SHU2727 - BJCJ Inners Vol7-FINAL-PA:bjcj · Community Justice, Southbourne, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S10 2BP, Email: [email protected]

Vol 7 No 2 Summer 2009

British Journal of Community JusticeIn this issueEditorialJean Hine

AreWeAllVictims Now? Crime, Suffering And JusticeSandraWalklate

Practitioner Report: From RhetoricTo Reality?TheProbation Service ContributionTo EmpoweringVictimsAlan Gray and PennyWhitford

Provision ForWomen Offenders InThe CommunityDr Loraine Gelsthorpe

Risk,Youth And Moving OnHazel Kemshall

A Research Basis For AddressingYouth Offending OnThe Broadland ‘Stairway Out Of Crime’ ProgrammeGwyneth Boswell, Fiona Poland,Anne Killett, and John Cross

Community Justice Files 20Jane Dominey

Book ReviewsDave Phillips

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Hallam Centre for Community Justice,Sheffield Hallam University

British Journal of Community JusticeISSN 1475 - 0279 © 2009

EDITORSProfessor Paul Senior, Sheffield Hallam UniversityJean Hine, De Monfort University

MANAGING EDITORProfessor DaveWard, De Montfort University

PUBLISHING EDITORSimon Feasey, Sheffield Hallam University

BOOK REVIEW EDITORDavid Phillips, Sheffield Hallam University

COMMUNITY JUSTICE FILESJane Dominey,De Montfort University

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARDProfessor Gwyneth Boswell, Boswell Research Fellows; Dr Denis Bracken, University ofManitoba; Dr Julian Buchanan, North East Wales Institute of Higher Education; Dr JonathanBurnside, University of Bristol; Tim Chapman, Criminal Justice Consultant, Northern Ireland;Professor Rob Canton, De Montfort University; Dr Chris Crowther-Dowey, Nottingham TrentUniversity; Dr Kevin Downing, City University of Hong Kong; Dan Ellingworth, ManchesterMetropolitan University; Professor Barry Goldson, University of Liverpool; Professor HazelKemshall, De Montfort University; Charlotte Knight, De Montfort University; Victoria Knight,De Montfort University; Professor Lo Tit Wing, City University of Hong Kong; Robert Mackay,University of Newcastle, Australia; Dr Guy Masters, Wandsworth YOT; Professor Mike Nellis,Strathclyde University; Dr Laura Piacentini, Strathclyde University; Sue Raikes OBE, ThamesValley Partnership; Pat Roach, G4S; Helen Schofield, Centrex; Graham Smyth, ManchesterMetropolitan University; Dr Paul Sparrow, Nottingham Trent University; Michael Teague, TeessideUniversity; Professor Peter Wedge, University of East Anglia; Dr Wong Sing Wing Dennis, CityUniversity of Hong Kong; David Woodhill, Sheffield Hallam University

PUBLISHERIan Buczynski, Hallam Centre for Community Justice, Sheffield Hallam University,Southbourne, Collegiate Crescent, Sheffield S10 2BP, UK.Telephone: +44 (0)114 225 5725 Fax: +44 (0)114 225 5800 E-mail: [email protected]


Information for Contributors• Articles, Book Reviews, or contributions to Community Justice Files, are welcomed from aca-demics, researchers, policy development advisers, managers and practitioners, working orinvolved in any aspect of the Community Justice field. If you should wish to discuss the suitabilityof an idea or topic for an article, please feel free to contact the Editors or a member of theEditorial Board. All articles are peer reviewed by at least 2 referees. • Manuscripts will onlybe considered for publication in this journal if they are unpublished and not being submitted forpublication elsewhere. All submissions to the Journal should comply with its style guidelines.• Authors should submit 3 copies of their manuscript, including any tables or illustrations, orsend it by email attachment to the Publishing Editor, Mr Simon Feasey, Hallam Centre forCommunity Justice, Southbourne, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield Hallam University,Sheffield, S10 2BP, Email: [email protected] • Authors are advised to retain a copy of theirpaper. • If accepted for publication authors may also be asked to supply a 3.5" disk versionin either Word or ASC11/text format. • Articles should not normally exceed 5,000 words.Please include the word count at the end of the article. If the article exceeds 5,000 wordsplease contact the Editor(s) prior to submission. • An abstract of the paper, of up to 200words, should accompany the article together with up to 6 key words suitable for indexing,abstracting, and on-line search purposes. The abstract should provide a concise summary of thewhole paper. • A brief biographical note about the author should be submitted with the arti-cle, on a separate sheet. Details should also be given of the authors full postal and emailaddresses, telephone and fax numbers. • All abbreviations should be preceded on the firstoccasion they appear, by the full name. Full points should be used after abbreviations such ase.g., i.e., etc., and where the end of a word is cut as in p. (page), or ed., but are not necessaryin acronyms such as HMSO, HMIP, UK. • Notes should be kept to a minimum and placed atthe end of the article before the references. Footnotes should not be included. • Use singlequotation marks for material quoted in the text. Double quotation marks can be used for quoteswithin quotes. Long quotations (40 words or more) should be displayed indented. Shorter quotesmay be retained within the text. • Tables and figures should be kept to a minimum and, whereincluded, should be submitted on separate sheets attached to the article with a short title and aclear indication of where they should be placed in the text. Tables and figures should be clearand well drawn. • The author is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of quotations and refer-ences. Permission to quote from or reproduce copyright material in their article must be obtainedby authors prior to submission and acknowledgements given at the end of the paper before thenotes, or, in the case of tables and figures, in the accompanying caption. • The journal’s poli-cy is to own copyright of its contributions therefore, before publication, authors are asked toassign copyright. Authors retain the right to re-use the material in other publications that are writ-ten or edited by them. However, permission to do so will only be given if due acknowledgementis given regarding copyright notice and first publication by this journal. • References shouldappear at the end of the article. The Harvard reference system is preferred in this journal. • Itis expected that language used in articles will be non-sexist and non-racist. • Single spacesshould be used after full points, commas, colons and semicolons, quotation marks etc. • Datesshould be written in the form 1 January 2001. • Full guidelines for contributors will be sent onrequest.

Subscription Rate:For each volume (3 issues per year) the subscription is: Institutional Rate £120; 2 yearsInstitutional Rate £225; Individual Rate £40; 2 years Individual Rate £70; Student Rate for 2years £50. All payments must be addressed to the Publisher and made payable to SheffieldHallam University.

British Journal of Community Justice

Volume 7 Number 3 Autumn 2009

Special Edition: Diversity in a Performance Culture

Contents

1 Guest EditorialDr Clare Beckett & Pauline Ashworth

5 Diversity and Performance CultureSue Hall & Professor Brid Featherstone

17 Organizational Experiences of Performance Targeting: Police, Prisons & ProbationDr Clare Beckett

33 ‘Defining and Recognising Are Not The Same’: Challenges to Tackling Hate Crime in a Performance CultureSimon R Mellors

47 Time and the Probation PractitionerKeith Davies

61 What Happened to Probation? Managerialism, Performance & The Decline of AutonomyPauline Ashworth

77 Race Relations In Prison: Managing Performance and Developing EngagementDr Malcolm Cowburn & Dr Victoria Lavis

91 Community Justice Files 21Edited by Jane Dominey

97 Book ReviewsEdited by Dan Ellingworth

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GUEST EDITORIALDr Clare Beckett, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Science and Humanities,University of Bradford & Pauline Ashworth, Teaching Fellow, University of York

For several decades now, public sector agencies have been subjected to major upheavals asthe spotlight of government has fallen on them. For criminal justice agencies the picture isfurther complicated by public and media expectations. New managerialist measurements ofperformance and targeting of practice are now endemic, if not universally accepted,throughout the police, prison and probation services. New professionals on one hand couldexpect that their professional training would earn them the right to some autonomy in theirfuture roles: On the other hand, their role is restricted to meeting pre set measures ofperformance. Discussion of this dissonance has become increasingly central to the trainingdelivered to probation officers in Yorkshire and Humberside.

This special edition of the Journal developed from that interest. The editors, Clare Beckettand Pauline Ashworth, have been involved in the delivery of training to probation officers inthe Yorkshire and Humberside Region. They were also involved in organising a dayconference held at the University of Bradford, looking specifically at diversity in aperformance culture. The event brought together academics from the partner Universitiesresponsible for delivery of training (Sheffield Hallam, Hull and Bradford), practitioners fromthe three criminal justice agencies (police, probation, prison), trainee probation officers andundergraduate students. Discussion between the disparate groups was focused and heartfelt.It was this that led to the idea of this edition, drawn from the conference and developingconference themes. It seems that a performance culture, its associated impact on ideas ofprofessional behaviour, the resulting service provision for a diverse user group, are ‘live’ andcurrent issues in practice.

The central focus of the contributions is the question: how far is the emergence anddevelopment of performance as the dominant criterion and guiding principle of criminaljustice agencies supportive of or antithetical to recognition of diversity? Are these conceptscompatible, sympathetic to one another, or are they necessarily distinct and even contradictoryin practice? The answer will depend to some extent on a definition of performance and anunderstanding of diversity – and on how to define the job to be done. In the planning stageswe, the editors, came to recognise that we held differing views on the issue. Our struggle to‘square the circle’ reflects our different perspectives. Our own discomfort with the context ofperformance management is reflected by the authors of these papers.

On the one hand, it is argued, the emphasis placed on performance indicators in the pasttwo decades or so has led officers whether in the police, probation or prison services to findtheir room for manoeuvre restricted and their ability to develop constructive workingrelationships with offenders curtailed by the requirements to meet targets of performancegenerated locally or nationally. They may believe that their professional identity and skills

have been undermined. It is fair to say that this opinion was expressed more strongly byprobation officers during the conference – particularly former probation officers whowitnessed the shift away from social work based values and education to on-the-job training,from there being roughly a balance between the ‘twin peaks’ of care and control to a heavyweighting in favour of the latter. On the other hand, the argument is that, without someclearly identifiable targets or clearly defined goals, it would be impossible to gauge theeffectiveness of what is being done or to hold agencies accountable for fulfilling their remit –jointly to protect the public from crime and to work toward ensuring those who did offendwere deterred from doing so again. Without a focus on performance, however it is definedor measured, criminal justice agencies would be working in a vacuum with only the vaguestidea of whether they were being successful as the very notion of ‘success’ would have no clearparameters and would, indeed did, remain fluid and uncertain.

The polarities of this argument were brought out very clearly by the two key note speakers atthe conference, which are presented here as delivered at the event in June 2008. Thespeakers were Brid Featherstone, Professor of Social Work at the University of Bradford, andSue Hall, Chief Officer of West Yorkshire Probation. The contrast in their perspectives setthe scene for the conference and for the articles that follow. Brid Featherstone, outlining thefindings from a recent piece of research, spoke about how those on the receiving end ofperformance-orientated social service provision have felt their opinions to be marginalized,unheard and even discounted by the professionals. At the same time, she notes how thosesame professionals express resentment and dissatisfaction with a system that requires them tostruggle with increased paperwork and complex procedures. Sue Hall argues that thechanges introduced by the focus on performance have had a positive effect on probationpractice and should be recognised as such. She welcomes the shift away from the highlyindividualized and potentially ad hoc approach to working with offenders on the groundsthat the latter led to piecemeal provision based on personal preferences rather than on aclear and defensible assessment of what was needed. As a result, working with diversity waspoorly understood and could lead to disparities and injustices that went unnoticed.

The next article has been collated by one of the editors, Clare Beckett, from materialgenerated in the conference workshops and reflects the views of the various participants onthe issues raised during the day. Each workshop focused on a different criminal justiceagency – probation, prison and police – and what emerged were some similarities but severalradical differences in assumptions and approaches to ‘performance’. It was evident from thediscussions that ‘debate and dispute arise over the value of target setting even before thearguments about how it should be done’. The article is structured to present thebackground and outcomes of each of the workshops separately to allow comparisons to bedrawn in the ways in which the different agencies have come to adopt and, more or less,embrace the concept of diversity and its implications for policy, performance and practice.The workshop reports are provided by practioners, the accompanying discussion by theeditor. Both the police and the prison service had the issue brought into sharp relief by aseries of high profile cases involving racial assault or murder, which prompted wide-rangingreviews of practice involving clearly defined targets, not all of which were helpful.

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The probation workshop considered an initiative aimed at combating racist abuse andattacks by offenders, and the problems encountered not only with the offenders but alsowith the agency which was slow to recognise the importance of such an initiative and whichhad no target for performance in this crucial area.

The third paper is also written by a senior practitioner, Simon Mellors of South Yorkshire Police.The issue raised here is how performance targeting can be undermined by organisational andpersonal practices, to the point that the usefulness or otherwise of the targets becomesundermined. Perhaps the lesson of this paper is that, to some extent, performance targeting is such an inexact science that professional autonomy is still largely untouched.

The remaining three papers have been commissioned specifically for this special edition.The topics addressed reflect themes drawn from the day event. Keith Davies and PaulineAshworth, both former probation officers now academics, focus on different aspects of theprobation service in relation to performance and diversity. The former article highlightsthe particular problem of time as a key component of probation practice and how it hasbeen re-shaped and re-structured by the imposition of performance targets in a way that‘threatens to displace other practice considerations’ including taking proper account ofdiversity. The latter article considers the effects of the adoption by the probation service ofsuch ‘market-driven’ concepts as cost-effectiveness, efficiency, measurable outcomes and thelike on the nature of the probation service and its work; the author argues that the changesintroduced during the 1990s served to lead the service away from offering a ‘way back’ foroffenders into society’s mainstream to another arm of government and state control of analready marginalized section of society. Notwithstanding recent initiatives in restorativejustice for young offenders, the experience of the vast majority of offenders is of aprobation service designed to contain, manage and control their behaviour.

The last article in this collection places the focus again on to offenders. Malcolm Cowburnand Victoria Lavis present the findings of their current research into the effects of the‘performance culture’ on prison inmates, in particular those from minority ethnicbackgrounds. In the debate entered into by professionals about the implication ofperformance on their work the poles can perhaps be identified as professional autonomyversus management priorities. This debate fundamentally reflects ways in which officerswill meet and offer service to clients, and these effects are easy to ignore.

Perhaps that is where we, as editors, first came in to this debate. We both teach futureprobation officers, as do the other conference organisers, Maria De Angelis and CherylShackleton. With representatives of the probation service and members of our partneruniversities, we attempt to ensure that service provision continues to reflect the highstandards that have always been present in the probation service. At this time, when theservice is facing unprecedented pressure accompanied by swingeing cuts and public andmedia antipathy, it is more than ever important to be clear about what the job is and whyofficers continue to do it. Clarity about the purpose of a performance culture could notbe timelier.

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DIVERSITY AND PERFORMANCECULTURE

Sue Hall, Chief Officer, West Yorkshire Probation Service and Professor BridFeatherstone, University of Bradford. Edited by Pauline Ashworth, University of York

The following accounts represent different personal views of the implications of performanceculture in professional settings. The first, offered by a probation professional concerned withthe implications for practice, is broadly positive about performance targets as a way ofmeasuring, and therefore improving, service provision of diverse clients. The second accountdraws on research experience with one group of clients to indicate a more negative view oftargeting. Both authors agree, however, that targeting is with us, and both in different waysargue for qualitative rather than quantitative measures.

A PRACTIONERS ACCOUNT - DIVERSITY ANDPERFORMANCE IN PROBATION

Sue Hall, Chief Officer, West Yorkshire Probation Service

AbstractThis article represents a written version of one of two key note speeches delivered at theUniversity of Bradford on June 6th 2008. The address, a personal view, was given in mycapacity as Chief Probation Officer of the West Yorkshire Area of the National ProbationService. The focus of my paper was on the growth and implications of the performanceculture on the work of the Probation Service.

Growth of a Culture of Performance Management and Targets The concepts of ‘performance management’ and ‘targets’ have had a bad press withpractitioners, carrying the unmistakable taint of political interference and control. Whilst itis undoubtedly true that the aims of the probation service included those relating toreducing offending and thus protecting the public, it is equally true that nostalgia for a‘golden age’ before the introduction or imposition of centrally-determined targets can bestrong, particularly amongst older or more seasoned probation staff. They recall the hey-daysof “advise, assist and befriend” when the probation officer’s principal task was to work withindividual offenders to support and guide them through the tricky waters of the criminal

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Diversity And Performance Culture

justice system. In this, they were granted a good deal of individual autonomy and licence towork according to their own strengths and preferences.

There was a downside to this. The lack of accountability meant that poor practice couldremain unaddressed. The type of work that probation officers did with their cases(‘casework’) tended to reflect individual or team preferences. For instance, if the probationofficer was keen on group-work, the offender was placed in a group; if they favouredcounselling, this was the approach adopted. There was little research to show whether or notthese approaches were effective.

It is perhaps not difficult to appreciate how such an ad hoc and individualized approach tothe work could lead to injustices in terms of diversity. The level of contact and the type of‘treatment’ an offender received was often more dependent on the probation officer’sassumptions and preferences than on the seriousness of the offence or on any evidenceabout what was more likely to have a positive impact. As an unintended consequence,awareness of difference and diversity could be simplistic and limited to the generally obviousdifferences of race and gender without a full appreciation of the implications of suchdifferences or those that were not immediately apparent.

Level Playing FieldThe first National Standards for the Supervision of Offenders in the Service were introducedin 1992 (Home Office, 1992) with the first set of key performance indicators followingshortly afterwards in 1994. National Standards brought in a set of minimum requirementsand were clear in laying down how quickly supervision would start, how often offenderswould be seen and what the purpose and content of such contact was to be. They weredesigned to ensure greater consistency in how offenders were dealt with; they also served tomake the hitherto individualized decisions of probation officers much more transparent andaccountable.

National Standards were also the vehicle for ‘toughening up’ community sentences, as wasapparent in the introduction to the 1995 updated set of standards: ‘Ministers would like therevised national standards to redress the balance in presenting community sentences aspunishment, place greater emphasis on the protection of the public, and provide a tougherresponse to failure to comply with an order' (Home Office 1995). In the years since theirintroduction, the range and scope of National Standards have increased to cover all offendermanagement activity. The systems for monitoring their execution have also been extendedthrough a framework of performance management – the Integrated Probation PerformanceFramework (IPPF).

This transformation in the mechanisms for holding probation to account means at a verybasic level that case files no longer get lost at the back of a filing cabinet; that key

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information about the work being undertaken no longer remains inside the head of theprobation officer. There is much greater transparency and, indeed, more equality in the wayoffenders are managed than 20 years ago when the Standards were first implemented. Byequality, I am referring to the way in which offenders are treated by the probation service interms of the frequency of contact, the nature and style of the reports that are written aboutthem, the focus of the work done with them and the expectations that probation officershave of them. All this has been made much clearer and more consistent than before theStandards were introduced.

National Standards do not operate in a vacuum. When the probation service came into beingthe mission was to ‘advise, assist and befriend’ people appearing before the court. The purposewas to support the offender. In this context it made sense for an individualised response. Now,however, the focus for probation has moved away from advising, assisting and befriendingoffenders to achieving an outcome for society – reducing reoffending and protecting the publicfrom serious harm. These two priorities underpin how resources are allocated.

Effective PracticeThe current focus on reducing reoffending has been very influenced by the ‘What Works’agenda developed in the early 1990s promulgated through key books such as What Works:Reducing Reoffending (McGuire 1995). Statistical techniques brought together the resultsof a large number of studies (meta-analysis) shedding light on the types of intervention whichhad better than average ‘treatment effects’ (Merrington and Stanley 2007). This work andstudies such as Underdown (1998) were the starting point for the implementation of a rangeof research based ‘accredited programmes’. The establishment of a National ProbationService in 2001 provided the context in which this work could be implemented acrossEngland and Wales. We now have a position where a standard suite of accreditedprogrammes is available both for offenders in the community with targets in the IPPF2008/9 and for the number of offenders appropriately referred to and completing suchprogrammes. Strict criteria for the execution of the programmes are reinforced through‘treatment management’ and inspection. Research has shown that accredited cognitivebehavioural programmes targeted at the right offenders and delivered well, can make adifference (2008 West Yorkshire Probation Research Briefing).

Evidence-led practice has continued to develop through increasing knowledge of the impactof social exclusion and the factors which increase the likelihood of reoffending, referred to ascriminogenic needs (e.g. unemployment, substance misuse). This has underpinned thedevelopment of the assessment tool used throughout the National Offender ManagementService – OASys (Offender Assessment System). And the evidence has been positive. Thereis no doubt that standards in practice have risen. Further, there is greater equality in servicedelivery and in access to that service. So what is the problem – why are the doubts andquestions still around?

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Performance ManagementOne of the downsides of performance management and target-setting is that priorities canget skewed, with a focus on what can be measured rather than what should be measured.League tables and performance bonuses can promote a culture of short term compliance andshort-cuts, as opposed to supporting higher quality, long-term interaction. This has beenrecognised in the development of the Integrated Probation Performance Framework referredto earlier, where the national aspiration is to focus on outcomes – for instance, the reductionof offending, the effective protection of the public, the effective delivery of interventions andorganizational capability. However, outcomes are notoriously difficult to measure, whichmeans that the current IPPF concentrates principally on process. This involves quantifyingthe time it takes to complete risk management plans on high risk offenders or to initiateenforcement or following breach proceedings through the courts. It also involves countingthe numbers of successful completions of accredited programmes.

Targets and DiversityImperfect as current targets are, they are telling in highlighting potential areas of discriminationand disproportionality. Segmenting results according to categories or ‘strands’ of diversity (e.g.ethnicity, gender, (dis)ability as well as age and criminal history), allows us to begin to explorethe potential differential impact of our services and the way we deliver them, which representcritical considerations in completing meaningful equality impact assessments.

In my Area, West Yorkshire, the figures show that young white men are least likely to complywith their orders; in terms of drug rehabilitation requirements, BME offenders, young peopleand women are least likely to engage with or successfully complete their drug rehabilitationrequirements and women and black offenders appear to be less likely to start and successfullycomplete an accredited programme. Whilst these figures have to be treated with cautionbecause of small numbers in relation to some orders, they are an important starting point forwhich prompts us to ask further questions - what are the reasons for the disproportionality?How can it be addressed?

One of the perennial difficulties with this approach is that high level performancemonitoring categorizes individual offenders according to a particular ‘diversity strand’ andcannot take account of individual differences and unique characteristics or circumstances.Diversity, if it is to be a meaningful concept, must enable us to incorporate such differencesinto our thinking and approach. Nationally there have been a number of developments, allof which have involved setting targets and which have given impetus to a renewed focus onthe offender as an individual.

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Reducing ReoffendingThe Comprehensive Spending Review 2007-10 introduced a number of Public ServiceAgreements (PSAs) which embody Government’s priorities which run across the wholepublic sector. They are cascaded down to local authority areas where partners are requiredto agree Local Area Agreements which include key performance indicators. PSA 23 ‘MakeCommunities Safer’ has within it the cross-government priority to ‘reduce reoffendingthrough the improved management of offenders’ and includes two key National Indicators:

NI 18 Adult re-offending rates for those under probation supervision NI 30 Re-offending rate of prolific and priority offenders

For the first time the success of the Probation Service in effectively reducing reoffending isnot just a criminal justice concern, but the concern of all local partners who are required tocontribute. Local Area Agreements across England and Wales have led to innovative multi-agency approaches to addressing the issues presented by offenders in communities. This hasrequired increased awareness of individual risk factors and of how to recognise themamongst the groups and individuals with whom the various agencies worked.

Reoffending statistics are now produced to help monitor the progress of Local AreaAgreements in reducing reoffending under National Indicator 18 within the NationalIndicator Set at both Probation Area level and Local Authority level. The most recent LocalAdult Reoffending statistics (Ministry of Justice 2009) show that within my Area, WestYorkshire, Bradford and Calderdale had had the most impact in reducing reoffending inrelation to offenders on probation caseloads.

Nationally, data in relation to offenders sentenced or released from custody in 2006(Ministry of Justice, 2008) shows that overall 36.1% of offenders on a community order re-offend within a 12-month period, compared to 46.5% of those sentenced to custody. Ofthose in custody 58.8% of those serving sentences of less than 12 months reoffended withinone year of release – the worst outcomes of any group. This group is more likely to havesimilar characteristics to those sentenced to a Community Order. The National Audit Officealso concluded that ‘community sentences can reduce reconvictions proportionately morethan a custodial sentence’ (NAO, 2007). There is no doubt that the multi-agency focus onreducing reoffending and the level of data being produced strengthens the focus on themaking a difference with each individual offender.

Increasing Confidence in Community SentencesBy early 2008 the prison population had climbed over 83,000 and there was a looming crisis.There was a growing awareness that a significant proportion of offenders serving prisonsentences of 12 months or less were there because of breach of their community orders, orbecause they had been recalled for failing for comply with their licence supervision on

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release from custody. This, coupled with evidence that offenders serving short prisonsentences were more likely to re-offend on release than if they had served community orders,meant that it made sense to focus:

(i) on reducing the level of breaches and recalls by increasing offenders’compliance and

(ii) on working to increase sentencers’ confidence in community sentences asappropriate for offenders on the cusp of custody.

This is being supported and encouraged by central government where there is increasedrecognition of the need to strengthen the ‘frontline’ probation officer’s scope and ability towork with offenders to reduce their risk of re-offending and breach. To this end, anadditional £40 million have been given to the Probation Service for 2008/9:

An important objective in the (National) Plan is to support more professionalism in theoperation of National Standards. A review of National Standards is being undertakento drive local flexibility, reduce bureaucracy, and strengthen the management ofcommunity sentences in order to build sentencer confidence… it is my intention thatrevised National Standards will support the exercise of professional judgement byfrontline staff (Roger Hill, May 2008).

The results have been impressive. The under-12 month prison population has been reducedby approximately 1000 (May 2009)1 over a 12 month period at a time when other parts ofthe prison population have continued to grow. Much of this is due to the impact of theICCS (Increasing Confidence in Community Sentences) initiative.

The aim to ‘build sentencer confidence’ reflects the growing awareness that many of thosewho ended up in custody as a result of breach or recall did so because of a technicality ratherthan because they represented a risk to the public. The process of raising the awareness ofsentencers necessarily entails a more nuanced approach to dealing with offenders, one thattakes fuller account of the differences between them. There is recognition that whilst it isimportant that offender management is properly undertaken, and that the rightinterventions are properly sequenced, it is also critical that this is not approached in amechanistic way. It is the offender managers who ‘go the extra mile’, who take full accountof the individual they are dealing with, who are the most effective. Responsivity (a good‘what works’ term) is critical – and it brings us back to diversity.

The performance culture is not going to go away. There has to be accountability andtransparency in the way that public money is spent. The National Standards can assist us todo that and targets can help us identify where best to allocate resources and where the efforts

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of our ‘frontline’ officers should be placed. The issue is whether we can devise targets andstandards that are meaningful and effective in what we are trying to achieve – reducingoffending. We have not got this right yet – there are still too many process driven targets whichhave led to an overly bureaucratic and regulated approach. Targets are useful; they are a way ofdemonstrating accountability. However, they can drive behaviour rather than guide it and, indoing so, can be rendered disproportionate and meaningless. Nationally there is a clearrecognition that we need to ‘loosen the strings’ and to focus more attention on offenderengagement – to motivating and listening to offenders and responding to their specific needs.

DIVERSITY AND PERFORMANCE – A RESEARCH VIEW

Professor Brid Featherstone, University of Bradford

AbstractThis article represents written extracts from the second keynote speech given at the ‘Diversityin a Performance Culture Conference’ at the University of Bradford on June 6th 2008. Theaddress, a personal view, was given in my capacity as Professor of Social Work at BradfordUniversity. The focus of my talk was on the growth and implications of the performanceculture identified within my personal experience and research, which, broadly speakingfocused on social work. However, the points I make could equally be applied to theprobation service and other agencies with responsibility for providing services across thepublic sector .

