Positive reinforcement in probation practice:The practice and dilemmas of praise

Positive reinforcement is a key part of probation practice, and linked to client desistance from offending. The main way practitioners positively reinforce clients’ prosocial comments or behaviours is through praising them. However, praise is tricky in interaction, as people are under pressure to accept the positive assessment whilst also avoiding self-praise. Applying conversation analysis to 21 video recordings of probation sessions originally collected for the Jersey Supervision Skills Study, we examine how this important aspect of probation features and functions in practice, and how clients respond. Our analysis shows how practitioners and clients manage the practice and dilemmas of praise

Unpicking social work practice skills: an interactional analysis of engagement and identity in a groupwork programme addressing sexual offending

The importance of the working relationship between people who have offended (clients) and criminal justice social workers (practitioners) as a vehicle for promoting rehabilitation is increasingly recognised. To build and maintain effective working relationships practitioners must demonstrate key practice skills, including empathy, warmth and respect. Previous research has used quantitative methods demonstrating links between aggregated categories of practitioner skills and outcomes post intervention, and qualitative research interviews retrospectively exploring individuals’ views of compulsory supervision or intervention. However, this research has not clarified how these skills are demonstrated in interaction, how they function to promote engagement or the potential micro-mechanisms of change which contribute to rehabilitation and desistance, i.e. the cessation of offending. To address these gaps, I used the innovative qualitative methods of discourse analysis and conversation analysis to examine what happens when practitioners and clients talk to each other, what happens in the ‘black box’. I analysed video-recordings of twelve groupwork sessions from the groupwork programme for addressing sexual offending in Scotland, ‘Moving Forward: Making Changes’. This rolling programme works with adult men convicted of sexual offences, legally compelled to attend. Five practitioners and eighteen clients participated in the study. I transcribed and analysed the video recordings in detail using discourse analysis, specifically discursive psychology, and conversation analysis. These methods enable a micro-level examination of the talk-in-interaction, to consider what people are doing in their talk and how they are doing it, e.g. how practitioners demonstrate empathy. In the analysis I demonstrated the tacit practice skills of empathy, warmth and respect are evident in talk as actions that maintain co-operation in interaction and build solidarity; i.e. managing face, handling epistemic authority and facilitating empathic communion. I further outlined some of the conversational resources practitioners used to ‘do’ these actions, promoting engagement whilst pursuing institutional goals. Through this talk, practitioners shape and direct how clients tell the story of who they are, although clients can resist this. In this way clients’ narrative identities were actively and collaboratively constructed and negotiated in the talk-in-interaction. Aspects of identity considered to promote desistance, e.g. presenting a good core self or a situational account for offending, were presented, encouraged, developed and attributed. Talk about risk also contributed to the construction and negotiation of clients’ identities. Practitioners and clients expected clients to demonstrate they are aware of and attending to the risks around their behaviour, highlighting risk discourse as central. Risk in this sense was used discursively to demonstrate change and agency over the future, establishing a nonoffending self. However, risk talk could challenge clients’ self-image and threaten ongoing engagement. This study highlights the suitability of discourse analysis and conversation analysis to access the ‘black box’ of criminal justice social work intervention. Routine and common-sense practice skills were made visible, making these more accessible to practitioners to reflect on and develop more responsive and reflexive practice. Finally, criminal justice social work interventions are sites where clients’ narrative identities are constructed, as such potential sites for developing non-offending identities. This study highlights this process is inherently and necessarily relational. In developing forward looking self-stories, which encapsulated features of desistance and risk, narratives of rehabilitation were constructed at the interface of the client and the institution

Co-authoring desistance narratives: Analysing interactions in groupwork for addressing sexual offending

Research and theory suggest desistance narratives and pro-social identities are key to the process of desistance from crime. However, little research has examined how desistance narratives and related identities are produced in contexts other than research interviews or how core correctional skills intersect with the development of these narratives or identities. This study applies discourse analysis and conversation analysis to transcripts of 12 video-recordings of groupwork sessions for addressing sexual offending, examining how desistance narratives and identities are produced, and how practitioner skills and conversational styles intersect with their production. The analysis illustrates how criminal justice practitioners help to co-author desistance narratives through subtle and explicit aspects of interaction, although certain orientations to risk may limit this potential

Dams, barriers and beating yourself up: shame in groupwork for addressing sexual offending

Shame is a powerful emotional experience embedded in prevailing social and cultural norms. It is the judgement or fear of judgement for who we are rather than what we have done. Braithwaite (1989) proposes shame can be re-integrative or stigmatising, where re-integrative shaming condemns the behaviour not the person, to enable their re-entry into society. Shame is relevant to sexual offending and its treatment, yet little research has explored how it is expressed or responded to in treatment programmes. We applied conversation analysis and discourse analysis to examine expressions of shame in 12 video recorded sessions of a court mandated groupwork programme addressing sexual offending. Both social workers and the other men on the programme distinguished between being a bad person (shame) and being responsible for a bad act (guilt) as a way to empathise with the individual, build motivation, instil hope and leverage optimism towards positive change. We demonstrate that shame constitutes topics, resources and actions drawn on to achieve the programme’s rehabilitative aims, including separating the person from the behaviour, as per re-integrative shaming, demonstrating empathy and congruence, and motivating change. We discuss the paradoxes and dilemmas of shame for practice that addresses sexual offending

Eliciting third person perspectives in social work case discussions:A device for reflective supervision?

Reflective supervision is widely recommended as an effective way to support social workers to think about their practice and to make better decisions. Although previous research has proposed methods of pursuing reflective supervision, little is known about how supervisors attempt this in actual supervision meetings. One proposed method for supervisors is to elicit third person perspectives so that social workers can consider a situation from different points of view. In this article, we examine this method by analysing audio recordings of 12 supervision meetings from one local authority Children and Families Social Work team. Using Conversation Analysis (CA), we explore supervisors’ attempts to elicit other people’s perspectives, focusing on how such requests were formed and how the social worker responded. We found 35 instances of supervisors attempting to elicit third person perspectives and identified four different ways that supervisors designed these enquiries. Supervisors oriented to two concerns, based on whether they enquired about a perspective that was currently established or projected into the future, and whether the information was verifiable through speech or actions, or imagined based on the other person’s thoughts or understanding. We draw on CA work on epistemics and stance to show how these different approaches have implications for what the social worker is expected to know and how both speakers orient to the accountability of the social worker. We conclude by considering the epistemic friction between the design of these enquiries, the relevance of professional accountability and the possibilities for pursuing reflective supervision in practice

‘Within my work environment I don’t see gender as an issue’: Reflections on gender from a study of criminal justice social workers in Scotland

Community justice professionals operate within deeply gendered territory, yet there has been little attention to how gender is understood and embodied by the workforce. Building on findings from a mixed method study, this article explores professional perceptions of how gender plays out in criminal justice social work (CJSW) in Scotland. Our findings demonstrate that gender is an important but neglected dimension of CJSW. We conclude that advancing gender in this field requires a more inclusive theorising of gender in professional education and research, a more practical commitment to gender equality in policy and practice, and more routine opportunities for dialogue on issues of gender and justice within and across these domains