Do We Need the Users’ Voice? An Empirical Research Example Comparing Views of Service Providers and Ex-Prisoners: Implications for Practice

User involvement in service development is seen as important to the credibility of these interventions but involving prisoners or ex-prisoners in this process can be problematic because of the vulnerability of this group as well as security issues. Questions arise as whether front line workers can instead reflect the perspectives of their clients accurately during service development events. Further, we query whether an alignment of perspectives is important for effective professional-prisoner relationships and offender self-efficacy when engaging in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. To explore these questions, this chapter, in a case study third sector mentorship organisation, compares and contrasts the views of ex-prisoners and their mentors. Q methodology is employed to make this comparison. We find that mentors perspectives are most in tune with the most pessimistic perspectives of their clients: the most lonely, indigent and ill group of the exoffenders they work with. They do not share the optimistic views that characterise other groups of offenders in receipt of their service. The chapter explores the implications of these different views for exoffenders, their mentors and the participation of the offender in service innovation.

Interorganisational Collaboration in a Norwegian Prison—Challenges and Opportunities Arising from Interagency Meetings

In prison, the provision of care and the surveillance of inmates takes place in multiple locations with several often contradictory demands. Inmates may experience a fragmentation of services because of the separate silos in which criminal justice service and mental health professionals work and the distinct ways of working that develop within these. A greater alignment between services is required. This chapter focuses on interagency meetings in a Norwegian prison. These are groups that aim to develop an holistic perspective of the inmate’s situation and problems, and are seen as an innovative way to overcome the contradiction between ‘treatment’ and ‘punishment’ prison paradigms applied by the different professionals working together in the prison and mental health services. We analysed how the professionals interact at interagency meetings, and how they align their tasks, goals, roles and expertise to support the inmate’s imprisonment and rehabilitation. Our analysis illustrates the multiple ways in which this collective activity is conceptualised by the participants and then provides a model of interorganisational dynamics through which these collaborations may be fostered. By so doing, we have made suggestions about how to enhance interprofessional collaboration between prison and mental health services. The chapter also contributes to research on challenges and opportunities for collaboration in complex organisational settings.

Mirrors of Prison Life—From Compartmentalised Practice Towards Boundary Crossing Expertise

In this chapter, our aim is to broaden the understanding of the compartmentalisation of practices within and between different service providers in the prison setting and to emphasise the need to cross professional boundaries between these services treating the same inmates. For this, we will provide a multidimensional “mirror” into prison life by bringing forth the different voices of the professional groups involved in the provision of mental health and prison services. A key finding is that the tensions emerging during the activities between the service providers are historically accumulated and caused by the inflexible division of labour and the lack of interagency expertise. New models to enable the crossing of the organizationel boundaries between parties are thus needed.

Early Recognition Method: ‘Opening Doors’ in Risk Management Dialogue Between Mental Health and Prison Services

In secured institutions, which include prison services, violence between clients or towards staff has a major impact, eliciting feelings of stress, anger and fear for those involved. In this chapter we explain how violence can be understood as a complexity of multiple factors, and why a structured risk management strategy is necessary to adequately assess and manage violence. We describe specifically the Early Recognition Method (ERM) as a step-wise forward strategy aiming to identify, formulate and manage early warning signs of violence and allows a risk management dialogue to develop between prison staff and inmates. The ERM-dialogue strategy has successfully been developed and applied in forensic psychiatry and in this chapter we explore how, in a process of innovation, the knowledge and research of the ERM-applied in forensic services, has been transferred to prison services. The ‘multivoicedness’ of the ERM is explored through the theoretical concept of the ‘Self’

People in Contact with Criminal Justice Systems Participating in Service Redesign: Vulnerable Citizens or Democratic Partners?

This chapter presents a conceptual consideration of the centrality of ‘voice’ in the Criminal Justice System (CJS), particularly in respect of service development. The hidden perspectives of those who are ‘subject to’, working with or working in the CJS represent important aspects to consider when seeking to change, develop or evaluate services. After emphasising the turn to including the voices of those often excluded from participation we explore aspects of the contested concept of ‘vulnerability’ as a label often applied to those working with CJS. We widen this to consider the vulnerabilities by association that professional take on as popular discourses permeate perceptions of CJS cultures. Subsequently, we examine some of the ways in which the inclusion of hidden and potentially vulnerable voices of those citizens involved with CJS can assist the transformative development of services by irritating the normative perspectives. We advocate an approach based around critical ethnography as a means of sitting with and walking besides people intimately involved in CJS.

