Anti-Racist Probation Practice

Lena Dominelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781857422801
• eBook ISBN: 9781351957823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The probation service has committed itself to anti-racist initiatives and those promoting equal opportunities for some time. However, the experiences of black people, whether as workers or 'clients' indicates that the realities of day-to-day practice are far removed from this. Moreover, the picture is just as bleak if not even more so in other parts of the criminal justice system including the judiciary and the prison service. Anti-Racist Probation Practice addresses this conundrum and drawing on the experiences of black people makes practical proposals for moving forward in non-tokenistic ways. These include core areas of practice, for example court reports monitoring systems; resource allocation; and working relations. Arguing that process, procedures and outcomes in the work done must be taken together if individual, institutional and cultural racism are to be eradicated, the book shows that anti-racist probation practice must be taken seriously by both black and white people if it is to materialise.

1 More than injustice

justice is the currency which is expected to circulate throughout the criminal justice system, and in most people's view, that system is the institution which is entrusted with the duty of ensuring that justice is both done and seen to be done. However, when evidence to the contrary occasionally comes to light, as has happened in the long, drawn-out attempts to get at the 'truth' in recent well-publicised cases of miscarriages of justice, such as the Guildford Six, the Maguires, the Birmingham Four, the Bradford Twelve and the Cardiff Four, it is hotly disputed (Kennedy, 1992). If errors are admitted, they are usually attributed to a few corrupt individuals rather than being considered signs of failure in the system itself.

That the problems of the criminal justice system (CJS) result from more than the traits of unreliable or incompetent individuals is evident if we examine its structures as well as its personnel. Such an examination reveals that the decision-making processes, regardless of whether these concern policy, legislation or practice in the CJS, lie primarily in the hands of white middle- and upper-class men (King and May, 1985). A wide range of people - particularly if they are working-class, women or black - are excluded from these. Yet it is mainly working-class people, black people and women who are disproportionately represented amongst those at the receiving end of its deliberations as alleged offenders.

We use the term 'black people' to mean people who are oppressed or excluded from holding socio-economic power and being involved in society's decision-making structures because they are considered 'black', regardless of their actual skin colour; in the UK this includes people of Asian and African descent. Our use of this category does not suggest that the people encompassed by it are a homogeneous group. Indeed, we recognise that they are heterogeneous peoples with differing origins, languages, religions, and cultural and historical traditions. They are more unlike each other than they are like each other. But what they have in common is their experience of racism - their exclusion from the public domain on the grounds of an assumed phenology of 'race' and racial types.

The exclusion of a wide spectrum of people from the decision-making apparatus within the CJS, coupled with the over-representation of society's marginalised groups as the objects of its ministrations, is a main preoccupation of this book. However, the CJS is a vast institution which cannot be covered in the confines of one short text. Hence we will focus on one section of it - the Probation Service, which presents in microcosm the issues which challenge the CJS more generally.

By examining specific areas of probation practice (from Pre-Sentence Reports to throughcare), and by considering both qualifying and in-service training, we will show how racism operates and how anti-racist practice can be achieved.

The decision-makers

Mirroring the society of which it is a part, the Probation Service is riven by social divisions. Crucial decisions about its resourcing and development lie in the hands of the Home Secretary who, to this point in UK history, has always been a white male. Within the institution itself, the major decision-makers are white men. White women make up only 8 per cent of the Chief Probation Officer grade, and no black person has made it to this level thus far. Moreover, although both white women and black people are now coming into the profession in greater numbers, they are still located primarily at the main grade and lower levels. White women now form 45 per cent of the main grade officers, and in the last four or five years have been drawn increasingly into the ranks of middle management as Senior Probation Officers (NACRO, 1992).

It is still unclear whether this progress is the result of changes in employment policies arising from pressure women have placed on the Service, or whether it is part of a broader structural process, namely the feminisation of the Probation Service. If it is part of the latter, it is a sign of the decrease in status and reduced professional clout which the Probation Service is undergoing rather than indicating a gain for women (Dominelli, 1995). Yet even this marginal improvement in the position of women is precarious. In early 1995, the Home Secretary expressed concern at the increasing numbers of married women joining the Probation Service and threatened to turn it into a uniformed 'Corrections Service' staffed with former army personnel and police officers.

Black people are present to a lesser extent, in that only 3 per cent of the workforce is made up of black people, and these are more likely to be found at the lower levels including those of main grade officer, Probation Service Officer (a reclassification of the previous Probation Service Assistant) and volunteers (NACRO, 1992). The experiences of black people in their encounters with the system are a major theme of this book.

