It's almost certainly a product of advancing years that things that seemed understood and quite straightforward years ago are now an almost complete mystery. Things were so simple, but now aren't. Jobs and role boundaries have changed beyond recognition and as one agency has retreated from areas of work, another has taken it over.
I can still recall being shocked by a phone call many years ago from a police officer regarding a client of mine and their 'supervision' of them. I heard myself saying 'but that's my job' as they explained their job title under the umbrella of Integrated Offender Management.
Isn't it astonishing that during a period of austerity and substantial cuts in numbers of police officers, the police have been quietly encroaching upon areas of work that most would feel were the legitimate purview of other more appropriate agencies, such as probation. It surely cannot be unconnected that as probation has found itself increasingly side-lined and in chaos, the police have been quietly moving their tanks onto our lawns?
Of particular note is Durham Constabulary who were testing the legal boundaries some time ago with 'supervision' facilities for the injecting of heroin provided by them! Now they are flying the flag for the rehabilitation of offenders as well because, as the Chief Constable puts it, "the current criminal justice sanctions were not effective for dealing with low-level offences such as shoplifting, assault or drug possession."
It's absolutely extraordinary that as probation is being quietly strangled under the dead hand of centralised bureaucratic control, it's now the police who are able to be flexible, innovative and forward-thinking. No more 'we lock 'em up and you let 'em out'. They are the new liberal-minded social service, the 'iron fist in a velvet glove'. Why don't we just merge with them and have done with it - a 'one stop shop'? We might be better off under the Police and Crime Commissioners than bloody civil servants. This from the Guardian:-
Durham's pioneering police scheme slashes reoffending rates
Reoffending rates have been slashed in a pioneering police scheme in north-east England which experts say could lead to a transformation in how the justice system deals with violent crime.
More than 2,660 offenders who have committed offences such as burglary and assault have taken part in an experiment in which they avoid prosecution if they take part in a rehabilitation programme for issues such as mental health and substance abuse. If they complete the four-month contract with police, they walk away without a criminal conviction. If they do not, they are prosecuted in the traditional way.
The initiative by Durham constabulary is the longest-running and most advanced of its kind in England, with at least five other forces, including Surrey and Devon & Cornwall, considering the introduction of similar schemes. The first results of the trial, seen by the Guardian, found a 15-percentage point drop in reoffending after two years among those who took part in rehabilitation compared with those who did not.
Most of the 519 offenders in the first cohort of the trial had been arrested for violence, theft, drug possession or criminal damage. About half had no previous convictions but others had been arrested as many as 52 times. The results, which are part of a University of Cambridge study to be published in 2022, are the most significant indication to date of the long-term success of “deferred prosecution” programmes in England.
The findings will reopen the debate about whether such initiatives represent “soft justice”, as some critics claim, or are successful in reducing crime and cutting costs. The idea has gained traction with senior police leaders and is to be discussed by the National Police Chiefs Council later this month.
Jo Farrell, the chief constable of Durham constabulary, said the current criminal justice sanctions were not effective for dealing with low-level offences such as shoplifting, assault or drug possession. “What I’m not saying is where people commit serious offences, they won’t feel the full force of the law,” she said. “This isn’t about trying to do things on the cheap or divert people away from court or prison. It’s a cohort of people for whom this cycle will never end unless we do something different.”
Under the Durham programme, called Checkpoint, offenders spend four months with a police supervisor who helps them access support for issues including mental health, to drug or alcohol use, homelessness and communication skills. Of the 2,660 offenders involved in the trial to date, only 166 (6%) have reoffended.
The initiative also involves the victim of the crime, consulting them on the progress of the offender’s rehabilitation, although they do not get the final say on whether the offender is prosecuted. Durham police said only five victims had complained out of the 2,660 offenders who had completed the programme.
Checkpoint costs the force £480,000 a year but an internal estimate suggests that for every 1,000 offenders it saves at least £2m a year in reduced crime. A similar trial in the West Midlands, which ended in 2014, tracked 414 offenders over two years and found that the amount and severity of reoffending by those on deferred prosecutions was lower, or no worse, than those who were prosecuted. That study, by criminologists at Cambridge, has not yet been published.
Prof Lawrence Sherman of the university’s Institute of Criminology said there was mounting evidence against the prosecution of low-level offences such as theft or common assault. “It’s expensive, it rarely results in a formal punishment, victims aren’t satisfied with it. It’s generally a pretty bad way to manage low-level offences which are the highest volume offences,” he said.
