Professionalism, Payment by Results and the probation service: A qualitative study of the impact of marketisation on professional autonomy

Abstract

This article utilises Foucauldian understandings of the sociology of the professions to explore how marketising reforms to probation services in England and Wales, and the implementation of a ‘Payment by Results’ (PbR) mechanism in particular, have impacted professional autonomy. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a probation office within a privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Company, it argues that an inability to control the socio-economic organisation of probation work has rendered the service susceptible to challenges to autonomy over technique. PbR was proffered as a means to restore practitioner discretion; however, the article demonstrates that probation staff have been compelled to economise their autonomy, adapting their conduct to conform to market-related forms of accountability. In this sense, it presents the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms to probation as a case study of the impact of marketisation on the autonomy of practitioners working within a public sector profession.