‘Diversity’ has become a concept that has acquired almost hallowed status in the languageand discourse of social care generally and social work in particular. But what does it actuallymean? Are those of us who use it regularly, those of us who practise according to itsprecepts, and those of us who write and proclaim upon it fully aware of its meaning and itsimplications? Like many similar concepts – empowerment for example – diversity is now souniversally embraced that it is relatively rare for it to be questioned, defined or interpretedafresh. Language is a powerful tool; it can open up and at the same time close downdiscussion about specific words and their use. Understanding is taken for granted, andsomehow we are all meant to know what we are all talking about. I think this is what hashappened to the concept of ‘diversity’.

Social work - in common with other public sector agencies – has specific policies and valuestatements that assert its recognition of and respect for diversity. For instance, enter anyprison in the country and you will see a laminated declaration of adherence to principles ofanti-discrimination and equal rights regardless of race, colour, religion, creed etc. Yet step

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into a busy magistrates’ court and take a look at who is arrested and processed through thecriminal justice system and who ends up in the prison system; you might be led to questionthe equality of treatment and rights meted out to certain sections of our society. How isrespect for diversity understood in the criminal justice system if this is happening?

If we are truly to understand the concept and its implications for practice, whether we areprison officers, police officers, probation officers or social workers, we must stop to think aboutwhat might be referred to as “the differences that make a difference”. For ‘diversity’ to meananything, it must take account of those distinctions – social, physical, conceptual or situational– that have a bearing upon how we are perceived and dealt with in the world. Somedifferences – for instance, hair colour, height (within ‘normal limits’), or musical taste – are notparticularly significant in these terms; others such as class, poverty/wealth, (dis)ability, ethnic orracial background can be highly significant and can lead to critical differences in the ways inwhich people are treated. It is incumbent upon us to recognise this and to reflect carefully onthe impact of such differential treatment – and then to work to reduce or eliminate the damagecaused to those in poverty, from the lower socio-economic classes, from particular ethnicbackgrounds. These are the differences that make a difference.

The Performance CultureIt is important to bear in mind that the performance culture is not specific to any one agencyor sector; nor is it a new phenomenon. Its most recent manifestation can perhaps be traced tothe 1980s/90s and to the strength of successive Conservative governments’ political dominanceand adherence to the principles of the market and competition. Ideas derived from the worldof business extended beyond business confines and came to enter public sector discourses sothat, early on, managers and practitioners in public services were introduced to concepts suchas ‘cost effectiveness’, ‘efficiency’, ‘value for money’ and the like. In addition, agencies such associal services, education, health and the probation service were required to demonstrate andaccount for what they did in a way that politicians, policy makers and tax payers couldunderstand and judge. Effectiveness was to be assessed by results which required evidence,usually measurable and clearly definable. League tables were introduced and, professionaloutcries notwithstanding, came to be one of the dominant arbiters of effectiveness andperformance applied to schools, universities, hospitals and other public sector institutions. Inanother development, professionals in the public sector such as the police, teachers and somegovernment departments were introduced to performance-related pay where individualperformance was to be measured against a pre-determined set of criteria.

In higher education, universities have not escaped the ‘target and performance culture’ asthey have become caught up in the general headlong rush for league table recognition. In-keeping with other elements of the educational sector, universities are largely governed byconsiderations of student numbers – recruitment, retention and, their concomitant, studentsatisfaction surveys.

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Professor Brid Featherstone

In social work, standardized procedures with regard to assessment, time-scales forundertaking and completing assessments, frequency of contact and systems for recordingthat contact, processes by which cases were reviewed, monitored, recorded and evaluated,were introduced in successive pieces of legislation and policy directives. All of these‘innovations’ aimed to render the social worker ‘fully accountable’ but often served to stymieresponsiveness, creativity and, ultimately, effectiveness as social workers struggled withincreasing amounts of paperwork and complex procedural formulae.

There are, of course, a number of positive aspects to all this; first is the opening up toscrutiny of what had hitherto been rather closed systems, making decisions and actions takenon behalf of the wider public (especially in the case of social work) transparent and subject toquestion. Such procedures and requirements can serve to give a clearer indication of whatcan be expected from the service, and a more accessible way of challenging when thingsdon’t fulfil those expectations.

On the other hand, of course, there are the drawbacks which those labouring to fulfil thedemands of the culture are all too aware of – the endless pursuit of ‘paper’, the over-emphasis on proving effectiveness at the expense of that very effectiveness, in short, adistortion of practice and of the very ethos underpinning the work. This ‘distortion’ can beillustrated perhaps by reference to a relatively recent piece of research, Lessons from a recentpiece of research (Featherstone, B. and White, S. (2006) in Ashley, C. et al Fathers Matter,London: FRG )

Research into the experiences and ‘treatment’ of fathers who are dealing with the break upof their families has shown how unjust and discriminatory social services are perceived to beby fathers. They experience social workers as blinkered and deaf to alternative points of view– alternative, that is, to the wishes, stories and beliefs of their ex partners. They perceivethat the state is inevitably and ineluctably on women’s side to the extent that they feel theyhave no rights and no voice – at least not one that will be listened to and heard.

‘They go by the book’ and ‘they do not listen to our point of view’ were frequent responsesto questions about fathers’ encounters with professionals; unfortunately, for the men, the‘book’ is not usually opened for them. Hence, from the point of view of many of the fatherswe researched, the services they are offered are inconsistent and unpredictable; goal postsappear to move and what is clear one day becomes obscure and impenetrable the next. Atthe same time, social workers and other professionals they encounter in the course of theirjourney through the system seem to start from the position that the best place for children iswith the mother and it is up to the father to argue against that position rather than beingoffered an equal hearing where the outcome is not judged in advance.

In the conclusion to our account of this research, we noted:

Professionals need to be able to engage with fathers’ versions of events in an open andexploratory way, i.e. to adopt a position of ‘respectful uncertainty’ and ‘not knowing’

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avoiding premature foreclosure and precipitous categorisations, as well as acknowledging thecomplex discursive terrain in which contemporary fatherhood is situated. Developing such amodel of education is a key task to emerge from this research .

This position seems to stand in direct opposition to the standardised procedures andmeasurable outcomes demanded by a performance culture.

How can we Make a Difference to People’s Lives?Notwithstanding the difficulties and protests that often accompany discussions within publicsector professions about the performance culture and all its ramifications for practice, wehave to accept that such criteria and procedures are with us and so have to be worked withrather than balked against. So the question is: how can we do this and maintain our beliefin and approach to working with those who are disadvantaged, different and decidedly inneed of help?

The first principle we should hold on to is adherence to what might be called ‘the 5 Rs’ –Rights, Recognition, Redistribution, Respect and Reliability. These precepts incorporatesocial work principles and values, and can be drawn upon to guide our contacts with serviceusers. Rights are perhaps self-evident in that all citizens, regardless of race, colour, creed,ability, gender, class, sexual orientation are entitled to the same basic human and socialrights. Social workers have a duty to foster and uphold those rights. But it is more thanthat; they also have a duty to recognise where those rights are or are in danger of beinginfringed, ignored, abused or openly trampled on – and to take steps to redistributeresources to avert the danger or redress the damage. This redistribution might involve‘simply’ directing attention to the unfairness or the inequality, or it might involve decisionsto concentrate resources in those areas where rights are being denied or abused. To do thisis to demonstrate respect for difference; to translate that respect into something meaningfulis to be consistent and reliable in one’s adherence to the principle of equality and fairness.

Universities that offer social work training must engage with issues of diversity and differencethroughout the teaching; rather than being an adjunct to the rest of social work training,these issues must run as a continuous thread or theme which informs the teaching andtherefore the students’ experience and learning of what social work is. In our view, socialwork is fundamentally concerned with the issue of diversity and in seeking to embrace andpromote diversity whilst ensuring that it is never used as an excuse for unequal orunfavourable treatment. It is a moot point whether the emergence of the performanceculture in recent years has contributed to or hindered that endeavour, but it is our view thatsocial workers – and society generally – cannot afford for it to be the latter.

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Professor Brid Featherstone

End Note1. During the week commencing 15 May 2009 there were 7635 prisoners serving sentences of under

12 months, a reduction of 1071 (12.3%) from the same time in the previous year

ReferencesHill, Roger (2008) Director of Probation – internal circular

Home Office (1992) National Standards for the Supervision of Offenders in the Community, London:Home Office.

Home Office (1995) National Standards for the Supervision of Offenders in the Community, London:Home Office.

McGuire, J. (ed.) (1995) What Works in Reducing Reoffending. Chichester: Wiley.

Merrington, S. and Stanley, S. ‘Effectiveness: Who Counts What?’ in Gelsthorpe, L. and Morgan, R.(ed.) (2007) Handbook of Probation. Devon: Willan

Ministry of Justice (2008) Re-offending of adults: Results from the 2006 cohort, England and Wales.Ministry of Justice Statistics Bulletin

NAO (2007) National Probation Service: The supervision of community orders in England and Wales.Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General. HC 203 Session 2007-2008.

Underdown, A. (1998) Strategies for Effective Offender Supervision, Report of the HMIP WhatWorks Project. London: Home Office

West Yorkshire Probation (2008) Review of Research on the Effectiveness of Sentencing, ResearchBriefing

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ORGANIZATIONAL EXPERIENCES OFPERFORMANCE TARGETING: POLICE, PRISONS & PROBATION

Dr Clare Beckett, Department of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Bradford 1

AbstractPerformance targeting has developed differently in the three key criminal justice agencies,police, prison and probation. The differences have, arguably, reflected both the character ofthe organisation and the specific history of the agency. Exploration of a performance culture,therefore, should reflect the commonalities and differences in the three arms of provision.

In this article representatives of police, prison and probation present their own accounts ofcentral performance issues (These accounts were made available as workshops during theconference). I, as author, have then brought these accounts together in order to provideinterrogation of common, or uncommon, factors that can shed light on the central question:Is performance targeting beneficial or otherwise in meeting the needs of a diverse user group?

IntroductionAt the Diversity in a Performance Culture Conference in June 2008, representatives fromthe three central criminal justice agencies presented workshop papers on their respectiveorganization’s approach to and experience of working with performance targets. Eachworkshop was held twice with the intention of including as many delegates to the conferenceas possible, and discussion drew on their wide-ranging experiences to develop a critique ofthe aims and value of performance targets within the criminal justice system.

It was clear from the presentations that different agencies held some similar but also someradically dissimilar views. Interpretations of the concept of ‘performance’ differed not onlybetween the agencies but also across time within a single agency. This is not new: as early as1992 the Institute of Personnel Managements research analysis indicated that ‘oneorganisation’s appraisal system was another’s performance management system’ (p.137).Often the concepts behind different approaches are implicit. As a result, it can be assumedthat other agencies that use the same terms are essentially doing and focusing on the samethings when the whole picture is more diverse. Such assumptions of uniformity and

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Organizational Experiences of Performance Targeting: Police, Prisons & Probation

synchronicity can create difficulties, the most obvious being in the field of inter-agencyworking which, in itself, can be one of the performance targets set within each agency.Problems arise when each of the agencies involved takes a different approach to performancemanagement. Nash (1998) makes this point when comparing the police and prison services:both work to an ethos of managing risk and protecting the public, but both approach theday-to-day exercise or implementation of that ethos differently. While commentators haveargued that management of agency performance through the use of targets and appraisal isnow a fact of life (Loveday: 1999, Flynn: 1997, Carter: 1995, Napo: 1989) the extent towhich they have been embraced and understood on both an organisational and a personallevel varies. Nor is it simply a difference in terms of practice; debate and dispute arises overthe value of target setting even before the arguments about how it should be done.

However, performance targets are a familiar part of the landscape of the criminal justice system.The intention of the conference was twofold: to explore implications of performance targeting inthe field of diversity, and to explore similarities and differences between different agencies intheir performance culture. It could be expected that these three services would share someexperiences, even if Loveday’s (1999:353) picture of the criminal justice system as a ‘fractious,often mutually contradictory melange of competing interests’ is accepted. The workshop leaders,representing both their own experience and their agencies’ approach to an issue of practice anddiversity, have contributed their own analysis. The aim of this paper is to elucidate thedifferences as well as the similarities in approach and practice between the three representedagencies as they emerged during the conference workshops, and to locate the argumentsidentified in a wider theoretical arena. As author I begin by presenting the leaders’ ownaccounts of the material presented. The next section synthesizes and develops the discussionsthat took place, incorporating the contributions and ideas put forward by the Trainee ProbationOfficers, academics and criminal justice practitioners who attended the workshops. Theconclusion represents my own analysis of the arguments as presented ‘on the day’.

Workshop Leaders’ AccountsThe first workshop account reflects the position of the police services, which has been in theforefront of change around diversity since the murder of Stephen Lawrence in April 1993.The publication of the Macpherson report (1999) into the killing can be seen as a definingmoment in race relations within the police force, offering a critical view of policing andintroducing the concept of institutional racism. Arguably, this compelled police forces tochange quickly. The second account is from the prison service, and reflects reaction tospecific targets following a racist murder. The third account is from the probation service,who are perhaps in privileged position because they have not, or have not yet, been requiredto react to a specific incident.

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Managing Diversity in the South Yorkshire Police Force2

The Organisational Context South Yorkshire Police is an organisation of almost six thousand people, with responsibilityfor policing the conurbations of Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley. Together,these communities amount to a population of a million and a quarter people. The workforceis divided into police officers (office holders) and employed contracted workers, or policestaff, who in various ways support and augment the activities of the police officers, forexample as administrators, call handlers or detention officers. In recent decades theproportion of police staff in all forces including South Yorkshire has increased, reflecting anongoing trend towards ‘civilianisation’ of roles traditionally carried out by police officers, butnot necessarily requiring the powers or presence of warranted and expensive constables.

The stated legislative purpose of a police force is to protect the lives and property of thepopulation it serves, to prevent and detect crime and preserve the peace. The effectiveness ofthe police service and how it should be measured is something about which commentatorscontinue to disagree, partly because, despite the stated purpose of the service, itsperformance is of interest to observers from a vast range of disciplines.

Police services generally tend to use ‘diversity’ as an umbrella term to capture all associatedissues, such as equality of opportunity, community relations, human rights and the inclusionagenda. It is important to recognise that services address diversity as functions of bothservice provision and workforce management, with a force’s own workforce among thepopulations to be served. Police forces are public authorities, and so are subject to therequirements of the three statutory equality duties, race, disability and gender. There is asignificant body of legislation by which police forces must abide in carrying out theirpurpose, including that governing the exercise of police powers, codes of conduct anddemanding that forces work in partnership with other agencies towards shared goals.

There are forty-three police forces in England and Wales, and no single model of how tomanage diversity or measure performance. This is reflected in differences in placing theirdiversity practitioners. Many forces place their diversity practitioners either within theHuman Resources department, and thus emphasise the inward-looking aspects of the field,or in the Community Affairs department, in which case police relations with the populationis the main focus. A smaller number of forces seek to balance their attention across thewhole field of diversity by placing practitioners in departments with responsibilities forcorporate development, business change or performance management.

South Yorkshire Police is unusual in that it places its diversity practitioners in its ProfessionalStandards department. This department, as the name suggests, has responsibility forpromoting standards of behaviour, recording and investigating police complaints andinternal grievances, vetting staff and protecting the integrity of police information. To thosewho note the link with misbehaviour this may seem a strange marriage, and indeed the

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accusation could be made that this tends to present diversity in a negative light. Theargument offered by critics is that diversity should be associated with the highest standardsof police conduct, and not with complaints and misconduct. The same argument actuallyhelps to justify this setting of the diversity function once it becomes clear that, in 1999,police forces were driven by new regulations to dispense with the old ‘Complaints andDiscipline’ departments, seen as reactive and mistrusted by the workforce, in favour of amove to departments that would take a more positive, proactive stance, encouraging‘Professional Standards’ of behaviour.

PerformanceThe dilemma of whose priorities to reflect in managing police performance is resolved tosome degree by the Home Office approach, which is to set, annually, a raft of ‘strategicpolicing priorities’ following public consultation. In 2008, the Home Office delivered,among its requirements of the police service, an overarching requirement to improve publicconfidence and trust. Further areas of focus include reducing crime and improvingeffectiveness through working in partnership with other agencies.

A number of regulatory bodies exist to inspect, guide or otherwise hold police forces toaccount for their performance in fulfilling these requirements. These bodies include a PoliceAuthority for each force, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, the Independent PoliceComplaints Commission, the National Police Improvement Agency and the Association ofChief Police Officers; each body has different areas of responsibility for the oversight andregulation of the police. It could be argued that the police are one of the most regulated andcontrolled agencies we have in this country. The implications of all these ‘overseers’ forperformance and targets is that it is conceivable that occasionally the requirements andexpectations of the police will be confusing if not contradictory, such that individual policeofficers will not always be clear what targets they are or should be aiming for.

Service ReactionsThe opening approach taken with workshops was to draw a timeline of some of the criticalevents that have affected the relationship of police performance with diversity andcommunity relations:

• 1981 – The public unrest in Brixton, Handsworth, Toxteth and other inner city areas,giving rise to the Scarman Report of the same year and the critical decision of LordScarman not to accuse the police of service-wide racism.

• 1993 – The murder of Stephen Lawrence and the inquiry, led by Sir WilliamMacpherson, into the police investigation that followed.

• 1999 – The publication of the Macpherson report, and the effect of popular focus on itsfinding that the Metropolitan Police Service was ‘institutionally racist’.

• 2000-2002 – The general and specific duties of the Race Equality Duty upon publicauthorities, as created by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.

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• 2003 – The screening of the BBC documentary, ‘The Secret Policeman’ in which ajournalist, posing as a police recruit at a northern police training establishment,uncovered racial hatred among recruits, allowed to flourish covertly and going seeminglyunchallenged by trainers and police managers.

• 2003 – The investigation of the police service by the Commission for Racial Equality,and its findings that diversity remained either remarkably absent from theconsiderations of the police service in many of its functions, or where it wasencountered officers regarded it as a cause for fear and regarded themselves as ill-prepared to address it.

• 2005-2007 – The expansion of equality duties into the dimensions of disability andgender, as created by the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and the Equality Act 2006.

• 2008 – The launch of a national performance framework entitled, ‘Assessments ofPolicing and Community Safety’. The framework is comprised of scores of numericalperformance targets, including just two that are specific to the management of diversity,one addressing the proportion of women among police officers, the other theproportion of black and minority officers among police recruits.

• Once provided with introductory information about the context, delegates were able tocompare the police experience with their own, and to make observations. A number ofareas of commonality were exposed. Perceptions associated with the maxim that ‘whatgets measured gets done’ were offered in both workshops, along with misgivings aboutthe exclusively quantitative nature of many performance measures. This argument wasillustrated by the problematic nature of police stop and search powers, especially withregard to the consequences of using the number of stops carried out by each officer as aperformance measure. There was wide agreement that this could exacerbate the problemof disproportionate stops of young black males.

Developing Key Performance Target for Race Equality inService Delivery in the Prison Service3

The Organisational ContextThe recognition of the racist nature of the murder of Zahid Mubarek in Feltham YoungOffender Institution in March 2000 was a catalyst for a sustained effort to tackle racismwithin the Prison Service. The murder, together with negative reports on a number ofprisons and a successful tribunal case brought by a Black prison officer, prompted theCommission for Racial Equality (CRE) to launch an investigation into race relations in thePrison Service. The outcome was a report (CRE 2003), which concluded that the PrisonService was in breach of its legal obligations and found failure in fourteen areas, ranging asbroadly as ‘the general atmosphere in prisons’ and ‘the treatment of prisoners’, as well asfocusing on specific areas such as the operation of incentive and earned privilege schemesand the handling of race complaints from prisoners. Criticism centred not on policies buton practices within prison establishments and in particular on the use of discretion by

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prison staff, which was found frequently to impact negatively on black and minority ethnicprisoners.

More recently HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) has published a thematic report on racerelations in prisons. The title – ‘Parallel Worlds’ – neatly summarises its central finding that“there is no shared understanding of race issues within prisons: instead, there are a series ofparallel worlds inhabited by different groups of staff and prisoners, with widely divergentviews and experiences” (HMIP 2005, p2). The report finds that governors and white racerelations liaison officers have the most positive ‘management’ view, believing that whilstthere may be more that can be done, regimes operate in a broadly fair way. By contrast,minority ethnic staff have less positive views of what is being achieved, and visible minorityprisoners have the most negative views of all, reporting poorer experiences across each of thefour dimensions of prison life measured by the Inspectorate’s test of a healthy prison.

In 2003 the Prison Service and CRE published ‘Implementing Race Equality in Prisons: ashared agenda for change’ (HMPS & CRE 2003), setting out the five year action plan thatthey had agreed to address the failures that had been identified. During those five years thisplan has grown as actions on the areas for development identified in the HMIP thematicreport and the relevant recommendations of the Zahid Mubarek Inquiry have been added.By 2008 there were over 100 high level ‘actions’ required by the plan. Its importance isshown by the fact that it was managed by a programme board chaired by the Director ofFinance, reporting quarterly to the Prison Service Management Board and three times a yearto a Scrutiny Panel co-chaired by the Prisons Minister and a CRE commissioner.

Amongst the actions in the plan was the development and implementation of a keyperformance target (KPT) on race equality.

PerformanceLike the rest of the public sector, the Prison Service has become increasingly focused onperformance management. Liebling and Arnold (2004:57-70) trace in detail the earlydevelopment of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the Prison Service from the eightidentified in their first year, 1994-5 to the sixteen set in 2002-3.

During this period KPIs have been supplemented by the introduction of Key PerformanceTargets (KPTs), which are applied to individual prisons. These have also proliferated, andthere are now more than fifty such targets for each prison. Since 2001 they have been used aspart of a ‘weighted scorecard’ system to compare the performance of different prisons. TheKPTs are weighted for different types of prison, and results combined to give an overallrating for the prison. These can then be directly compared and used as managementinformation, facilitating what Liebling and Arnold call “senior management control from adistance” (2004: 65).

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Sinclair reports that this has been seen as a positive development by managers and staff inprisons. He argues that KPIs “for the first time gave staff confidence that they knew whatthey were being asked to deliver” (2002: 4), and quotes staff as saying that they “care abouthow my prison is doing on those charts” (2002: 57). However, they have not been universallywelcomed. Criticism from practitioners has been articulated by Wagstaffe (2002) who notesthe low reliability of many performance indicators, together with the fact that many of themdo not measure the ‘health’ of the institution. He points to the extent of game-playing, ormanaging for the target, the perverse incentives that targets can bring, and the emphasis thatthey place on quantity rather than quality. This view is shared by the Chief Inspector ofPrisons who has condemned them for having created “a virtual prison system” (NewStatesman 2002), and a similarly critical position has long been evident in the academicliterature, for example Garland argues that performance indicators tend to focus on “whatthe organisation does, rather than what it achieves” (Garland 1996:458). In this sense, thereis a very real danger that effort shifts from improving performance to what Clarke (2004)calls ‘the performance of performance’ or putting on a show by manipulating the figuresrather than achieving a real change in outcomes.

Liebling and Arnold found that “it seemed possible for a prison to practise violence andabuse of prisoners and yet be meeting its performance targets” (2004:144), and areconcerned that “the search for ‘what matters’ in prison has been overshadowed by a narrowfocus on what can be easily measured” (2004:132). Against this background it was veryimportant for the organisation to think hard about what the race equality KPT should be:what does it mean to be performing well on race equality, and how can it be measured?

It was quickly apparent that no single measure could capture performance adequately, andthat a combination of a number of elements would be required. In particular because theCRE criticism focused on practice rather than policy, it would be important to move beyondprocess measures to look at outcomes for prisoners, and in the light of the findings of‘Parallel Worlds’ described above, to build in a measure of prisoner perceptions.

The basket of measures that was devised therefore included:

Outputs – does the prison have processes in place to manage race issues? – This is an auditmeasure to check that processes are in place and organisational risk is effectively managed.The Output score contributes 40% to the final score.

Outcomes – are prisoners from different racial groups treated fairly? This resulted in anethnic monitoring measure of key functions and policies, particularly those identified by theCRE as failure areas. This is scored using specially-developed range-setting software tool,known as SMART, which contributes 15% to the final measure.

Perceptions – do people from different racial groups believe that they receive fair treatment?This is answered through a survey measuring the quality of life in prison (30%) and visitor

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survey measures (15%). These measures are scored to reflect the difference between resultsfor different racial groups, as well as overall scores.

The final KPT for each prison produces a percentage score by aggregating these measures.

Service Reactions The KPT was implemented nationally in 2006-07 and results during the first two years ofoperation have been very pleasing. The target was initially set at 70%. In April 2006, 61(out of 127) prisons achieved the target. By March 2008, 92 prisons achieved the target. Theaverage score improved from 65.4% in April 2006 to 74.6% in March 2008. Improvementwas achieved on all elements. The biggest change was in the audit score, but improvementswere also seen in outcomes and perceptions measures.

From these results it is clear that the KPT has caused local management to focus on raceequality issues to a degree that was not always achieved in the past. In addition to this,prisoners and visitors have been made more aware that their perceptions are important tothe Service. Target setting has generated useful management information that is being usedto ensure that attention is focused where it is needed.

However, it has also been found in practice that the complexity of the measure means that itis not well understood across the Service. Moreover, some of the issues of game-playing andperverse incentives identified above have not been avoided. For instance there was initiallyexcessive focus on the audit measure, with some prisons conducting repeated self-auditssimply to improve scores. This has since been eliminated by improving the audit measureand centralising responsibility for conducting audits. The outcome measure initially createdsome perverse incentives, with manipulation to ensure high scoring ethnic monitoringresults being possible, and sometimes leading managers to take action that is not inaccordance with equal opportunities principles (for instance operating quotas to ensure thatthe population on a particular wing remained in the scoring range). The measure has beenrefined to eradicate these problems.

There are also issues with the perception measures. One centres on the frequency ofmeasurement: resources do not allow surveys to be conducted more frequently thanannually, and in the case of the large survey measuring the quality of life in prison every twoyears, and this makes this part of the measure rather static and the incentive for managers toseek to improve less immediate. Another problem lies with the surveys themselves. Whilstthe instrument is generally held in high regard, there are parts of the prison estate (forinstance high security prisons) where the usefulness of the results is being questioned. AtWakefield, for example, more detailed research on the effectiveness of the establishmentdiversity strategy is under way, using an appreciative inquiry method4. Moreover in somesmaller prisons it can be difficult to find sufficient numbers of minority ethnic respondentsto produce a valid result. Also, the questionnaire initially used for the visitor survey was verylimited in scope. This is being addressed, but a problem remains in administering it as

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many visitors are reluctant to complete the survey. There are particular problems at prisons(e.g. open prisons) where visits are less frequent.

The KPT is widely seen to be a success, and has been praised by the Minister and the CRECommissioner at the Scrutiny Panel described above. It has produced some realimprovement in performance across all measures. However, alongside real improvement, ithas not always avoided some of the risks described, and it has been responsible also in somecases for the performance of performance improvement. More recently it has been refined toencourage further real improvement and to eliminate the more obvious opportunities formanipulation.

On a broader level the Race Review report (REAG 2008) finds that the actions taken sincethe CRE investigation, including the implementation of the KPT, have brought realimprovement. However whilst this series of procedural changes has been very positive, theexperiences of BME prisoners are unlikely to have been transformed. Further work willtherefore be necessary to build on these foundations, with a renewed focus on culturalchange being required to achieve this.

Improving Performance in Recognising and ChallengingHate Crime in the Probation Service5

The Organisational ContextThe work shop was run by a practitioner with responsibility to oversee the Hate CrimeModule throughout the super-districts (Wakefield/Kirklees, Bradford/Calderdale Leeds).

West Yorkshire Probation (WYP) is one of 42 probation areas. Currently and over the lasttwo years some of these areas have taken Trust Status. West Yorkshire is hoping to achievetrust status during 2009. Probation areas are part of the National Offender ManagementService (NOMS) and therefore part of the Ministry of Justice. The Criminal Justice Act 2003introduced a new system of community orders. These allowed particular requirements to beattached to target specific types of offending. The more requirements, the more onerous thesentence became. The probation service role includes supervising offenders on release fromcustody, carrying out supervision of offenders subject to a Community Order with thevarious requirements attached, or working with victims of crimes. One of the requirementsthat could be attached to a community order was ‘Specified Activity’. This enabled the WYPto look at existing work and to design and structure interventions that could be undertakenby offenders as specified activities.

