‘Who you gonna call?’ The role of trust and relationships in desistance from crime

Abstract

Motivation and engagement in desistance programmes are examined in an article that analyses two projects that aimed to ‘normalize lifestyles’ of chaotic offenders. In one of the projects, participants claimed that their engagement was related to the charitable sector of the provider, which meant that staff were outside of the parameters of offender management regimes. However, similar claims were made by participants in the other programme − which was delivered by statutory public sector agencies but by staff operating in different roles to the usual probation service framework. On this basis it is argued that the character, culture and ethos of programmes is of greater significance than their status in terms of third, public or private sectors.

Keywords

community safety desistance evidence based practice interventions motivation offender management offenders practitioners probation supervision

Introduction

Efforts to promote desistance from crime are made more salient by policy imperatives to tackle the relatively small proportion of offenders responsible for a disproportionally large volume of offences. A UK government report suggested that a cohort of 16,000 offenders had an average of 75 convictions each, had been to prison 14 times, had nine community sentences, and 10 fines (Ministry of Justice, 2010). Although the basis on which the model is calculated bears little critical scrutiny – it reveals more about patterns of convictions rather than offending, for example – the notion of the prolific repeat offender has underpinned policy development (Garside, 2004). Financial pressure on agencies to ‘do more with less’ resources has further reinforced the need to identify effective programmes. Additionally there has been a rediscovery of responses engaging the voluntary sector, and an emphasis on programme evaluation to ensure that recidivism is reduced cost effectively. Drawing upon studies of two programmes¹ in the north of England, this article contributes to research relating to the effectiveness of Integrated Offender Management (IOM) schemes and further examines the significance of motivation to offender desistance. The projects included in this study placed considerable emphasis on offenders’ self-reflexivity and engagement in processes of personal development and transformation. Such processes have been identified as crucial to offender treatment and rehabilitation (Day et al., 2006; McMurran, 2009).

The results of the two studies suggest that the nature and status of offender motivation is highly contextual. It is argued that motivation needs to be understood as a complex and inconsistent aspect of desistance, contingent upon other material, social and emotive factors. Offender perspectives on desistance were related to the characteristics and ethos of programmes and staff provision of a focused response to the needs of individual offenders and to their intrinsic characteristics. Recognition of the complex characteristics of motivation underlines Vaughan’s (2007) point that offenders are ‘active agents’ in their own path toward desistance.

The article is organised into three sections. First, the nature of offender motivation is explored. The findings suggest that offenders tended to rate their current level of motivation as relatively high compared to previous periods in their offending careers. It is argued that the character of this motivation was both circumscribed and highly instrumental. Motivation was complex and rarely matched a ‘pure’ model whereby a cognitive behavioural reassessment leads to the pursuit of a normalized lifestyle. In terms of Bottoms’ (2001) fourfold model, service users were rarely compliant only for normative reasons; they also spoke of instrumental, constraint-based and habitual reasons for complying with programmes.

The article then considers the significance of the programmes themselves and their relation to offender perspectives on desistance. As is outlined below, one was offered by a third sector organization contracted to the local probation trust and community safety partnership. Service users reported that the charitable status of the project, and its independence from the CJS, enhanced the trust and confidence that were significant factors in their motivation to desist. However those on a programme provided by the statutory sector also claimed that their high level of motivation was derived from the strong relationship enjoyed with staff. On this basis it is argued that offender motivation needs to be understood as a relational as well as an individual factor in the process of desistance. A key argument is that motivation was highly related to personal relations with staff – the ‘who is in the room’ question but that, in practice, what was central were the perceived roles being filled. The ‘who’ factor was less important than the perception that staff were working outside the boundaries of mainstream offender management.

