To read this content please select one of the options below:

Offenders at the Heart of Evaluation

Perspectives on Evaluating Criminal Justice and Corrections

ISBN: 978-1-78052-644-7, eISBN: 978-1-78052-645-4

Publication date: 21 May 2012

Abstract

This chapter looks at the role qualitative evaluation can play in the external review of the Probation Service, the development of an evaluation framework for ongoing assessment and how it can be used to develop new elements of the service. How is this different from the use of existing data by the service?

This takes us to the kind of information that is used by the probation service, to make judgements about the effectiveness of its programmes and the impact on offenders. The main contention is that this is in the main quantitative data, and reports on levels of re-offending. The data is standardised so that it can be used to make comparisons between different types of sentence and criminal justice intervention.

Our contention is that this information is limited in what it says for two main reasons. Firstly, quantitative data tends to report on impact, that is whether an offender has committed another crime after engagement with the probation service, or whether there are patterns of behaviour between offences, individual circumstances and the likelihood or re-offending. In short, the data is a snapshot of whether an offender has changed his or her behaviour or not. However, this chapter will illustrate how quantitative data misses an understanding of how behaviour changes and why behaviour does not change. As a result, this leaves the service with a limited understanding of how it is working.

Secondly, the chapter will argue that the existing probation framework itself creates quite specific definitions of which data is relevant and which data is not relevant. We will give examples of narratives that offenders offer in group sessions that provide rich material about their lives, pressures and offence. But evidence suggests that this information is not used to inform programmes, re-assess and review an offender's own progression towards re-offending or a life without crime.

Citation

Kushner, B. and Kushner, S. (2012), "Offenders at the Heart of Evaluation", 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. 211-229. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1474-7863(2012)0000013014

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited