Welcome to Probation Perspectives insights into
Community Justice, the podcast where we dive into the world of
probation, rehabilitation and community justice.
Each episode we explore the themes, challenges and skills
that underpin effective probation practise.
Whether you're just starting out on the peak WHIP, have years of
experience in the field, or are simply curious about the
criminal justice system, this podcast is your space for
practical insight, expert perspectives, and meaningful
conversations. In today's episode, we're joined
by Professor Mike Nellis, Professor of Criminal and
Community Justice at the University of Strathclyde, and
Louis All Good from the AI and Justice Government Department.
Together, we explore the evolving role of technology in
probation, focusing on electronic monitoring and the
growing influence of artificial intelligence.
Electronic monitoring is a technology in its original form
for monitoring the locations and schedules of remanded, convicted
or released offenders, and the initial version of it, which
like most versions of electronic monitoring have originated in
America, is just radio frequency curfew technology.
We talk about the origins and development of electronic
monitoring, the promises and pitfalls of AI and justice, and
what these technologies mean for P quips probation officers and
the future of the probation service.
So Gentive AI in particular, how can we help provide assistance
that can do things like help you spend more time listening to the
personal probation and less time manually writing up notes, more
time analysing information, joining the dots together, less
time having to reread the same information again?
It's a timely and thought provoking conversation that
invites us to reflect on how technology is reshaping
probation and what it means to practise ethically in a digital
age. Let's get into our conversation
with Mike and Louie. Great.
So thank you so much for being here today.
If you could both introduce yourselves and tell us a bit
about your background and your current work.
Mike, are we happy to start with you, please?
Well, thank you very much, Megan Kerry.
It's very nice to be here. I'm Mike Nelis, and I'm an
emeritus professor, a retired professor of criminal and
community justice at the University of Strathclyde, and I
am retired. But every now and again I get
quite involved in things, and AI turns out to be one of them.
Over the years I've done work with the Council of Europe on
electronic monitoring, which I was very pleased with and which
seemed to go quite well. But when I was asked to work
with the Council of Europe committee on an ethical
recommendation about AI in prisons and probation, I didn't
feel quite as comfortable with that.
So I left after a year, but nonetheless got the book about
AI and criminal justice, prisons and probation, and I've remained
interested in it ever since. And I started to write about it,
linking it to my work on electronic monitoring.
Thank you so much, Mike. And then Louis, happy to say a
bit about yourself, please. Of course, lovely to meet you
all. I'm Louis Orgut.
I'm an AI product manager from the Justice AI units.
We work directly within the membership Justice.
We are building solutions and also partnering of some of the
best companies out there from the likes of Open AI to
Microsoft, to give people the most powerful and most safest
tools. I lead the work on speech AI,
looking at opportunities that are either speech to text,
speech to speech, and beyond. Specifically working a lot with
probation offices. I want to help them spend more
time being analytical, more time actively listening, less time
note taking. Taking conversations into
structured notes for example, is been a super big interest to me
of late. And yeah, anything that helps to
support professional judgement is awesome in my mind.
And helping with the relationships that are truly at
the heart of probation. AI can only support but not
replace. Great.
Thank you. Both.
We've punched AI there and electronic monitoring.
So there are terms that a lot of us might hear, but maybe not
everyone fully understands. Are you both able just to
explain both of those things for our listening?
OK, well I'll, I'll do the electronic monitoring one.
I'll leave the AI 12 LUI. Electronic monitoring is a
technology for in its original form for monitoring the
locations and schedules of remanded, convicted or released
offenders. And the initial version of it,
which like most versions of electronic monitoring have
originated in America, is just radio frequency curfew
technology. You put an ankle bracelet on
someone and you ask them to stay in proximity to a reporting
device that's installed in their own homes so that the monitoring
authority will know whether you're in your house or not by
dint of the connection that has been made by your ankle bracelet
and the device that's installed in your home.
GPS tracking also requires an ankle bracelet, but it means
your movements can be followed. It's GPS tracking because it
makes use of GPS satellites, which were developed for various
navigation purposes, some military, some civilian, as far
back as the 1970s. But they weren't accurate enough
to do the location tracking of individuals until the 1990s.
And ever since then, GPS tracking has been developing
around the world. So you can monitor movements and
you can also create exclusion zones.
You can tell people where they can't go.
And more recently we've had alcohol monitoring, which
doesn't monitoring the locations, but it monitors your
intake of alcohol and that's particularly useful if the court
has banned you from using it. It's time stamped so we know
what from it, what times of day you are drinking alcohol or not
drinking alcohol. Some technologies can combine
the 2 alcohol monitoring and location monitoring.
Thank you, Mike. And just as a follow on, as some
of the public might think those things are quite reliable, maybe
they think they're not that reliable.
I just wondered, as you've done a lot of research in this area,
what's your thoughts on the reliability of those?
Right. Well, I have to say that they
are reliable most of the time, but they're not perfect.
And in those instances when the technology has failed, can that
can have quite devastating and fateful consequences for the
individuals concerned. So we shouldn't go around
thinking, you know, in the manner of Fujitsu and the post
office, that the technology is always right.
And if we have anomalies with offenders who say, but you know,
you're saying I was here when I did this burglary when I'm
saying I was somewhere else, that there must be data to to
confirm my innocence in this, we should listen to that because
the technology doesn't always get it right.
But I don't want to use an argument to resist the any of
these technologies by saying they won't work properly,
because for better or worse, a lot of the time they do work
properly. Thank you, Mike.
That's really helpful. And then, Louis, are you happy
to explain what you mean by AI? Absolutely.
There's two flavours of AI. Typically you'd see things like
machine learning and modelling, and this is that type of AI,
which I think a lot of people wouldn't realise, but they use
it, they stay as is. If you're using the weather
forecast every on Netflix, every on Amazon, it's learning from a
pattern to predict or recommend the next thing.
If you watch a particular show on Netflix, you're likely to
potentially like something else. So that's one type of AI.
And then the one that's caught everyone's attention recently is
gender of AI. And it's gender AI.
And I think the nicest way to frame is we're still learning
from patterns, but it's generating new content.
