Climate-Aware Probation Expertise: Call for colleagues to contribute to developments
Have you considered how ‘climate change’ impacts Probation Practice? What’s the relevance of extreme weather for the work of Probation and CAFCASS staff?
NAPO acknowledges the worsening climate crisis since the UK Parliament declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 (UK Climate Change Committee 2023). More people are being convicted for drawing attention to climate breakdown, then assessed and supervised by Probation staff, even first-time offenders being sentenced to custody for peaceful protests.
This new demographic lacks risk and need literature or evidence-based practice guidance.
At NAPO’s 2024 AGM, a motion was passed for staff to:
- Use professional judgment to override OASys in relevant cases and assess PoPs’ context, motivation, and needs (through existing guidance).
- Recognise systemic safeguarding issues (neglect, harm) and consider the imminence and severity of harm, using resources like https://www.lcat.uk/
- Develop Best Practice Guidance in collaboration with social work and health experts, eg https://climatechildprotection.org/
- Participate in training to ensure consistency.
A group is being set up to develop guidance for this practice area, including former POs and SPOs. They seek input from current staff, urgently, particularly about implementing report-writing guidance for climate protestors. The Probation Service was founded on ethical principles, and there are concerns that these aren’t being applied. Report writers need proper support to avoid criticism.
Wider Probation responsibilities include management of unpaid work, prison sentences and licence conditions. A recurring condition is: “Not to participate directly or indirectly in organising and/or contributing to any demonstration, meeting, gathering or website without the prior approval of your supervising officer. This condition will be reviewed on a monthly basis and may be amended or removed if your risk is assessed as having changed”.
A young activist subjected to very restrictive conditions tragically took his own life. Such restrictions are likely to be seen as hugely disproportionate and a denial of basic human rights, including freedom of association.
Probation Practice has not, as yet, kept up with the wider picture, unlike colleague organisations and their regulators. For example, the Law Society has 29 pages of guidance for its members about cases which relate to climate. In May 2021, the Royal College of Psychiatrists issued an official Position Paper on the Climate Crisis. In September 2021 in an unprecedented collaboration, 200 academic Health Journals from around the world called on governments to make necessary changes due to the threat to life. Probation urgently needs a professional position about this issue, to provide guidance for dealing with this distinctive new group, whose breaking of the law will likely be understood in the future as acting in the public interest – essentially pro-social and certainly not anti-social.
The UK has a long history of peaceful protest to achieve legal reform when other kinds of campaigning has failed. Women’s suffrage is one important historical example. Women were finally allowed to vote in 1918 following a lengthy campaign of civil disobedience by the suffragettes, who started off with petitions, marches and speeches and when these failed to achieve change, moved on to direct action, engaging in civil disobedience such as chaining themselves to railings of public buildings, and famously going on to a racecourse to stop the King’s horse. Emily Davidson lost her life in that incident, and many women were imprisoned and force fed when they protested their imprisonment by hunger strikes. These women risked their lives and health because they believed that the law and the government were wrong in refusing to let 50% of eligible adults vote. We now take this right for granted and see their protests as well justified and correct. However, at the time, they were seen by the establishment as criminals, wrong-headed and deserving of punishment.
We are facing a real climate emergency, supported by scientific evidence. Rising sea temperatures are melting polar ice caps, floods and storms causing destruction, wildfires ravaging the USA and Australia, and increasing temperatures are making parts of the world uninhabitable. UNICEF’s 2023 report stated that 50% of the world’s 2.1 billion children are already affected by climate breakdown. While it is difficult for us in the UK to imagine such a scale, events in Florida, Spain and across the globe help us grasp how quickly this is happening. See more at https://www.ccrm.co.uk/climate-change
The UK Government was one of the first to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but many believe this is too little, too late. Groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil aim to highlight the climate emergency. These activists, motivated by concern for the planet and future generations, are often treated as serious criminals being sent straight to prison. These sentences reflect years of repressive legislation, government rhetoric, and attacks on juries' rights to deliberate according to their conscience. The Labour government inherited this mess and must restore the right to protest. This is a rapidly evolving issue - on 2nd May 2025, the Court of Appeal ruled that anti-protest laws introduced by the previous government are unlawful. https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/liberty-defeats-government-appeal-as-court-rules-anti-protest-laws-are-unlawful/
This is a systemic problem requiring systemic responses. Other UK organisations: lawyers, psychiatrists, and Local Authorities, are prioritising climate issues. The Royal College of GPs is addressing climate-health links, and BASW’s 2024 conference featured a presentation from a Climate Psychologist, Dr Caroline Hickman and two young people, which moved the audience, and affected the whole event. So, where is Probation in all this? Neither NAPO nor HMPPS has a professional position or path to develop expertise for working with those in conflict with the law over climate issues. We have not yet even acknowledged the climate crisis. Court Reports are often being prepared as if climate breakdown isn’t real, ignoring its impact on defendants. We must develop evidence-based guidance for Probation work.
Protestors are a distinct group not covered by OASys. Are you interested in helping develop guidance to better understand and work with this unique group of PoPs? Please contact Tania Bassett at tbassett@napo.org.uk for more info about next steps. Members of the working group are available to make online presentations at branch meetings about this hugely important issue.