PerformanceBefore the Criminal Justice Act 2003 WYP ran a programme intended for racially motivatedoffenders. The development and continued use of the programme was carried out by a smallnumber of Probation Services Officers within the service. Courts or case managers could

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suggest that an offender undertook this intervention but could not order it. The work wasnot placed in the programmes unit and it could be argued that the organisation took alackadaisical approach to it. Even though offenders were committing racist attacks or abuse,the Racially Motivated Offending Programme was little utilised or apparently ‘owned’ by theorganisation.

In 2005/6 the organisation asked a single staff member to look at the potential fordeveloping the RMO programme to target hate crime. Initially a small group of staff becameinterested, but this group quickly dwindled due to other pressures including workloads andsickness. In the end two members of staff worked on the module. Workload relief was givento one staff member, and the work became one of her main tasks. The module waspainstakingly written over 12 months, taken through a consultancy process with tutors andexternal agencies, and approved for delivery within the WYP area. It became available as aspecified activity from June 2008. At the time of the conference it was a very new initiative.

The Hate Crime Module is based on the belief that people can change. It is designed topresent offenders with alternative ways of understanding and responding to ‘difference’. Themodule is developed using ideas and techniques from Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT).Some of the sessions are CBT based and include looking at issues around where our beliefscome from, how we can recognise anger, and how to respond to anger. The module isdesigned to look at the seven areas of diversity identified in the Equality Act 20066 and tothis end there is specific work focusing on each group. Each session is recorded by the tutorand then is retained for video monitoring purposes. This is a quality assurance process butalso gives the treatment manager and the tutors the ability to address any issues and toreflect on the work that is taking place with the offender. The module is delivered as aspecified activity and not an accredited programme, so this process had to be developed andincluded rather than being standard.

An offender could be sentenced by a court or given a licence condition that requiredcompletion of the Hate Crime module. The module was located in the newly created‘Interventions directorate’, which meant that it had an organisational home and was anorganisational responsibility. However, being given a place did not necessarily mean that theorganisation took ownership of the module. Other programmes within interventions wereaccredited, and subject to performance targets set by NOMS and the Ministry of Justice.Achieving completion targets in these programmes attracted revenue. Specified activitieswere not accredited or the subject of external targets. They did not generate income. As ‘inhouse’ initiatives they were included in the service business plan, but achieving completionsdid not carry the same weight as completions in accredited programmes. This in its turnaffected the enthusiasm for hate crime provision among those overseeing interventions. In aperformance culture that prioritises targets and uses cash rewards, this inevitably led to lessresources being placed in the area. The reality was that offenders could be waiting for andbenefit from the provision, but tutors might be required elsewhere.

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Service ReactionsIn a performance culture the emphasis can be on income generation. Where incomegeneration is prioritised, non income bearing targets often become sidelined. The focusbecomes ‘what can we not do?’ At the current time, the probation service has not beenimplicated in a major hate motivated crime, unlike the police and the prison service.Although around the country and in West Yorkshire Hate Crime and the Hate Crimeagenda is a centre for local and community activity, probation service provision is notforegrounded. I would argue that this is primarily because it is not a targeted and thereforelucrative initiative. This could lead to the conclusion that resources are not following risk.

The module is a valuable and currently under-utilised piece of work that can be used withoffenders who are convicted of Hate Crime. While it will not change the behaviour of everyoffender it can and has worked with offenders who have committed racist and homophobiccrimes. Responsibility for under utilisation lies in the lack of political will to prioritise thisprogramme even though it is not cash linked. In an era of rising far right politics andincreasing hate crime, this is short sighted.

DiscussionThese three accounts represent different ‘moments’ in a performance culture. In the police,the imposition of targets from above is accepted, if unwillingly. The discussion interrogatesthe usefulness of those targets and the implications of targeting but does not question thepresence of a performance culture. The prison service describes a real attempt to create amethod that avoids the quantitative pitfall of so much targeting. The probation serviceaccount highlights potential consequences of not having a performance target in aperformance culture. Although all three agencies work in the same field, with offenders andin the criminal justice arena, they do not use the same performance targets and theperformance targets used are not transparent between agencies. There is commonalitybetween the accounts, however. Common themes include implications for professionalism,management, resources, and equal treatment for service users.

There is a clear statement of difficulty in standardising understanding and approachthroughout all the personnel in any one agency. Historically, this issue might have beendescribed as one of ensuring professional standards from all personnel, now it is more likelyto be couched in the language of compliance and successful target meeting. This is a culturalshift resulting from the political and ideological changes in the wider context brought aboutby increasing privatisation and individualisation of public services charted by manycommentators. (Particularly relevant here is the account of change in the probation servicegiven by May: (1991a+b), and by May and Buck (1998) in relation to social services.) It is notthe intention of this article to comment on political change, but it cannot be ignored. Theboundaries of professionalism have shifted so that the understanding necessary to occupy aprofessional role is related to completion of specific performance targets rather than to a setof general attributes. Newman and Nuttley (2003) describe changes in the professionalboundaries that must result from a ‘what works’ agenda: their argument is specificallyrelevant here, where professional judgement is overshadowed by organisational

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practice. Of course, professionals have never been and arguably should never beunquestionably autonomous: (Illich et al, 1997; Malign, 2000) and there will be space forjudgement inside and outside a performance culture. However, Loveday’s (1999:352)argument, that a performance culture will and is intended to curb professional autonomyand ‘reduce professional discretion while increasing managerial power’ is reflected in theexperiences described. In particular, comments in the prison service workshop see ‘managingat a distance’ as a way of explaining the power and control introduced by a performanceculture.

Another example of the implications of a culture that shifts responsibility for target settingfrom the individual to the agency is reflected throughout the workshop reports as ‘what getsmeasured gets done’. The problem with setting a target that can be measured, even one ascarefully calibrated as the prison target reflected here, is that measurement is quantitative.The more elusive parts of a professional role are not open to counting. There is a welldocumented (Buchanan & Millar, 1997; Chui and Nellis, 2003; Lancaster, 2003 amongothers) history to this change from professional responsibility to organisational responsibilityin the probation service, summed up as from ‘advise, assist, befriend’ to the currentconcentration on prevention of risk. The prison service and the police force do not show asimilar trajectory, or at least not in these workshops, although it can be argued, as Senior,Crower- Dowey and Long (2007) do, that a similar changes have been brought on in allcriminal justice agencies through a modernisation agenda (Newman and Clarke: 2009 makea similar point). It is easy to link a quantitative measure that is based in organisational ratherthan personal values with a resource reward. The result is shown in this probation examplewhere work that is in the public interest and on the community agenda does not attractsupport. Here, the problem seems to be more deep rooted than one of creating ‘good’targets. In the prison example the experience of prisoners did not necessarily change despitecareful targeting. In the probation example, participants felt that resources were followingpre-set targets and not reflecting a changing ‘risk’ agenda. The police workshop raised anexample of counting the numbers of staff appraisals completed, but not the quality or impactof those appraisals. The sum of these examples is an indictment of current performancepractice, which can be seen as an indictment of performance targets per se.

There is a wider issue in a policy context that has foregrounded race followed by gender anddisability provision. Race equality has been a priority because it has been the agenda thatforced change on the prison and police services, and also actions taken to ensure racialequality are frequently visible and measurable. Equality for, for example, non–heterosexualpeople is not always visible. As Sedgwick (2007) argues, race is usually a characteristic thatcan be identified through external measures: recognition of non-heterosexual orientationrelies on the action of the non-heterosexual individual. To some extent foregrounding race isan inevitable result of the events in the prison service and the police, and may not be anissue in the same way in the probation service. However, research in probation (Beckett,2009) suggests that responses to sexuality, sexual orientation and potentially transgenderedissues are not open to discussion in the same way that race has been. There are certainlytargets in all services to counter discriminatory practice, but as Mellors argues elsewhere inthis journal the ways in which police officers’ reactions, values and understanding alter target

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scores can be critical. Compliance from staff is likely to depend not only on their belief (orotherwise) in the usefulness of targets, but also on their understanding or practices inrelation to ‘diversity’. There is a wider problem indicated here. Unless a work force isconvinced that a target and the steps to meet it are worthwhile, completion will alwaysbecome a matter of presenting evidence rather than of creating change. As Bhui (2003) saysworking for equality is a ‘hearts and minds’ project: it requires openness to change inpractice and attitude. It can be argued that targeting performance will always stand in theway of creating change because, by their nature, targets concentrate on the parts of aninteraction, not on the whole and similarly concentrate on an evidenced diversity ratherthan a general anti–oppressive agenda.

‘What gets measured gets done’ has specific resonance where performance targets are linkedto resources. In the prison example, the importance of a target was explicitly signalledthrough placement with the finance director. In the probation example lack of resource-giving targets was seen as creating low priority for a particular initiative. The comment thatresources should follow risk could apply to all three services. The issue, though, is about whois measuring and therefore ‘seeing’ performance. The three services are subject to publicscrutiny to varying degrees. Visible indicators allow public accountability, and thereforefollow publicised issues. For example, the police force is explicitly committed to diversity inrecruitment. Will this become a measured end in itself, and the quality and attitudes ofpolice recruited alter? Does being part of a diverse group immediately fit an individual towork with diversity? And specifically in the police setting, how would the public perceptionalter if the police service was visibly more diverse? These questions still need to be addressed.

ConclusionThis conference was intended to offer practitioners a forum to explore performance issues,so perhaps the overall sense of frustration is not surprising. Identification of performancetargets as a way of limiting professional autonomy is not new and nor are critical connectionsmade between quantitative measures and qualitative practice, or concern over allocation ofscant resources. More worrying is the sense that, in the field of diversity, currentperformance practice allows a hierarchy of equality action to develop. Actions driven byvisible markers, like race and ethnicity, take priority. This may, of course, change withcurrent governmental moves to introduce ‘single equality’ legislation and the evidencepresented here dates from 2008, but nevertheless there is clear indication that countingactions leads to prioritising visibility.

Perhaps the question underlying the discussion is a more fundamental one. Are thecriticisms of the current position a result of practice, or are they a fault of performancetargeting per se? Should there be a total overhaul of targets, or an overhaul of target setting?Perhaps the most important question is what would happen without some form of targeting?The use of quantitative measures that follow resources rather than risk and concentrate onevidenced action rather than attitudinal change seems to bring a damning indictment. Onthe other hand, measures that lift the status of what is done (identified in the prison serviceworkshop), provide management at a distance and raise the profile of minority groupscannot all be bad, surely. Professional autonomy is not always a holy grail of good practice,


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and relies for success on an educated and thoughtful practitioner work force with goodinformation and communication networks. This is an expensive commodity. Even then,service delivery requires some measure of accountability. It is unlikely, in the currentincreasingly right wing and individualised political climate of the United Kingdom andEuropean Union, that this debate will be revisited in principle. Even so, target setters needto show professional accountability. It is absolutely clear that in the examples given, targetsetting and a performance culture is not resulting in attitudinal change in service delivery.

End Notes1. I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the work shop leaders from Police, prison and

probation who both made this article possible, and contributed their own accounts and otherhelpful suggestions on previous drafts.

2. This workshop was delivered by Simon R. Mellors (T/Chief Inspector) Force Diversity ManagerSouth Yorkshire Police, who also provided the written account.

3. This workshop was delivered by Chris Barnett-Page, Race and Equalities Action Group, NationalOffender Management Service HQ and Chris Robinson, HMP Wakefield, who also provided thewritten account.

4. This research is being undertaken by Malcolm Cowburn (Sheffield Hallam University) andVictoria Lavis (University of Bradford) and is funded by the Economic & Social Research Council(ESRC). Appreciative inquiry into the Diversity Strategy of HMP Wakefield. Award number RES-000-22-3441

5. This workshop was delivered by Elizabeth Wrighton, Former Practice Manager, West YorkshireProbation, who also provided the written account.

6. (a) age,

(b) disability,

(c) gender,

(d) proposed, commenced or completed reassignment of gender (within the meaning given bysection 82(1) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (c. 65)),

(e) race,

(f) religion or belief, and

(g) Sexual orientation.

ReferencesBeckett, C. (2009) ‘Addressing Sexuality and Sexual Orientation in Supervision Relationships’

Probation Journal- The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice- forthcoming. Bhui, H.S. (2003) ‘Deconstructing Diversity’ in Probation Journal- The Journal of Community and

Criminal Justice Vol. 50:3 September Buchanan, J. & Millar (1997) 'Reclaiming a social work identity', Probation Journal 44 (1)Carter, N: Klein, R: Day, P. (1995) ‘How Organisation Measures Success: The use of performance

indicators in government’, Routledge: LondonChui, W. H. and Nellis, M. (2003) ‘Moving Probation Forward’ Harlow: Pearson LongmanClarke, J. (2004) Changing Welfare, Changing States: new directions in social policy, London, SageCommission for Racial Equality (2003) ‘Racial Equality in Prisons: Part 2 of a formal investigation by

the CRE into HM Prison Service of England and Wales’, London, The Stationery Office

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Flynn, N. (1997) (3rd. Edition) Public Sector Management Prentice hall, Harvester Wheatsheaf:London

Garland, D. (1996) ‘The limits of the sovereign state: strategies of crime control in contemporarysociety’, British Journal of Criminology, 36:445-471

Greenwood, E (1957) ‘The Elements of Professionalization’ in Social Work (US) Vol 2 No3 pp94-200HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2005) ‘Parallel Worlds: a thematic review of race relations in prisons’,

London, Home OfficeHM Prison Service and Commission for Racial Equality (2003) ‘Implementing Race Equality in

Prisons – a shared agenda for change’Illich, I: Zola, K: McKnight, J: Caplan, J: Shaiken, H. (1977) ‘Disabling Professions’ New York,

London: Marion BoyarsInstitute of Personnel Management (1992) ‘Performance Management in the UK- An Analysis of the

Issues’ Institute of Personnel Management: UKKeith, B. (2006) Report of the Zahid Mubarek Inquiry, HC1082-I, London: The Stationery OfficeLancaster, E. (2003) 'Probation values - where are we now?' British Journal of Community Justice 2(2),

25-40.Liebling, A. assisted by Arnold, H. (2004) Prisons and their Moral Performance: a study of values,

quality and prison life, Oxford, Clarendon PressLoveday Barry (1999) The Impact of Performance Culture on Criminal Justice Agencies in England

and Wales International Journal of the Sociology of Law 27, 35-377 Malign, Nigel (2000) Professionalism, Boundaries and the Workplace’ London, New York: RoutledgeMay, T. (1991a) Probation: Politics, Policy and Practice. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. May, T. (1991b) 'Under Siege: The Probation Service in a Changing Environment'. In R. Reiner and

M. Cross (editors) Beyond Law and Order: Criminal Justice Policy and Politics into the 1990s.London: Macmillan.

May, T. and Buck, M (1998) 'Power, Professionalism and Organisational Transformation' SociologicalResearch Online, vol. 3, no. 2, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/socresonline/3/2/5.html

Macpherson, Sir W. (1999) ‘The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – Report of an enquiry by Sir WilliamMacpherson of Clune’ The Stationary Office: London

Napo (1989) ‘Performance Indicators, Accountability and Improved Service Probation Journal 36: 65,Nash, Mike (1998) ‘Managing risk - achieving protection? The police and probation agendas’ The

International Journal of Public Sector Management. Bradford: Vol. 11, Iss. 4; pg. 252New Statesman (2002) ‘The chief inspector of prisons fears that squalid conditions and overcrowding

breach the human rights of some inmates’, New Statesman, 15/718: 783-91Newman, J. & Clarke, J. (2009) Politics, Public and Power: Remaking the Public in Public Services,

London: Sage PublicationsNewman, J: Nuttley, S. (2003) ‘Transforming the Probation Service: What works, Organisational

Change and Professional Identity’ Policy and Politics vol.31:4 p.547Race and Equalities Action Group (2008) ‘Race Review 2008: Implementing race equality in prisons –

five years on’ Sedgwick, E. K. (2nd. Revised edition) (2007) ‘Epistemology of the Closet’ University of California

Press: CaliforniaSenior, P., Crowther-Dowey, C. & Long, M. (2007) Understanding Modernisation in Criminal Justice,

Maidenhead: Open University PressSinclair, A. (2002) ‘A study of how and the extent to which KPIs drive performance in the Prison

Service’, unpublished M.St. thesis, University of CambridgeWagstaffe, S. (2002) ‘There is a measure in all things’, Prison Service Journal,

no 141, pp2-431


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‘DEFINING AND RECOGNISING ARENOT THE SAME’: CHALLENGES TOTACKLING HATE CRIME IN APERFORMANCE CULTURE

Simon R Mellors, Force Diversity Manager, South Yorkshire Police

AbstractHate Crime can be defined as that section of criminal behaviour that is motivated by thevictim’s membership or perceived membership of a particular group. Victims are commonlytargeted on the basis of their ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, faith or adisability. In some instances legislation exists to prohibit it, for example the specific offenceof ‘Inciting Racial Hatred’. In other cases, where hatred is contributory in the commission ofa more generic offence, for example a criminal assault, it is regarded as an aggravating factor,and is thus accorded greater priority in its investigation. A successful prosecution can resultin greater sanctions against the person convicted. However, it is a reality of the UK criminaljustice system that not all hate crime is reported, not all of that reported is recognised forwhat it is, and not all of that recognised is recorded or prosecuted as such.

This article considers some of the complexities in how hate crime is defined and the issuesrelating to how it is addressed. With reference to the application of a performanceframework to policing, this includes barriers to reporting by victims and recognition bypolice, and barriers to accurate recording. Included is a review of some of the availableacademic literature on the subject, but also an assessment of some of the systems andpractical considerations of the police service in seeking to tackle the issue effectively.

IntroductionIn determining how well hate crime is tackled by the criminal justice agencies, the focus ofHome Office and broader scrutiny has tended in the past to be concentrated in twostatistical areas. The first is the volume of such crime that is recorded, and the second is theproportion of that recorded for which offenders are identified and ‘brought to justice’. Oneissue with this approach rests in identifying and reconciling any disparity between theamount of hate crime occurring and the amount being recorded.

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‘Defining and Recognising are not the Same’: Challenges to Tackling Hate Crime in a Performance Culture

This article sets out some of the challenges encountered by the police service and othercriminal justice agencies in seeking to accommodate a performance framework that hastended to be based on these quantitative issues, rather than upon qualitative matters such asvictims’ and witnesses’ perceptions of the service received from criminal justice agencies.

A focus of the following discussion is the observation that the motivation, the internalelement that drives some people to commit hate crime, is a critically important element thatmust be identified and proven beyond reasonable doubt if a prosecution is to have a realisticchance of success and can be a slippery and insubstantial concept to capture in practice.Another is the difficulty in finding consensually acceptable systems and processes to managethe tackling of a phenomenon that can be observed from so many perspectives and has suchan abundance of different guises.

DefinitionsCrime can be defined from various perspectives. Hall (2005:14) identifies it as a socialconstruct, meaning different things to different people, but for the purposes of this article alegal definition is appropriate. That offered by De Sola (1982:34) is concise:

Anything forbidden by law and hence rendering the offender punishable.

Walklate (2005:3) also offers a concise definition, “Crime is that behaviour prohibited by thecriminal code”, but goes on to emphasise the multitude of complexities concealed. Not leastamong these is the issue of what is and what is not interpreted as crime and then recordedby police officers. The situation is unclear even with regard to such enduring categories ofcrime as assault, criminal damage, theft and so on. The police service has traditionally takenprimary responsibility in England and Wales for the preventing, reducing, recording,investigating and detecting of crime. With the creation of ‘Crime and Disorder ReductionPartnerships’ by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, these responsibilities have begun to beshared across public sector agencies. According to the Home Office (2009), the partnershipsare required to establish the levels of crime and disorder problems in their areas, and consultwidely with the population of those areas to make sure that the partnership’s perceptionmatches that of local people, especially minority groups. Accompanying these changes, anincreasing public and bureaucratic demand for information about the volume and nature ofcrime has brought about an industry of crime surveys, statistical monitoring andperformance targeting.

However, ‘Hate Crime’ has not been referred to historically in Home Office figures, anddoes not appear in any statute. Comparatively recently coined, and originating in the UnitedStates of America, the term has only lately begun to appear in such authoritativepublications as the British Crime Survey. Hall (2005:51) describes the murder of StephenLawrence in London in 1993, and the subsequent public inquiry, as catalysts for raising theprofile of hate crime as a social and political problem in the United Kingdom.

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The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) offered its most recent definition of hatecrime:

Any hate incident, which constitutes a criminal offence, perceived by the victim or anyother person, as being motivated by prejudice or hate (ACPO, 2005:9).

ACPO regards an incident as distinct from a crime in that the behaviour subject of theincident may or may not amount to a crime. Thus, by this definition, hate crimes are a sub-set of hate incidents. Whilst the ACPO definition is broadly accepted in the criminal justicesector, an agreed academic definition remains much more elusive. At the same time, it isimportant to note, as Hall (2005:7) suggests, that the ACPO definition is used operationallyby the police to recognise hate crime, yet it differs markedly from legislative definitions, apoint I return to later.

Gerstenfeld (2004) suggests that to be defined as hate crime an action would need to bemotivated by the group to whom the victim affiliates. He acknowledges that this definitionlacks precision, and hides a number of complexities. Other academics have attempted toaccount for various features in their own contributions. Hall (2005), for example, observesthat Wolfe and Copeland, in their 1994 work entitled ‘Violence against women as bias-motivated hate crime: defining the issues in the USA’, regarded violence as an essentialcomponent of the hate crime phenomenon, while Perry (2003:5) considers a definitionflawed unless it captures the effect hate crime has upon its victims.

An important consideration common to all definitions is the issue of motivation. Hall(2005:56) suggests that the very title, ‘hate crime’ is unhelpful in that it can be misleading.Some definitions describe the motivation for the crime as hatred, a term that carries with ita suggestion of powerful emotion. Hall goes on to suggest that in its contemporary meaning,hate is actually a:

…variety of human emotions that are often far removed from real hatred. These otheremotions range from prejudice to bias, or anger, or hostility, through to unfriendliness ora mere aversion to others (2005:56).

However, in particular among those proffered by writers in the UK, definitions tend to linkthe motivation to ‘prejudice’, a broader and more expansive term, of which hate may be seenas a small but extreme part.

An effect of using the term ‘prejudice’, rather than ‘hate’, is that many more sets ofcircumstances gain the potential to meet the definition. An added complication is thatprejudice, like hate crime, is a term for which a consensually agreed meaning has yet to bereached. However, much of the literature on the subject (Gerstenfeld, 2004; Hall, 2005;Dovidio et al., 2005) does recognise the influential nature of Gordon Allport’s work, TheNature of Prejudice (1954) in this field. In attempting a definition that would serve tointerrogate ‘ethnic prejudice’, Allport (1954) arrived at the idea that:

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Ethnic prejudice is antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. It maybe felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward anindividual because he is a member of that group. The net effect of prejudice, thusdefined, is to place the object of prejudice at some disadvantage not merited by his ownconduct (1954:9).

Subsequently, Allport (1954) argued that prejudice functioned to maintain the advantagedstructures of majority groups while rationalising the exploitation of minority groups, or out-groups. In identifying the feelings that set the stage for people to experience hostility towardsout-groups he distinguished anger and hatred. Smith and Mackie (2005) describe anger as atransitory emotion, ordinarily directed towards individuals. In contrast, they see hatred asmore long-standing, involving bitter feelings as well as accusatory thoughts that serve torationalise those feelings. They claim hatred is held without compunction or guilt because itis viewed as justified. In addition, they suggest that hatred is more often directed at groupsthan individuals. Mason (2005:837) observes that the types of prejudices most commonlyrecognised under the umbrella of hate crime are those associated with the victim’s real orperceived ‘minority’ status, such as those based upon ethnicity, sexuality, faith, disability,gender, etc.

It is important to note how the concept of ‘hate crime’ is covered in the legislation.Newburn (2007) describes how the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced ‘raciallyaggravated offences’, and that racial aggravation occurs when:

at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, theoffender demonstrates towards the victim of the offence hostility based on the victim’smembership (or presumed membership) of a racial group, or where the offence ismotivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards members of a racial group based ontheir membership of that group (2007:775).

The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 extended the concept of raciallyaggravated offences to include religiously aggravated offences. The Criminal Justice Act 2003added offences relating specifically to homophobia and disability bias.

Although the term ‘hate crime’ is not used in British legislation, for practical purposes ofrecognition, the concept can be divided into two categories. The first is that group ofoffences existing in current legislation and which specifically refer to a prejudicial motivationbased upon one or more dimensions of diversity. Examples include ‘Racially or religiouslymotivated criminal damage’ and ‘Using words or behaviour intended to stir up racialhatred’. The second group is those cases in which the ‘standard’ crime is reported, such as‘Threatening behaviour’ or ‘Assault occasioning actual bodily harm’, but in which therequisite prejudice or ‘hate’ motive is present, and demonstrated by the offender at the timeor immediately before or after commission of the offence. Scholars refer variously to thiscategory as ‘predicate offences’ (Iganski, 1999), ‘generic offences’ (Hall, 2005), or ‘parallel’ or‘underlying offences’ (Gerstenfeld, 2004). The recording of these generic offences as hate

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crimes is left to the police, though courts are given powers to treat some cases with greaterseverity where the hatred motive is proven.

Policing Hate CrimeOne reason to recognize hate crime as a category is that police become required to gain anunderstanding of it, to measure the size and nature of the problem. Walklate (2005:33) refersto ‘the three ‘R’s: recognising, reporting and recording’ of crime. She points out somedifficulties of gathering an accurate picture of what crime is occurring. In particular not allhate crime that occurs is recognised as crime, not all crime recognised as such is reported tothe police, and not all crime reported to the police is recorded as such.

A second focus has been and still is on how best to address the problem. Newburn(2007:775) takes issue with the idea that, in practical terms, the police have discretion todetermine what is and is not a hate crime. Following a similar theme, Bell (2002) describessituations in which, despite the existence of a recognised definition, and the meeting byincident circumstances of the definition’s criteria, those situations have neither beenrecorded, nor dealt with, as hate crimes.

Gerstenfeld (2004) recounts the comments of some police officers, indicating how eithertheir own personal biases or even laziness discourages them from recognising or recordingcrime as hate crime. Hall (2005:157) also notes that some officers regard hate crimeinvestigation as ‘griefy’ work, disliked owing to its complexities and the difficulty of provingmotive. However, whilst her research was carried out in the USA, it is noteworthy howsurprised Bell (2002) was to find that an anticipated unwillingness of police to record crimeas hate crime was not borne out in her observations. Instead, she found that police officerswere willing to respect the stories and experiences related by victims of hate crime and recordthem fully.

This gives rise to a raft of issues surrounding the concept of police performance. Myhill andBeak (2008:2) report that contact with the police can potentially affect one’s trust andconfidence in the police service as a whole, and in a number of ways. For example,confidence is likely to be higher if people feel they have been dealt with fairly and justly incontact with the police. Thus, the public may expect the police to listen to their concernsand experiences, to record them fully and to perceive and address with the same levels ofurgency and severity as do the people reporting them. However, Myhill and Beak (2008:3)add that studies also suggest that the public are more likely to express confidence in thepolice if they perceive crime and disorder to be low in their area. Insofar as police serviceperformance is measured by the Home Office and the public in terms of crime rates, theincentive for the police to under-record crime is difficult to deny.

Consequently, Bell (2002) suggests two ways of affecting the decisions made in relation tohate crime recording. The first is to increase the visibility of police (in England and Walesread ‘Crown Prosecution Service’) decisions not to enforce the law. Bell suggests this will

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lead the public to demand accountability, and apply fresh pressure on the grounds of publicinterest. The second is to create incentives to enforce the law. This reflects her observationthat police performance is measured, not on the quality of the service provided to the victim,but on whether an arrest is made, a suspect charged, or a crime ‘detected’. It is of note herethat for police recording purposes, a crime’s status as ‘detected’ is only partially dependentupon the result of any subsequent trial or the imposition of a penalty. Many detected crimesnever go to trial, qualifying instead for any of various sanctions, such as warnings, cautions andbehaviour orders that may, or may not, meet the expectations of the victim.