You don't use Gen AI to create a new type of weather because
that's like can do for chance of me balls.
That's not the case here. So gent of AI think about
drafting text, summarising things, creating content based
on an input itself. And the most popular version of
gent of AI tools would be ChatGPT.
Don't click on the figures now that there was something like
10% of the world's population have used chat for GBT, which is
a super massive number. Yeah, if you hear of ChatGPT Gen
AI, if you're using the weather forecast, that's more classic
predictive modelling, but that's the best way to describe it.
It's worth asking if anyone ever says what do you think about AI?
Might be worth checking. What type of AI do you mean in
this? That's really interesting.
So then, Louis, the use of AI in probation, we're really
interested in hearing what you've got to say about how it's
being developed and rolled out in probation.
So in my mind, I think of like sort of three buckets about what
this actually means for probation.
So firstly, you know, when people join the profession,
they're super excited to build loving, kind relationships.
They're super excited to help create a safer community,
prevent risk, etcetera. And yet a lot of people get
shocked by the amount of admin. So Gentive AI in particular, how
can we help provide assistance that can do things like help you
spend more time listening to the personal probation and less time
manually writing up notes, more time analysing information,
joining the dots together less time having to reread the same
information again. So one bucket giving people and
retain them time to the things that are most interesting to
them and most useful to them. More time with the people of
creation in the meeting directly looking at them actually
listening. Second bucket is more about like
faster great ways of like finding information.
I think it was last week I met someone who was telling me it's
crazy hard sometimes because you know, we've got people who have
had 20, fourish offences, they've got so much
documentation about them, so much information.
It's really hard to find the things that are most important
to me. So sometimes a thing that's
really useful in this context is using things like semantic
search, using AI to say you didn't search the direct word
of, you know, drug offence, but by searching drugs you might
have noticed all of the information about this person
and their relationship with drugs called etcetera.
So supporting with consistent school decisions, it's super
useful, especially in the context of using semantic search
and a bit that's touches upon electronic monitoring as well.
It's not gentive AI, but more about classic machine learning,
predictive models. We can use analytics to support
patterns, risk patterns, vulnerability signals, emerging
risks, etcetera. We've got people who work with
probation staff and they're so busy that sometimes happen them
with nudges or information that can inform a decision can be
super useful. But again, it's a decision that
the person who's doing the job are building.
Probation officers, they're the ones who are most informed.
This technology is only as supportive in our context.
Admin time, back to people I'm living and bringing that with
speech AI for sure. Faster, clearer information
handling we're tackling with semantic search.
Smarter triage I think is more about the broader stuff that
happens as is in regards to data modelling work.
Some of these solutions come in the form of bespoke builds.
Some of these solutions, we're finding, are covered by some of
the more common generative AI tools which can be used
effectively and safely with appropriate training and
adoption support. Yeah, you've given a really
interesting summary there, and a lot of this information is set
out in the AI Plan for Justice that was published over the
summer, and it really captures some of that key information.
But what really speaks to me is that recognition of how busy
probation officers are, how much they're juggling, and how you're
working in those offices and you work with those individuals and
you learn from them about what they need.
And I think that's really important to learn their job and
understand how they can reduce time spent on the admin and
develop time for professional judgement and those sorts of
skills. And then I think that might
speak to some of Mike's concerns as well about rollout of AI.
Well, I mean, I think the relational core of probation is
something that is worth preserving.
And if one didn't preserve the relational core of it, I guess
one wouldn't want to be calling it probation, you know, just
calling it Offender Management rather than using the word
probation with all the the moral aspects of the probation
tradition that the term itself incorporates.
And with electronic monitoring over the years, the 20 or 30
years that I was involved with that I was the person who was
championing uses of electronic monitoring in probation.
And certainly in the early days I didn't make myself very
popular in doing that. But I, I was always aware that
electronic monitoring could be used in better or worse ways.
And my belief that electronic monitoring could be used to
support relational work, support, rehabilitative work,
support resistance was the basis on which I thought probation
should take it seriously. But given that for a long time
the Home Office and then the Ministry of Justice wanted to
use electronic monitoring in more punitive ways, I could see
that the I could see why the probation service resisted it
when there was such a punitive rhetoric around electronic
monitoring, which didn't prevail to the same extent in a number
of European probation services who I think finished up using
electronic monitoring in much more interesting ways.
And I guess the core thing there is that the European probation
services, take the Scandinavian ones or the Netherlands, they
did not farm out the delivery of electronic monitoring to an
external private contractor. Obviously you work with the
private sector to get the tech from them and to get technical
assistance with them. In Scandinavia and the
Netherlands, electronic monitoring was always in the
hands of the probation service and they had to learn how to use
it wisely and well. In fact, so split was electronic
monitoring probation in England and Wales that there was never
the opportunity to learn how to use it wisely and well.
Because the Ministry of Justice's view until relatively
recently was that these things should be kept set separate.
And I always feared that if there was a separate development
of electronic monitoring, it would be used to advance a
technological agenda which got further and further away from
the practise ideals of the probation service.
That I think is the situation that we're in at the moment.
And that worries me a little bit about AI because having seen
that the Ministry of Justice did not use electronic monitoring
wisely and well, I fear despite all the rhetoric and all the
dedication of people like Louis, the Ministry of Justice might
still finish up using AI badly rather than using it to support
the things that I could see the point of if that's what it was
used for. Really great points there.
I was going to segue straight to Louis.
I thought you might have a response to that.
I think in our context, in the Justice AI unit and gent of AI
tools, if someone has been given access to a tool and they don't
use it, I've literally just been saying to people throughout my
time here, we won't take a punitive measure.
There's no like slapping on the wrist.
Louis, why didn't you use your tool?
You're supposed to use it no matter what.
Instead, our mantra is more like, oh, interesting, we saw
you got access, but you haven't used it.
How can we help you? So I found myself reaching out
to people and sometimes they go say, oh, sorry, I haven't had
time just to open it. I'm so busy at my, I'm really
tired. My head's full.
We go, no worries. If you want some help, let us
know, reach out. If not, when you're ready, give
it a go. And here's how to get started.
