What Works in Probation and Youth Justice

Ros Burnett, Colin Roberts

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138150119
• eBook ISBN: 9781134035984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Both probation and youth justice have undergone massive changes in recent years, and continue to face important new challenges. A key emphasis of new developments has been on developing effective evidence-based practice and disseminating this throughout the Probation and Youth Justice services - reviewed in this book.

Chapter 1

The emergence and importance of evidence-based practice in probation and youth justice

Ros Burnett and Colin Roberts

Over thirty years ago, in their classic textbook on criminological issues, Roger Hood and Richard Sparks (1970: 71) observed that, while research into the effectiveness of treatments to prevent recidivism was ‘still limited and very rudimentary’, the stage was set for considerably more research to extend the knowledge-base over the next few years. The advances made in research methodology at that time were certainly adequate to achieve that task. Yet, in the decades that followed, there were many countervailing influences that limited the amount of research done. Chief among these was the credence given to the precipitous conclusion that ‘nothing works’, following an early review of research findings (Martinson 1974), thereby shifting research attention away from the question of effectiveness. Changes in legislation and related variations to the official purposes of criminal justice services also intervened, thereby redirecting the research enterprise onto other lines of enquiry. In particular, the rise of the ‘just deserts’ paradigm led to the development of ‘punishments in the community’ based on proportionate retributive principles, against which questions of the comparative effectiveness of ‘treatments’ became irrelevant.

Whether or not probation was an effective means of reducing recidivism, in any case, has not always been central to the work of the Probation Service. At various times in its history more emphasis has been placed on providing help. The specified mission of probation officers for a sustained period of the service’s history was to ‘advise, assist and befriend’ offenders. Later on, concerns that the treatment model was ineffective and led to injustices through disproportionate periods of supervision gave rise to the ‘non-treatment paradigm’ (Bottoms and McWilliams 1979), which reframed probation work as a collaboration between the worker and the offender aimed at providing help with problems defined by the offender. In youth justice, the main responsibility prior to the reforms following the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, was to look after the welfare of children and young people who had come into conflict with the law.

When, for the first time, the Probation Service was given an official Statement of National Operations and Purpose (SNOP) (Home Office 1984), it marked the beginning of a sustained period of review and readjustment in which the service was required to be more accountable and to provide evidence of its effectiveness. Questions about the value and achievements of the service came from both outside and within. A report by the Audit Commission (1990) called into question the cost-effectiveness of the service. In his address to the 1991 conference of the Association of Chief Officers of Probation (ACOP), Cedric Fullwood (1992) challenged probation managers to open up the variety of approaches in probation to evaluative scrutiny. Yet studies of the reoffending rates following community and custodial penalties have generally shown very little difference between the outcomes, even after taking into account differences in the types of offenders and their criminal histories (Lloyd et al. 1994). Even the most committed and ardent supporters of the probation service had little by way of concrete evidence to support their advocacy.

It was not until the mid-1990s that the advance in accumulating evidence of effective practice, as had been envisaged by Hood and Sparks, was ‘back on course’. Following the ‘nothing works’ era and the corresponding shift in the ethos and purpose of probation away from rehabilitation towards surveillance and control (Garland 1997), optimism in the effectiveness of community interventions was rekindled, initially among probation service managers. The factors that lay behind this were: the emergence of some encouraging reviews of research, particularly through the use of the new technique of meta-analysis leading to findings that contradicted previous negative evidence of effectiveness; and the modernisation agenda and new public management, with its emphasis on providing hard evidence of ‘value for money’ and efficient use of resources (Raynor and Vanstone 2002). Several influential reviews which employed meta-analysis showed that some interventions have had a small but statistically significant effect (e.g. Andrews et al. 1990; McGuire 1995). Such research also indicated the importance of process and implementation in achieving positive outcomes (for example, programmes must be appropriately targeted and systematically delivered) and provided the basis for the formulation of effective practice principles and criteria.

In the UK, the renewed commitment to rehabilitative work with offenders was reflected in an annual series of What Works conferences beginning in 1991 which were initiated by two probation services, as well as a series of ACOP conferences. Although most of the research that inspired the What Works movement originated in Canada and North America, there were isolated, well-designed studies in England and Wales (see, in particular, Roberts 1992; Raynor and Vanstone 1997) that attracted attention as rare examples of evidence in this country that some interventions might be associated, at least in the short term, with lower reconviction rates than was the case for comparison groups.

