Research Aims

My overall research questions are inherently empirical. That is, they are questions about the nature of social phenomena in practice, rather than in theory or principle, and so demand empirically investigated answers. Furthermore, these objectives suggest certain research methods as more effective means of answering them than others, in that they are concerned with offenders’ personal experiences under community punishment.

The empirical study described in this chapter pursued a number of subsidiary objectives in order to help answer these broad questions. Firstly, it sought to identify the pains of community punishment experienced by offenders subject to orders including a supervision requirement. Secondly, it attempted to clarify how those pains related to the orders imposed, and in particular, to the process of supervision. Thirdly, it endeavoured to determine the severity of the pains experienced by those offenders, in order to create a composite picture of the given order’s penal impact.

To achieve these secondary aims, I conducted a series of semi- structured qualitative interviews with offenders and their Probation Service supervisors, drawn from two Probation Centres within a single Probation Trust.

Before discussing how a sample of these two groups was constructed, and the specific methods applied to them, I need to justify some of the research design decisions embodied in the aims laid out above. Specifically, I must address: the emphasis on pain as a subject of data generation; the focus on offenders subject to probation supervision; and the inclusion of probation officers as participants in a study that principally examines the experiences of offenders.

4.1.1 The Pains of Community Punishment as a Subject of Inquiry

I have already defended the understanding of pain as the metric of retributive punishment (at 3.1.1). In determining the penal impact of community punishment it is therefore sensible to explore the impact that these sentences have on offenders’ lives in terms of pain. However, that is not to say that this approach is without its limitations. Indeed, it would seem to focus wholly upon what might be called the negative characteristics of community punishment, at the expense of the positive effects that such penalties can have upon offenders’ lives.3 _{Whilst I am}

concerned with identifying the retributive content of community punishment, this study cannot ignore the rehabilitative history of community punishment, or of probation supervision. Whereas the former can potentially serve to increase the penal impact of a given punishment (by imposing restrictive or otherwise onerous requirements), the latter seems more likely, prima facie, to reduce it.

Ultimately, this study considers the impact of community punishment upon offenders’ lives in terms of the specific pains that they suffer. However, my research questions compel me to consider those pains in terms of the extent to which they are affected by the supervisory relationship. This study therefore treats pains as experiences that can be exacerbated, ameliorated, or indeed wholly unaffected by supervision. The rehabilitative actions of probation supervision can be understood in that context: if, for instance, probation supervision deals with an offender’s criminogenic needs by helping them to find a job, then that supervision ameliorates any pains associated with unemployment and jobseeking that the offender might otherwise have felt (cf. Canton 2011: 75-78). Whilst an approach focussing on pain does tend to accentuate the ‘negative’

3 _{‘Negative’ and ‘positive’ are used here in a purely functional, rather than normative, sense:}

pain is negative in that it takes something away from the offender by hard treatment, whereas a ‘positive’ intervention adds something to the offender’s life. We should expect to see a mix of both positive and negative consequences in any penal intervention.

elements of community punishment (Durnescu 2011: 539-543), that is not to say that it will inevitably be blind to any pain reduction following from supervision.4 Rather it allows a consideration of what negative experiences are extant in the lives of supervised offenders, and how they are affected, positively or negatively, by supervision.

4.1.2 Justifying Supervision as the Sampling Nexus

I must also justify focussing the study upon only those offenders subject to supervision requirements. Although the practice of community punishment has been synonymous with the work of the Probation Service (until the 2014 privatisation of key services: recall 1.2.5), in fact only about a third of all community and suspended sentence orders involve the Service’s traditional activity, supervision (Ashworth 2010: 347). By limiting this study to cases involving supervision, I restrict the scope of enquiry to only this minority of orders.

