Risk in Probation Practice

Hazel Kemshall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9780429815300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this volume examines risk in probation practice through consideration of the context, the risk differences and how to reconcile them. Hazel Kemshall responds to a recent crisis in the probation service of offenders committing crimes while on probation, prompting a re-evaluation of risk assessment of offenders with the potential for probation. The volume will be of interest to staff and managers involved in probation work.

Part One: Methodology and Context

Risk is an everyday preoccupation as well as a criminal justice one. As Adams expresses it, we are all experts on risk to some degree (Adams 1995), and there are moments of uncertainty, choice and ‘gambling’ in the conduct of our everyday lives. How then should we understand and investigate this thing called ‘risk’? Is it a matter of commonsense lay experience or a matter of formal expertise? These are key questions as to how risk is to be conceptualised and understood, and to a large extent involve questions on how risk is to be identified, measured and controlled. The following chapters outline a distinct theoretical and methodological approach to risk rooted in social constructivism. In essence, a pre-occupation with how risk gains particular meanings and usage, how particular assessment and measurement methods gain currrency, and how those dealing with risk (in this case probation staff) confer meaning and use on the term.

Chapter one outlines this approach to the research enterprise in some detail, including some attention to the difficult issues of validity and claims to knowledge within a research approach which foregrounds the contingent and uncertain nature of risk. This ‘nature of risk’ is further pursued in chapter two, and current approaches to method and measurement in offender risk are reviewed, including the problem of probability and the social construction of measurement tools.

The implications of social constructivism and social theories of risk for understanding and managing risk in the Probation Service are reviewed in chapter three, in particular the social and organisational dynamics which result in differing and at times competing views of risk. The issues for the effective organisational management of risk work and the current managerial responses, for example of prescriptive guidance, are briefly reviewed. This is followed in chapter four by a more in-depth and extensive exploration of the historical and policy precursors of risk based work in the Service. Whilst many readers will be well versed in such a history of the Service from other sources (primarily the McWilliams quartet, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989); nevertheless, a recognition of the origins of risk and the cumulative policy journey to a risk based penality are worth re-stating in the face of some temptation to view risk as solely the product of ‘Howardism’ or a rather recent ‘flavour of the month’.

1. Researching Risk in Probation Practice: Methodology

The concern with offender risk prediction is not entirely new. Burgess (1928, 1929, 1936), for example pioneered parole risk prediction in the late 1920s, a technique emulated subsequently by Ohlin and Duncan (1949), Mannheim and Wilkins (1955) and the Gottfredsons (Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1985, 1986, 1993). The principles utilised by Burgess (1928, 1936) still form the core of actuarial (i.e. statistically based) parole risk prediction today (Copas et al 1996), and were utilised in Nuttall’s prediction model in England (1977), and Nuffield’s (1982) model in Canada.

However, the Carlisle Committee (1988) found that the risk of reoffending and the risk to public safety were not integral to parole decision making. Rather ideals of rehabilitation coupled with satisfactory reports of institutional behaviour were central to the largely subjective and anecdotal decision making of local review committees (Flynn 1978, Glaser 1973). The demise of the Nuttall predictor (1977) is well documented by Polvi and Pease (1991) and illustrates the difficulty in both locating risk as central to decision making, and in moving decision makers away from case-based highly subjective information (Carroll and Payne 1976, Glaser 1962, 1973).

Risk prediction in probation supervision has a more recent history. Originally concerned with classifying those ‘most amenable to resocialisation’ (Flynn 1978), the risk assessment methodologies often have as much to do with rationing the use of supervision and allocating costly community resources as with the prediction of risk per se (Andrews and Bonta 1994, Harris 1994). Their overt link to issues of evaluating practice performance and the effectiveness of service delivery has sometimes hindered their acceptance by both practitioners and managers (for example Association of Chief Officers of Probation 1995, Fletcher 1995, National Probation Research and Information Exchange 1995). The challenge to professional autonomous decision making is particularly resented (Fletcher 1995).

