Cinderella Workers of the Cinderella Service: Researching the history of paraprofessional probation workers in England and Wales from 1967

• In Event: EHC-WG Panel 3: Police and Sanctions in Historical Context

Abstract

In 1968, the Home Office met with the Probation and After-Care Committee of England and Wales to consider a small pilot experiment into the use of ancillary workers to supplement the work of qualified probation officers. Over fifty years later, paraprofessionals - those who do not require professional qualifications - make up over 50% of frontline workers within the Probation Service. However, almost all histories of probation from the late 1960s have entirely neglected to explore the expansion and development of these paraprofessional roles within the service. Reviewing the historical literature about probation prompts some interesting considerations for historical criminologists: how to contribute to and interact with a history often written by former probation officers and officials, where reflection on the past is intimately connected to the perceived decline of probation in recent years. By focusing on paraprofessional workers, our research aims to broaden our understanding of the Probation Service and to contribute a new lens through which to view the recent history of probation.

This paper discusses the challenges, complexities and rewards of doing oral and archival research to uncover a neglected area of modern criminal justice history. By centring the voices of former paraprofessional workers, we aim to understand how these roles were learned, enacted and experienced across the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper will consider oral history interviewing as a methodology within criminological research, as well as the need to complement interviews with document sources from the probation archive at the University of Cambridge and from the Home Office records at the National Archives.

Authors

• Emily Rose Hay, University of Sheffield

• Gwen Robinson, University of Sheffield

• Jane Dominey, University of Cambridge