I was asked a week or two ago by the French Section of the International Prisons Observatory to provide written responses to a series of questions about desistance research and its implications for probation work (though this is relevant for prisons people too). Since they’ll be publishing this in French, they were happy for me to post the English versions on the blog. As with all (my) blog posts, these ‘answers’ come with a health warning; I’m expressing opinions here (albeit with an eye on the evidence)… Very happy to hear others’ views, including dissenting ones!   

According to desistance studies, which are the main factors that lead to stop criminal activity? 

Most reviews of the literature point to three main theoretical perspectives on desistance. The first draws on evidence about the relationships between crime and age. Noticing that crime is disproportionately a youthful activity – and that even persistent offenders seem to eventually ‘grow out’ of crime, these ‘ontogenic theories’ suggest that desistance can be explained in terms of age and the developing maturity that it usually brings.

The second perspective suggests that desistance can be best explained not by age and maturity per se, but rather by the changing social ties or social bonds that tend to come with adulthood. These ‘sociogenic’ perspectives point to evidence that desistance is correlated, for example, with securing meaningful employment, developing successful intimate relationships, investing in becoming a parent. People desist from crime because they acquire a stake in conformity.

The third perspective points not so much to the structural nature of these ‘turning points’ (linked to work or family life) but to the subjective dimensions of them. A new partner or a new job is more likely to provoke or support desistance if and only if the person values that new pro-social partner or that new job more than they value existing pro-criminal relationships or activities. These subjective dimensions take us into a consideration of how criminal identity can be cast off – and how new and more positive identities can become established. That process of ‘de-labelling’ – both by the person themselves and by those around them – seems to be especially important for people who have been involved in persistent offending, and whose criminalized identities are therefore more deeply entrenched.

Although they place the emphasis in different places, most desistance scholars now tend to agree that desistance can best be explained not from one of these three perspectives but by examining the interactions between these three sets of factors – age and maturity, social ties and identity transitions.   

Does that mean that supervision of offenders by probation officers has only a minor effect on criminal careers?

No, I don’t think so. It is true that one of the most important studies of probation and desistance – discussed in Steve Farrall’s (2002) book ‘Rethinking What Works – suggested that probation had little direct impact on desistance, and that the individual’s motivation to desist and his or her social context seemed to matter more. But even then, Steve argued that probation could have positive indirect effects, for example, by working to develop motivation and by addressing social problems. Also, since 2002, Steve and his colleagues have conducted several follow-up studies on the same probation cases, and these studies now suggest that probation did a better job in terms of ‘sowing the seeds’ for future change that he first thought. This finding echoes something I discovered in a small study of people who had been on probation in Scotland in the 1960s. Looking back from the vantage point of 40 years later, several of those I interviewed recognised that probation had a significant and positive impact on their lives – but not always immediately.  

How important is the quality of the relationship between offender and probation officer? Which supervision methods should be favoured? 

I think the quality of the relationship between the person under supervision and the supervisor is absolutely vital – my 1960s study showed that very clearly, and many larger and more robust studies have reached similar conclusions. Indeed, it is a common finding in studies across the human services (and in relation to psycho-social interventions of many different sorts) that the relationship is a critical factor in success. It seems obvious to me that people are more likely to be prepared to embark on a challenging change process when they feel cared about, valued and respected by those supporting that effort.   

More generally, there is now ample evidence that desistance is a relational process; it involves renegotiating identities and relationships. Though personal relationships are perhaps more fundamental to desistance in the longer term, supportive professional relationships have a key part to play – especially where the person has complex needs and faces many challenges.

I think it is probably impossible to answer the question about which methods should be favoured in a general or abstract way; it depends on the individual. One of the key implications of desistance research is that, since the process is affected by subjectivities and questions of identity, we need to have properly individualized approaches that tailor the support to fit the situation, the needs and strengths and the particular dynamics of each individual’s change process. 

It is possible to say that everyone will need motivation to change, the capacity (or skills) to begin to live differently, and the opportunities to do so – and that the supervision process therefore is likely to involve counseling, educative and advocacy-related aspects. But exactly what is required to support any individual depends on carefully exploring – in collaboration with the person him or herself – where they are on their desistance journey, what obstacles they face and what can help them to get moving or to keep moving forward.

How can probation officers work on questions related to the influence of couples in criminality, on the « social capital » of offenders, their lack of « positive » relations and networks ? Can the relatives of offenders be implied in the supervision and how (examples welcome if possible)?

I have already alluded a little to this above. The concept of ‘social capital’ refers to the networks of relationships and reciprocities that we all rely upon in our lives. Family and close friends are our usual source of ‘bonding social capital’. Workmates, classmates and other people with whom we have some interest or activity in common provide ‘bridging social capital’. Of course social capital can licit or illicit – it can function to support desistance or to support criminality.

