Two discovering desistance workshops were held in the Wirral in November and December 2012.  The workshops were attended by probation officers and workers, partners of Merseyside Probation Trust, current and previous service users and their families. This workshops were funded by the Merseyside Probation Trust and facilitated by Stephen Farrall and myself.  We have produced a report based on the contributions at the workshops, available here.

A number of next steps and actions were identified during the workshops.  Colleagues from the Merseyside Probation Trust are currently working to develop an action plan to take these suggestions forward.

We look forward to hearing what happens next and would like to thank everyone involved in the workshops for their contributions.

The Road from Crime documentary has been seen all over the world and now Avon and Somerset Probation Trust are showing the film on Thursday 22nd November 2012 at the Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon, North Somerset, BS21 6NN from 10am to 12pm.  Professor Stephen Farrall will be speaking and there are creative performances that demonstrate desistance.

We have spaces available to attend this screening and learn more about why people desist from offending.  If you would like to reserve a place then you can contact Chantelle Smith to avoid disappointment.

Chantelle Smith, Desistance Development Officer

Email: chantelle.smith@avon-somerset.probation.gsi.gov.uk

Research is being undertaken about social media usage, its  perceived benefits, pitfalls and issues and potential for influencing crime policy formation.  Given the use of social media throughout the discovering desistance project,  I thought some of you might have views/opinions to share.  If you are interested you can complete a short survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/smcjp

The research is being undertaken by Paul Senior (Sheffield Hallam University) and Julian Buchanan (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand).

Find more about the project here:

blog – http://yorkhull.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/social-media-and-criminal-justice-policy-exchange-smcjp/

you tube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5D35pSqyfY

I recently published a guest blog post for the Alliance for Useful Evidence, where I mentioned the Discovering Desistance project as a good example of research-practitioner-service user engagement.   Thought some of you who follow this blog might be interested.

Claire Lightowler

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At an event today about community empowerment in Scotland someone approached me to discuss his less than empowering experience of research.  He had been contacted by a group of, in his words, “no doubt eminent academics”, who had told him they had just been awarded funding to research his community and were seeking to meet him to find out about his experience of community ownership. There had been no prior engagement, no discussion with the community about what research they would like, and the research funders clearly hadn’t seriously considered the level of engagement between researched and researchers.  The irony of all this when the topic of research is community ownership didn’t escape either of us!

Now, lets hope that despite this inauspicious start, the evidence emerging from this process will eventually be useful to the community being studied and also that wider lessons are shared for others to reflect and learn.  However, it’s a helpful reminder of one reason (there are others) why useless evidence is produced.

In this example, there is a strong likelihood that the people being researched will feel disconnected from the research process, they won’t necessarily think the questions being asked are the ‘right’ ones, will have no ownership over the findings emerging, may not know what the research means to them or how to actually use it.  So the quality of the research is likely to be poorer and the potential for it to be useful to policy, practice and people outside academia likely to be less than if there had been greater engagement and co-operation at an earlier stage.

As luck would have it only last week a colleague, Cathy Sharp (from Research for Real), shared with me a book chapter by John Heron and Peter Reason on this very topic – “The practice of co-operative inquiry: Research with rather than on people”.  For them, and for me too, “good research is research conducted with people rather than on people” (Heron and Reason, 2001: 179).  Not a bad starting point of principle for the creation of useful evidence.

How people translate this principle will differ. For some this may lead them to think about action research or co-operative inquiry approaches (for a useful exploration of what this is see the chapter referred to above or this storyboard). For others it may start with some relatively basic changes to their research approach.  For instance, last night my partner, who works as an academic, was asking me how he could ensure his research project about child protection and joint working across housing and social services was really “with people”.  When I suggested he spoke to housing and social work practitioners about the issues they faced before he developed a potential research question, he genuinely hadn’t considered this. “Could I talk to them at this stage?” he asked, immediately relieved of the pressure of coming up with a research question in isolation from this engagement.  A really simple suggestion, but potentially transformative in terms of ensuring useful evidence emerges.

