A Cautionary Tale

The Probation Service that I joined in 1985 used a tried and tested method of dealing with clients and it was known as the Casework Method. It basically involved looking at an individual, their history and background and through the building of a trusting relationship, attempts were made to change that persons attitude and situation for the better in the hope that offending would either cease or be reduced. This philosophy had developed over many years, was widely understood and became to be known as 'advise, assist and befriend'.

Now possibly like many other people, I just assumed this was the only way of doing things and it would just continue. I assumed it must work for some people, but if it didn't it was because of environmental factors such as unemployment, homelessness, abuse, mental health etc. and as a result the probation service was clearly set up by society to try and deal with these environmental issues. We duly got stuck into setting up projects that sought to address the environmental deficits such as housing, training, employment etc. These were exciting days and I just assumed we were doing the right thing, that it would work and just carry on.

But then I became aware of what became known as the 'What Works' agenda. Basically academics, mostly in North America, were saying that evidence showed that we were barking up the wrong tree and that the problem lay with clients thinking. Apparently if these cognitive deficits could be tackled in structured and specially designed groupwork programmes, evidence proved that such an approach was more effective in reducing re-offending. This was seized upon as the magic bullet solution and programmes were started first in prison and quickly rolled out in the community following some limited experimental pathfinder projects. The timing was perfect because the 43 independent services were effectively nationalised and programmes became the holy grail imposed from above that replaced all the ad hoc local groupwork projects. Entry and training requirements had changed and all new recruits were required to train as programme tutors.

Basically the massive focus on programmes came to highlight even further the cultural shift within the Service. Many old-style officers refused to have anything to do with it and remained deeply sceptical that such a proscribed intervention that did little to address environmental issues would work. In essence, right from the beginning the joke was that 'What Works' didn't bloody work and was never likely to. Of course it did for some, but not the majority and certainly not to the extent that anywhere near justified the resources put into it. When at a conference I tackled an academic on this point she said 'well 'What Works' was always meant to be a question, not a statement'.

Anyway the whole sorry saga is about to come to an end as one of the inevitable results of spending cuts. Of course management and the unions and possibly some academics will say it's all a terrible mistake and sex offenders and domestic violence perpetrators will go 'untreated'. Indeed that would be a mistake, but the answer is that we return to something we had before, namely an holistic approach with some old-fashioned groupwork and casework tailored to an individuals needs, not the present factory-style attempt at processing people and trying to localise the causes of crime onto individual pathologies. I've never been impressed with the thinking deficit argument alone and never will be.