Background and methodology

The discussion is based upon evaluation research conducted in 2011/12 on two programmes designed to provide intensive support to service users with prolonged histories of relatively minor offending, and who had been subject to previous interventions of different kinds during their criminal careers. Service users were characterized by chaotic lifestyles that had inhibited previous interventions. The programmes were not identical but they shared a commitment to deliver a sustained programme to meet complex criminogenic needs and so reflected the wider principles of Integrated Offender Management identified by the Home Office/Ministry of Justice (2010):

a multi-agency problem-solving approach focusing on offenders, not offences.

engaging all relevant local partners in strategic planning and decision-making.

offenders facing their responsibility or facing the consequences.

making better use of existing programmes and governance, for example, drug-treatment facilities.

all high risk offenders are ‘in scope’, irrespective of position within the criminal justice system or whether statutory or non-statutory.

The programmes sought to build on these principles in various ways. In terms of the first point, one of the schemes (Programme A) was sub-contracted to a local charity that had little prior engagement in criminal justice but a long history of supporting people with acute social and personal needs. Programme B was delivered by public sector staff from different agencies working intensively with clients to access support services from across public, private and third sectors. The type and extent of support offered was designed to meet the specific requirements of each offender, which also reflects the first theme identified above.

In terms of the second point above, both programmes emerged in response to problems identified in terms of the local characteristics of criminal careers. Local agencies sought to develop programmes to more effectively intervene with an offender population that had high levels of recidivism and longer-lasting criminal careers relative to similar cohorts of offenders in other places. In both respects local patterns of recidivism, established in audited performance data, compared unfavourably with national trends.

Both schemes reflected the third element underpinning IOM programmes. Service users were to face their responsibilities directly by addressing their offending behaviour and indirectly through lifestyle normalization that would provide the social and material capital necessary to become self-reliant in terms of employment, accommodation, family relationships and so forth. Implicitly both programmes sought to encourage offenders to develop ‘redemption scripts’ (Maruna, 2001) that entailed them redeveloping their cognitive social maps and self-identity. Maruna et al. (2004) noted that offenders in their study ‘… described finding some sort of “calling” … through which they find meaning and purpose outside of crime’.

The fourth item above – the delivery of multi-agency provisions – was also apparent in both programmes. Service users with complex and multi-faceted criminogenic needs were often subject to treatment regimes and court orders that had to be managed alongside their participation in the programmes evaluated here. The Home Office (2004) identified seven ‘pathways’ to offending (relating to accommodation; skills and employment; health inequalities; drugs and alcohol; children and families of offenders; finance, benefit and debt; attitudes, thinking and behaviour) and both programmes addressed service users’ needs across these variables.

Finally, although the status of the service users engaged in the programmes differed between the two schemes, all were characterized as highly recidivist volume offenders, although they had not generally been engaged in serious offences. Programme A was a mandatory part of a community sentence, while Programme B targeted offenders leaving custody but who had not been sentenced for periods long enough for them to be included in statutory offender management schemes.

In both programmes ‘wrap-around’ support was provided by a lead case worker tasked with developing a collaborative trusting relationship with the service user. Staff combined duties of mentoring and monitoring, problem-solving and facilitation in order that service users could better access a range of other services that might help them to stabilize their lifestyles. Both programmes were delivered to relatively small numbers of offenders and were designed to meet the particular needs of each service user.

These similarities were matched by important differences between the projects, however. Programme A was delivered by a charity contracted to the local Community Safety Partnership. Service user engagement was mandatory, based on court orders that compelled a programme of activities identified and agreed between the client themselves, staff from the charity, and the offender manager. Failure to participate in the programme could result in the service user being ‘breached’ and returned to court for further sanction. The fundamental aims of the programme were to reduce service user involvement with Class A drugs and to improve their skills in terms of employability.

Programme B was ostensibly a voluntary scheme, at least in the formal sense that it was not mandated by the criminal justice system. There was some evidence to suggest participants were incentivized to continue to participate in ways that might raise concern about forced or encouraged compliance, as is discussed more fully below. Service users came to the programme having been identified as suitable candidates by staff at the local probation trust, sometimes in conjunction with prison staff. The Trust had noted a need to provide interventions to a cohort of offenders that failed to meet the threshold to be categorized as prolific and priority offenders (PPO), and so were not subject to statutory targets in terms of reducing recidivism. Some of these offenders had previously been PPO and all of them had long criminal careers and presented entrenched and continuing problems to the CJS.

