Working With Offenders

A Guide to Concepts and Practices

Rob White, Hannah Graham

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781843927945
• eBook ISBN: 9781136681318
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a theoretically informed guide to the practice of working with offenders in different settings and for different purposes. It deals with topics such as offender rehabilitation, case management, worker-offender relationships, working with difficult clients and situations, collaboration, addressing complex needs, and processes of integration. The book offers a unique perspective on working with offenders in that it incorporates three key elements. As part of the latter, it provides different types of data, including descriptions of programs and selected statistics from each jurisdiction, and presents this information in easy-to-read formats. The chapters are structured around a dual focus of workers and their environments on the one hand, and the nature of the offenders with whom they work on the other. The condition and situation of workers is thus considered in the context of the condition and situation of offenders, and the relationship between the two. The book is intended to be relevant and familiar to those already working in the field, as well as to introduce contemporary principles and practices to those wishing to do so in the future. Each chapter concludes with two key features. The first, Further Reading, is oriented toward concepts and the 'why' questions of practice. The second, Key Resources, alerts readers to appropriate manuals and handbooks, and the 'how' questions of practice. This includes reference to evidence-based examples of good practice and specific intervention models.

Chapter 1

Setting the Scene

Right now, I’m in prison. Like society kicked me out. They’re like ‘Okay, the criminal element. We don’t want them in society, we’re going to put them in these prisons.’ Okay, but once I get out – then what do you do? What do you do with all these millions of people that have been in prison and been released? I mean, do you accept them back? Or do you keep them as outcasts? And if you keep them as outcasts, how do you expect them to act?

(Prisoner, quoted in Uggen et al. 2004: 284)

Introduction

This book provides a theoretically informed guide to the practice of working with offenders in different settings and for different purposes. Our intention is to offer practitioners and academics a useful and usable introduction to this type of work. Accordingly, we have concentrated on outlining the general skills, concepts and knowledge that are necessary to work with diverse groups of offenders. It is our hope that this will provide a platform upon which specialist intervention, in areas such as working with violent offenders or those with a mental illness, for example, can be built.

The emphasis in this book is on practice, on the ‘how to’ component of working with offenders. The practice of working with offenders, however, rests upon a foundation of philosophy, principles and policies, each of which informs how we do what we do. A practical guide, therefore, is at one and the same time a guide to those key concepts that shape how practice occurs at the applied level.

The book offers a unique perspective on working with offenders in that it incorporates three key elements.

• It cuts across specialisations insofar as it attempts to consolidate generic competencies and knowledge from different occupations (for example, social work, psychology, criminology) and different types of agencies that work with offenders (prisons, community sector organisations). For example, the book considers the nature of work in both institutional and community settings in criminal justice. As part of this, it includes case studies and comments from correctional officers in prisons, and workers in community corrections and community sector organisations, about the content and nature of their work.
• The book examines and draws upon what is happening in a number of different jurisdictions, and especially those of England and Wales, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Each jurisdiction has its own unique character. Some have provinces, others have states and territories, still others have a combination of national and local governments. We have tried to ‘cherry pick’ what we feel are some of the better examples of good practice from many different places. The book also provides different types of data, including descriptive statistics, from various jurisdictions and presents this information in comparative tables. All of the chapters also contain stories of innovative practices, including examples drawn from Europe, Asia and the Middle East as well.
• The book is written with practitioners in mind, with theoretically informed discussion of principles and practices. In essence, the book provides an analysis of ‘what is’ and a guide to ‘how to’. Each chapter therefore concludes with two key features. The first, a further reading section, is oriented towards concepts and the ‘why’ questions of practice. It includes reference to commentaries, analysis and research studies. The second lists key resources, alerting readers to appropriate manuals and handbooks, and the ‘how’ questions of practice. This includes reference to evidence-based examples of good practice and specific intervention models.

The chapters are structured around a dual focus of workers and their environments, and the nature of the offenders with whom they work. The condition and situation of workers is considered in the context of the condition and situation of offenders, and the dialectic or interaction between the two. As part of this approach, both generic and specialist models and interventions are described and analysed, including discussions of the nuances and differences in their application to divergent work roles and workplaces. The book is intended to be relevant and familiar to those already working in the field, as well as to introduce contemporary principles and practices to those wishing to do so in the future.

This chapter provides background information and an outline of broad trends within corrections. It is very much a setting-the-scene chapter. As such it describes imprisonment trends, participation rates in community corrections, and the character and attributes of offenders generally. We begin, however, with an acknowledgement of the central two problems that perennially beset those who work within this field.

The Core Problems of Corrections

For sake of brevity we will, for present purposes, merely identify the key problems of corrections rather than tackle them in any kind of depth. For those working in the field these are more than familiar; for those studying criminology and corrections, they are central to any meaningful contemporary analysis.

Problem 1: Prisons Fail

This problem relates mainly to the phenomenon of imprisonment. Basically, the problem is that prisons, as an institution, fail (see Mathiesen 1990). Prisons fail in a number of significant ways.

• They fail to prevent future offending/recidivism.
• They fail to protect and preserve human dignity.
• They fail to use taxpayers’ money effectively.
• They fail to address the causes of crime.
• They fail to deal with the consequences of crime.
• They fail to acknowledge the complexities of victimisation andcriminalisation, and the offender/victim nexus.
• They fail to facilitate autonomy and self-determination.

The failure of prisons also, necessarily, means that much of what happens in post-release situations also fails. That is, what occurs in the prison, and the impact of imprisonment itself, have a negative effect on what subsequently lies ahead for the offender, and for those who work with offenders within a community setting.

