‘A qualitative investigation into the impact of domestic abuse on women’s desistance’: A practitioner’s response

Introduction

The launch of the Female Offender Strategy (Ministry of Justice, 2018) in June 2018 can be seen to have reignited a much-needed focus on the ethos and guiding principles of work with women in the criminal justice system (CJS). Published an astonishing 11 years after the landmark Corston Report (2007), which received all-party support and Government backing at the time, the strategy revisits the need for ‘a distinct approach’ to working with female offenders, specifically one which is gender-responsive, trauma-informed and partnership-led. Aimed at reducing the number of women serving short-term custodial sentences, the strategy recognises the complex link between women’s victimhood and their own offending behaviour and the differing operational challenges that this presents. Barr and Christian’s (2019) article builds upon this to focus specifically on the link between domestic abuse and women’s desistance, highlighting the often-unrecognised gendered harms faced by ‘desisting women’. They argue that desistance theory fails to acknowledge the complex link between women’s experience of harm and their criminality and that in order for desistance theory to offer something meaningful, desistance from crime needs to be reframed as desistance from harm. In practice, this might mean a reframing of protective factors for female offenders and greater system-wide acknowledgement that these are not necessarily those recognised for male offenders.

Notably, women’s relationships and the link between these and entry to and exit from the CJS have recently been explored in the Farmer Review (2019). Tellingly, this asserts that ‘healthy, supportive’ relationships are ‘utterly indispensable’ for every woman in the CJS if they are to ‘turn away from criminality and contribute positively to society’ and argues that the promotion of good family ties and other relationships need to be the ‘golden thread’ running through the CJS. Barr and Christian would argue, however, that there is an emphasis on responsibilisation within Farmer’s reference to women turning away from criminality and contributing positively to society which fails to acknowledge the ‘severe lack in all forms of capital’ often experienced by women in the CJS and the assumption inherent that in turning ‘away’ from crime there has been some level of choice in turning ‘towards’.

To this end, Barr and Christian propose the view that women’s desistance from crime is not necessarily indicative of women’s success in establishing healthy and harm-free lives and that as such, there is a need to be cautious when working with women to actively hold this in mind. Indeed, as Baldry (2010) states, desistance theory fails to account for ‘the marginal space from which most [female offenders] come and to which most return’ in light of which, the focus of the Female Offender Strategy on enabling women in contact with the CJS to become ‘productive citizens’ suggests an onus on pursuing individualised solutions to structural problems and in turn, they argue, a seeming over-simplification of some of the issues at play.

Writing from the perspective of my current role as Women’s Strategy Lead in the North West National Probation Service (NPS) division and with the acknowledgement that seismic systemic change is required to truly address the problems highlighted here, this article attempts the more humble task of considering how the probation service might respond to the need to reframe desistance in relation to women and considers some of the structural and cultural barriers which may currently stand in the way.

Female desistance

Gelsthorpe and Wright (2015) argue that desistance theories which are androcentric in nature cannot be straightforwardly applied to the lives of women. Barr and Christian explore this in terms of the importance of the ‘love of a good woman’ to male desistance narratives where romantic relationships (Sampson and Laub, 1995), ‘fatherhood’ (Moloney et al., 2009) and being a ‘family man’ (LeBel et al., 2008) are all considered to be fundamental factors. For female offenders, however, it is comparatively less likely that they will find prosocial ‘romantic’ partners to support their desistance (Leverentz, 2006) and that the practical difficulties associated with maintaining desistance may limit the degree to which being a mother can actually contribute to or support this process (Michalsen, 2019). There is also little consideration of non-heteronormative routes to desistance or reflection on the role of peer relationships in this process, something which feels particularly important given the current focus on women supporting each other through attendance and engagement at local Women’s Centres.

In addition, a wide range of additional criminogenic needs have been identified as being specifically linked to women’s offending. For example, experience of both sexual and violent victimisation in childhood and adulthood is high among criminalised women (Comack, 2006) with a recognition that whilst males may experience similar circumstances, females are ‘differentially affected by exposure to the same criminogenic conditions’ (Mears et al., 1998). Additionally, the prevalence of trauma histories, traditionally regarded as a ‘non-criminogenic’ factor (Moloney et al., 2009), have been found to have a ‘strong influence on [women’s] offending behaviour’ (426), with the number of childhood traumatic events experienced by criminalised women ‘positively correlated with lifetime number of arrests’ (Messina and Grella, 2006).

Writing from a feminist perspective which does not currently overtly inform probation practice, it is the impact of these ‘historical and contemporaneous experiences of violence’ which Barr and Christian directly address in their article, providing qualitative accounts of women who have struggled and continue to struggle with the expectation of being the ‘good woman’ in the desistance narratives of the men in their lives, largely, it would seem, at the cost of realising their own.

Theory into practice

To a certain extent, this ‘non-protagonist’ role can be seen to echo women’s position within the CJS and, in turn, probation services. Indeed, the low numbers of female offenders (around 15% of the total NPS and Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) caseload) have, to a certain extent, led this work to be given less priority in comparison to the more onerous task of managing male offenders and the more serious risk to the public typically posed by this cohort. To this end, the vast majority of the training provided by and available to probation staff focuses on understanding and assessing male offending behaviour and risk. By virtue of this, anecdotal evidence would suggest that working with female offenders can lead to officers feeling that they are working out of role, that they are on their own and that they are required to develop a quite different set of skills than those they were trained in. This has led to a parallel process of ‘responsibilisation’ which sits with those offender managers supervising women to effect change in lieu of the systemic and structural support required, something which might explain difficulties in recruiting to specialist roles working with women. A study into ‘probation workers and their occupational cultures’ by Mawby and Worrall (2011) also revealed that whilst probation services have become increasingly feminised in terms of staffing, this does not translate into a greater motivation to work with women with few of those officers interviewed ‘express[ing] any particular interest in working with women offenders’ (15).