Barriers to Hate CrimeIn the police service, crimes are recorded through more than a single process. In those casesattended by a police officer, the victim or person reporting is questioned about thecircumstances. Through this conversation and the investigation that follows, a party maysuggest the presence of a hate motive, or through investigatory work, the officer may come tosuspect and then confirm it. In these situations, motives are recorded on the CrimeManagement System, an electronic tracking system and database, so cases can then berecognised as hate crimes. Of course, not all reports of crimes attended by officers aresuccessfully recognised as hate crimes. (Purdy 2007:10) Sometimes the motive is simplyconcealed, and may never be identified, either by victim, witness or officer. In others, one ormore parties may suspect the motive, but that suspicion may go unvoiced (Gerstenfeld, 2004).

One barrier to effective recording lies in the design of the electronic form used to populatethe Crime Management System database. Purdy (2007:24) describes how the field forrecording the offender’s motive makes use of codes drawn from a list. Before 2007, the listonly recognised hate motives based upon the dimensions of ethnicity, sexual orientation andfaith. The recent additions of transphobia (crimes against people with transgendercharacteristics) and disability to the list have been accompanied by limited publicity, whichmay mean that the awareness of the workforce is incomplete in this regard.

A challenge specific, but not exclusive, to crimes committed against people with disabilities isin working out whether the motive of the offender is based on hatred, or whether insteadthe offender merely took advantage of a real or perceived extra vulnerability accompanyingthe disability. In these and other situations, as Bell (2002) suggests, the Crown ProsecutionService may elect to deal with the crime in its generic form and not as a hate crime. Forexample, where an offender causes damage to a car owned by a member of a faith groupagainst which she holds hatred, if sufficient evidence is present to prove the identity of theoffender but not her motive, then it is entirely likely that she will be charged with thegeneric offence of ‘criminal damage’. This may be preferred to the more appropriate hatecrime charge of ‘Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage’ owing to the greater easeof proving the generic offence. In such a situation the crime record is unlikely to be includedin hate crime statistics, as it is the charge type, rather than an unproven motive, that is morelikely to determine how the case is recorded. In these circumstances, for purposes ofperformance management, a generic crime with which a person has been charged will be

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regarded as a positive outcome, even if the offence charged does not reflect the entirety ofthe crime’s events.

Where the crime charged is a hate crime by its title, the challenge of recognition is lessened.An example is the offence of ‘Using Words or Behaviour intended to stir up Racial Hatred’.This crime exists in legislation, so whenever a suspect is charged with the offence, it iscommonly recorded, and included in the statistics.

Some crimes are reported by telephone to the Crime Recording Bureau. For example, casesof minor damage in which no evidence to help identify an offender is readily available maynever be attended by an officer, but simply recorded for statistical and crime intelligencepurposes. An example is damage reported only in order to fulfil a condition of claimingagainst an insurance policy. In these cases, call handlers question the caller about thecircumstances, but recognition of a hate motive depends entirely upon what information thecaller provides. As these calls are script-free (that is, callers are asked to describe thecircumstances in their own words, rather than being interrogated through use of a standardtemplate of approved questions), the call handler may or may not ask those questionsnecessary to elicit the specific suggestion of the presence of a hate motive.

Some crimes are recorded from third party reporting facilities. Such schemes are increasinglyused where crimes are committed against people who have something to lose by reportingthe matter to the police. Examples include people who conceal their sexuality, or whosecretly use sex workers, and who become victims in circumstances that mean standardreporting measures would compromise anonymity or ‘out’ them. Third party reportsgenerally involve a form or template to be completed with some assurance of confidentialityof the victim’s identity. They do tend to solicit information about the suspected motive ofthe offender, and can therefore achieve inclusion in hate crime statistics, though it does notfollow that such is always the case.

A barrier to the broader recognition of hate crime lies in its origins as a category. As Hall(2005:52) describes, the Lawrence inquiry and its subsequent report by Sir WilliamMacpherson (1999) led to intense criticism of the Metropolitan Police accompanied byconsiderable media and public attention. Latterly, a series of related reports and action plans(e.g. Winning the Race (1997), Winning the Race Revisited (1999) Winning the Race:Embracing Diversity (2001)) have served to preserve the link in the police service consciencebetween hate crime and racism. This suggestion is reinforced by the findings by Purdy (2007)that, among a sample of hate crimes recorded by South Yorkshire Police during 2007, morethan ninety-eight per cent (98.5%) were cases of race hate.

Crimes with race-based motives seem the most likely, therefore, to be recognised as hatecrime. Purdy (2007:5) describes how no cases of disability-based hate crime were recorded inSouth Yorkshire Police during a six-month period of 2007. The inequity of this situationseems to be compounded by the limitations of the criminal law and the advisory bodies

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concerned. For example, the offence of ‘Using words or behaviour intended to stir up racialhatred’ exists to address the dimension of racism, but no similar offence exists fordimensions such as sexual orientation, disability or gender identity. Inevitably, suchomissions fuel allegations that race hate crime is given special priority by law-makers to thedetriment of members of other disadvantaged groups. Also, guidance released by ACPO(2007:10) prescribed that crimes with a hate motive based upon the dimension of age (e.g.the victim is made a target owing to being elderly) or gender (e.g. the victim is attackedowing to being a woman) do not meet the definition of hate crime, and should not berecorded as such. The same document excludes violence carried out in a domestic setting(e.g. between husband and wife or civil partners).

The Police Performance FrameworkConflict between the potential for recording hate crime based on ethnicity and other hatecrime reflects a wider conflict: whose priorities to reflect in managing performance? Policeforces are open to scrutiny from both the public and from the government: policingpriorities could be influenced from many sources. To some extent the dilemma forindividual police forces is resolved by the Home Office. Following public consultation,annual ‘strategic policing priorities’ are published and used by all police forces. In 2008,among these priorities was an overarching requirement to improve public confidence andtrust in the police service. Further areas of focus included reducing crime and improvingeffectiveness through working in partnership with other agencies.

In relation to the issue of public confidence and trust, however, there is a series of levels ofmanagement that reflect the public position and responsibility of police forces in terms ofperformance. At national, regional and local levels, a number of regulatory bodies inspect,guide or otherwise hold police forces to account for their performance. Each force isoverseen by a police authority, a body of lay and elected members whose role it is to monitorthe activity of the force, exercise power over its budget and recruit and select for its mostsenior post, that of the Chief Constable. Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) isa national agency tasked with monitoring and assessing the performance of forces. Itsworkforce is a mix of civil servants and police officers seconded from forces. Liaison betweenHMIC and individual forces is achieved nationally and through regional offices. In carryingout its inspections, and reaching judgments on forces, HMIC will request and take intoaccount performance records, broken down if appropriate by department or policing district.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is a body with oversight andmonitoring responsibilities in relation to the management of complaints made against thepolice. In relation to the most severe cases, the agency also has an investigative role. It is tothe IPCC that force performance records, pertaining to police complaints, are submitted.

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The National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) is a guiding body with interests in howthe service trains its staff. Staffed by civil servants, police officers and staff seconded fromforces, it develops learning programmes and products, offers a range of courses in numerousaspects of policing including many of a strategic nature and aimed at senior police managersfrom domestic and international services. Whilst the NPIA has no direct involvement withindustry of performance management, it does produce performance measurement tools foruse by police forces.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is, strictly speaking, a staff association, inthat it represents the needs of its membership, those police officers of ranks senior to ChiefSuperintendent. It also develops and publishes national guidance on different policingfunctions, such as hate crime management, road policing and stop and search. Its mostrecent manual on tackling hate crime was published in 2005 and was scheduled for revisionin 2009.

Performance management activity in policing can be separated into the old and the new.The more established activities include the strictly numerical statistics that are submittedregularly to bodies such as the IPCC (about complaints against police) and the Home Officefor inclusion in statistical reports such as the ‘Crime in England and Wales’ bulletins. Usingthese statistics, forces are compared in terms of the amount of crime that occurs in theirareas, and in the proportions of the recorded crime that is detected, or ‘brought to justice’.These figures are also used in force level performance management activity, so that, forexample, detection rates (as a percentage of the crime recorded) for knife crime in thepolicing district of Doncaster can be compared with those of Rotherham, Sheffield andBarnsley.

The Analysis of Policing and Community Safety (APACS) is a performance managementframework used at national, regional and local levels in policing. The framework uses acollection of statutory performance indicators, against which individual forces gaugethemselves, and against which groups of similar forces are compared nationally. Indicatorsused feature both qualitative and quantitative measures, in that some are based onperceptions of service users, drawn from feedback about their interactions with the police,whereas others focus on numbers of incidents and detection rates.

The APACS framework was launched in April 2008, and continues to develop newindicators. In its original form, the framework included several indicators about racistincidents, knife and gun crimes, but none that captured the totality of hate crime. Theframework for 2009/2010 (Home Office Performance Strategy Directorate, 2009) introduceda temporary indicator, ‘APACS 6.3 – Sanction detection rate for racially and religiouslyaggravated offences’. Like the indicators for matters such as racist incidents, this onecaptures only a fraction of the offences that amount to hate crime. Being a measure of theproportion of recorded crimes that are ‘brought to justice’, a sanction detection rate is anentirely quantitative measurement. In recognition of this the description for the new

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performance indicator includes a promise that a more all-encompassing hate crime indicatoris under development and will be launched in the 2010/2011 version of the framework.

Among the products of the NPIA, in development for a scheduled launch before the end of2009, is ‘The Equality Standard for the Police Service’. (NIPA, 2009) This is a sophisticatedassessment tool, with twenty-one categories of criteria, in the form of tiered positiveperformance statements, against which forces can produce evidence to measure theirperformance in order to identify their own strengths and areas for improvement. TheEquality Standard is, to some extent, a police-specific version of a similar framework that hasbeen used to measure and drive the diversity performance of local authorities for severalyears. Not one of the twenty-one criteria in the final draft version of the Equality Standardfor the Police Service makes specific mention of hate crime. However, the positiveperformance statements, those phrases that forces must provide evidence to prove they canmeet, include, ‘7B – The organisation applies existing frameworks and guidance effectively todeliver improved services to meet the needs of diverse victims and witnesses.’ and, ‘5E –Diverse individuals and communities report confidence in the capability of the organisationto address factors that can create vulnerability.’ Envisaged also to be of value to partneragencies, the Standard is being marketed as an aide to police authorities, in that it can beused as a basis for negotiating policing plans with forces. The launch of the Standard isaccompanied by the promise that it is to become the foundation upon which futureinspections of forces by HMIC will be set. A feature of the Standard is that it does notdictate to forces what form performance evidence will take. Qualitative and quantitativeevidence would appear to be equally acceptable.

DiscussionDevelopments in the Police Performance Framework notwithstanding, the picture describedis of an environment in which desired outcomes are not achieved. Statistics obtained abouthate crime are incomplete, inaccurate and thus largely fail to achieve their purpose. Severalbarriers to effective recognition, recording and charging of hate crime have been described.The professionals involved are contributing to the inaccuracies and misconceptions thatabound, as are the systems in place.

The ACPO definition of hate crime is artificially restrictive in that it denies hate crimestatus, and therefore does not accord the same level of ‘enhanced service’ to victims of thosecrimes motivated by hate or prejudice, but which do not fit into the ‘big five’ categories ofrace, faith, sexual orientation, disability and gender identity. For anyone seekingconfirmation that a hierarchy of diversity dimensions exists, at least in UK policing policy,supporting evidence is to be found here.

Another characteristic of the ACPO definition is its failure to align either with intuitive oracademic views of the concept. It seems beyond doubt that police officers and police staff, aswell as the victims and witnesses of hate crime, do not grasp it. Observers in general (Purdy,2007; Hall, 2005; Gerstenfeld, 2004) agree on the existence of multiple barriers to hate

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crime recognition, so yet another being in the form of the ‘official’ definition is aparticularly unwelcome feature.

Police performance assessment frameworks are renowned for their bureaucracy andattention to minutiae, yet as Purdy (2007:27) observes, ‘what gets measured gets done’.Perhaps the key to greater recognition, recording and successful prosecution of hate crimerests, at least in part, in the reframing of performance indicators. It seems difficult to deny,given the environment described, that their existence would add more convincing evidencethat the criminal justice agencies are serious about tackling hate crime, and would lead togreater allocation of resources to the problem. Some hope rests in the promise that hatecrime indicators are to be developed for the APACS framework, though just how well thesewill meet their purpose remains to be seen.

It is possible to put forward many ways in which the existing systems could be evolved tobetter capture a hate motive if it is suggested. Processes through which hate crime is presentlyrecognised can be reviewed and evolved. For example, police call handlers could be equippedwith a script of approved questions through which telephone conversations could be steeredin order to ensure that all callers are prompted to suggest the presence of the motive wherethey suspect it. Equally, improved training or a briefing campaign, or both, could be used toraise awareness among police officers of the latest version of the hate crime definition, andpress home the importance of recognising it when victims suggest its presence.

Fundamental assumptions must be recognised and challenged. Despite the wording of theACPO definition, which acknowledges that ‘any person’ may perceive a crime to be a hatecrime, several crime-recording routes share a common tendency for the person receiving thereport, or inputting it onto the database, to act as little more than a passive recorder ofanswers to questions. In all but those circumstances in which a police officer activelyinvestigates the crime reported, and even, it is suggested, in some of those cases, the onus toperceive the hate motive tends to rest with the victim or person reporting, rather than withthe report’s recipient, or as a shared responsibility. After all, to detect and prove thecommission of a hate crime is often more complex or difficult than to gather convincingevidence of its less punitive cousin, the generic crime. In addition, the police service nowexists in a performance culture in which there are rewards for recording less crime ratherthan more, and lesser crimes rather than more severe. Services are still gauged by their crimedetection rates, so it follows that in the case of an undetected crime lesser severity willreflect better, and even in cases of detected crimes, the advantage of recording the detectionwill still be balanced by the detrimental picture of a more crime-ridden society.

ConclusionsIn concluding, it is suggested that a true picture of the extent and nature of hate crime willevade the recorded statistics until such time as disincentives to recognise and record

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effectively are eliminated, and until all stake-holders are induced and motivated to share theonus of uncovering, identifying and recording the hate motive.

Nevertheless, optimism about the future is to be drawn from recent and currentdevelopments. The police performance management framework is changing, developing andimproving, apparently with a view to looking beyond the numbers into the real experiencesof service users, and the levels of their satisfaction with the policing they receive.

Greater hope still would accompany a revision of the ACPO guidance, were it to feature adefinition tailored as well to the providers of policing services and the victims of hate crimeas to the needs of the performance managers.

ReferencesAllport, G.W. (1954) The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, Massachusetts, USA: Addison-WesleyAssociation of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) (2005) Hate Crime: Delivering a Quality Service – Good

Practice and Tactical Guidance, London: Home OfficeBell, J. (2002) Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights and Hate Crime, New York, USA: New

York University PressDe Sola, R. (1982) Crime Dictionary, New York, USA: Facts on File Inc.Dovidio, J.F, Glick, P. and Rudman, L.A. (Eds) (2005) On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after

Allport, Oxford: BlackwellGerstenfeld, P.B. (2004) Hate Crimes: Causes, controls and controversies, Thousand Oaks, California,

USA: SageHall, N. (2005) Hate Crime, Cullompton, Devon: WillanH.M. Inspectorate of Constabulary (1997) Winning the Race: Policing Plural Communities, London:

Home OfficeH.M. Inspectorate of Constabulary (1999) Winning the Race: Policing Plural Communities Revisited,

London: Home OfficeH.M. Inspectorate of Constabulary (2001) Winning the Race: Embracing Diversity, London: Home

OfficeHome Office (2009) Crime Reduction - Partnerships [on-line] Available at:

http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/partnerships2.htm [Accessed 21st November2009]

Home Office Performance Strategy Directorate (2009) Guidance on Performance Indicators forPolicing and Community Safety 2009/10 - version 2, London: Home Office

Iganski, P. (1999) Why make ‘hate’ a crime? in Critical Social Policy, Volume 19 No. 3 pp 386-395Jones, S. (2005) Criminology (3rd Edition), Oxford: Oxford University PressMason, G. (2005) Hate Crime and the image of the stranger in British Journal of Criminology,

Volume 45 March 2005 pp 837-859Myhill, A. and Beak. K. (2008) Public Confidence in the Police, London: National Police Improvement

AgencyNational Police Improvement Agency (2009) The Equality Standard for the Police Service (Draft –

Final Agreed Version), London: Home OfficeNewburn, T. (2007) Criminology, Cullompton, Devon: Willan

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Nicholas, S, Kershaw, C. and Walker, A. (eds) (2008) Crime in England and Wales 2006 – 2007,London: Home Office

Perry, B. (2003) Hate and Bias Crime – A Reader, London: RoutledgePurdy, R. (2007) Review of Hate Crime in South Yorkshire Police unpublished consultation reportSmith, E.R. and Mackie, D.M. (2005) Aggression, Hatred and Other Emotions, in Dovidio, J.F, Glick,

P. and Rudman, L.A. (eds.) (2005) On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport, Oxford:Blackwell

Walker, A, Flatley, J, Kershaw, C. and Moon, D. (eds.) (2009) Crime in England and Wales (VolumeOne) – Findings from the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime, London: HomeOffice, Research Development and Statistics Directorate

Walklate, S. (2005) Criminology: The basics, Abingdon: Routledge

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46

TIME AND THE PROBATIONPRACTITIONER

Keith Davies, Senior Lecturer, University of Hertfordshire

Abstract ‘It is a question of extracting from time, ever more available moments and, from eachmoment, ever more useful forces.’ (Foucault 1991 / 1975, P. 154)

IntroductionPerhaps most would agree that it is preferable to be a little too busy at work than to bebored. A sense of competence can arise from achieving a lot in a day whilst confidence canebb when under-employed and time hangs heavily. Nevertheless, it might also be agreed thatthere are limits beyond which being busy, even very busy, spills over into something lessproductive and more disorientating. This balance regarding time, pace and quantity of tasksis difficult to achieve in the field of probation practice, an arena subject to strong politicalpressures and this article explores the forces which govern time in probation practice and theeffects which the prevailing ‘time culture’ has on practitioners and the quality of their work.It is argued that time and pace in probation practice is currently governed by a performanceculture which is characterised by the audit of cash-linked indicators and, whilst theimportance of efficiency in practice is recognised, it is suggested that the unintended effectof too zealous a performance culture is an irrational haste and associated reductions in theeffectiveness of practice. As Merrington and Stanley observe, performance management inprobation has:

placed particular emphasis on timeliness of activities, rather than content or quality(p453).

Writing of the ‘New National Probation Service,’ Nellis (2002) drew attention to theimportance of time in shaping probation practice commenting that:

the amount of time that professionals perceive themselves to have – the deadlines theyhave to meet – significantly shapes the way in which they approach their task (p71).

Taking an overview at the turn of the century he expressed concern regarding the pace ofpractice noting that:

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Time and the Probation Practitioner

anecdotal evidence suggests that probation staff, managers and basic grade workersalike, already feel an acute sense of time pressure (p61).

More recently, a number of research studies focussing on the experience of probationpractitioners have indicated that the ‘time pressure’ which Nellis described has intensifiedsignificantly (Farrow 2004, Mair, Burke and Taylor 2006, Robinson and Burnett 2006,Petrillo 2007, Mehta 2008, Davies and Durrance 2008). Indeed, commentators warn thattime scarcity and a sense of relentless haste threaten to displace other practiceconsiderations. To give an example, Robinson and Burnett (2006) tracing the experience ofprobation staff in keeping abreast of the development of NOMS, found that a sense of timescarcity tended to relegate much updating of knowledge to the bottom (or, rather, off theend) of a very long list of things to do.

Almost all interviewees made some comment along these lines:

I’m always chasing my tail and I don’t really have the time, you know (p322).

In this instance, updating knowledge and maintaining an awareness of key changes in thegovernance of the agency are displaced by the pace of daily activity. A concern explored hereis that other necessary aspects of effective practice are also eroded by haste.

In order to place the discussion in context, a broad overview is taken of developments in thefield of probation and the ways in which they have shaped how time is structured in practice.Following this, and focussing particularly on recent research findings, evidence is presentedwhich illustrates the influence of these developments on time and practice but in moreimmediate and concrete ways. In conclusion, consideration is given to the implications oftime scarcity for effective working relations, risk management, ‘proper punishment’ and therehabilitation of offenders.

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?1

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. Ifyou want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! (Carroll L.1970 /1871 p210).

Running ever faster and yet remaining stationary is a puzzling as well as a dispiriting thing.In order to make sense of this apparently paradoxical situation use is made of Nellis’ (2005)identification of three criminal justice discourses which he argued are constitutive of thefield of probation namely the ‘punitive-repressive’, the ‘surveillant-managerial’ and the‘rehabilitative-humanist’ discourses (P 44). Here Nellis echoes Garland’s (1996, 2001)account of the transformative effects of the rise of the neo-liberal approach to crime control,in both its managerialist and punitive forms, on the pre-existing penal welfarist paradigm. Itis argued here that both punitive and managerialist approaches to probation practice requirea quicker (indeed, an ever quickening) pace and, in addition, that an intensification of focuson risk management coupled with a drive to commercialise probation services have acted as

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further accelerators. It is further argued that, together, these approaches have been forcefullyoperationalised through performance indicators which bind probation practice to theirdefinition of effectiveness and timeliness through the stark and irresistible logic of the cash-link. It is finally suggested that penal-welfarism and the rehabilitative-humanistic paradigm,although marginalised and altered by the new discourses, have nevertheless remained activeat the level of practice. Since this approach indicates a contrasting time-frame, difficulties arecreated for practitioners who must reconcile the requirements of ‘target time’ with aconstruction of time governed more by the dynamics of human interaction and change.

The Punitive-Repressive DiscourseExpressive punitiveness is described by Garland (2001) as one aspect of the neo-liberalapproach to criminal justice which has in recent decades superseded and transformed theprevious welfare hegemony. Severity in sentencing and a rising prison population embody amore morally directed, condemnatory criminal justice. In line with this, the confidence ofthe public and of the judiciary in probation has been seen as resting heavily on toughnessdemonstrated by the swift enforcement of sentences. In probation this discourse has beenexpressed forcefully in the reconstruction of the probation order as punishment in thecommunity (Worrall and Hoy 2005, Farrant 2006) and in drives to tighten the enforcementof community sentences and licences. In this environment, practitioners are required toenforce within the time frames laid down in National Standards (Home Office 2007) andfailures to do so are policed through performance management, the accompanying threat ofa withdrawal of funding and the publication of national, local and individual performancedetails (Faulkner 2001). In day to day practice, this introduces an overriding imperative tocomplete the ‘paperwork’ stemming from breach in a timely way where timeliness is definedby the requirements of punishment enabled by National Standards and the performancemanagement framework.

The Surveillant-Managerial DiscourseA second aspect of neo-liberal governmentality in criminal justice stems from the economicsof small government and a loss of trust in experts and public servants. Transparency andvalue for taxpayers’ money have increasingly been demanded of public services such asprobation and these demands have been embodied in the installation of a performanceframework at the heart of the organisation. In addition, this discourse has brought to bear aprofound scepticism regarding the efficacy of rehabilitative work with offenders, tending toreplace this with actuarially informed practices designed to contain offending and risk withinacceptable limits. As Garland observes:

The same lowered ambition and retreat from positive social purposes reinforces the newmeaning of imprisonment and probation both of which are increasingly represented asmodalities of punishment and incapacitative control, rather than as transformativemeasures (2001 p120).

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In this climate, probation has been required to demonstrate its ‘economy, efficiency andeffectiveness’ (Power 1997 P. 10) through the achievement of numerically expressed ‘output’targets such as the percentage of Initial Sentence Plans completed within the stated time limitor the proportion of offenders breached within a specified period following a failure tocomply. The relevance of this for the pace of practice will be readily apparent. As Merringtonand Stanley (2007) point out, regarding audit and the examination of performance:

much of the emphasis is on timeliness of practitioner actions, deriving from NationalStandards (p451).

Good practice is thus defined in terms of ‘timeliness’ which in turn is constructed withreference to the valuing of speed and numerically demonstrable productivity.

Expanding on these points, it is readily acknowledged that there are sound ethical andpragmatic arguments for organisational efficiency. The concerns explored here are firstly thatundue time pressure has the unintended effect of impairing both efficiency and effectivenessand secondly that a fixation on in-house output targets detaches an organisation from itswider remit and rationale. Where managerial frameworks tend to espouse ‘continuousimprovement’ (Wallis 2001 P. 8) and where performance is tied closely to speed theorganisation is locked into a commitment to work ever-faster. However, where there are manyequally pressing priorities and deadlines, targets can only be met by reducing quality. Theironic effect of this is that effectiveness, whilst ostensibly achieved by virtue of hitting a target,is actually reduced. The public are not protected for example nor are criminogenic needsaddressed since the assessment is quick but superficial and the offender is not engaged in anyreal way in supervision. Although apparently self-evident and beyond question, the rationaleof speed alone is in fact debatable.

Finally, it should be emphasised here that performance management frameworks, audit,league tables and the cash link are very powerful drivers of speed. As Power (1997) recognises:

Audit is never purely neutral in its operations (and it) inscribes the values it embodies inthe heart of the organisation (p13).

It penetrates, through inspection and the electronic surveillance of practice, down to the levelof the daily activities of the individual practitioner whilst at the same time setting the agendafor senior managers through the funding stream and the potential shaming inherent in leaguetables.

Prior to moving on to consider the influence of the residual rehabilitative-humanisticdiscourse on time in probation practice it should be noted that other time-drivers havebecome increasingly influential in recent years. Important amongst these is the growingcentrality of risk assessment and management (Beck 1992, Nash 1999) which impacts onpractice time through imperatives to record and to share information promptly and alsothrough the increased depth and scope required in reports by the Parole Board. To this can be

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added progress towards the commercialisation of practice following the introduction ofcontestability and commissioning in the Carter Report (2003). The current push towardsTrust status, for example, confirms what Garland (2001) observed some years previouslywhen he wrote that:

public sector agencies (prisons, probation, parole, the court system, etc.) are now beingre-modelled in ways that emulate the values and working practices of private industry(p18).

With regard to time, it might be fair to say, the ‘values and working practices of privateindustry’ are straightforwardly unsympathetic to activities which do not appear to be directlyrelated to hitting in-house productivity targets. These factors combine with the discourses ofpunishment and management to intensify the time environment to a point at whichcounterproductive effects are generated and these effects are amplified, in a rather differentway, by the rehabilitative-humanistic discourse.

The Rehabilitative-Humanistic DiscourseSo far, the focus has been on the challenges for the practitioner of relentless hurry. However,turning to the rehabilitative-humanistic discourse, a further challenge arises concerning theresolution of tension between different time-paradigms.

Although it has been argued that humanistic values and rehabilitation have been more orless abandoned in probation practice (Farrant 2006, Nellis 2005), a number of importantcontemporary practice initiatives might be said to embody a penal welfarism which hasadapted to the neo-liberal climate. For example, the thrust of Evidence-Based Practice(Chapman and Hough 1998, McGuire 2002) is rehabilitative and treatment-oriented whilstat the same time lending itself to centralisation, a victim-centred ethos, the audit of referrals/completions, and resource management through ‘the risk principle.’ A more recentinitiative still, the ‘Seven Pathways’ developed by NOMS (2006) on the basis of the SocialExclusion Unit Report into ex-prisoners (2002), directs practice towards traditional welfareneeds (accommodation, education/training/employment, health, substance misuse,finance/benefits/ debt, children and families as well as attitudes/thinking/behaviour).Although clearly designed to be compatible with contestability and the commissioning ofservices relating to the several pathways, this approach to practice represents a long traditionof ‘help’ (Bottoms and McWilliams 1979). Finally, a third example of the resilience ofrehabilitation is provided by the ‘core correctional practice’ of Dowden and Andrews (2004)which has been embraced by NOMS (2006 p39). With its encouragement of ‘warm, openand enthusiastic relationships’ (p39) and ‘quality relationships’ (p37) this represents anaspect of the Evidence-Based Approach which draws on the humanistic tradition ofrelational work which is now being re-emphasised following the evaluations of groupinterventions and the emergence of the key role of the offender manager in programmecompletion (Roberts 2004, Harper and Chitty 2004, Mills, Davies and Brooks 2007).Indeed, the welfare-oriented objectives of ‘help’ and ‘change’ are installed at the centre of

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the NOMS Offender Management Model as the core objectives of tiers two and threerespectively (p49).

