Month: June 2012

This is a post I wrote for the No Offence blog; they were kind enough to allow us to post it here too: 

There is a great theatre in Glasgow called ‘The Citizens’ Theatre’ which, amongst many other things, does excellent work with prisoners. Glaswegians know it simply as ‘The Citz’. Sitting in the second ‘Discovering Desistance’ workshop in Sheffield, that name came into my mind as we were discussing (not for the first time in the workshops, on the blog or on Twitter) how to refer to the people we currently refer to as ‘offenders’ and ‘ex-offenders’.

As I’ve written a couple of times on the Discovering Desistance blog already, I’m becoming convinced that the notion of citizenship offers us a potential way forward in terms of getting past the criminal justice obsession with risk, harm, reoffending; it encourages us to re-focus on the positive goods that justice tries to secure rather than on the evils it seeks to prevent.

But equally, citizenship might help with the problem of labeling people in criminal justice too. Perhaps, rather than labeling people by harms caused or offences done in the past (which we do even when we are defining people as ‘ex’ or as ‘reformed’), we should label them in terms of what we are inviting or enabling them to become – or recognizing what they have become?

‘Offenders’, after all, are failed citizens in two senses. They have failed to honour their responsibilities as citizens and, more often than not, they have been failed as citizens. Failed, that is, by a State that hasn’t honoured its side of the social contract; that hasn’t enabled or supported the development of their citizenship.

Scholars of citizenship will have recognized that I’m using the term in its ‘republican’ rather than its ‘liberal’ sense here. The basic difference is that republican citizenship extends the ambit of rights beyond freedom from interference with our individual liberties and into freedom to enjoy certain positive rights. The idea is that there are services or resources that we all require before citizenship comes to mean anything. The right to education is an obvious example; without it, formal equality of opportunity is pretty meaningless.

So, might we think of ‘offenders’ or ‘ex-offenders’ instead as ‘re-citz’? The ‘re’ here might stand simultaneously for re-formed, re-stored, re-integrated, re-habilitated, re-qualified; people who are ready to honour their responsibilities and to enjoy their rights. Both rights and responsibilities are part of supporting and achieving desistance. Of course, the other meaning of ‘re-sits’ will be familiar to students and ex-students; re-sits are second chances to pass the course and to qualify. That seems to work in this context too [though both the individual and the State need to pass the test].

One last thought: over the course of the Discovering Desistance project, I’ve been developing more and more respect and admiration for the work of ‘ex-offenders’ in and beyond the criminal justice system. Many of them strike me not just as ‘re-citz’ but as ‘super-citz’; people who are putting themselves on the line for the good of others. They are doing more than what can be reasonably expected of any citizen. Their actions are what moral philosophers call ‘supererogatory’; above and beyond the call of duty. Our current honours system has recognized the contributions of some of them – like Bobby Cummines OBE. But imagine a whole honours system based on recognising those whose service to the common good had been supererogatory; a system based on asking who has travelled furthest and given most to building a better society? I can think of a few ‘super-citz’ I’d want to see honoured in that system; mostly people who have long since defied and transcended the label ‘offender’.

This guest post comes from Jessica Simons, a sociology student at the University of Glasgow who is looking for some help with her research project….

 Having experienced someone close to me go through the criminal justice system, it seems to me that it is often very easy for people to become lost in that process. Sometimes it appears that government programmes and policies have failed to understand the very personal and complex journey of desistance from crime and the internal process which ex-offenders undergo in order to change. With this focus in mind, I would like the chance to discover the meaning of desistance, and the challenges which it brings, from people who have themselves experienced it. This is what has led me to undertake this research project as part of my MA degree.

Would you be willing to share your experiences and contribute to my research? I am currently working on my undergraduate dissertation for Sociology at the University of Glasgow and am very interested in talking to people to explore the area of ex-offender reintegration and rehabilitation. My research hopes to explore ex-offenders’ personal experiences and views on the process of desisting from crime, and how they feel this has affected the person they are today.

Through this blog post, I hope to meet people who are willing to share their stories of their life post-sentence. I am interested in hearing your views and experiences of criminal justice, how people react to you as an ‘ex-offender’, what role support networks play in your life, and your hopes for the future.

I would like to speak to 10 ex-offenders in total and hopefully conduct face-to-face interviews or interviews over the phone. Face-to-face interviews will be done in a private and quiet space on the university campus at a time which is convenient for you. If you are interested in taking part or if you have any questions about the research, please get in touch by emailing me at: 1003938S@student.gla.ac.uk.

 

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

With the film launch just 2 hours away, and before I head off to get my make-up and hair done, I thought I’d put up a few links to the Scottish media coverage for this in foreign lands.

Here’s the BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18490073

And here’s the excellent piece in yesterday’s Sunday Herald: http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/crime-courts/the-real-life-lesson-of-the-angels-share.17855575

Look out for more in the Daily Record tomorrow.

 

Steve’s post about the soon to close consultations on community sentences and on probation (organisation) in England and Wales prompted me to offer just a couple of thoughts — mostly about the community sentences consultation. So, in reverse order, as it were, here they are:

Not clever? The latest consultations suggests the UK Government is hoping that ‘toughening up’ community sentences can somehow help with curbing the rise of the prison population (a laudable aspiration if only they would really own it and commit to it) and build public confidence in other sorts of sanction. And yet like many previous governments, they fall into an old trap. By trading on the discourse of punitiveness, they condemn their efforts to failure. As Shadd and Anna King once put it memorably, probation just can’t compete with high walls and razor wire; if punitiveness is the currency, then  imprisonment has a higher value. That’s not to say that community sentences can’t or shouldn’t deliver punishment — they can, and there is evidence that the public will ‘buy’ community punishment. But they’re not daft. Community punishment makes sense as a way of securing positive payback that benefits communities; it can’t compete with prisons when it comes to imposing pains on ‘offenders’. It makes sense as a means of eliciting public good, not as means of imposing penal harm. When community punishment tries to do that, it also undermines its capacity to secure a positive contribution from reforming citizens. The section of the consultation on reparation and RJ implicitly recognises this, but it is underdeveloped and inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the document.

Not tough? What is tough? What does it mean? Is it harder to endure another futile episode of short-term imprisonment or to seriously commit to working hard at paying back positively — including by changing yourself and honouring your responsibilities to people around you? I’m not sure we really know the answer to these questions — I do know that short sentences can and do really hurt– not in the way we expect (i.e. via the pains of doing time), but rather through the dreadful and criminogenic disruptions that they visit upon prisoners and their families. Those interested in some compelling evidence on this should read Sarah Armstrong and Beth Weaver’s report on ‘User Views of Punishment’: (http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/projects/User-Views-of-Punishment/70).

Not big? Anyone remember the Big Society? It doesn’t seem to figure much in these two consultations. Maybe the idea doesn’t apply to criminal justice. Here it seems more a case of ‘The Big Exclusion’. Criminal justice services — and especially community sentences — could and should be recast as a route into active citizenship, as a locus for re-forming, restoring, re-qualifying citizens; basically as a field in which some citizens help other citizens to become citizens, and to enjoy all the rights and responsibilities that a republican version of citizenship entails. That seems to imply a key role for the public sector and for the voluntary and community sector. It doesn’t exclude the private sector — far from it — business has a major role to play, not least as a provider of opportunities for work. But the social capital that desistance requires is more about community development and engagement than private enterprise and shareholder interests. Yet, here we are presented with two documents which seem to have more to offer big business than the big society; one seems insistent on finding new ways to disqualify citizens who have failed and who have been failed; the other seems to insist on creating a market to drive down the costs/improve the quality of the services delivering disqualification (a proposition that seems equally tragic and comic to me at the moment).

Maybe I am lapsing into pessimism here. There are some interesting ideas and some intriguing possibilities in the two consultations. But the tone leaves me cold. The Rehabilitation Revolution can still deliver real and progressive change — but the slip back into punitiveness and the insistence that markets are the only or best mechanism for progress have diminished rather than enhanced its prospects.

