The quality of probation supervision – a literature review
Centre for Criminological Research November 2012, University of Sheffield and University of Glasgow
By Joanna Shapland, Anthony Bottoms, Stephen Farrall, Fergus McNeill, Camilla Priede, Gwen Robinson
Publication Date: March 2012
This review focuses on what research has revealed is seen as ‘quality’ in probation supervision. It is written to assist the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and to link into their Offender Engagement Programme, so it is principally concerned with England and Wales, but literature from other countries has also been searched and is included to compare and contrast with the experience in England and Wales.
Ideas as to what is ‘quality’ depend of course on what the key purposes for probation and for supervision within probation are thought to be. These have changed over time and with ideas of what the criminal justice system as a whole is intended to do, and they are also affected by the deep-seated legal cultural traditions of that country and the history of its probation service. As we shall see, research has only rarely addressed ‘quality’ per se, whether from the perspective of those managing the service, those supervising or those being supervised. However, ideas of ‘quality’ are intrinsically tied up with ideas of ‘effectiveness’, ‘best practice’ and the often deeply felt, but rarely articulated views about ‘what we are really here to do’. We have, therefore, cast our net wide in terms of what to include, though we try to bring the discussion back to ‘quality’ and what it is at each point.
The review follows on from the review by McNeill and Weaver (2010), also for NOMS, which looked at the literature on desistance, or what affects offenders1 stopping offending, and so we have not repeated those lessons here. This review is though very much influenced by the desistance literature, because current views about quality in probation generally are strongly influenced by what is linked to helping to stop offenders offending. The research indicates that desistance is affected by offenders’ own agency (decisions on desistance and offending), their personal and social context, and being able to surmount practical obstacles to successfully leading a non-offending life in the community (obtaining money legitimately, having somewhere to live, growing social ties to prosocial others). Some of the literature on surmounting practical obstacles stems from areas outside criminology, such as dealing with people with multiple social problems, what helps in getting people generally into work or housing the homeless, or referring people to other agencies. We have deliberately sought to bring together these studies into the review, even if they have not been used in probation previously, but have tried to link them into what may be helpful in probation practice at the end of each section.
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.159010!/file/QualityofProbationSupervision.pdf
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