The evaluation methodology underpinning this discussion was applied identically to both programmes. Semi-structured biographical interviews were conducted with a random selection of service users drawn from the first cohorts of offenders engaged in both programmes. Interviews were conducted with service users at various stages in their participation in the programmes. Typically, engagement lasted for a maximum of three months so none of those interviewed had been participating for longer than that. Selected service users agreed to be interviewed by the authors in venues where the programmes were delivered. Each interview addressed their criminal career and response to previous criminal justice interventions. They were asked to compare those experiences with their current situation, and particularly to comment upon their present motivation to desist from offending. The interviews explored motivation to desist and service user perspectives on their engagement with the scheme. The interviews were not ‘motivational interviews’ in the sense used by practitioners in the light of models first developed by Miller and Rollnick (2002) in the context of interventions with drink and drug addictions and subsequently extended into probation (McMurran, 2009).

It is recognized that comparative analysis of offender perspectives on their current engagement and motivation will be influenced by the nature of previous and concurrent criminal justice interventions. A limitation of the data reviewed here is that it is not possible to explore these differences in detail. Eighteen service users were interviewed (seven from Programme A and eleven from Programme B). Only three were female and so a further limitation is that gender differences in offender experiences of criminal justice interventions – as explored by Hedderman et al. (2011) – are not examined in this article. Furthermore, all the interviewees were white British and the age-profile was also relatively narrow as participants were aged between 22 and 35 years of age, except for two who were in their early 40s. Nine semi-structured interviews were also conducted with staff engaged in the delivery of the programmes and with offender managers responsible for service users on Programme A. Although this methodology replicates the validity concerns that Elffers (2010) outlined in relation to interviews with offenders – in that they might be subject to misinformation, misunderstanding or being misleading – the intention was to capture subjective perceptions rather than an objective measure of criminal history. Given its significance to many contemporary desistance programmes it is important to capture the perceptions of offenders about their own motivations, but nonetheless the concerns outlined by Jacques and Wright (2010: 27) remain:

Although motivations and emotions often are construed to explain ‘why’ behaviour happens, the concepts of motivation and emotion are, at best, unobservable or, at worst, nothing real at all … theories concerned with motivations and emotions can never be directly falsified because those factors are subjective.

These qualitative perspectives were supplemented with quantitative data relating to the offending patterns (measured, problematically, in terms of number of arrests) of individual service users from Programme B. Arrest data was used as a proxy measure of service users offending and supplemented their subjective reflections on the likelihood that they would desist from crime. The data was collated across three distinct periods on the basis of Police National Computer records. Since the standard duration of the programme was six months, this data was collected in terms of the six month period prior to commencement, the period of the programme, and a six month period post-engagement. In addition, the data gained from interviews and arrest statistics was supplemented by observational work undertaken by the authors as they spent time accompanying staff and service users engaged in the programmes.

In evaluating these programmes, the intention is not to measure the impact that they had in terms of desistance from offending. Instead the focus is upon considering the character of offenders’ motivation to address criminal behaviour, the extent to which this was shaped by their perceptions of programmes and the staff that delivered them (‘who was in the room’) Clearly these latter points indicate that motivation and engagement were shaped by external factors as well as service users’ internalized commitment to desist. It is intended that this analysis provides useful insight into the quality and dynamics of offender motivation, a relatively neglected but increasingly salient component of processes of desistance from crime. In the conclusion, the article suggests that offender motivation has a number of key characteristics and needs to be distinguished from ‘engagement’: a more functional notion that might not reflect a normative commitment to desistance. The conceptual relation between motivation and engagement is considered further in the conclusion.

