numbers on community supervision including probation and parole in the United States has been declining each year since 2007. Within that figure however the number on parole has been increasing. In the USA around twice as many people at any one time are under community based supervision as are incarcerated. I also note that the prison population for England and Wales appears to have stabilised at a little over 85,000 as of the 31st of March this year compared to last year. And within that number the sentenced population is up 3% while the number of those remanded in custody is down 15%. At the end of 2015 the total probation population in England and Wales is up 11% on the previous year to 241,000. All of the above has fuelled an interesting debate on what Phelps has described as the concept and the reality of mass supervision supplementing and even replacing to some extent mass incarceration. Gwen Robinson and Fergus McNeill and others have also raised the issue of mass supervision or mass probation taking over from or at least extending the reach of mass incarceration and mass surveillance more generally. And similarly IEB argues that alternative sanctions and measures have in fact supplemented the existing system. I would suggest that there is a need to further explore the components of national and international statistics further to get the real picture. If I may again use Ireland as an example. Over the last five to six years in Ireland there had been a noticeable decline in the use of community service which in Ireland is a direct alternative to imprisonment. Despite a number of measures including legislative changes to arrest that decline. When the subsequent further decline in the use of community service in Ireland is considered in comparison to other measures such as probation and fines. One sees in fact that while community service has declined over the past few years, the use of short 12 months or less sentences of imprisonment has declined at an even greater rate. In addition numbers of probation orders have remained relatively stable while use of fines by the district courts in Ireland has increased by 20 to 25% over the same period. My point here is that simple changes in prison and probation numbers require deeper analysis at a more systemic level to establish what is really going on. The overall statistics for both Europe and the United States indicate reductions to some extent in numbers in prison and on probation. It is beyond the scope of the present paper to carry out a detailed analysis of trends in global probation and prison statistics. Nevertheless these statistics are worthy of further exploration and analysis and the value they bring to policy development has probably yet to be maximized. I am very conscious of the need to bring the experience of practitioners to the penal policy table and to any consideration of practice development. I also believe that not all the value we add to the lives of individuals or communities can be measured. Nevertheless within the bigger picture of penal policy there is a clear need to analyse crime, offending, probation, prison and all that goes with them from a statistical analysis of what can be measured. In the first instance none of us nor our organisations exist in a vacuum. I would now like to consider some themes that reflect something in my view regarding the state of penal policy in Europe and the position of probation within that. In relation to probation as a brand even though Herzog Evans has questioned whether practitioners and academics using the word probation assign the exact same meaning to it and citing Burnett as concluding that probation is a brand name that has international recognition. She concluded that identical words and crucially the word probation itself have different meanings depending on the language and the national culture and context, ranging from being perceived as punitive to being perceived as the embodiment of social work. How we describe what was traditionally known as probation has been questioned further more recently by a range of commentators including researchers, criminologists and policy makers. Again when Robinson and Fergus McNeill for example have suggested that terminology such as community punishment may be more appropriate for what has become the modern reality or social construction of supervision in the community. I have to say I prefer to hold on to the term probation not just for nostalgic reasons. While I have struggled at different times to consider such alternative terms I have always returned to consider probation as the most appropriate albeit less than perfect description for what we do and how we organise it. For me it captures the sense of someone being given a second chance to prove themselves. In that regard I hold to the Council of Europe's definition of probation which quote relates to the implementation in the community of sanctions and measures defined by law and imposed on an offender. It includes a range of activities and interventions which involve supervision, guidance and assistance aiming at the social inclusion of the offender as well as contributing to community safety. In terms of our values and principles we may have to as Paul Sr et al suggest to repackage how we describe how we do what we do in quote the right language for the 21st century unquote such as replacing the advice, assist and befriend of the 1907 act with to support, enable and relational co-production. Without losing or altering the fundamental values that drive us. The issue of policy transfer has received a certain amount of consideration in the