We've also found things like if there is a particular reason you
didn't get started, did you want better training?
Did you want in person training? Thank you for giving us
information. For me, it's like a really cool
learning to say, if you're not using a thing, why not?
How do we make it better for you?
And how do we ultimately live and breathe the goal of
improving your working life no matter what it takes.
And I think like I've been blessed to work with a lot of
probation officers because these people are fantastic, very
honest, upfront. If they like something they'll
tell you they like it, if they hate something they'll tell you
they hate it and they're open minded to try something new.
So I've been lucky enough to spend two days a week at the
moment. It's been busy but it's so
useful in probation offices. Being at the front line with our
brilliant staff has helped me work closely with them, my Co
worker, give them quick things to learn from and then build
better for them. The Justice AR unit is really
big on the fact that we need to get as close as possible to
probation staff in order to build them winning products or
help them with adoption. Any sport or products.
We see their working life, we feel their pain.
I think my favourite example was one time someone said to me, if
you want to know how hard it is, do you want to stay with me
until I finish work? I'm on duty today.
I'm finishing at 8:30. I said yes, it was great.
It was so useful. Like they had 10 meetings
back-to-back in a day. Like that's crazy.
And the amount of admin that has done between it was insane,
Yeah. Thank you.
That's that's a really important overview and what I'm really
hearing is that you're understanding the human element
of probation officers and the role that they do I.
Mean this is a common pattern I see this week.
I got a call up later in the afternoon being like, I've got
an idea for you. This is also the probation
officer. And it's like, I've got an idea
for you. Can you, can you, can you build
this? And what was great is they
showed me this thing and head on their screen.
They're like, this bit takes me ages, but it's really benign.
Like it's really basic. Can you help me with that?
And they always say, I've noticed, but don't do this bit,
don't bother with that, but I'll do the analysis.
So I'm already seeing when people do work with me, they'll
say, oh, here's my idea. But AI, can you help me with
this bit, which I'll describe as like the cognitive routine
stuff. They always tell us this is the
bit that's most important to them.
You know, it's the identifying the things that really inform
your awareness of the protective factors, the risk factor, the
analysis piece itself. They're always super keen on
life. Don't touch that bit.
My concern about introducing AI into probation in this way is
that we're not talking about an ideal or even a healthy
probation service right the moment the Ministry of Justices
plans to vastly expand the use of electronic monitoring and to
introduce AI into all public services.
Because this debate is not just restricted probation.
The probation service is not in good shape and hasn't been for a
long time. It was severely damaged by the
attempt to part privatise it, to privatise 70% of it 10 years
ago. We lost an awful lot of staff
from the probation service who have never been replaced and
we've never managed to recruit sufficient probation officers or
retain sufficient probation officers to do what is required
Now. My reading of that situation is
that a public service that is short of 10,000 staff is rife
for greater or lesser degrees of automation, right?
And my worry, I suppose, is how far that goes under those
circumstances of staff shortage. Because, you know, the Ministry
of Justice can say all it likes that we really believe in a
rehabilitative probation service where people have relational
skills to engage with difficult offenders.
But if you can't find the people, there will be a tipping
point where the technology becomes more important than the
people. And I appreciate that Louis
isn't defending that scenario, but I think that scenario is
possible. And that worries me about the
direction of travel. Engaging with people to find out
what they want under the circumstances that we're in is a
very sensible thing to be doing. But I learned from electronic
monitoring, from all the people who had good ideas about its
potential, including myself, that the road to hell really is
paved with good intentions. And despite your best intentions
as to how a technology might be used, the powers that be can
still shape it in ways that you do not find congenial.
That's my worry. And that's a really important
concern to I'm interested in Louis.
Thoughts on that? Can I just anchor that in
practise a little bit about the about the recording and
transcription technologies that have been used in some probation
services and will be rolled out further?
I was talking to a senior probation officer friend of mine
of long experience who said to me that even if these
technologies do save individual probation services between 30
minutes and 60 minutes a day, and we can all see the value of
that. But then he said I still don't
have enough probation officers to do all the work that needs
doing. And that doesn't vitiate the
technology. It doesn't say don't bother to
do this, but it does mean the technology isn't solving the
problem in a significant way because you just haven't got the
people to do the relational work.
And so his fear about what that the recording and transcription
technology would do would just enable his team to do more
interviews and more transcription, but never get
round to doing the relational, relational work that that
technology is supposed to free them up to do.
So to what Mike said, I think if you think a bigger picture to
ensure that we have one of the, you know, the world class
probation service that's truly focused on, you know, helping
with safer community technology is one part.
But we still need to have a lot of work to ensure that we have
the best people well supported to do a good job.
I think my favourite thing, which I love from our leadership
is the announcement made at the start of this year, which is
that we're going to continue to use AI and other technologies to
explore opportunities. But simultaneously, we're still
committed to recruit 1600 more probation officers.
We know it's not easy. But we know it's also super
important. And I think, Mike, to your point
about a senior probation officer saying, oh, am I just having
more technology solutions to do more work?
I think it's a fair thing to flag.
And that's why in our world we're saying, well, we don't
simply say time savings, time savings, time savings.
That isn't simply the goal. When it talks to if I talk about
transcription summarisation, the things that I noticed landing
better with leadership at the moment is actually like the
conversation and engagement. The people involved in the pilot
so far, they still might take the occasional notes that helps
remember something that's important step, but their
conversations feel more human, more natural.
People probation have been telling us things like, yeah, it
feels like a nicer conversation. You're not looking down all the
time, you're not writing all the time.
So that pure golden outcome of having a better relationship is
super important to me. Also things like, and I found
all the information about you and I don't have to ask you the
same thing again and again, those really important parts in
the crux of the relationship. And that's not something that
would be captured by Tom at time saving.
In that context, that doesn't matter to the personal patient.
It's talking about the fact that they feel like they're being
well supported, that AI can only support to help people get the
best out of working life. You'll be fools to say good
news. You're using AI to simply still
feel busy, but now use AI to feel busy.
We want people to wake up, go to their working life and finish at
5:00 to say, Gee, I've got time to, you know, decompress and
relax. We want people to have time to
take lunch breaks. We want people to have time to
have headspace to go. I've just had a meeting and I've
just remembered, let me speak to social works.
