The statutory requirement to “advise, assist and befriend” was deleted from the relevant legislation when the Probation Order became the Community Rehabilitation Order under the 1991 Criminal Justice Act. To advise, to assist and to befriend are all inputs in probation work with offenders. In common with most of the public sector, the probation service has been more focused in recent years upon the outcomes of its efforts rather than the inputs.
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (s 142) sets down five purposes of sentencing. Offender Managers—Probation Officers and Probation Service Officers—are charged with implementing sentences of the court in order to achieve the purpose or purposes defined by the court for any individual sentence passed. The Offender Management Model, which has been implemented for all offenders on community sentences and around 14 per cent. of offenders in custody, sets out the NOMS end-to-end case management approach. Within this approach, Offender Managers will select one of the four broad options for which the one-word labels—PUNISH, HELP, CHANGE and CONTROL—are a “shorthand”.
The Offender Management Model itself describes what these labels mean in more detail. The terms PUNISH, HELP, CHANGE and CONTROL map well against the five purposes of sentencing set out in the Act. They each attract different workload allowances for the Offender Manager. The Offender Management Model describes a case management approach with a sound working relationship between an Offender Manager and an offender at its core. Advising, assisting and befriending are approaches an Offender Manager might use in that relationship, depending on the needs and learning style in each case, in order to achieve the outcomes sought from the sentence, but advising, assisting and befriending are no longer viewed as the objectives of probation work.