Setting the Scene and Introduction

Collaborative working in the criminal justice system is complex. This introductory chapter synthesises some of its challenges and the role of innovation and organisational learning to address these. In so doing, we present the work of the COLAB consortium and its ambitions to apply theories and methods of activity systems to the field of interagency collaborations and social innovation within the criminal justice system. We explore the basic principles of these and supplementary theoretical and methodological perspectives that are treated in greater detail in later chapters of this book. We raise, in particular, issues and challenges faced in including service users’ voice in service development and innovation before exploring the concept of multivoicedness and its application. This leads to a discussion of distributed responsibility for offender rehabilitation to which many stakeholders including academic institutions should be held to account. The chapter ends with a consolidation of where we are in our current understanding of collaboration, innovation, and organisational learning in the criminal justice context and proposes ways forward.

Avenues of Opportunity: Journeys of Activities Through Third Sector Organisations

This chapter discusses a social anthropological research study that considers the place of third sector organisations (TSOs) in society, particularly for those who have been in contact with the criminal justice services. The work is based on insights from journeys through Norway, and to a lesser extent the UK, captured as narratives by a TSO caseworker in partnership with other research team members. The insights were drawn from interactions with those along the journey such as ex-prisoners, volunteers, charity workers, members of religious communities and so forth. What these revealed were the many and sometimes hidden universes that exist in and outside TSOs. This chapter offers deep and sometimes different perspectives, asking the reader to consider the range of opportunities TSOs can offer and sets these against concepts of self and other, place, boundary crossing and organisational learning. The work speaks to those seeking to reintegrate into society after prison, their families, significant others, professional practitioners, students and academics, and although primarily based around Norway, the content resonates internationally.

Interprofessional Collaboration Concerning Offenders in Transition Between Mental Health and Criminal Justice Services. PINCOM Used as a Framework for HCR-20V3 Assessment

This chapter provides a novel framework for risk assessment and management by combining the Perception of Interprofessional Collaboration Model (PINCOM) and Historical-Clinical-Risk Management-20, Version 3 (HCR-20V3). PINCOM was developed to identify central aspects of interprofessional collaboration, whereas HCR-20V3 is the most used instrument in risk assessment of violence worldwide. The main scope of this chapter is to introduce and discuss the feasibility of combining the two tools to enhance collaboration between service providers in the mental health and criminal justice systems. First, we describe the HCR-20V3 and suggest how parts of it can be jointly used as a tool for concrete collaboration in the practice field. Next, we present the PINCOM tool, containing a conceptual model (PINCOM) and a research methodology (PINCOM-Q). It is suggested that the HCR-20V3 serves as a meeting point between different professionals for being concrete in joint casework. PINCOM can then be used within a larger social innovation framework and as a reflective tool during or after this structured professional assessment and acting as a catalyser for constructive collaboration.

Facilitating Understanding of Ex-Prison Service Users’ Needs: The Utility of Q Method as a Means of Representing Service User Voices in Service Development

Novel approaches are needed if the voices of prisoners as service users are to be heard in service development and organisational learning. In this chapter we introduce Q methodology and suggest how this research method can be applied in order to reveal the views of service users in contact with the criminal justice system. We illustrate this by describing the development of a set of Q statements used to elicit the perspectives of ex-prisoners’ experiences of service provisions in an UK mentorship organisation. We discuss how Q methodology can be applied to capture ex-prison service users’ views in research, in therapy or in dialogues between service user and mentor, as well as in including service users’ voices in service development.

Mentoring in Practice: Rebuilding Dialogue with Mentees’ Stories

The voluntary and community sector (VCS) is a key player in the support of prisoners and ex-prisoners in the English and Welsh criminal justice system. Organisational learning and innovation is urgently required in this sector to adapt to the current political and economic environment. The chapter describes exploratory efforts to introduce participatory methods drawn from Change Laboratory Methods and Clinics of Activity within a local VCS organisation that would help (re)build dialogue between stakeholders with the aim of promoting organisational learning and innovation. The intervention comprised an ethnographic phase of observing the staff, interviews with 19 key stakeholders, and a final developmental workshop with the staff. The analysis of these data by the researcher (first author) provided insight into the experience of mentors working in the voluntary sector as well as providing a trigger for dialogue in a subsequent workshop that used these data to establish dialogue between staff. These served as dialogical artefacts, introducing micro-dramas in the form of selected user stories. These dialogical artefacts triggered diverse reactions and analyses by the various participants, highlighting different elements than those anticipated by the researcher. We discuss the different readings of our research data by the researcher and staff members, presenting these two contrasting perspectives, and the implications this has for workplace development methods.