Both bonding and bridging social capital – obviously of the licit or pro-social sort — seem to matter in desistance. Recent studies in Sheffield and Tubingen, for example, point to the importance for young men involved in persistent offending of repairing their relationships with their parents, so as to secure their support in moving away from crime and criminal networks. Similarly, I have also suggested the role that forming new families may play in enabling desistance. But bridging social capital is very important in terms of securing involvement in work and in succeeding in education – it is critical for the social mobility that desistance requires.       

I think that the main implication of this is that probation can’t work with people under supervision on their own.  Probation should work with and through families and peer support networks – at least where these are thought to be supportive of desistance – in order to support the change process. Practically, that means that probation staff need to get out of their offices – to explore and understand the social contexts in which people live, to build relationships with families, communities, employers and NGOs, so that change can be supported, obstacles removed and pathways opened up.

One interesting and very promising example of this sort of work is the development of ‘Circles of Support and Accountability’ in which people who have committed sexual offences and are considered to be at high risk of doing so again are placed within a ‘circle’ of trained volunteers who are supported by criminal justice professionals. The volunteers act a bit like a proxy family or friendship network for people who are otherwise highly isolated, but they also provide an accountability mechanism – monitoring as well as supporting the person. This is a more artificial mechanism for building social capital than might be required in most cases, but it shows what can be achieved by mobilizing non-professional actors in the process even of supporting and supervising the most difficult cases.  

Which are the recommendations that desistance researchers make as regards working on human capital, particularly cognitive dimensions, offender’s values and representations linked to criminal activity (examples welcome if possible)?

To succeed in a change process probably does require the development of ‘human capital’ or ‘skills’ – or at least the redirection of existing skills and strengths in a more positive way. There is evidence in the ‘what works?’ literature that many people involved in offending have learned attitudes and behaviors that need to be un-learned, and that CBT programmes can play a big part in supporting this process. ‘What works?’ tend to be focused on very specific ‘criminogenic needs’ or ‘dynamic risk factors’ – those attributes of the individual (or to a lesser extent of their situation) which are most strongly correlated with reconviction. Three of the main ‘targets for change’ that emerge from this kind of research are anti-social attitudes, anti-social associates and substance use problems. 

I think that where these problems exist, probation certainly should work to address them. However, I think it is a mistake to assume that ‘fixing’ these intra-individual problems will resolve offending. As I  said above, desistance is a relational process; no amount of ‘fixing’ the individual will repair the breaches in relationships (between the ‘offender’, the victim and the community) that crime creates. So probation work has to support the development of the human capital of the people involved, but it has to do more than that if it is to support desistance. 

Should individual interviews be favoured, or group activities, or both?

Again, there is no simple answer to this question. I said already that the process of supervision needs to be highly individualized, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t involve elements of group work on particular issues (like the skills development discussed above). If there are some common needs across the probation population, then it can make both financial practical sense to bring people together to work on those issues – and to support each other’s change process. ‘What works?’ group-based programmes have always used peer support and challenge in the process, but they are now beginning to learn more about this from other kinds of ‘mutual aid’ – like Alcoholics Anonymous. So, for example, in Scotland we now run ‘rolling (groupwork) programmes’ where the programme has modular elements and different people can be working on different issues and be at different stages in the process. In each session, one or two people become the focus of the group discussion, working on their issues and accounting for their progress with peer support. In a sense this approach allows group work to become more individualized.   

That said, in my view, group work always needs sit within the context of an individualized supervision process, and the whole process needs to be embedded in an understanding of desistance, if that is its objective.

Could you accurately describe the SPP programme, its content? Has it been assessed and what are the results?

The SSP (the Structured Supervision Programme) borrowed the structure, preparatory training and cognitive behavioural techniques and tools from group work programmes, as well as their procedures for managing interventions to ensure that they are delivered with integrity.  However, it also drew on desistance theory, attachment theory (which concerns people’s early life experiences and how these shape their capacities to relate to others) and the Good Lives Model of Offender Rehabilitation pioneered by Tony Ward.

After receiving training, probation officers delivered SSPs through a one-to-one supervisory relationship rather than in a group context. The SSP was initially developed for the Romanian Probation Service was later re-developed for London Probation; it included 12 one-to-one sessions which made up 5 modules dealing with motivation; problem solving and assertive communication; goal-setting and the cycle of change; perspective-taking; and relapse prevention.  

Though I’m not aware of any available evidence about the effectiveness of the SSP in reducing reoffending, it was very well received by probation staff in both Romania and London, and by probationers themselves. SSP seemed to allow for a focus on the individual’s concerns and hopes, without losing the rigour and structure of group-work programmes. More recently, the SSP informed the development of the SEED (Skills for Effective Engagement Development) programme which is currently being piloted in England and Wales. Like SSP, SEED focuses on relationship building, pro-social modelling, motivational interviewing, and on applying the risk-need-responsivity model and cognitive-behavioural techniques to a more structured form of one-to-one supervision.

I am part of a team, led by Prof. Joanna Shapland at the University of Sheffield, which is evaluating SEED. While it is too soon to report any results, there is no doubt that probation staff have responded very positively to SEED; they seem to like working with it very much.

The key practical point to take from this is that the emerging evidence, coupled with a concern to make the routine, high-volume business of one-to-one supervision more effective in fiscally difficult times, is leading probation services in some jurisdictions to invest more heavily in staff skills and one-to-one approaches, rather than relying on complex and expensive group work programmes to deliver reductions in reoffending. Such programmes are not being abandoned, but their number looks likely to become more restricted to those deemed necessary for particular groups of higher risk offenders.

This guest post comes from Ros Burnett of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. Anyone who knows desistance research will know and respect Ros’s work. She was one of the UK’s pioneers in the field, and has influenced and supported many other students, scholars and practitioners. In this post, she reflects back on her pioneering ‘Dynamics of Recidivism’ study.

Recently and not for the first time, I’ve been thinking about the word ‘dynamics’ in relation to ‘desistance’, what it really means and whether it is a concept which elucidates or obfuscates our understanding of pathways out of crime. Some twenty years ago I was the lead researcher on a study at Oxford, commissioned by the Home Office, called ‘The Dynamics of Recidivism’. That was its given title. It could just as easily have been called ‘The Dynamics of Desistance’ because it involved learning about the interaction of social and psychological factors which contributed to whether or not individuals reoffend in the period following their release from prison.

It relied mostly on their own accounts given in up to three long qualitative interviews, the first one being close to their release from prison when they were looking ‘over the wall’ towards their future. At that point, most of the cohort (130 male property offenders) wanted to ‘go straight’ but a lot expressed doubts about whether they could succeed. I managed to track and reinterview 109 of them, and about half of them again on a third occasion, during the following two years. On re-meeting they were impressed by the memories we shared of what they were experiencing last time, and touched by my recall of the details they had imparted in the previous interview. Suitably engaged, they became as keen as me to explore continuities and departures in the route their life was taking and to understand why things had worked out as they had and to explain their present directions, wishes and intentions.

Far bigger and more sophisticated studies along similar lines overtook the efforts of this small tracking study; but it did briefly make a splash – quite frighteningly at the time – when, the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard cited it to support his pronouncement that ‘prison works’. Yes, most of the cohort had told me, in each interview, that a determination to avoid further imprisonment was foremost in their reasons for desisting from offending, and a key disincentive when we conjectured about tempting opportunities to make money illegally. I and my colleagues were quick to shunt away the rational choice implications that were being drawn to support greater use of imprisonment. Indeed I felt some pressure to ‘bury bad news’ and the prospect of publishing the report was shelved.

A decade or so later, Shadd Maruna, Tom LeBel, Shawn Bushway  and I analysed the subsequent reconviction and reimprisonment data for the cohort in relation to the original qualitative data. An alarming percentage had continued offending and served further prison sentences; but a few had ‘come through’ without further blemish on the official records. Whittling it all down (with clever statistical wizardry – thanks Tom and Shawn!) we proposed that, if anything, hope works. That was too nearly another slick answer, another slogan. Shadd and I batted around some alternative terminology. I think I suggested ‘self-efficacy’ or some inelegant labels like ‘optimistic expectation’, ‘confident intention’. Then Shadd introduced me to C.R. Snyder’s hope theory, and things clicked into place.  

‘Prison works’. ‘Hope works’. Such slogans are memorable and capture the imagination, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could all agree we’ve hit on ‘the answer’ with something neat like that, instead of all these wishy-washy conclusions about interactive dimensions and trajectories to desistance. We should be careful though not to either accept or dismiss single factors on the grounds of their compatibility with our own ideology and value position.

When I commenced the 1992 study, it was not long after a previous career in the probation service, and talk of ‘dynamics’ sounded right to me because I knew a lot about the difficult, often prolonged, journey my ‘clients’ (as we used to call them) were making in ‘going straight’. I would have been less comfortable with a single theme study on the role of, for example, drugs, or employment, in crime and rehabilitation. I liked that it wasn’t advancing a hypothesised key factor but kept all options open, and that it effectively allowed that desistance is complicated.

At the beginning though I admit to being a bit bemused about what I was meant to be looking for: the concept of ‘dynamics’ is so rich in meaning. It is evocative of movement, change and forces. It has its origin in the Greek word dynamikos, meaning ‘powerful’, and in its singular, adjectival sense, ‘dynamic’ people and events gets things done. There can be a dynamic for something to happen or change: a motivator, a push, perhaps a sudden source of socio-psychological energy; or perhaps a more gradual intertwining of events, situations actions and reactions that leads to a particular outcome. Mostly though, I understood my task to be a search for that ‘dynamic interplay’ of all those factors that might influence a person to behave in a certain way and that might impact on the outcomes. With all those potential strands, it was going to be different for each person, for each further offence and each triumph of desistance, but there would be patterns to draw out and recurring factors that would stand out.