Let me speak to police. I think what we observed today
is people are cognitively so busy, sometimes they don't have
headspace to think of the best decision for the personal
probation for the safer communities.
It's super hard. But Mike, I think your point, we
internally as well as certainly need to find that Trump
retreatment, getting the best people in and sporting our best
people as well as helping them with the best tools.
Tell them to do awesome work. Really important on my radar.
Yeah, that's. Pretty important to recognise
and you know the probation officer training programme does
take time and it's important that it does take time.
So in relation to what's just being talked about there that a
key statement that jumped out to me in the AIA action plan for
justice is a statement around AI should enable human talent,
skill and judgement, not replace it.
So that recognition that we do need a fully staffed probation
service with all those skills and AI is there to enable it and
not to replace it. That's all true, but I suppose
my question is still, what happens if we don't achieve it?
You know? What happens if probation just
ceases to be an attractive profession for enough young
people, or the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice decides
with limited resources they would rather invest in tech than
in people? I don't think either of those
scenarios are entirely out of the picture, although I
understand. I do get that the the rhetoric
about how we should use AI wisely and well just presume
that there are going to be enough people.
But if there aren't, what happens then?
The Council of Europe ethical recommendation on AI and
prisons, which came out in 2024. The work began on it in 2021.
But the point I want to make about it is that even though I
only worked on it for a year and left because I felt that the
whole Council of Europe ethos was a desperation to insist that
there have to be benefits, benefits, benefits across public
service and across criminal justice.
And I didn't like being constrained by that kind of
attitude when I can see what the benefits of AI are going to be
in scientific innovation and military security and maybe
economic growth. But I find the case about AI is
going to transform public service for the better than
that. We may never have enough of the
human element in the public services of the future.
Rather worrying. And what that Council of Europe
report said in an appendix was that you could with emerging and
existing technologies automates a great deal of what probation
officers already do right. That would have included risk
assessments, online rehabilitation courses,
monitoring their location and behaviour in the community,
giving them self help tools to use after release, even using
chat bots for counselling and practise and and finally having
a a technological way of doing the dialogical bits of
probation. Now the Council of Europe
emphatically said don't do that, but it was interesting all the
same that their expert said it could be done and the ethical
recommendation is not enforceable if countries want.
If member countries want to do it differently and push
automation further in public services in general and
probation in particular, there are very few constraints on
them, legal or ethical, to prevent them doing that right?
So without wanting to dispute the technologies that are in use
now and the good intentions behind it all and the
assumptions that we will have a fully human workforce, I just
want to step back and say what if we don't get that good
surrounding human environments? What kind of decisions in a
world of limited resources will government agencies take about
the best way to manage offenders in the community?
And it isn't a foregone conclusion to me that they will
support the humanly grounded model.
They might just want to automate a lot more of probation that
anybody is actually talking about doing at the moment.
Yeah. Thank you.
Mike, I think you raised some valid concerns.
Louis, did you have any thoughts?
I think my take on that is ultimately what we're starting
to see, not simply probation but other sectors, is that we will
need to start leaning into what we define as the best ideal
future of work. What does work look like when
you have tools that can help you do things which are informing,
enhancing, supporting your practise.
But it's a really hard sweet spot to define and I don't think
anyone in the world has defined this, let alone for probation,
but for other contexts. What happens in years in the
future to say we start having tools that change the way we go
about our day-to-day life? How does that change the work?
Obviously we need to make sure we have our best people
supported and recruited. But if we look at the crux of
the relationships, the risk factors, the protective factors,
I think these are the things that we still hold true, the
things that we won't have technology touch.
It would be more looking into what that looks like.
So it's part of the work that we're doing now.
We're giving people helpful tools and we're also making sure
that we work with evaluation leads to see, well, what do we
observe on the field? What do people do differently?
But what do we observe in that practise?
What are the behaviours that we want to promote and what are the
behaviours actually we need to support further.
So one thing that we're doing in our unit, which keeps us very
busy but super important is not simply provide or build
solutions. It's also to evaluate what what
actually happens. What do people do behaviourally
as well as what do they think think about it, what do they say
about it? So I think in the bigger picture
there will be a very different future of work for loads of
context, including probation, which is why it's important that
people like me don't lose track of that.
So those are the things that we're leaning into and it helps
us improve the way that we use technology in the way that it
supports. It doesn't replace people.
Thank you, Louis. Yeah, it's really interesting
about the evaluation and what you observe people doing in
practise, how it might change practise.
And if people are interested in looking at the work and how we
consider evaluation, one thing I'd recommend people looking
into is our safety framework. So it's a framework that was
built in collaboration with our brilliant teams internally and
the Allen Chewing Institute. Essentially it says in the midst
of thinking about an idea, building an idea, or having an
idea being used by real people in a real world environment, we
talk about ethics in divisive ways.
And that looks about from the societal sustainability angles
as well as like behaviour. So one of the things that we are
lucky to benefit from, we've got some data ethics leads who help
us be well informed from an evaluation perspective.
So we'd recommend people have looked if they're interested.
Yeah. Thank you, David.
Yeah. And that's an interesting point
about ethics, because that's your point, Mike, isn't it about
how can we make sure it is still, you know, a service that
isn't all automated, that has that at its heart about people?
So linked to that probation work is rooted in relationships and
professional judgement. So how do you think AI and
technologies like electronic monitoring might support or
challenge this core part of the world?
Well, I've already indicated what some of my fears are about
that, because in a world of limited resources, I'm not sure
what constraints there would be on using technology more than
might be warranted. In the early days of electronic
monitoring, one of the Home Office researchers said about it
that the Home Office wants to use electronic monitoring in
ways that go beyond the evidence of its usefulness.
And there was evidence of its usefulness, but the Home Office
wanted to to take it further than that.
And perhaps that's in in the nature of technological
innovation, one has to invest in uncertain outcomes.
Now it was interesting to me though, and this was one of the
bases on which I was supportive of electronic monitoring, is
that there was some research done in Canada at the turn of
the century that showed how electronic monitoring could be
used to support rehabilitative programmes.