Of course, sometimes this practitioner-research monologue is not enough either! After all, we are often focusing on people and their lives, and so a more appropriate aspiration might be to support genuine dialogue between a much wider group of stakeholders.  This is one of the aspirations of a project I’m involved in at the moment which aims to share knowledge about how and why people stop offending from crime, and to recommend changes in policy and practice to better support people to stop offending (a process known as desistance).  In this project knowledge is shared and co-created between people who have offended, families and supporters of people who have offended, academics, policymakers, managers, practitioners, employers and service providers.  The project activities have included the production of a documentary film (called ‘The road from crime‘), the creation of a blog site and facilitated workshops where this group of stakeholders co-produce clear recommendations about how to improve processes, policies and practice to better support desistance from crime.

I’m really struck here by the parallels between the ownership of research (agendas, questions and data) and the issues around community ownership of physical assets I’ve just been involved in discussing (and where this post started).  One of the parallels is nicely summed up by one of the panel experts at the community empowerment event (Milind Kolhatkar, from Edinburgh voluntary organisation’s council) who argued that communities need:

“Experts on tap rather than experts on top”

So, to all of us involved in producing research can we stop thinking of ourselves as experts on high who know it all and need to know it all?

Obviously, I’m simplifying things for effect here: there are many researchers who do not fit this overly simplified caricature and there are a range of issues and difficulties associated with the approach I’m advocating.  However, as a research community, perhaps there is value in reflecting on what research production would look like if there was greater acknowledgement of the different forms of expertise other people can bring to the creation of research, and so really free researchers from being the experts on top. Could this reflection help us to focus on making our research expertise available “on tap”, to help people understand the issues they face and the world in which they live, and to help us all collectively learn how to change and improve.

Not only will the evidence we produce be more useful as a result, but it is highly likely that it will be more accurate, our theories will be better informed, our publications of higher quality and our endeavours could just also be better recognised by (some) research funders too.  It’s not an either or – useful evidence is better evidence!

Claire Lightowler is programme manager of Evidence-informed practice at IRISS (Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services).

IRISS promotes positive outcomes for people supported by social services in Scotland by enhancing the capacity and capability of social service stakeholders to access and make use of knowledge and evidence for service innovation and improvement.

You can contact Claire at claire.lightowler@iriss.org.uk or find out more about IRISS at www.iriss.org.uk.

References

Heron, J. and Reason, P. (2001) ‘The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research with rather than on people ‘ in P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice (pp. 179-188). London: Sage 2001.  Download here – http://www.peterreason.eu/Papers_list.html

IRISS (2012) How action research can help deliver better services: Creative Storyboard,

http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/how-action-research-can-help-deliver-better-services-video

Discovering desistance blog, http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/discoveringdesistance/

The road from crime film (2012) http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/the-road-from-crime

This is a guest post from Chantelle Smith from Avon and Somerset Probation Trust. 

While working as a Probation Officer in an Offender Management Team, I have worked with individuals who have moved away from committing crimes and those struggling to make these changes.  Without doubt the most rewarding part of this job has been seeing the changes, no matter how small.  There are so many variables that influence how desistance may progress and as practitioners we must continue to commit to work with people to support changes when they are ready and support access to opportunities.

The increasing interest in desistance research is encouraging as it is putting the focus back onto the people that we work with and their unique experiences and needs.  Instead of “one size fits all” methods, the research demonstrates that approaches and interventions need to be tailored to the individual.

I am involved in an exciting project as the Desistance Development Officer in Avon and Somerset Probation Trust.  The aim of this role is to explore why individuals desist from crime and to explore how to encourage this within the work that we do.  Part of the outcomes of this work will be to reduce re-offending.

