Women’s pains of punishment: Experiences of female offenders serving community sentences in Lithuania

Using the concept of ‘pains of punishment’, the article analyses the experiences of Lithuanian women serving community sentences. Our study demonstrates that women experience the universal pains of punishment associated with stigmatisation, shame, and the inconveniences caused by punishment, as well as constraints and anxieties about impending imprisonment. Furthermore, the complex context of their social environment (relationships with partners, children, and other loved ones) contributes to these pains. In contrast to some previous studies, the Lithuanian women’s experiences do not fall under the category of ‘demanding clients’ since the research participants do not think of the Probation Service as an institution that could meet their needs and provide them with assistance.

Co-creating rehabilitation: Findings from a pilot and implications for wider public service reform

As part of a large pan-European project on co-creating public services we supported the design of a programme in England that attempted to operationalise research on desistance, through a model of co-created, strengths-based working. We then evaluated its implementation and impact. The programme was implemented in a Community Rehabilitation Company. It was delivered in the context of rapid organisational change, often in response to rapidly changing external events and a turbulent policy environment. These factors impeded implementation. An impact evaluation did not identify a statistically significant difference in re-offending rates between the intervention group and a comparator group. However, in-depth qualitative evaluation identified positive examples of co-production and co-creation, with individual case managers and service users supportive and noting positive change. Taken as a whole our findings suggest that a co-created, strengths-based model of probation case management is promising but needs to be accompanied by wider systems change if it is to be embedded successfully.

Putting a face to a name: Telephone contact as part of a blended approach to probation supervision

This article is about the experience of telephone supervision from the perspective of practitioners. It is set in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which changed and challenged the nature of probation supervision and required service users and supervisors to communicate remotely, using the telephone, rather than by meeting face-to-face. The article explores some of the impacts and consequences of telephone contact and examines the extent to which this approach has a part to play in future, post-pandemic, ways of working. The article draws on findings from a research project examining remote supervision practice during the pandemic. Fieldwork (comprising an online survey and a series of semi-structured interviews) was conducted between July and September 2020 in three divisions within an English community rehabilitation company. The article reinforces the importance of face-to-face work in probation practice but suggests that there is scope to retain some use of telephone supervision as part of a future blended practice model. Further thinking about telephone supervision might consider these three themes identified in the research: remote working limits the sensory dimension of supervision, relationships remain at the heart of practice, and good practice requires professional discretion.

‘Lockdown's changed everything’: Mothering adult children in prison in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic occurred at a time when families of prisoners were gaining visibility in both academia and policy. Research exploring the experiences of families of prison residents has tended to focus on intimate partners and children, despite parents of those in prison being more likely than partners or children to maintain contact. The small body of work focusing on parents has identified their continued care for their children and highlights the burden of providing this care. With the ethics of care posing an ideological expectation on women to provide familial care, the care for adult children in custody is likely to fall to mothers. However, with restricted prison regimes, the pandemic has significantly impeded mothers’ ability to provide this ‘care’. Adopting a qualitative methodology, this paper explores the accounts of mothers to adult children in custody during the pandemic across two UK prison systems, England and Wales, and Scotland; exploring the negotiation of mothering in the context of imprisonment and the pandemic and highlighting important lessons for policy and practice.

How probation officers understand and work with people on community supervision sentences to enhance compliance

This study aimed to explore, describe, and interpret New Zealand probation officers’ insights into supervisees’ non-compliance with community sentences. Seventeen probation officers participated in two focus groups. Probation officers viewed problems with cognitive skills as a key barrier to sentence compliance. They reported that these problems underpinned other factors linked to compliance, such as meeting basic needs and skill acquisition. Probation officers employed a number of social worker oriented evidenced-based strategies, including building high-quality relationships and being flexible, along with modification of sentence requirements to increase supervisee compliance, especially with supervisees who faced considerable obstacles when engaging with a community sentence.

Pervasive punishment in a pandemic

In this paper, we draw on data from a recent study of how Covid-19 and related restrictions impacted on vulnerable and/or marginalised populations in Scotland (Armstrong and Pickering, 2020), including justice-affected people (i.e. people in prison and under supervision, their families and those that work with them; see Gormley et al., 2020). Focusing here mainly on interviews with people released from prison and others under community-based criminal justice supervision, we explore how the pandemic impacted on their experiences. Reflecting upon and refining previous analyses of how supervision is experienced as ‘pervasive punishment’ ( McNeill, 2019 ), we suggest that both the pandemic and public health measures associated with its suppression have changed the ‘pains’ and ‘gains’ of supervision ( Hayes, 2015 ), in particular, by exacerbating the ‘suspension’ associated with it. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the pursuit of justice in the recovery from Covid-19.