Two consultations which set out radical proposals to strengthen community sentences and improve probation services will close in one weeks time.
The wide ranging consultations include proposals for a new rigorous new community sentence, alcohol bans for offenders convicted of certain alcohol fuelled crimes and plans to give local probation areas more control to commission services to better cut crime locally.
The consultations close on Friday 22 June 2012. They include measure such as: :
Community Sentences:
• Intensive Community Punishment sentence – a rigorous new community order for criminals who deserve a serious penalty and who can be dealt with sensibly in the community. It will include a package of punishments including unpaid work, significant restrictions on liberty through a curfew with tagging, exclusion from certain areas, a foreign travel ban, a fine and a driving ban, where appropriate.
• At least one form of punishment element in every sentence – for the first time every community sentence will include one form of punishment from the list outlined above.
• Greater and more creative use of electronic monitoring – using technology, such as GPS, to monitor offenders’ compliance with their sentence and to track their movements.
• Seizing criminal assets – a new power for bailiffs to seize criminals’ possessions.
• Alcohol bans – new power to trial a scheme to ban offenders convicted of alcohol-fuelled crime from drinking as part of a community sentence or suspended sentences using new monitoring technology.
Probation:
• The public sector will retain control of the management of offenders who pose the highest risk, including the most serious and violent criminals to protect the public. They will continue to provide advice to court, and take public interest decisions over all offenders including initially assessing levels of risk, resolving action where sentences are breached, and decisions on the recalls of offenders to prison.
• Greater effectiveness and quality in probation services – extending competition, including for lower-risk offenders, to ensure that probation services are delivered by those best equipped to tackle crime and reoffending, and encourage the most effective rehabilitation measures, whether they are in the public, voluntary, or private sectors. Where possible we will pay providers by measured results.
• Devolving accountability and responsibility – giving Probation Trusts control of local budgets, including electronic monitoring of curfews, so they can deliver programmes targeted at local needs and reducing reoffending.
The proposals set out in two consultations build on the reforms already being taken forward in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, which include extending the maximum length of a curfew from 12 hours a day to 16 hours a day, from six months to 12 months and introducing foreign travel bans. The proposals in the probation consultation are designed to build on the intentions of the Offender Management Act 2007 to introduce a much broader range of competition across probation services.

The Community Sentences consultation can be found here and the Probation consultation can be found here

Hi!

Just a quick thank you to those who have taken time out of work to attend the seminars. We’ve all been really pleased with the degree to which people have engaged with the project and been open about what has and has not supported the processes of change they have been a part of. The enthusiasm not just for the film but for the project as a whole has been staggering.

I found the discussions at the two seminar locations I was able to get to (London and Sheffield) really stimulating and these made me think of new things I’d not been aware of before and helped me to think about matters of old in a new light. Really stimulating. I know that Fergus and Claire found the Glasgow seminars really useful too; I’m sure that the last Belfast one will not fail to deliver.

Things might go quiet around here for a while (but Fergus will keep on posting with updates on the film launch and media coverage I am sure) as we beaver away writing up notes and thinking about how we distill all of the wonderful insights you have given us … but we’ll be back.

We’re currently thinking that a useful next step for us will be a write a manifesto based on the most popular of the provocative propositions you were working on during the second seminar.

Feel free to keep on posting comments and do let us know if you’d like things added to the resources page – we’d like this to become something which people can draw on in their own work. Similarly, we’re happy to upload stuff which others would like to share.

I’m now off to lie down in a darkened room …

 

Steve

 

 

 

Just a quick post to let you know that we have moved the venue of the film launch to Lecture Theatre 1 in the Boyd Orr Building at the University of Glasgow. This lecture theatre holds 300 people — allowing for those currently signed up and those on the waiting list, we should have a few more places available, but I’d suggest booking up very soon. We’ll amend the details on Eventbrite tomorrow — meantime, sign up to the waiting list to be sure of getting a place: http://theroadfromcrime.eventbrite.com

Hope to see you there!

This post is another extract (basically the introduction and the conclusion) from a paper with big connections to this project; the full version is available on the Useful Resources page. In it, we set out what we see as some of the limitations of a preoccupation with the question ‘what works?’ when it comes to improving supervision practices — and how looking more closely at how and why people change, and at what ex/offenders and their families/supporters have to say about that process, is critical to progressive development. The paper is coming out soon in a US journal called ‘Justice Research and Policy’ and so uses US terminology which may seem a little alien to some readers. We’re grateful to the editor of JRP for permission to post it here.

