4. The reduction of crime. p.168
They consider the confusion between theory and practice within the Probation Service, and suggest that problems have been caused by assuming that the first three points should lead to the achievement of the fourth. As they point out, there are links between all four, but the only convincing statistical evidence shows that the Probation Service may be able to "hold" people away from crime in the short term, but this does not necessarily mean a reduction of recidivism in any permanent way. p.189. They suggest that the reduction of crime is an important individual aim - but it has to be considered within the context of community.
Community Crime Reduction
Bottoms and McWilliams suggest that the reduction of crime needs to be tackled due to the fear it creates, and the
destruction it causes within communities that are often already socially deprived. Much of the research on victims of crime show that the fear of crime is often more debilitating than crime itself. For example see the British Crime Survey ^Hough and Mayhew 1983); I also found this in my own work with victims of crime. Along with many others discussing the same theme, they suggest that crime reduction may be tackled by a community ap proach, working alongside residents who wish for help on issues they have identified as contributing to crime in their area; this may include environmental improvements, housing or education policy, the provision of social facilities or perhaps some form of advice service or mediation conciliation project for neighbour disputes. The latter suggestion is one that I have personally attempted to develop following the completion of my research and data collection from November 1988. As a community proba tion officer with a developmental job brief, I began talk ing to professionals and local residents on one compact estate in Sheffield; as a result we are in the process of setting up a community conciliation and mediation service eventually to be run by local people to cope with their own problems fSmith 1989). This recent development and change in my role is discussed further in Chapter 14. The ideas of Nils Christie (1977 and 1981) have influenced some of the thinking behind mediation schemes, although he talks more of non-professional, victim-focused, neighbour hood courts, and the return to a neighbourhood-centred mode of life encouraging social care and social cohesion.
This could arguably be stated as one of the aims of local conciliation and mediation projects, but they are geared more towards counselling, communication, and education, to enable people to cope with, and to handle their own dis putes. This may forestall the commission of some personal crimes through the resolution of differences and tensions before they erupt or escalate. Some issues may well be dealt with instead of contacting the police and official dom.
Crime reduction as a goal for the Probation Service has traditionally been concerned with action after the initial harm has been done - by working with known offenders to hopefully stop them re-offending - not attempting to work with communities to prevent crimes not yet committed. The public see the Probation Service as aiming to keep offenders out of further trouble by individual work with them, an impossible goal in many situations as one officer points out:
"... I remember a speech about the new South Yorkshire Probation Service and its role in crime reduction...but we are not about reducing crime...but social and education factors... its an impossible goal..."
The themes of community mediation and community crime reduction, are ones which are discussed in idealistic terms by probation officers and others who work in the Service. They represent part of the search for an alter native development for the Probation Service instead of the direction that it appears to be forced to take by present Home Office and Government policies. But there are contradictions here, as the Home Office is also show
ing interest in mediation development - for example by seconding Tony Marshall from their research unit to be the Director of the national organisation FIRM (Forum for Initiatives in Reparation and Mediation) for the past two years. They are now expressing interest in funding a conflict resolution course for probation officers, social workers and voluntary groups. At this point it is diffi cult to assess how far mediation ideas are being taken on - and also in what form.
The Germination of Ideas
It is only in retrospect that the slow germination and take up of ideas can be charted; essentially ideas and their future are not seen at the time and may appear lost or ignored. Many advocates of ideas are not heard in their time, for example Plato's views that criminals were sick souls in search of treatment rather than wicked souls in need of punishment. Such views were not incorporated into penal policies until the late 1800's. In the late 1700's John Howard in England advocated rehabilitation as the primary goal of the penal system, yet it took a fur ther hundred years for such ideas to infiltrate individual and institutional thinking. See Hudson (1987) p.2-3. In a similar way, as already mentioned, initial ideas for victim/offender reparation and restitution were proposed in 1969 by Philip Priestley (1970), who as a NACRO Orga niser instigated victim/offender discussion groups which highlighted many joint needs that could be met through such contact. He eventually helped found the first Victim
Support Scheme in Bristol in 1974, but ideas of reparation were not taken up practically until the South Yorkshire Scheme in 1983.
Considering recent ideas - as Hudson (1987) points out, quoting the Marxist dictum, 'there is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come' (p.55), - there are now strong political moves to return to the 17th and 18th century view of the State as needing to provide control and punishment for culpable individuals who offend. Offenders are seen as rational and able to make choices, so have the right to be punished. If ideas are voiced by politicians and the media, they can quickly appear to be public opinion. On a smaller scale, ideas are rarely all pervasive and initial developments are generally taken up by a few enthusiasts, and only expand if the time is right. Helen Reeves (1989) discusses the issues involved in developing reparation and mediation and points out that despite a lot of interest from the victim support movement in the 1980s, they resisted any parallel developments as the time was not right for the ideas to work in conjunc tion with victim support. In the early 1980's, Victim Support Schemes were still fighting to establish their own identity and gain funding and political and public sup port. Now, increasing awareness and acknowledgment of the suffering of victims of crime, has resulted in Govern ment funding and the growth of schemes in most areas of the country.