The dynamics of recidivism has a good academic ring about it, and ‘dynamic interplay’ connotes factor analysis and multi-dimensional scaling and regression, while the notion of dynamics embraces the complexity of causation, of relapse, of shifting change. The opposite of static and with its implications of movement and continuous activity or progress, it dissuades us from looking for finite positions and simple explanations.

On the other hand, it is the kind of jargon which becomes its own explanation and a stopgap for real understanding. It tells you everything but it tells you nothing; begs the question and defers the answer. You can accurately reflect that there are multiple interacting factors that influenced why this person stopped offending completely and that individual desisted for two weeks but then relapsed. But saying that there is a dynamic interplay is itself a kind of simplification; is reductionist. No-one can really argue with it but what does it tell us, and what do we do with it to improve policy, to change lives. It’s a long way from a pointed explanation that could become the centre of a new rehabilitation policy.

I still wonder about the individuals I got to know at that time and how long it might have taken them to become ‘secondary desisters’ or whether they went back round the relapse loop; and, for all my years of practical and then academic inquiries into rehabilitation and desistance I haven’t yet discovered an equation of ingredients that lead to one or other of those outcomes. I’m pretty sure though that there are some dynamic variables that are more powerful in the mix, and I’m left with a lingering unease that despite best intentions to report the data faithfully and with integrity, I didn’t manage to tell the general story as straightforwardly as I might have done, did not show the ways in which prison might indeed contribute to changes in behaviour and did not clearly enough explain in what senses and in what ways hope is a critical factor.

Single factor causal theories can be over-simplistic and, as such, dangerous or annoying, and they add to the hostilities between opposing positions on criminal justice policy. We should be wary of supporting pet theories with equivocal research findings. Equally though, we should not  shy away from acknowledging the role of some factors because they offend our sensibilities. It’s complicated. By all means let’s not be simplistic, but let us continue the quest to discover which factors are more important than others and to understand the circumstances in which they come into play.

[References provided on request.]

Ros Burnett

Email: Ros.Burnett@crim.ox.ac.uk

Twitter: @rosburnett

hi,

I’ve just spent the last hour or so watching the latest ‘draft’ (there is probably a more technical term, but I think in terms of ‘drafts’) of the film. The film company aided with Shadd at their elbow have produced some really great stuff. Although I’d seen some of the interviews in their entirety (having been there for the filming for some of them) and although I’d seen longer edits of much of the material, I was stunned at how well it all hung together and how well it seemed to get across some of the key messages we’d hoped it would.

I really can’t wait for others to see it too. There is more work to do, not least of all Allan (Weaver)’s voice overs which will ‘link’ the story together and keep the narrative flowing, but already I can see how good this’ll be. Yet to be properly edited out is that f@$*!~g duck (see my post 3-4th Nov for the full story).

More soon!

Steve

hi everyone,

Lots of exciting things are happening behind the scenes (as true of making films about desistance as it of desistance itself!). We are very shortly going to release the dates for the seminars. These will be held in:

Sheffield (where Claire Lightowler and I will be hosting the day)

Belfast (where Shadd and Claire will be the hosts) and

Glasgow (where Fergus and Claire will be looking after everyone).

These dates are likely to be mid-late-April to mid-late-May. Like all great rock and roll outfits, we might be able to add an extra date if we can squeeze the budget a bit (and if we can, this’ll be in London).

Okay, this is what to do if you’d like to come to the seminars when the dates are up:

There’ll be an email address for people who want to attend a specific seminar to write to. When you write, please do tell us something about yourself; do you work in the CJS/3rd sector? were you once a service user? are you a family member of a service user?  are you helping to design policies around reintegration etc? are you a current service user? do you work for a ‘user voice’ organisation? are you training to work in the CJS, or do you train people who will go on to work in the CJS?, and so on. We’d like to know this as we’re keen to ensure a good mix of people at each event as this’ll bring together more perspectives and give us (all) a better insight into the process of desistance and how we can foster it.

People who do not work for organisations who can pay for them to attend (i.e. service users, their families, ex-service users and so on) be offered a gift (i.e. a small peice of paper with a picture of the Queen on one side and a picture of someone like Adam Smith or Charles Darwin on the otherside – we have a limited colour range, we’re afraid - purpley-blue or orange ones). We’ll say more about this nearer the time.

If you know of people who you think might like to come, please do email them a link to this web page. There’ll be room for about 30-40 people at each seminar, so there ought to be lots of room for everyone who’d like to come to attend.

All the best,

Steve

hi,

Just an update on where we are with the film. The filming is pretty much done and dusted (although there may be a couple of interviews to do, just for the sake of completeness), and has been in post-production since the start of January. We’re now in the process of editing the material and bringing it together into a cohoerent ‘whole’. We have tenative dates for the first round of seminars arranged and are looking at the second dates in late June. The film will be produced as a DVD in order for it to be circulated more widely, and will have subtitles in various languages to aid comprehension for those for whom English (esp. with a Scottish or Yorkshire twang!)  is not familiar.

