Criminal Justice Identities in Transition: the case of devolved probation services in England and Wales

In 2014, the coalition government’s Transforming Rehabilitation reforms led to the wholesale restructuring of probation services in England and Wales. As part of this reconfiguration of probation services, more than half of the employees of public sector Probation Trusts were transferred to 21 new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) set up to manage medium- and low-risk offenders and destined for sale in the criminal justice marketplace. This article presents the findings of an ethnographic study of the formation of one CRC, with a specific focus on the construction and negotiation of identities. We identify a number of key themes, prominent among which is ‘liminality’: i.e. the experience of being betwixt and between the old and the new, the public and the outsourced. Other themes discussed in the article include separation and loss, status anxiety, loyalty and trust, liberation and innovation

Usability, Acceptability, and Effectiveness of Web-Based Conversational Agents to Facilitate Problem Solving in Older Adults: Controlled Study.

BACKGROUND: The usability and effectiveness of conversational agents (chatbots) that deliver psychological therapies is under-researched. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to compare the system usability, acceptability, and effectiveness in older adults of 2 Web-based conversational agents that differ in theoretical orientation and approach. METHODS: In a randomized study, 112 older adults were allocated to 1 of the following 2 fully automated interventions: Manage Your Life Online (MYLO; ie, a chatbot that mimics a therapist using a method of levels approach) and ELIZA (a chatbot that mimics a therapist using a humanistic counseling approach). The primary outcome was problem distress and resolution, with secondary outcome measures of system usability and clinical outcome. RESULTS: MYLO participants spent significantly longer interacting with the conversational agent. Posthoc tests indicated that MYLO participants had significantly lower problem distress at follow-up. There were no differences between MYLO and ELIZA in terms of problem resolution. MYLO was rated as significantly more helpful and likely to be used again. System usability of both the conversational agents was associated with helpfulness of the agents and the willingness of the participants to reuse. Adherence was high. A total of 12% (7/59) of the MYLO group did not carry out their conversation with the chatbot. CONCLUSIONS: Controlled studies of chatbots need to be conducted in clinical populations across different age groups. The potential integration of chatbots into psychological care in routine services is discussed

Acceptability and Effectiveness of NHS-Recommended e-Therapies for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress: Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND: There is a disconnect between the ability to swiftly develop e-therapies for the treatment of depression, anxiety, and stress, and the scrupulous evaluation of their clinical utility. This creates a risk that the e-therapies routinely provided within publicly funded psychological health care have evaded appropriate rigorous evaluation in their development. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to conduct a meta-analytic review of the gold standard evidence of the acceptability and clinical effectiveness of e-therapies recommended for use in the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. METHODS: Systematic searches identified appropriate randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Depression, anxiety, and stress outcomes at the end of treatment and follow-up were synthesized using a random-effects meta-analysis. The grading of recommendations assessment, development, and evaluation approach was used to assess the quality of each meta-analytic comparison. Moderators of treatment effect were examined using subgroup and meta-regression analysis. Dropout rates for e-therapies (as a proxy for acceptability) were compared against controls. RESULTS: A total of 24 studies evaluating 7 of 48 NHS-recommended e-therapies were qualitatively and quantitatively synthesized. Depression, anxiety, and stress outcomes for e-therapies were superior to controls (depression: standardized mean difference [SMD] 0.38, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.52, N=7075; anxiety and stress: SMD 0.43, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.63, n=4863), and these small effects were maintained at follow-up. Average dropout rates for e-therapies (31%, SD 17.35) were significantly higher than those of controls (17%, SD 13.31). Limited moderators of the treatment effect were found. CONCLUSIONS: Many NHS-recommended e-therapies have not been through an RCT-style evaluation. The e-therapies that have been appropriately evaluated generate small but significant, durable, beneficial treatment effects. TRIAL REGISTRATION: International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) registration CRD42019130184; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=130184

Lost in transition? The personal and professional challenges for probation leaders engaged in delivering public sector reform

The outsourcing and transfer of labour in the contexts of policing, prisons and courts illustrate that, even in a national context, these transitions are not uniform. Rather, there are a diverse set of ‘privatisation journeys’ that can be taken and that need to be understood. Our focus in this article is on the experience of probation leaders who, under the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reform programme, were charged with stewarding their organisation from the public sector, through a 10-month transitional period, and into the full relinquishing of ownership to the private sector. It is an account of how, with no clear ‘transition and transformation’ precedent to follow, a locally based senior management team from one Probation Trust engaged with the task of implementing organisational change during a period of great uncertainty. We explore managers’ engagement with the language, working styles and vision of engineering transformational change and how they processed and began to articulate the challenges of new ownership, both for themselves (as individuals) and for their organisation (as a collective). We examine the resilience of the organisational culture at senior management level; the operational dynamism of leaders to embrace change; and the extent to which senior managers felt able to participate in, and take ownership of, the new Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) they were charged with forming

Scrutinising the appeal of volunteer Community Speedwatch to policing leaders in England and Wales: Resources, Responsivity and Responsibilisation