‘Critical moments’ and the model of the motivated offender

The third feature of the IOM family of programmes outlined earlier indicates that offenders need to ‘face their responsibilities’ and both of the programmes sought to work with clients who were committed to addressing criminogenic behaviour and developing a ‘normalized lifestyle’. Programme A was supposed to include sessions to develop cognitive skills that would help develop ‘redemption scripts’ that would help clients to imagine future life choices that were not related to offending or other risky behaviour. The process of identifying clients to participate in this mandatory court-ordered programme included consideration of an individual’s commitment to change. Motivation was also significant in Programme B, which targeted a cohort that wanted to regularize their lifestyles and move away from criminal careers. In both programmes clients were identified on the basis of a ‘critical moments’ approach to reintegration; that is, they were intended to provide intensive wraparound interventions for offenders at specific points in their lives that might be a juncture to develop away from offending (Shildrick and MacDonald, 2008). Engagement on the scheme was a potential ‘turning point’ whereby a motivated offender would receive the support needed to leave behind their long-term criminal career (Elder, 1985; Sampson and Laub, 1993). Through practical engagement to enhance employment and training prospects, address housing needs, tackle addiction and so forth the programmes were intended to promote desistance through the development of a ‘pro-social identity’ for offenders that would enhance their motivation to change (Farrall, 2002). In keeping with many offender interventions, the programmes considered in this study sought to address both subjective and social circumstances surrounding service users (LeBel et al., 2008). Service users were encouraged to develop social capital but also to imagine themselves in terms not solely defined by anti-social, problematic and criminal behaviour. The explicit recognition of success through awarding certificates, for example, was a feature of Programme A intended to help service users conceive of themselves and their position in the world in more positive terms. The programmes both required service users to be motivated and took steps to sustain and cultivate that motivation.

The interviews with clients suggested that offender motivation often failed to match the model that formally underpinned both programmes. Motivation was a complex and dynamic process rather than a one-off pre-programme event or variable. As Healy (2010) noted, many contemporary desistance programmes rely on service users having high levels of motivation, although the concept is ambiguous and often remains unconceptualized. Clients often expressed multiple reasons for engaging, some of which were outlined in highly specific terms (for example, to secure accommodation) while others were generic aspirations (for example, to become a ‘respectable member of society’). This engagement is distinct, it is argued below, from ‘motivation’ which suggests a normative component. Moreover, motivation took different forms: at one end of a spectrum was a ‘pure’ normative commitment to develop a ‘normalized lifestyle’ and desist from offending, while at the other was the ‘forced compliance’ of engagement rooted in a desire to avoid negative sanctions either in terms of criminal justice outcomes or in personal terms of health, damage to familial relationships and so forth. While these characterizations are conceptually distinct, it was clear from interviews with clients that they often occupied several of these positions simultaneously and that the character of their motivation might change over time. The realities of motivation to desist from crime evident reinforces Vaughan’s (2007) argument that the status of offenders as ‘active agents’ needs to be recognized. Motivation is not a fixed variable that offenders bring with them at the start of a programme, alongside accommodation problems, drug addiction, or one of the other offender pathways identified by the Home Office/Ministry of Justice (2010). Instead, offenders’ personal narratives, social identity and relationships mean that their motivation to desist from offending is malleable, inconsistent and variable. Moreover, motivation was more than a matter of internal subjectivity; it was also related to extraneous factors related to combinations of the various pathways. One interviewee, Adam, noted that his motivation to desist from offending was closely related to his alcohol consumption and varied on a daily basis:

I get days like that, when I lack motivation. It’s mostly drink; I need to get off the drink. I’m going to get myself proper sorted out. If I can stay in the community, I’ll get myself sorted out and go into rehab, get myself out the area and stop there for six months’ residential. In the last week I’ve been motivated fully, don’t know if it’s because I am going to be up in court or I’m off the drink, sometimes I have good weeks and sometimes I have bad weeks, but I have managed to get all my washing done and my room’s tidy. I’ve been pure motivated, I have made all my appointments. I think that might be because at the weekend, I just sat in and relaxed. One week I get paid and the next I week I am skint, so drink for a week and then I stay off it for a week. That’s what it is.