Now that research was very influential in mainland European
probation services. It was of 0 influence in the
England and Wales Probation Service because we didn't
combine the electronic monitoring and probation in the
single organisation. We we created degrees of
tensions between the private company and the probation
service and quite often the government was giving the
impression that it favoured the approach of the private company
more than it favoured the social work approach of the probation
service. So I've yet to be convinced that
a similar dynamic won't kick in with artificial intelligence.
And I am alarmed by the fact that at the moment the Ministry
of Justice is openly saying that it wants to use electronic
monitoring in more punitive ways.
Right the the rhetoric is now prison outside prison or
incarceration without walls, all enabled by electronic
monitoring. Now to a certain probation cast
of mind that is anathema. And it is once again taking
electronic monitoring in an ultra punitive direction, which
is precisely what I didn't want to see and what I at one time
hoped the value base of the probation service would resist.
And in in Europe I see some shaping of electronic monitoring
by probation values, but I haven't seen it here.
It's really interesting the point though, that you make
about the fact that electronic monitoring is delivered by an
external organisation. And I think something to bear in
mind when we're looking at AI and how that's embedded.
And I think that point is a really important one about how
the relationship is managed between who's delivering it and
who's in charge of it. And it's probably worth saying
at this point that it is now the policy of the Probation
Institute to incorporate electronic monitoring within the
probation service. Now that would transform our
probation service and make it more like the European probation
services in ways that we've never done before.
And if we're going to have a more technological service in
general, that makes a great deal of sense.
I mean, the time was when probation didn't want electronic
monitoring within it's boundaries on the principle that
if, if electronic monitoring fails, we can blame the private
sector. But electronic monitoring isn't
going to fail if you use it wisely and well.
And there are no good administrative reasons as to why
in England and Wales we shouldn't do what the
Scandinavian countries have done.
I mean, the Swedish Probation Service actually employs an AI
manager who is now in charge of all technology in the Swedish
probation service. He is like you, Louis.
He's an AI engineer and he gets probation, he gets the Swedish
probation service. And that has worked out for
them. But it's worked out for them in
my view, because they are not as relentlessly punitive in their
approach to offenders in the in the Nordic countries as we are.
And my fear that in the political and penal culture that
we have, that technology will be used badly, despite the best
intentions of the people who are developing it, is very real.
And Louis, if you've got any thoughts about the roll out of
AI and how it can be managed to support that rebuild rather than
risk focused approach? In provision, yeah, for sure.
Some of our staff have joined because they're excited to make
a difference. They might have dyslexia, might
have English as an additional language, they might have
dyspraxia, they might find it difficult to get through the
amount of paperwork on a day-to-day basis.
So one of the benefits we're observing right now, which is
coming through the training as well as the actual feedback, is
that it helps people with a lower barrier of entry.
I've had some staff come to me personally and just say thank
you because PPC, I was close to quitting.
I felt really struggling with the amount of paperwork.
They love the nature of the work.
It is hard, it is complex, and it was struggling with just
keeping track of everything. And they're helping themselves
by using dentive AI in a way that helps them understand
information, easily identify actions.
Again, only as an assistant. The other things that I've seen
so far, so helping people focus on the more human parts of work.
I lose to it earlier, but transcription summarisation work
is my favourite example. We've been seeing people just
say, look, it's not simply about saving me time, it's actually
about me feeling more engaged. Like wow, you observe things,
this is something subtle. I didn't appreciate it really.
But we've had people say, I didn't realise it before, but
when this person would speak about a certain topic, hands
would trench the body language changes and previously I had to
look down and now I'm seeing these subtle changes.
But again, that's what technology, yes, it helps you
focus on the human parts, but it's only because it's
deliberately been built in a way that gives the people meaningful
control. So focusing more human elements
and finding information, that's really important sooner not
later. So finding information and
understanding it as well. For example, I saw recently was
a case where someone was saying, oh, I've just had like
information about drug supports and I can't remember the top of
my head. What is the nanograms to warrant
it being that they've actually consumed it or been in the
facility of it. Oh, let me find what is the
actual guidelines. What is the policy currently?
I found the policy quickly. I found information and now I
can remind myself against the actual results.
Oh, a few. That means that they might have
been in proximity but not taking it.
That's good. It's helped me find information,
find policies, understand them as well as find information
about the person themselves. And it's like AI as an
opportunity to also just be more supportive for new staff.
But we're piloting tools like Dot Lee from the Taught by Human
company. We're helping them with AI
assistance to help learn about topic, collect on a topic, but
simply regurgitate an answer or you're always correct.
You're fantastic. Some of that parent like Dynamic
been excited to use AI to help staff have better reflective
processes to go about learning a thing.
But there are risks. So I think it's worth lagging.
Ultimately, this is a new technology.
This is something that people have never seen before and
people are having to be understanding like that this is
a nondeterministic technology. It's about helping me, but it
can't just give me a binary right or wrong thing.
Sometimes you got to reflect on the thing, critique the thing,
own the thing. The fact that it's
conversational is really alien to people.
I think whenever we do in the past, say I communicate with my
tools, I converse with them to get the best answer.
That never happened. So the example of the drug
report, it wasn't a one way conversation.
That's so different. It's part of that risk.
How do we give our brilliant staff bit of headspace to safely
try something and feel comfortable being empowered?
And the other thing we're interested in is this is a tool
that supports professional judgement.
It can't replace the really important skills.
So we don't want people to become overlined by accident.
We need to encourage and promote those really important human
skills, the motivational interviewing, analysis, etc.
But this is a tool that supports, doesn't take over.
So that's baked into not simply the things we build, but how we
train people and support them with using it.
When we give people new tools, we have to think of it as the
bigger picture. What type of help do they
potentially need? We wanted to be really clear.
This is how you get started, this is how you get help, and
this is how to use it safely in a way that promotes your skills,
not replacing. So just for context, like the
Justice AI unit, we're not simply recruiting people like me
who are building things, engineering things.
We're also recruiting quite a lot of adoption support people,
customer success people who just really care about understanding
the problem space and helping someone get the best out of a
tool. It's really interesting point
about AI could be used for. So if you get given a case from
someone else, for example, and actually could to quickly
summarise some of the key points about that individual.
