How did the 'What Works?' movement and the ways in which EBP was developed contribute to its strengths and weaknesses as an approach to probation practice?

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How did the ‘What Works?’ movement and the ways in which EBP was developed contribute to its strengths and weaknesses as an approach to probation practice?

This essay will give a brief developmental and historical overview of the history of the ‘What Works’ movement and Evidence Based Practice (EBP).  It will then assess how this has contributed to the strengths and weaknesses of Probation practice as a modus operandi. Finally it will give some recommendations which could address the current weaknesses and build on the highlighted strengths.

From 1976 until the late 1990s, with very few exceptions, no government research was carried into the effectiveness of probation services in Britain and whether the methods used by Probation officers in supervising offenders were actually likely to reduce offending. In Britain (more than in several other countries) there was an official acceptance, particularly in the Home Office, of the conclusions of certain American and British research reviews (such as Martison (1974) and Brody (1976)) which were presented as proving that ‘nothing works’ in terms of the rehabilitation of offenders. Such conclusions were exaggerated and were not an accurate summary of the research they reviewed. However it was believed that further research on the effectiveness of probation would not be a good investment. This feeling was confirmed by Britain’s own contributions to the ‘nothing works’ literature, the IMPACT study which showed that probationers supervised on specially low caseloads, who spent more time with their supervising officers, were no more likely to avoid reconviction than those supervised on normal caseloads (Folkard et al., 1976).

Another reason for the decline in ‘effectiveness’ research was a shift in policy about the role of the Probation Service in criminal justice. During the 1980s it was seen as the critical agency for achieving reductions in costly custodial sentencing: the central tasks became to provide ‘alternatives to custody’ and to persuade sentencers to use them (Home Office, 1984) (Raynor 2004).

 

However a revival of the rehabilitative model was brought about in the 1990s and the Nothing Works era began to fade.  Researchers and practitioners were soon beginning to benefit from the statistical analysis from the new statistical technique of meta-analysis; this combines the results from a number of studies by coding them to a common framework and applying a common measure of effect size.  For example the extent to which outcomes for treated groups differ from those for control groups or matched comparison groups (Chui & Nellis, 2003). These methods were however criticised as they used reconviction rates as the main criterion for success. In addition most of the research was conducted in the USA and Canada on white males and juveniles, thus questioning the results and how effective they will be in Britain on ethnic minorities and females (Chui & Nellis, 2003).

  Merrington and Stanley (2000) were cautious about using reconviction rates as an outcome measure of the offending behaviour programmes and felt that Probation success can be measured using various other measurements such as rate of compliance, improved attitudes towards offending and reduction in social and personal problems (Raynor 1996).

Robert Ross and his colleagues in 1985 developed the Canadian ‘Reasoning and Rehabilitative’ programme which was later adapted and named ‘Straight Thinking on Probation’ (STOP) by the Mid-Glamorgan Probation Service in 1991. The STOP programme indicated that when compared with offenders receiving custodial sentences, the STOP programme completers were reconvicted less and self reported changes in their thinking (Raynor and Vanstone 2001).

The Probation division of the Home Office began to promote the development, piloting and evaluation of particular initiatives as ‘Pathfinders’, usually with evaluation provided by the Probation Studies Unit in Oxford, and by the time more substantial research funds became available four priority areas had been identified for development and research. These were offending behaviour programmes, basic skills, and an enhanced version of Community Service and resettlement projects for short-term prisoners. This was the first concentrated and targeted official research on the effectiveness of the Probation Service’s work with offenders since 1970s, and much the largest body of research on this subject ever undertaken in Britain (Raynor 2004).

The Home Secretary incorporated ‘what works’ initiative into his Crime Reduction Strategy in July 1998 and supported it with £250 million (Home Office 1999b). Guidance to probation managers and front – line manager practitioners was given in a number of publications including: Evidence Based Practice: A Guide to Effective Practice (Chapman and Hough 1998).

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The ‘What Works’ probation experiment in England and Wales was the largest initiative of its kind in the world, and the expectation that the major elements of it would be implemented and show results in three years was not realistic. The pressure created by this time-scale led to short-cuts, some of which had little evidence available to support them at the time and have in retrospect proved damaging (Raynor 2004). This hastiness contributed to the weaknesses in EBP. For example, the targets for accredited programme completions set in 1999, which drove the pace of the roll-out of offending behaviour programmes, ...

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