The time now seems right for acknowledgment of the victim, as interest and concern has shifted away from concentrat ing on the offender as discussed in the last chapter. In retrospect, it appears that the British Crime Survey in 1983 was the take-off point for the growth of victimology and victim policies. The victim movement has not just been intellectual, but has had practical results through the rapid development of victim support schemes with Government funding, and the development of policy relating to victims - for example the Home Office proposal for a 'Victims Charter' which is a theme running through the recent White Paper and the more recent Green Paper on the future of the Probation Service; (HMSO 1990 , Hibbs
1990) .
It has been suggested that large-scale shifts in thinking only occur at a time of crisis, and this idea is developed by Downes using the nature of scientific change, developed by Lakatos; (Downs 1978 p.453). He identifies eras in criminology where due to changing beliefs large 'problem shifts' have occurred, for example in understanding delin quent behaviour - from socio-cultural theory to labelling theory. The shift towards consideration for the victim of crime could be understood in this way - perhaps due to the apparent failure of policies to rehabilitate offenders. But Downes does not relate his ideas to practice, as he sees their difficulty when he says that new facts cannot be predicted from assessing the character of the problem shifts, and that:
"more, the theories have the capacity to permit new facets of phenomenon to become integrated in both explanatory and observational theories."
A critique by Bottoms (1978) takes this further as he does not suggest any large-scale changes but a gradual growth in understanding, with new ideas added to the old tradition of pragmatism and eclecticism. Are the threats of the recent Government White Paper likely to provoke or enforce a 'problem shift'? Or will old values remain with grafted additions to satisfy the Thatcherist thinking about control and punishment? Will some of the new ideas about mediation and community crime reduction develop and grow? There has been much speculation in newspapers about potential reforms and new penalties;(Carvel 1990 and The Guardian 1990). There have been influential ideas in the past which appeared to affect the thinking of practitioners as well as sociologists, but in practice did not effect any reforms or new legislation.
Eleven years ago the influential paper by Bottom and McWilliams (1979), suggested a new approach to probation practice advocating the non-treatment paradigm - a radical reconceptualisation of the aims of probation, as discussed and listed earlier. Their ideas were community and client-focused, but in a way that maintains the values of respect for persons and hope for the future, and does not compromise ideals of fundamental social change. Ten years later the ideas are still live in current debate, and are still much quoted; for example by Hudson (1987), Broad (1988), and Harris (1989). In South Yorkshire it
was an interpretation of these ideas and particularly that of aim 4 (the reduction of crime) that led to the three year Hallam Project that ran before the Victim Offender Mediation Project discussed in Chapter One. On the surface the Hallam Project seemed to fail, as it ended with the workers feeling disillusioned and having no incentive to maintain or continue the development; they easily returned to their previous practice. The community involvement part of their work did not "gell" for a mixture of rea sons. This can be explained by a conflict of ideologies before the project even started - explained by Celnick (1985), as due to changes in the final version of the Paradigm paper which was completed after the start of the Hallam Project. Celnick comments:
"Both officers and managers were understandably dis concerted to find that the community work aspect was not in the form previously assumed; the team began to have serious reservations about the model of working put forward on the grounds that it appeared to have little relevance for the statutory work of the Service."
p.224 It appears that their interpretation of the paradigm paper used the four key concepts of 'reciprocity', 'networks', 'conflicts as property' and 'interweaving' - but justified the aim of helping offenders as a way of reducing crime. Whereas it was intended in the paper to work with the community with the aim of reducing crime, i.e. so crime did not occur. As the researcher points out:
"Although the focus of the project was intended to be 'community work' with the aim of crime reduction, my observation of the team's statutory practice suggests that it was only at the social enquiry stage that it was possible to involve any section of the community."