So, watch this space: we’re aiming to have a full set of dates for the seminars up shortly. Although these will be invitation only events, we’d be delighted if people would express an interest in attending. We can’t make any promises, but we will take all expressions seriously and we’ll try to get everyone interested into one of the seminars if possible.

Best wishes,

Steve

This intriguing guest post comes from Prof Martine Herzog-Evans of the Law Faculty, University of Reims.

In the academic year 2009-2010, I polled my 2nd law students at the very beginning of the penology and sentencing class (Droit de la peine).

I used the International Crime Survey question, i.e. question number 1, which can be found in the appendix to this post.  This experiment was repeated in the academic years 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. 

The first two years, I obtained vastly different results: the first year, my students replied in a very similar vein to the French general population: a lot of them voted in favour community work (see: http://herzog-evans.com/edito/2010_01_28.php).The second year, however, they appeared extremely tough on crime, a significant proportion opting for very long sentences, including life. I posited that two reasons explained this change. First, the very same month when I had polled my students, there had been a high profile case involving an offender on probation who had so far only committed a petty offence (contempt of court) and who ‘suddenly’ – or so it seemed as a closer look into his file would have revealed that he had previously attempted to sexually assault a co-inmate – went on to savagely murder a young woman just about the same age as my 2^nd year students. Second, there was at the time intense coverage in the local news and papers of a gang of house burglars who operated in Reims and nearby Châlons en Champagne (see: http://herzog-evans.com/edito/2011_06_13.php).

In this academic year 2011-2012, I decided to add new questions to the basic ICS one.  The ICS does not give much details about the 21 year old burglar. This is because the ICS only wants to know what are people’s spontaneous and core instincts about the ‘right’ sentence. If this still interested me re my students I also wanted to determine whether they were re-integrative and whether, in real life situations, when it came to people they knew, they would welcome former offenders back in their lives.

In the course of previous desistance research  (http://www.ejprob.ro/index.pl/desisting_in_france_what_probation_officers_know_and_do._a_first_approach), I had suggested that French people were rather re-integrative and only wanted ex-offenders to be discreet and live a normal life like the rest of us early risers. My research had showed that in France, there did not seem to be any of the Anglophone/protestant asking people to redeem themselves by overdoing ‘Making Good’. So I tailored my questions (three of them – see in appendix) so that they would:

-          Concern a friend of theirs;

-          Concern various offenses;

-          Concern people who had desisted in a manner that I thought French people would respond to.

-          Concern people who had desisted at various points in the past. 

As usual, I asked the four questions at the very beginning of my first penology and sentencing class in order to make sure that I would not have any influence on them in any way. A formal article will eventually be published in order to try and make sense of my findings. For now, here is a short presentation.

The results

128 students answered.

The first (ICS) question

This year’s students appeared less tough on crime than last year’s students, confirming that 2010-2011 answers were indeed linked to a conjunctural media situation.

-          31.2% of the students chose imprisonment;

-          19.2% chose a fine;

-          24.8% chose community work;

-          10.4% chose suspended sentence;

-          11.2% chose other;

-          3.2% of the answers could not be used.

Of those who chose imprisonment, the range of answers went from 1 month to life (two students), but concentrated between 3 months and 1 year.

74.3 chose a sentence of less and up to a year; 20.5 chose more than one year.

Of those who chose ‘other’ there was, as each year, a wide range of mixes: fine + forced work; fine + community work; semi-freedom; imprisonment + community work; suspended sentence + fine, imprisonment + fine; fine + EM. I also got the usual jokes, such as ‘four hours of penology class’ or ‘castration’.

The reintegration questions

The reintegration questions yielded extremely interesting results.

The armed robber

-          94.48 of my students answered yes

-          5.52% answered no.

The murderer

-          67.74 of my students answered yes

-          32.25% answered no.

 (some answers could not be used)

 The addict

-          75.78% of my students answered yes

-          24.21% answered no. 

It did not surprise me that they would be more reticent to welcome back the murderer, as it was the most serious offence in the list. Also the question did not give much details about the fight in the bar, which some students pointed out: was he provoked, did he attack first, was the death an accident (i.e. manslaughter rather than homicide, which in France is still sometimes qualified as murder even though there is such an offence in the Penal Code called ‘violence leading to death without the intent to kill’)?

I was not surprised either by the more integrative – yet not unanimous – answers to the addict question: after all, I posited, they all had friends who were or had been in trouble with drugs or alcohol, some of which, as a result, flunked in high school or at university. Cannabis in particular was part of their culture. Still, I found them very tolerant with someone who had a full criminal record and who had only quit drugs two years ago.

The biggest surprise came with the armed robber question: their yes (94.48%) was bordering on the plebiscite. It appeared in the course of further discussion with smaller groups of students (30/50) that they did not seem to think armed robbery was a serious offence. It was also quite obvious that they were already strongly influenced by their law studies and by the legal ‘tariffs’ for each type of offence, that they had already been exposed to. 