Sophie Gregory, criminology course director at Birmingham City University, described the Durham findings as significant and said: “We know that around two-thirds of women and a third of men are reportedly committing crime to fund addictions, so if we can go back to that root problem and help with some tailored support long term it has got to help reduce reoffending.”
The debate about rehabilitation was reignited by the terrorist attacks in London Bridge in November and Streatham this month, both carried out by men who had been recently released after prison sentences for terrorism offences. Boris Johnson also made “law and order” a key part of his 2019 election campaign, promising among other things to prosecute within a week anyone caught with a knife.
But Farrell said such a blanket approach may not always be appropriate. “Within all offences, there’s context. You get bold statements by politicians: ‘Everybody who carries a knife must go to prison.’ Policing is based on discretion – we have a lot of discretion and a lot of autonomy,” she said. “Context is everything and the situation you’re dealing with and their background. Taking a very binary position on things strikes me as a not very intelligent way of dealing with an issue.”
Alex Mayes of the charity Victim Support said the one wish of those affected by crime was for the offender to stop offending. He added: “Where evidence shows offender management schemes to be effective at reducing reoffending, many victims of low-level offences may be open to credible and safe programmes. However, just as in the wider public, justice means different things to different victims of crime. For this reason, where these schemes are used, it is vital that all victims receive explanations as to their use, and that victims’ ongoing feedback is sought in order to inform the process.”
Hadn't thought of it, but a one stop shop makes perfect sense.
ReplyDeleteThe role reversal of police and probation has been happening for some time now, and as much as its likely to disturb some in the probation service, I think it's no bad thing.
It's no bad thing only because of the way probation has has gone in recent years. As noted in the article above, there's always a context to offending, and that's where a social work ethos is important. If that ethos no longer belongs to the probation service, then it must live somewhere else.
Pragmstisim, flexibility and autonomy is essential in the CJS, and unfortunately those essentials have been stripped from probation.
To some extent probation has itself to blame for that. It's been happy to try to raise its profile by allowing itself to become to deeply embedded in the CJS. I cringe when I hear people say probation are there to protect the public. Even the police won't accept that position. They work to make the public safer.There's a margin. I think that definition is a pretty important one. Its not absolute, it allows for the possibility of failure at times. Its that position of "we're here to protect the public" that sees so many probation officers being hung out to dry when something goes wrong. It's a position with no flexibility, no acknowledgement that sometimes things go wrong.
There's much low level crime associated with drugs, and our drug laws simply not only don't work, they prevent any resolution to the problem. Drugs belong on a spectrum. At one end the fat cats and purveyors get rich, at the other end people get addicted. Ones a crime purely of acquisition and needs to be seen as such. On the other end the crime associated with addiction falls far more into the context of 'social problems', and that too needs to be seen as such.
There is no law against addiction itself. Many people are addicted to many things. Gambling and alcohol are often as destructive, as as much a driver for offending as drug addiction, but they attract much more of a social problem definition then drugs do. Some addictions attract no attention at all because they're only problematic for the individual and not the broader society.
There is no doubt in my mind that our drug laws are just as responsible for driving crime as addiction itself. They create the same problems that prohibition created in the states. Drugs aren't going to go away. It's too much of a lucrative market for the purveyors. It's the good old capitalist concept of supply and demand. The more that's intercepted just reduces supply and increases demand, making the importers richer and driving higher rates of crime at the bottom end of the spectrum.
I can bang on all day about how a different approach to drug laws would impact very drastically on our CJS, society and social welfare if anyone wants to sit and listen to me over a few pints, but the upshot is drugs are a problem that's not going away anytime soon. The only real pragmatic approach is for the state to take ownership of that problem.
Just a little food for thought.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/yw4nnk/when-boots-prescribed-heroin-the-uk-did-drug-policy-right
'Getafix
Come off it getafix . The police go out and do what they choose in relation to crime. Drugs all over the place while police officers sit in probation doing what was our work. Worse they are pernicious and silky. If the police don't like you in out office your out faulty sharposh. They control direct and have taken over. They have complained and seen colleagues sacked than focus on building professional relationships. Frankly it's a police service in arm length now let's not pretend anymore.
