Week 9 RF-Desistance in Young Offenders Flashcards
What is the definition of Desistance?
“Desistance is the process of abstaining from crime amongst those who previously had engaged in a sustained pattern of offending” (HMI Probation, May 2016, p.4)
How are Youth Offending Services evidence-based?
-Researchers find the evidence
-Academics shape the theory and the practitioners’ tools
-ASSET and ASSET Plus = YOS assessment tools, based on latest research evidence
-ASSET – originally looked at criminogenic and protective factors
-ASSET Plus assesses desistance factors
What are the levels of desistance from theory?
Primary desistance:
-Change behaviour
-Develop push factors
-Develop agency
-Identify turning points
Secondary desistance:
-Change identity
-Identify turning points
-Utilise pull factors
-Develop prosocial identity
Tertiary resistance:
-Change social belonging
-Prosocial identity affirmed
-Building social capital
-Reintegration as prosocial non-offending individual
When HMIP interviewed YOS case managers, what did they find? (HMIP Inspection, 2016)
“A lack of detailed knowledge around desistance theory in general and its application to practice, not helped by the fact that the majority of case managers had received little training on this subject”
What methods did Eyre, Jamieson & Yates (2016) do when measuring YOS Readiness for Desistance-based Practise?
-Three YOS in North England
-Questionnaires to YOS staff
-Focus groups on incoming Asset Plus
-Asked on challenges of new system and changes required
-Asked to provide a young offender ‘success story’
-Narrative analysis of the success stories conducted
-N = 24 YOS professionals;
-Each participant at one focus group of practitioners or managers;
-Six broad questions on desistance;
-Analysis corresponding to three-fold structure (descriptive, conceptual, linguistic);
-Bottom line – focus was on participants’ lifeworld – what mattered to them on topic of desistance.
-Asked to provide a success story
What results did Eyre, Jamieson & Yates (2016) do when measuring YOS Readiness for Desistance-based Practise?
YOS-centred themes:
-YOS officer as agent;
-Organisational problems, roles & systems;
-Professional Image;
-How to support young people;
-Barriers to desistance.
YP-centred themes:
-Goals and aspirations;
-Personal development;
-Maturity.
What is Agency: an old-fashioned grammar lesson?
-Syntax in English is subject-verb-object
E.g., The boy kissed his girlfriend
-Subject is The boy
-Verb is kissed
-Object is his girlfriend
What is the Positioning effects of subject verb object (SVO)?
-The officer rescued the boy
-Subject is the agent (we actually call them agent nouns, typically end in ‘er’)
-Agency belongs to the agent
-Verb (doing word) is what the agent does
-Object is ?
What are example statements for a Young Person’s Change (SVO)?
The young person changed his offending behaviour
The child changed her friends
The young man changed his lifestyle
The young woman changed neighbourhoods
The child changed his mind about joining a gang
The young person now saw themself as a good parent
What is YOS Change (SVO)?
-The YOT officer stopped the child’s exclusion;
-The YOS worker arranged the young man’s hours in community payback programme;
-The case manager found accommodation for the child;
-The police officer visited the child’s home;
-The judge gave the young man a nine-month referral order;
-The senior YOS practitioner breached the young woman.
What did Participants say about YOS Officer as an Agent?
-“She [YP’s mother] always mentioned, ‘Oh [YOS officer name redacted] did really good’ and I did. That was a good relationship but we got him, picked out what he was good at and we just moved him from the area physically to put him in [place name]. It’s an older age group; he’d be treated like an adult. That’s what he needed to be dealt with, treated like … It was good. You have to go with the praise, soak it up from his mum” [P17];
-“You get a robber who maybe at the end of the order gets done for being in town peeing up against a wall he shouldn’t have. That, in the Home Office, is a failure. They reoffended - No, it isn’t. I’m making this city safer. He might be peeing up against a wall but he’s not out robbing an old pensioner or something. I’m making the city a better place. I’m improving that young lad’s life.” [P4].
What did Participants say about YOS Officer as an Agent: The Context?
-“You’re trying to make them, I know it sounds wrong but you’ve got to try and address the offending behaviour. The court expects it so when you start pushing it, then that’s when it becomes problematic. The young person is not ready to do that yet you’re stuck in a certain time restraint” [P17];
-We have to abide by national standards and if we think that doesn’t work for a young person, we’ll find a way around it so things like intervention plans, the ones on the system are horrendous. I can’t understand them … I look at them and go, ‘Wooh, not doing that’ [P22];
-“Our practice, what we have to do is very prescriptive and we have to complete an enormous amount of assessments and questionnaires for our young people that they really don’t want to do … I think that that does actually come across to the young person because really you’re not interested in them as an individual, you’re just interested in them in terms of how they impact on everybody else and that’s a very negative viewpoint to be coming to anybody from” [P17].