criminological academic research literature. As Rob Canton has pointed out, countries have long exchanged ideas, research findings and practices in all aspects of criminal justice. Jones and Newborn have pointed for example to the perception that over the past two decades social policy in the UK has increasingly involved the importation of ideas from abroad particularly from the United States. They point out that the notion of policy transfer is just one way of understanding what may be occurring and that importantly such transfer of ideas and policies is frequently a two way street. Perhaps unsurprisingly the transfer of ideas and policies in the criminal justice area that I will speak about today is not just in the context of the USA and the UK but in the wider European context. McNeill and Robinson again have suggested that since the inception of community punishment policy transfer has played an important role in diffusing innovation thus creating some commonalities between jurisdictions. They also observed that although the most significant and best travelled penal innovations may have boasted scientific support their successes have perhaps owed more to their political appeal, to their cultural systemic fit and to their potential systems effect in reducing imprisonment rather than to scientific evidence about what works to reduce re-offending. They also point to other reasons why some jurisdictions may engage in such policy transfer for example those in the process of Europeanization as part of state building or state sustaining where the target legitimizers may be politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels. Part of my concern here is in the first instance on how or why certain policy changes begin and develop as much as why and how they may transfer between jurisdictions. I would suggest that the reasons may be many and varied depending on the local situation and circumstances. For example in the USA recently and currently penal reform seems to be based on budgetary and legal constraints allied to a realisation long addressed by researchers that prison generally does not work when measured against recidivism rates post release. As well as by other measures of its negative impact on prisoners themselves, their families and communities. One question is why has its time just arrived now, the time for penal reform. Is it all about economics? Has there been an Obama effect? I believe that it may be a combination of these and other factors such as important legal judgements and the particular confluence of perfect storm conditions. Very much catalyzed by key leadership actions creating a domino effect. Although I live and work in a completely different jurisdiction to most if not all of you, I'm deeply conscious of our shared history. That shared history and the practice flowing from it has influenced the development of probation across these islands and Europe more generally. Some many or few of you may be aware that the founding legislation on which probation practice in Ireland is based continues to be the probation of offenders act 1907. That statute came into effect at a time when of course all of Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom. In fact even though we have had a modernizing community sanctions bill on the stocks for a few years now awaiting to be passed. I am ever more conscious as time passes that the 1907 act has stood the test of time and we will need to be really careful about what we eventually put in place to replace it. In fairness the 1907 act so often paired with the exhortation to probation officers that I mentioned earlier to advise, assist and befriend probationers has served us well. The reasons why and the journey of how England and Wales not only dropped this but was keen to repudiate it entirely has been explored by various authors including of course Bill McWilliams among many others since. To some extent a significant change came in what McWilliams described as the situation and probation whereby an organisational machine was created in which the individual offenders which had processed became units in a framework of policy. To be fair it could be argued that Ireland has only retained the 1907 legislation by default. It has always seemed to me that Britain has never been slow to make dramatic policy changes and all that implies. There may thus be a downside of too vigorous policy change versus possible advantages of stasis or what some might term stagnation. Data, information, analysis and research have always been important in terms of policy and practice development. I notice not just an increase in activity in this field but an increased openness and accessibility to such data and its analysis. I already mentioned the Council of Europe's space statistics. These are still in my view under many people's radar across Europe and very much underutilised. Next week in Dublin we will convene a conference of the criminal justice agencies with the team of putting research into practice in criminal justice. In terms of research specifically in the field of probation I believe it is important to ensure a strong connection between practice and the academy. Something which has been part of our tradition for many years and from which the field has benefited greatly. Equally I should point out the need for balance in that people we might term strangers to practice can bring a more dispassionate focus to the study of us which is necessary. I also wonder to what extent we make good policy decisions on the basis of research which can itself in turn be value laden. And we also need to allow for the possibility