If you are time short to get up to date with the case before you
meet them, because then you know the individual know that you've
just remembering. When I met some of them, they
said, oh, you've done your homework Kerry, like you know
about me. And I was like, yeah, of course
I'm going to try and find out a bit about you before.
But I suppose it's just some people might have concerns about
the information that it's using because if there's ever any
mistakes in there or anything like that, maybe you wouldn't
know. So I suppose it's always relying
on the data that goes in perhaps.
But I can see how some of those things might help reduce time
but also help when you're time pressured as well.
That could have a good with individuals.
Absolutely. And I think there's a nice way
to frame it going back to the AI action plan, which is this next
year we're really focusing on investing in our foundations
that includes the data. Most of our data isn't as good a
quality as we need it to be to truly leverage emerging
technology. So one part is looking at that
data set and going, actually this might need improving
through XY and Z processes because otherwise we might be
regurgitating things which won't be both useful in the outcome
that we want, but investing in our foundations, which is
something I'm really proud about.
As part of our plan, we don't simply say foundations means
data and quality of data. It also means the foundations of
helping our people feel they are empowered to know how to use it
all, when to use it all, and now to do so safely.
But no, that's a really fairpoint.
Thank you, Kate. And that's something that I
don't know how Mike feels about it.
I'll be interested to hear shortly.
But hopefully is a bit different to the how the electronic
monitoring was rolled out because it's not like there's a
completely different private company that is in charge of the
AI and is saying, look, we're in charge of this, we're running AI
within probation. We have ownership of this.
It sounds like it's certainly being developed, developed and
delivered with the skills and the approaches of the probation
staff in mind and recognises all of that rather than an external
organisation not taking that into consideration.
And then who could potentially be blamed if it goes wrong or,
but I don't know if that's what you're hearing as well, Mike or
if that addresses any of your concerns about the difference or
similarity with electronic? Yes, I mean there are
differences in the electronic monitoring was a much more
limited intervention than the kind of things that have been
envisaged by AI. And potentially it was a tool
that probation officers could easily have got their heads
round as they did in the Netherlands, as they did in in
Scandinavia. And within a certain political
culture they could have used that technology wisely and well.
But I keep coming back to the the issue about it's, it's all
very well to to talk up the micro uses of AI technologies in
the broadest sense in terms of the individual ways in which
they might help people to to process their cases.
And I agree completely with what Louis says about these
technologies are found useful by neurodivergent people.
I get that. I think the the neurodivergent
argument, while true, I think there are limits as to how far
you can use the argument to normalise the development of
this tech in probation. But it is true and the argument
will be used. It's also true, true that all
our lives, and you know, my, the younger members of my family all
embody this. There will be more technology in
everybody's life. We will all have to get used to
more digital infusion into our lives.
We will become an even more hyper connected world.
And in that sense, probation might look odd if it was trying
to stand outside that. But nonetheless, I still want to
register that the things that we go enthusiastically into in the
short term may not bring about the consequences we envision.
In the long term, right? I am reminded of Lord Timpson
when he gave the McWilliams probation lecturer.
He boldly quoted the the line that is attributed to Bill
Gates, although apparently it originated to somebody else.
We overestimate what technology can do in the short term and
underestimate what it will do in the long term.
Now, when Bill Gates says that, it's meant to evoke the idea
that in the long term it's going to be fabulous, right?
But you can turn that round and think in the long term it's
going to be awful. But in the short term we just
can't work that out because we're enthusiastic about the
short term possibilities and we won't see what the long term
disadvantages of it would be in the particular political context
and culture in which we are. We are introducing these
technologies into probation. Really important point and
interesting to reflect back on Lord Simpson's speech there.
There's a a briefing on flag in this world of what I'm working
on with other team members. Like for us, we have a massive
obsession with like solving this thing to make things better.
And that means having our finger on the pulse of what is
happening. So if we observe behaviour
change that isn't what we want change that we want to maybe
support better in other ways, then that's some people like me
to change the way that we build the product.
It's shouldn't be a case where we say the tool of today,
whatever that tool is, it goes out and it's used by lots of
people. But we don't want to play like a
game of darts in the dark. We want to quickly observe and
learn what do people love, what do people hate and what do we
observe as the actual tangible difference in day-to-day working
life. It just means accountability
wise. I don't want to finish my
working day and go sweet, I'll just wait for someone to pick
up. It's like this is on me to make
better, this is on me to improve.
Yes, I'll happily do however much work is needed to make this
come to life in a way that's most useful for our brilliant
probation staff. Yeah, thank you.
So therefore the the concerns that Mike's airing and and I'm
sure you're hearing from them from other people as well,
really important for you to hear and and hold in mind as you're
moving forward and all of this. Thank you for our P quip
listeners who are at the start of their career is in probation,
what do you think they should prioritise in their training and
practise when they're working in a probation service that we do
recognise is increasingly shaped by technology?
Well, that's a that is a that is a fair question.
And if electronic monitoring is going to be more commonplace,
then I think probation officers should try and work more
creatively with it. It seems to me now that the era
where probation is going to resist electronic monitoring is
more or less over, although there will be resistance to an
excess of it. Like use it with everybody all
the time, even if you use it in different ways.
Any attempt to normalise it across the whole of supervising
offenders in the community, whether that's sentenced or or
or released from prison, I think there would be resistance to
that. But the idea that you can use it
constructively in the way you manage offenders in the
community, I think there is an evidence base that helps you to
do that. And I think there are examples
of good practise from other countries which would help
people do that. I mean, I've used this story
before, but back in 2012, a long time ago, I went to the
retirement party of a Dutch probation officer who had had 10
years experience of working with electronic monitoring and
probation in an integrated way. That was 13 years ago.
Now, to this day, there is no probation officer in England who
could even begin to match that kind of level of experience
about how to use electronic monitoring wisely and well.
But such a thing is possible, so I would encourage people to do
that. Our electronic monitoring is
changing. There is more interesting in
using the data that GPS tracking develops to do data analysis
that might lead you to enable a predictive approach to
reoffending. And it's no, it's no you saying
that that's not a good thing to do.
