Developing Offender Engagement: Evaluating Probation Trust Pilots

Abstract

The Offender Engagement Programme (OEP) within National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has been built on our collaborative approach with probation trusts to develop approaches which can support more effective offender engagement. Drawing areas of potential practice development from our early fieldwork and literature review, events for trusts and reference groups with practitioners and middle managers, we identified where more focussed work with trusts would develop learning and evidence which could be shared. In response to an invitation to express an interest, 22 trusts committed themselves to taking forward an OEP pilot, starting between March and May 2011. External evaluation is planned for nine trusts in total and is being undertaken by our research partners: a team from the Institute of Criminal Policy Research (ICPR) Birkbeck College London and Leicester University, and a team based at Sheffield University which includes Fergus McNeill from Glasgow University.

This chapter looks at how we implemented pilot work on approaches to involving offenders in Sentence Planning; Developing Effective Engagement Skills through training and continuous professional development; and a model for Reflective Supervision by senior and middle managers to support effective engagement. It also examines how the methodology for the external and internal evaluation was developed, and what we are hoping to get out of the evaluation. In short, the purpose of this work is to investigate and test the core proposition that the relationship between the offender and the practitioner can be a powerful means of changing behaviour.

Citation

Rex, S., Ellis, E., Hosking, N. and Hyett, W. (2012), "Developing Offender Engagement: Evaluating Probation Trust Pilots", Bowen, E. and Brown, S. (Ed.) Perspectives on Evaluating Criminal Justice and Corrections (Advances in Program Evaluation, Vol. 13), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 199-209. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1474-7863(2012)0000013013