that we can be creative and make the most of things that just happen. That happenstance I referred to previously without any great research input. For example the development of the community return programme in Ireland which has been very successful was simply as a response to the need to reduce prison numbers and in the absence of finance to build a planned new super prison just outside Dublin at Thornton Hall. And it did not start with a policy review or feasibility or scoping study. I want to say something now about what are termed super national bodies. These bodies referred to by Jones and Newburn include the United Nations, the European Union and the Council of Europe. While the relative influence of all of these bodies is not necessarily easy to gauge. Rob Canton suggests in relation to policy transfer that a principal stimulus here which is likely to become still more compelling is the increasing influence of super national influences. And that several treaties and conventions have given a mandate for super national entities for example the Council of Europe to concern themselves with the penal practices of their member states. Penal policy in short is no longer the sole concern of the nation state. I would suggest that to the list of formal super national bodies might be added for the purpose of the present exercise such representative bodies as the consideration of European probation, CEP and Europris as well as a range of lobbying or advocacy NGOs among numerous others. In ways that are different to but not necessarily much less effective. These latter bodies can exercise considerable influence in promoting policy change and development. The confederation of European probation was founded over 30 years ago. It has served and continues to serve as a powerful voice for the probation profession and organizations around Europe. Both Ireland and the UK are both represented on the CEP board. More recently when the Europris organization was formed I sensed that there was a certain apprehension in European probation circles that the new organization might overtake the CEP and somehow reduce the value of the probation network. It became apparent very quickly that that was not and would not be the case. In fact CEP and Europris now cooperate closely in many initiatives and I see the respective secretaries general at the Council of Europe meetings that I chair in Strasbourg several times a year. Speaking of the Council of Europe and its bodies and specifically the PCCP that working group has an agenda very firmly rooted in the ongoing development of prison and probation standards, policy and practice in the 47 Council of Europe Member States. The work of the Council of Europe in this regard has been significant since its establishment but particularly in my view over the last three decades. Instruments such as the European probation rules, European prison rules and the European rules and community sanctions and measures as well as some others that deal with specific teams or areas of work including electronic monitoring and dangerous offenders set the shared international standards for work in these fields. Another example of the increasing global connectivity in the world of probation is the World Congress on probation first held in London in 2013. The second of these biennial events was held in Los Angeles in 2015 with the third Congress on probation scheduled for Japan next year 2017. The authenticity of such international events may be questioned in terms of its impact on practice and so on and indeed their benefit may be symbolic as much as practical. Nevertheless such a gathering would not have been imaginable up to recently and they do as far as I am concerned demonstrate something of the real connectivity and shared reality of probation across the world. They also bring inter-jurisdictional communication and knowledge sharing to a level not otherwise possible outside the more usual exchanges bilaterally between friendly countries within regions or continents or across historical or postcolonial bonds. In addition they can help to break down the barriers between what might be described as the probation or aristocrats and countries where services may be in the early stages of development. In such situations the meetings of minds take place on the basis of equality and with the clarity that we really can all learn from each other. The place of victims of crime has been increasingly recognised and acknowledged in European penal policy as well as in probation practice. This has taken place through for example developments in restorative justice practice and more recently and very significantly through the implementation of the European Union victims directive. The directive establishes minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime and ensures that victims are recognised, treated with respect and receive proper protection, support and access to justice. The directive has implications for probation as well as the other parts of the justice system. One key issue in my organisation and country is how to ensure a seamless and experience as possible for victims who have contact with more than one justice agency. This cannot be achieved without considerable inter-agency cooperation including from probation. There may not be many countries where probation agencies undertake direct work with victims. In Ireland we now do an increasing albeit proportionately small amount of this work for example through our restorative justice initiatives. One clear question is is this probation work or is it better done by NGOs. Interestingly such work is addressed