 Appendix : The four questions

 Students’ poll – English version

1) A 21 year man is arrested for burglary. He has stolen a colour TV from the house he has broken in. It turns out he has already been arrested in the past for burglary. This is all we know. People are asked what would the right sentence be:

- Prison? In which case please say for how long;

- Fine;

- Suspended sentence;

- Community work;

- Other? In which case, please specify.

2) You are 28 and have left university a while ago – 2nd year students are typically 19/21. One of your former friends from high school contacts you via Facebook. He explains to you that the reason why he had abruptly left high school when you were both 16, is that he had committed a series of armed robberies and, as a result, had served 5 years of imprisonment. He was released at 21 and has now totally turned his life around; has never committed another offence; has a house, a wife, a child, a car, and a dog. Would you actually resume your relationship with him?

3)  You are 35 and have left university a while ago. One of your former friends from high school contacts you via Facebook. He explains to you that the reason why he had abruptly left high school when you were both 16, is that he killed someone (in the course of a pub fight) and as a result had served 10 years of imprisonment. He was released at 26 and has now totally turned his life around; has never committed another offence; has a house, a car, a wife, a child, a car, and a dog. Would you actually resume your relationship with him?

4)  You are 35 and have left university a while ago. One of your former friends from high school contacts you via Facebook. He explains to you that the reason why he had abruptly left high school when you were both 16, is that he had a serious drug problem which escalated and lasted until two years ago. As a result he has been sentenced numerous times, to community sentences and to imprisonment. Two years ago he met his wife and since then, has turned his life around; has never committed another offence; has a house, a baby, a car and a dog. Would you actually resume your relationship with him?

Sally’s review of the classic ‘I Believe in You’ sent me into a reminiscing mood and, since I’ve just realised that it’s now decade since the publication of Steve’s book and with it the first appearance (I think) of the argument for desistance-focused probation practice, I had a browse around in some old files and discovered that I reviewed the book for the Probation Journal back in 2003. Here’s what I wrote:

Rethinking What Works with Offenders: Probation, Social Context and Desistance from Crime (Stephen Farrall, Willan Publishing, 2002 pp256; £30.00hbk ISBN 1903240956)

This is ‘an important book’, as Christine Knott acknowledges in the forward. Peter Raynor has described it as ‘fascinating and ambitious’ and concludes his review with the comment that Stephen Farrall’s ‘contribution is new and distinctive and looks like making a difference’ (Vista: Perspectives on Probation, vol. 8, no. 1, p51). I include these commendations to underline that, although this is not an easy book, it is a book that simply must be read by practitioners, managers, policy makers and academics alike. While the complexity of its content poses challenges for the reader, its conclusions pose major and significant challenges for probation services. Key amongst these challenges is the presentation of a convincing argument that both how we understand and how we pursue ‘what works’ need to be reconsidered.

The book reports the findings of a four-year Probation Studies Unit project entitled ‘Tracking Progress on Probation’. This project explored the role of probation supervision in encouraging desistance amongst a sample of 199 people aged 17-35 who were made subject to probation or combination orders in six different English services in late 1997 or early 1998. Both probationers and their supervising officers were interviewed about the work undertaken and about the probationer’s response to it, as well as about the probationer’s social and personal circumstances. These interviews were conducted in three ‘sweeps’: within seven weeks of the commencement of orders, during its progress and near or shortly after its conclusion. In total, the study involved over 1,000 interviews.

The rationale for and significance of this method is outlined in the first part of the book. These three introductory chapters, in carefully building the case for the study’s approach, provide a succinct analysis of two differing but related research paradigms: the available criminal careers research concerning ‘desistance’ and the much better known research studies of rehabilitative interventions. The general lack of attention paid to desistance research in probation circles is, on the face of it, surprising, since this research aims to explore and to understand precisely the processes of change which probation services are charged with facilitating. Perhaps this neglect is a consequence of the fact that few studies thus far have directly explored the links between probation and desistance, although Sue Rex’s work is a notable and important exception. Alternatively, the neglect may have its roots in the suspiciously convenient alignment between the ‘what works’ research, managerialism in the National Probation Service in England and Wales and its broader socio-political context. As will become obvious, the evidence from desistance studies is far less convenient.

What often seems to be missing from programme effectiveness studies, or rather from their reduction to bullet-point mantras, is any sense that the multi-faceted and complex change processes involved in desisting from offending occur within equally complex and usually difficult personal and social contexts. With this in mind, Farrall succeeds in highlighting the important limitations of the ‘what works’ research, making the case for research methodologies which explore the contexts and processes of interventions as well as their outcomes. As he argues, knowing what works is inadequate unless we can discern how, why and in which contexts it works. In an important sense, the desistance research and the criminal careers paradigm offer the prospect of developing a much more holistic and person centred understanding of change and how best to promote it, within which the research on interventions could and should be conceptually embedded in order to avoid pursuing a puerile, reductionist correctionalism. These introductory chapters succeed in whetting the appetite for the account of the study that follows.