The decision to focus on this requirement was primarily one of convenience, since it allowed for the identification of a clear gatekeeper to the offender, namely the supervision officer. However, given that the supervision requirement is also the least likely to be used alone, supervision acted as a useful sampling nexus: a point of overlap for many diverse experiences and a key point at which to gain access to potential offender participants serving a range of different requirements, thereby compensating somewhat for the limitations a supervisory focus entails. 4.1.3 Offenders and Probation Officers: The Subjects of Study

In a similar vein, I must also explain the inclusion in this research design of probation officers as participants. After all, the focus of this study, and indeed of the thesis as a whole, is on offenders’ subjective experiences of community punishment, about which probation officers can necessarily only ever give second-hand testimony. Whilst the probation officer must

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understand their client’s5

situation, including any pains experienced during the supervisory process, in order to effectively engage with them, they cannot actually know the offender’s pain in the same way that the offender herself does (Spelman 1995: 105).

Despite this, probation officers have been included in this study for three main reasons. The first is triangulation. Whilst the data generated by participating offenders will necessarily be the closest source to the subject of the study (their pains of community punishment), it does not necessarily follow that they will be the most illuminating source of that information in all cases. In particular, the interview testimony of offenders is liable to be fraught with inconsistencies and uncertainties. This is not to suggest that an offender is necessarily less trustworthy a source of information than the law-abiding, but only to recognise the complexities of any human interaction, including interviewing.

Interpreting interviews is a complex process: one cannot take everything one hears at face value. Even when they have no reason to lie, interviewees’ recollections may be more or less subject to the vagaries of memory, misunderstanding the question, and conventions that may make certain responses impolite, or even taboo (Mason 2002: 78-79). Triangulation of the data – that is, critical comparison with other sources of information (Bauwens 2010) – can provide one avenue for identifying inconsistencies and tensions in participant statements, offering an opportunity to challenge the offender to explain them in a way that neither privileges their own testimony, nor the ‘official’ views of probation officers, as superior (Blagdon and Pemberton 2010: 277-279).

Secondly, probation officers provide valuable context for offender experiences. The probation officer is a point of contact between the

5 _{I use the somewhat obsolete social work terminology of ‘client’ as a synonym for ‘offender’,}

since it is useful as a way of indicating the specific offender supervised by a specific staff supervisor, as well as highlighting their relationship. On the distinction between ‘offenders’ and ‘clients’ in the history of Anglo-Welsh probation practice, see Canton 2011: 33-34.

criminal justice system and the individual offender, and therefore enjoys a considerable level of power to influence their clients’ experiences of community punishment (Phillips 2014). Staff values and practices are important context to the pains that an offender experiences, insofar as they demonstrate the extent to which the supervision (or other aspects of community punishment) cause the pains experienced by the offender during (and after) the period of penal intervention.

Thirdly, probation officers’ inclusion offers some (however limited) assistance in generalising offender experiences beyond the cases of the participating offenders themselves. Whilst their knowledge is second-hand, staff participants do have access to a broad range of clients, each of whom will have experienced different pains of community punishment (and communicated them to their supervisors to different extents). Giving officers the opportunity to comment upon the relationship between the pains experienced by a particular offender and their wider client base provides an opportunity to reduce (if not overcome) the limitation of the study’s findings to the small sample size made necessary by its work- intensive methods (Mason 2002: 67).

In sum, the adoption of a research design aiming to explore the pains of community punishment (as experienced by offenders subject to supervision requirements) via semi-structured interviews with both offenders and supervising probation officers produced data that provides an effective description of the penal impact of community punishment in England and Wales. Let us therefore turn to how these research aims were pursued, through the construction of a meaningful sample and the generation of data from that sample through specific research methods.

4.2 Sample

4.2.1 Sample Construction: From Access Negotiation to Recruitment

(a) THE PARTICIPATING TRUST

The study took place within the area of a single English Probation Trust, which operated within an area corresponding to a regional police force and which is responsible for all probation officers operating within that geographical region (Canton 2011: 194-196). This particular Trust was responsible for a range of Centres located in a central county city and a variety of smaller towns scattered over a single county area.

The Trust was selected because the population of the area it operates within is largely similar to national averages in terms of racial, class and gender composition, and is therefore a useful microcosm of broader Anglo-Welsh society (ONS 2012, 2014). However, each Trust was comparatively independent and self-governing, within the confines of the National Offender Management Service, and as such these data will reflect, and be limited by, the strategic and operational decisions of the Trust at that time.

