East of England
Welcome from Steve Johnson-Proctor
East of England Regional Probation Director
Steve is the Regional Probation Director for the East of England, which at unification will see over 1800 staff supervising in excess of 19,000 individuals in custody and the community as well as providing services to over 6000 victims through the Probation victim contact scheme.
He currently has the national lead for Probation on Health and Social Care issues including activities linked to substance misuse, mental health and wider neurodiversity.
Steve says, “I see myself as a bit of an alchemist, using the range of people and financial resources at my disposal to make something that benefits the individuals we supervise, the victims we support as well as the public we serve. My other role is to provide partnership glue to support that alchemy. I’m a strong believer in trusting the experience of your staff and managers and to be bold in decision making, recognising that there are not always easy answers to the many challenges in our business”.
Steve started his Probation career back in 1986 as a hostel officer at Felmores bail hostel in Essex. Following training Steve began as a Probation Officer in 1993 rising through the ranks as manager and senior manager in Essex and Hertfordshire before taking on the divisional now regional leadership role.
“This is my 35th year in Probation, all in operations. Is there a better way to work with people, serve your community and make a real difference – I don’t think so. I have good days and bad days like everyone else, but I love the job and in particular working with a staff group who, in my opinion, are completely dedicated and the ultimate problems solvers”.
Outside of work Steve enjoys running and gardening and has been expanding his skills during the pandemic building a greenhouse and growing his own veg. He is also a keen Spurs fan.
What have been the major successes? “I sometimes think it’s the smaller things that have given me the most pleasure, setting up the first women’s project in Hertfordshire was one and developing early accommodation projects with partners there another. Things don’t change that much over the years. Of course, steering the region through transition is probably my greatest challenge but it is also a privilege and I have no doubt that our staff will land it well.”
About our region
East of England have 15 public prisons and 8 Approved Premises. We currently supervise a total of 7369 cases. Within this total there are 1829 community cases, 2764 prison licenses and a custody total of 2776.
One way of the many ways of assessing our Service Users (SUs) criminogenic needs is through the use of the Offender Assessment Systems (OASys). For example, of the service user cohort convicted of Robbery offences, 42% of this group have the area of ‘accommodation’ identified as a criminogenic need. Furthermore, of those convicted of drug offences we can identify the area of ‘lifestyle and associates’ to be a criminogenic need in 89% of that group. Lastly of those individuals convicted of sexual offences, relationships was identified as a criminogenic need in 71% of those cases, whilst at the other end of the scale ‘alcohol’ as a need was identified in on 9% of that cohort.
When using some of our Performance led tools the EoE Regional caseload can be profiled in many ways – for example in terms of risk, need and responsvity. When assessing areas of responsivity within the EoE regional caseload, 14% of that caseload have been identified as BAME service users, 49% of the same caseload had some form of Disability and those with a Learning Disability/Challenge (LDC) stands at 27%.
In seeking to address some of the needs/risk factors our service uses present there are an array of interventions available that are either in house, available through external agencies and/or through our Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) programmes and services, including interventions surrounding accommodation, employment, substance misuse, mentoring, Finance/benefit/debt and women’s services.
Below are some of the interventions East of England offer:
- Unpaid Work: Supporting local communities with the equivalent of over £3 million of unpaid work hours giving supervised individuals the opportunity to repay society and learn new life skills.
- Accredited programmes: Our portfolio of accredited programmes with a focus on domestic abuse, aggression, general and sexual offending work to enable participants to develop a ranges of skills to address their treatment needs.
- Structured interventions and toolkits: A suite of rehabilitative interventions that are delivered in a group or one to one settings to address the criminogenic needs of attitudes, thinking and behaviour, emotional management and domestic abuse to support desistance from offending.
Probation Delivery Units (PDU)
6. Essex North
(Braintree, Chelmsford, Maldon, Colchester, Tendring, Harlow, Uttlesford and Epping Forest)
7. Essex South
(Basildon, Brentwood, Rochford and Castlepoint,
Southend-on-Sea)
8. Suffolk
9. Norfolk
10.Hertfordshire
11. Northamptonshire
12. Bedfordshire (includes Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton)
13. Cambridgeshire (includes Peterborough)
Staff engagement activities and induction
We have several engagement activities currently within the region. This includes regular joint live staff engagement events via Microsoft teams, joint CRC/NPS live events, a regional staff engagement forum.
A OneNote Induction is currently in the process of being created for all staff to access. The OneNote is a document which will consist of all introductory materials including induction activities. This information will be available at a later date.
How to get in touch
For more information please contact the team at EoEdivisionaloffice.generalenquiries@justice.gov.uk who will be able to answer or re-direct your query.