So, What of 'What Works'?

Just recently there has been a spirited and welcome resurgence in debate on the NAPO forum pages and I was particularly interested in contributions from people about 'programmes'. I discover that I am not alone in feeling that the whole headlong rush into the pseudo-science based 'treatment' model of offenders was ill-thought out, based on dodgy research and ideologically-driven. Rob Palmer neatly sums up the situation thus:-

"Programmes are proving of limited value because, increasinlgy, they are seen as stand alone 'cures' for the targetted behaviour and not part of a wider intervention as they were in the pre-what works days.

The fact remains that the only way to secure change is for trained professionals to spend long enough with the people they work with to a) learn what makes them tick and b) find which of the myriad ways of working available will meet their particular need. This continued search for a magic bullet, be that the perfect assessment tool or the perfect programme, is a fools errand that comes from business models that are about efficiency NOT effectiveness. The increasing reliance on the efficient production of a useless product is what is killing our credibility. We need a model of intervention like the medical profession. Managers manage resources, clinicians manage treatment . The current arrangements see bureaucrats determining the most appropriate means of addressing offending behaviour."


I have recently discussed the whole sorry saga initiated under the 'What Works' agenda and how funding cuts are at last causing a critical eye to be cast over the whole expensive probation programme industry. Just by way of a re-cap, here is Martin Gosling, a former SPO writing in Criminal Law and Justice Weekly on 25th July 2009:-

"A cornerstone of traditional probation supervision was the establishment of a relationship between the offender and the supervising officer who, in earlier times, was enjoined to befriend each one of his flock. By adjusting the content, frequency and pace of interviews to the circumstances, characteristics, deficits and abilities of each individual, an officer was able to anticipate crises and was permitted to be flexible in enforcing sanctions if a longer term goal could be achieved by their postponement. Against this background the greatest effect of the revolution on previously well established probation practice has been the introduction of “what works” theory and “evidence based” interventions."

"One of the most startling pronouncements from the newly created National Probation Directorate was that all previously existing forms of probation intervention with offenders were ineffective, unproven and unscientific. They would be replaced by accredited forms of groupwork that would teach cognitive skills to those offenders, in custody and in the community, who demonstrated measureable deficits in their thinking patterns. Such was that emphasis given to this diktat that in prisons where groups were being run by seconded probation staff — victim awareness; addressing relationships and others — governors issued instructions that they should be immediately halted, even if mid-way through, and should not be completed. In the eyes of the new regime, established probation theory was de trop. The old methods were deemed primitive and a waste of everybody's time."

The trouble is that the whole 'What Works' bandwagon that we so enthusiastically imported from North America and took up whole-heartedly here, we have been busy exporting with prosletising zeal to the rest of Europe. Here we have the Council of European Probation reporting on a STARR conference held in 2010 on the very topic of 'What Works' and its spread into Eastern Europe. It seems that the somewhat grandly named Strengthening Transnational Approaches to Reducing Re-offending has been set up specifically for the purpose, but a hint of trouble is belied in the statement that 'Those Brits are trying to conquer Europe with their programmes approach.' But the CEP says it is a neutral broker, trusted by all member nations. My advice to our European colleagues is to watch what happens over here in the coming months as I suspect there will shortly be some official doubts being expressed as to the efficacy of 'What Works' after all.