Guest editorial.
Beckett, Clare
For several decades now, public sector agencies have been subjected
to major upheavals as the spotlight of government has fallen on them.
For criminal justice agencies the picture is further complicated by
public and media expectations. New managerialist measurements of
performance and targeting of practice are now endemic, if not
universally accepted, throughout the police, prison and probation
services. New professionals on one hand could expect that their
professional training would earn them the right to some autonomy in
their future roles: On the other hand, their role is restricted to
meeting pre set measures of performance. Discussion of this dissonance
has become increasingly central to the training delivered to probation
officers in Yorkshire and Humberside.
This special edition of the Journal developed from that interest.
The editors, Clare Beckett and Pauline Ashworth, have been involved in
the delivery of training to probation officers in the Yorkshire and
Humberside Region. They were also involved in organising a day
conference held at the University of Bradford, looking specifically at
diversity in a performance culture. The event brought together academics
from the partner Universities responsible for delivery of training
(Sheffield Hallam, Hull and Bradford), practitioners from the three
criminal justice agencies (police, probation, prison), trainee probation
officers and undergraduate students. Discussion between the disparate
groups was focused and heartfelt. It was this that led to the idea of
this edition, drawn from the conference and developing conference
themes. It seems that a performance culture, its associated impact on
ideas of professional behaviour, the resulting service provision for a
diverse user group, are 'live' and current issues in practice.
The central focus of the contributions is the question: how far is
the emergence and development of performance as the dominant criterion
and guiding principle of criminal justice agencies supportive of or
antithetical to recognition of diversity? Are these concepts compatible,
sympathetic to one another, or are they necessarily distinct and even
contradictory in practice? The answer will depend to some extent on a
definition of performance and an understanding of diversity--and on how
to define the job to be done. In the planning stages we, the editors,
came to recognise that we held differing views on the issue. Our
struggle to 'square the circle' reflects our different
perspectives. Our own discomfort with the context of performance
management is reflected by the authors of these papers.
On the one hand, it is argued, the emphasis placed on performance
indicators in the past two decades or so has led officers whether in the
police, probation or prison services to find their room for manoeuvre
restricted and their ability to develop constructive working
relationships with offenders curtailed by the requirements to meet
targets of performance generated locally or nationally. They may believe
that their professional identity and skills have been undermined. It is
fair to say that this opinion was expressed more strongly by probation
officers during the conference--particularly former probation officers
who witnessed the shift away from social work based values and education
to on-the-job training, from there being roughly a balance between the
'twin peaks' of care and control to a heavy weighting in
favour of the latter. On the other hand, the argument is that, without
some clearly identifiable targets or clearly defined goals, it would be
impossible to gauge the effectiveness of what is being done or to hold
agencies accountable for fulfilling their remit jointly to protect the
public from crime and to work toward ensuring those who did offend were
deterred from doing so again. Without a focus on performance, however it
is defined or measured, criminal justice agencies would be working in a
vacuum with only the vaguest idea of whether they were being successful
as the very notion of 'success' would have no clear parameters
and would, indeed did, remain fluid and uncertain.
The polarities of this argument were brought out very clearly by
the two key note speakers at the conference, which are presented here as
delivered at the event in June 2008. The speakers were Brid
Featherstone, Professor of Social Work at the University of Bradford,
and Sue Hall, Chief Officer of West Yorkshire Probation. The contrast in
their perspectives set the scene for the conference and for the articles
that follow. Brid Featherstone, outlining the findings from a recent
piece of research, spoke about how those on the receiving end of
performance-orientated social service provision have felt their opinions
to be marginalized, unheard and even discounted by the professionals. At
the same time, she notes how those same professionals express resentment
and dissatisfaction with a system that requires them to struggle with
increased paperwork and complex procedures. Sue Hall argues that the
changes introduced by the focus on performance have had a positive
effect on probation practice and should be recognised as such. She
welcomes the shift away from the highly individualized and potentially
ad hoc approach to working with offenders on the grounds that the latter
led to piecemeal provision based on personal preferences rather than on
a clear and defensible assessment of what was needed. As a result,
working with diversity was poorly understood and could lead to
disparities and injustices that went unnoticed.
The next article has been collated by one of the editors, Clare
Beckett, from material generated in the conference workshops and
reflects the views of the various participants on the issues raised
during the day. Each workshop focused on a different criminal justice
agency--probation, prison and police--and what emerged were some
similarities but several radical differences in assumptions and
approaches to 'performance'. It was evident from the
discussions that 'debate and dispute arise over the value of target
setting even before the arguments about how it should be done'. The
article is structured to present the background and outcomes of each of
the workshops separately to allow comparisons to be drawn in the ways in
which the different agencies have come to adopt and, more or less,
embrace the concept of diversity and its implications for policy,
performance and practice. The workshop reports are provided by
practioners, the accompanying discussion by the editor. Both the police
and the prison service had the issue brought into sharp relief by a
series of high profile cases involving racial assault or murder, which
prompted wide-ranging reviews of practice involving clearly defined
targets, not all of which were helpful.
The probation workshop considered an initiative aimed at combating
racist abuse and attacks by offenders, and the problems encountered not
only with the offenders but also with the agency which was slow to
recognise the importance of such an initiative and which had no target
for performance in this crucial area.
The third paper is also written by a senior practitioner, Simon
Mellors of South Yorkshire Police. The issue raised here is how
performance targeting can be undermined by organisational and personal
practices, to the point that the usefulness or otherwise of the targets
becomes undermined. Perhaps the lesson of this paper is that, to some
extent, performance targeting is such an inexact science that
professional autonomy is still largely untouched.
The remaining three papers have been commissioned specifically for
this special edition. The topics addressed reflect themes drawn from the
day event. Keith Davies and Pauline Ashworth, both former probation
officers now academics, focus on different aspects of the probation
service in relation to performance and diversity. The former article
highlights the particular problem of time as a key component of
probation practice and how it has been re-shaped and re-structured by
the imposition of performance targets in a way that 'threatens to
displace other practice considerations' including taking proper
account of diversity. The latter article considers the effects of the
adoption by the probation service of such 'market-driven'
concepts as cost-effectiveness, efficiency, measurable outcomes and the
like on the nature of the probation service and its work; the author
argues that the changes introduced during the 1990s served to lead the
service away from offering a 'way back' for offenders into
society's mainstream to another arm of government and state control
of an already marginalized section of society. Notwithstanding recent
initiatives in restorative justice for young offenders, the experience
of the vast majority of offenders is of a probation service designed to
contain, manage and control their behaviour.
The last article in this collection places the focus again on to
offenders. Malcolm Cowburn and Victoria Lavis present the findings of
their current research into the effects of the 'performance
culture' on prison inmates, in particular those from minority
ethnic backgrounds. In the debate entered into by professionals about
the implication of performance on their work the poles can perhaps be
identified as professional autonomy versus management priorities. This
debate fundamentally reflects ways in which officers will meet and offer
service to clients, and these effects are easy to ignore.
Perhaps that is where we, as editors, first came in to this debate.
We both teach future probation officers, as do the other conference
organisers, Maria De Angelis and Cheryl Shackleton. With representatives
of the probation service and members of our partner universities, we
attempt to ensure that service provision continues to reflect the high
standards that have always been present in the probation service. At
this time, when the service is facing unprecedented pressure accompanied
by swingeing cuts and public and media antipathy, it is more than ever
important to be clear about what the job is and why officers continue to
do it. Clarity about the purpose of a performance culture could not be
timelier.
Dr Clare Beckett, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Science and
Humanities, University of Bradford & Pauline Ashworth, Teaching
Fellow, University of York
