Working within the Forensic Paradigm

Cross-discipline approaches for policy and practice

Rosemary Sheehan, James Ogloff, Rosemary Sheehan, James Ogloff

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317702368
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Forensic work occurs across the criminal justice sector and the legal and health professions and intersects with work in a range of areas, such as child protection, family welfare, mental health, offending, disability and addictions, family violence programmes, juvenile justice and sexual assault centres. This book offers contemporary perspectives on forensic policy and practice from the range of practitioners working with people within the forensic domain and canvasses ideas about risk and offending behaviours together with ideas about effective responses to rehabilitation and recovery.

The contributors to this proposed book are drawn from the practitioners, policy contributors, advocates and researchers in mental health, welfare, law, criminology, policing and health. Negligible attention has been paid to forensic policy and practice; this proposed book offers cross-national attention to how mental health, welfare and justice systems intersect, who they affect, and how practitioners structure effective responses for vulnerable people within the forensic domain.

A particular strength of the book is its international focus, making it relevant to academics and practitioners who work in this field around the world.

Part I The forensic domain

1 Practising in the forensic context A cross-disciplinary perspective through the social work lens

Rosemary Sheehan

DOI: 10.4324/9781315780399-1

1.1 Introduction

An increasing number of people who are seeking mental health services are also involved in the legal system, whether it is because the nature of their illness invokes involuntary care or because their mental health and offending behaviours are interrelated. The law and work in the human services are increasingly conjoined as mental health policy focuses on practitioners’ decisions about disorder, risk and capacity when deciding on the nature of treatment for community service users and at what point this treatment is compulsory. The key issues of detention and civil liberty are grounded in the emerging context of forensic practice, shaping work not only in the criminal justice and youth justice systems but also in mental health, child protection, drug and alcohol services, family violence programmes and sexual assault centres. This chapter examines the specialist field of forensic practice and the cross-discipline contributions to working with individuals whose offending and its consequences draws them into both the mental health and legal systems, with specific examples coming from Australian and international literature. The social work contribution is the lens through which this chapter profiles such discipline contributions. The chapter looks also at the practice challenges in this domain, the tension between legal and welfare obligations, the central place of knowledge of psychological disorder and criminal behaviour, and working in environments where legal process shapes the work context.

1.2 The specialist field of forensic practice

Practising in the forensic context is a specialist endeavour both because of the legal requirements with which treating professionals must comply and the legal parameters affecting client problems. Barker and Branson (2000) present forensic work as a highly specialised practice that is very court-oriented, and whose assessments are focused on assisting courts with their decisions in both criminal and civil matters. A range of disciplines provides treatment and services to individuals within the forensic context: nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists and social workers, among others, recognising the range of environmental and interpersonal influences that contribute to mental health and criminal offending matters.

The shift from mental health care in institutions into the community has increased the need for professionals to understand the nexus between individual and community. Brownell and Roberts (2002, 2) suggest this cannot be merely explained as individual pathology, but reflects the pressured and contested life contexts of many individuals and families. Fragile families and high-risk communities are challenged by poverty, substance abuse, high unemployment and rising incarceration rates, which increasingly propel individuals into the mental health and criminal justice systems. The disciplines noted above feature in the range of systems and services responding to individuals in the mental health and criminal justice systems, with demand for assistance from community corrections, juvenile justice and child protection. This is occurring in a context in which there are increasing pressures from governments and funding agencies to medicalise mental health problems – with primary emphasis on fitting the individual into diagnostic categories – despite increased knowledge of the importance of social and personal factors to the maintenance of mental health and individual functioning.

Green et al. (2005, 145) describe forensic work as the application of professional practice (and they refer to social work as the specific example) in any non-voluntary system, which includes mental health and child protection systems. Certainly, such professional practice in contemporary mental health and child protection is almost as legally intensive a practice as that in the criminal justice and corrections systems, given the range of legislation that regulates professional interventions with clients and their families. This is consistent with the US National Organisation of Forensic Social Work’s (NOFSW) view of forensic social work as “practice related to legal issues and litigation, both criminal and civil” (NOFSW 2013, 1). Green et al. (2005, 146–147) explored Australian social workers’ understandings of forensic social work by conducting focus groups with practitioners who had professional experience in forensic settings (health, justice and community settings). Specialism brings with it particular recognition of skills and knowledge, and the practitioners in the study believed this could improve perception of their role by courts and justice personnel and properly acknowledge their expertise in this complex work environment (Green et al. 2005, 150). As societal demands increase around prediction of risk (to determine if someone should be detained, monitored or kept in prison), avoidance of adverse circumstances (for example, child deaths), and assessing compensation (for example, victim impact), the demand for professionals with such expertise will increase. Brownell and Roberts (2002, 9) argue that the forensic social work role is equally well placed to respond to public health crises such as responses to HIV/AIDS as well as to legal initiatives such as the specialised drug and domestic violence courts, which in the US include social workers as key personnel. What characterises forensic social work, they argue, is its key understanding of systems – intrapsychic, interpersonal, familial and societal – as well as its expertise in case management. Reflecting the case in Australia (Sheehan 2012), Brownell and Roberts (2002, 9) highlight this key role of social workers: “Social workers also link prisoners with special needs to child welfare, substance abuse and mental health systems”.

