Prisoner Resettlement and Reducing ReOffending

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Prisoner Resettlement and Reducing Re-Offending

• Prof Mike Maguire (Cardiff University and
  Glamorgan University )

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1. OVERVIEW
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Reducing re-offending key challenges

• Helping offenders tackle their social and
  personal problems / criminogenic needs
  (accommodation, debt, mental health, substance
  abuse, unemployment, relationships, literacy and
  numeracy, etc)
• Improving cognitive skills
• Sustaining motivation to change
• Overcoming prejudice and stigma, creating
  opportunities, reintegration into communities

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Key mechanisms

• Expanding and improving throughcare
• Relational continuity through the gate
• Skilled assessment and case management
• Motivational support
• Offending behaviour programmes (where needed),
  with later reinforcement
• Coordinated provision of services to offenders by
  mainstream agencies
• Links with families and local communities

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Traps to avoid

• Programme fetishism
• Solely providing welfare services without
  addressing thinking and attitudes
• Excessive breaching for non-compliance
• Losing sight of the whole person

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2. THE KEY GROUP RECIDIVIST OFFENDERS WITH HIGH
NEEDS (OFTEN ON SHORT TERM PRISON SENTENCES)
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People who had been in prison before had
frequently experienced the same problems each
time they were released. Problems with
accommodation, employment and substance misuse
had not been resolved, possibly increasing the
chances of them being imprisoned again. A number
of people said that specific problems were faced
by people on short sentences an issue raised by
the professionals and one that was to emerge
again throughout the interviews with
prisoners. Few prisoners had adequate
preparations for their release. Access to
pre-release courses was patchy and many prisoners
were discharged with little idea what was
happening to them and with no access to support
and advice (K. Alexander et al., Blocking the
Fast Track from Prison to Rough Sleeping, London
Research Centre, 2000)
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• Short-term prisoners
• Highest reconviction rates (60 male, 50 female)
• 30 back in prison within 2 years
• High proportion with major social and personal
  problems
• Many individuals with multiple needs
• Problems exacerbated by imprisonment (lose jobs,
  homes, relationships)
• Stigma and rejection
• Low motivation and skills

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SEU REPORT STATISTICS

• Short-term prisoners
• 2 mental 72 disorders 70
• Unemployed 67
• No qualtions 52
• Homeless 32
• Receiving 72 benefits
• Drug use in 63 previous year 39

• General population
• 5 men2 women
• 5
• 15
• 1
• 14 working age
• 38 men15 women

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PATHFINDER OASYS ASSESSMENTS WITH SIGNIFICANT
NEEDS re

• Accommodation 51
• Drugs 50
• Thinking skills 46
• Employment 40
• Women highest needs
• (Lewis et al 2003)

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But a history of neglect

• Major public sector service agencies (health,
  housing, employment, etc) have not seen
  ex-prisoners as a priority group and sometimes
  the opposite
• Probation limited attention to ex-prisoners
  (especially short termers)
• Often left to voluntary sector/charities

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Even where throughcare offered

• Lack of continuity between prison and probation
  interventions
• Low priority by probation services to prisoners
  on licence, compared to those on community
  sentences
• Poor (and increasingly impersonal) case
  management of offenders on licence
• Modest ambitions (limited help, focus on
  immediate practical problems)

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• Little attention to thinking, attitudes and
  motivation
• Too ready resort to exclusionary measures (breach
  etc)
• Lack of individual tailoring of plans and
  interventions
• Little attention to short termers
• Reluctant assistance to (and sometimes
  discrimination against) ex-prisoners by major
  service providers

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3. RESEARCH FINDINGS ON REDUCING RE-OFFENDING
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Cognitive Skills

• There is evidence that CB programmes can help
  reduce re-offending, but only if
• well designed
• delivered by skilled staff in a responsive manner
  
• targeted at those ready and motivated to attend
  them and
• They form part of a wider plan, and are followed
  up by case managers

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Desistance literature key findings