This article focuses on ‘Community Speedwatch’ (CSW) - a particular volunteering approach that has apparently attracted the attention of senior police decision-makers in England and Wales over recent years. It considers the significance of decisions by many Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and Chief Constables to embrace CSW as a response to calls from the public for action against speeding motorists. CSW is apparently an option that ticks many boxes in a new era characterised by the increasing democratic accountability of the police. Whilst frequently promoted using the popular language of ‘empowerment’, ‘localism’, ‘self-help’ or ‘ownership’, and seemingly well-suited to current trends towards the increasing responsibilisation of the public, CSW should not be looked at as a straightforward example of a concerned public gifting their time to a grateful police. Rather than consider the road safety merits of the scheme, this paper views CSW as something of a tool which PCCs and Chief Constables can use to negotiate the often conflicting demands placed upon them in straightened economic circumstances. The paper draws on 22 interviews conducted with PCCs (during their first tenure) and Chief Constables in England and Wales

Probation migration(s): Examining occupational culture in a turbulent field

In June 2014 approx. 54 per cent of the total probation service workforce in England and Wales were transferred to the newly created Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) as part of the government’s plans to establish a market for offender management services. This marked the beginning of one of the largest and most significant migrations of criminal justice staff from the public to the private sector in England and Wales. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of the formation of one of these CRCs through to the period immediately following the transfer into private ownership. The authors discuss the key features of this migration which are identified as ‘splitting and fracturing’, ‘adapting and forming’ and ‘exiting or accommodation’. It is contended that this development not only has significant implications for the future of probation services but also provides a unique example of the impact on an occupational culture of migration from the public to the private sector

Policing British Asian Identities; policing and the situated negotiation of belonging and ethnicity among young British Asian men in Staffordshire

This thesis has two fundamental aims. Firstly, it contributes to the on-going production of a cultural sociology of policing, and secondly it helps to develop a more complete understanding of the challenges of policing culturally diverse, ethnically mixed and plural polities. It does so by examining how the police as an institution, and issues around policing, security and safety more generally, contribute to the competing identity constructions of young British Asian men in Staffordshire. By adopting and adapting Floya Anthias' (2001, 2002) concept of 'translocational positionalitv' this study sets out a framework for understanding processes of identity construction that enable us to better interpret the meaning and symbolic capital of young British Asian mens' real and imagined exchanges with the police. At the same time it takes us to towards more tuned and appropriate vocabularies of identity and social groupings than those currently employed within policing (and indeed wider public service) provision. By understanding individual and collective negotiations of belonging at the intersections of wider, national and global understandings of culture, community and ethnicity, it is possible to recognise their impact upon the experience and nature of the local as the young people in question forge their sense of being Asian/being Muslim in Staffordshire. By placing the situated constructions of individual and group self-definition within their fractured sets of social relations the study furthers understanding of the experiences of integration and marginalisation that generate the tangible challenges for multicultural politics and social justice to surmount. Within the dynamic and complex negotiations of identity, interactions - real or imagined - with the police have to be located. On one level, relationships with, and dispositions towards, the police serve to craft and re-work ethnically coded claims of belonging and political participation. On another, coming to terms with the processes that manufacture individual and collective definition exposes the complexity of the on-going generation of diverse publics evolving within the ethnically diverse, culturally plural and racially mixed Britain that the organisation is charged with serving.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Transforming rehabilitation, emotional labour and contract delivery: A case study of a voluntary sector provider in an English resettlement prison

In 2019, the UK government announced a scaling back of changes enacted under the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) agenda introduced in 2013. In doing so, it seemingly reversed key criminal justice policies surrounding the management and supervision of those subject to penal and community sanctions, which had drawn fierce criticism due to its financial and systematic failings. This article speaks to a small but growing body of literature concerned with the professional damage induced by this failed ‘rehabilitation revolution’ for practitioners (see Robinson et al., 2016; Millings et al., 2019b; Tidmarsh, 2019), through a sharpened focus on a small group of actors brought into the sector through out-sourcing and sub-contracting. Our findings are primarily based on observational and semi-structured interviews conducted with 11 staff employed by a Voluntary Sector Provider (VSP) working in a Category B resettlement prison during this period of profound change. Through the lens of emotional labour theory (Hochschild, 1983) we identify three themes; operational legitimacy; practice proficiency; and professional well-being - to make sense of VSP worker's experience of policy reform under Transforming Rehabilitation. In doing so we contend that working in such fraught conditions, and the excesses of emotional labour involved, can potentially compromise both the integrity and efficiency of service delivery

Transforming Rehabilitation and Through The Gate: Research from a resettlement prison

A strong emphasis within the TR agenda was placed on the establishment of 70 resettlement prisons to commence the ‘through the gate’ provision to allow rehabilitation support to extend from custody into the community. A key motivator for such developments was the need to provide additional support for those released from prison having been sentenced to 12 months or less - who, as a group, have a reoffending rate of 60% (Ministry of Justice 2013). This paper presents findings from phase one of a longitudinal project seeking to document the views and experiences of a series of individuals caught up in the grip of the profound changes to service provision taking place in one resettlement prison in the North West of England. The study seeks to explore how the structures, processes and operation of in-prison based resettlement service provision change; examine the views of those charged with implementing and managing these interventions; and gauge the experiences of those inmates (and their families) who engage services both within and outside the prison estate