Pamela Ugwudike

The impact of skills in probation work: a reconviction study

This article reports on the results of a quasi-experimental study of practitioners’ skills in probation work. Videotaped interviews were produced by a group of probation officers and analysed by researchers using a checklist designed to identify the range of skills used in one-to-one supervision. Reconviction rates were found to be significantly lower among those whose supervisors were assessed as using a wider range of skills. The article also reviews the recent history of research on practitioners’ skills in probation, and considers the implications of positive findings from this and other studies.

Mapping the interface between contemporary risk-focused policy and frontline enforcement practice:

To develop an empirical account of the impact of contemporary penal developments on frontline probation practice in England and Wales, this article will draw on a study that examined how the interrelated discourses of ‘risk management’ and public protection’ pervading probation policy in England and Wales are translated in enforcement practice. The study found a degree to resistance to the prevailing risk-focused policy agenda. Frontline probation practitioners reported that they tended to rely mainly on a compliance-oriented enforcement model underpinned by welfarist ideals reminiscent of penal modernism1.

Bridging the gap between research and frontline youth justice practice

Although the Risk, Need, Responsivity model of rehabilitation is rooted in a substantial body of research evidence, several studies of the model’s efficacy in youth and adult justice settings within England and Wales have revealed modest outcomes. In this article, we contend that the findings do not necessarily reflect deficits in the model. Rather, a growing corpus of research now indicates that poor practice integrity or inadequate implementation of the model’s principles is a key but under-researched factor that undermines the efficacy of interventions based on the model. We also present the findings of a study that explored applications of the model in three Welsh youth justice services and we examine possible means of bridging the gap between research evidence and real-world practice.

Understanding Compliance Dynamics in Community Justice Settings

This article seeks to expand the existing literature on compliance in community justice settings by highlighting the importance of service user participation in efforts to achieve compliance. The article’s central argument is that although co-productive strategies can enhance service user participation, the degree to which co-production is achievable in penal supervision is perhaps uncertain, and has received insufficient theoretical or empirical attention. To address the gap in knowledge, the article draws on the data generated from a study of compliance in Wales, United Kingdom, and employs the Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, field, and capital to argue that the convergence of two key factors undermines the viability of co-productive strategies in penal settings. One factor is the service users’ habitus of powerlessness which may breed passivity rather than active participation. The second also relates to the power dynamics that characterize penal supervision contexts. Within these contexts, practitioners are statutorily empowered to implement and enforce the requirements of community orders. In the current target-focused policy climate in England and Wales, practitioners may prioritize measurable compliance over forms of compliance that stem from service user participation and engagement perhaps because these are not readily quantifiable.

Conclusion: What Works in Offender Compliance

The contributions to this volume offer wide-ranging empirical and theoretical analysis of offender compliance from diverse theoretical orientations and various academic disciplines which include criminology, law and psychology. This is quite intentional. Our primary aim has been to draw together international empirical and theoretical insights that can enhance knowledge and inform policy and practice in the field of offender compliance. Therefore, we invited leading international experts (who have researched and published widely in the field of offender compliance policy and practice) to contribute chapters. Experts based in diverse academic disciplines and in jurisdictions across Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada have contributed chapters that provide rich insights into: theories of compliance; the views of the key actors involved in compliance transactions-namely, criminal justice practitioners and the people they supervise; and emerging empirical work in the field of offender compliance.

Evidence-based skills in criminal justice: international research on supporting rehabilitation and desistance.

This book brings together emerging international research on how specific, evidence-based practice and skills in criminal justice can lead to positive outcomes, such as desistance from crime, reduced reoffending, and active service-user engagement. Contributors address skills and practices that can be applied across a range of criminal justice settings—particularly in probation, youth justice, and private sector settings—while exploring the organizational and wider policy contexts that might affect their implementation and efficacy. Uniquely global in its scope, this book is of particular relevance to the larger push to transform the nature of criminal rehabilitation.