A collaborative study between Warwickshire Probation Service and the Probation Studies Unit at the University of Oxford (Roberts et al. 1996) demonstrated the feasibility of a systematic assessment procedures (known as ACE) that was linked to case-management and integral evaluation by practitioners. Under the leadership of Graham (later Sir Graham) Smith, the Probation Inspectorate commissioned a comprehensive survey of probation practice which found that systematic evaluations, of sufficient rigour to provide convincing evidence of effectiveness, had only been undertaken in four of the 267 programmes (Underdown 1998). The incoming New Labour government in 1997, in conformity to its commitment to evidence-based public policy, launched the Effective Practice Initiative (Home Office 1998). The Crime Reduction Programme invested in a series of ‘pathfinders’ to identify best practice and methods for reducing offending and protecting the public, and seminal reviews of the What Works literature by academics and Home Office researchers (see McGuire 1995; Vennard et al. 1997; Goldblatt and Lewis 1998) were widely read. The Home Office also published Evidence Based Practice: A Guide to Effective Practice to provide practical assistance and guidance to practitioners (Chapman and Hough 1998), as well as a What Works strategy document (Home Office 2000).

One of the main messages of the What Works meta-analytical reviews was that cognitive-behavioural approaches were generally associated with lower reconviction rates in comparison with the reconviction rates related to other methods. Not surprisingly, therefore, both the Prison Service and the National Probation Service have invested considerably in the development and implementation of cognitive-behavioural approaches (see Social Exclusion Unit 2002). Critics have argued that the wide-scale implementation of such programmes was too swift and exclusive, and that a focus on changing reasoning and thinking patterns should be matched by a focus on environmental and social factors linked to offending (Merrington and Stanley 2000; Mair 2004). Such judgements are now less valid because the National Probation Service has continued to expand its pathfinder programme and the curriculum has included, for example, basic skills, employment, community punishment and ‘approved premises’ (formerly, probation and bail hostels). Indeed, while evidence of effectiveness remains patchy, the service deserves credit for taking part in a significant enterprise, and it is appropriate to acknowledge the considerable advances that have been made:

From being unable in 1997 to point to more than a handful of evaluated effective initiatives, the probation service has been transformed within a few years into an organisation able to offer quality-controlled programmes throughout England and Wales, in what is believed to be the largest initiative in evidence-based corrections to be undertaken anywhere in the world. (Raynor and Vanstone 2002: 95)

Like the Probation Service, the youth justice service has been overhauled, resulting in an intensified focus on its role in preventing offending by young people and in reducing recidivism. A corresponding period of challenge and change in the youth justice service occurred in the 1990s, when the Audit Commission’s (1996) review Misspent Youth and subsequent government policy documents led to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and a radically reformed Youth Justice System. One of the central tenets running through the reconstituted youth justice is that the effectiveness of interventions must be monitored and evaluated.

Sharing progress in probation and youth justice

A glance through the literature on probation work and youth justice services suggests that the two domains, especially from a managerial perspective, often seem to coexist separately despite their parallel endeavours in establishing policies and practices that are based on rigorous research and evaluation. Just as the Prison Service and Probation Service are now poised to be integrated (Carter 2004; Home Office 2004), there is a need for youth justice services to be appropriately linked with evidence-based services for adult offenders. Indeed, this is recognised in the strategy document for the National Probation Service, A New Choreography, which referred to its role in providing services for young people, either directly or in partnership, and stated its intentions to ‘strengthen the relationship with the Youth Justice Board and apply the lessons from the evidence-based practice to young adult offenders’ (NPS 2001). Both services obviously need to work together in providing continuity of service for young people on the cusp of the age divide and as they progress from the age group served by youth justice to the older age bracket when they become the responsibility of the Probation Service.

There may be much for the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to learn from the Youth Justice System in current developments to strengthen and merge the Probation and Prison Services. While the latter two services have made exemplary progress in their implementation of evidence-based interventions, it is the reformed youth justice system that has led the way in providing inter-agency services (Burnett and Appleton 2004) and in developing restorative justice approaches (Crawford and Newburn 2003).

A major aim of this volume has therefore been to bring together perspectives on developments in both probation and youth justice. The chapters are based on papers that were presented at a colloquium, Towards Evidence-Based Practice in Probation and Youth Justice, held from 31 July to 1 August 2003 at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. The colloquium was the latest in a series of activities and events arranged by the Probation Studies Unit (PSU) of the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford. The PSU was set up in 1996 with the main goal of carrying out research into the effectiveness of different practices and probation’s role within the criminal justice system. The Unit has worked closely with senior members and policy staff of the Probation Service and the Youth Justice Board (YJB), as well as with Probation Areas and Youth Offending Teams, in the introduction and evaluation of evidence-based practice. It has collaborated with other departments in the University of Oxford (notably Education; Psychiatry; Economics and Statistics) and has worked in conjunction with researchers in other universities, including the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge and the University of Wales (Swansea), in carrying out its programme of work. The colloquium and its outcome in this volume provide an opportunity to share the findings from some of that body of work.

