Photovoice and lived experiences of probation supervision: Using visual images to understand the experiences of service users

Abstract

Despite the expansion of probation supervision, the lived experiences of service users are under-researched. This article discusses a research project which sought to understand the experiences of service users supervised by Probation. The purpose of the project was to offer probation service users, who often feel invisible and ignored, a chance to share their feelings about supervision, through a technique called Photovoice. Photovoice is a new approach to studying probation supervision (Fitzgibbon and Healy, 2017) that shifts the control over the subject of study from the powerful to the powerless. Photovoice provides service users with an opportunity to give voice to their experiences