Today Glasgow hosts the premiere of Ken Loach’s new film, ‘The Angels’ Share’ — a desistance movie of sorts. Confirming its place as the global capital of ‘desistance’ (or at least of film premieres linked to desistance…), as trailed below, we’ll be hosting the launch event for ‘The Road from Crime at the University of Glasgow on Monday 18th June at 5.30pm. You can sign up here: http://theroadfromcrime.eventbrite.com/
Places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment.
This just in from our Scottish Correspondent:
Kenny MacAskill, Cabinet Secretary for Justice in the Scottish Government, will be the guest of honour at the formal launch of ‘The Road from Crime’ on Monday 18th June, 5.30-7.30pm. The venue will be the G12 Cinema on the University of Glasgow campus. We’ll be viewing a film and then a brief Q&A discussion involving Allan Weaver (the film’s main protagonist and narrator), Eamonn Devlin (the director), CLaire Lightowler (our very own Knoweldge Exchange guru) and Fergus McNeill.
We’re in the process of setting up arrangements for registration etc. I’ll post those as soon as we have them.
Book early to avoid dissappointment!
This guest post comes from Ewan Lundy who was a participant in our stage 2 workshop in Glasgow. Ewan has 30 years experience of working with criminal justice services, including work as a volunteer, researcher, legal assistant and police officer. Since becoming a chartered psychologist 13 years ago he has worked extensively as a practitioner with mental health, criminal justice social work and prison services, and this continues. He has been independent for the last 5 years. Email: ewanl2008@hotmail.co.uk
This is the first event of this kind that I’ve attended. Having service users and families taking part was great on various levels, not least that it kept alive the perspective of living daily with the consequences of our work as practitioners; work that is often well-intended but misguided.
At the close of the day Fergus suggested that perhaps this phase of the project might result in a set of broad principles that people could agree on. However, he was less confident that it would deliver the framework for practice that had been the original aspiration for the project. I was surprised to hear this because the day had left me thinking that there was lots of scope for some of the ideas raised to be translated into practice relatively easily. For example, the idea of a prominent role for ‘graduate’ mentors is exciting on lots of levels, not only could it reduce stigma and form part of a redemption script, but it could also be a form of gainful employment, help model how to be a pro-social peer, cascade into other community based initiatives, etc.. I imagine that this could also draw many service users into engaging in the change proces that would otherwise stay well away from it.
I think some of the ideas mentioned on the day and in the existing materials can also be woven into the fabric of existing good practice. My own experiences with personal change work over the last few years has been that, with a bit of creative thinking – mostly from families and service users, often little more than a guiding framework from myself – we have usually been able to find ways to make things better that are solution-focussed and strengths-based. For example, encouraging a young adult who had taken on the values of his peers and was obsessed with committing violence to gain respect (including wanting to stab a member of staff in the neck) to build on previous successes where he would follow the example set by other male role models in his community and family (in particular his grandfather) who had gained respect in non-violent ways: regular prompts and praise were enough to get the change sought, and keep it going.
I am also finding increasingly that there is little – sometimes no – need for any of the work to involve being in a room doing CBT, as was the case in the example above; the conversations took place while going for a walk and being in a cafe. When I do tap into approaches that I have accrued through CBT I find that investing in language and approaches that are as common-sense/down-to-earth as possible helps. For example, adopting terminology that service users volunteer such as ‘digging myself up’ rather than thought-challenging, ‘calming my jets’ rather than emotion-management, and ‘getting my finger out’ instead of behavioural experiments. This seems to make service users feel listened to and understood, which keeps them engaged, even if we cannot immediately help them effect the change that they are looking for.
In pursuit of approaches that feel grounded in the client’s reality I always try to go with where each individual uniquely wants to focus their energy positively, whether that’s getting quality time with their gran before she dies, taking their kids to the park, being good at football, fixing cars, etc.. I find that this not only gets the motivation required but also there are invariably ways of using this to tap into their strengths, achievements and the relational attachments that mean the most to them. It’s no coincidence that people are drawn to doing things that are tapping into innate abilities whether that’s kicking a ball or putting up shelves – I think they’d call that the bio-psycho-social model in action in CBT.
Finally, I find that consistently framing personal work with phrases such as ‘where do you want to get to and let’s try to get you there’ (they invariably describe something pro-social) makes a difference too. I rarely make reference to the work being about stopping bad stuff happening, and if I did I would take care to mention the rationale for conceptualising what we are doing in this way.
