Policy Transfer in Criminal Justice

Crossing Cultures, Breaking Barriers

Mary Anne McFarlane, Rob Canton

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781137300591
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137300607
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Will 'what works' in one country work in another? This unique collection examines the cross-cultural transfer of skills and expertise, drawing out the opportunities and challenges involved in taking penal practices from one country to another.

1

The Partnership between the United Kingdom in Developing Probation and Other Criminal Justice Services and Turkey’s Path to Accession

Kevin Barry and Mary Anne McFarlane

Background and early twinning

The English and Welsh probation services have a long history of working with colleagues in other jurisdictions in other parts of the world. However, this activity has little in the way of published material. In an unpublished manuscript, Tony Heal of the Inner London Probation Service describes a range of international engagements, from exchange visits between London and Los Angeles probation officers to one-off visits to international conferences usually conducted by chief or other senior probation staff or officials from the Home Office. The early days of international engagement could be characterised as individualistic, reactive, highly localised and certainly not structured or systematised. The infamous British inability to master foreign languages ensured that almost all of the focus was in English-speaking countries, with the United States being the primary country of engagement.

The most structured engagement with the foreign jurisdictions was the UK membership of the CEP – (Conférence Permanente Européenne de la Probation) – the European Probation Organisation and the international committee of the Association of Chief Officers of Probation (ACOP) – whose mantle was inherited by the subsequent international committee of the Probation Chiefs Association. These organisations focused largely on enhancing relationships between national probation services and the exchange of information to improve consistency and best professional practice across international borders.

There were few examples of probation services or staff engaging in development, training or justice assistance projects in other states. Staff from individual probation areas engaged in some limited exchange programmes, mostly with their US colleagues. These were not regarded as development work on either side. The only recorded examples of probation staff engaging in development work are that of London officers deployed on short-term assignments under a project in Zimbabwe run by Penal Reform International (PRI Report 1997). This project helped the Ministry of Justice in Zimbabwe to set up Community Service as an alternative to imprisonment. The probation officers’ involvement in this project did not come from the Home Office or the senior management but arose from their own professional interests. Such involvement was given no formal support other than a benign tolerance of officers’ initiatives.

The beginning of the probation service’s active engagement with the world of European Union (EU) twinning programmes has a characteristic idiosyncratic genesis. In 2000, the Inner London Probation Service was approached by the Spanish Ministry of Justice to assist in an existing twinning project in Romania and a small number of probation officers from London became involved, working for short periods as trainers and advisors in Romania providing advice and training to the nascent Romanian probation service. This twinning project largely focused on prison reform, with only minor modules dealing with probation work. However, this small-scale involvement served to raise the awareness of the Inner London Probation Service to the EU twinning programme and of the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) of the existence of a probation service that had the interest and willingness to cooperate with these projects. The twinning programme of the EU requires that each member state has a ‘national contact point’ whose responsibility it is to act as a conduit to circulate project proposals among government departments and to encourage government departments to participate in the twinning programme by bidding for and delivering projects. Having engaged the Inner London Probation Service, later the London Probation Area, in a minor role with the Spanish twinning project in Romania, the UK national contact point was able to encourage the London Probation Area to become involved again when a twinning project from Prague was circulated. This time the role would be as a lead agency, as the project in 2002 was a twinning project to assist the new probation service in the Czech Republic. Once again it was the initiative of an individual staff member responding to a FCO request that started the project work. However, at the turn of the century, the world of the English and Welsh probation services had changed with the creation of a new national probation service (NPS) led by a central National Probation Directorate, which for the first time coordinated the activities of individual probation areas.

Development of twinning since 2000

The new directorate created a new national identity and championed the new evidence-based practice initiative under the slogan ‘What Works?’ The probation service in England and Wales grew in confidence as other national services began to look towards it as the leader of this new evidence-based resurgence in probation practice. Paradoxically, while the United Kingdom looked towards the United States and Canada for inspiration and direction in terms of effective practice, Europe followed the United Kingdom’s lead in its programmes and new evidence-based approach to its work. In this way the United Kingdom became a filter for some of the best practice from the United States to Europe. This provided a new profile for UK probation services across Europe, which in turn provided a platform that benefited the United Kingdom in the competitive environment of EU twinning projects. London Probation Area’s twinning project with the Czech Republic was the first initiative. Having demonstrated that EU projects could be delivered without loss of focus to the core work of the service and been reassured that there would be no demands on the budget of the probation service, the NPS established a small twinning team to exploit the new opportunities and greater profile to successfully win twinning projects in a number of candidate countries. The UK presentations at the selection meetings (all twinning projects are competed for by interested member states of the EU) were supported by the new national focus and underpinned by the new emphasis on the ‘What Works’ initiative that the United Kingdom and some other member states such the Netherlands and Sweden were pioneering in Europe. While the UK emphasis on offending behaviour programmes looked to the United States and Canada for its theoretical basis, the presentations for projects in developing probation services in Central and Eastern Europe did not look to export US models but rather the resurgence of confidence and professionalism that in turn gave UK practitioners the credibility in the selection processes. Between 2003 and 2013 the UK justice and home affairs twinning team had been awarded 69% of the projects that they had made bids for.