Celnick (1985) p.225 As with other Special Projects, an underlying but unrecorded aim appears to have been to find new or alternative methods of work that would fit with present and accepted methods of practice - rather than contemplating practice or Service change. Workers throughout this project maintained the position of the offender as their prime client, so were unable to engage with the community in any generally effective way. Despite problems with this Project, the development of the following Project of mediation and reparation was an indirect spin-off from some of the ideas and results as mentioned in Chapter One. Specifically, through a few attempts to engage with community networks in a consideration of local crime, it was found that victim/offender meetings often proved beneficial to all concerned and that victims felt generally less punitive towards their offenders than had been previously assumed. Hence the mediation and reparation project was developed in Barnsley and Rotherham as a method of work, (described earlier), that could potentially be incorporated into everyday practice. In retrospect and through experience, the ideas have less value if formalised or made statutory; they fit more readily into ideas of community development, and not with developments that are in the control of the
criminal justice system. I would contend that the Proba tion Service should be considering a local and community basis for its work, and should move away from central control; the way forward may be to develop ways of engag ing with local communities by developing local initiatives that are "community-owned", and through working locally to improve communication between people, and foster better understanding and local responsibility towards local disputes, offenders and offences.
The Persistence of Offender and Court-based Aims
This interpretation though, is very much my own; such ideas are still seen by my colleagues as secondary to their role in the courts, and aim 4 (the reduction of crime) is accepted as the impossible but potential outcome of aims 1, 2 and 3 (help for offenders, the supervision of offenders, and their diversion from custody). In Chapter 6, a discussion of my data including probation officers backgrounds, their reasons for joining the Service and their ideals, will show the persistence of the four relat ed aims identified by Bottoms and McWilliams, but with the offender prominent in all four. Attempts to step outside offender focused work methods or to approach crime reduc tion in an alternative way, (perhaps in terms of community involvement), is seen as a specialism or special time- limited project, and is not given working priority with other aims. The inability to look at the problem of crime from a new direction, perpetuates old patterns and leaves workers grappling with unachievable aims which create:
"a gap between the theory of policy formulation and the reality of practice...'1.
McWilliams (1987) p.114 Probation officers talk about wanting change, wanting a realistic justification for their work but:
"most people so restrict their frame of reference, or context, for the problem they are facing that little true change can occur...they get into such a routine with their work that they view virtually all problems in a similar way...all problems look like nails when all you have is a hammer."
Garratt (1987) p.59 I would contend that the Probation Service has been working with individual nails since the Police Court Missionaries I Radical proposals, such as mediation and reparation and community involvement, have a common element -
"that of decentring the offender from the focus of crime policies, and to look instead at the problems of communities, victims and offenders together. This constitutes a real break with the individual pathology approach to crime and delinquency...preventing crime where possible, restoring relationships and compensating harm where prevention has not succeeded are the key themes..."
Hudson (1987) pp.179-80 I would advocate that the Service needs to look upwards and outwards, i.e. away from offenders as an isolated group, but towards offenders as part of the wider community and the economic, social and political system. There is much talk about this by field probation officers, but in reality it plays little part in their daily work. The tendency to revert to the language of treatment when talking about helping offenders reinforces this, and maintains the inward-looking stance of the Service. This matches a strong proposal by Raynor who suggests that:
"The Probation Service should become far more involved in the community and in promoting constructive community concern about crime. Such a major shift of emphasis requires clear thinking about objectives if it is to demonstrate enough effectiveness to command a useful share of resources and of the attention of capable staff; otherwise there is a risk of a wide range of ill-co-ordinated initiatives with no common purpose, or of community involvement becoming a marginal activity, the hobby of a few officers rather than a Service commitment."
Raynor (1984) pp.44-45 He warns against community projects being isolated initiatives which would be easily marginalised and seen as the "hobby" of a few officers rather than a Service commitment. The recent Audit Commission Report for the Probation Service (1989) details the need to develop community initiatives and projects, but also comments on their relegation to the status of "hobbyism" as they are seen as divorced from statutory demands; independent grant funding is recommended, (pp.59 and 65^. This would sepa rate such work from the Probation Service, so maintaining an individual offender focus and impeding any change; it would also minimise community involvement which myself and others see as a crucial developmental need; see for exam ple: Broad (1988) and Senior (1988).
Other probation officers and authors talk in a similar way about moving in community-based directions; projects of this sort display, in the long-term, some success when judged not only on a qualitative basis, (the quality of life for both offenders and other community members), but on a quantitative basis considering reconviction rates. A good example is the Belfast Motor Project; but as with many initiatives, for on-going success it needs to be
acknowledged as a viable Service commitment requiring a permanent shift in boundaries to accommodate the develop ment. If not, the initiative will fade, as expressed below:
"The officer now...has a new role which may be experienced as less satisfying, especially if the change in practice has not been accompanied by a worked through change in ideology. Holding onto the traditional framework of family casework while referring clients to community projects can result in the feeling that community work, however worthy and relevant, is not part of the mainstream...the result is then a gradual reduction in referrals, a tendency for