in the European probation rules. I want to move on to the issue of service user involvement in developments. Probation work has always focused by definition on working with people who have committed criminal offences. Even the issue of how we describe our service users has been the focus of some debate. The involvement of current and former service users in the development of practice and policy has grown increasingly influential. While groups such as user voice have operated in Britain for some time, similar developments in other countries, Ireland included, have been slower to take off. There have also been a number of notable individuals as well as organisations that have forged a path in this respect. For example from my own perspective Alan Weaver has been a singular and powerful voice from Scotland. Alan has put himself out there in ways that have been unique in my view including through his writing, his involvement in the role from crime video programme and through his general communication in and engagement with this arena. Alan has presented at a number of conferences in Ireland and will do so again in September this year. He has also presented at one of our probation service staff conferences. Last week the 21st Conference of European Directors of Prisons and Probation was held in Zandam in the Netherlands. For the first time in its 21 year history the conference included inputs from two ex-prisoners, both from Ireland. This is not evidence that penal policy and practice is going soft on those who offend, nor denying the negative impact of crime on victims and communities. Quite the contrary, it is rather about the redefinition and reconceptualisation of people with criminal convictions and people involved as service users as having something distinctive and unique to contribute in a valued context of inclusion rather than exclusion. This is, I believe, just one important area where we are collectively slowly and with some noticeable struggle, but also with some success gaining positive ground. It is worth mentioning here too that the Council of Europe's revised draft rules on community sanctions and measures, the ones Rob is working on, includes a rule about involving service users in service evaluation and research. This is an important acknowledgement at a high level of the value and importance of hearing the service user's perspective and is much more than lip service. In relation to communications it can seem a little trite to say, but the development in information and communications technology have made a significant difference to how we engage and network with our colleagues, including those in other jurisdictions. It can seem like one is an old fogey to say this, but I believe developments in communications technology and specifically social media, because of their immediacy and their reach for example, have changed, continued to change and will change further the way we do our business. This has been added to by the increasing drive towards more openness and transparency on the part of public representatives and officials. I should point out that I do not place myself in the old fogey camp in this regard. While I believe that some of the developments, for example, how discussions or decisions can be leaked inappropriately or how individuals, public representatives, officials or members of the public can be targeted and subject to abuse more easily, are negative developments. I see modern ICT systems and social media as a powerful tool for positivity. I have benefited countless times from my access to Twitter, for example, as a means to communicate with others on a global scale in relation to probation policy and practice, including in the preparation of this paper. While studies of the influence and impact of portrayals of probation work in the traditional communications media, both in Ireland by people like Neve McGuire and Nicola Carr, and in Britain, for example, Lowell Burke and Mike Nellis and Hong Chui, I believe there is a study or studies yet to be done on the use and potential impact of modern communications and specifically social media on public and community engagement in probation. We do not know exactly how to address these issues and how such technologies and methods have potential in terms of opening up our otherwise are here to for relatively closed systems. This may well have significant potential in terms of informing and engaging with our stakeholders, communicating proactively and even for a start debunking myths and clarifying what we do and how our systems work. Y cyfgweithio y dyneth ymddangos iawn arall o'r ffordd yn ymddangos dechrau, y parig fe allan o'r funerau elechroni. While we may have debated its value or applicability at all in the past, it is clear, as far as I'm aware, that electronic monitoring is here to stay. A few weeks ago, I participated on an international panel discussion at the electronic monitoring conference awrgynaid â'r Lacteaings Nithgledd mewn Lacteaing. Rwy'n gweithio am y cwmhysig i wneud y cwmhoeddllai. Rwy'n gweithio cyfaint rydyn ni'n ddrafod i'r gyflawni ar hynny'n gweithio cyfrwyno cyfrwyno ac yn astud, mae'n cael ei wneud ar gyfer cyfrwyno cwmheill, meddwl i'r h Rhondd mewn cyfrwyno cyfrwyno cwmheilwyr yn y Sryst i'r Tethau Gweithio sy'n ei ddodolor, a o gyda'r syniadau cyfnodol. Yn y cyfnodol yn y gyfnodol, rydyn ni'n meddwl i chi ddiwedd yn gweithio. I gael maen nhw'n gweithio'r bydau, neu ddodd i chi ddurau'r ddeud am y cyfnodol, ac ymddangos cyfnodol yn gweithio'r ddweud. Mae'n dweud, mae'n ddweud o'r rhaglen cyffredinol sy'n gwneud a'u bod yna'r ddweud wedi ei helpu yn