Deletehttps://www.college.police.uk/News/Newsletter/April_2018/Pages/social-work.aspx
ReplyDeleteIs modern policing social work? – Dr Hilary Cottam
DeleteThe police are facing something of a perfect storm. They witness every day the increasing vulnerability in the populations they serve: a result of widening inequality, the effects of modern poverty and the rise of new problems such as digital crime and modern slavery. As deep cuts to our public services take effect the police become a service of last resort called out to find that missing child, confused older person or distraught homeless youngster with increasing regularity. At the same time the police have faced their own cuts and must maintain their focus on addressing the complexity of modern crime.
The police need to work differently and they are exploring how best to do this. Those who gathered last month at the College of Policing site in Ryton were frank about the challenges and open to thinking in radical new ways about how to move forward.
I was asked to take vulnerability as my theme in this year's lecture and a tweet announcing the title of my talk provoked social media interest from the police but an exasperated and sometimes angry response from social workers who are clear that social work and policing are two distinct roles although as Mick Ward, a trained social worker and public leader I very much admire pointed out, 'bad social work is soft policing'.
In my lecture, I was not arguing that police should become social workers. Since I am no expert on policing I was not in fact making any recommendations, I was simply asking a series of questions about how we can look afresh at some knotty challenges and what we can do differently. As everyone that evening acknowledged better management and greater efficiency are important but doing the same things differently will not get us to where we need to be.
Here are the facts.
Demand is rising – the welfare state has not eroded poverty – it is here with us in old forms and new – there is increasing and deepening vulnerability: amongst the young, the old, and those left behind in many ways.
Complexity is thickening – crimes that take place where we can't see them – on the net – through networks we cannot easily fathom; and here we see some of the challenges too of the instruments of old institutions – traditional statistics can mislead, telling us that crime is going down when it is taking on new form, becoming concentrated in certain places and often increasing.
And our communities are changing: new patterns of work, of family life, of migration: the social bonds between us are shifting and altering the contexts in which we work. Many want to participate within their communities but traditional forms of professional working and hierarchical post war welfare institutions make it hard to join in.
What should the police do?
My work designing new forms of public service with front line workers and communities across Britain has brought me face to face with crisis and vulnerability on a regular basis. As I describe in my forthcoming book Radical Help, I have seen the way that those most in need – families in crisis, those with mental illness, those who cannot find good work, those who are lonely – revolve through our welfare systems again and again.
Why is this?
DeleteI think we face two problems. First, when there is not enough resource to hand to do the job properly you must manage the situation below the line of risk and turn to the next person in the queue. Police officers, social workers and many others do this every day, knowing that this individual or family will come back on their radar but not being able to do very much about it.
Secondly, our current welfare institutions were not designed to solve the problems we face today: problems that are complex and different in nature, problems that need mass social participation if we are to solve them.
So it is not just about a lack of money nor is it a simple case of whether the police, social workers or any other committed public workers are best at the job. We cannot get lost in a border war. Instead we need to work together to grow different and socially rooted approaches – we need to find new public solutions that support communities and each and every one of us to flourish and we need to develop new roles and ways of working to facilitate this change. In this particular way – in advocating a way of working that is socially rooted – I would argue that modern policing is social work.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/17/building-resilience-social-workers-quitting
ReplyDeleteI have had this dialogue so many times with colleagues who think it Is down to them to do something about problems, mental, physical and psychological, caused by their employer.
Put simply, your employer has a legal, duty not to make you ill.it doesn’t matter if they try to make you better afterwards, the damage has been done.
Perhaps individuals in “wellbeing,” posts need to look at what they are doing because they are not addressing the problems and would be better off carrying a caseload
Building 'resilience' won't stop traumatised social workers quitting
DeleteA healthy workforce is a fundamental prerequisite to ensure children and their families receive the best possible social work support. The positive effect of a stable and experienced workforce cannot be overestimated when one considers that inspectors say reduced staff turnover can lead to better quality services.
However, these aims have been frustrated as social workers leave the profession due to stress and burnout. Analysis of the children and family social work workforce in England published by the Department for Education in 2019 suggests workforce instability is an ongoing problem. Figures suggest 35% of social workers leave their local authority within two years, while 33% leave within five years. This means 68% of full-time equivalent children and family social workers were in service with their local authority for less than five years.
