There's always been a bit of a mystery as to exactly what 'works' in relation to encouraging offenders to change their behaviour and many experienced probation staff were sceptical of 'one size fits all' approaches introduced some years ago and that had to be delivered in extremely proscribed fashion. I see Danny Shaw at the BBC reported yesterday on a recent report from Transform Justice:-
More than 118,000 offenders have taken part in rehabilitation programmes that have yet to be fully tested to see if they work, BBC News has learned. Courses for sex offenders and domestic abusers are among those which haven't been subject to an "outcome evaluation".
The charity Transform Justice, which compiled the data, said it meant they "have no idea" if the programmes have a positive or negative impact. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said although it aimed to conduct evaluations to an "academic standard" it could take years to develop a "robust data sample".
According to MoJ figures supplied to Transform Justice, 25 offender behaviour programmes currently run by HM Prison and Probation Service have not had an outcome evaluation. The evaluation consists of a research study which investigates the impact of an intervention - whether it worked and, if it did, how well it worked.
Between 2010 and 2018, 16,434 prisoners in England and Wales began non-evaluated courses and 101,662 offenders serving community sentences started such programmes between 2009/10 and 2016/17. In custody, the non-evaluated programme most commonly used was RESOLVE, a cognitive-behavioural intervention that aims to reduce violence, which was started by 7,444 inmates.
The two community-based schemes with most participants were Building Better Relationships, for male domestic violence perpetrators (15,090), and the Thinking Skills Programme, which helps offenders set goals and make plans without committing crimes (42,215). In addition, more than 20,000 sex offenders - in jail or on community orders - began courses which hadn't been fully evaluated.
Peter Neyroud, a former chief constable and an independent member of the MoJ's Data, Evidence and Science Board, said he was "concerned" about the findings and wanted them to be addressed. "You would have expected that every significant programme that the Ministry of Justice is funding and recommending out for delivery would have a clear basis in evidence, and would be tracked to make sure that it's actually matching the outcomes you'd expect - and I can't see from the evidence I've seen here that this is happening," he told BBC News.
In March 2017, the MoJ scrapped its main sex offender treatment scheme (SOTP) after research found that prisoners completing the programme were slightly more likely to offend than a control group.
Penelope Gibbs, a former magistrate who set up Transform Justice, said the "scandal" of SOTP - which had initially been devised in 1992 - must not be allowed to happen again. "There could be more disasters like the Sex Offender Treatment Programme but we just don't know," she said.
A number of courses, run by the Prison and Probation Service or outside agencies, have been evaluated but the MoJ accepted that for some programmes, with only a small number of participants, it could take five years to find out if they've had any impact. A spokesman said: "The effectiveness of these types of programmes, many of which are used successfully around the world, is constantly assessed on the ground and subject to rigorous academic-standard evaluation when there is sufficient data."
The department added that offending behaviour schemes were approved by a group of "independent, international experts" - the Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice Panel.
But Mr Neyroud, who lectures in criminology at the University of Cambridge, questioned whether the accreditation panel had sufficient information on which to base its decisions. "If as it seems the word 'accreditation' doesn't take in that this programme has got a clear evidence base and secondly that we've clearly tracked the outcomes and it's meeting those outcomes, it's good value and the public are being kept safe with it... then it simply isn't good enough," he said.
--oo00oo--
Rehabilitation programmes – do we know whether they work?
Anything which helps those who commit crimes change their behaviour has to be a good thing. For many years the rehabilitative efforts of prison and probation have been focused on behaviour changing courses or interventions. Evidence is amassed and analysed as to how one or the other programme seems to be successful in reducing reoffending. Programmes provide an easy way of “measuring” whether those who have committed crime are on the path to turning their lives around and of monitoring the performance of organisations (such as CRCs) tasked with fostering rehabilitation.
Last year Transform Justice published a report on domestic abuse and how we could reduce it. Perpetrator programmes are part of the answer but its not clear they all work equally well. We asked for the evidence that the programmes delivered in prisons and for those on probation worked and were surprised when none was forthcoming. No outcome evaluations had been done on the programmes running now (the main one has been running for five years) – the government is scoping how they might evaluate them. All the main HMPPS programmes are accredited – but all this means is that a panel of experts has said that the programme’s design is sound.
The news that the government does not know whether its own domestic abuse programmes work hardly caused a ripple. But I was disturbed, particularly since excellent out of court programmes are frowned on. I put in a freedom of information request to find out what other prisons and probation programmes were not (outcome) evaluated and the results were even more disturbing – most programmes that are running, and many that no longer run have no outcome evaluations. This means we have no idea whether they work or not. We calculate that 118,096 people have started prison and probation programmes which do not have impact evaluations.
It is really surprising that the government has not sought to find out whether these programmes work. A few years ago they had a bad experience. In 2017 they found out that the programme they had been running since 1992 to help prisoners reduce their likelihood of committing sex offences in fact had the opposite effect – doing the programme increased the chance that someone would offend again on leaving prison. The sex offender treatment programme had in fact been evaluated in 2003 – then it appeared to have no effect in reducing sex offending but did reduce “the overall combined sexual and violent reconviction rate”. But the problem with programmes is that they can work in different ways in different circumstances. Trainers may deviate from the original programme, or it maybe delivered to a different cohort. Anyway, the Sex Offender Treatment Programme was running another decade before they decided to run a new evaluation. When this showed such negative results, they quietly axed the programme and the fiasco was only revealed through Frances Crook of the Howard League and journalist David Rose.
The problem with not evaluating programmes is not just that we don’t know if they work (or worse – if they are making people more likely to re-offend) but that we are forcing people to do these programmes and punishing non-completion. Those in prison applying for parole have to complete certain programmes to be eligible for release and there are many prisoners, particularly those on IPP sentences, who have spent extra years in prison mainly because they have not completed programmes. People are ordered to go on programmes as part of community sentences. If they don’t complete them, they can be prosecuted for breach and punished with imprisonment. It seems grossly unfair that we should deprive people of their liberty for failing to do courses which may or may not work.
Plenty of drugs and interventions used by the health service have a shaky evidence base. If they go wrong they can do people great harm. The same is true of programmes prisoners are pressurised to go on. Those who have committed crimes want support to turn over a new leaf. But we let them down if we make them do courses and never seek to find out whether they help or hinder rehabilitation.
NB In our spreadsheets etc we are referring specifically to outcome/impact evaluations not process evaluations – the latter are not designed to assess whether programmes have an impact.