A significant aspect of the work will be consultation with service users and staff in establishing what approaches support desistance.  The focus will be on the service users with extensive offending histories who have demonstrated desisting behaviour.  Further consultation will be with staff from all grades within Avon and Somerset Probation Trust, but focusing on those who have face to face contact with the service users.  There will also be detailed interviews exploring the approach of staff who have a caseload with statistically lower re-offending rates than would be expected.  Essentially, I am looking at developing a comprehensive understanding of what is influencing desistance by looking beyond the statistics and exploring personal experiences.

There are a number of plans to use The Road from Crime film in increasing awareness of desistance with service users, staff and others.  This resource can stimulate more interest in this important area and hopefully encourage more openness to supporting integration into the community.

The findings are going to be channelled into our work in Avon and Somerset Probation Trust and will be shared through my blog www.desistanceaspt.blogspot.co.uk and via Twitter @ChantelleSmith

All feedback will be very welcome.

The road from crime film is now available to view on-line and to download –  see http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/the-road-from-crime.

The film is available with (or without) English, French, Spanish, German or Finnish subtitles.

We would welcome any feedback about the film, and would be delighted to hear about how you use it and the impact it has.  You can add comments at the bottom of this page if you so wish.

We hope you find the film thought provoking and useful.

Many thanks to all of you who took part in the desistance workshops.

The workshops took place between April and June 2012 in Belfast, Glasgow, London and Sheffield.  We held two workshops at each location.

Details of the workshop process, and the notes and outputs from each workshop are detailed in the reports below.  The reports present the outputs of the workshops without offering any comment or analysis.  We would welcome any feedback and discussion.

• Report on Belfast desistance workshops (held on 14 May and 25 June 2012)
• Report on the Glasgow desistance workshops (held on 10 April and 16 May 2012)
• Report on the London desistance workshops (held 11 May & 11 June 2012)
• Report on Sheffield desistance workshops (held on 10 May & 14 June 2012)

IRISS.FM is a new internet radio station intended as a forum where all involved in social services can share opinion, knowledge and experience.

You can now listen to our show entitled Discovering Desistance.

The recording was made on the 16 May and involves a discussion with four of the participants at the second of two workshops held in Glasgow.

We will shortly be making the notes available from the Glasgow workshops but for now hope you enjoy the show!

Below is a blog post from Neil Hutton, Professor at the Centre for Law Crime and Justice, University of Strathclyde.

First, congratulations on the film. A very moving and professional looking piece of work which will be a very useful resource for teaching, training and raising awareness more generally.

The film  unashamedly told the story from  the offender perspective, but did not seek sympathy for offenders but instead focused on the negativity of imprisonment. “A prison sentence starts when you walk out of the prison gates.” The film showed how prison disqualifies and excludes far beyond the term of the sentence.

Almost inevitably, most of the ex-offenders interviewed were highly articulate, intelligent, perceptive and even charismatic: extraordinary people. I was struck again by how difficult it must be to radically change your life, how brave to  take the responsibility to be the author of a new life. Most of us bumble along,  only rarely required to make the kind of courageous decisions or demonstrate the kind of steely determination that these guys have had to do. But they show that it can be done, that there is hope alongside the poverty, unemployment, drink and drugs and all the rest of it. But if it is hard for these guys to succeed, how much harder for the less gifted offenders.  Amongst other things, desistance requires patience from the authorities and a willingness to give offenders a second  chance (or even a tenth chance) to make the changes which they want to achieve but find difficult. The challenge is to find ways not just to stop less serious offenders going to prison in the first place but ensuring that those sentenced to community payback are not returned too swiftly to prison when for whatever reason they breach a condition of their order. Desistance takes time.

Alan Weaver does a very fine  job as presenter and the music is great. I will definitely be using this for teaching next year. Thanks to all involved for a great idea brilliantly executed

Due to popular demand here’s a sneak preview of the film, “The Road from Crime” – http://vimeo.com/43519157

Let us know what you think.

The film will be available to purchase from July, and will be freely available to download in September. Details of how to buy/download will be posted here shortly. Not long to go!