The second and third parts of the book provide a detailed account of the processes of the research and of its findings. In some respects, chapters 4-9 (part two) make for difficult reading. For example, in chapter 5, Farrall reports that probationers and their supervising officers rarely agreed in their assessments of what constituted obstacles to desistance and that, even when they did agree, they had different approaches to the resolution of them; “(i)n short, there were few officers and probationers who were ‘working together’” (p83). Farrall’s analysis, in chapters 6-9, of what accounted for the successful resolution of obstacles (like those posed by peer associations, problems with drugs and alcohol, personal characteristics, finances, etc.) arrives at an equally challenging conclusion: whereas both the motivation of probationers and their “social and personal contexts played crucial roles in mediating the outcomes of probation supervision…”, there was “little evidence of probation interventions ‘working’” to resolve obstacles (p168). This does not however, lead him to conclude that probation does not ‘work’; rather he suggests that probations officers could improve the prospects of success where they offered help in tackling employment and family-related issues.

Part three of the book, which looks at the factors associated with persistence and desistance, underlines the central message that motivation and personal and social contexts were more significant factors than probation interventions per se; and that these interventions were more effective where they supported probationers in tackling these issues. In many respects, these findings may be unsurprising to experienced probation officers and managers. The case for addressing the practical needs of offenders as well as tackling their offending, after all, has a long and distinguished history. In the longer term, it may be that the main significance of Farrall’s work is that, in an era of ‘evidence-based practice’, it begins to empirically re-legitimate probation’s original moral purpose: ‘to advise, assist and befriend.’ With a bittersweet historical irony, as we progress (sic) towards what Mike Nellis has termed ‘the field of corrections’, Farrall’s book arguably makes a necessity out of the virtues of penal welfarism.

Part four of the book, its concluding chapter, begins to ‘develop the agenda’ around probation, social context and desistance and crime. Here, Farrall is surely right in arguing that interventions themselves and evaluations of them must pay greater heed to the community, social and personal contexts in which they are situated. As he puts it, “social circumstances and relationships with others are both the object of the intervention and the medium through which… change can be achieved” (p212, emphasis added). Necessarily, this requires that interventions be focussed not solely on the individual person and his or her perceived ‘deficits’. As Farrall notes, the problem with interventions based on such dubious criminological foundations is that while they can build human capital, for example, in terms of enhanced cognitive skills or improved employability, they cannot generate that social capital which resides necessarily in the relationships through which we achieve participation and inclusion in society. For Farrall, this suggests that practice should be focussed not solely on ‘offence-related factors’ but also on ‘desistance-related needs’. The nature of the difference between the two approaches is well captured by one of the probationers in the study, in response to a question about what would prevent him from re-offending. In heartily commending this book, it is to this probationer that I leave the last word:

“Something to do with self progression. Something to show people what they are capable of doing. I thought that was what [my Officer] should be about. It’s finding people’s abilities and nourishing and making them work for those things. Not very consistent with going back on what they have done wrong and trying to work out why – ‘cause it’s all going around on what’s happened – what you’ve already been punished for – why not go forward into something… For instance, you might be good at writing – push that forward, progress that, rather than saying ‘well look, why did you kick that bloke’s head in? Do you think we should go back into anger management courses?’ when all you want to do is be a writer. Does that make any sense to you at all? Yeah, yeah. To sum it up, you’re saying you should look forwards not back. Yeah. I know that you have to look back to a certain extent to make sure that you don’t end up like that [again]. The whole order seems to be about going back and back and back. There doesn’t seem to be much ‘forward’” (p225).

I have a new article in what I think is a fascinating exchange in the newest issue of the ASC journal Criminology and Public Policy. See

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/capp.2012.11.issue-1/issuetoc

This is a special issue on “Prisoner Reentry, Employment, Signaling, and the Better Identification of Desisters” (whew, that’s a mouthful) and it is tied into a (US) Congressional Luncheon of some sort, so the idea is that the debate should have some real policy relevance. That said, the discussion ended up being far more academic and theoretical than was probably intended, but I found the whole “signaling theory” thing just too interesting to resist.

Here is an excerpt from my response below. It makes most sense if you read the lead article by Bushway and Apel to which I am responding. If people need help accessing the issue, as always give me a shout at s.maruna @ qub.ac.uk or we might see about posting.

Excerpt:
Robert Martinson’s (1974) infamous “what works?” question has much to answer for here. The argument that perhaps “work doesn’t work,” cited in Bushway and Apel (2012), has to be one of the most frightening phrases I have read in criminology in a while. Surely, it is time to retire this “what works” phrase once and for all and to agree that the word “works” does not “work” when talking about human lives. What does it even mean? I have heard people ask, “Do the arts work?,” “Does prison work?,” and “Does supervision work?” as if these questions could be meaningfully answered. After a presentation, I was once asked, “Yes, but does desistance work?” Has anyone ever asked, “Does grad school work?” or “Does university work?” I hope not, or else they will start testing it by randomly assigning people to Ph.D. programs in criminology.

