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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:36 am
Time: 11:36 am
Results for offender rehabilitation (u.k.)
2 results foundAuthor: Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Title: Making Prisons Work: Skills for Rehabilitation - Review of Offender Learning Summary: Re-offending blights lives and communities, carrying personal, social and economic costs of between £9.5 billion and £13 billion a year. Enabling offenders to have the skills that will make them attractive to employers so that they can find and keep jobs on release or whilst serving a community sentence – becoming an asset rather than a burden to society – makes sense. Whilst our investment in giving offenders the skills they need to help them get and keep jobs is significant, it is a fraction of the prize on offer to all of us if we can prevent the creation of future victims of crime, with the associated economic and social costs, by cutting their reoffending. Skills for Sustainable Growth set out the reforms that will help bring renewed economic growth, improve people’s chances to achieve social mobility, secure greater social justice, and build the Big Society. It recognised that learners need help with support and information to make the right decisions about their future. For offenders, those decisions must be focussed on developing the skills and aptitudes that will secure employment, helping to put offenders on the right path. Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders puts work for offenders at the centre of punishment and rehabilitation, both in custody and the community and, like Skills for Sustainable Growth, enables decision-making and accountability to move decisively away from the centre of government. Both documents put a premium on local-level autonomy and on local-level discretion. This review of offender learning takes us down the same path, setting out our view that we will achieve the most effective results by making offender learning an authentic part of the skills and employment systems that operate at that same local level. Details: London: Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011. 33p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 7, 2012 at http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/further-education-skills/docs/m/11-828-making-prisons-work-skills-for-rehabilitation Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/further-education-skills/docs/m/11-828-making-prisons-work-skills-for-rehabilitation Shelf Number: 124019 Keywords: Correctional EducationCorrectional ProgramsOffender Rehabilitation (U.K.)Vocational Education and Training |
Author: Canton, Rob Title: Outside Chances: Offender Learning in the Community: Final Report Summary: Offenders have fewer educational and employment skills than the general population and fewer opportunities to access the services they need. Since education and qualifications help people to gain employment, and since employment is often central to desistance from crime, enhancement of services could contribute significantly to a reduction in reoffending. To understand how services are provided at the moment and how they are experienced by the users themselves, the City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development commissioned De Montfort University to interview offenders and to collate and interpret their experiences and their opinions. Research approach De Montfort interviewed 127 service users in four Probation Trust Areas. More than 30 professionals were also interviewed in a range of different roles, including offender managers in the probation service, and education providers/tutors. While interview schedules were used to ensure that the necessary areas of inquiry were covered systematically, interviewers encouraged participants to express their own views about what mattered to them – foregrounding the user voice – and a great deal of rich data were gathered. There has been quite a lot of research about learning opportunities in prison, but much less is known about provision in the community. The needs profile of offenders subject to community orders is likely to be very similar to that of prisoners, but the context of provision is very different, as are the accessibility and quality of learning as perceived by service users, and the incentives and barriers to participation. Key findings Offenders involved in learning have an enormous diversity of experience, aspirations and motives. For example, some were unable to read or write; others were educated to degree level. This needs to be taken into account by those undertaking assessment, as well as by those designing and delivering the programmes. A very common experience is under-achievement at school, for many and often inter-related reasons, and a subsequent disaffection from education which leaves offenders anxious and apprehensive about learning. Busy offender managers may fail to recognise doubts – for instance a reluctance to participate in educational programmes or even to acknowledge their needs – and therefore give priority to more obviously criminogenic factors in planning their work with offenders. Almost all respondents were subject to a community order. There seems rarely to have been a specific requirement to participate in education. The majority were attending education either as part of their supervision or on unpaid work. The experience of unpaid workers is mixed: many take it up to work off their hours more quickly or as what they perceive to be an easier option. While some may then participate enthusiastically, many do not and struggle to engage with the learning experience. There are different models of provision. Systems and procedures for the assessment of offenders and the delivery of education and learning vary considerably between Trust areas. Whilst there is scope for improvement in some places, there is considerable innovation and commitment to offender education across