In some cases, therefore, the chapters refer to ‘work in progress’, or to the findings of completed projects that have not been officially released. The projects discussed are associated with significant changes and exciting developments in probation and youth justice and it is important that the lessons and insights drawn from them are shared with all parties in the evidence-based community. A complaint made by some practice managers attending the conference and referred to by Christine Knott in her chapter is that it generally takes too long for research findings to be communicated to those who are affected by it. We agree with this assessment. Admittedly, some of the responsibility for delays lies in the research process which is necessarily extended by stages of data collection and analysis and the allowance of sufficient time for interventions to have an effect and for change to be observed. But long delays, sometimes unfathomable, can also occur between the time when research reports are submitted to funding organisations and the time when findings are released. The collaboration of Home Office and YJB officials in this volume effectively serves as an endorsement of the view that it is sometimes useful to share preliminary findings rather than suspending all feedback until the final outcomes are known. We welcome the opportunity, through the medium of this volume, to disseminate this body of work to open up the findings and their implications for wider debate.

We have organised the contributions to this volume, where possible, into pairs of chapters. One in each pair deals with an issue largely related to probation services while the other pertains more to youth justice services. Of course, and as our purpose requires, there is often some overlap. The first pair of chapters presents an overview of progress in implementing effective practice agendas in each service from the perspective of managers in both services.

The key developments in the Probation Service, transforming it into an evidence-based service, are traced by Christine Knott in her chapter. The Underdown report (Underdown 1998), referred to above, opened eyes within the service to the inadequacy of internal evaluation practices and the paucity of evidence available to substantiate claims of effectiveness, and led to the introduction of the Effective Practice Initiative. As Knott indicates, the amalgamation of hitherto disjointed local services into a single National Probation Service in 2001 served as a turning point because it facilitated a coordinated approach. She identifies the various building blocks and continuing initiatives that are required to increase the effectiveness of practice, and provides insight into the scale of change and challenges involved for members of the probation service, and the problematic issues still to be resolved. Some of these difficulties, she suggests, may be partly attributed to the rapid pace at which pathfinder programmes have had to be adopted and implemented.

Cedric Fullwood and Helen Powell outline the YJB’s strategy for developing effective practice to reduce reoffending by young people. The extent of the YJB’s commitment to research and evidence-based practice is made clear in the range of achievements they describe. The Board has promoted the use of electronic information systems and collects data from Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) on a quarterly basis so as to build up a database on children and young people and interventions. When the YOTs were first formed in 2000, the YJB funded an extensive programme of development and evaluation to identify effective interventions and best practice. These initiatives were supported by training provision, national standards, a series of guidance notes and quality assurance procedures including a performance target system. The YJB has not placed the same emphasis on accredited programmes as the NPS, but instead has adopted a broader framework to reflect a multi-modal approach. The most recent Audit Commission Report, Youth Justice 2004, concludes that ‘the new system is a considerable improvement on the old one’ (2004: 12), but it also identifies areas where ‘more could be done’ and in its recommendations refers to the importance of examining the effectiveness of new interventions, particularly those for persistent young offenders.

A vital element of evidence-based practice has been the development and accepted usage of systematic assessment tools as is charted in the next pair of chapters. Simon Merrington explains the evolution and use of assessment tools in probation, and Kerry Baker describes the development of the assessment tool for youth justice. This ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• List of abbreviations
• Notes on the contributors
• 1 The emergence and importance of evidence-based practice in probation and youth justice
• 2 Evidence-based practice in the National Probation Service
• 3 Towards effective practice in the Youth Justice System
• 4 Assessment tools in probation: their development and potential
• 5 Is Asset really an asset? Assessment of young offenders in practice
• 6 Exploring effective educational interventions for young people who offend
• 7 Probation interventions to address basic skills and employment needs
• 8 Offending behaviour programmes: emerging evidence and implications for practice
• 9 Intensive supervision and surveillance programmes for young offenders: the evidence base so far
• 10 One-to-one ways of promoting desistance: in search of an evidence base
• 11 Using community service to encourage inclusive citizenship: evidence from the CS pathfinder
• 12 Opportunity, motivation and change: some findings from research on resettlement
• 13 Pursuing evidence-based inspection
• Index