Many clients had a bounded and limited motivation that might have underpinned their participation in the programme but did not necessarily entail a fundamental re-imagining of their self-identity. Many service users expressed commitment to addressing their offending behaviour but this was frequently couched in instrumental terms as a means to a particular end. Since many other studies have shown that offenders express intentions to reform that are often not borne out in practice (Burnett, 1992; Maruna, 2001; Soothill et al., 2009), service users were challenged to substantiate these commitments. Given that clients tended to have long histories of reoffending and had experienced many criminal justice interventions, they were asked to explain if their prospects for success were stronger in relation to their current programme compared to earlier experiences. Consistent with the extant literature, interviewees often expressed their current high level of motivation in terms of ‘critical moments’ in their broader lives, primarily in relation to family relationships. In this way, motivation depended in part on external factors, as well as internal commitment to change. Graham, for example, explained that he was less likely to reoffend after the current programme than he had been in the aftermath of the drink-driving schemes, anger management courses, community service and alcohol treatments he had previously undertaken:

I’ve got more to lose now. I’m trying to get in contact with my son. They’ll go to probation and social services, ‘cos I’ve got to go through the court to see him. If I start reoffending it’s not going to look very good at court if you are trying to get access to see your kid. He’s ten in December; I’ve not had access to him since last December.

Similar responsibilities to children were cited by several others to explain the strength of their commitment to lifestyle changes. Clearly this might be related to other transitions, relating to age, but also to the desistance from crime and lifestyle ‘normalization’ undertaken by peer groups. Along these lines, Susan expressed her commitment in the following terms:

I am 30 now, I don’t want to live my life like that anymore. I want to be financially secure and my kids to be financially secure, I want a better life.

One client expressed his commitment to change in terms that combined similar perspectives with a wider assessment of changing attitudes towards crime in society. Robert noted that his psychologist had told him that he was too old (in his early 40s) to continue offending and that:

… society has changed now, people don’t buy stolen goods now, they know it is a crime. A lot of people who used to steal don’t now, they’ve got jobs, the people I used to hang around with have got themselves into college courses, they have got jobs and settled down with families. They’ve managed to stick in their jobs, and that has changed people’s perceptions about crime. My sons know now not to commit crime, and that if they do they’ll get into trouble for it. When I was younger, when I was committing crime, I was applauded for it. It’s different for my sons, they won’t be appreciated for it. They know not to go to the shops if they’ve got no money.

The clients quoted in the above extracts maintained that they were committed to desistance from crime and to addressing related harmful behaviour. Often their motivation was instrumental, however. Desisting from offending was not seen as a goal in itself but rather something to be pursued because it would bring other advantages, frequently relating to accommodation or family. This was a form of ‘disguised compliance’ whereby offenders were engaging with the programme in accordance with its stated aims and philosophy but were actually renegotiating terms on a different basis (Reder et al., 1993).

In addition, ‘disguised compliance’ was sometimes mirrored by processes of assertive engagement and ‘forced compliance’, motivated negatively by fear of a sanction of some kind. As Robinson and Crow (2009: 101) have argued, while motivation is often seen as an essential prerequisite for desistance programmes there is also evidence to suggest that coerced participation in offender programmes can also be effective. While both programmes were predicated on the voluntary or willing motivation of the client, in practice it was often apparent that participation might be secured through a mixture of explicit and tacit coercion. In the case of Programme A, participation was mandatory, but the scheme was intended to be targeted at clients willing and motivated to address offending behaviour. In Programme B, participation formally was on a voluntary basis. In the former case it is clear that motivation might be influenced by the prospect of a sanction for non-compliance. The complexity of motivation and forced engagement in the practical delivery of the programmes reflects McSweeney et al.’s (2007) analysis of drug treatment programmes that found that a majority of nominally voluntary participants reported that they felt some degree of external compulsion to attend, even if that were not from a decision of the court.