In addition to these formal, institutional manifestations of the survival of the rehabilitative-humanistic discourse, it is argued that the essential dynamics of practice also require thatpractitioners draw on this discourse at the level of daily practice. That is, human interactioncontinues to constitute a key vehicle of probation practice whatever the setting in which it isdelivered and human interaction, it is suggested, requires behaviours which draw strongly on ahumanistic-rehabilitative ethos. Practitioners know from visceral, first hand experience thatpeople respond negatively to punitive, detached and managerial approaches and they aresupported very strongly in this by the available research (Rex 1999, Trotter 1999, Miller andRollnick 2003, Dowden and Andrews 2004, NOMS 2006). Where these styles of interaction areused neither constructive ‘punishment’ nor genuine ‘control’ are achieved let alone ‘help’ or‘change’ (NOMS 2006 p49). Research relating to effective practice through human interaction,on the other hand, underlines the value of listening, empathy and genuine communication.

If it is accepted that the rehabilitative-humanistic discourse remains active in practice thenthis discussion must consider the construction of time which it brings with it and Davies’(1994) concepts of ‘clock’ and ‘process’ time are helpful here. Although anxious to recognisehow these two approaches to time complement each other in many work settings, shedistinguishes between them by associating ‘clock time’ with the historical displacement ofseasonal, diurnal and religious time rhythms by those of industrial production (Thompson1967). Time here, as typified in Taylorist and, subsequently, Fordist systems, is determined bymarket dynamics with the speed of production being directly related to costs andcompetitiveness (Tomlinson 2007). As Davies (1994) points out, the logic of humanrelationship, by contrast, evokes a time governed partly by ‘process’ (p279) as opposed to onegoverned entirely by the clock. For example, the time required to listen to someone and torespond genuinely cannot be entirely predicted and scheduled in advance and a very briefinterview necessarily imposes a detached, instrumental, unresponsive interaction on theparticipants. As Nellis (2001) points out, the same applies to the process of establishingworking relations with community leaders and agencies. There are, therefore, tensionsbetween ‘clock time’ and ‘process time’ since both support a rather different understandingof the term ‘timeliness’. This is of particular importance to probation practice sinceeffectiveness in achieving its objectives is dependent on a combination of ‘clock time’efficiency and the thoughtfulness and relatedness associated with ‘process time’. At present,it is suggested, the balance has tipped too far in favour of the clock and practitioners,therefore, constantly experience the force and logic of ‘process time’ and the claims it makeson them as they strive for effectiveness in practice whilst, at the same time, being acutelyaware of the claims made on them by ‘clock time’ through the imperative to meet time-related targets. Not only are they rushed, they are also conflicted.

If these are some of the key forces driving the experience of time in probation practice, whatare the detailed implications for practitioners?

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Practice ConcernsAnecdotally, in conversation with practitioners and trainees, it is rarely long before thematter of time arises. Often it is described as a governing dimension of the workenvironment tending to render other considerations and questions subordinate. Forexample, interviewing, assessment, thinking and making links with other service providersretain an importance which is heavily qualified by the prevailing time constraints. Further tothis, so many tasks carry an urgent status that prioritisation threatens to break down. Timepressure seems to penetrate and characterise the practice experience and presents as a realitywhich reconfigures other considerations in its own terms.

Turning to examples from recent research, this anecdotal impression would seem to besupported. For example, a participant in Farrow’s study (2004) of morale and commitmentamongst staff with over ten years of practice experience comments:

All of us are beside ourselves…it’s just impossible…the targets are wholly unrealistic(p212).

The term ‘beside ourselves’ suggests both disorientation and anxiety whilst the use of thewords ‘impossible’ and ‘wholly unrealistic’ convey a sense of despair. This practitioner pointsto ‘the targets’ or performance indicators as a source of the difficulty whilst anotherparticipant in Farrow’s study is concerned about the relationship between pace, riskmanagement and the possibility of making mistakes:

I work with high-risk offenders and I’m always chasing my tail. I don’t have time forreflection…have I done things properly? (p212)

This practitioner also refers to manic, misdirected activity (‘chasing my tail’) and it might bereasonable to assume that her concern about whether things have been done properly relatesto the suffering both for others and for herself arising out of an imagined Serious FurtherOffence (SFO). Reflection is simply precluded by shortage of time.

In other related comments made in the course of the same study participants traced theimpact of time scarcity on their work with offenders:

We see people as a national standards requirement each week for five or 10 minutes…(p211).

I probably spend 80 per cent of my time with paperwork, 10 per cent with offenders(p212).

We’re constantly being told what to do…and that we must not spend too much time onoffender activity (p211).

A number of messages, it is suggested, are contained here: that time spent on ‘offenderactivity’ is noted and somehow suspect, that relations between staff tend to take on an

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authoritarian tone, that offenders are perceived primarily in relation to the meeting ofstandards, and that the heart of the job lies in the ‘paperwork’ or screen-based tasks.

Turning to a different research study, Mair, Burke and Taylor (2006) examined the initialnational survey of probation practitioners’ experiences of the Offender Assessment System(OASys). Although they found many favourable views, they note that, amongst thedifficulties OASys presented:

by far the most commonly mentioned problem (irrespective of which version was used)was that it was time-consuming to complete (p13).

Mehta (2008), describing the high quality assessments often produced by practitioners forParole Board hearings, agrees regarding the positive contribution which OASys makes tothese assessments but cautions that:

Detailed completion of OASys on a high risk offender can take the best part of a day(p191).

She goes on to point out the relationship between time and quality risk assessment:

It is true to say that comprehensive PARs (Parole Assessment Reports) are the result ofmany weeks of multi-agency consultation, thought and reflection. They cannot beachieved in the space of a few hours and they certainly cannot be churned out assimplistic pieces of work, as sometimes appears to be the expectation when Home POsare reminded of other competing cash linked targets they are required to meet (p139).

Good assessment is associated here with ‘consultation, thought and reflection’ and quality islinked proportionally with time invested. Again, the performance culture appears as apotential threat to quality through the creation of time scarcity which, in turn, invites the‘churning out’ of ‘simplistic’ analyses.

Further evidence of the salience of time as an issue for practitioners is provided by Annison,Eadie and Knight (2008). Their three studies of those seeking to join the organisation,trainees and newly qualified officers found that what attracted practitioners to probationwork was most often ‘direct work with offenders’ and ‘bringing about positive change.’ (P.265) However, where the hopes of new entrants had been disappointed, reasons given oftenconcerned time:

I am often frustrated by the lack of time I have to undertake my role and with theimpact this has on the quality of my work (p265).

Whilst underlining Mehta’s message about the relationship between time and quality, thesecomments also point towards the emotional impact of a ‘lack of time’ for practitioners.

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Taking a final example, this time regarding learning, Davies and Durrance (2008) conductedfocus groups with Trainee Probation Officers, Practice Development Assessors and UniversityTutors discussing their experience of the Diploma in Probation Studies. Participants observedthat the course ‘requires a lot in a short space of time’ (p212). This, in turn, limited the‘reflection,’ ‘discussion,’ ‘absorption’ and ‘digestion’ (p212) which they associated withlearning. Trainee Probation Officers called for a ‘breather’ (p213) between modules suggestingthat hectic activity restricts learning and might contribute to unchanging patterns of practice bycontrast with the developmental patterns flowing from learning and growth.

This reference to recent studies is far from exhaustive. However, it is sufficient to establish time-poverty as a serious concern for practitioners and to begin to map its impact on a range ofpractice areas. What follows is a discussion of the implications of hurry for effective practicewith particular reference to staff supervision and the nature of communication with offenders.

Time the Practitioner and Effective PracticeIt can be argued that a forceful, demanding organisational time-framework has the capacityto support a sense of structure and of competence in the practitioner. Working in a settingwhich requires an optimum pace of work can be enabling and the task experienced as clear.However, the comments already quoted above suggest that an organisational time frame canalso have unintended, disempowering consequences for practice. Taking as an example therelationship between practitioners and those who manage them, a contributor to Petrillo’s(2007) research into female officers working with high risk offenders, comments on thequality of staff supervision:

It’s punitive, it’s target-focused, it’s, it’s primitive… Now, there’s not really anyone whocan talk you through the practical stuff, never mind the emotional stuff (p404).

Despite the continuation of excellent staff supervision in many locations, the dangerdramatically signalled here is that performance indicators come to dominate staffsupervision. As compliance is required of staff, as it is of offenders, they too begin toexperience the organisation as punitive. This impression is likely to be reinforced by themonitoring and surveillance associated with performance management. For example, apractitioner’s contact with management might most often be triggered by the appearance onthe latter’s screen of a signal indicating that a target has been missed. The sense that practiceis continuously under detailed scrutiny, that ‘the dust of events, actions, behaviour’(Foucault 1975 / 1991 p213) are caught in a web of observation and records, heightensanxiety. A related danger is that time spent developing high quality working relationshipswith partners, victims or offenders can become reformulated in a time-scarce organisation asunwanted ‘perfectionism’ whilst mechanistic but brief practice can be misinterpreted andencouraged as ‘good enough'.

A further, more general, point can be made regarding the relationship between thepractitioner and the time-pressured organisation and this concerns identification with the

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work itself. As organisations become more wedded to interim target outputs, value-considerations related to making a substantive difference can recede. It becomes more likelythat practitioners will experience a sense of dehumanisation and disenchantment. AsGarland (2001) again neatly summarises:

social practices and institutions become more instrumentally effective, but at the sametime they become less emotionally compelling or meaningful for their human agents(p179).

Turning to time culture and the working relationship with offenders, it is important not toneglect the value for probation practice of time boundaries. The unsentimental skills ofmaking the most of limited time and conveying a sense of reasonable urgency play animportant part in the professional relationship. However, speaking of family conferencing inthe field of restorative justice, Nellis (2002) draws attention to an aspect of the workingrelationship which is impaired by haste:

the point is that for the initial event to have relational, emotional and moralsignificance to the participants – for them to be present to each other in meaningfulways – it seemingly needs to take place, conspicuously, outside the ‘hurry culture (Daly1996) (p72).

Put another way, if time is scarce there is little choice for practitioners but to relate to thosethey supervise as objects. That is, in the language of Martin Buber (1947), to establish an ‘I’– ‘It’ relationship in which the other person is relevant only with reference to the gaining ofsome other objective such as meeting the target for appointments kept within a certain time-frame. By contrast, an ‘I’ –‘You’ contact prioritises the authenticity of the conversation andchallenges both parties to interact in honest and authentic ways. Such contact, it is arguedhere, often requires time in interview and is necessary not only to engaging with patterns ofoffending but also to effective risk management. This is partly so since, if listened tocarefully, the offender is more likely to engage in a meaningful exploration of their offendingand to commit to action designed to reduce risk.

This point is strengthened when the dimension of diversity in practice is considered.

As Bhui (2008) compellingly argues, real engagement with diversity is not something whichcan be achieved through fleeting, standardised contacts and rapid recording:

Reflective time is critical to the development of anti-racist attitudes and practice (p96).

Probation practitioners, when working with victims, partner agencies and offenders, mustconstantly bring to bear an understanding of the influence of cultural considerations andthe complex, dynamic operation of power and discrimination. Public protection andmeaningful punishment as well as rehabilitation depend on their informed and thoughtfulanalyses, although these are likely casualties when temporal targets are stressed too strongly.

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Taking time to think after interview and also whilst recording, planning, reviewing andreport writing allows for an informed and alert sifting of the material gained with obviousbenefits for the quality of assessment and planning. In relation to risk management and toreducing re-offending these are not superfluous activities but, combined with careful readingof records and close consultation with the staff of other agencies, are the practices mostlikely to contribute to the prevention of serious further offences.

ConclusionIt has been argued that the way time is constructed in an organisation governs practice in afundamental way. In the instance of contemporary probation, an acute sense of hurry andtime scarcity is driven by discourses of punishment, best value, risk management, andcommercialisation encapsulated in a potent and penetrating performance culture. Whilstthis can encourage focus, consistency and momentum it comes with an inbuilt dynamic ofacceleration and presents serious obstacles to the achievement of core agency objectivesincluding risk management, constructive enforcement, the valuing of diversity and workusing human interaction to contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders.

In particular, it has been suggested that the practitioner operates at the crossroads where therationales of ‘clock time’ (performance time) and ‘process time’ intersect (Davies 1994).Aware, on the one hand, of the pressing claims of timeliness in relation to performanceindicators and, on the other, of the need for genuine working relationships and forthoughtfulness if substantive goals are to be met, the practitioner is charged with the task ofreconciling these forces in their daily practice.

At present, the performance management framework is constructed in ways which renderthat reconciliation difficult and, often, impossible. An unfortunate chain of events is set inmotion whereby, whilst internal targets are hit, nevertheless fleeting and distant contactswith offenders and other relevant parties are followed by thin assessment and planning withthe result that the public is less safe, in any real sense, than it otherwise might be.

As Petrillo, referring to the practitioners who participated in her study, succinctly puts it:

reconciling the organizational focus on the achievement of quantifiable targets, with theactual personal, dynamic experience of the work is something that most of the womenfelt that the Probation Service struggled to satisfactorily achieve (2007 p404).

End Note1. Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ Sandy Denny / Fairport Convention (1969) Unhalfbricking

Island Records.

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ReferencesBeck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Bhui, H.S. ‘Prisons and Race Equality’ In Bhui, H.S. (ed) (2008) Race and Criminal Justice. London:

Sage. Bottoms, A. and McWilliams, W. (1979) ‘A Non-Treatment Paradigm for Probation Practice.’ British

Journal of Social Work 9: 159-202Buber, M. (2001 / 1947) Between Man and Man London: Routledge.Burnett, R. and McNeill, F. (2005) The Place of the Officer-Offender Relationship in Assisting

Offendedrs to Desist from Crime. Probation Journal. 52. (3) pp 221 – 242Carter Report (2003) Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime – A New Approach. London: Prime

Minister’s Strategy Unit. Caroll, L. (1871) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. London.

Penguin. Chapman, T. and Hugh, M. (1998) Evidence-Based Practice: A Guide to Effective Practice London:

Home Office.Davies, K. (1994) The Tensions Between Process Time and Clock Time in Care-Work: The Example of

Day Nurseries. Time and Society. 3 (3) 277-303Davies, K. and Durrance, P. (2008) Probation Training: The Experience of Learners and Teachers.

Social Work Education 28. (2) 204-221 Farrant, F. (2006) Knowledge Production and the Punishment Ethic: The Demise of the Probation

Service. Probation Journal 53 (4) 317-333Farrow, K. (2004) Still Committed After All These Years? Morale in the modern-day probation service.

Probation Journal. 51 (3) 206-220Faulkner, D. (2001) Crime, State and Citizen. Winchester: Waterside Press.Foucault, M. (1991/1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin.Garland, D. (1996) The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary

Society. The British Journal of Criminology. 36 (4) 445-471Garland, D. (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.Harper, G. and Chitty, C. (2004) The Impact of Corrections on Re-offending: a Review of ‘What

Works.’ Home Office Research Study 291. London: Home Office.Home Office (2007) National Standards for the Supervision of Offenders in the Community. London:

Home Office. McGuire, J. (ed) (2002) Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment: Effective Programmes and Policies to

Reduce Re-Offending. Chichester: Wiley.Mair, G., Burke, L. and Taylor, S. (2006) ‘The Worst Tax Form You’ve Ever Seen?’ Probation Officers’

views about OASYs. Probation Journal. 51. (3) 7-23Mehta, A. (2008) Fit for Purpose: OASys assessments and parole decision – A practitioner’s view.

Probation Journal. 55 (2) 189-194Merrington, S. and Stanley, S. ‘Effectiveness: Who Counts What?’ In Gelsthorpe, L. and Morgan, R.

(eds) (2007) Handbook of Probation. Cullompton: Willan. Miller, R. W. and Rollnick, S. (eds.) (2002) (2nd. Ed.) Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People For

Change. New York: The Guildford Press.Mills, K., Davies, K. and Brooks, S. (2007) Experiences of DTTO: The Person in the Process. British

Journal of Community Justice 5 (3) 5-22.Nash, M. (1999) Police, Probation and Protecting the Public. London: Blackstone Press.

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Nellis, M. (2002) Time and the New National Probation Service. The Howard Journal of CriminalJustice. 41. (1) 59 – 86.

Nellis, M. ‘Dim prospects: humanistic values and the fate of community justice.’ In Winstone, J. andPakes, F. (eds) (2005) Community Justice: Issues for Probation and Criminal Justice. Cullompton:Willan.

NOMS (2006) The NOMS Offender Management Model. London: Home Office.Petrillo, M. (2007) Power Struggle: Gender Issues for Female Probation Officers in the Supervision of

High Risk Offenders. Probation Journal. 54 (4) 394-406Power, M. (1997) The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rex, S. (1999) Desistance From Offending: Experiences of Probation. The Howard Journal of Criminal

Justice. 38 (4) 366-383Roberts, C. ‘Offending Behaviour Programmes: Emerging Evidence and Implications for Practice.’ In

Burnett, R. and Roberts, C. (eds) (2004) What Works in Probation and Youth Justice:Developing Evidence-Based Practice. Cullompton: Willan.

Robinson, G. and Burnett, R. (2007) Experiencing modernisation: Frontline probation perspectives onthe transition to a National Offender Management Service. Probation Journal 54 (4) 318-337

Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing Re-offending by Ex-Offenders. London: Office of the DeputyPrime Minister.

Thompson, E.P. (1967) Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism. Past and Present 58: 59-97Tomlinson, J. (2007) The Culture of Speed. London: Sage.Trotter, C.(1999) Working With Involuntary Clients. London: Sage.Wallis, E. (2001) A New Choreography: An Integrated Strategy for the National Probation Service of

England and Wales. London: Home Office.Worrall, A. and Hoy, C. (2005) Punishment in the Community: Managing Offenders, Making

Choices. Cullompton: Willan.

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WHAT HAPPENED TO PROBATION?MANAGERIALISM, PERFORMANCE &THE DECLINE OF AUTONOMY

Pauline Ashworth, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York

AbstractIn the last 25 years or so, the concept of ‘performance’ and its concomitant suffixes ‘culture’and ‘indicators’ have come to dominate discourse surrounding public service policy andpractice, as a consequence of a radical shift in the ethos of public sector provision thatemerged following the election of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in 1979. TheProbation Service was one of the last public sector agencies to come under the spotlight ofpublic sector reform as, following the scrutiny of the health service, education, social work, itwas required to address central issues of accountability, effectiveness and cost. This articleexamines the effects of this shift on the practice and management of probation over the pastquarter of a century or so, particularly in terms its professionalism and organisation.Attention is paid to the ways in which ‘performance’ is understood and interpreted withinprobation practice. Whilst the focus, especially in terms of the timing, is on the experienceof the probation service in England and Wales, it is suggested that the arguments putforward could be generally applicable to other parts of the UK and to systems in other partsof the world where neo-liberalist, market-dominated ideologies have been introduced.

The introduction of explicit performance targets and the more general performance cultureinto public sector policy over the past few decades represented a radical or ‘seismic’ shift(Dorey, 2005; McLaughlin et al, 2001: Carter et al, 1992) in policy thinking and publicpractice. This is not to suggest that the idea of ‘performance’ – or doing a good job – wasalien to people working within the public sector before the 1980s, but it was somethingwhich practitioners tended to take for granted, a self-evident consequence of behavingprofessionally and of taking responsibility for upholding the values and aims of your agency.(McWilliams, 1983; Boswell, 1985; Eadie, 2000) According to Peter Dorey (2005) it wasbelieved at the time that ‘policy failures could be attributed to excessive or unwarrantedgovernment interference’ which could only be redeemed by ‘rolling back the state’ (2005:215). At the same time, rhetoric notwithstanding, Dorey continues:

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What Happened to Probation? Managerialism, Performance & the Decline of Autonomy

…in many public services, the state actually became more directive and intrusive, viavarious reforms, targets, performance indicators, audits and fundingmechanisms…(which aimed to)…restore the authority of government (2005:217).

Consequently, in recent decades, increasing emphasis has been placed upon demonstratingprofessionalism and responsibility, upon proving the effectiveness of one’s practice, andaccounting for the decisions made. Few would argue against such aims but, for manyworking in the public sector, they begged a number of questions: how could such abstractconcepts and processes be rendered concrete enough to indicate good or bad performance?Within the probation service, for instance, the suggestion that what they did could bereduced to measurable and clearly definable performance indicators was anathema to manyprobation officers. The very nature of the work, which involves ‘transformation’ throughunderstanding and addressing the individuality, the diversity and uniqueness of offenders(Garland, 2001; Nellis, 2005; Hough et al, 2006), throws into question the usefulness ofsome of the standardized and measurable indicators of probation performance. For example,how can the effectiveness of the time taken to develop a working relationship with anoffender be measured? What does ‘effectiveness’ actually mean in these circumstances –reducing or stopping offending, or something more subtle such as providing a source ofunderstanding and respect for the first time in an offender’s life that might one day lead to aquestioning of behaviour and attitude? Can the drive toward a measurable concept ofperformance take account of the latter? If not, what does it mean for practice?

In this article, I propose to address some of these questions from the point of view of aformer probation practitioner, but also in the light of my subsequent experience of teachingand training probation officers. My argument is that the impact of the central government’simposition upon the probation service of market forces and business models, incorporatingmarket-driven terms such as cost-effectiveness, efficiency, measurable outcomes andperformance indicators, served to distract probation officers and their managers fromprobation’s central purpose, to distort its priorities, and in some measure at least to alienatean otherwise committed workforce. This is not to say that some changes were not needed,but that the changes that were imposed turned the probation service from its role as apotential ‘bridge’ between the state and the criminal to another arm of the state’s controland suppression of offenders. Probation, having long been criticized as a ‘soft option’(Brake & Hale, 1992; Hughes & Lewis, 1998; Worrall & Hoy, 2005) was to become ‘harder’,tougher and more standardized in its delivery. This is not a new debate, but it is one thatdeserves further consideration in the light of developments in the probation service. I willargue that one of the most damaging consequences of these developments for probation hasbeen the loss of a distinct professional identity and role for the probation service. As wehave, as a society, become more obsessed with risk and risk avoidance, so probation has beenrequired to take a narrower approach to working with offenders, predicated largely on theneed to contain, control or otherwise eliminate that risk. Notwithstanding thedevelopments in ‘restorative practice’ with young offenders, the current probation approachis to categorise, label and otherwise contain adult offenders according to the degree of threat

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they pose. It is on these criteria that the performance of the probation service has come tobe judged.

Writing in 1999, Loveday noted how ‘the introduction of performance culture within publicservices has been the object of considerable analysis and evaluation in the last decade’,adding that the ‘impact of performance culture on criminal justice agencies has not been thefocus of the same degree of analysis (1999:351). This was largely due to the fact that reformof the criminal justice agencies proved ‘to be the last public sector bodies to be subjected toprivate sector disciplines by the Conservative Government’. (ibid) Being the last, however,did not mean getting off lightly. Flynn (2007:102-3) agreed, saying that ‘(a)lthough theorganizations of the criminal justice system were relatively late in receiving the attention ofthe reformers, when it happened they were by no means immune from it.’ McAuley (citingRaine & Wilson, 1997 in Johnson & Scholes, 2001) suggested that ‘governments since 1979have tended to understand criminal justice as pervaded by a culture that is alleged to be“spendthrift, idiosyncratic and unaccountable”’ (2001:251). However, some of the agenciesin the system were rather stronger and more able to resist this assault than some othergroups. The judiciary and the police, for instance, were able to call on their connectionswith powerful interests. The probation service was less well connected.

To set a further context for the discussion, it is important to remember that, until relativelyrecently, the qualification to become a probation officer was a CQSW (Central Qualificationin Social Work) and the ‘motto’ of the service was ‘advise, assist and befriend’ (dating backto the Probation of Offenders Act, 1907), which indicated that the focus of the probationofficer’s endeavours should be on the relationships which could be forged with offenders toencourage, support and guide them to change their behaviour rather than controlling,threatening and forcing such change. Into this background, the changes imposed by thedemands of the performance-led, managerialist culture came as something of a challenge.Exworthy and Halford (1999:2) noted how this experience was mirrored elsewhere in thepublic sector. Their comments on the distinction between the professional and themanagerial approaches are apposite; they note how during the 1990s the emergence intopublic sector policy of what was termed ‘new managerialism’ was regarded by severalcommentators as a critical juncture in relations between professional and managerial staff.They summarised the differences in their approaches in terms of a number of factors:objectives, sources of legitimacy, regulation and reference groups (1999:25), which highlightpotential sources of contestation surrounding priorities and practice management. This isnot to suggest that no differences existed prior to the introduction of new managerialistprinciples, but that they were not so clearly demarcated.

In connection with professionalism in the criminal justice system, Loveday (1999), notinghow policy changes during the 1980s and 1990s ‘reflected the high salience attached to lawand order issues’ by successive governments, describes the criminal justice system asrepresenting a ‘fractious, often mutually contradictory mélange of competing interests’(1999:353). He notes how agencies within the criminal justice system have traditionallyenjoyed ‘a high degree of discretion and operational independence’ and have ‘demonstrated

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a bias toward exclusion rather than inclusion as a means of managing services’. Thistendency toward independence and exclusion has in effect led to ‘a high degree of secrecydesigned to resist effective public scrutiny’ (Loveday, 1999:353). I would suggest that the‘secrecy’ within the Probation Service was less deliberate or conscious than elsewhere. As arelatively new profession (compared with the judiciary, for example), the Service was keen todevelop its standing and status within the criminal justice system; to do this, it had to claiman expertise not shared by other professions and hence to establish a discrete andidentifiable body of knowledge. This is not the same as attempting to avoid accountability.Nonetheless, it did mean that probation officers were able to operate largely autonomouslyand to use a fair amount of professional discretion in their day-to-day contacts withoffenders. The introduction of performance indicators and the demand for measurableevidence of effectiveness called such autonomy and discretion into direct question. Perhaps ifthe probation service had been more conscious of the implications of ‘secrecy’, they wouldhave sought ways to be more openly accountable before it was imposed on them. In that way,they might have been able to dictate, or at least influence, the form that such accountabilitywould take – it would have been on their terms.

Carter, Klein and Day (1992) referred to the ‘revolution’ begun by the Thatcheradministration which involved the introduction of performance indicators as an ‘essentialpart (of) making evaluation a feature of the new Whitehall structure’ (1992:1). Clarke &Newman (1997:38) referred to the ‘transformation agenda’ that was devised for the publicsector. McLaughlin, Muncie and Hughes (2001) described the huge, almost seismic changesintroduced by the Conservatives as the ‘permanent revolution’. They wrote:

In line with what was happening in the rest of the UK public sector, the principles of“new public managerialism” (NPM) were identified as the pathway to post-bureaucraticcriminal justice (2001: 302).