ychydig ar y cyfnodol. is a range of real and potential threats to the advancement of a positive focus on penal policy This includes, particularly at local and national levels, what I described earlier as policy decisions, based on the most recent outrage. This in turn includes, for example, the rise of terrorism and radicalisation to violent extremism. While in no way minimizing the awfulness of terrorist and hate fuelled violence, Y cael ei ddweud o gyllidio a cyfrannu pethau yn unrhyw pethau ymlaen nhw'r unrhyw o'ch gwestiwn i ddweud o gyllidio a'r cyfrannu i ffyrdd y cerdd o'r argyrchol a'i ddweud oherwydd y ddweud o'r argyrchol i ffyrdd yr unrhyw ymddangos i'r ffyrdd o'i ddweud o gyfrannu, i ddweud o'r pryddysgu'r cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu a'r cyfrannu o'r dyfodol yn cyfrannu i ddweud yr hynny, Prifatio will have a particularly important role. While there is a strong focus on surveillance, intelligence, and hard security in this work, probation strength has always been in trying to engage. If radicalisation is to be addressed by the winning of hearts and minds, probation knows a few things about that. Serious crime, including terrorism, will not be addressed unless our responses include investment in communities and in community-based services. Technical fixes such as increased and more hardline policing or building more and more secure prisons will not in themselves provide the required fundamental change, which is not just about policy and organisation, but more about the way of doing services, leading to transformative change through its manner and way of relating. In setting out what I have to say today, I am starting from the position that we, hopefully all of us in this room anyway, are starting from, even though we may represent a minority view among the wider public, that we share some core positions and goals, including less use of prison, more appropriate use of community-based sanctions based on well-established values and principles that people can change, that everyone deserves a second chance, and that evidence-informed practice can help those involved in the justice system and specifically those who have offended at some point to move on. Also that prison, per se, is a negative thing in itself and that we should at all times aim to minimise the damage that our systems can cause, in this case, how we treat those involved in them. If that is what we believe, how can we move and continue to move this forward? Leadership is hugely important in probation and in the wider criminal justice system as much as in any area of significant human endeavour. This is another issue considered in Bill McWilliam's work. Bill was cautious about managerialism and keen to distinguish it from leadership. Moore argues that the job of the public manager is demanding, as they are required to strike a complex balance between two commonly opposed psychological orientations. First, they must have strong enough convictions about what is worth doing that they are willing to work hard for them and to stake their reputations on the values that they pursue. Yet their convictions cannot be so strong that they are impervious to doubt and the opportunity for continued learning. Their views, the ones for which they labour so mightily and with which they are most closely identified, must be held contingently. Second, they must be willing to act with determination and commitment while retaining a taste and a capacity for thought and reflection. This reflects views shared by Matheson, for example, who warns that in standing between the pillars of reform and revolution, a position which Matheson suggests carries risks of being respectively defined in by the current system and therefore neutralised, are defined out as irrelevant. The task for practitioners, policy makers and those exercising effective leadership in either is to defy being defined by any one position, to resist the pressures of working only for short term goals that may be more ameliorative than transformative, to commit to being part of a never unfinished process of learning, but always on the way cumulatively towards a higher ideal of transformative change. We need to work at what is close of hand, but always in the openness of the unfinished and in the direction of that which supports solidarity and integration. And of course leadership, as Haifetz and Linski point out, would be a safe undertaking if your organisations and communities only faced problems for which they already knew the solutions. And without learning new ways, changing values, attitudes and behaviours, people cannot make the adaptive leap necessary to thrive in the new environment. This is the challenge we face in so many aspects of our work and our lives. There are, in my view, a number of factors that may help or hinder how we go forward in a positive way. These include the politics and policies of the most recent atrocity, or what MacNeill and Robinson refer to as the vulnerability to events, and in particular to tragic high profile cases. And they highlight the important caution about happenstance. Specifically, terrorism and radicalisation seem to me to represent major threats at present. To progress, we also need to remain open to the fact that inspiration and practical development will come from other places and other jurisdictions. Clearly countries in which probation has developed relatively recently, such as former Soviet Union states, will and do have a lot to offer. We must listen to the voices of leadership from below and from other unexpected quarters, perhaps to the side or even from outside. Those of