The response of users to both the parole and probation risk predictors also illustrates a major gap between research and practice. Whilst criminology has become increasingly concerned with risk, predominantly with questions of risk distribution, perception and management (Box 1987, Clark et al 1993, Cornish and Clark 1986, Farrington and Tarling 1985, Flynn 1978, Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 1985, 1986, 1993), research into how criminal justice workers assess and respond to risk is less prevalent (Glaser 1973). Studies of offender risk in both the United States and more recently in Britain have concentrated upon either the production of risk predictors for recidivism (Copas et al 1994), or upon offender responses to getting caught and the types of calculations offenders make in deciding to desist (Cornish and Clark 1986). However, a key question must be the extent to which such studies have impacted upon the knowledge base and practices of those criminal justice personnel responsible for offender risk assessment, in this case probation staff. It is these personnel who have a key role on behalf of their organisation for the assessment and management of offender risk at point of sentence, during community supervision and at point of parole release. There has been little investigation into how those responsible for offender assessment and supervision receive and process information on risk. For example:

• Do probation risk assessors see risk in the same terms as academic criminologists?
• Are the calculations of risk by frontline staff similar or different to the statistical calculations of experts?
• What risk assessment indicators and methods do staff rely upon in their daily practice with risk?
• What is it that frontline workers and their managers actually do when they assess offender risk?

Answering these questions has been the main concern of this study.

Purpose of the study

The study was funded under the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Risk and Human Behaviour Programme, originally for a two year period from 1994-1996, with the author as the sole researcher. This period was extended by one year to allow for an increased period of dissemination which included training for Probation senior managers, the production of training materials, training of in-service trainers, and training of main grade probation officers (funded separately by the Home Office Probation Training Unit), and a review of assessment methods for the Home Office Research and Statistics Directorate (Kemshall 1996).

The research has examined how Probation managers and staff understood and applied the term risk in their daily supervision and management of offenders. Of particular interest was how staff and managers assessed offender risk and risky situations, how information on risk was acted upon, what was determined as risky and how risk decisions were actually made. In addition to these concerns, the research has attempted to develop an analytic framework for understanding how risk decisions are actually made ‘in the field’ in order to inform policy development, practice guidance and training. In this sense the research has had an increasing action bias, with particular attention to enhancing risk decision making by staff and managers.

In particular a key theme has been how best to achieve effective risk decisions, and the respective roles of professional judgement and prescriptive procedures in improving decision making. In effect:

• What types of decision making results in the most accurate risk assessments and file most effective risk management strategies?
• And what types of policies, procedures and practice guidance best facilitate these decisions?

This necessarily leads into the fraught area of evaluating risk practice and assessing the quality of risk decisions in file field where the negative performance indicators of false negatives resulting in harm can be highly visible. However, evaluating the type of practice and management which not only contributes to hue positives and true negatives but also reduces risk can be more difficult This led to an increasing preoccupation with the following questions:

• Can the characteristics of an accurate risk assessment be identified and consistently replicated across the Probation Service?
• Given the difficulties inherent in risk prediction what levels of accuracy can be achieved and how accurate is accurate enough?
• Are risk management strategies reducing risk or are they merely mis-targeted at those falsely classified as risky by poor assessment procedures?

These are key questions for Service personnel as they attempt to respond to the risk agenda with credibility and within shrinking resources. Whilst no study should claim to definitively answer such complex questions, this book does attempt to constructively add to the debate.

Research methods and theoretical framework

Research on offender risk has predominantly been undertaken from a positivist and normative position, concerned with the identification and dissemination of those factors most likely to assist practitioners in the accurate prediction of risk. Research inquiry has framed the problem of risk as one of more accurately defining the phenomenon of offender risk and uncovering the factors which can indicate that risk is likely to be present or not For example the work of Copas et al (1994) in establishing the factors most likely to predict the risk of reoffending, or the work of Andrews (1995) in identifying those risk factors most associated with future criminal conduct Accurate risk prediction is then viewed as a matter of communicating such research findings to policy makers, managers and workers, and regulating the degree of fit between practice and research. However, this approach to risk research does not necessarily tell us how frontline workers assess and respond to risk, nor how research information and risk indicators are incorporated into worker judgements.

Attention to what practitioners and managers actually do when working with risk invites a different theoretical and research position. This position assigns ‘...a significant role to the organisational members’ own subjective ideas about the phenomena in question’ (G. Smith and Harris 1972, p. 27). This view takes the construction, understanding and use of the phenomenaby participants as the focus of research inquiry. This is not to assert the totally relative position that offender risk has no existence outside the meanings conferred upon it by practitioners, but that exploring such meanings are essential to understanding how workers assign certain factors as risky and others as not. The purpose is to identify what people do in order to assess and manage risk, and not necessarily to evaluate these activities or to state what ought to be done.