The challenge, therefore, is to figure out a way to make prisons ‘work’ successfully (across various evaluation criteria), to come up with realistic and positive alternatives to imprisonment (which has major implications for community-level resources), and/or to reconsider the corrections project in its entirety. One thing that is clear is that major social change is needed. Otherwise, there are and will continue to be a lot of people doing a lot of work, for very little social pay-off.

The failure of imprisonment has been noted often, by many different people, and over a long period of time. For example, Foucault (1977) observes how the voices of prison reform were essentially the same from one century to another. He comments: ‘For a century and a half the prison had always been offered as its own remedy: the reactivation of the penitentiary techniques as the only means of overcoming their perpetual failure; the realization of the corrective project as the only method of overcoming the impossibility of implementing it’ (Foucault 1977: 268). In other words, over many years the failure of the prison was seen to reside in the failure of prison reform. The key demands of prison reform, too, have been the same: the principal aim should be to change the behaviour of prisoners in a positive way; by methods that involve classifying them according to specific individual needs and traits; in a regime that rewards progress towards rehabilitation; that involves work as an obligation and a right; that includes education and general social improvement; supported by suitable professional staff; and with access to help and support during and after imprisonment. Such demands resonate today much the way they did almost two centuries ago at the birth of the modern prison.

For some writers, the fact that prisons fail is in its own perverse way a sign that they are succeeding (see Foucault 1977; Gosselin 1982; Mathiesen 1990). That is, the role of the prison is in fact symbolic and political, rather than rehabilitative and deterrent. As long as the institution fails, it reinforces the stigma of offending, of offenders, and of the lower social orders, and thereby serves to prop up the hegemony of those at the top of the social hierarchy. It is a perfect scapegoat for the ills of unequal and socially divided societies.

We will return to the question of prison failure in the last chapter, when we once again discuss the phenomenon of recidivism and how a rehabilitation agenda is crucial to reducing the likelihood of offenders recommitting crimes and returning to prison.

Problem 2: Offenders are Victims Too

A second core problem of corrections is that, generally speaking, it does a bad job of dealing with the fact that offenders are usually simultaneously both offenders and victims. In other words, those most likely to be subject to intervention by the state and prosecuted as ‘criminals’ are also among the most vulnerable, marginalised and victimised groups in society, for example:

• For indigenous people, colonialism has tended to equal marginalisation, dispossession and criminalisation.
• Young women (and men) suffer abuse at the hands of others, then are brutalised by uncaring and unforgiving systems of justice when they ‘act out’ (either through illicit drug use or by engagement in criminal activity such as assaults or sex work).
• Many who suffer from co-morbidity end up enduring the harsh realities of punishment systems, but not dealing with their mental illness or substance abuse while in the hands of the state.

The fact is that the vast majority of offenders who are actually processed by the state and branded as criminals have complex needs and face a wide range of complicated social, economic and political issues. The expression ‘the rich get richer and the poor get prison’ (see Reiman 1998) is factually accurate, but nonetheless needs to be fleshed out by consideration of the myriad obstacles that most offenders have had to grapple with in their lives.

Consider the fact that women, despite comprising over half the population, constitute a small percentage of the prison population. Given the relatively low number of women who are incarcerated, female prisoners tend to be housed together regardless of official ‘security’ status (for example, high, medium, or low). Many contemporary programmes and services tend not to cater to the specific needs of women as women, insofar as the system as a whole has a masculine bias in its structure and programming (Alder 1997). Historically, where there have been women-specific programs, these were more than likely to be built upon conservative and limiting assumptions regarding proper ‘women’s work’ (for example, as domestic servants or housekeepers) and ideal notions of ‘femininity’ (for example, to act in more passive ways, and to dress in particular ways) (see Smart 1976; Easteal 1994). To cater for the special needs of female offenders once they are in the system requires the introduction and evaluation of a wide range of programs dealing with issues such as sexual and other forms of abuse, employment, education and personal empowerment (Cameron 2001).

The failure of prison is in part simply a reflection of the failure of the criminal justice system to accommodate social justice issues within its purview. Punishment is seen as a central driver of the system (even if modified by language that stresses rehabilitation, treatment and reparation). Consideration of the social circumstances and life opportunities of the punished has rarely been of paramount importance, even if courts, police and corrective services occasionally allude to such in their deliberations and intervention policies. Yet, even if based on pragmatic considerations, it is evident that addressing the failure of corrections is fundamentally a matter of addressing the underlying causes and structures of alienation, the struggle for subsistence and having to endure the pains of abuse and ignorance.

Offending and Rehabilitation

Unemployment, poverty and declining opportunities continue to directly affect the physical and psychological well-being of people in our communities. Such social problems are entrenched at a spatial level, and are increasingly concentrated in specific locations within our cities. This is sometimes referred to as a process of ghettoisation. The social costs of marginality are inevitably translated into the economic costs of crime.

The Social Context of Offending

The social costs of marginality are also transformed into behaviour that is officially defined as ‘anti-social’ and ‘dangerous’. All of this is bound to have an impact on the self-image of marginalised people and their efforts at self-defence in a hostile environment. The pooling of social resources and the construction of identities that are valued by others (if only one’s peer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of boxes, case studies, figures, innovative practices, scenarios, stories from the field and tables
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors
• 1. Setting the scene
• 2. Key approaches to offender rehabilitation
• 3. Institutional dynamics and the workplace
• 4. Case management skills
• 5. Tools and interventions
• 6. The worker–offender relationship: roles and respect
• 7. Working with complex needs and special populations
• 8. Difficult work: managing risk, violence and crisis
• 9. Continuums of care and collaborative alliances
• 10. Pathways and possibilities: the process of reintegration
• Appendix 1: Drug use in prison – discussion notes
• Appendix 2: Client safety contract pro forma
• Glossary
• References
• Index