us living and working in these islands of Ireland and Britain have a huge advantage in that English is our shared language, as well as the real international lingua franca of international exchange. So, what am I saying? Well, I believe that there are green shoots of a movement for positive change in penal policies across Europe and more widely, even in the United States. One swallow does not make a spring and I do not want to give the impression that I am implying that one good conference or research paper marks a sea change in policy. I believe that significant changes in direction can be and are in fact initiated by very small nudges to the rudder. The sailing analogy clearly tells us that a small magnitude alteration in the angle of the rudder is all that is required to implement a much bigger degree of change in the direction for the ship as a whole. Probation is clearly part of that but not its entirety. Bourne et al concluded last year in considering a possible global rehabilitation revolution that, regardless of how we got here, we are at a watershed moment in the history of corrections and sentencing reform. They go on citing Cullen to state that rehabilitation has weathered a sustained attack and is now increasingly guiding correctional policy and practice. In short, it is time to take the task of rehabilitating offenders seriously. Just one of the small in one way but really significant steps which has made this recent watershed moment qualitatively different to earlier ones is the fact that we are learning more and more to listen to the different voices seldom heard from, excluded or ignored voices as I have described above. Just as what works emerged as a bottom-up green-shoot development that took hold and changed our direction, now how to work a different approach and concept in how we do justice is similarly developing as an outcome of listening to the seldom heard from people. This is one of the really important things in thinking about what taking the task of rehabilitating offenders seriously means. But like the individual's path to desistence itself, this journey is zigzag, stop-start, forward-backward-forward movement. Policy does transfer between jurisdictions but it is not a straightforward process. It takes work to successfully adopt policies and programs from elsewhere. There is a need to share with and learn from each other. The so-called supranational bodies referred to earlier play a key role. There are green shoots of positive change. We have a solid base on which to build. Probation now across Europe and beyond does share common approaches and history and goals, but is also diverse. We need to accept that. We need to move on. Some critical things like focus on desistence, service user involvement are game changers. Our people are critical and we need to develop leadership at all levels and within and across all jurisdictions. Probation, as I say, has played a definite role in all of this. At times it seems to me that probation organisations, probation leaders and probation workers have championed and kept the flame of offender rehabilitation alive and alight, sometimes in the face of strong opposition and when it could have been completely extinguished. So have influential individuals and networks. In the third paper of his famous quartet, Bill McWilliams argued that the mission of probation in Britain, which began in the 1870s has twice been transformed in the century. Probation in the jurisdiction of England and Wales has been further transformed over the last three decades since that input from Bill. Nevertheless, I do believe, as Paul Sr, et al, have recently suggested that there is a fundamental essence of probation which overlaps through shifting boundaries with the other social systems surrounding it and that something identifiable as probation still exists. That fundamental essence and what it stands for and what we, I believe, stand for is still burning brightly throughout Europe and more widely. I also believe that probation as a concept, as part of the criminal justice jigsaw and as a profession is broadly in good shape. Of course there are and always will be threats, threats that probation because of its nature and the fact that it can be fuzzy and occupy and inhabit contested spaces and be required to do different things at different times will always face. Strengths can exist in some countries at particular points in time countered by threats in others at the same time with the pendulum swinging in either direction at different points in time. If my assessment and that of others is that there is evidence of a definite and positive shift in penal policy, those of us in probation and across the justice systems have a role and a responsibility to move beyond being mere custodians of the rehabilitative ideal and values to press the advantage in the interests of all of us and our communities everywhere. For me, Britain or perhaps more precisely England and Wales and always will be the cradle of probation and of many developments in probation and related fields. It is like the family home no matter where the children end up or what they do. But the probation children across Europe and far beyond have grown up and are still growing up no matter what the parents or should I describe them as grandparents now are up to. Probation practice has evolved and continues to evolve in ways that are unique and appropriate to its own locality depending on where that is. Britain is no longer the centre of the probation universe. Probation as a profession in Europe, as I said, is in my view in good shape, although it faces as always