Twinning is a method of linking member state ministries with ministries or agencies of countries which are candidates for Accession or have intentions of applying for accession. It is popular with the EU because the majority of twinning projects achieve their objectives and contracted outcomes (reference below), and the experience of the UK twinning in Justice and Home Affairs funding programmes is that these projects also build up a network of professional relationships, some of which are maintained long after the end of the project. Furthermore, the twinning instrument has now been approved for use in the countries of the European neighbourhood as well as its original target of candidates for accession.

Periodically the EU Commission for Enlargement commissions an evaluation of the effectiveness of twinning. The most recent was published in 2012 when twinning in the European Neighbourhood was reviewed. The evaluation reported:

Twinning has proved to be an extremely effective instrument, more effective than other types of project, more particularly with the required achievement of mandatory results and the way to achieve them. That is a very important point of this evaluation. This effectiveness is strengthened insofar as the beneficiary’s absorption capacity is high.

(Bouscharain and Moreau 2012)

The main findings and conclusions based upon data analysis include the following: twinning, as a unique and valuable instrument, provides EU member state expertise which is appreciated across the ENP, but many ENP nationals, civil servants and senior officials are unaware of its features. Some of the procedures and management structure should be simplified and better coordination is needed across all projects and donor activities. Twinning, Taiex and SIGMA offer distinct and separate contributions to beneficiaries, although the latter are not always initially clear about these differences. Study visits engender high expectations. There is a tension between the Aquis-related longer term strategy and objectives and the demand-driven nature of many of the Twinning projects. Twinning projects have been successful when they responded to needs identified by the Beneficiary Administrations (BAs); when they were feasible and focused just on a few specific issues; when BAs had sufficient absorption capacity and demonstrated a level of commitment to mandatory results; and also when the quality of EU MS expertise was high. The local administrative and political context is highly influential on success, as is the role of the local Advisor (PAOs/UGPs and RTAs).

During her speech at the closing ceremony for a United Kingdom-led twinning project in Zagreb on 26 February 2013, the national director of the new Croatian Probation Service noted the effectiveness of the project. She commented:

In twenty-one months we have achieved so much. Staff have been appointed, offices opened and a national service created. As part of the project and beyond the project we connected at many levels and we want to thank the UK probation service for sharing with us your best practice which we will try to pass on to new generations of staff to come. We now have staff who feel secure in practising this professional knowledge and we are now strong secure people who are well connected and support the improvements of justice in Croatia… thanks to you we have created a probation culture and created a European culture, it was money well spent by the EU.

(Špero 2013)

Twinning is popular with Accession countries because it delivers expertise in a framework that emphasises partnership and is popular with member states because of its generous funding by the Directorate General of Enlargement.

Twinning focuses on capacity building across all areas of public sectors and is restricted to public bodies or bodies that carry mandates from the state to deliver services or process that typically are the responsibility of the government. Accession states are granted funds to deliver projects as part of the agreement with the EU on their journey to membership. These projects typically cost around a million euros and have an implementation period of between 12 and 24 months. The focus is on the adoption of the Acquis Communautaire (the regulations and principles that bind the EU) or enhancing capacity through training and development of public administrations.

Twinning contracts; implementation and sustainability

The watchwords for twinning for the union are ‘partnership’ and ‘sustainability’, and the EU twinning manual specifically sets twinning in opposition to technical assistance. The experience of the United Kingdom is that this distinction between twinning and technical assistance is not necessarily understood clearly by beneficiary ministries or organisations. Twinning, as the name implies, requires a major deployment of effort in collaboration and responsibility while technical assistance only requires a willingness to accept advice and training. Organisations which have a traditional command and control structure or a history of institutional behaviours have the biggest difficulty in adopting collaborative processes.

The EU places a premium on the principle of sustainability – at both the point of selection and throughout the delivery of the project. Likewise the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom places a similar emphasis on engaging in justice assistance with partner justice ministries for the long term. Projects have a six-month preparatory phase, followed by a 12- to 24-month implementation phase and in both these periods the staff who are engaged in the twinning project are expected to build good personal and professional relationships with their opposite numbers. The experience of the United Kingdom is that these relationships will last beyond the lifetime of the project and in the best of cases establish a longterm relationship between the institutions and the staff from both sides. Twinning projects are intensive for the period of their implementation and this intensity cannot be sustained at the same level beyond the lifetime of the project; but a lower level of contacts between the RTAs and some STEs has been the outcome of a number of United Kingdom-led projects. This usually takes the form of requests for professional information or data, occasionally involving visits and/or advice on developments in practice.