• 1. Agency is as important as if not more
  important than - structure in promoting or
  inhibiting desistance.
• factors in the social environment seem
  influential determinants of initial delinquency
  for a substantial proportion of offenders . . .
  but habitual offending is better predicted by
  looking at an individuals acquired ways of
  reacting to common situations
• (Zamble and Quinsey 1997)
• Whereas active offenders seemed to have little
  vision of what the future might hold, desisting
  interviewees had a plan and were optimistic that
  they could make it work
• (Maruna 2000)

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Desistance literature key findings

• 2. Individuals differ greatly in their readiness
  to contemplate and begin the process of change.
• Cycle of change (DiClemente and Prochaska)
• Pre-contemplation ---gt
• Contemplation ---gt
• Action ---gt
• Maintenance

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Desistance literature key findings

• Desistance is a difficult and often lengthy
  process, not an event, and reversals and
  relapses are common
• A zigzag rather than a linear process Burnett
  (2004)

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Desistance literature key findings

• 4. Generating and sustaining motivation is vital
  to the maintenance of processes of change.
• 5. While overcoming social problems is often
  insufficient on it own to promote desistance, it
  may be a necessary condition for further
  progress.

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Desistance literature key findings

• 6. Motivation can be seriously undermined by,
  for example, persistent financial or
  accommodation problems.
• 7. As people change they need new skills and
  capacities appropriate to their new lifestyle,
  and access to opportunities to use them.
• Both human capital and social capital
  (Farrall 2004 McNeill 2005)

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Features associated with effective case
management

• Continuity
• Holistic
• Personal relationship
• Responsivity
• Participatory
• Motivation
• Pro-social modelling
• Structured, based on model of change

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Core correctional practice (Dowden and Andrews
2004)

• Effective use of authority
• Pro-social modelling and reinforcement
• Problem-solving (with offenders)
• Open, warm, empathic, enthusiastic
• Where CCPs present (in conjunction with
  effective interventions), meta-analysis indicates
  significant reductions in reconviction rates

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Other lessons from research

• Value of early planning and preparation for
  release
• Establishment of a close relationship with the
  offender while still in prison.
• Continuity between work in custody and after
  release, reinforcement of specific learning.
• Provision of any required services, such as drug
  treatment, as soon as possible after release.

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Implications for Resettlement practice (1)

• It is important to understand and respond to
  offenders individual circumstances, including
  where they are in terms of readiness to change,
  rather than applying a one size fits all set of
  interventions.
• Importance of empathetic support to sustain
  motivation in the face of setbacks. Staff skills
  vital.

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Implications for Resettlement practice (2)

• Importance of helping offenders to acquire skills
  to take advantage of opportunities to improve
  lifestyle.
• Help in overcoming social and practical problems
  can be important in terms of maintaining
  motivation (and hope), and hence removing
  obstacles to progress.
• It is to be expected that relapses into prior
  patterns of behaviour will occur, and these
  should not be taken to indicate that the
  desistance process has failed.

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4. DEVELOPMENTS IN E W
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The new architecture of resettlement in E W

• NOMS
• Single body to commission prison and probation
  services
• Contestability
• separation offender management and
  interventions
• OASys standard assessment tool
• end-to-end offender management, one manager
  throughout
• REDUCING RE-OFFENDING ACTION PLAN
• REGIONAL RESETTLEMENT STRATEGIES
• CUSTODY PLUS (NOW SHELVED?)