When it comes to service delivery, neither white women nor black people receive services which are specifically geared to their needs. The Probation Service is awash with stereotypes about womanhood (black and white) and black people which provide the driving force behind the provisions which are made available to them. As a result, services are developed primarily to cater for white male offenders, whilst white women and black people are expected to put up with variants of these. White women are disproportionately represented in custodial settings and are related to as 'sick, mad or bad' (Worrall, 1990; Morris, 1987; Dominelli, 1983). Black people are also disproportionately represented in custodial settings (Hudson, 1990; Sivanandan, 1992). Moreover, the dominant themes which are brought into play regarding them are 'dangerousness' and 'pathology' (Dominelli, 1988; Hall et al., 1978). The 'dangerousness' motif is particularly evident in relation to black women (Dominelli, 1983). These themes are articulated in myriad ways to weave the fabric of racism which threads its way through the criminal justice system as a whole.

Definition of terms

Racism

Racism was defined by Audre Lorde as 'the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over another and thereby the right to dominate' (Lorde, 1984, p. 115). Such beliefs are extended into the public arena and given legitimacy through legislation, policies, cultural norms and behaviours. Thus we can speak of racism as a complex web of interwoven relationships aimed at controlling black people and subordinating their needs to those of the dominant white group. Racism operates at a number of different levels which interact with and build on each other. These are:

• personal racism;
• institutional racism;
• cultural racism (Dominelli, 1988; Bromley and Longino, 1972).

Personal racism concerns the attitudes, beliefs and prejudices against black people held by individuals who aim to put black people down at every opportunity whilst enhancing their own sense of worth and importance. It relies on the presence of the other forms of racism in order to be affirmed in the public arena. But the existence of personal racism is also crucial in maintaining both institutional and cultural racism.

Institutional racism is made up of the routine policies and practices which exclude black people from participating in the decision-making processes of society, enjoying citizenship rights and receiving their share of society's resources. The impact of institutional racism can be either direct or indirect, depending on whether or not black people are deliberately excluded from the system. It relies on the existence of both personal and cultural racism to be maintained and reproduced, and it contributes in turn to the maintenance and reproduction of the other two.

Cultural racism consists of those socially accepted values and norms which ascribe an inferior status to black people and devalue the contribution which they have made to society. It underpins both personal and institutional racism and relies on them for its continuation.

The interconnectedness of these three forms of racism makes it difficult to deal with racism, and suggests that we cannot abolish racism without tackling the problem at all three levels. We will focus on the issues which addressing racism presents in the context of working in the Probation Service from both anti-racist and black perspectives in subsequent chapters of this book. In the course of doing so, we will also provide examples of good practice in working with both black and white people from anti-racist and black perspectives.

Black perspective

Our definition of black perspectives stems from an understanding of how living in a racist society shapes black people's experience as black people. In other words, a black perspective is about developing a world view which is informed by a person's experience of racial oppression, their desire to comprehend and articulate that experience, and their wish to eradicate the social relations which give rise to racism. Therefore not all black people hold a black perspective. Only those who acknowledge the presence of racism and consider it a political issue which must be tackled for the liberation of black people would be included in our definition of it. A black perspective's commitment to eradicating racism and improving social relations for all people makes it relevant to white people too (see hooks, 1992,1993).

White perspective

A white perspective, on the other hand, is about a world view which takes for granted the existence of racial oppression and does not seek to address the issue of its elimination. Its form varies over time with the changing forms racism assumes. At this historical conjuncture, it concerns itself primarily with redefining racist discourse around culture and ethnicity, as can be evidenced in the discourse of the New Right (see Barker, 1981). Nor does a white perspective acknowledge the enormous advantages which accrue to white people as a result of the existence of racism. In short, a white perspective is another name for a racist perspective, although it need not be this. It is our hope that white people will be able to reclaim a white perspective for more progressive purposes as part of our collective struggle to remove racism from the social agenda.

We do not, therefore, use the term 'white perspective' to signify an antiracist perspective held by white people. Our reasons for this are the following: white perspectives have historically been racist perspectives, thus the concept for us does not signify a commitment to eliminating racism. Moreover, we are concerned that white people have used the term to denote white supremacy - that is, that whiteness becomes the norm whereby everything is judged (see hooks, 1992, 1993; Ahmad, 1993), and, in the course of exercising that prerogative, white people become less sensitive to what constitutes racial abuse.

Anti-racist perspective

An anti-racist perspective takes racism as a fundamental feature of social relations and aims to change these in favour of non-racist, egalitarian ones. Social change is very much a key concern of anti-racists. Anti-racist perspectives provide white people with the tools for transcending racist discourse and enabling them to work with black people who are also working to eliminate racism from social relations from a black perspective (Dominelli, 1988; hooks, 1992, 1993). At this point, a white perspective can be reclaimed by white anti-racist workers attempting to move it away from its racist connotations. We use the term 'anti-racist perspectives' to refer to the views of white people and black people wishing to end racial oppression.

