Effective practice in resettlement

HM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth offending services. Academic Insights are aimed at all those with an interest in the evidence base. We commission leading academics to present their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth offending services. This report was kindly produced by Dr Matt Cracknell, reviewing the evidence base on how best to support people as they leave prison and transition back into the community. Six key principles for effective resettlement practice are set out, highlighting the importance of working co-productively as early as possible, maintaining relationships and providing continuity of support, recognising intersectionality, accessing a wide network of community resources, and balancing monitoring and risk management with genuine rehabilitative and reintegrative support. For the principles to be realised, practitioners need to be given the time and resources to adopt an individualised and collaborative approach, and any exclusions that individuals face as they leave custody need to be minimised to enable them to fully integrate into the community

Running on the treadmill: practitioner experiences of mass supervision

This article explores the impacts that the addition of individuals serving short sentences has had on daily practice and working culture for probation workers. These practitioner perspectives are explored through the lens of ‘mass supervision’, providing a new insight into the harms and implications for its inherent deskilling qualities and constraints. This empirical research underlines three main themes related to the harms caused by mass supervision: firstly, that it inhibits innovative practice; secondly, that it necessitates a more limited model of supervision that undermines practitioner autonomy and the reach and scope of the supervisory relationship; and thirdly, that mass supervision corrodes the values of probation staff, leaving many experienced practitioners struggling ethically, practically and emotionally. The experience of mass supervision is compared to a treadmill by several practitioners and employed as a metaphor to analyse practice in the confines of mass supervision as generic, monotonous and relentless

Reflections on undertaking the Probation Qualifying Framework scheme during the transforming rehabilitation changes

This article reflects upon the author’s experience of undertaking the PQF (Probation Qualifying Framework) training scheme during the chaotic period of Transforming Rehabilitation. The author asserts that the uncertainty and precarious nature of the changes were detrimental to an effective learning environment, which ultimately promoted a practice culture of punitiveness and control and did not allow learners the space to be skilful and confident practitioners, comfortable working autonomously. Furthermore, the author contends there is an emerging culture within the NPS (National Probation Service) increasingly fostered on ‘risk management’, which is reflected in the vocational nature of PQF training and is contributing towards a widening cultural gap that is emerging between the community rehabilitation companies and NPS

Horizontal and vertical responsibilisation in the resettlement field

Purpose: The Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014, extended post-release supervision to individuals serving short prison sentences while introducing an extended array of actors into the resettlement field. This article explores the barriers that prison practitioners and community probation workers faced in their attempts to provide resettlement support, and how in response to these barriers, these practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies. Methods: This empirical research features the perspectives of 19 prison, probation and third-sector actors within a case-study area in England. Qualitative interviews were carried out, alongside observations and field notes of daily practice. Findings: Findings indicate that despite the promise of additional support, practitioners face significant barriers inhibiting their ability to provide effective resettlement assistance. The three specific barriers identified are; institutional, temporal, and political-economic. In response, practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies, shifting blame vertically down to service users, and horizontally towards the other actors involved in managing these individuals. Originality: These findings help to expand our understanding of the responsibilisation literature, particularly how responsibilisation operates at a practitioner level, and how barriers become refracted and reframed into responsibilisation strategies. This article also draws on the ‘mass supervision’ literature to demonstrate how the introduction of multiple agencies obfuscates individual responsibility for resettlement and large caseloads erode supervisory practice. Practical implications: This article concludes with a brief overview of the latest iteration of resettlement practice, before exploring how a desistance-focused approach by practitioners may improve resettlement outcomes

The diminishing voice of the probation service

In the past twenty years, the probation service in England and Wales has undergone four large-scale reforms, placing the service in a near-constant state of flux as it adopts to a revolving door of top-down re-organisations (Mair and Burke, 2013). Indeed, probation has recently emerged from the near ‘death knell’ (Newburn, 2013) of the failed transforming rehabilitation (TR) reforms and has since been reunified into one National Probation Service (NPS). However, the NPS faces a renewed set of challenges as it adopts to its increasingly centralised role within the civil service structure and subordinated role within HMPPS (HM Prison and Probation Service). This article will briefly outline three current challenges probation is facing, including: the straight-jacket imposed by a monolithic civil service culture; the further domination of prisons arising from the ‘one HMPPS’ leadership restructuring, and; the diminishing voice of probation in court work and parole hearings. These three challenges demonstrate concerns that a vital service is losing its independence and critical voice on a local and national stage. These challenges will also be assessed in light of the negative media reporting regarding probation’s role in a number of recent serious further offences (SFOs) (Editorial, 2023). This article will conclude by suggesting a potential pathway to ensure the distinct voice of probation continues to be heard