1.3 The social work contribution

Forensic social work has been in existence since the beginning of the profession. However, it is often ‘seen’ to be practised by a small number, and thus there are no unified forensic social worker practice standards (Madden 2000; Munson 2011), despite laws and associated policies, procedures and guidelines underpinning all practice. Indeed, social work education places emphasis on generic skill training – such as developing interpersonal skills – which is applicable to any welfare setting, including the legal system. Forensic specialisation is then developed though practice, guided by supervision, core social work skills and associated values and ethics (respect, social justice and professional integrity, for example) (Madden 2003).

Brownell and Roberts (2002, 3) recognise the origins of forensic social work in the US as residing in “policies, practice and social work roles with juvenile and adult offenders and victims of crime”. Social work in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the US was very much identified with attending to the needs of the poor and disadvantaged, people on the margins, and was strongly associated with work in prisons and with juvenile delinquency (Munson 2011). The current view of forensic social work continues in these same practice domains. The growth in demand for social work assistance from community corrections, juvenile justice and child protection recognises what Rogers and Pilgrim (2010, 8) comment on as a shift in viewing criminality in terms of “inherited disposition or bad conduct” to an “increasing interest in environmental or psychological explanations for law breaking”, although Stinson et al. (2008, 8) caution that governments and society are more and more seeking “biological explanations for human behaviour” with less attention given to environmental and interpersonal influences. Howe (1994, 526) reminds that forensic work, with its focus on care and control, “is good at regulating society’s marginal and undisciplined members”. Thus, Madden (2000, 4) suggests social work needs to be “a strong voice in hostile environments . . . to influence the legal system in order to improve its decisions for clients and practitioners”, and to preserve the inherent dignity of the individual and their right to self-determination, albeit in the forensic context often in restricted circumstances. Balancing the rights of the individual and the community is regularly debated because of the latter’s concern for community safety and a view that mental disorder and criminality are connected; with social workers regularly needing to challenge such generalisations and persuade community agencies and individuals to understand risk and precautions in a more nuanced way (Meadows et al. 2007). Taylor and Swain (2009, 321) remind, however, that this focus on risk and its assessment can turn attention away from a focus on recovery, with attention to self-determination and empowerment, through undue emphasis on control and protection.

Green et al. (2005, 142–143) argue that the social work perspective differs from that of other professions because it takes a holistic approach to each client, viewing them as a person within a social context shaped by systemic, family and environmental influences; social work views the whole person not solely as a person with a particular “diagnosis, offence or sentence” (p. 149). This approach is less familiar in Australia, where forensic social work concentrates more on understanding that part of human behaviour and motivation which intersects with offending behaviours, as evidenced in mental health, child welfare, family violence, addiction and criminal activity. The very focused definition of specialisation presented by Barker and Branson (2000) causes Howe (1994, 524) concern; it is his view that legislation and policies can fragment social work’s underpinnings – or indeed the human interest focus of all involved disciplines – by shaping different kinds of practice to suits fields such as mental health, child welfare and working with adult offenders.

As previously stated, Green et al. (2005, 146–147), in their Australian study, conducted focus groups with practitioners who had professional experience in forensic settings. The participant social workers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introducing the forensic domain
• PART I The forensic domain
• 1 Practising in the forensic context: a cross-disciplinary perspective through the social work lens
• 2 Implementing the risk paradigm in forensic mental health: evidence and values
• 3 Beyond the risk paradigm: maintaining the place of the client in criminal justice interventions
• 4 Risk management
• 5 Sexual offending
• PART II Care, control and community
• 6 Neoliberalism and ‘welfare’ in the shadow of the prison
• 7 Solution-focused justice in the time of ‘law and order’
• 8 From care to the community: leaving the ‘community of custodial care’ and the challenge of community transition
• 9 Policing young people
• 10 Child sexual abuse: providing protection and turning away from future offending
• PART III Justice, welfare and mental health
• 11 Significant harm: the application of the law in practice with vulnerable children
• 12 Policing, custody and mental illness
• 13 Mental health and the courts
• 14 Vulnerability and resilience in the criminal justice system
• PART IV Rehabilitation and recovery
• 15 The recovery environment: health, homelessness and criminal justice
• 16 Mental health services in prison
• 17 After prison: managing re-integration, mental health and desistance from offending
• 18 Substance abuse and offending: pathways to recovery
• 19 Balancing legal, cultural and human rights with the forensic paradigm
• Index