In seeking to address this, regulators require social workers demonstrate resilience as a professional capability. However, our previous research suggests this has a negative impact on professionals. It leads to a focus on the individual’s “failure” to cope with the pressure of work, rather than identifying and addressing organisational failings, such as a lack of resources, high caseloads and increased bureaucracy.
This continued workforce instability has been investigated by the government, which labels it a “recruitment and retention” issue. But that downplays the distress that research suggests social workers experience, and its impact on individuals’ resilience to remain in the profession. The need for employers to acknowledge distress to prevent social worker burnout has been highlighted by Prof David Shemmings. Yet government, employers and regulators still expect professionals to carry the weight of responsibility to work on themselves to reduce stress.
While a new diagnostic tool launched by Bedfordshire University and a revised workforce health check, led by the What Works for Children’s Social Care and the Local Government Association, may be helpful, there is a concern that these approaches might replicate the negative focus on the individual practitioner. Research on how to build resilience in the workforce suggests mindfulness as an approach to enhance workforce wellbeing.
The question is whether these new initiatives will address the trauma and distress experienced by practitioners, and acknowledge the political and ideological context in how they are applied?
As Ronald Purser, a professor of management at San Francisco State University, suggests in respect of the relationship between mindfulness and ideology:
ReplyDelete"The so-called mindfulness revolution meekly accepts the dictates of the marketplace. Guided by a therapeutic ethos aimed at enhancing the mental and emotional resilience of individuals, it endorses neoliberal assumptions that everyone is free to choose their responses, manage negative emotions, and “flourish” through various modes of self-care. Framing what they offer in this way, most teachers of mindfulness rule out a curriculum that critically engages with causes of suffering in the structures of power and economic systems of capitalist society."
We would also add that government and leaders in the profession need to explicitly acknowledge the trauma social workers experience in the workplace, along with the trauma they witness in the lives of those they work with. This is often due on both counts to under-resourcing across inter-related systems that impact hugely on individuals’ lives, such as housing, benefits, education, employment. Inadequate resourcing of these basic essentials of life are the root cause of much that can make the job of social work untenable.
When combined with under-resourcing in service provision – suitable placements, mental health, substance misuse and domestic abuse services – no one wins. No amount of resilience, mindfulness, tools or standardised processes will resolve these issues.
There is only so much social workers can take on because there is only so much they can change. The same may also be said of those who require services, and to an extent employers providing services. While individual groups work to develop resolutions to these problems, they will flounder unless the ideology that underpins their application is exposed and addressed.
Diane Galpin is academic lead for social work at the University of Plymouth, where Annastasia Maksymluk and Andy Whiteford are both lecturers
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/17/pioneering-policing-and-probation-work
ReplyDeleteLetters to the Guardian:-
DeleteThe Durham constabulary’s deferred prosecution scheme looks like a good example of doing “something different” to achieve the transformational change that the criminal justice system is crying out for (Pioneering police scheme slashes reoffending rates, 15 February). But as its champion, Jo Farrell, reminds us, “context is everything” and your article raises bigger questions about the part preventative work plays in rehabilitation, not to mention a properly resourced probation service.
Mental health problems and substance abuse form with domestic violence the toxic trio that underpins so much violent crime and, as the criminologists observe, finding a long-term solution means going back to the root problem and designing tailored support that, quoting Farrell again, considers “the situation you’re dealing with and their background”.
Far from “trying to do things on the cheap”, the public health approach underpinning schemes like Durham’s challenges us to consider how public funding can be targeted in a more intelligent way than the traditional calls for more prosecutions, prisons and police officers.
Steve Phaure
CEO, Croydon Voluntary Action
Your article on work with offenders by Durham police to address the cycle of reoffending was interesting. It’s great that they have such good results and also involve victims of crime. But I was baffled by the fact that there was no mention of the probation service, which has been doing exactly the same work (albeit post conviction) nationwide for many years. Despite huge cuts, its dedicated and underpaid staff do an amazing, widely unrecognised, job.
Sarah Clark
Bristol
Should public service become the new form of national service with compulsory conscription?
ReplyDeleteI'm really not sure how serious to take this article, but it's an interesting read, especially if you are a public service worker.
https://unherd.com/2020/02/why-boris-should-conscript-public-servants/
'Getafix
I know this is not acceptable, people deserve better police service. If you need any support regarding criminal law contact Criminal lawyer in Surrey, they have experienced lawyers to help you with all types of criminal law issues.
ReplyDelete