One of the ways in which this was to be achieved was through the introduction of ‘explicittargets and performance indicators to enable the auditing of efficiency and effectiveness’(2001:302). Carter et al (1992) noted that the emergence of NPM was not just a technicalexercise but raised ‘some fundamental questions of governance’ including ‘what counts asgood performance?’ ‘How do we define the various dimensions of performance?’ And ‘whodetermines what good performance is?’ All of which, according to McLaughlin et al(2001:303), signalled ‘a fundamental assault on the professional cultures and discourses andpower relations in the public sector’. These questions, and others, were part of a sometimesfierce debate between practitioners and managers within the probation service during thelatter part of the 1990s (see for instance, Senior, Crowther-Dowey and Long, 2007). Thedebate centred on the issues of ‘professionalism’ and ‘bureaucracy’. Davies & Kirkpatrick (inKirkpatrick & Lucio, 1995), in reference to higher education in Britain, noted how thesector was ‘characterized by a mixture of bureaucratic and professional controls’; keyelements of the latter were ‘self-regulation, collegiality, credentialism and semi autonomy’which served to create an ‘aura of indeterminacy precluding managerial or user involvement’(1995:92, emphasis added). Much of what they describe could be attributed to the probation

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service prior to the institution of what might be called ‘performance thinking’; the servicewas predicated on notions of professionalism and individual expertise which were largely self-regulating and self-evaluating (Harman in Senior & Woodhill, 1990; Nellis, 1990). Thedevelopment of NPM signalled a move away from this concept of professionalism to onepredicated on the ability to manage and control. Thus, it can be argued that the concept of‘the professional’ underwent a significant shift away from the idea of someone with practice-based knowledge and expertise to someone who could manage and organise others.

Following this theme, Goodman (2008:44) noted how the early-mid 1980s was the periodwhen ‘the standing of professionals was challenged as clinicians and practitioners lost theirpower to management professionals’. More specifically, Davies & Kirkpatrick (1995) arguedthat ‘(p)erfomance indicators provided management…with…a “rational” justification forexerting increased bureaucratic control’ (1995:93, emphasis in original). The desire for suchincreased bureaucratic control derived from the political agenda of the ConservativeGovernment which, whilst advocating free market liberalism on the one hand, wasconcerned with somehow forcing efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the public sector on theother. McLaughlin & Muncie (1994 in Gelsthorpe, 2001) refer to the development of a‘mixed economy of criminal justice’ during the 1980s and 1990s which sought to ‘establishnew boundaries of state responsibility and new modes of regulation’ (2001:107). So, whilstthe state was seeking to absolve itself of its traditional role as the natural and primaryprovider of law and order, it was not seeking to divest itself of control. To make this controlsimpler, and practice within criminal justice agencies more transparent, changes were madeto introduce greater formalization of tasks and routine, specialization of roles and increasedhierarchy, more standardization and, where possible, simplification of tasks, and clearerobjective and target setting.

Alongside the Conservative Government’s introduction of market-oriented managementprinciples into the public sector, the other dominant focus for governmental policy wascrime. Concern about crime had been growing as statistics produced during the 1980s and1990s showed significant increases in the level and seriousness of offending (see Hicks &Allen, 1999). The consequences of an upsurge in crime, in terms of prison over-crowding,recidivism, sentencing injustices, mounting fear of victimization, and the perceived failure ofrehabilitation as the dominant approach to dealing with offenders, led politicians on allsides to develop what amounted to an obsession with the subject of crime control. In thelight of this, performance was now to be judged on tangible and measurable results whichwere, according to the economic rationality of the growing enterprise culture, the keymeasure of quality. Thus, Kirkpatrick and Lucio (1995:8) argued: ‘Quality as it has beenunderstood in the public sector during the 1980s was associated with a fundamental critiqueof established organizational structures, cultures and working practices.’ They suggested that,in the name of quality, interventions in public sector functioning were legitimated (1995:9).

Shaw (1995, in Kirkpatrick and Lucio) referring to what he called the ‘rhetoric of quality’,suggested that one of the consequences of successive governments’ use of such rhetoric wasto obscure the fact that:

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…there is no way that the rhetoric could “work” in some unambiguous, instrumentalmanner, if only because different interest groups arguing for quality have different andpossibly incompatible objectives (1995:137).

Relating this to the probation service, it is possible to identify a range of potentiallycompeting objectives. For instance, there was the public’s desire that crime, and thus theirfear, should be reduced; the government’s goal of cutting expenditure; politicians’ desire tofulfil the public’s wish and therefore gain political support; the probation officer’s aim ofhelping to effect change; and, at the same time, the probation officer’s desire to keep his orher job. Whilst not necessarily incompatible, these aims could certainly conflict.

During the 1990s, in the light of the general ‘shake up’ of the public sector, questions wereasked which directly challenged probation officers’ professional individual autonomy andresponsibility, and thus their understanding of their role. With mounting fear of crime andgrowing pressure on the prison system through apparently endemic recidivism, regularbreaches of probation and bail conditions, and alarming increases in juvenile offending,attention was paid to the cost effectiveness of what was being done with offenders (HomeOffice Research Study, 1998). Public interest in crime was at a peak, public fear of crimewas growing apace; it was not unreasonable that people, and their political representatives,would look to those agencies to have their fears assuaged. The problem was that suchreassurance was predicated upon a punishment-orientated way of working that was alien tohow many probation officers defined their task (Nash, 2008:31).

Within the probation service during the 1990s, arguments raged about the validity of thedeterminedly managerialist and bureaucratic approach being imposed (Nash, 2008; Bailey etal, 2007). On the one hand were the managers who were coming under increasingideological and financial pressure to comply with the tide of managerialism that wassweeping through the public sector. They grew concerned about the threats to funding andthe possibility of even more swingeing attacks on the autonomy of the service if they did notshow willing and comply with the required particular management approach (Senior et al,2007). Practitioners, on the other hand, whose day to day rationale and existence consistedof direct working with offenders and who knew intimately the problems associated withcreating and sustaining a relationship that might help effect behavioural change, werealarmed that a good deal of what they did could be discounted, ignored or invalidated by thechanges that were being introduced.

One of the implications of what Newman refers to as the ‘restructuring of state servicesaround the twin principles of managerialism and marketization’ (2005:89) has been the wayin which the clients of such services who have complex needs or problems are ‘shunted off’to the responsibility of their families and communities. For probation, where (as Davies

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argues elsewhere in this edition) time has become an increasingly rare commodity, probationofficers are no longer necessarily the experts but are now responsible for making time-limitedassessments before passing offenders on to programmes and schemes provided elsewhere(Goodman, 2008). Newman (2005:89) says we now have a ‘fragmented array of serviceswhich need to be co-ordinated’. Such co-ordination is now the probation officer’s task.They are also charged with what has become a focal concern – identifying risk.

Alongside the focus on evidence-based working as a central element of the growingperformance culture was the emphasis on risk as a determining factor in decisions aboutsentencing, managing and dealing with offenders. Clear & Candara (in Stenson & Sullivan,2001) consider what Feeley & Simon (1992) dubbed ‘the new penology’ in whichpreoccupation with risk represents:

…a fundamental shift in correctional ethics…(involving) a migration away fromtraditional concerns for offender reform and humanitarian programs…toward a‘warehousing’ ethic, in which bodies are sorted according to formalized assessments oftheir risk and their time and movement under penal authority managed according torationalized images of ‘control’ and ‘desert’ (2001:51-2, emphasis added).

The recognition of risk as an important factor in dealing with offenders was due, in part, toacknowledgement of the legitimacy of the victim perspective. An indirect consequence ofthe burgeoning ‘law and order’ rhetoric which came to dominate so many party politicalconferences during the 1980s, the public’s fear of crime and the way in which victims’ viewswere side-lined in the criminal justice system emerged as a significant strand of law and orderdiscourse (Williams & Goodman Chong in Green et al, 2008). The increasedacknowledgement of the victim and public’s fear gave rise to the focus on risk and how thelatter might be limited in order to assuage the former. We have become what has beendescribed as a ‘risk society’ (Stenson, 2001; Hudson, 2001; Beck, 1992) or, I would suggest, a‘risk averse society’, especially in relation to crime where the growth of a huge industrysurrounding personal protection, insurance and surveillance is testament to the level ofconcern people have about crime.

In reference to the emergence of ‘risk’ as a dominant factor in criminal justice discourse,Barbara Hudson (in Stenson & Sullivan, 2001:144) raised a serious concern about justice asan ‘endangered concept’ suggesting that modern Western societies such as the UK and theUSA were ‘losing sight of the importance of justice as a regulative ideal’. She continued:

‘Justice’ is now very much less important than ‘risk’ as a preoccupation of criminaljustice/law and order policy; the politics of safety have overwhelmed attachment tojustice in the institutions of late-modern democratic polities (2001:144).

In a similar vein, it could be argued that, in the government’s (and, by extension theprobation service’s) concern to avoid, limit or eradicate risk, they have lost sight of theindividual as a holistic and separate entity. The central focus is not on the individuality of

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the people they work with, but on how far and to what extent they pose a risk; in doing so,they overlook the essential humanity of the person in front of them. As ‘risk’ has movedcentre-stage, Parton & O’Byrne (2000) argue:

…society, especially the media, has developed an insurance mentality and is quick tolay blame when things go wrong. This situation has changed the relationship betweenworkers and service users (potential and actual) and often seems to result in workersseeing those they are assessing as ‘the enemy’ (2000:146).

Here we come to the crux of the matter in relation to the probation service’s ability andwillingness to embrace and deal with ‘diversity’. In the risk-dominated language andapproach of current political and policy discourse, ‘difference’ can easily come to be seen notas an essential human quality, but as a source of potential threat and disruption to ourotherwise ordered and manageable lives. This order and manageability is directly mirroredin the systems which have been introduced throughout the public sector generally, and thecriminal justice system in particular, to define and measure risk. The effect of this changehas, in my argument, been particularly damaging to the Probation Service because of itshitherto unique position within the criminal justice system. The gradual erosion of theprinciples relating to ‘care’ in favour of those concerned with ‘control’ has tended toundermine the service’s underpinning professional ideology and rationale, as well as the day-to-day practice of probation officers.

Weissman (2006) wrote, in reference to the demise of therapeutic work, which underpinnedmuch of what probation officers did:

The long-haul therapeutic journey is now considered to be an activity that lacks aproper evidence base and is castigated for being too costly, and an inefficient use ofscarce resources. It has also been criticized for its professional overindulgence, lackingthe rigour and structure to evaluate both its purpose and effectiveness (2006:169).

Although probation officers did not consider themselves ‘long-haul therapists’, they did, asthey had been trained to do, draw heavily on the skills and case work approach developed bypsychodynamic disciplines. For many years, the ‘case-work relationship’ was one of thecentral approaches to working with offenders; for a time, it dominated other ways ofworking. The focus was on the individual and his or her needs and circumstances.Acknowledging and working with difference and diversity were central themes in practice aswell as in principle. Developing a relationship with individual offenders was deemed criticalto influencing change. This relationship was predicated upon an understanding and anacceptance of difference; at its best, the essential difference between the offender and theofficer was not merely acknowledged, but actively incorporated into discussion so that, asParton & O’Byrne put it, ‘human engagement is required where the worker comes from “notknowing” and is able to listen’ (2000:141). They point out, however, that this ‘is ratherdifficult to do in one meeting, particularly if one has to deal with the current risk culturethat tends to dominate how assessments are devised’ (2000:142). Other ways of working,

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more behavioural in their approach, were developed to take account of the increasing timeconstraints and, for some, the need to develop more pragmatic ways of working. It might beargued that the emergence of these alternative approaches represented a response to externalpressure to develop a more structured and accountable way of working; at the same time,they signalled a change in practice as probation now lacked a coherent (or uniform) practicebase. It may be that this lack of coherence has been responsible for the way in which theservice has been effectively undermined by the developments in public sector policy over thepast few decades.

At this point, it is worth noting that the change of government in 1997, which seemed toherald the longed-for return to what was seen as a more ethical and humane approach tocriminal justice, quite rapidly came to be perceived as a monumental disappointment (Senioret al, 2005; Newman & Clarke, 2009). Probation officers at the time felt a resurgence ofhope that their way of thinking and their approach to tackling crime would find a voice ingovernment. Unfortunately, in the increasingly hysterical atmosphere that surrounded therun up to the 1997 election, the race for government was at times dominated by theConservative Home Secretary and his Shadow ‘toughing it out’ on who had the hardest,most punishing policy and attitude toward crime and criminals. As a result, the hope thatNew Labour might fulfil Blair’s promise to be tough on the causes of crime faded.McLaughlin et al (2001) note how:

In the count-down to the 1997 election, New Labour’s remarkable transformation intothe flag-bearers of ‘tough on crime’ policies smothered any meaningful politicaldiscussion of the Party’s proposals to tackle the underlying causes of crime (2001:304).

Notwithstanding the rhetoric which ‘offered some hope for a revival of the rehabilitationistspirit’ (Nash, 2008: 32), New Labour proved to have wedded itself to the pragmatism of theenterprise and entrepreneurial culture left behind by the Conservatives (Nash, 2008). The‘What Works’ agenda had first been promoted in a conference in 1991; New Labour pickedup on the idea demanding evidence to justify, amongst other things, key elements ofprobation practice. It should be noted that ‘what works’ mantra had been espoused by manywithin the probation service in recognition of the legitimacy of the requirement to addressand demonstrate the effectiveness of what they did. However, the way in which effectivenessnow came to be equated with what was measurable and definable in such terms served tolimit the scope of what was deemed ‘good practice’ as only the quantifiable could becounted. As I suggest above, the embracing of the ‘what works’ mantra by probation officersmay unwittingly have opened the door to this new form of assault on their professionalism.

In this regard, Flynn (1997:92) noted that the ‘autonomy of…the professions has been greatlycurtailed’; for probation officers, this meant that the traditional balance between the twinpeaks of care and control was tipped strongly in favour of the latter so that ‘probationofficers are (now) offering punishment in the community’ rather than a traditional socialwork-based process applied to offenders. Flynn further noted how managers andprofessionals have become ‘more competitive and less collaborative’ which means, amongst

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other things, ‘a reluctance to share skills, knowledge, information and good practice’ (Flynn,1997:93). Whilst this might refer more to those professions where league tables have beenimposed, it nonetheless has had an effect on probation in that awareness of the need toprove and demonstrate performance has meant that professional discretion and autonomy isgeared more toward presenting a convincing picture of what is being achieved and hence agreater concentration within the organization on measurable results. At the same time asreducing professional discretion, the effect of the shift toward managerial and bureaucraticcontrol has been to increase the influence of managers. Flynn argues:

Whether the managers were previously professional or not, the power they acquirederives from their relationship with the centre rather than their professional expertise orknowledge. Centralization shifts the balance between the professionals and managers(1997:93-4).

One effect of this has been the way in which probation officers are supervised and theirwork scrutinized. Prior to the emergence of the performance culture within probationduring the 1990s, supervision was, as Flynn puts it, ‘conducted as a conversationbetween professionals rather than between a boss and a subordinate’(2007:108).

Following the production, in 1984, of the initial “Statement of National Objectives andPriorities” for the Probation Service, which ‘signalled the Home Secretary’s intention tosubject probation policy and practice to a degree of control never previously attempted’(Morgan in Gelsthorpe & Morgan, 2007:92), National Standards were introduced in 1992.

These developments represented a challenge to the professional autonomy of individualprobation officers, were associated with growing demands for management performance dataand practice accountability, and were allied to increased pressure that practitioners adoptevidence-based working practices legitimated by Home Office and other research (ibid).

Further, it was argued, the introduction of National Standards was an overt signal of theGovernment’s intent to ‘detach the Probation Service from its social work origins’ (Flynn,2007:109). The Standards were ‘partly a description of the activities carried out by the serviceand partly an attempt to enforce routines of behaviour’. (Flynn, 2007:108, emphasis added)From that point, a consensus amongst commentators, and a fear amongst practitioners, wasthat individual probation officers and their practice decisions would be scrutinized byWhitehall bureaucrats and somehow measured to determine their justifiability andeffectiveness, but no-one was quite sure how this would be done. The National Standardsgave a clue and ‘(e)ach edition of the National Standards from 1992 onwards became tighter’with increased emphasis on enforcement and control (Gelsthorpe & Morgan, op cit, 10,emphasis in original). Limits were imposed on the time between the imposition of an orderand initial assessment, on the number, frequency and duration of contacts during the periodof an order; the structure and content of court reports were more closely prescribed, and theassessment of the risk posed by an offender developed from being one amongst many factorsto the central concern of the PSR (Pre-Sentence Report) as well as the way in which

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offenders’ progress whilst subject to probation supervision was to be gauged. In 2003, newsystems such as OASys (Offender Assessment System) and OGRS (Offender GroupReconviction Scale) were introduced which aimed further to standardize and clarifydecisions about risk and likelihood of re-offending and reconviction which had hithertobeen largely left to the individual officer’s professional judgement and experience. As timepassed, the systems became increasingly complex and specific so that, for instance, in 2000 aRisk Matrix for use with sex offenders was created, which came to be used alongside theStructured Risk Assessment and the Acute Risk Checklists developed within the ProbationService in 2004 (Gelsthorpe & Morgan, op cit, 222). Designed to ensure that all bases werecovered, a ‘checklist’ approach was introduced in the preparation of reports and theassessment of what came to be referred to as offenders’ ‘criminogenic needs’.

This brief overview of the developments from the 1984 SNOP and 1992 National Standardsto the introduction of OASys and similar systems a decade later demonstrates what I wouldsuggest was an incremental challenge to traditional ways of working within probation; each‘innovation’ was squeezed into existing practice in the hope that compliance would satisfythe government and persuade them against wholesale radical change. This was not unique toprobation; Nash (2008:33) refers to the ‘compliance culture across the public sector.Unfortunately, the change happened anyway.

I would argue that there is a distinct difference and tension between the need to control,account for and standardize practice and the need to engage offenders in the process ofchange. Whether this tension is reconcilable is unclear. It could be argued that theprobation officer’s freedom and ability to respond to each offender as an individual withdifferent needs and different backgrounds or circumstances is enhanced by having some ofthe routine and generalizable factors taken care of by such systems of assessment. On theother hand, it could be argued that the necessity to think about and explore theparticularities of each case is obviated as officers are relieved of the intellectual burden bybeing able to draw upon ready-made check lists and quantified systems for judging risk andassessing need. As Goodman notes, the espousal of the cognitive-behavioural model as a wayof dealing with offenders (Maguire, 2000) has seen ‘a retreat from considering continuitywith offenders as important’ (Goodman, 2008:48). He continues, commenting on the “TheNOMS Offender Management Model” (Home Office, 2006, version2): ‘The report showsthe influence of management consultants rather than those with a grip on the reality ofworking with offenders’ (2008:49).

Some recent commentators (Tallant, et al, 2008:75) have noted the shoots of a revival ofinterest in rehabilitation as the importance of the ‘practitioner-offender relationship’ isacknowledged in policy documents, yet it remains the case that such ‘shoots’ are beingcultivated within a framework of ‘restrictive and punitive interventions and riskmanagement’. Further, whilst it might be argued that the concept of ‘what works’represented a ‘revived confidence in the belief that rehabilitation programmes for offenderscould reduce their likelihood of re-offending’ (Merrington & Stanley, in Gelsthorpe &Morgan, 2007:440), it did not at the same time reverse the political and policy focus on

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tougher sentencing and harsher community penalties and on performance targets andmeasures of effectiveness and efficiency. Merrington and Stanley link these trends, stating:‘(w)hat performance management particularly does is operationalise the Government’spriorities by defining effectiveness in very specific ways which are likely to influenceprobation practice (2007:448, emphasis in original). From the Government’s perspective,priorities would be sustained reductions in criminality and crime, in the prison population,and in the demands on the public purse that high levels of crime and imprisonment entail.From the public’s point of view, especially those who have been victims of crime, anincreased sense of ease and freedom from fear coupled with tough sentencing to punish,deter and satisfy the need for vengeance, is more likely to be a priority and, if achieved, themeasure of success. However, from the perspective of the practising probation officer, whilstall these things would be welcome, ‘success’ would be something less tangible or immediate.Traditionally, probation officers have had to ‘play the long game’, sowing seeds that mightbear fruit quite a long way down the line (Nash, 2008; Goodman, 2008). They recognisedthat change, especially in attitudes and behaviour, was not achieved overnight; that itrequired sustained effort, motivation and commitment – not something that many offendershave been used to in their lives (Trotter, 1999; Miller & Rollnick, 2002). To such officers‘what works’ is a matter of degree and possibility. Measuring this, accounting for this, oreven defining this is extremely difficult.

No-one could disagree with the assertion that probation officers should be accountable forwhat they do, or that they should be working to professional standards. What could bedisputed is the way in which systems to achieve these aims were devised and imposed. In myview an opportunity was lost in the 1990s when managerial approaches, procedures andlanguage were introduced at the expense of the ‘traditional’ professionalism of the service.There can be no doubt that many of the criticisms that were being levelled at the ProbationService at that time had some large grains of truth – accountability (internal as well asexternal) was unclear; professional autonomy meant that individual officers were largely leftwith the freedom but also the responsibility for the decisions they made.

However, addressing those issues need not necessarily have entailed the introduction of‘performance indicators’, measurable outcomes, or quantifiable assessments. Before leaping(or being helped) onto the performance culture bandwagon, the probation service couldhave paid closer attention to developing systems which increased accountability andtransparency without sacrificing some of its central principles and beliefs. The change couldhave come from within rather than allowing it to be imposed from outside; that way, moreprobation officers might have remained in the profession instead of quitting to leave thefield open for the introduction of a more punitive and intolerant ideology to emerge. Being‘the last’ to come under the spotlight should have forewarned the probation service as towhat was coming. But many of the managers at that time had come up through the ranksand were not necessarily well versed in management-speak or in how to stand against it; theimpression was given that, if we ‘just comply with this bit, perhaps ‘they’ will let us off therest’. On such naïve hopes have many foundered.

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The introduction and development of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS)in 2004, following the Carter report to the Cabinet Office (2003) has continued the drivetowards centralized control that emerged has been a theme of government criminal justicepolicy since the first Statement of National Objectives and Priorities (SNOP) in 1984through the establishment of a National Probation Service (as distinct from regional, semi-autonomous services) in 2000 to the current conjoining of probation and prison servicesunder NOMS. The (albeit uneasy, see Senior et al, 2007 chapter 5,) alignment of these twocriminal justice agencies represents an arm of the government’s ‘joined up thinking’ wherebyoffenders are subject to ‘end-to-end’ supervision whether in custody or the community, andserves to erode the distinction between the aims and approaches of the two agencies,preferring the controlling, punitive aim of prison to the rehabilitative, non-judgementalapproach of probation. This conjoining has meant, in the minds of the government and itspolicy makers at least, a loss of probation’s distinct identity and purpose. It has not,however, resulted in a more coherent and co-ordinated approach to offender supervision(Senior et al, 2007; Goodman, 2008).

As I suggest above, I believe an opportunity was lost. Not all in the probation garden wasrosy – far from it – but the shake up that the service has experienced in the past 20-25 yearshas been imposed by people without a comprehensive understanding or appreciation of whatprobation officers knew, did or believed in. As a result, the service now acts largely as anextension of the criminal justice system rather than, as it used to regard itself, the‘humanizing face’ of that system.

An interesting post-script to the portrait of the probation service’s recent history, and onewhich serves to remind us that history so often repeats itself, can be found in CliffordShaw’s 1930 ground-breaking study of ‘Stanley’ entitled “The Jack-Roller: A DelinquentBoy’s Own Story”. In this study, Shaw, a prison welfare officer in Chicago, chose to presenta life story which he argued ‘reveals the essentially human aspects of the problem ofdelinquency.’ (Shaw, 1966:17) Such ‘human aspects’ – ‘attitudes and intimate situations’ –provide the probation/parole officer with crucial insight into the ‘fundamental nature of thebehavior difficulty’ which ‘affords a basis for devising a plan of treatment adapted to theattitudes, interests, and personality of the (offender)’. (1966:17) Tellingly, for the presentpurposes, Shaw continues:

The large amount of failure in probation and parole work is not at all surprising, sincethe worker is forced, under the pressure of a heavy caseload, to deal primarily with themore formal and external aspects of his cases… In the absence of detailed knowledge ofthe delinquent’s personal attitudes and intimate situations, the worker’s relation to hiscase is necessarily more or less formal, and the treatment consists chiefly of attempts togain control and effect adjustment through threats of arrest and punishment (1966:18,emphasis added).

Shaw was writing in 1930, but the picture he paints is disturbingly familiar.

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ReferencesBailey, R., Knight, C. & William, B. (2007) ‘the Probation Service as part of NOMS in England and

Wales: fit for purpose?’ in Gelsthorpe, L. & Morgan, R. (eds.) Handbook of Probation,Cullompton: Willan Publishing

Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernism, London: Sage Boswell, G. (1985) Care, Control and Accountability in the Probation Service, Social Work

MonographsBrake, M. & Hale, C. (1992) Public Order and Private Lives: the politics of law and order, London:

RoutledgeCarter, N., Klein, R. & Day, P. (1992) How Organisations Measure Success: The Use of Performance

Indicators in Government, London: RoutledgeCarter, P. (2003) Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A New Approach, London: Cabinet OfficeClarke, J. & Newman, J. (1997) The Managerial State: Power, Politics and Ideology in the Remaking of

Social Welfare, London: Sage PublicationsDorey, P. (ed.) (2005) Developments in British Public Policy, London: Sage PublicationsEadie, T. (2002) “From befriending to punishment: changing boundaries in the probation service”, in

Malin, N. (ed.) Professionalism, Boundaries and the Workplace, London: RoutledgeFlynn, N. (1997) Public Sector Management, 3rd Edition, Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall/Harvester

WheatsheafFlynn, N. (2007) Public Sector Management, 5th Edition, London: Sage PublicationsGarland, D. (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society,

Oxford: Oxford University PressHarman, J. (1990) “The Quest for Stronger Probation Management: Threat or Opportunity?” in

Senior, P. & Woodhill, D. (1990) Criminal Justice in the 1990s: What Future(s) for the ProbationService? Sheffield: PAVIC

Hicks, J. & Allen, G. (1999) A Century of Change: Trends in UK Statistics since 1900, House ofCommons Library

Hudson, B. (2001) “Punishment, rights and difference: defending justice in the risk society” inStenson, K. & Sullivan, R.R. Crime, Risk and Justice: The politics of crime control in liberaldemocracies, Cullompton: Willan Publishing

Gelsthorpe, L. & Morgan, R. (Eds.) (2007) Handbook of Probation, Cullompton: Willan PublishingGoodman, A. (2008) ‘The evidence base’, in Green, S., Lancaster, E. & Feasey, S. (eds.) Addressing

Offending Behaviour: Context, practice and values, Cullompton: Willan PublishingGreen, S., Lancaster, E. & Feasey, S. (eds.) Addressing Offending Behaviour: Context, practice and

values, Cullompton: Willan PublishingHome Office (1998) Reducing offending: an assessment of research evidence on ways of dealing with

offending behaviour, Home Office Research Study 187Hough, M., Allen, R. & Padel, U. (eds.) (2006) Reshaping probation and prisons: The new offender

management framework, Bristol: The Policy PressHughes, G. & Lewis, G. (1998) Unsettling Welfare: the Reconstruction of Social Policy, London:

Routledge Kemshall, H. “Risk Assessment and Management: An Overview” in Lishman, J. (2007) Handbook for

Practice Learning in Social Work and Social Care: Knowledge and Theory, 2nd Edition, London:Jessica Kingsley Publishing

Kirkpatrick, I. & Martinez Lucio, M. (Eds.) (1995) The Politics of Quality in the Public Sector,London: Routledge

Lishman, J. (2007) Handbook for Practice Learning in Social Work and Social Care: Knowledge andTheory, 2nd Edition, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishing


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Loveday, B. (1999) “The Impact of Performance Culture on Criminal Justice Agencies in England andWales”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 27, 351-377

Maguire, J. (2000) Cognitive-Behavioural Approaches: An Introduction to Theory and Research,London: Home Office, HM Inspectorate of Probation

McAuley, J. (2001) “The relationship between quality, approaches to management control, and theachievement of best value in public sector professional service organisations” in Johnson, G. &Scholes, K. (eds.) (2001) Exploring Public Sector Strategy, Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.