Clients and staff often identified value in the programme being delivered by a charity outside of the disciplinary framework of the criminal justice system. From this perspective, ‘who is in the room’ made an important difference since it allowed for more supportive relationships of trust between client and staff. This is discussed further in the section that follows. Nonetheless, both parties expressed awareness that staff monitored client behaviour and reported this back to probation staff and so effectively did have capacity to ‘breach’ non-compliant clients and return them to court. Coercion was less explicit in relation to Programme B, although voluntary involvement was elicited in a context were they were told that non-participation might mean extensive informal supervision from local Neighbourhood Policing teams.

In some respects the qualified nature of motivation might be relatively unproblematic. If a virtuous circle commences such that desistance leads to lifestyle normalization and an increase in social capital that might itself reduce the likelihood of future offending, then the quality of the initial motivation might be of minor significance. Service users and staff expressed a range of perspectives on the importance of voluntary participation and personal motivation. In some case both staff and service users noted that the compulsory nature of attendance helped overcome preconceptions that might otherwise have prevented participation. This reinforces the point that offender motivation is subject to change over time: it might be relatively low at the beginning of a programme but develop as a result of participation. The extracts below illustrate an important distinction that can be drawn between ‘motivation’ and ‘participation’.

Susan had engaged in Programme A as a condition of her release from prison. Elsewhere in the interview she reported high levels of internal motivation to desist from offending, but this was not the basis of her initial participation. The extract suggests that Susan had a high level of engagement (in the narrow sense of participation) at the outset of the programme, which led subsequently to strong motivation to desist:

[The programme] was part of my licence, so it was something I had to do, but I am glad. Coming out of prison, you need structured days and something constructive to do … it’s a good programme, if you’ve got to do it as part of your licence. I think people need something like that to come back into the community, because it is very structured in prison, so to come back into the community, I think people would turn back to crime. Having something to keep your day structured.

On the other hand, Barry, from Programme B expressed a high level of motivation from the outset. He stressed that the voluntary nature of participation was an important part of his motivation:

They offered support before but I wasn’t ready. Now I am. I got taken to [hostel] the first night out of jail, they picked me up. A week after I got out they offered me all these courses and that but I wasn’t ready. This has been different, I can’t get breached or anything so it’s more laid back. It works both ways, it makes me want to do it more. I know they are there to help us; it was a good decision.

A staff member engaged in Programme B spoke of the ambiguities surrounding the question of voluntary or mandatory participation. Implicitly this reflects the distinction between engagement and motivation. The respondent took an operationally pragmatic position that either can be effective, but this approach is at odds with the wider ethos of programmes modelled on an assumption that service users will have a strong internal motivation to change. The staff member noted that the model for Programme B was that engagement often ‘fell down’ in terms of sustaining longer-term motivation:

It’s got its pros and its cons. It’s an advantage for some because they know we can’t make them do things, so if they choose to do them then they’re doing them because they want to. The disadvantage is sometimes that we don’t have the power to get them to do things because it’s frustrating that you can get someone to a project and you know that they’re enjoying it and you know that they’re having a constructive time, but then it’s just getting them to go back. Because the first few times we take them to places so that they’re not on their own, but then it tends to fall down when you’re asking them to go on their own and grow up a bit, take responsibility.

Although it is hard to conceive of offenders desisting from crime without some degree of motivation both studies that underpin this article demonstrated that this need not be a precursor to engagement in desistance programmes but can be developed through participation. Motivation was conditional, variable and contingent upon other aspects of offenders’ lives and self-identity.