Methods

Research which priotitises the views of its participants requires methods designed to gather them. As Dey (1993) expresses it, methods designed to deal with meanings. Such meanings are not merely the subjective thoughts of individuals, but are also embedded in social practices (Dey 1993) and the contexts within which they are daily used. The research study therefore used a range of qualitative methods particularly designed for accessing meanings.

The study took place in a large, diverse Probation Service covering a range of offender types and geographical area. Six probation teams and their relevant managers were chosen as a purposively constructed sample to represent the range of probation tasks and settings (with the exception of community service and family court welfare). In total 31 probation officers, 7 senior probation officers, and 6 assistant chief officers took part in the study over a two year period. Despite staff changes, the six teams remained in the study for the full period and the co-operation of all staff remained very high.

In any qualitative study the representativeness of the sample and the ability to draw general conclusions from it have been the subject of long-term debate (Patton 1980). However, Dey (1993) usefully distinguishes between two kinds of generalisation: the first are generalisations derived from induction and based upon our empirical observations; and the second, which is about the application of our generalisations to the population as a whole. The primary role of qualitative research is to establish the generalisations which the data will support and the conditions ‘..under which our generalisations may hold true’. (Dey 1993, p.263). In this sense the sample is representative of the various settings typifying work in probation practice, and the conclusions drawn, whilst suggestive, could be tested for applicability in other probation and similar settings.

The study employed a range of qualitative data collection methods: avignette survey, semi-structured interviews, observation and collection of field notes, and critical path analysis workshops, with each stage of the project utilising differing methods to collect specific data. In addition, each stage was designed to provide verification of the data collected previously (Denzin 1978). The detail of the methodology is presented stage by stage.

Stage One

In stage one the objective of the research was to gather data on the current definitions and meanings on risk within the agency; and to assemble initial data on the knowledge base, value system and concepts of risk which staff routinely drew upon in order to accomplish their risk assessments. This was done by the use of the vignette technique (Finch 1987, Finch and Mason 1993); a technique in which interviewers ask interviewees to consider a range of hypothetical situations and to provide choices of actions and outcomes and reasons for these. Finch (1987) argues that this technique assists in the study of normative issues and assists in the uncovering of contextually specific material particularly around respondents’ beliefs and values. Whilst this technique will not tell us what people actually do, it has the potential to survey the beliefs on risk current in the agency and the type of knowledge workers (including managers) are using in their risk assessments. Vignettes can also be of use in situations where data collection is sensitive, for example in situations where staff may believe that their performance is being evaluated. Analysis can subsequently produce an initial schema of the value system and knowledge base utilised by staff in their risk assessments.

The design of the vignettes originally proved problematic. Which hypothetical case situations were to be chosen and why? This was resolved by selecting recent or ‘live cases’ typical of the range of the agency’s work which could be anonymised and used for data collection. This communicated a crucial realism to staff, and assisted the researcher in avoiding the communication of implicit or explicit definitions of risk and ‘acceptable’ courses of action. The vignettes were piloted with one team and then applied to the sample as a whole after minor revision. The vignettes are reproduced as appendix one.

Stage Two

This stage aimed to collect data on the operationalisation of risk in practice, and to determine the situational factors affecting risk assessment, risk decision making and risk management decisions. Semi-structured interviews were used to illicit further clarification of the beliefs, values and knowledges of risk being used; and to explore in depth thefactors which participants felt impinged upon their decision making. Semi-structured interviews use a topic guide rather than fixed word questions in order to facilitate a conversational format and greater flexibility (the topic guide is reproduced as appendix two). This approach is designed to gain data on participants’ views of the world in their own words, thus avoiding the impingement of the researcher’s meanings.

This was supported by approximately 120 hours of observation of managers and practitioners across the various settings in discussions, team meetings and direct work with offenders. The observations were recorded in field notes which also contained a record of conversations both formal and informal, observation of procedures, and the daily activities of participants. Field notes also included the researcher’s reflections both upon the process of fire study and the data collected in line with the principles expressed by Burgess (1982), Webb (1982) and Minichiello et al (1990). By the end of stage two a detailed ethnography of risk in probation practice had been assembled.

Stage Three

This stage aimed to formulate an explanatory model of risk decision making on risk in probation practice which could be shared with practitioners and managers and inform policy, practice and training. This was done through a series of workshops run by the researcher with participants, workshops with staff outside the sample group for comparison (including another probation area), workshops with policy makers, and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• An Introduction
• Part One: Methodology and Context
• Part Two: Risk Differences
• Part Three: Reconciling Risk Differences: Optimum Risk Management Systems
• Part Four: Appendices
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index