those challenges. As well as the challenges, probation has some significant allies that will sustain and develop it into the future. I have outlined these as I see them. There are also particular developments, some of which I have been able to outline, which will in my opinion sustain probation and foster its growth further into the future. Phelps suggested that scholars of punishment still have much to learn about probation and its role in the criminal justice system. Probation reforms, she went on to say, must focus on increasing the diversion potential of probation while also limiting back end net widening or concluding that as reforms have swept across the nation, the USA, in recent years, it seems we are beginning to reach this new political consensus in which the values of punishment and public safety are rationally balanced with fiscal constraints and competing claims for public revenue. This reform towards a new political consensus on punishment and rehabilitation, as described by Phelps, seems to me to be shared in Europe and more widely as well as in the United States. In their short summary final report of the cost action initiative on offender supervision in Europe recently, Fergus McNeill and Crystal Bayon described the need for us to move around conceptually and the facilitating these movements is one of the key contributions that European institutions and European associations can make to criminal justice reform. They concluded that certainly we now know from experience that working together produces new understandings, opens up new possibilities, and helps us imagine progressive change. I agree. Referring to the value of what he called purposeful practice in any field of endeavour, Matthew Syed, former international table tennis champion, suggests that it is often said that human achievement will eventually run its course, that we will sooner or later bump our collective head up against the ceiling of possibilities. But while this may be true in some very simple tasks, it is certainly not true in activities characterised by complexity. In complex human tasks, human achievement has many more centuries, possibly millennia to run, before it hits any kind of immovable ceiling. This is not just because the principles of purposeful practice are constantly being elaborated and improved, but also because of what we might call paradigm shifts, completely unforeseen innovations in technique and application. I believe the same is true in relation to penal policy and the world of probation practice within that. We have not yet reached the ceiling in terms of penal policy development and the practice of probation. There is a discernible, but by no means secure positive change of direction in penal policy within Europe, but also further afield. I believe that European probation and new voices in Europe are influencing the elder statesmen of Europe, including Britain and the United States, reversing the previous trend of punitive policy transfer. The picture is not simple. It is, of course, complex and multifaceted. The potential for further positive change is fragile and may be threatened as much by complacency and inertia as by any act of opposition or negativity. There is always a danger of returning to the politics and decision making of the most recent outrage, for example, or of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. We need to be confident that things are in good shape and in good hands and to encourage the leadership at all levels and from perhaps unlikely sources to keep the positive momentum of the current penal reform movement moving. Thank you for your attention. Good afternoon everyone. I have the privilege of responding to Vivian's lecture, which, perhaps I can begin by saying and with your permission on behalf of you all, to thank Vivian for such a lucid, engaging and instructive contribution. It was thought provoking, challenging, but also optimistic that optimism hasn't always been so easy to find in reflections on the future of probation. And I think Vivian, if I hope it would be fair to say that what you've presented us with is not so much a single thesis as a series, a set of interwoven themes and I'd like to touch upon some of those. Past lectures in this series, as regular attenders will know, have included many well-judged and prudent insights into England and Wales. But Vivian has reminded us of an international context and tried to set probation in this country within that context. And one of the strongest messages is the value that can be found of being a member of an international community. In this case, the probation community united by common values and by shared practices. And I think when we reflect on the value of membership of an international community I can't resist saying that it was very sensible of the government to set the referendum date only a few days after the Williams lecture so that we could all as voters benefit from Vivian's wisdom. Many of the European institutions referred to have been, had a strong English contribution as indeed the Council of Europe itself has had over the years. The Council for Penalogical Cooperation of which Vivian is the current president, one of its founding members, not all of you will mis-rumble know, was Sir Graham Smith, who was chair of that council when it promulgated the first set of rules on community sanctions and measures. And John Walters, formerly the chief probation officer of Middlesex, was again one of the founders of the CEP. Vivian has detected some green shoots of an international consensus around rehabilitation. And among the questions we might want