How best to engage users of forensic services in research: literature review and recommendations

Guidance on service user involvement is available to help researchers working with people with mental health problems, but there is currently no comprehensive guidance relating to forensic settings where additional issues arise. This rapid review aims to summarise the currently available information on how best to engage users of forensic mental health services in the research process, and to make appropriate recommendations. Medline and five other databases were searched to May 2016 using relevant keywords and Medical Subject Headings, supplemented by a general Internet search. Eleven peer-reviewed journal papers and 12 reports or web-based documents were identified, the majority containing information derived using a qualitative methodology. Five areas of particular relevance to forensic settings were identified: power relations & vulnerability issues (including ethical treatment; informed consent; attitudes of staff and other service users; support), practical difficulties (including ‘consultation fatigue’; tokenistic inclusion; tensions over security and risk management; access; payment; co-authoring); confidentiality and transparency; language and communication and training issues. Recommendations on engaging service users in forensic mental health research are presented

Restorative justice with female offenders: The neglected role of gender in restorative conferencing

This article presents findings from a new qualitative study into female offenders’ experiences of restorative conferencing in England and Wales. It is argued that gendered factors of crime and victimization have a definite impact on the restorative conference process, particularly in the areas of complex and interacting needs, differently natured conference engagements, and risks around shame, mental health, and stereotypical ideals of female behavior. For women to reap the full benefits of restorative justice, it is argued that the particular needs and circumstances of female offenders must not only be acknowledged, but also incorporated into the field and mainstreamed into practice

Transforming Women’s Rehabilitation? An Early Assessment of Gender-Specific Provision in Three Community Rehabilitation Companies

Following the implementation of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014, the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms expanded the offender management market to include several private providers, known as Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). The TR reforms have been the subject of intense debate since the outset. Political, academic and campaign-group commentary has critiqued the rapid implementation of the new agenda and examined its likely impact on existing services (particularly those run by the charitable sector). A growing body of research has also questioned the likely impact of the legislation on community provision for women, a field already beset with precarious funding streams. Lamenting the ‘lack of strategic focus’ on women, a recent review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) revealed that ‘dedicated funding for women’s community services has virtually disappeared, and provision is mixed and uncertain’ (2016a: 4). Drawing on 36 interviews conducted with probation officers and practitioners (keyworkers) working for women’s services, this paper validates such concerns. While the supposed subjects of an established government strategy, it is particularly regretful to report such findings in the tenth anniversary year of Baroness Corston’s seminal report

The experience of young people transitioning between youth offending services to probation services

Jayne Price, The experience of young people transitioning between youth offending services to probation services, Probation Journal (Vol. 67 Iss. 3) pp. 246-263. Copyright © 2020 (SAGE). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.This article explores the experience of transitioning from youth offending services to adult probation services upon turning age 18 years whilst incarcerated. The significant differences in the level of provision has been described as a ‘cliff-edge’ (Transition to Adulthood Alliance, 2009). Drawing upon interviews with young people held in institutions, stakeholders and survey data from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), it is argued that the drop in support is exacerbated by poor communication between institutions and services which has harmful implications for young people during this crucial period of developmental maturity and beyond custody

I wanted to feel the way they did: Mimesis as a situational dynamic of peer mentoring by ex-offenders

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Deviant Behavior on 10/10/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01639625.2016.1237829Despite growing enthusiasm for peer mentoring as a criminal justice intervention, very little is known about what actually happens within these relationships. Drawing on an ethnographic study of peer mentoring in the North of England this article will foreground the concept of inspiration” in these settings. It will argue that Rene Girard’s theory of mimesis offers a framework with which to analyze role modeling in mentoring relationships and that a Girardian reading also offers interesting insights into the unresolved problem of the origins of personal change

The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

This article reviews developments in probation in England and Wales since 2010, a decade in which services were exposed to the logic of competition and profit. In 2014, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government’s Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms promised an end to a top-down, target-centric culture of state intervention by outsourcing services for low-to-medium risk offenders to 21 privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). And yet, just four years after the reforms were implemented, the Conservative government announced that CRCs’ contracts would be terminated, with all offender management services returned to the public sector. With a focus on the private sector, the article argues that radical change to the probation service’s structure has entrenched a focus on centrally-administered performance targets and audit. In other words, contrary to the decentralising rhetoric at the core of TR, the decade has in many ways produced more of the same managerialism that the reforms were presented as a means to displace. The result has been a general decline in the quality of probation services

The specific needs of foreign national prisoners and the threat to their mental health from being imprisoned in a foreign country

Foreign national prisoners represent an increasingly significant and vulnerable proportion of the prison estate in England and Wales, accounting for 13% of the population in custody (Prison Reform Trust, 2010). They are ever present in the Safer Custody statistics, accounting for nearly a quarter of self-harm incidents and self-inflicted deaths (HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2009). Recent Inspectorate Reports (2006, 2007, 2010) and a handful of research studies outline the lack of support facing many foreign national prisoners, in terms of language problems, social and cultural isolation, family support, immigration uncertainties and diversity issues. This paper reviews the current context of the foreign national prisoner population in England and Wales, paying particular attention to their experiences, specific needs, and potential threat to their mental health from being imprisoned in a foreign country. We then offer suggestions as to how these issues can be addressed by reviewing existing initiatives and making recommendations for future research