Takes Two To Tango

I saw this posted recently on the probation Facebook group page:-

"When I read this I feel even more concerned about the stultifying effect that being civil servants has upon the probation profession."

It was referring to the latest Academic Insight paper published by HM Probation Inspectorate entitled Needs Assessment : Risk, Desistance and Engagement. These papers have been published at regular intervals since the first in February 2019. To be honest, I'm not at all sure we've ever spent much time discussing them, but I suspect we should. As a taster, I was struck by this from the first:-

Fundamentally, as with the science of losing weight, the science of crime reduction is simply too difficult and frankly too weak for partisans on either side to declare a monopoly on useful evidence. Neither the ‘what works’ movement nor ‘desistance’ research is anywhere close to revealing the secret formula guaranteed to reduce crime (or lose weight), and never will. Human behaviour is simply too complex to be predictable in ways similar to the laws of physics or chemistry, and we should be thankful for that.

Anyway, these are snippets from the most recent:-

Foreword 

HM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth offending services. Academic Insights are aimed at all those with an interest in the evidence base. We commission leading academics to present their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth offending services. 

This report was kindly produced by Kevin Wong and Rachel Horan, recognising the importance of effective and robust assessment for planning and service delivery. The focus of the paper is upon the potential for improvements to assessment processes. The possibilities from integrating Risk-Needs-Responsivity and desistance principles are highlighted, while stressing that it is essential for such integration to provide additionality and avoid dilution (which should be subject to testing). Attention is then given to the role that assessment can play in facilitating effective engagement. Crucially, the assessment process itself can serve a purpose that goes beyond identifying the support an individual may require and what risks need to be considered. It offers opportunities for co-production, the demonstration of care, and the starting point for building a relationship. Within our inspections of probation services, we will continue to examine whether assessment focuses sufficiently on all the key areas of engagement, desistance and keeping other people safe.

Dr Robin Moore 

Head of Research

Introduction 

The Probation Inspectorate’s standard for the assessment of people with convictions is disarmingly simple. Posed through three ‘does what it says on the tin’ questions, they are: 

i. Does assessment focus sufficiently on engaging the service user? 

ii. Does assessment focus sufficiently on the factors linked to offending and desistance? 

iii. Does assessment focus sufficiently on keeping other people safe? 

(HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019) 

These dimensions of assessment resonate with policy makers, researchers and practitioners in the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe. There is a general consensus that a responsive criminal justice process must start with an effective and robust assessment that guides intervention planning and rehabilitation for people with convictions (see among others, Canton, 2015; Moore, 2015; Council of Europe, 2010; McNeill and Weaver, 2010). 

This is particularly pertinent in England and Wales as the latest shake-up in probation fast approaches. The post-Transforming Rehabilitation delivery model will see the ‘unification’ of Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) staff with those from the National Probation Service (NPS) in June 2021 (HMPPS, 2021). In this bolstered national civil service, the Offender Assessment System (OASys), based on Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) principles (Bonta and Andrews, 2017), will be the default system for assessment. Of course, OASys was used by probation trusts prior to Transforming Rehabilitation and by the NPS and most CRCs so perhaps this is no great change. 

However, it is worth thinking about the assessment of people with convictions more broadly, as the ‘unified’ probation service won’t be alone in making assessments. As observed by Senior et al. (2016), probation services in their broadest sense span four major systems of social organisation which, in general terms, operate as follows: 

• probation staff as corrections workers 
• voluntary sector staff principally as welfare workers addressing criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs 
• public sector health and voluntary sector staff as treatment workers delivering drug and alcohol treatment (adapted from Harkin and Fitzgibbon, 2017) 
• the broader interaction between people with convictions and their communities, mediated in many instances via the voluntary sector.

The non-probation organisations will have their own assessment processes based on standardised and non-standardised tools. Is there an opportunity, in this latest shake-up for probation services, to make improvements to assessment processes across the piece? This paper aims to answer this question by focusing on two related issues: 

1. Is it possible to integrate the RNR model of rehabilitation (Bonta and Andrews, 2017) with desistance principles? 

2. What role can assessment play in facilitating the effective engagement of people with convictions? 

The paper concludes by considering how this learning can be applied by policy makers and practitioners.

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Conclusion

How should the learning about the integration of RNR, good lives and desistance principles along with enabling effective engagement be taken forward through the Probation Reform Programme? 

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) have invested considerable intellectual effort and resources into developing and refining OASys; for confirmation, see Moore’s (2015) compendium of OASys research and analysis. Clearly OASys is not going to be abandoned in favour of another tool. Nor, arguably should the MoJ/HMPPS go down that route. Instead, there are a number of questions worthy of consideration: 

• Can the strengths-based approaches trialled in the EOC tool, incorporated into AssetPlus and other tools be incorporated into OASys itself without diluting its efficacy? 
• Could such an addition enhance its sentence planning function?
• Is there something to be gleaned from other innovations around assessment, sentence planning and case management trialled by CRCs during Transforming Rehabilitation? 

Also, what about the efficacy of the assessment tools used by non-probation agencies? It is neither proportionate nor logistically practical to expect these agencies to use tools that mirror the complexity of OASys. However, having a better understanding of the evidence base around RNR, good lives and desistance, and how this translates into assessment should help these agencies improve what they do and inform their choice of which validated tool they should use. 

As to engagement, no agency or individual is going to imagine that they do engagement badly. However, are there ways in which it could be improved? Rigorously and honestly reviewing their processes against the frameworks presented in this paper would be a good starting point. Feedback loops, rather than linear lines, are critical. 

It matters how each agency undertakes assessment and engagement. The assessment process, which occurs at the start or soon after an individual’s involvement with an agency, serves a purpose that goes beyond just finding out what support an individual may require and what risks need to be considered. In the ‘it takes two to tango’ process of engagement, it offers an opportunity for co-production, the demonstration of care, and the starting point for building a relationship. 

It is also worth considering that the supervisee is not ‘tangoing’ in isolation. They may well have more than one ‘partner’ at any one time. In addition to the probation supervisor, they may be engaging with a caseworker at a drugs agency and/or a mental health support worker. Additionally, they may well have a long history of past encounters with the same and other agencies. The research suggests that these experiences are likely to influence the individual’s desistance journey; the trick therefore is making each encounter count.