Probationer-directed interventions

Introduction

In my work as a Team Manager in a busy city centre generic field team we have been focusing on developing our practice according to the burgeoning desistance and probationer engagement agenda. Much of our effort has been focused on attempting to develop a far more engaging manner of working with probationers, and in particular the co-production and ownership of the sentence plan. As such it was with much interest that I read Bosker et al.’s comment piece in the June 2013 edition of the Probation Journal. Their idea − of creating a more structured approach to interventions − appeared to be based not so much on probationer engagement but more on structured thinking and the assessed criminogenic need. Indeed, the piece has come at a time when as a team we have been starting to think more specifically about how we can move to planning our interventions in the initial sentence plan, incorporating a far stronger hearing of the probationer’s voice as opposed to primarily focusing on the criminogenic need (as assessed in OASys and guided by both the risk of harm and risk of reoffending summaries).

Focus of the article ‘Structured decisions about Dutch probation service interventions’

In their article Bosker, Witteman and Hermanns outline the development and implementation of a more structured approach to risk assessment, recognizing the Dutch developments as reflecting a growing pan-European approach to probation that increasingly focuses on structured evidence-based assessment. They summarize their piece as follows:

This article examines the assumption that more structure leads to higher quality decisions, and discusses how this relates to the expertise of the probation officer. It describes that structuring the decision making process in probation so far has been focused on risk and needs assessment, but that intervention planning is still purely a matter of professional decisions. This leads to the conclusion that further structuring of the decision making process in the probation service is indeed desirable. (p. 169)

Is structure really important?

The first observation I would like to make is based on Eadie et al.’s (2012) insightful piece about making space for thinking. They questioned, ‘whether focusing on getting the process right really makes a difference in outcomes for offenders. Instead, quality was seen as being about the ability to get alongside people and understand their perspectives.…’ (p. 13). The alternative offered by Eadie et al. was to encourage professional reflection through creating thinking space to allow engagement with knowledge and experience and encouraging probationer agency in supervisory contact. Indeed, they observe that there is a risk of falling into the ‘rationality mistake’ (p.13) when process is prioritized over reflective thinking space. This would suggest that perhaps it is reflective space and probationer engagement more than structuring decisions alone which may play an important part in effective sentence planning.

This practitioner-based concern over the apparent rationality of structure is also seen more practically at work in the experience of the probationer as demonstrated in the review of the community chaplaincy project at HMP Swansea (Grayton et al., 2008). This project could be seen as a challenge to the ‘resources follow risk’ mantra as one of the successful features of this project was the use of spider assessments in which inmates (and subsequently released prisoners) investigated and expressed their own intervention priorities. The spider assessment is a tool devised to actively engage individuals in the self-assessment of what areas of need they have which will require help and support upon release. These assessments are completed at the onset of contact with the project, repeated on the cusp of release and then revisited six weeks after release. Whilst this was a non-statutory intervention, this does emphasize the importance of the individual’s own production and ownership of any interventions they receive. In relation to statutory probation intervention planning, this would suggest that a greater emphasis should be paid to the co-production of interventions using tools such as the OASys (Offender Assessment System) self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) and ‘Stepping Stones to Success’. The latter is a tool designed to be used alongside OASys to engage the probationer in setting objectives for their sentence and developing their understanding of the steps they will need to take to achieve their goals − rather than a greater focus on the intervention areas highlighted by the professional’s assessment. Whilst it would not lead to the negation of any of the risk of harm or re-offending areas being included, nor exclude structured thinking, it would suggest that the probationer’s understanding, input and agreement − which Hughes (2011: 57) has indicated may be achieved through directive interviewing in some instances − may be of primary importance in the co-production of planning interventions.

Grounding the critique in history

Perhaps one of the telling aspects of Bosker et al.’s article is the appeal to medical models for a theory base. The medical model of interventions is historically familiar to probation practice; a pathological model of intervention had developed in the service’s history, following that of ‘police court missionary’, along with a developing national welfare state. However, whilst this approach was aimed to be more scientific, it came to be recognized that a significant difficulty with the model was that ‘client malfunction was diagnosed by the caseworker and the treatment decided without consulting the client’ (Burnett and McNeil, 2005: 227). This suggests that appealing to a more structured model on the basis of a scientific approach of research evidence may be of minimal value if the lessons of history are to be acknowledged. Again, this is not to dismiss the importance of a thorough and considered approach to planning interventions, but to raise the concern that it is a reflective co-produced approach which may prove more beneficial than the structure in itself.

Whilst this response has focused on the impact of promoting a more structured approach to the probationer’s engagement and ownership of their supervision, there is a further concern in terms of the practice context it may also inadvertently promote. Reflecting more recent historical analysis of general organizational approaches, Ritzer (2008) has identified the risk posed by an increasingly structured approach through the McDonaldization concept of predictability. This author has already raised concerns that McDonaldized thinking is becoming increasingly apparent in criminal justice policy thinking (Wood, 2013) and cannot help but be concerned that the more systematization is present in structuring the work of the probation service, the more this reflects the McDonaldized concept of predictability and management structures. Predictability allows the description of tasks through processes and subsequently the reduction of tasks into smaller constituent parts in order to provide consistency of service delivery. However, Ritzer’s analysis suggests that the inevitable outcome of predictability is that once skilled tasks are understood by processes and structures they are separated and reduced to be undertaken by an unskilled, or lesser paid workforce and that whilst the output may be more consistent, its overall quality suffers. In relation to increasing the structure and ‘predictability’ of the intervention planning aspect of probation supervision there is a danger that the importance of engaging probationers in their supervision and sentence planning could be lost with these aspects becoming a mere model to be followed, reducing the more organic relational element of probationer engagement to a step in an efficient process. Bosker et al. clearly would not endorse a de-professionalized approach, and clearly (and rightly) state that increasing structure does not need to lead to a reduction in professionalism. The concern is that whilst it does not need to lead to such an outcome, and is indeed proposed to increase quality, it ironically may be a risky approach to take at a time where the ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ revolution is seeking to privatize probation and create profit-making opportunities in service delivery. Increasing process structures may provide just such an opportunity through reducing the need for professional staff who have the skills, training and expertise to understand the organic nature of probationer engagement in structured planning, and reducing this element of planning to a time limited step in the process of planning rather than an ongoing underpinning organic part of the supervisory experience. This in turn may risk lowering the quality of intervention planning through making sentence planning an efficient process-driven task limited by a need to control costs as opposed to an opportunity to professionally engage the probationer in their opportunity to pursue assisted desistance.

Conclusion

Bosker et al. provide a thought-provoking analysis of recent practice and conclude that increasing structured decision making is the next logical step in improving practice and relating it to research. It is difficult to disagree that increased structured decision making, if this is done as part of a relational reflective approach with the probationer to co-produce intervention planning, would be a positive move forward. The challenge is to ensure that in doing this there is not a reductionist approach which risks endorsing a view that both (i) ‘the professional knows best’, whilst (ii) also providing a structure through which that very professionalism may be undermined through the risk of attempting to create profit making space in reducing the organity of the supervisory experience to a process to be efficiently followed.