Policing the partnership: structural change, organisational legitimacy and police evaluations of probation in public protection

This article explores how police actors perceive the probation service in the wake of its outsourcing and reunification during a decade of profound structural reform, offering a unique perspective on multi-agency collaboration within criminal justice. Drawing on interviews with senior leaders, frontline officers and staff immersed within partnership arrangements, the study examines how probation’s organisational legitimacy is evaluated from outside. Using the conceptual lens of organisational legitimacy, we reveal how legitimacy is experienced as transitional – shaped by professional encounters and institutional memory. Participants frequently described probation as a service in crisis, citing operational instability and diminished capacity as barriers to effective collaboration. Yet these critiques were tempered by reflections on probation’s enduring moral legitimacy, grounded in shared values and long-standing relationships. The failed Transforming Rehabilitation reforms of probation services emerged as a cautionary tale, sharpening police awareness of the fragility of interagency partnerships and fuelling anxieties about the marketisation of criminal justice. Despite concerns, many expressed cautious optimism about the reunification of probation services and reaffirmed their belief in public service collaboration as essential to public protection. This paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how legitimacy is co-constructed across organisational boundaries and how police perceptions illuminate the relational dynamics underpinning effective multi-agency work in criminal justice.