There are techniques for predictivity now that didn't
exist 10 or 15 years ago and that may become an important
part of it. And with higher risk offenders
who wouldn't want to know about the possibility of predicting
when re offending might occur. My sense is that electronic
monitoring, locational monitoring by itself does not
generate sufficient data to make those kind of predictions.
But if you combine electronic monitoring data with other
sources of data about that person's life, you can probably
do predictions. So I was speaking to a Korean
researcher just recently who is in the process of working on an
AI prediction model for sex offenders.
And they are going to study 5000 offenders over five years with
200 variables attached to each individual.
And out of that, they hope to have a predictive model.
And I won't say that that is a bad way to go with if you were
doing it with all offenders, that would be so Ross resource
intensive. I would worry about the level of
resource that was been committed to it.
But for high risk sex offenders, I can see the point of do of
doing that sort of thing. And the alcohol monitoring is
going reasonably successfully in England and Wales at the moment.
And there is much talk about having a monetary device which
would tell you when a person is using drugs that they have been
prescribed from using. Well, that's probably further
down the line than some of it's champions think it is.
But I don't think there's a probation officer anywhere who
wouldn't welcome that element, that contribution to the way
they manage offenders, who's offending is related to the drug
use. So all of this, I think, is up
for grabs in our more technologically inclined age.
So advice for P quips is learning about the technology
that's available and using it to help them develop their
professional judgements, their understanding of the people that
they're working with, but using it wisely and well.
I like that term. So then Louis Technology, what
advice would you give for new training probation officers?
I think the first thing I'd say is if you've been newly
recruited in this space, congratulations.
It's an awesome like really important place.
Super not easy. Broadly speaking, I would I
would recommend people continue to prioritise the most human
parts of the role. How do you build loving care
relationships? How might you use things like
motivational interviewing? How might you have a trauma
informed practise? How do you observe and spot
particular factors that can form your analysis?
Technology can amplify that craft, but it can't replace it.
So being ready to do the things that are most important anyway
records decisions clearly what you did and why.
Maybe in that context you want to record what tools you used.
Did you use an AI tool there? Maybe it's worth flagging it.
But equally, it's important to start being really good at
sharpening that analytical skills.
You're going to be able to find information more easily.
You're able to observe people in the actual meetings and see a
bigger picture of how they communicate, so you'll need to
be able to extract what really matters from a large amount of
information, and sometimes AI can surface it, but your
judgement alone will be the thing that determines the things
that are most important. OK.
So then within the training probation officer programme, a
really important element of it is reflection and reflective
practise, and it's a key part of being a probation officer as
well as they move forward in a professional development.
So a question to both of you, how can reflection help
probation officers critically engage with tools like AI and
electronic monitoring? Mike.
I think that is important and I guess that I experienced with
electronic monitoring and reflective practise was that
there wasn't much reflection on it because it wasn't something
that probation officers have traditionally had to do.
But I remember meeting a team of Canadian probation officers who
had been required to work with the police to develop a
programme for dealing with young adult car thieves, right?
And they devised a plan and then for political reasons they had
electronic monitoring, GPS tracking foisted upon them
against their will, right? But they found that it was
useful, but they had to work out how it was useful.
And in their particular context, they had a kind of free hand as
to how to do that. And that experience with that
team of Canadian probation officers has marked all my
understanding of how reflection on the possibilities here, even
when it's something you didn't initially want to do, can
actually give you some good results, right.
More broadly, I think that if we are encouraging people to
reflect on ethics, well there's a whole field called the ethics
of punishment, which I hope is still taught to probation
trainees, as it was in the days when I was involved in it.
But alongside the ethics of punishment these days, because
technology is so ubiquitous, you need part of your training
programme on reflective practise to equip people with the ethics
of technology. And it's interesting that
proportionality, proportionality of punishment and
proportionality of technology proportionality is a concept
that comes up in both of those fields, right?
And I think that because we are all immersed in our hyper
connected world these days and we have very little time to
think about the ethics of that in general, although it does
happen. You know, think about the debate
we're having about smartphones and school children.
So doing reflection on the the way we use technology,
specifically in probation would seem to me to be have become a
very necessary part of the way we train probation officers.
Thoughts from you, Louis? So in regards to helping,
consider what reflection can do to help with engaging with AI
and the likes. Keeping it simple is key.
What has this AI tool produced? What would you find most useful?
What do you want to accept, modify, and reject and why?
You might find you've used AI technology to service
information, but you've noticed it's surfaced information that
might have been 20 years out of date and this person has changed
since then. So use your professional
judgement. You might observe, for example,
this personal probation had these certain situations occur
and these were the behaviours observed.
But I was in a different context.
That was maybe when they didn't live with their family, they
lived alone. It's in a different city.
So use information that you find, but be ready to ground in
the truth of today. That can mean as well.
You know, this is something that's there's an assistant, but
you're the person as a person to see the bigger picture, to know
what's really most important right now.
And you might have further information up here in your mind
that would definitely change the decision.
The information analysis and AI isn't perfect.
There will be times when it's not going to accurately do a
thing. For example, with transcription
summarization, need to bear in mind that it won't be perfect
for things like names of people, places.
So we've got to be very mindful that things like transcription
summarization, it only hears what's been said in the room,
doesn't see the person, it doesn't know the bigger picture.
And that's just an example of many where with the person using
it, the human is the one of meaningful control.
They need to be ready to say it's not going to be perfect all
the time. And for them, it's something to
assist. They can extract the things that
most useful, move things that aren't useful, whatever suits
them best. So yeah, identify what's been
produced, what you would use and why.
Make sure you're ready to change the output to be analytical and
recognise that it will have limitations.
Thank you, Lou. Yeah, that's really helpful.
And Kyle actually earlier point about ongoing training, but also
the pilot study that you talked about, whereas it's not AI tool
that just says yes, that's a good idea like ChatGPT does that
encourages more thought provoking and questioning the
data. So that's helpful.
Thank you. This is the point in the podcast
where we give you a magic wand and say if you could implement
one big change in how technology is used or developed in
probation, what would it be? Louie, do you want to go first?