the areas. This research points to strengths and drawbacks of various arrangements, with some aspects of ‘best practice’ identified, but overall finds no one model to be superior to another. Assessment is variable. Despite the professionals’ insistence that assessment instruments were efficiently and routinely deployed, many offenders do not recall processes of assessment (which is not to say that they did not take place) and some say that they had to raise the matter of learning themselves. Although qualification and employment are often mentioned by offenders, there is a wide range of other motives to participate in education, including the value of learning for its own sake, intellectual stimulation, personal fulfilment and a wish to contribute to the learning of their own children. These are all worthy motives and should be valued for their own sake, as well as for the contribution that they are likely to make to the living of a ‘good life’ with which desistance is typically associated. Some offenders and offender managers explain that service users cannot usefully participate in education until they have addressed other challenges in their lives – for example, drug misuse and other criminogenic factors. Other professionals, on the other hand, and some service users say that learning has helped them to deal with those very problems, by giving them purpose, improving their skills of personal organisation and increasing their confidence. Even where it has been decided that an individual is not in a position to benefit from education for the time being, this should be reviewed periodically and not be forgotten. Providers typically offer encouragement, enthusiasm, patience and considerable educational skill. Even offenders who were relatively unimpressed with the programmes themselves tended to speak very highly of the tutors with whom they worked, whether probation employees, partners – mainly from Further Education colleges – or others. As well as supporting educational attendance, especially where this is voluntary, the quality of engagement with tutors seems likely to contribute to the general experience of probation and enhance compliance. This is another way in which educational provision might support reduced reoffending. Where employment is a principal motivation, in many cases offenders express disappointment that much available provision is too basic and offers no very clear pathway to work. A common criticism was that programmes were too elementary and there were insufficient opportunities to progress, at least through probation provision. Many offenders felt that there was very little choice available. Where learning programmes were individualised, this is valued and enables people to develop – both those at higher/faster levels and those who need more basic support and input. Motivation and attitude seem much the most important factors in determining participation. Crucially, the reasons for continuing in education may not be the same as those that led to participation in the first place. Offender managers may need to develop their skills in initial motivation. Once offenders have begun learning, their achievements often bring their own reward and reinforcement and tutors contribute invaluably in this process. There are practical constraints to educational participation. Probation and its partners are generally creative and supportive in overcoming many practical difficulties around times and location for educational provision. On the other hand, fear, lack of confidence, pessimism about employment prospects and a lack of funding to develop education beyond that provided by probation can further undermine the commitment of even the most motivated offenders. Many professionals are anxious about economic uncertainties. There is a worry that high unemployment will further prejudice the position of a profoundly disadvantaged client group. There is also great concern about the funding of future provision. Many professionals are worried that their projects may not be able to continue, despite their meeting of the targets set for them and the demonstrable value of the work. Several professionals said that much time was spent trying to find funding which might better be spent on developing the quality of offender learning. Generally the most appreciated programmes were characterised by: ● the personal qualities of the tutors ● a positive learning environment ● the active and continuing interest of the offender manager ● the provision of learning on familiar and accessible premises ● the opportunity to follow individualised learning programmes at the person’s level and pace ● connections between the learning and other concerns and interests in the service user’s life ● the intrinsic interest of the materials ● some opportunities for peer support in learning. Since educational programmes have several objectives and can bring many gains, different criteria and methods must be used to evaluate their effects. This challenges the idea of ‘payment by results’. No research findings have been able to establish a clear causal association between participation in education and reduced reoffending (with or without the intervening influence of employment), but the role of learning as one aspect of desistance, its value as a precondition of social inclusion and its indirect effects on self-esteem, confidence, problemsolving and personal relationships make it one of the most important services accessible through a community order. Details: City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development; De Montfort University: Community and Criminal Justice, 2011. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 18, 2013 at: http://www.skillsdevelopment.org/PDF/Outside%20Chances%20full%20report.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.skillsdevelopment.org/PDF/Outside%20Chances%20full%20report.pdf Shelf Number: 129022 Keywords: Educational ProgramsEx-Offender EmploymentOffender Rehabilitation (U.K.) |