The beauty of the signaling approach is that it allows us to recognize the folly of such a question when the subjects involved are human beings trying to live meaningful lives. Furthermore, the signaling theory would take apart what about graduate school we would need to test to answer the question that matters. Would graduate school work if you did not get a degree at the end? That is, what if you got all the “dosage” (i.e., took all the courses and completed a dissertation), but you received no official credential at the end (e.g., because you forgot to pay your tuition)? What about the opposite? Imagine you skipped all the “dosage” (never attended a single lecture), but you forged or scammed a Ph.D. credential from one of the top university departments. Which of those scenarios (all dosage, no degree or all degree, no dosage) would “work” better on the job market? (I think I don’t want to know the answer to that).

So, does grad school work? Don’t ask me! In fact, don’t ask that at all. Bushway and Apel (2012) would argue that the better question (and certainly the more pertinent one for aspiring criminologists) is “what do I have to do to get the job I want in academia?” Now, that is a question that I can answer.

Prisoners ask the same sort of questions. The prisoners whom I have met and worked with over the years are deeply ambivalent about expert correctional treatment and highly skeptical of expert risk assessment. They are, however, very interested in the idea of redeeming themselves (i.e., signaling their desistance). They ask, “What do I have to do to get a second chance?” and if that means sitting through a “what works” course or smiling while a 23-year-old trainee psychologist from the suburbs risk assesses them, so be it. The problem about such signaling opportunities, that every prisoner knows well, is that these signals carry little or no weight in the real world. Successful completion of a criminal thinking course or an expert assessment of low-risk of recidivism is hardly something one puts on a job application. As employers would not understand either one or accord them much legitimacy, they have little by way of what Pierre Bourdieu (1977) deemed “symbolic capital.”

This post comes from Sally Lewis, who is proud to be a CQSW qualified probation officer. She is currently CEO of Avon & Somerset Probation Trust and the Probation Chiefs Association’s national lead for Integrated Offender Management. She previously worked in Berkshire, London and Lincolnshire Probation Areas. 

How did the opportunity of spending time with a person there to assist you become a type of punishment? When did the creation of relationships with other people to provide encouragement and advice become an “Offender Engagement Programme”?

Sewell Stokes was born in 1902 and lived an extraordinarily eventful life as a novelist, screenwriter, biographer, playwright, broadcaster and prison visitor. As a young man Sewell befriended the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan in her penniless years. In common with other active and creative minds that came before him, and were to come afterwards, Sewell decided to enlist as a Probation Officer. Between 1941 and 1945 he worked at Bow Street Magistrates Court and in 1950 he published an autobiographical account of his experiences in ‘Court Circular’ which later formed the basis of the 1952 British film ‘I Believe in You’.

From the legendary Ealing stable, I Believe in You is a heartwarming black & white and a genuine classic for anyone working today with people who offend. This little film beats with a gentle human pulse of what “offender engagement” really is. It portrays  the truth that to have meaning we have to know the whole person and their narrative. The story is rather innocent and sentimental but the message is enduring.

Posters for the film give a rather racy image with the by-line, “what was her crime that no one could say…”. Remember, this was an era when Celia Johnson’s portrayal in Brief Encounter, only 7 years before, often referred to as the perfect love story, was considered very bold.

Henry Phipps (Cecil Parker) ex Colonial Office man of leisure ponders on his future, sherry glass in hand, beside the fireplace of his Mayfair flat. When teenage tearaway in distress, Norma (Joan Collins) seeks refuge in his building, the event provides the inspiration he needs to become a Probation Officer.

Mr.Phipps joins the probation team led by the wise and kindly Mr. Dove. In a steep learning curve and despite his most genuine efforts Mr. Phipps is puzzled, exasperated then disheartened in his attempts to work with the people entrusted to his care by the courts.

He seeks and receives robust advice from his stalwart colleague probation officer, the excellent  ”Matty”  Matheson (Celia Johnson). “It’s no good planning for people you have to plan with them” she tells him firmly, “you think you can understand without liking?”.

What this simple little film portrays are the attitudes that underpin meaningful human connection.  As Matty reflects “there’s no such thing as a typical probation officer”. The warmth in this depiction of probation’s professional ancestry will, I hope, remind practitioners amongst you of why you were first motivated to work with people who have offended. So much is recognisable 60 years later; not least the frustration of the police sergeant (Sid James) at probation’s inability to organise their supply of fresh milk for the office tea; perhaps it’s in the DNA. This is a film to watch beside the fire on a cold day with a pot of tea and, if you can, have a few colleagues around to share the experience.

Sally Lewis Probation Officer / CEO