Sure. So.
I think the most important thing for me is about how it's
developed. I think for all teams doing
anything of technology, you've got to fall in love with the
problem you're trying to solve and obsess about it, build with
the people who have the problem. If I didn't spend half my time
working alongside probation officers, then how do I truly
know that what I'm building is truly a useful, winning product?
So for us, it's really key that we work with people like me who
share that vision to learn fast in a Safeway, to learn directly
from the frontline probation officer have been super candid
about what works but doesn't, and that opens to try new
things. But whenever we develop a
solution, even beyond technology, make sure we fall in
love with the promise of and build something that people want
in the 1st. Place, Yeah, Thank you, Leo.
And I think it is really encouraging to hear that you're
going into probation officers, working with frontline staff and
finding out really about the job and what might be helpful in the
future and their role. Thank you.
How about you, Mike? So if I had a magic wand, the
one thing that I would push for at the present moment in time,
as I've said earlier on, is to incorporate electronic
monitoring into the statutory probation service and treat the
probation service as a potentially technologically
sophisticated organisation which can use technologies wisely and
well with all the safeguards and constraints that Louis has
talked about. And that would be such a sea
change for the England and Wales Probation Service, given that
it's commonplace nearly everywhere else.
But that would seem to me to be a good base on which you could
then think about incorporating other technologies into
probation practise as well. And if my magic wand can just be
spun once again, it is learned from the mistakes of
implementing electronic monitoring in the way we've done
it up to now, and make sure we don't make the same mistakes
with the much more complicated and sophisticated technology
that is embodied in. Thank you, Mike.
And linked to that, really, do you have any articles or a book
or any resource that you would recommend our P quip learners
read or anyone interested in the probation service, what one or
two key articles would you recommend?
Well, there's lots of articles about electronic monitoring and
the way it can be used well in probation.
I mean, some of those I've written myself, but lots of
people have written those things.
But to help and to encourage probation officers to think more
generally about the the changing world in which we all live in
the way that this might impact on probation.
The book that I have found most useful as a layperson is by a
barrister called Susie Allegre, and it's called Human Rights and
Robot Wrongs, Being Human in the Age of AI.
And that addresses very directly the question of overselling AI
proportionality in AI. You know, what does it mean to
preserve human skills and values in a context where technology
can be presented as as such an easy solution?
Right. Thank you, Mike.
That sounds really interesting. And Louis, any recommendations
from? You as a recommendation for
those who are decrypt, if you do a simple Google AI action plan
for justice, I would, you know, recommend maybe we can hold
plan, but you've also got a publicly available website and
it talks to the plan in a more visual way and it also showcases
the stuff that's actually happening in the in realities.
So I'll say get started there. It gives you a sense of what we
are looking to support and progress in the context of their
working lives. Thank you.
We'll also make sure both the book and that web link is
included in our show notes. Thank you very much to both of
you for those recommendations. So we've, we've come to the end
of the podcast. We've had some really
interesting discussions. Thank you for everything that
you've shared. But is there anything important
that you came here to say that you haven't had a chance to say
yet? We haven't addressed the buzz
phrase human in the loop, which is very beloved of the Council
of Europe and not just the Council of Europe.
The human in the loop is supposed to be the person who
makes sure that any knowledge that is generated by AI in terms
of risk assessments or whatever, there is always a human
assessment of its value and viability.
And that seems like a good idea. That's a major feature of all
the Council of Europe approaches to it.
But I'm interested in who the human in the loop would be in a
future probation service. Because to manage this
technology, you need to know a lot about this technology.
And I'm not sure that there seems to me to be a tension
between the kind of experience and knowledge that you would
want the human in the loop to bring in a probation context and
the kind of person who really understands how the technology
is working. Who is the human in the loop?
That's a good question, I think. It's a good, good question to
almost end on. So really important point if you
want to speak to that, Louis or if there's anything else that
you came here to say that we haven't managed to say.
Yeah, sweet. So 2 points in the Justice AI
unit, we've started going beyond the language of human and loop.
It came across a bit like implying there's automation and
you have visibility of it. But we start using language
which you would hopefully have heard me say a lot in the
discussion today, is meaningful human control.
Like we don't want people to simply have in loop.
We don't want people to simply be able to observe.
It's more like, wow, I'm in a driving seat here.
I'm choosing more AI tools or whatever M tech tools to use and
what context and how to use invest.
It isn't easy to simply pick up a load of tools and know how to
use it like that. It's something that needs to be
baked in as part of that product, as part of that
experience to sign up in the 1st place.
So yeah, that's a fair thing to flag.
And we will hear a lot of people say human loop.
And my challenge then was we actually want to give them
something bigger, older, meaningful human control on my
mind. Secondly, the only thing that
wants to flag again was just like a massive thanks to all of
the awesome probation officers, P Crips, PSOSSPOS that I've
worked with in Wales, Kent. So in Sussex, so far it's been
awesome. Keep them open minded, they're
willing to try something new and give us their honest feedback.
So I'm really grateful for that. The last thing that I'll leave
with is to say at the Justice AI units, we're still quite young
and we are recruiting. So if anyone's listening and
they're super interested to get involved, be it as an engineer
or a product person, an adoption person, get in touch.
They'll be super interested to hear from.
You. Thank you, Louie.
Thank you, Mike. It's been really great having
you on the podcast and really interesting for Addison.
Thank you. It's been great.
Thanks for listening to Probation Perspectives Insights
into Community justice. We hope our conversation with
Professor Mike Nellis and Louis All Good sparked new thinking
around the role of technology and probation practise.
From the history of electronic monitoring to the emerging use
of AI, we trust this episode offered insights into both the
opportunities and the challenges that come with tech driven
justice. If you found this episode
valuable, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with
colleagues or whoever you think would benefit.
And do let us know your thoughts or who you'd like to hear from
next. A big thank you to Mike and
Louis for sharing their expertise and to the team behind
Probation Perspectives for making.
This podcast possible. We'll be back soon with more
conversations that shine a light on the practise, purpose and
people behind probation and community justice.
Until next time, take care.