Third sector, culture and ethos of programmes

As has been noted, one of the programmes included in this evaluation was delivered by a local charity. As Vennard and Hedderman (2009) have outlined, the role of community, charitable or ‘third sector’ providers has become increasingly significant since the principle of ‘contestability’ was applied to the work of the National Offender Manager Service from the early 2000s onwards. Service users engaged in Programme A often expressed their heightened level of motivation in terms of a different response to engaging with staff and a service that was not part of the criminal justice system. ‘Who is in the room’ made a real difference and enhanced current motivation. Commitment to desistance was stronger due to engagement with staff perceived to have an authentic interest in assisting them. The following extracts from interviews with Philip and then Susan reveal something of this perception of the role of the staff who delivered Programme A:

When I had probation in the past, I just walked into a room, they asked a couple of questions and that was it. That was basically it: you’ve showed your face, you can go now. Not ‘How you doing? Are you keeping out of trouble?’ nothing like that. [This programme] is different…. It’s much better. They seem to care for you, they ask how you’re doing, whereas I have never had none of that, well it must be about 20 years ago I had my last probation order. They weren’t interested, not like the people now.

… they are more hands on, on the other end of the phone… picking us up and things like that, if I was short of bus fare. It’s a close bond that you have with them…. They are all lovely, [names staff] all really nice. The [project name] had like a passing-out thing. I didn’t know that you could have people there, all the other lads have carers and family there, I was the last to get up and talk and when I sat down someone told me that [names staff] were there at the back. I thought ‘e, my God!’, I was buzzing and that, they’d come to see us! I was chuffed to bits, that was really nice.

The perceived ‘befriend and assist’ role of the programme staff was often linked to their distinction from the control aspects of offender management. Although the charity’s staff did monitor engagement, liaised with probation staff and were prepared to use powers to breach individuals who were not compliant with the court-order, the service users emphasized that they were distinct from mainstream probation. Offender managers shared this perspective, as the quote below illustrates:

It’s a matter of caseload but [the charity] also take a different approach – more of an outreach approach. They can take them out for a cup of coffee and a chat. When they come to us, we are doing structured activity/work with them. They have to do their citizenship programme. We are on at them if they are committing offences, in order to work out why. The [charity] staff don’t worry about that, that’s for us to worry about… they get the nice bits…. My service users see me as an enforcer…. I can report them to the police, report them to social services, whereas [charity staff], they could do exactly the same but because they take a different approach to it, they don’t perceive the direct threat as they do when they come in and see me.

Staff and service users from Programme A suggested that the character and quality of their mutual relations were derived from its being delivered by a third sector organization. However, the evaluation of Programme B, which was delivered by staff in the public statutory sector also revealed a common perception that it too was of a distinctive nature that was very different from traditional offender management work. Staff provided intensive support in response to the immediate and diverse needs of service users, often in ways that they suggested other agencies would not be able to provide. One staff member, from Programme B, noted this with relation to a particular episode the authors had witnessed:

… take for example those two last week who turned up, they weren’t ours anymore, they’d just come out of prison but they came out of prison with issues. Now, you know how much time we spent on them, we took them to [town], we got them their cheques, took them to [hostel], got them their meds and then we came back here. It was quarter to four when [colleague] and I got back here last week. They weren’t our cases and they were nothing to do with us but nobody else, no statutory agency could have done anything with them that day.

The capacity that project staff had in terms of providing enhanced support for service users was cited by many as a factor that increased their commitment to addressing offending behaviour. As with the other programme, service users perceived the staff and project to be distinct from the control and compliance model of offender management. In common with the other programme, this perception was somewhat misplaced since staff emphasized that the work they did with service users had important gains in terms of police intelligence-gathering. Nonetheless, service users suggested that their commitment to desist from offending was rooted, to some extent, in the support that they received from staff with whom they had meaningful and sustained relationships of trust. This finding reflects other studies that have emphasized the ‘who is in the room’ question to the prospect of desistance (Robinson, 2005).

