Su McConnel

Su McConnel
Retired Probation Officer

Su McConnel worked in the Probation Service of England and Wales for nearly four decades, retiring in 2024. During that time she held posts from ancillary worker to Assistant Chief: all the right jobs, but not necessarily in the right order. Community Service Officer and then Manager in Bristol, Assistant Chief in Durham, Trainee, Probation Officer and Senior PO in Devon and Cornwall. She has worked in and for courts, programmes, generic, and unpaid work teams.  In the last decade of her career in South Wales, she worked as a PO on the frontline, where her heart always was, specialising in work with women.

Su was raised and educated in Scotland, completing her first degree at St Andrews University where she gained a liberal arts MA, and was President of the Students Union. The Moral Philosophy module on the ethics of punishment may have been formative.

Postgrad, she ran away to sea on a sailing ship where her risk assessment skills were honed by storms and reefs, in advance of landing an onshore job in the Community Service team of Avon Probation Service.  She was enraptured by the organisation in which she found herself: an institution of the state, committed to support those who had broken its laws, many of whom the state had failed, enabling and assisting them to live better lives to the betterment of all.

Su trained as a Probation Officer in Cornwall, gaining her BSc/Diploma, benefitting from the coaching and teaching of Jill Annison and the late and missed John Howard.

The onset of Transforming Rehabilitation prompted Su to gird her loins and act in defence of her Profession.  As no effective remedial action has been taken by government to repair this catastrophic damage, she is still arguing for a healthy humane and effective Probation Service.

Su is an Executive Member of Napo Cymru, the Welsh arm of Napo, the professional association and Union for Probation Staff.  With and for Napo, she has given evidence to: The Welby-McAllister Report on the Constitution of Wales, The Thomas Commission Report on Justice in Wales, the Gauke review, the House of Lords and the UK Government Welsh Affairs Committee. She is a member of the Welsh Probation Development Group (WPDG), a sub-section of the Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice.

Su is a graduate of the Fabian Society’s Fabian Women’s Network mentoring programme.  Now a  retired PO, she is a County Councillor, trustee of two local charities, and a school governor.

She is an amateur cartoonist and inept but enthusiastic tennis player.

Su sets the bar for her own efforts, and for policy makers and leaders, against The Bob Hall Test.  Bob Hall, long served and skilled Probation Officer in Cornwall, mentored Su early in her career.  Towards the end of his too short life, he opined,  “Did I make a difference?”.