Emma Moldevanu

Emma graduated from our BA (Hons) Criminology degree in 2014 and now works as a Probation Officer in Cambridge.

What have you been doing since graduating from ARU?

While studying I worked at Scudamore’s punting company, and I carried that on after finishing uni. It was a lot of fun, and I worked my way up into a management role. Due to my contract I couldn’t leave during the summer so it took me a good few years to get into another role.

I applied to different things – prison, probation, police. Eventually I got into the Probation Service, where I did a 15-month training course – because I’d studied Criminology I didn’t have to do the 21-month course. Then I became a Probation Officer.

As a Probation Officer I work with people who have medium-high and very-high risk of re-offending, usually when they have come out of prison. I work in the community, checking in on them, interviewing them, doing assessments. Really we’re there to assess their needs – housing, finances, drug or alcohol abuse, and their offenses. There’s different toolkits depending on what somebody’s done.

We work with other services as well, like social services and the courts. It’s a very wide range of tasks, although the way you manage your cases is quite independent, so you have to keep on top of everything.

Did you always know that you would go to university and if not, what changed your mind?

No, university wasn’t on the cards for me. I’m the first in my family to go. There wasn’t really a big push for me to go – not that my Mum didn’t push me to do well, because she definitely did!

But when a teacher at school said “Why are you not going to university?”, that’s when me and my Mum started looking into it. We didn’t know about finances and how I was going to survive. So we did some exploring, viewed a couple of unis. They told us about the finances, because I didn’t know that I would be able to afford to go to. So that was helpful, and that was my push.

Why did you choose to study at ARU?

One reason was being a bit scared of being too far away from home – ARU was a nice distance to be able to go home.

Also, I loved the teachers – they had such an impact on my Open Day here. I thought they were amazing. They made it sound really interesting and really fun. And those were the biggest things for me.

What made you want to get involved with Criminology?

Originally I hoped to do policing in the RAF, and I thought Criminology would be good to help me into that, and explore more behind why crime exists. That was the plan!

I studied Media, Law and Sociology at A-Level, and those were the subjects that directed me towards Criminology and gave me a bit of background for it.

What’s the most valuable thing you took away from your education?

I loved all the modules on the course – I don’t think there was one I didn’t like. We did forensics, youth justice, history. I was a bit of a geek, I really liked it!

But the biggest thing for me was learning to always ask questions. One of my lecturers said, when you read an article, think about who wrote that article, why they wrote it, who it’s targeting, what are the arguments for and against it. Because when you start looking behind the media, the articles – that’s when the biases come in. Is there an agenda behind it? That's something I have to think about a lot in my role now – why are they telling me this information?

Which aspects of the course were most helpful for your career and why?

I think all of it helped, but I remember one particular lesson with Colleen Moore, there was a guest speaker joining the lecture who had worked in prisons with men that committed offences of domestic abuse. Colleen had this chart and every three years it was spiking, and he straight away looked at it and said “That’s the World Cup”. The drinking goes up, the domestic abuse goes up. For me, in my work now, that’s something I look out for – the football’s on, Christmas is on, New Year is on. All those times are not good times for everybody – and that’s not just domestic abuse, it’s mental health and drug misuse too.

The course also helped broaden my possibilities. The police was my original target, but as I studied Criminology more it became the preventative and rehabilitation side that I enjoyed.

And my dissertation was really helpful. I wrote about the effects of short prison sentences, and why they don’t help in the criminal justice system. Since I wrote it the law has changed, and we’ve now got post-sentence supervision, which is a top=up. So if people get a two week prison sentence, they’ll be topped up to a year, so you actually have time to work with them in rehabilitation. But this has now caused some big issues in the prison system, because people are potentially staying with us longer than they need to.

What do you think of as your biggest success in your role?

Passing the training! It’s very difficult. You really get thrown in the deep end, and there’s a lot more paperwork than I thought.

But it’s always nice when you’ve had a very difficult person – in that they don’t want to work with you and put up a lot of barriers – and you manage to build a rapport with them. Sometimes that takes the whole of their order, which can be a year or two. But I love winning somebody over and seeing a change in them. Because it’s difficult to get somebody to trust you – we’re the difference between them being in the community or in prison.

What piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

To have more confidence in myself. I always doubted when I put an essay in that it was good enough, or I didn’t think I did well in that exam. I wasn’t confident enough to stand up and give presentations to people. Of course, that’s really nerve-wracking the first, well, multiple times that you do it! But the more you do it, and the more you challenge yourself, the easier it gets. University as a whole is about getting chucked in at the deep end.

My advice to others would be to ask questions – keep questioning yourself and questioning others. Also, don’t sleep in! Go to your lessons. Take advantage of it and don’t miss out. Enjoy the whole experience.

How did the course community help you build your confidence?

I think we just had the best group of students, and such a variety of people on the course. We all had a laugh together, and we could challenge each other in debates.

The teachers were really good as well. They were there when you needed them. Like when you’re on last-minute deadlines, and you’re thinking “Please help me!”, I always felt I could go to them.

What was your favourite thing about studying in Cambridge?

I loved Cambridge, and I’ve stayed in Cambridge after studying. That’s how much I didn’t want to go home! It’s an all-year-round place. There’s always something going on. In winter there’s the winter fairs, and Winter Wonderland. In the Summer you’ve got the beer festivals. You can always find something to do.

You can go and explore lots of the colleges for free as well. They’ve got many different museums, if that’s something you enjoy. And obviously the punting is the number one thing you should be doing! I can’t believe how many people live here and don’t go punting. You can go up to Grantchester for the day and take some drinks. There’s lots to explore.

What are you currently working on, both in work and outside it?

Currently I’m on maternity leave, so I’m on a big journey outside of work, learning to be a parent. Next year I’ll be learning to be a parent and working, so that will be another challenge.

In work, although you get taught as much as you can about probation, people are people and they give you a different challenge all the time. You could read a thousand books, and do all your studying, but you will always have a new challenge. I don’t think you ever learn all you need to. It’s very much about talking to others, like your Senior Probation Officer – you’ve always got someone you can go to.

Other than that, we’re working on community integration. For those coming out of prison, we’re not very good at communicating on things like housing, substance misuse, prison or probation. You’d think that the probation service and prison would just be talking to each other and it would be simple. It’s not. You can wait weeks and weeks for an email, and you’re jobbing backwards and forwards or trying to book in to see somebody. So we were getting all the professionals together – about five different teams – to ensure a smoother process. That’s still in the making at the moment, but it’s what I’d started to get involved in before my maternity leave.