to tease out in debate is whether we can detect those shoots ourselves, where they are, what makes us think that they are green shoots. We also might want to wonder why if the time for this has come, why now? What's the particular moment that makes this a propitious time for such change? Vivian referred to Barack Obama and maybe the subtle effect of having a manifestly decent person in such a high office has helped to change a mood. But in that case, we might want to reflect what, if that's been the Obama effect, what might be the Clinton effect or Heaven for Fend, the Trump effect. So if there are green shoots, what can we identify that might be helpful to make these roots flourish, these shoots flourish? But what are the weeds that might choke their growth? What are the predators, the slugs and the weevils that might be nibbling away at the green shoots? And if we find ourselves in a position of having to make invidious choices, how are we going to identify lesser of two weevils? I'm sorry, I couldn't resist it. So here are some of the things I think that we need to be vigilant about. Perhaps first of all is politicisation. Not all European nations have made law and order as prominent a theme in their party politics as we have in England and Wales. Perhaps in this respect, we followed the United States of America and maybe the low point of this was in the 1997 election where we witnessed what was described as an auction of cruelty between the Home Secretary of the Day and the leader of the opposition, each trying to see who could be more unpleasant to offenders. That idea of popular punitiveness I think has been a little bit less salient. It wasn't so prominent in 2010 or in 2015. But perhaps it's a light sleeper. We need to be aware of it because it seems to me to be one of our potential weeds. Another is perhaps commerce, which is of course a very salient consideration in this country at the moment. Commerce we should be suspicious of because it's expansive. That's what industries are supposed to do. They're supposed to grow. And although there's a consensus among us perhaps that the widening of the net is not a good thing, if you're making money out of a particular activity then why would you be bothered about widening a net? Commerce also has a profit imperative. It needs to generate money for shareholders, money that might otherwise be invested in enhancing service. And it also perhaps most importantly of all strikes the wrong relationship. Rehabilitation is not a commodity. Rehabilitation and the activities of the probation services are about expressing the responsibilities that a society has towards the victims of crime and towards those of the community's members who've committed crimes. What do we think then might be the allies, the nutrients in the soil? I'm sorry, I'm breaking this metaphor taking it to a breaking point. But what do we think might be on our side might be propitious? Well, technology I think is an open question. It is bound up with commerce because the people who pervade technology understandably want to flog it to us. And I think the message that I picked up from Vivian here is that we should use technology but not allow ourselves to be used by it. Not just do things because we can but find ways of using the technologies to advance our work. Secondly, research. I think research is at a very exciting time now. And this, a wise use of research and an expanded understanding of what it should involve can help the roots to flourish, the shoots to flourish. Paul Senior has I think said that we should perhaps talk less about evidence-led practice and more about evidence-informed practice. But what kind of evidence are we going to draw upon here? Much of the evidence for some years has been dominated by reconviction studies which are often inconclusive and almost always contested. But the idea of involving a much more rounded appreciation and evaluation, including the perspectives of the people who use and are affected by the services of probation seems invaluable. And then another and perhaps in terms of Vivian's agenda today the most important of all, the participation in a supranational community. Through this medium as Vivian has so eloquently put it we can share, we can stretch our ideas and minds, we can learn from each other whether or not we call that policy transfer. But we can also address some of the problems that are common to all of Europe. The committee that Vivian presides over has been considering problems of radicalisation, extreme and violent extremism. We might also want to think of the problems of non-nationals which is one of the biggest challenges that faces Europe at the moment. As you know with wide scale migration across the continent large proportions of people held in prisons in all European countries are non-nationals. We're used to talking about citizens but what does reintegration mean for someone who may be deported at the end of their sentence? What resettlement look like for them? So it seems to me preposterous to think that we could or should detach ourselves from looking at that except in an international context. So it's time for me to finish the Council for Penalogical Cooperation which has the benefit of Vivian's leadership. Its task is to begin with human rights. It starts with the convention and it says how do these rights apply to the work of penal policy to prisons and to probation? And Vivian has become a strong, eloquent voice for penal progress and for standards of decency across Europe. I want to reiterate my warmest thanks on behalf of us all for enabling us to hear that today. Thank you.