The male-centric nature of probation work and the required focus on building relationships and working effectively with men who have committed serious sexual and violent offences, often against women, also presents a significant challenge in terms of adopting Barr and Christian’s approach to desistance. Indeed, building meaningful and productive relationships with male service users requires a commitment to understanding male lives and male offending narratives which can leave little space for equal consideration of female lives and female offending narratives. The predominant female narrative encountered in probation work is typically that of victim and, therefore, to encounter and extend understanding to female perpetrators is potentially confounding. This perhaps offers some explanation for some of the unhelpful labels, for example, intractable, manipulative and difficult to work with (Alder, 1998; Worrall, 1999), which seem to follow women in the CJS. For practitioners who are directly involved in working with women and feel acutely aware of this, the challenge lies in being able to operate at an emotional distance when the potential to be drawn into a ‘pacifier’ or rescuing position can be strong (Hamilton, 2010). Similarly, there is a need to balance women’s victimhood with their potential to cause harm and in doing so maintain coherence in the role and the requirement to ‘protect the public’. Indeed, balancing care and control and establishing appropriate boundaries are key factors, which can either help or hinder the development of a supportive and enabling relationship. To a certain extent, increased keyworker provision through Women’s Centres provides an opportunity for a natural division of these roles although this is not without its complications. Most important is a practitioner level of awareness and acknowledgement of these complexities fostered through practice discussions, line management and training.

Holding in mind the link between women’s victimhood and their offending behaviour is further compounded by a reliance on assessment tools and audit processes which have been designed to consider male criminogenic factors and risk of harm and which, therefore, do not easily lend themselves to a consideration of the duality of women’s experience and the complex nature of female desistance as highlighted by Barr and Christian. Consequently, there is still some way to go to facilitate this approach within probation services. The recent launch of the Positive Outcomes for Women: Empowerment and Rehabilitation (POWER) training package by the HMPPS (Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service) National Women’s Team is a positive step forward in terms of the service formally recognising the need to think differently about the women and take a gender-responsive and trauma-informed approach (Covington, 2012). A joint the prison service and NPS initiative, POWER covers the stages of a woman’s journey through the CJS from first contact to end of sentence covering such specifics as honour-based violence, sex working and young women and gangs. It replaces previous training packages focussed on working with female offenders, namely the Women’s Awareness Staff Programme (WASP) (2008); Sex Workers in Custody and the Community (2008) and the WASP in the Community (2010–2012).

Whilst the promotion of POWER is undoubtedly positive, this must be viewed as a starting point rather than an end in itself. There is also an argument that trauma-informed approaches are similarly relevant for male offenders and that as such there is a need for greater clarity in future training packages about how trauma occurs and impacts from a gender-informed perspective. The potential for practice with female offenders to influence that with male offenders would be a heartening one and timely given the increased use of adverse childhood experiences (Felitti et al., 1998) as a framework for intervention by health and social care services and the related benefits of a more unified language and approach across sectors. As Gelsthorpe (2006) comments, there is an established pattern of researchers and writers reiterating the principles underpinning what works with female offenders, thus highlighting that the problem is not in understanding but in applying this understanding in practice. Indeed, without a service- and system-level motivation to adopt a sustained approach to implementing learning, we are at risk of remaining in the Groundhog Day state of affairs recognised by Corston in 2007 when she asserted that ‘there can be few topics that have been so exhaustively researched to such little practical effect as the plight of women in the criminal justice system’ (16).

Conclusions

There is sufficient evidence to make Barr and Christian’s call for a change in how female desistance is conceptualised a valid one and for a focus on desistance from harm to be a foundational principle in probation work with female service users. However, the predominantly male-orientated culture of probation work makes putting this into practice a challenge. The Female Offender Strategy can be seen as an important foundation to achieving this change although, given that this succeeds an 11-year hiatus following the Corston Report, there is a clear case to ensure that momentum is sustained and that current traction is not lost. Similarly, increased access to gender-specific and trauma-informed learning through the delivery of training packages such as POWER offers a starting point in broadening out skills currently viewed as specialist and increasing conversation around female offenders. Future training will also need to extend and respond to the needs of senior and middle managers to ensure that these principles are held structurally and are understood by those with responsibility for gatekeeping offender management. Such fundamental change cannot be held exclusively at practitioner level and as such there will be a need for strong advocates of these approaches at senior level to ensure that ‘trauma-informed’ and ‘gender-specific’ do not become buzz words with little tangible impact. With further change to service delivery lying ahead, both in terms of Offender Management in Custody in the female estate and in terms of the reunification of the NPS and CRCs, there is an opportunity to build upon early investment in the Female Offender Strategy, influence future thinking and ensure that increased knowledge and understanding equate to practical change. As the years since Corston have shown us, ensuring that the needs of female offenders continue to be held firmly in mind will be paramount to ensuring that lasting, meaningful and transformative systemic change is achieved.