Although staff and service users tended to attribute the distinctive character of Programme A to the ‘third sector’ status of the charity involved, similar qualities were identified in respect of Programme B that was provided by statutory agencies. The culture and ethos of programmes seemed more significant than sectoral status. Specifically, being perceived to be apart from the mainstream of offender management was regarded as significant. The ideological and cultural tensions surrounding probation work, and the complex relationship of probation officers with prison and police staff more directly involved in control and management functions, has been outlined by Mawby and Worrall (2011). These ‘who is in the room’ factors outlined above reflect those debates in microcosm. The offender managers interviewed expressed some muted resentment of third sector organizations that were able to concentrate on the ‘nice bits’ of the role that probation staff might once have performed. Notwithstanding tensions relating to the demarcations between the functions and roles of different agencies, service users engaged in both programmes identified value in the programmes being distinct from the control and supervision elements of offender management.

Conclusion: Motivation, engagement and desistance from crime

The promotion of ‘lifestyle normalization’ to reduce offending alongside wider harmful and anti-social behaviour is a common feature of many desistance programmes. A strong internal motivation is held to be key to developing pro-social identity and social capital that promote desistance. A central finding of this evaluation has been that motivation to desistance is a complex and dynamic process. The service users engaged in the programmes demonstrated that they were ‘active agents’ in terms of their subjective assessments of their own motivation to desist. Perspectives on motivation were multi-faceted and related to combinations of social and personal matters. Unlike some other characteristics associated with offending risks, motivation is not a static variable but is subject to change over time and in relation to intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Key among these are social, economic and familial matters including housing, training, employment, and prospects of improving relationships with children. Motivation to desist from offending tended to be expressed in terms of the benefits that would accrue in these terms, and so motivation tended to be expressed instrumentally in ways that were bounded and applied to short- or medium-range goals.

Motivation was also shaped by the relationship that service users had with staff who delivered programmes. In one programme this was expressed in terms of the charitable status of the organization that was seen to underpin a particular style and ethos of working such that staff befriended and advocated on behalf of service users. In the other programme, which was delivered from the statutory sector, service users expressed their motivation in terms of positive relations with staff. Across both programmes it was the perception that staff and programmes were working outside of the disciplinary framework of the criminal justice system that led to greater motivation. This was clearly a subjective assessment, and one that failed to recognize that often there were close links between programmes and mainstream offender management activity. In some respects it might be that the significant issue was not ‘who is in the room?’, so much as ‘what role are they playing?’.

A crucial dimension of the dynamic nature of motivation, offenders and staff reported, was that it tended to change over time. In part this was in response to engagement in programmed activities. This illustrates a conceptual difference between engagement and motivation that is significant for programmes in an environment where ‘payment by results’ becomes a more common funding model. Motivation and engagement are distinct conceptually: one might be motivated but not engaged, or vice versa. Engagement might be objectively measured in terms of keeping appointments and meeting targets while motivation has a more qualitative and subjective quality. Despite these important differences, this study provides further grounds to recognize that motivation and engagement are linked. In particular it was found that programme engagement and ‘forced compliance’ can lead to enhanced motivation. The nature of this relationship was characterized by Serin and Lloyd (2009: 349) in the following terms:

There may be a kind of ‘threshold’ level of engagement in the change process that must be reached before change can occur. Furthermore, with each treatment attempt, individuals may learn how much effort is required and obtain a clearer picture of what changes must occur for success. Thus, for some individuals it may be that this threshold is only reached through a learning process involving multiple failed attempts to succeed. We can expect that those who desire to change will experience periodic setbacks and decreases in motivation stemming from external and internal barriers along their way.

That perfunctory and routine engagement can engender an emotional and normative motivation to desist from offending is significant in policy terms, especially when it comes to the criteria for measuring performance and impact in a results-based mechanism. Engagements in programmes might be measured in terms of, for example, the number of cognitive thinking workshops an offender has attended. Their participation in such an event, though, does not necessarily reveal anything about their motivation to change. Moreover, in the longer term, as Serin and Lloyd argued, failed engagements might also be important components in meeting a threshold necessary for desistance eventually to develop. Performance assessment frameworks that fail to capture these complexities will not properly reflect the complex, contradictory and long-term nature of desistance or identify the interventions that ultimately might have shaped the trajectory of that journey.

Footnotes

Note

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