McLaughlin, E. & Muncie, J. (Eds.) (2001) Controlling Crime, 2nd Edition, London: SagePublications

McLaughlin, E., Muncie, J. & Hughes, G. (2001) “The Permanent Revolution: New Labour, NewPublic Management and the Modernization of Criminal Justice”, Criminology and CriminalJustice 2001; 1; 301-318

McWilliams, W. (1983) “The Mission Transformed: Professionalism of Probation Between the Wars”,Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 24(4), 257-274

Merrington, S. & Stanley, S. (2007) “Effectiveness: who counts what?” in Gelsthorpe, L. & Morgan, R.(Eds.) (2007) Handbook of Probation, Cullompton: Willan Publishing

Miller, W.R. & Rollnick, S. (2002) Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People for Change, 2ndEdition, London: Guildford Press

Nash, M. (2008) ‘The policy context’, in Green, S., Lancaster, E. & Feasey, S. (eds.) AddressingOffending Behaviour: Context, practice and values, Cullompton: Willan Publishing

Nellis, M. (1990) “Probation, the State and the Independent Sector” in Senior, P. & Woodhill, D.(1990) Criminal Justice in the 1990s: What Future(s) for the Probation Service? Sheffield: PAVIC

Nellis, M. (2005) “Dim prospects: humanistic values and the fact of community justice” in Winstone,J. and Pakes, F. (eds.) Community Justice: Issues for Probation and Criminal Justice,Cullompton: Willan Publishing

Newman, J. (ed.) (2005) Remaking Governance: Peoples, politics and the public sphere, Bristol: ThePolicy Press

Newman, J. & Clarke, J. (2009) Publics, Politics and Power, London: Sage PublicationsParton, N. & O’Byrne, P. (2000) Constructive Social Work: towards a new practice, London:

Macmillan Press LtdSenior, P., Crowther-Dowey & Long, M. (2007) Understanding Modernisation in Criminal Justice,

Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw HillShaw, C. (1930/1966) The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story, Chicago: University of Chicago

Press LtdStenson, K. & Sullivan, R.R., (Eds.) (2001) Crime, Risk and Justice: The politics of crime control in

liberal democracies, Cullompton: Willan PublishingTallant, C., Sambrook, M. & Green, S. (2008) “Engagement skills: best practice or effective practice?”

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Trotter, C. (1999) Working with Involuntary Clients: A Guide to Practice, London: Sage PublicationsWeissman, R. (2006) “The Demise of Long-term Work: Is the Clock Ticking Too Quickly?” Clinical

Child Psychology and Psychiatry 2006; 11; 167Williams, B. & Goodman Chong, H. (2008) “Victims” in Green, S., Lancaster, E. & Feasey, S. (eds.)

Addressing Offending Behaviour: Context, practice and values, Cullompton: Willan PublishingWorrall, A. & Hoy, C. (2005) Punishment in the Community: Managing Offenders, Making Choices,

2nd Edition, Cullompton: Willan Publishing

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RACE RELATIONS IN PRISON:MANAGING PERFORMANCE ANDDEVELOPING ENGAGEMENT

Dr Malcolm Cowburn, Principal Lecturer in Criminology, Sheffield HallamUniversity & Dr Victoria Lavis, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Bradford

AbstractThis paper explores the paradox that whilst the quantitative measures of prison performancein relation to ‘race relations’ indicate substantial improvements in service delivery, morequalitative measures of the quality of prison life appear to indicate little substantiveimprovement in race relations. Using the underrepresentation of Black and Minority Ethnic(BME) prisoners in accredited offending behaviour related prison programmes as a casestudy to explore understandings of race relations, the paper reflects on whether the underrepresentation indicates the operation of racial discrimination by prison staff or a refusal toparticipate by prisoners. It also explores other explanations for this phenomenon relating tothe enactment of positive ethnic identities and resistance to programmes that ignore suchidentities. The paper concludes by considering the challenge of developing an active prisonculture that validates all ethnic identities in culturally appropriate ways.

IntroductionThis paper has its origins in our attempts to understand and respond to theunderrepresentation of BME sex offenders on the Prison Service of England and Wales’ sexoffender treatment programme (SOTP) (Cowburn and Lavis et al 2008a, 2008b). However,it is also influenced by our recent experience of undertaking research funded by theEconomic and Social Research Council which sought to explore how issues of diversitywithin the prisoner population are responded to in HMP Wakefield1. In carrying out thatresearch we became sensitised to the existence of parallel, yet often conflicting, ‘stories’ ofprison performance. Such conflicts generate difficulties for researchers in accounting forpractices, particularly where standardised [quantitative] measures of performance tell adifferent story than first hand observation and the told experience of staff and prisoners.This tension is consistent with Cheliotis and Liebling’s (2006) argument that performancemeasures count but do not account for issues related to race relations in prison. Using thecase study of accredited offending behaviour related programmes in prison we explore what

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Race Relations in Prison: Managing Performance and Developing Engagement

inhibits and what facilitates the participation of Black and Minority Ethnic prisoners inprison life. These programmes are a key element in mapping prisoners’ sentence plans andin preparing them for living without committing offences when released from prison; as suchinvolvement with these programmes would appear to be essential for all prisoners. Thispaper highlights the evidence of ethnic minority non-participation in accredited offendingbehaviour programmes. It considers ways of understanding this phenomenon that includestheorising the development and enactment of positive identities.

In this paper we use the term ‘BME’ to refer to Black and Asian minority ethnic prisoners.This term is used in the Impact assessments of Prison functions in England and Wales (H.M. Prison Service, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c; 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). Aspinall (2002: 803-805)points to the limitations of what he calls ‘pan-ethnic’ terms. Moreover, the Prison Servicerecognises that the term has limited utility, particularly in distinguishing particular ethnicgroups; thus from the second quarter of 2008 it introduced a new database (SMART II)which enables more sophisticated analysis of ethnic groupings (it uses six categories – Asian,Black, Mixed, Other, White British and White Other). Presumably future Impactassessments will reflect this complexity. However, the focus of this paper is ‘race relations’which are largely predicated on skin colour rather than detailed ethnic differences, so the useof pan-ethnic terminology is appropriate. Where we use the terms “Black” and “White” todenote race (as defined only by skin colour) we use capital letters to denote the ideologicalconstructs implicit in the terms, however where cited sources use the terms we reproduce theoriginal typographic case.

The paper first outlines how performance in relation to ‘race relations’ is managed in theprisons of England and Wales. It then presents demographic data related to the ethnicmakeup of the national prison population and the non-participation of BME prisoners inOffending Behaviour programmes. It moves on to develop an understanding of BMEprisoner (non) participation in offending behaviour programmes, and concludes with anexploration of how prisons may move from monitoring discrimination to encouragingparticipation.

Performance management in the Prisons of Englandand Wales: Race Relations

Performance information shows how well an organisation is performing against itsstated objectives. Knowing how well the organisation is currently doing is essential indeveloping strategy and policies to meet the organisation’s aims. (H.M. Treasury 2001: cited in Liebling & Arnold 2005:57)

The information related to the performance of the Prison Service of England and Wales isprescribed by a ‘framework of targets or standards’ (Liebling and Arnold 2005: 56-57). Threekey sources of data are used to assess the performance of the organisation as a whole and ofindividual establishments; these are – ‘Key Performance Indicators and Targets (KPIs andKPTs) and Standards Audit ratings of compliance with specified policy processes … [and] the

Prisons Inspectorate.’ (Liebling & Arnold 2005: 57). Of these three sources KPTs are

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more numerous and although most are set centrally there is some scope for local variation.They represent a more detailed (establishment specific) way of providing evidence in relationto KPIs.

In the specific context of race and ethnicities in prison, a revised national policy was set outin 2006 in Prison Service Order 2800 ‘Race Equality’ (H.M. Prison Service, 2006). It notesin chapter 4.11 (Management of Information) that:

The Key Performance Target (KPT) on Race Equality (Operational) has beenconstructed to give an assessment that reflects a balance of processes, outcomes andperceptions (p,11).

This KPT was subsequently revised in April 2008. Currently, the scoring for the target isconfigured with the following weightings: ‘Outcomes: 15%, Process 40% and Perceptions45%). The data for ‘outcomes’ is obtained from the SMART II database, for ‘process’ fromthe Standards audit and for ‘perceptions’ from the Measurement of Quality of Prison Life(MQPL) survey and the National Visitor Survey’ (Barnett-Page, 2009).

Since its introduction in 2006, and subsequent revision in 2007, there is evidence that theKPT is having an impact on prison practice. Moreover, the quantitative measurement andthe grading and reporting of performance have led to improved scores of individual prisons(NOMS, 2008: 31).

A further means of measuring aspects of race relations in prison; impact assessment, wasintroduced with PSO 2800 (H. M. Prison Service, 2006: 12):

… the Prison Service has undertaken in its Race Equality Scheme to impact assess thosefunctions, policies and practices considered relevant to race equality and to publish theresults of those impact assessments.

The impact assessment process provides the means by which the Prison Service:

•assesses proposed and current policies for any effects they might have on the promotion of race equality;

•consults people who are likely to be affected by those policies;

•monitors policies for any adverse effects they might have on people from different racial groups;

•takes action to correct any adverse impact found, through timed action plans.

The impact assessment process is central to the management of race equality inestablishments. It is a structured method that the Governor and Senior ManagementTeam must use to eliminate any discriminatory effect of each of the policies and

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practices within the prison and to demonstrate their commitment to the promotion ofrace equality. It is a particularly effective way for the Race Equality Action Team topromote the integration of race equality issues into the management of theestablishment and to ensure that such issues are considered as a routine part of allpolicy-making and management decision-making.

PSO 2800 (H.M. Prison Service, 2006: 12) also notes that an Impact Assessment is ‘asystematic way of finding out whether current or proposed functions, policies or practicesaffect different racial groups differently’. In summary, KPIs and KPTs help prison managersto focus on making activities and practices in Prison Service establishments congruent withthe expressed objectives of the Prison Service. Impact Assessments serve to highlight areaswhere different racial groups receive different treatment. However, Liebling and Arnold(2005: 68-70) point to the dangers that an over-preoccupation with counting that things have(or have not) been done potentially ignores how things are done. In the next section wefocus on issues raised by impact assessments of accredited offending behaviour relatedprogrammes and in the sections that follow we consider matters relating to how things aredone on these programmes and how they may be explained.

The Underrepresentation of BME Prisoners inOffending Behaviour Related Programmes The prison population of England & Wales is ethnically diverse with BME prisonerscurrently making up 27 per cent of the overall population (NOMS, 2008). Table 1 showsthat this proportion has been steadily increasing over the last fourteen years.

Table 1 BME proportion of the prison populations of England and Wales (derived from NOMS2008: 6)

Year Proportion of prison population of England and Wales that identifies as BME

1995 17 per cent

2001 19 per cent

2006 25 per cent

2008 27 per cent

However, although these proportions continue to show that Black and Minority Ethnicpeople are substantially over represented in the prison population of England and Wales(Phillips & Bowling , 2007), they are significantly underrepresented in participation on thevarious accredited groupwork programmes organised and delivered by the Prison Service.


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All Impact Assessments (http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/raceequalityscheme/impactassessments/) in relation to accredited offending behaviour related programmes indicatethat BME prisoners are significantly underrepresented. The Impact Assessments that wehave reviewed are: Cognitive self-change programme (H. M. Prison Service, 2007a);Cognitive Skills Booster programme (H. M. Prison Service, 2008a); Healthy RelationshipsTreatment Programme for Domestic Violence Offenders (H.M. Prison Service, 2007b); SexOffender Treatment Programme (H.M. Prison Service, 2007c) ; Substance TreatmentOffending Programme (H.M. Prison Service, 2008c); Counselling Assessment ReferralAdvice Throughcare service (CARATs) Standard Groupwork Packages (H. M. Prison Service,2008b). Whilst some of these assessments try to account for the underrepresentation ofBME prisoners, it is clearly a matter that demands further exploration and remedy.

Prison Programmes: Towards an Understanding of BMEPrisoner (non) ParticipationIn seeking to understand the underrepresentation of BME prisoners in accredited offendingbehaviour related programmes, a number of issues need to be considered: (i) do BMEprisoners have equal access (in comparison with White prisoners) to these programmes? (ii)do all accredited programmes facilitate the participation of BME prisoners? and (iii) doaccredited programmes contribute to BME prisoners’ positive ethnic identifications?

(i) Do BME prisoners have equal access (in comparison with White prisoners) to accreditedprogrammes?In order to participate in the various accredited prison programmes a prisoner has to benominated to do so – that is to say a prisoner has to be referred to the particularprogramme. This normally takes part at the ‘sentence planning’ stage of the sentence. Notall programmes are held in all prisons thus local prisons may be required to identify suitableprisoners for accredited offending behaviour programmes held in other prisons.

Little is known about how this process of nomination operates and it may be that some formof discrimination (intended or otherwise) operates at this stage. The Impact Assessment onthe ‘Substance Treatment Offending Programme’ (H.M. Prison Service, 2008c: 3) notes:

There is no documented evidence to demonstrate that individual establishments analyseand act upon data they collect and send to the Interventions Group. Therefore it is notclear if the Local Management Team (LMT) for the programme are aware of the lackof BME groups engaging in the programme and if they are what strategies are being putin place to resolve this issue.

Similar concerns are also raised in the Impact Assessment in relation to the Sex OffenderTreatment Programme (H.M. Prison Service, 2007c: 2):


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These monitoring arrangements are robust and give a good picture of programme take-up. However, it is a weakness in the current system that individual prisons may notmonitor their treatment population and make local comparisons.

Impact Assessments point to the possibility that BME prisoners’ access to accredited Prisonprogrammes is obstructed during the processes of referral. At present little is known on asystematic basis about what happens during the operation of local prison selectionprocedures and how consistent they are across the sector.

A small piece of research jointly conducted by three prisoners and a senior research officer atHMP Grendon point to some potential difficulties experienced by BME prisonersattempting to access specialist prison resources (Sullivan, Gyamfi et al, 2007). HMPGrendon is a specialised prison resource organised on therapeutic lines; prisoners arereferred to this prison from other establishments, but there is considerable competition forthe limited places available. Reflecting on the processes that inhibit/obstruct BMEprisoners’ access to Grendon, they note (Sullivan, Gyamfi et al 2007: 11):

Grendon has traditionally had difficulty in getting accurate information about itself tothe wider prison estate. As a result prison staff may have inaccurate and erroneousbeliefs about the kind of people who would be suitable referrals. At its worst, this mightmean that discriminatory or racist attitudes could result in BME individuals not beingseen as suitable for Grendon because of their race or culture. In this case it could bevery difficult for an individual to get the appropriate cooperation from staff to supporttheir application.

One of the prisoner authors comments:

I felt staff that dealt with my application didn’t want me to come to Grendon, I thinkin a way they sort of saw me coming to Grendon as a progressive move, you know, megoing to better myself and they did everything they possibly could to stop me fromcoming to Grendon. (p. 11)

Clearly, the processes whereby prisoners are referred to specialist resources, includingaccredited offending behaviour related programmes, within prisons and the wider prisonestate are not separately audited. The internal obstructions to ethnic minority groupsaccessing specialist resources is an area that requires systematic national research and perhapsincorporating into a KPT to ensure that standards are regularly monitored.

(ii) Do accredited programmes facilitate the participation of BME prisoners?Issues that relate to a person’s willingness and ability to participate in a groupworkprogramme are the treatment style and contribution of the groupwork leaders and thecontent of the programme. The Prison Service has begun to consider both of these issues;small internal research projects are finding that BME prisoners (H.M. Prison Service, 2007a:4):

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• Commonly feel marginalized, stereotyped, misunderstood and discriminated against onoffending behaviour programmes.

• [Find] … programme materials to be Eurocentric and do not find them relevant to theirlife experiences.

• Felt staff did not have enough knowledge of their culture or background and coulddiscriminate on this basis.

• Could feel marginalised when the group was not a diverse mix of ethnicity.

Moreover they have also found that staff who lead the various programmes:

• Feel they lack knowledge about different cultures and religions. • Felt confident at recognising outward signs of isolation, such as withdrawal or poor

attendance, but did not realise that marginalized BME group members may not displayobservable signs of isolation.

• Strongly desire more training in cultural sensitivity, awareness and cross-culturalcommunication skills.

Interestingly, both prisoners and staff felt that staff did not have appropriate culturalknowledge. Prisoners point to the inability of staff to notice and manage negativeexperiences within groups, yet the staff respondents felt that they were able to address thisissue. Issues of isolation and lack of cultural familiarity make it very difficult for BMEprisoners to fully participate in groupwork programmes whether accredited or otherwise.Their opportunities to communicate fully about who they are and how they feel aboutthemselves will be severely restricted. This inevitably will restrict how they are able to ‘be’within the group and may necessitate them making uncomfortable adjustments toaccommodate the dominant culture of the group. This issue is explored more fully when we discuss issues related to identities and identification below.

(iii) Do accredited programmes contribute to BME prisoners’ positive ethnic identifications?

In addition to the concerns about culture and isolation, a further issue of concern that theabove research highlights is the Eurocentric nature of the content of the programmes. Thefocus of accredited offence related group work programmes is to identify andreplace/challenge distorted patterns of thinking, which are argued to underlie offendingbehaviours. The development of appropriate treatment for people who have committedoffences has been has been a far from straightforward process. In 1995 McGuire andPriestley reviewed the then extant literature on offender treatment and concluded that whilstpsychotherapeutic models, medical models and punishment did not ‘work’ to reduce re-offending, the cognitive-behavioural (CB) ‘approaches’ were ‘the most promising’ (1995: 16).Since that time there has been an exponential growth in CB approaches to working withoffenders. Panels of experts now accredit CB programmes in both the community and inprison before they are delivered to groups of people convicted of offences (Rex et al., 2003).


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A key feature of CB approaches is the identification and exploration of the link betweenfeelings, thoughts and actions – particularly in relation to offending behaviour and otherharmful actions (e.g. substance abuse, the violent expression of anger) (Friendship et al.,2002). Potentially underpinning these programmes is the assumption that there is a ‘right’and a ‘wrong’ way of thinking (Cowburn, 2006). This assumption ignores identity-specificcultural issues that inevitably vary considerably and may offer many alternative ‘right’ ways ofthinking (Rex and Lieb, et al 2003; McGuire 2002).

Hwang (2006: 702-703) notes that relatively little is known about the efficacy of empiricallysupported treatments for people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. He concludesthat there is a need to understand relational dynamics and to attend to the complexitiesinvolved in treating people from ethnic minorities. Owusu-Bempah & Howitt (2000)highlight that Western approaches to psychology are predicated on Western notions of whatit is to be an individual and that these notions are not shared by people from African andAsian cultures. Similarly Sue & Sue (2003) point to the importance of understandingdifferences in cultural worldviews, socio-political issues, assumptions and biases as potentialbarriers to effective treatment, and cross-cultural communication styles. They particularlyhighlight the danger of Western therapeutic approaches pushing non-Western clients towardpotentially maladaptive cultural changes (e.g. Asian Americans being pushed to adoptindividualistic self-care strategies that ignore socio-cultural context, such as collectivisticnotions of family) (Sue & Sue 2003: 711).

Such issues are important since the issue of what it is to be a person (an individual) and howa person can change is at the core of accredited offending behaviour programmes andinfluences the culture in which the programmes are delivered. The context of prison andthe dominant culture of the group work programmes therefore shape the ways in whichprisoners are able to articulate their various identities.

Performativity in Prisons: Theorising Identification and ResistanceThe issue of what or who a person is and how identity is made up has troubled theologians(of many faiths), philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and many practitioners of what iscurrently called the ‘humanities’. It is not the purpose of this section to review thisliterature. However, one distinction in these ontological explorations is of significance to thecurrent discussion, namely, whether ‘identity/ies’ are ‘essential’, that is preconfigured, orwhether they exist through ‘doing’, through performance. The focus in this section is onidentity as something that is constantly being achieved rather than something as fixed androoted in a person’s essence. In 1959, Erving Goffman theorised identities as being‘dramaturgical’. Through this notion he presents a model of identities that is based on ananalogy to the theatre and in particular the theatrical role. A role is established andsustained through performance (‘frontstage’), with a variety of behind the scenes support(‘backstage’). Identities are performed in contexts that sustain or negate them. Aspects ofthe ‘frontstage’ are both what the performer does but also how s/he conceives her/his role.

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‘Backstage’ elements may include other people in the social context where the performanceis taking place and the physical space/place where the performance is taking place. Otherpeople can be actively colluding with the performance or be deceived into supporting theperformance. Goffman (1959) suggests that presentation (of self/ves) to others is anintentional act through which one aims to strengthen affiliations to specific groupings.

The concept of performativity was first developed by the feminist philosopher Judith Butler(1989). In taking issue with essentialist notions of gender, Butler (1989) suggested thatgender was something that did not pre-exist. She argued that it was not fixed, as in biologicalor functionalist definitions, but was something that was dynamic, contingent and dialogical:it was performed – i.e. it did not exist prior to the ‘doing’ (of gender). Thus for Butler aperson enacted a variety of ‘gendered’ identities at different times and in different places.The nature of these identities was contingent upon time and place. Richard Jenkins (2004:4) clarifies the nature of identity/ies understood in this way:

There is something active about identity that cannot be ignored: it isn’t ‘just there’, it’snot a ‘thing’, it must always be established.

He (Jenkins 2004: 5) suggests that attention should be paid to the identifications ofindividuals and groups, and that identifications ‘can be minimally defined as the ways inwhich individuals and collectivities are distinguished in the social relations with otherindividuals and collectivities’. Identifications are, he suggests, ongoing, dialogical, contestedand (sometimes) reciprocal. The process of identification is sustained (for it is nevercompleted) through what Jenkins (2004: 7) terms ‘repertoires of identification’. Without ashared comprehensible way of communicating, identification and identities would not bepossible (Jenkins 2004).

Within a prison context such identifications occur through the assertion of, negotiation withand resistance to power. Through these negotiations prisoners try to find ways ofsuccessfully asserting their agency despite the weight of power lying with prison staff. Wilson(2003) describes how young Black men in the in the wider community adopt ‘the Game’ as away of dealing with authority figures. The game involves two distinct strategies - ‘going nuts’or ‘keeping quiet’ – which are deliberately chosen according to situations. Wilson describeshow ‘the Game’ is used in Young Offender Institutions. Both strategies rely heavily on thecontest with prison authorities (the ‘govs’) and the support from the ethnic peer group. Theovert contest is enacted primarily through ‘keeping quiet’ – not participating actively inprison life – and occasionally by ‘going nuts’ (the phrase needs no other explanation). It isin contact with the peer group that ethnic and male identities receive recognition andaffirmation. Bosworth and Carrabine (2001: 502 – emphasis added) suggest that:

In order to engage actively with the regime and with one another, prisoners mustsuccessfully construct themselves as agents, despite the restrictions placed upon them.To do so, they draw on their lived experiences outside the prison walls. In turn, the

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strategies of resistance they select or reject, and the issues they try to subvert or support,reflect their race, gender and sexuality …

Foucault (1984) argues that resistance to dominant ascriptions of identity is not only seen indirect action, like those articulated in ‘the game’, but also through repertoires ofidentification. A dominant ascription of identity to people locked up in prison is based onthe crimes that they have committed. The National Offender Management Service (NOMS)is the executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (2009: 6). In the ‘values’ section of itsbusiness plan for 2009-10 to 2010-11 NOMS (2009: 2) states that it will ‘treat offenders withdecency and respect’. In our current research project we have encountered many prisonerswho reject the name ‘offender’. Although we have not systematically explored this issue,anecdotally it points to issues of contested definition. Whilst they accept that they wereonce offenders, they resist this identification, arguing that they are not currently offenders.Rather, they offer constructions that privilege their current status, namely ‘prisoner’ or‘inmate’ rather than past behaviours.

Prison based programmes are concerned with issues relating to offending behaviours andchange. The CB approaches informing prison accredited offending behaviour programmesare not informed by the theorising identify as ‘fluid’ and ‘performative’. Rather they arebased on notions that the concept of ‘identity’ is visible and identifiable through thebehaviours in which we engage. These behaviours are theorised to be guided by ourcognitive structures [attitudes] and these, although relatively stable, can be adapted andchanged through sustained cognitive re-training. The challenge for these programmes is toprovide an environment that challenges offending behaviour but also offers the opportunityfor all prisoners to develop and ‘perform’ positive identities that are widely affirmed andacknowledged.

From Discrimination to ParticipationWhilst the KPT on ‘race equality’ is designed to explore ‘processes, outcomes andperceptions’ there has been little or no exploration of the non-participation of BMEprisoners in accredited offending behaviour related programmes. Such programmes are afundamental part of the penal process and the absence of BME prisoners in this area is acause for concern. Although, PSO 2800 (H.M. Prison Service, 2006: 10) states:

Ethnic monitoring can be used to assess whether the Service offers equality of opportunityand treatment to all groups of prisoners. It can also tell how and why establishments andpolicy leads are not achieving this goal.

The case of accredited offending behaviour related programmes casts doubt on this assertion.Impact assessments clearly point to the fact that few BME prisoners are entering theseprogrammes; however whether this is merely a failure to offer them an equal opportunity todo so, or whether it is something much more complicated remains unclear. Perhaps, thechallenge for the Prison Service is not to understand non-participation but to begin to

understand participation of BME prisoners. A recent Impact assessment (H.M. PrisonService 2007d) on the usage of the prison gyms and physical exercise facilities reports overusage of this resource by BME prisoners. Drawing on Bosworth and Carrabine (2001), itcould be that the P.E. facilities or regimes within those facilities enable prisoners totranscend cultural boundaries and develop and sustain positive identifications. The issue ofwhether the identification relates to gender or race points to the need to develop a morecomplex concept of identity that is not only fluid and contingent but allowing of multiple(Harré & Van Langenhove 1999) and intersecting identifications (Crenshaw, 1991). Forexample, Sabo (2001: 65) acknowledges the complexity of meanings that physical ‘hardness’and fitness may carry inside (and outside) a prison:

Men cultivate their bodies in order to send a variety of messages about the meaning ofmasculinity to themselves and others. Whereas conformity to the credo of hardness forsome men feeds the forces of dominance and subordination, for others athletics andfitness are forms of self-care. Whereas many prison jocks are literally playing out themasculine scripts they learned in their youth, others are attempting to attach newmeanings to sports and exercise that affirm health, sanity and alternative modes ofmasculinity.

ConclusionThis paper is concerned both with performance and accountability in dynamic contingentrelations. The non-participation of BME prisoners in many accredited offending behaviourrelated programmes was identified through the accountability process of Impact Assessment.A significant proportion of the prison population, identified by ethnicity, who do notparticipate (for reasons as yet unidentified) in a significant part of prison life must be a causefor concern for prison authorities. Understanding this phenomenon and how to change itcan be developed by theorising identifications within the prison context.

End Note1. 2009 Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC). Appreciative inquiry into the Diversity

Strategy of HMP Wakefield. Award number RES-000-22-3441.

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Persistence of Confusion and Ambiguity in Usage', Sociology 36(4): 803-816.Barnett-Page, C. (2009) Personal Communication from Head of Performance Monitoring and Data

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Punishment & Society 3(4): 501-515.Butler, J. (1989) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York:

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Cowburn, M. (2006) 'Constructive work with male sex offenders: male forms of life, language gamesand change', in N. Parton, P. O’Byrne, K. Gorman, and M. Gregory (eds.) Constructive ProbationWork. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Cowburn, M., Lavis, V., & Walker, T. (2008a) 'Black Minority Ethnic Sex Offenders'. Prison ServiceJournal, 178: 44-49.

Cowburn, M., Lavis, V., and Walker, T. (2008b) 'BME Sex Offenders in Prison: The Problem ofParticipation in Offending Behaviour Groupwork Programmes - A Tripartite Model ofUnderstanding', British Journal of Community Justice, 6(1): 19-34.

Crenshaw, K. (1991) 'Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence againstWomen of Color', Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241-1299.

Foucault, M. (1984) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (R. Hurley, Trans. 1984 ed. Vol. (i)).London: Peregrine.