Introduction

Questions about the role of evidence in criminal justice policy and practice have been around for a long time. One of the founding fathers of classical criminology, Cesare Beccaria, writing in 1775, put it this way:

‘Would you prevent crimes? Let liberty be attended with knowledge. As knowledge extends, the disadvantages which attend it diminish, and the advantages increase… Knowledge facilitates the comparison of objects, by showing them in different points of view. When the clouds of ignorance are dispelled by the radiance of knowledge, authority trembles, but the force of the law remains immovable’ (in Priestley and Vanstone, 2010: 11).

Alongside his early endorsement of the role of science in promoting public safety, Beccaria demanded clarity in the law, due process in its administration, and certainty and regularity in its delivery of punishments, limited by the principles of parsimony and proportionality. So, for him, as for many that have come after him, delivering criminal justice must be about both evidence and principle; both science and law; both the empirical and the normative.

It is with this central set of relationships in mind that we begin this discussion of ‘evidence-based practice’ (EBP) in the field of community corrections[1]. More specifically, we aim to look at EBP from three different points of view. Firstly, we seek to examine the relationships between the purposes of community corrections and the ways in which we might assess its effectiveness; we argue that these purposes are multiple and contested and that the types of evidence in play are therefore varied and diffuse. Relying on any one measure will fail to capture the complexities of the task. Secondly, even in focusing on one purpose (reducing reoffending so as to better protect the public), we suggest that ‘what works’ evidence drawn from evaluation studies has serious limitations, and that it must be supplemented with evidence from explanatory studies that explore how and why people desist from crime. Finally, we argue that evidence from research is not the only evidence that matters in advancing practice; both ex/offender and practitioner voices need to be taken much more seriously if we are to develop systems and practices that fit the realities of people’s lives. In our concluding discussion, we discuss a transatlantic ‘knowledge exchange’ project, ‘Discovering Desistance’, through which we are currently trying to open up debates and developments around evidence-based corrections.

[…]

Conclusions

This paper has taken what might seem to some a slightly unusual path. Rather than trying to present that latest evidence from research in EBPs in community corrections and issuing academic advice on what policies or practices to adopt, we have tried instead to respect Beccaria’s injunction and to open up new vantage points from which we might examine the claims of evidence on policy and practice.

We have focused here on just three sets of questions. Firstly, we explored the links between evidence and purposes, arguing that since the purposes of community corrections are multiple and contested, a range of approaches to measuring effectiveness is required. Secondly, focusing on just one of the purposes of community corrections – reducing reoffending — we exposed some of the methodological problems that lie behind exploring ‘what works?’ and suggested a wider engagement with evidence about how and why people desist from crime. That evidence base pointed us towards practices that support ex/offenders to develop new skills and change their behaviour, but also towards interventions that can motivate people and build hope, and that engage with the relational and social contexts of change. Finally, we argued that the development of more effective practice in community corrections (as in other domains) is less about getting research evidence into practice and more about academics, ex/offenders, practitioners and others working out how to co-produce change together.

In relation to this venture, Beccaria again has some wise words for us here:

‘Ignorance may be less fatal than a small degree of knowledge, because this adds, to the evils of ignorance, the inevitable errors of a confined view of things…’ (Priestley and Vanstone, 2010: 12).

We are all vulnerable to developing ‘a confined view’; to privileging our own perspective; to preferring to rely on the small degrees of knowledge that we accrue as individuals. And we all stand the best chance of avoiding the errors attendant on taking such ‘a confined view’ by exposing ourselves to the views of others. This is not to suggest that all forms of knowledge should be assessed and used in the same ways – and, of course, it is not to refute the need to expose and reject policies and practices based in ignorance or error, whatever their source. But it is to argue for the learning that comes from mutually respectful dialogue, since it is in that dialogue that the prospects for progressive community corrections resides.

If you want to read the full version, click here: McNeill et al JRP

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