Oppression

Whilst we focus on understanding racism and developing anti-racist alternatives in this book, we do not consider racism as the only form of oppression which the Probation Service needs to address. There are many other forms of oppression which are encountered in our work. These include sexism, homophobia, ageism, disablism, adultism and mentalism, just to name a few. These also feed into and out of each other, making our work even more difficult in the process. Indeed, the complexity of oppression and the interaction between one form of oppression and another make it unlikely that we can deal with one element of it without touching on the others. So, working from anti-racist and black perspectives means that we should be sensitive to other social divisions and take them on board as we proceed with our work.

Working on getting rid of racism can only be a starting point, from which good practice in general must flow. The development of good probation practice is a matter of concern to practitioners, policy-makers and academics. Hence, we would argue it is the concern of everyone working in the Probation Service - from the Chief Probation Officer to the Community Service Officer and the receptionist. Moreover, it is the responsibility of all those working in the courts, whether paid or not, and those politically responsible for the criminal justice system.

We define oppression as the systematic exclusion of people from the public domain by denying them:

• access to full citizenship rights;
• participation in society's decision-making structures;
• access to socio-economic and political power;
• access to resources;
• the value of their contribution to society.

Oppression, therefore, proceeds on a number of different dimensions, several of which can be present simultaneously. Moreover, we would argue that because it is difficult to separate out these different social dimensions of oppression (except for the purposes of logical argument and the construction of 'ideal types'), we should resist the temptation to order them according to criteria which place them on a hierarchy which pits attending to one social division against doing so for another.

Anti-discriminatory practice

Anti-discriminatory practice deals with only a small portion of the oppressive realities encountered by oppressed people. Its political and moral philosophy is derived from a liberalism which focuses on individual action and piecemeal engineering within a social system which is seen as problematic rather than irredeemable, thereby masking its more repressive elements. Anti-discriminatory approaches to social work concern themselves with access to services - procedures and entitlements, individual action on behalf of or taken directly by those experiencing discrimination - and with the more superficial concerns about language (for example, what someone or something should be called), rather than engaging with the social relations signifying inferiority embedded within language itself. Thus we get anti-discriminatory practice which can go through the hoops of gatekeeping in the Probation Service to eliminate racist and sexist bias, and discover that, none the less, these biases prevail. The following extracts from a Pre-sentence Report on a black woman which had been cleared as an example of good practice by the gatekeeping system demonstrate our point. The first extract is given under the section on 'current offences':

Leroi is only the father of one of Gloria's two children. Leroi is a heroin addict and used to spend most of the family income on drugs which caused some conflict and explains Gloria's past involvement in prostitution ... Gloria tells me she had spent money he needed for his heroin on food. She was also in the company of a male neighbour when Leroi came home, and accepts that the combination of the two factors probably provoked the attack.

The negative stereotypes of Gloria as a woman and as a black woman are abundantly clear. She is presented as a passive victim whose main concern should have been to play the 'proper' wifely role. The contextualising scene is also one which fosters the racist stereotypes of black people as 'dangerous' and irresponsible members of society who are always caught up in drugs and violence. This view is exacerbated by the additional material provided as 'relevant information about the offender':

Gloria's parents came to England from Jamaica in the 1950s. She comes from a large family, many of whom have been before the courts.

Besides stigmatising Gloria, the above statements feed into stereotypes which problematise black families, and by implication, all black communities.

The complexity of oppression and the interconnectedness of the different forms of racism mean that the struggle to overcome them is difficult and must cover a range of different factors. Some items may be dealt with by an individual operating on his or her own. However, the struggle is likely to necessitate the formation of alliances and organisations which can coordinate and carry out activities aimed at eliminating inequalities and re organising our social relations from an anti-oppressive perspective on a broader front. In this case it would have to include the courts as well as the Probation Service.

Equal opportunities

Policies of equal opportunities also limit themselves to a small segment of the framework of oppression. Equal opportunities policies, like those on anti-discriminatory practice, confine themselves largely to access issues - access to the job market and access to services, again very much on an individualistic basis. The preoccupation is with the number of black people at work, or using a particular service - a matter of quantity, not quality. The need to examine the quality of the services on offer, who defines them as appropriate, who is really paying for them and the need to consider the nature of the working relations and working conditions within the workplace are mainly ignored.

An example of the focus on quantity rather than on both quantitative and qualitative aspects of social relations is the following piece of 'equal opportunities' practice:

A Probation Service instituted an equal opportunities policy and was delighted with the successful response of black people to its advertisements placed in the black and ethnic press. As a result of a recent round of job interviews, 12 per cent of its posts went to black officers. The senior managers who initiated this policy initiative felt pleased with their efforts and deemed these a 'successful outcome to their policy'. The black officers took up their posts and discovered that on top of the normal caseload which was carried by other (white) officers, they were expect...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• A note on the authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 More than injustice
• 2 'Race', racism and equal opportunities: A black perspective
• 3 Self-empowerment, empowering others and justice
• 4 Training: Opportunities and dilemmas
• 5 Challenging racism in prison and throughcare
• 6 Conclusions: Past failures, new hopes
• Bibliography
• Name index
• Subject index