Invisible men: Short prison sentences and the pains of invisibility and insignificance

Introduced as part of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 promised to offer resettlement support to individuals serving short sentences - a cohort who have long been neglected in penal policy and research discourse. Featuring the perspectives of 16 men serving a short sentence in England, this empirical work argues that there is a dissonance between the rhetoric of the additional support promised and the reality these individuals experienced. The pains literature is used to demonstrate how a perceived lack of institutional care and attention led respondents to feel invisible and insignificant. This caused service users to internalise a sense of reliance for their own resettlement. However, the ability to achieve this is predicated on possessing the necessary capital. Paradoxically the more an individual cycles around the revolving door of repeat short prison sentences, the more this capital becomes eroded, leading to the particular pain of burnout. The article concludes by advocating for a presumption against the use of short sentences in England and Wales

‘Trying to make it matter’: The challenges of assimilating a resettlement culture into a ‘local’ prison

As part of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, 70 ‘local’ prisons in England and Wales were re-designated as resettlement prisons, in order to provide additional through-the-gate support to individuals serving short sentences. Drawing on staff and prisoner interviews in one case study resettlement prison, this paper considers what challenges were involved with implementing a resettlement culture in a local prison. Findings firstly outline factors inhibiting the resettlement status of the prison, these include: a tension between attempts to implement a more expansive resettlement remit into the prison, while also fulfilling more longstanding core institutional duties; the size and churn of the prison population; wide-scale apathy caused by change fatigue; and government austerity policies which caused significant difficulties in the day-to-day staffing of the prison. This paper then turns to practitioner responses to the re-designation, finding that practitioners interpreted resettlement in two limited ways: top-down managerial attempts to instil a wider resettlement culture into the prison, and resistance from prison officers who felt unwilling or unable to expand their roles beyond custodial and security concerns. This paper concludes by outlining how this set of inter-related barriers frustrated staff and prisoners alike, eroding a sense of hope and purpose and impeding true cultural change

The resettlement net: ‘revolving door’ imprisonment and carceral (re)circulation

The Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014 has extended post-release supervision to all individuals serving short sentences in England and Wales – a cohort who previously faced neglect within the criminal justice system. This empirical study uses a case study approach to explore the resettlement experiences of individuals subject to this new legislation, understanding how individuals circulate and re-cycle between a range of services and agencies in the community, further illuminating upon the reality of repeat ‘revolving door’ imprisonment. Drawing upon Cohen’s ‘net widening’ analogy, this article posits that collectively the array of services involved in an individual’s resettlement form a ‘resettlement net’, which segregates individuals in the community through control and surveillance functions, extending the carceral boundary of the prison firmly into the community. Welfare-orientated organisations become compelled to ‘braid’ welfare responses alongside penal functions in order to operate within the resettlement net. This article also explores some of the difficulties that individuals experience as they navigate the resettlement net, including informal forms of exclusion, and the wear and tear of the net, which undermines the rhetoric of care envisioned by this legislation, and drives individuals deeper into the mesh of carceral control

Post-sentence supervision: a case study of the extension of community resettlement support for short sentence prisoners

Introduced under the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 created a period of post-sentence supervision (PSS) after licence for individuals serving short custodial sentences. This empirical study features on the ground views and perspectives of practitioners and service users of PSS in one case-study area. Findings from this paper suggest a number of issues and ambiguities with the enactment of the sentence. These include ambiguities regarding the correct use of enforcement procedures; the antagonistic relationship between third sector and CRC staff, primarily centred around transferring cases; and concerns over the use of ‘light touch’ supervision and uncertainties over what the rehabilitative aims of this sentence mean in practice. These issues led to practitioners questioning the legitimacy of the third sector organisation involved in the management of PSS, while service users experienced PSS as a frustrating pass-the-parcel experience, where resettlement support was constantly stalled and restarted at each juncture of the sentence. Before briefly discussing the potential future of PSS under the next iteration of probation policy, this paper concludes by arguing that there is emerging evidence of a commonality of failures occurring at every juncture of the short sentence, undermining resettlement prospects for the long-neglected short sentence population

Assessing the resettlement reforms under transforming rehabilitation

Matt Cracknell presents key findings from his research on resettlement policy and practice in England and Wales