Friendship, C., Blud, L., Erikson, M., & Travers, R. (2002) An evaluation of cognitive behaviouraltreatment of prisoners. Home Office Findings 161. London: Home Office, Research and StatisticsDirectorate.

Goffman, E. (1959) The presentation of the self in everyday life. London: Penguin.H.M. Prison Service (2008a) Cognitive Skills Booster Programme. [online] Available at

http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/raceequalityscheme/impactassessments/ [Accessed 21st September, 2009]

H.M. Prison Service (2008b). Counselling Assessment Referral Advice Throughcare service (CARATs)Standard Groupwork Packages. [online] Available at:http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/raceequalityscheme/impactassessments/ [Accessed 21st September, 2009]

H.M. Prison Service. (2008c) Substance Treatment Offending Programme (STOP). [online] Availableat:http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/raceequalityscheme/impactassessments/ [Accessed 21st September, 2009]

H.M. Prison Service. (2007a) Cognitive Skills Self-Change Programme. [online] Available at:http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/raceequalityscheme/impactassessments/ [Accessed 21st September, 2009]

H.M. Prison Service. (2007b) Healthy Relationships Programmes for Domestic Violence Offenders[online] Available at:http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/raceequalityscheme/impactassessments/ [Accessed 21st September, 2009]

H.M. Prison Service. (2007c) Impact Assessment: Sex Offender Treatment Programme. London: H.MPrison Service.

H.M. Prison Service. (2007d) Impact Assessment Physical Education [online] Available at:http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/raceequalityscheme/impactassessments/ [Accessed 21st September, 2009]

H.M. Prison Service. (2006) Prison Service Order 2800 Race Equality. London: H.M. Prison Service. H.M. Treasury. (2001) Choosing the Right Fabric: A Framework for Performance Information [online]

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Hwang, W. C. (2006) 'The Psychotherapy Adaptation and Modification Framework: Application toAsian Americans', American Psychologist, 61(7): 702-715.

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Prison Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.McGuire, J. (2002) 'Integrating Findings from Research Reviews', in J. McGuire (ed.) Offender

Rehabilitation and Treatment: Effective Programmes and Policies to Reduce Reoffending.Chichester: Wiley Press.

McGuire, J., & Priestley, P. (1995) 'Reviewing 'What Works': Past, Present and Future', in J. McGuire(ed.) What Works: Reducing Reoffending. Guidelines from Research and Practice. Chichester:John Wiley & Sons Ltd: IPPR: 3-34.

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Phillips, C., & Bowling, B. (2007) 'Ethnicities, Racism, Crime and Criminal Justice', in M. Maguire, R.Morgan, and R. Reiner (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress: IPPR: 421-460.

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COMMUNITY JUSTICE FILES 21

Edited by Jane Dominey, De Montfort University

Redefining Justice: Addressing the Individual Needs of Victims and WitnessesThis report, led by victims’ champion Sara Payne, was published in November 2009 andexamines the way that frontline services meet the needs of victims and witnesses in thecriminal justice system. The report draws heavily on meetings and interviews with victimsand witnesses as well as staff and volunteers from the organisations that support them. Thereport both makes recommendations intended to improve existing practice and identifiesareas where further thinking and service development is required.

The report makes 14 recommendations. These include:

• The needs of victims should be addressed by a multi-agency approach, with the relevantagencies required to participate. The report gives the example of multi-agency riskassessment conferences, which operate in the area of domestic abuse, building a full riskassessment and putting in place action to support and protect the victim and family.

• Decisions about special measures (the arrangements for some witnesses to give evidencein a different way in court) should be made well in advance of the hearing. Decisionsshould be made on the individual circumstances of the witness and not simply based oncharacteristics such as age. Further advice and guidance is needed about the use ofspecial measures to ensure a balance between the rights of defendants, the costs of thecourt process and the needs of victims and witnesses.

• The terminology used to explain sentences and the language spoken in court whensentence is passed should be amended to ensure that it is clear and can be understoodby the general public. For example, it is confusing for many people that someone sentto prison spends much less time there than was implied by the length of their sentence.

• There should also be support for victims who are faced with civil court proceedings(such as injunctions in domestic violence cases) or where matters are dealt with underthe anti-social behaviour provisions.

The report poses 12 challenges. For example:

• The development and implementation of end-to-end victim and witness management.Such a system would provide victims and witnesses with a single reference point linkingtogether the various steps in the criminal justice system.

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• An improvement in the provision of counselling for those with post-traumatic stressdisorder.

• An ending to sentence discount for pleading guilty on the day of the trial and anincreased incentive to plead guilty at an earlier stage of the court process.

• Improving the services available to children who are victims of crime.• Ensuring that acts that should properly be dealt with in the criminal courts are not

deemed ‘anti-social behaviour’.

The report can be downloaded at http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/sara-payne-redefining-justice.pdf

Together We Can End Violence Against Women and GirlsThe Home Office has published a strategy intended to reduce the incidence of violencedirected at women and girls. The strategy promises further funding to support victims ofviolence, an increase in family intervention projects, the development of a stalking andharassment helpline, a new online directory of services for victims of violence and theintroduction of domestic violence protection orders to exclude perpetrators from their homes.

Launching the strategy, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said:

Violence against women and girls ruins lives, breaks up families and has a lastingimpact across the generations. Much has been done over recent years to increaseprotection for women and to prosecute their attackers. However, this is a complexproblem which demands an even broader response to stop violence from happening inthe first place. Changing attitudes that tolerate violence against women and girls willtake time but is essential if we are to eradicate this blight on women’s lives.

The strategy can be found at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/vawg-strategy-2009/end-violence-against-women?view=Binary

The Stern Review – an Independent Review of RapeComplaintsBaroness Vivien Stern has been asked by the government to carry out an independent reviewof the way that rape complaints are dealt with by the relevant authorities. This workcommenced in September 2009 and is due to report in February 2010. The terms ofreference of the review are:

• To examine the response of the public authorities to rape complaints and examine howmore victims can be encouraged to report;

• To explore ways in which the attrition rate in criminal cases can be reduced and how tofairly increase the conviction rate;

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• To identify how to increase victim and witness satisfaction and confidence in thecriminal justice system in addressing rape;

• To explore public and professional attitudes to rape and how they impact on outcomes;• To utilise findings and information available from other relevant work, particularly the

work on victims’ experience being led by Sara Payne and the Department of HealthTaskforce led by Professor Sir George Alberti, avoiding unnecessary duplication;

• And to make recommendations, with particular reference to improving theimplementation of current policies and procedures.

As well as drawing on existing information and linked projects, such as that being led bySara Payne, there is also a series of regional meetings for professionals involved in this workand the opportunity for members of the public to communicate their views and opinions.

Announcing the review Vera Baird, the solicitor general said:

Rape is a devastating crime that traumatises victims and shatters lives. There has beenprogress in tackling rape; but the fact is conviction rates are far too low. We need a stepchange in the way rape complaints are handled, and the Stern Review should help usidentify how we can improve the handling of rape complaints and drive up convictionsrates.

For more information, including the opportunity to make a contribution to the review, seehttp://www.equalities.gov.uk/stern_review.aspx

Making Amends – Restorative Justice in NorthernIrelandThis report was produced by the Prison Reform Trust and published in October 2009. Itlooks at the operation of the Youth Conferencing Service which was introduced in 2003 andis part of the Youth Justice Agency (YJA) of Northern Ireland. The service runs two types ofconferences: diversionary, dealing with a young person before conviction, and court-ordered,where the referral is made after conviction. Conferences are intended to bring together theyoung offender, the victim (or representative), professionals and others. The offence isdiscussed and an action plan is drawn up for the young person. Conferences are organisedand facilitated by coordinators who are employed by the YJA and receive specialist training.

The report provides evidence that victims who attend conferences tend to be satisfied withthe outcome and argues that there are encouraging signs both of a positive impact onreoffending rates and on a decline in the use of custody for young people. In 2006, thecombined reoffending rate for youth conferencing was 37.7% - this compared to 52.1% forcommunity sentences and 70.7% for custodial sentences. The number of children sentencedto immediate custody in Northern Ireland dropped from 139 in 2003 to 89 in 2006.


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The report argues that its findings have implications for the youth justice system in Englandand Wales. The executive summary concludes:

Certainly, the results of youth conferencing to date indicate that the implementation ofa similar model in England and Wales might well bring benefits – particularly in termsof victim satisfaction and, very possibly, constructive offender engagement. For ajurisdiction that is struggling to contain its prison population – and in which thenumber of children sentences to custody more than tripled between 1991 and 2006 –youth conferencing could, moreover, prove a welcome means of reducing the use ofcustody for young offenders.

The report can be downloaded fromhttp://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/uploads/documents/making_amends.pdf

Making Good – Reparation Projects for Young OffendersThe Youth Justice Board is piloting a programme allowing members of the public to proposework projects for young offenders. These projects will be undertaken as the communitypayback element of the new Youth Rehabilitation Order. The work is intended to helpyoung offenders understand the consequences of their actions and to provide a benefit tolocal people affected by crime.

The project is being run as a pilot in 18 youth offending team areas in the north west ofEngland. From now until the end of January 2010 members of the public are able to makesuggestions for appropriate projects.

Announcing the scheme Vernon Coaker, schools minister, said:

The Youth Rehabilitation Order will protect the public and prevent re-offending. Wewant to stop young people committing offences in the first place, but when they docommit a crime we want to make sure they get the punishment they deserve. They needto make amends in their local community, as well as receive tailored support to breakaway from a cycle of crime. It is also right that we give victims and the public a say inhow we can make our communities safer places to live.

For more information about this pilot project, see http://www.yjb.gov.uk/en-gb/yjs/MakingGood/

Turnkeys or Professionals: A Vision for the 21st CenturyPrison OfficerThe Howard League for Penal Reform has published a report arguing for change in the waythat the role of prison officer is constructed and understood. It suggests that the task of theprison officer should be a more professional one with staff able to work constructively withinmates who have a wide variety of problems and difficulties. The report argues that the job

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description of the prison officer has not kept pace with some of the changes taking place inprison which see prison officers involved in running programmes, assessing risk and otheroffender management tasks. The report also highlights the relatively low proportion ofprison officers from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and contrasts this with thecomposition of the prison population.

The report suggests that the prison service should aspire to raise the status of the prisonofficer role, putting it on a footing with occupations such as nursing. This could be achievedby developing a vocational degree providing prison officers with an experience of highereducation along with knowledge in areas such as criminology, prison law, mental health,diversity and ethics. The Howard League acknowledges that this approach would mark aconsiderable change from the current system of in-service training and would require time toimplement.

The full report can be accessed at http://www.howardleague.org/turnkeys-or-professionals/

HM Inspectorate of Probation Annual Report 2008-9This report was published in the summer of 2009 and gives an account of the work of HMInspectorate of Probation over the past 12 months. It outlines the inspection of both adultand youth offending work as well as inspection work in the areas of safeguarding and publicprotection. Thematic inspections carried out over the past year looked at themes includingelectronic monitoring, indeterminate sentences for public protection and work with both sexoffenders and those with mental health requirements.

The report explains that the inspection process is intended to discover how often the workof the probation and youth offending service is done well enough. In his introduction tothe report Andrew Bridges, the Chief Inspector of Probation, stresses that the role of theInspectorate is not to criticise organisations for failing to achieve the impossible but rather toestablish whether they are doing all that they reasonably could to manage and reduce risk.He writes:

It continues to be necessary to emphasise that ‘risk to the public’ can never beeliminated, but the public are entitled to expect the authorities to do their job properly.

The introduction to the report also includes a specific plea to the managers of probation andyouth justice teams to avoid the practice of preparing for inspections by staging ‘mockinterviews’ with members of staff and by organising retrospective up-dating of files. Thereport suggests that the task for managers is to ensure that good quality work is undertakenand then properly recorded.

The report can be downloaded from http://www.justice.gov.uk/inspectorates/hmi-probation/docs/Annual_Report_2008-09.pdf

Delivering Offender Management ServicesThe Ministry of Justice has published the high level strategic priorities that are set for theNational Offender Management Service (NOMS) for the period 2010-11.

Included in this strategy is an increase in prison capacity, the rolling out of probation trusts,the implementation of effective commissioning and a focus on increased public confidenceand victim satisfaction.

The document can be found at http://www.justice.gov.uk/about/docs/delivering-offender-manage-services.pdf

Jane Dominey

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BOOK REVIEWS

Edited by Dan Ellingworth, Sheffield Hallam University

RIOTING IN THE UK AND FRANCE: ACOMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Waddington, D., Jobard, F. and King, M. (eds) (2009). Collumpton: Willan. pp320(hbk) £48.50 ISBN 978-1-84392-504-0.

This book is based upon contributions made by a number of leading academics to a series ofthree workshops on ‘A Comparative Analysis of Recent French and British Riots’ that tookplace between February and October 2007.

One potential problem with a work of this nature is that of overall coherence. However,extremely professional editing has resulted in a book that is well laid out and organised.

It is divided into a number of sections. Part one commences with an overview of rioting inBritain and France since the 1980s. Parts two and three are concerned with detailedexaminations of riots that took place in Britain between 2001 and 2005 (part two) and inFrance between 2001 and 2008 (part three).

Part four contains some additional material from other countries, examining the 2001 riot inCincinnati and discussing the absence of riots in early twenty-first century Germany, asituation that is attributed in part to the ‘generally reasonable police-minority relationship’.Part five of the book formulates conclusions which evaluate the common themes that haveemerged in the preceding chapters. These include the relationship between multiculturalismand the community cohesion agenda, police-community relationships and territorialboundaries.

There is also an informative glossary which provides information relating to the Frenchaspects of the book. This includes material on politicians, political parties and municipaladministration. A brief discussion of the French system of policing is also provided.

Although all authors make valuable contributions there are some exceptionally valuablechapters. These include that by Hussain and Bagguley who seek to analyse whether riots arecomposed of a crowd possessing a singular collective identity and by Thomas who examines

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the extent to which events in Britain in 2001 that gave rise to the community cohesionagenda could be labelled as a ‘political watershed’ in the sense of how this approach wasunderstood and operationalised at ground level.

In relation to France, the chapter by Kokoreff makes an important contribution to thebook, posing the question as to whether the 2005 French riots could be regarded as a‘political protest’ as does the chapter by Mohammed which evaluates the role performed bygangs in these disorders. The role of the police in the 2005 riots is considered in detail byMouhanna who analyses whether the police could be held in any way responsible for theiroccurrence and what lessons they should learn from them.

There are a small number of issues that a work of this nature might explore in fuller depth.One of these relates to community cohesion where a detailed discussion of what constitutesa cohesive community and what are its key characteristics could usefully have been included.

The highly useful account of the problems inherent in specialised national police riot forcestackling disorders (which is discussed in chapter fourteen in relation to France) could havebeen supplemented by an equally detailed discussion of the manner in which disorders arehandled by the police service in Britain. This would have enabled issues that include thestructure and organisation of public order policing, the concept of paramilitary policing,mutual aid, the role of bodies such as PNICC and the tactics that are utilised at events ofthis nature to have been fully considered.

The book points to differences in the characteristics of disorders in Britain between 1980and 2001. Some of these (in particular in particular the extent to which technologies ofinformation flow played a crucial role in the build up to the 2001 riots) are fully discussedbut this aspect of the analysis might be pursued further. Although the disorders of the 1980sand those of 2001 shared certain common characteristics (such as riots as an activityassociated with the underclass and the role played by police interventions in causing suchevents to take place) there were important distinctions. The riots of the 1980s were anti-authoritarian in character but were clearly not race riots. Consideration might have beengiven as to whether events in 2001 could be labelled thus and the extent to whichsegregation contributes to race riots as was the case in Notting Hill in 1958. In this context,events that occurred in Lozells in 2005 may not have been quite as ‘unique in character’ as isalleged in chapter five.

The issue of policing the areas affected by disorders forms an important aspect of theanalysis. Burja and Pearce (chapter five) pose the question as to whether the historic role ofthe British police in responding to and preventing public disorder can be wedded to a morepluralistic police culture in tune with the society around it. In this context the importance ofengagement (which is briefly considered in connection with events that took place before2001) should be emphasised to consider the various initiatives undertaken by the policeservice in the wake of events in 2001. This is an important issue given that one of the aimsof the book is to provide a resource that would guide French academics, practitioners and

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policy-makers in formulating responses to the disorders. An account of this nature wouldenable the various strategies of engagement to be fully discussed and evaluated whetherpursued in isolation by the police service or in partnership with other agencies, most notablylocal government (in connection with issues that include rumour management).

Nor should a consideration of engagement be limited to initiatives driven by the policeservice and in this respect the wide variety of engagement mechanisms that have beeninitiated in Blackburn might be usefully analysed in consideration of strategies to preventfurther occurrences of this nature. These engagement mechanisms owe much to the drive ofthe town’s MP, Jack Straw, and include residents’ meetings and the ‘hundred voices cohesionforum’.

Blackburn / Darwen share many of the characteristics of areas affected by disorders in 2001,including 20% of the population being of Asian heritage, half of which live in just threelocal government wards. Thus although it is worthwhile to consider why riots failed tomaterialise in Germany in the early years of the twenty-first century, it is equally intriguing toassess why disorders failed to occur in towns in Northern England with profiles that aresimilar to areas where these did take place. This justifies a detailed examination of theconcept of engagement and the practices with which it is associated across Britain.

The book offers a comparative analysis of rioting in Britain and France and common themesare explored in the conclusion. However, the bulk of the material relating to these twocountries is dealt with in discrete sections and perhaps comparative evaluation could havebeen offered more consistently throughout the work. For example, although there areimportant differences in the nature and causes of the riots in Britain in 1991/2 and those inFrance in 2005 (most notably in connection with the background of the participants), thereare also interesting similarities which could have been explored if only in the conclusion tochapter nine.

Public order and protest do not consistently figure in undergraduate criminologyprogrammes. There are many reasons that justify its inclusion, one being the considerableimpact that the policing of various forms of protest has exerted on contemporary policingpractices. One explanation for its exclusion is the relative dearth of literature dealing withthis subject in comparison to other areas of criminology and criminal justice. This bookhelps to remedy this deficiency by providing an important resource that is certain to beregarded as essential reading for courses that focus on protest and the manner in which thisis responded to by agencies of the criminal justice system and public policy.

Peter Joyce, Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University

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JUSTICE IN TRANSITION: COMMUNITYRESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN NORTHERNIRELAND

Eriksson, A. (2009). Collumpton: Willan. xxiii + 256pp. hbk £37.50 ISBN 978-1-84392-518-7

In this well argued, carefully researched book emanating from her doctoral thesis, Erikssonplots the development of restorative justice schemes in both Republican and Loyalistcommunities from their inception in 1996 to the implementation of the Protocols that nowguide their practice. The substantial controversy surrounding their establishment due to theactive involvement of a number of ex-paramilitaries has resulted in a plethora of publications(and assumptions) about their aims and relationship to the state. Despite this, the author hasproduced a unique contribution in that it provides first-hand accounts not only from themembers of the statutory bodies and political parties that have often viewed them withmuch scepticism but also from staff that run them and community members that bothsupport and object to their existence.

Eriksson carefully navigates her way through this tense terrain by including a number ofquotes to provide insight into the highly politicised context in which these schemes operate.The book is divided into eight core chapters that reflect on the theoretical and empiricalfindings from research conducted between 2004 and 2008. The first two chapters are largelytheoretical and cover the ‘usual suspects’ included in any restorative text such as values, keystakeholders, the meaning of ‘community’ and subsequently the role that restorative justicemay play in dealing with the aftermath of national conflict. Eriksson points to theproliferation of ‘top-down’ models despite the academic literature highlighting the need formore localised, context specific responses from the ‘bottom-up’ to deal with the after-effectsof war (see p. 20). As such, she ‘…seeks to theorise better the link between restorative justiceand transition from conflict within a “bottom-up” framework, as opposed to the more usual“top-down” application of the concept through institutions such as truth and reconciliationcommissions’ (p. xix).

Eriksson attributes the pessimism surrounding the community restorative justice schemes toa lack of conceptualisation and theoretical distinction between paramilitarism; vigilantism;and community restorative justice which she seeks to rectify in Chapter 3. Links are alsomade between restorative justice and Brehon Law which Eriksson asserts explains ‘whycurrent restorative justice programmes have resonated so strongly with the communityactivists who were involved in their establishment’ (p. 36). However, I remain unconvincedthat this was because it shared similar values with restorative justice rather than because itenjoyed the support of the IRA, and more importantly, because they were opposed to by the

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British state. This link is further discredited, in my personal view, in that it fails to accountfor the equal popularity that community restorative justice enjoys in Loyalist communities.

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 subsequently deal with the schemes themselves and cover issues such astheir development and establishment within their respective communities as legitimatealternatives to punishment violence; the process through which they operate; and the role ofboth volunteers and ex-paramilitaries in their operation. The success of these projects isattributed to the 'bottom-up' approach which involved community consultation andeducation simultaneously. Eriksson also stresses that community schemes contribute notonly by breaking punitive attitudes and dealing with the root causes of crime but alsoproviding volunteers with additional skills that assist them in securing employment.

Chapters 7 and 8 explore the continuously evolving relationship between the schemes andthe state and police respectively. The success of restorative justice as a framework for dealingwith violence, exclusion and historical injustice within Northern Ireland and the role ofcommunity restorative justice schemes in particular as a conduit and facilitator between thestate and previously disengaged communities is undeniable. Less convincing, however, is theassertion that restorative justice is superior in transitional contexts in general due to a lack ofevidence to support this beyond the case of Northern Ireland.

Despite these minor reservations, Eriksson has produced an engaging and informativeaccount of the development of community restorative justice schemes that not only stands asa significant contribution in its own terms but also has implications for the relationshipbetween state and community and the role that restorative justice could play in otherdemocratically emerging nations. This book is a welcomed contribution to the subject andone that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in Northern Ireland, restorativejustice and transitional justice.

Kerry Clamp, Lecturer in Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University

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EDITORSProfessor Paul Senior, Sheffield Hallam UniversityJean Hine, De Monfort University

MANAGING EDITORProfessor DaveWard, De Montfort University

PUBLISHING EDITORSimon Feasey, Sheffield Hallam University

BOOK REVIEW EDITORDavid Phillips, Sheffield Hallam University

COMMUNITY JUSTICE FILESJane Dominey,De Montfort University

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARDProfessor Gwyneth Boswell, Boswell Research Fellows; Dr Denis Bracken, University ofManitoba; Dr Julian Buchanan, North East Wales Institute of Higher Education; Dr JonathanBurnside, University of Bristol; Tim Chapman, Criminal Justice Consultant, Northern Ireland;Professor Rob Canton, De Montfort University; Dr Chris Crowther-Dowey, Nottingham TrentUniversity; Dr Kevin Downing, City University of Hong Kong; Dan Ellingworth, ManchesterMetropolitan University; Professor Barry Goldson, University of Liverpool; Professor HazelKemshall, De Montfort University; Charlotte Knight, De Montfort University; Victoria Knight,De Montfort University; Professor Lo Tit Wing, City University of Hong Kong; Robert Mackay,University of Newcastle, Australia; Dr Guy Masters, Wandsworth YOT; Professor Mike Nellis,Strathclyde University; Dr Laura Piacentini, Strathclyde University; Sue Raikes OBE, ThamesValley Partnership; Pat Roach, G4S; Helen Schofield, Centrex; Graham Smyth, ManchesterMetropolitan University; Dr Paul Sparrow, Nottingham Trent University; Michael Teague, TeessideUniversity; Professor Peter Wedge, University of East Anglia; Dr Wong Sing Wing Dennis, CityUniversity of Hong Kong; David Woodhill, Sheffield Hallam University

PUBLISHERIan Buczynski, Hallam Centre for Community Justice, Sheffield Hallam University,Southbourne, Collegiate Crescent, Sheffield S10 2BP, UK.Telephone: +44 (0)114 225 5725 Fax: +44 (0)114 225 5800 E-mail: [email protected]


Information for Contributors• Articles, Book Reviews, or contributions to Community Justice Files, are welcomed from aca-demics, researchers, policy development advisers, managers and practitioners, working orinvolved in any aspect of the Community Justice field. If you should wish to discuss the suitabilityof an idea or topic for an article, please feel free to contact the Editors or a member of theEditorial Board. All articles are peer reviewed by at least 2 referees. • Manuscripts will onlybe considered for publication in this journal if they are unpublished and not being submitted forpublication elsewhere. All submissions to the Journal should comply with its style guidelines.• Authors should submit 3 copies of their manuscript, including any tables or illustrations, orsend it by email attachment to the Publishing Editor, Mr Simon Feasey, Hallam Centre forCommunity Justice, Southbourne, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield Hallam University,Sheffield, S10 2BP, Email: [email protected] • Authors are advised to retain a copy of theirpaper. • If accepted for publication authors may also be asked to supply a 3.5" disk versionin either Word or ASC11/text format. • Articles should not normally exceed 5,000 words.Please include the word count at the end of the article. If the article exceeds 5,000 wordsplease contact the Editor(s) prior to submission. • An abstract of the paper, of up to 200words, should accompany the article together with up to 6 key words suitable for indexing,abstracting, and on-line search purposes. The abstract should provide a concise summary of thewhole paper. • A brief biographical note about the author should be submitted with the arti-cle, on a separate sheet. Details should also be given of the authors full postal and emailaddresses, telephone and fax numbers. • All abbreviations should be preceded on the firstoccasion they appear, by the full name. Full points should be used after abbreviations such ase.g., i.e., etc., and where the end of a word is cut as in p. (page), or ed., but are not necessaryin acronyms such as HMSO, HMIP, UK. • Notes should be kept to a minimum and placed atthe end of the article before the references. Footnotes should not be included. • Use singlequotation marks for material quoted in the text. Double quotation marks can be used for quoteswithin quotes. Long quotations (40 words or more) should be displayed indented. Shorter quotesmay be retained within the text. • Tables and figures should be kept to a minimum and, whereincluded, should be submitted on separate sheets attached to the article with a short title and aclear indication of where they should be placed in the text. Tables and figures should be clearand well drawn. • The author is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of quotations and refer-ences. Permission to quote from or reproduce copyright material in their article must be obtainedby authors prior to submission and acknowledgements given at the end of the paper before thenotes, or, in the case of tables and figures, in the accompanying caption. • The journal’s poli-cy is to own copyright of its contributions therefore, before publication, authors are asked toassign copyright. Authors retain the right to re-use the material in other publications that are writ-ten or edited by them. However, permission to do so will only be given if due acknowledgementis given regarding copyright notice and first publication by this journal. • References shouldappear at the end of the article. The Harvard reference system is preferred in this journal. • Itis expected that language used in articles will be non-sexist and non-racist. • Single spacesshould be used after full points, commas, colons and semicolons, quotation marks etc. • Datesshould be written in the form 1 January 2001. • Full guidelines for contributors will be sent onrequest.

Subscription Rate:For each volume (3 issues per year) the subscription is: Institutional Rate £120; 2 yearsInstitutional Rate £225; Individual Rate £40; 2 years Individual Rate £70; Student Rate for 2years £50. All payments must be addressed to the Publisher and made payable to SheffieldHallam University.

Vol 7 No 2 Summer 2009

British Journal of Community JusticeIn this issueEditorialJean Hine

AreWeAllVictims Now? Crime, Suffering And JusticeSandraWalklate

Practitioner Report: From RhetoricTo Reality?TheProbation Service ContributionTo EmpoweringVictimsAlan Gray and PennyWhitford

Provision ForWomen Offenders InThe CommunityDr Loraine Gelsthorpe

Risk,Youth And Moving OnHazel Kemshall

A Research Basis For AddressingYouth Offending OnThe Broadland ‘Stairway Out Of Crime’ ProgrammeGwyneth Boswell, Fiona Poland,Anne Killett, and John Cross

Community Justice Files 20Jane Dominey

Book ReviewsDave Phillips

British

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Hallam Centre for Community Justice,Sheffield Hallam University

Documents

SHU2727 - BJCJ Inners Vol7-FINAL-PA:bjcj · Community Justice, Southbourne, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S10 2BP, Email: [email protected]