The purpose of these relationships is that of sustaining the informal network of professional relationships that underpin the formal structural relationships that make up the EU. The writing of this book is one indicator of the establishment of a relationship that has outlasted the 21-month period of the project proper.

A further example is that of the relationship between the probation services of the Czech Republic and England & Wales. In 2002–2006 they were partners in two EU twinning projects, with the United Kingdom as provider and the Czech Republic as beneficiary. The working relationship continued over the decade through low level formal and informal contacts and visits. In 2010, on the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Czech Probation Service, the Czechs became junior partners with the UK Ministry of Justice in a twinning project in Croatia where they delivered training and development work to their Croatian colleagues. Beneficiaries became partners who became deliverers. Croatia has now become a member state, and it would be a fulfilment of this model of engagement to look forward to the day when the probation service of Croatia would become a junior partner with the Czech Republic in an EU-funded twinning project in the Caucasus.

Twinning projects are always for a fixed period of time – usually 18 months or two years. It is during this period of intensive development, meeting of minds and exchange of ideas that most of the ‘heavy lifting’ is done. The time limit also helps to ensure that the partnership does not become a dependency with the more experienced member state being regarded as having all the answers. As part of the preparation for assignments, STEs (the name given by the EU to practitioners in these projects) from member states are reminded that their role is one of advice and guidance, helping their colleagues to find ‘local solutions to local problems’. A further sign of success, on the completion of a project, would be requests for information and papers on policy or practice from the United Kingdom to inform the discussions in the beneficiary rather than advice or direction.

The beneficiary selects a specific twinning partner through a competitive process. Some bids are consortia of two or more member states. The United Kingdom, like its competitors, either bids alone or with one junior partner. Even when the UK Ministry of Justice is selected to deliver a project on its own, its universal practice has been to deploy STEs from other member states to emphasise that while the United Kingdom was selected as partner of choice, a twinning project is a EU programme and this should be reflected in its staffing and exposure for the beneficiary to other EU justice systems. The expertise of other states enriches a project and provides a source of knowledge and skill that may not be available from the United Kingdom. In this project in Turkey the Austrian NGO, The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM), provided a significant number of professional experts and STEs were also deployed from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Catalonia and the Netherlands.

In the UK experience, working with other partners in delivering twinning projects has significant advantages to the beneficiary which outweigh the management and administrative burden that consortia require. A joint project reminds the beneficiaries (and also the providers) that there is not one European model of probation practice, but rather, as the Council of Europe probation rules indicate, there are standards and principles but many different ways of achieving the same goals and outcomes of probation work. Having a consortium with one country from a common law jurisdiction and another from a Roman jurisdiction provides two lenses through which the beneficiary can review the judicial and court processes. In our joint projects this differentiation has served as a useful catalyst for probation staff and judges when they examine the different roles of officer and judge in the sentencing of offenders.

Staff from some beneficiary countries have commented favourably on consortia that combine a jurisdiction like England and Wales, with its long history of probation practice, with another country where there is a much shorter history. They have pointed out how useful it was to be able to speak to staff who had been personally involved in the foundation of the new probation service in the Czech Republic, whereas the police court missionaries in England, the originators of probation were long gone. The justice system in England and Wales has a long history, linked to the historical development of democracy and individual rights. New probation services in the Balkans and Eastern Europe are recent foundations on the collapse of a failed socialist ideology. Staff from the Western Balkans in particular value the participation of countries such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, whose recent history is more similar to their experience than that of the longer experience of democracy in the United Kingdom. In a similar vein, the poorly performing economies that arose out of post-communist experience mean that their probation services are funded far less generously than in the United Kingdom. Working with partners who have much more restricted budgets helps to provide a useful balance to the better-funded countries of the older EU members.

The purpose of twinning projects under the Instrument for Pre-Accession is to prepare the candidate country for membership of the EU. The Union is essentially a club and as in all clubs, members have to abide by the rules of the club but also to accept its underlying values and culture. Twinning projects assist in this process by bringing the candidate up to scratch by teaching them to abide by the rules of the Union (the acquis), while the methods of the project should also teach the values and the culture of the Union. The value ascribed to diversity and subsidiarity is a good example of such a process.

Diversity within the Union is b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations and Glossary
• Introduction
• 1. The Partnership between the United Kingdom in Developing Probation and Other Criminal Justice Services and Turkey’s Path to Accession
• Part I: Management, Language and Cross-Cultural Issues
• Part II: Transfer of Policy and Practice for Work with Juvenile Offenders
• Part III: Transfer of Policy and Practice in Working with Victims of Crime
• Part IV: The International Context of Partnership Development
• Project and Book Chart: The Development of Work with Juveniles and Victims by the Turkish Probation Service
• Index