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NOMS Offender Management Model

• End to end (including assessment)
• One offender one manager
• A reasonable degree of continuity of
  relationship
• Resources follow risk
• 4 tiers (Punish-Help-Change-Control)
• Manager-SupervisorAdministrator
• Offender management team
• OM separate from interventions

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REDUCING RE-OFFENDING ACTION PLAN PATHWAYS
(Regional Partnership Boards)

• Accommodation
• ETE
• Mental and physical helath
• Drugs and alcohol
• Finance, benefits, debt
• Children and families of offenders
• Attitudes, thinking and behaviour
• PPOs and MAPPA

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The FOR A Change Programme (Cognitive-motivati
onal)

• Develop discrepancy (awareness of gaps between
  what prisoners aspire to be, and current
  situation/behaviour)
• Develop motivation and set achievable goals.
• Problem solving skills
• Promote self-efficacy
• Market-place session attended by agency
  representatives
• Continuing contact with resettlement workers
  after release

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Voluntary so problem of attrition

• All Best Worst
• Eligible 100 100 100
• (N178)
  (N953)
• Joined project 29 74 22
• Some work in prison 25 65
  13
• Some contact outside 11 40 7
• Significant contact 9 35
  4
• (Figures from first Pathfinders)

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RESULTS

• Attitude changes greatest in prisons using FOR
  (run by probation staff)
• However, reconviction rates lower where prisoners
  had continuity post-release (especially with
  volunteer mentors)

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5. RISKS AND CHALLENGES
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Risks (1)

• Positive effects of good work in prison
  (including FOR programme) are dependent on good
  continuity of services after release. In theory
  continuity will improve with end to end
  offender management, but this needs to be
  demonstrated not assumed.
• Organisationally may become bureaucratic
• Disproportionate preoccupation with enforcement?
  
• Fragmented experience for offender becomes
  bundle of risk factors referred to a series of
  unconnected interventions. Feels done unto
  rather than engaged in the process

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Risks (2)

• Insufficient staff skills
• Can it operate successfully in a context of
  organisational upheaval and low staff morale?
• Co-ordination and communication
• Funding
• Overload of cases with too many conditions
• Attitudes to ex-prisoners of non-CJS service
  agencies?
• Will re-offending actually be reduced!? How long
  political will sustained?

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Key questions

• To what extent can inclusionary strategies be
  successful in a system loaded with exclusionary
  elements?
• Can communities be persuaded to reintegrate
  offenders?
• How can a service for such numbers tailor
  responses to the individual?
• Can offender management be anything but
  impersonal? Can motivation be sustained?
• How can a drift to complex bureaucracy be
  avoided?
• How much, and what, can be expected of mentors?
• Concentrate on risky few or needy many?

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References

• Burnett, R. (2004) To reoffend or not to
  reoffend? The ambivalence of convicted property
  offenders in S. Maruna and R. Immarigeon (eds)
  After Crime and Punishment Pathways to Offender
  Reintegration. Cullompton, Devon Willan.
• Clancy, A., Hudson, K., Maguire, M., Peake, R.,
  Raynor, P. and Vanstone, M. (2006 forthcoming)
  Getting Out and staying Out Results of the
  Prisoner Resettlement Pathfinders. Bristol
  Policy Press.
• Fabiano, E. and Porporino, F. (2002) Focus on
  Resettlement A Change. Canada T3 Associates.
• Farrall, S. (2002) Rethinking What Works with
  Offenders. Cullompton, Devon Willan.

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References

• Farrall, S. (2004) Social capital and offender
  re-integration making probation desistance
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  After Crime and Punishment Pathways to Offender
  Reintegration. Cullompton, Devon Willan.
• Farrall, S. and Calverley, A. (2005)
  Understanding Desistance from Crime New
  Theoretical Directions in Resettlement and
  Rehabilitation.. Milton Keynes Open University
  Press.
• Frude, N., Honess, T. and Maguire, M. (1994)
  CRIME-PICS II Manual. Cardiff Michael and
  Associates.
• Her Majesty's Inspectorates of Prison and
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• Home Office (2004) Reducing Re-Offending
  National Action Plan London Home Office.
  http//www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/5505reoffending
  .pdf

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• Lewis, S., Maguire, M., Raynor, P., Vanstone, M.,
  and Vennard, J. (2003a) The resettlement of
  short-term prisoners an evaluation of seven
  Pathfinder programmes, Research Findings 200,
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• Lewis, S., Vennard, J., Maguire, M., Raynor, P.,
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References

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• NACRO (2000) The Forgotten Majority the
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• .

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