In closing, it seems to me that there are a host of practical applications of desistance that are already under-way, with practitioners as catalysts and/or guardians of the process in many individual cases, but perhaps they are not being construed or researched in desistance terms. I would welcome hearing the experiences of others who feel that practitioners are already consciously trying to facilitate desistance. It may be that what’s needed is a system for recording and sharing existing good practice. Perhaps we will find that there is a lot of ‘bottom-up’ practice already influenced by the ‘top-down’ desistance theory, just waiting to be more formally recorded and mined.
hi,
Charlie Ryder (who was at the London seminar last week) is going to be on a programme called 4thoughts.tv which is on just after Channel 4 News at 7pm TODAY! It is a two minute talk with puppets talking about forgiveness. It’ll be on at about 7.50. If you can’t watch it on then you can see later on this website: www.4thought.tv
Charlie will also be writing a post about his own experiences soon – so watch this space!
Steve
I know there are lots of people out there who wanted to get to the workshops but didn’t manage. As Steve said in his previous posts, we’ll get some material from the discussions up here soon, and of course the film will follow in due course. In the meantime, here’s an audio recording of the brief input that I provided today after we had watched and discussed the film in Belfast. It’s really just a summary of what we have to say in the IRISS Insight paper that is available on our Useful Resources page, but if you prefer an audio version, here it is: Belfast workshop input
hi,
Knowing my capabilities with technology (“v. poor”), thi smight not work, but given that we’ve no formal discussion space it occurred to me that if people who attended the London seminars wished to make comments on the film or the day in general, then replying to this post ought to kick start a discussion.
Well, thats that plan …
Steve
hi,
Knowing my capabilities with technology (“v. poor”), thi smight not work, but given that we’ve no formal discussion space it occurred to me that if people who attended the Sheffield seminars wished to make comments on the film or the day in general, then replying to this post ought to kick start a discussion.
Well, thats that plan …
I’ll set one up for London too.
Steve
If I sort out the technology, you should find here…
…or on the Useful Resources page, the audio recording and powerpoint from a short talk I gave this morning at event organised by the irrepressible Beth Weaver, for the Centre for Law, Crime and Justice, at the Risk Management Authority in Paisley. The event was a chance for people involved with MAPPA (Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements) in London and Scotland to get together and compare notes about how they do their work.itle — Change or Control? — reflects a dialogue that Beth and I have been having with London Probation Trust about public protection work. This dates back about 18 months now, and has centred on trying to workout together how to connect develop MAPPA practices and systems in ways that support change rather than just managing risks.
The first twenty minutes of the talk is basically a resume of the recently published IRISS Insight (which you can find on the Useful Resources page) in which Claire, Shadd, Steve and I summarise evidence about desistance and its implications for CJ practices and systems. If you have already heard or read that, you might want to start at about 22 minutes where I start to discuss the tensions between desistance-based and risk-based practices. Here, I’m drawing on some of my own research, but more on Shadd’s, on Alison Liebling’s and on Leon Digard’s — all of whom in different ways have highlight the tensions between developing the kind of trusting relationships that can support change, and being a risk manager.
Very interested to hear comments on this…
Following on from Reuben Miller’s brilliant recent post on ‘Carceral Politics are Local too: Racial geography and prisoner reentry in the USA’, I wanted to draw people’s attention to an equally excellent podcast from NYU Law School, which features Michelle Alexander’s keynote address to a recent conference there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2AjQbIESs&feature=player_embedded
This is definitely worth a watch. It covers a lot of issues, and contains a fair bit of personal and professional self-examination and reflection, explaining how a civil rights lawyer ended up feeling compelled to research and write a book about the racial politics of mass incarceration in the USA. Most relevant to readers of this blog however, are her comments on how the mass criminalisation and penalisation of urban African American men has created a new ‘undercaste’. Not an underclass, she argues, but a permanently disenfranchised and marginalised ethnic minority – a group against whom racial discrimination is ‘justified’ on the grounds of their status as criminals, despite the fact that that status itself is the product of racism and exclusion.
Please listen to the end. There is a rallying cry there that we all need to hear.
The book series below (which also has Ros Burnett, Fergus and Shadd on the Editorial Board, alongside a few others) is starting to build up a head of steam, with two books out, another two out very soon and a fifth (by Sam King) being commissioned:
http://www.routledge.com/books/series/ISODR/
Alisa’s book will be of interest to anyone interested in therapeutic communities, whilst Adam’s deals with desistance amongst ethnic minorities – both make fascinating reads.
Steve
Discovering Desistance 