The vicissitudes of contemporary independent penal research in England and Wales meant that access negotiation6 and preliminary recruitment were undertaken simultaneously. Whilst access negotiation began with the completion and submission of an online form through the Integrated Research Application System (IRAS),7 this process required the provision of information regarding the Trust/s with which I wished to work. It was therefore practical to approach the Trust on a preliminary basis as to whether they would be willing and able to participate, pending the official approval of NOMS. Such consent was, in the event, forthcoming,

6 _{I use the term in the narrow, static sense of meaning, ‘arranging formal permission to}

conduct the research project’. This is a simplification, and ignores the fact that access negotiation is both dynamic and an ongoing feature of empirical research, from the point of first contact to the final interaction with participants: Noaks and Wincup 2004: 55-73.

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Available online at <URL: https://www.myresearchproject.org.uk/SignIn.aspx> (accessed 10th

and once NOMS approval was granted, a liaison from the participating Trust placed me in contact with the participating Centres.

(b) THE PARTICIPATING CENTRES:OC AND IC

As noted above, the participating Trust was responsible for a number of Probation Centres spread across its geographical sphere of influence. These were located in a range of inner-city or smaller, semi-rural town areas, and each had different socio-economic and demographic constituencies. To reflect these institutional differences and avoid skewing data on the basis of factors common to only one area, two Centres were approached for the purposes of recruiting staff employed there as participants in the study. One was located in the centre of the county city, and the other in a smaller town; accordingly I adopted the code-names IC (Inner City) and OC (Outer County) for each Centre. In each Centre, a Senior Probation Officer (SPO), responsible for the management of a team of probation officers, was enlisted as a liaison.

There were a number of significant variations between the two Centres that merit discussion. Firstly, OC and IC differed considerably in terms of the respective scales of their operations. IC was responsible for far more cases overall than OC, although OC drew in cases from a wider (and more rural) geographical area. As a result, the managerial styles utilised by the SPO liaisons involved in the study differed considerably. In OC, the smaller, more streamlined office was able to comply with requests for organising participants and the space and time to conduct interviews far more rapidly, and the SPO was able to take a more hands-on role in circulating information about the study to potential staff participants on my behalf. Her philosophy was very much to set a clear deadline and then stick to it, which made the work of arranging and conducting interviews considerably easier for me! At IC, in contrast, the SPO was unable to provide such a high level of structural support as her Centre had to

operate on a more flexible basis. Her role in circulating information about the study to the staff and assisting in chasing up requests and communications was key, but the fieldwork was conducted here on a much more ad hoc basis, and required a considerably greater investment of time into arranging each interview.

Demographically, OC’s case-load was more homogeneously white, whereas in IC there was a greater racial diversity. In terms of gender, OC supervised both male and female offenders within the same staff team, whereas in IC a specialist staff enclave working out of a charity-run Women’s Centre was responsible for most female offenders.8

This contributed considerably to the demographic limitations of the study (discussed at 4.4.1 below). In both Centres, offenders tended to follow general trends in terms of offender age, with older clients being less common (cf. Farrington 1986).

(c) RECRUITMENT OF STAFF AND OFFENDERS:OCO,ICS

The study sought to recruit six staff and six offenders from each Centre, for a total of 24 participants. Of this, the study closed with a total of 11 staff and 9 offender participants, due to several withdrawals and a comparatively low availability of offenders in IC.

With the support of SPOs, SOs were invited to participate via email, in-Centre presentations, and face-to-face discussions in communal office areas. Information about the study was provided by presentation, as well as by a Participant Information Sheet (PIS), circulated by email (see Appendix C). Where volunteers were not forthcoming recommendations were accepted from the relevant SPO, and then approached regarding potential participation.

8 _{I decided to avoid recruiting participants from the Women’s Centre on the basis that their}

experiences would be too qualitatively different from those supervised in ordinary probation centres to be directly comparable. Some discussion on the experience of supervision in a Women’s Centre is available elsewhere (e.g. Durrance and Ablitt 2001), although this remains a fruitful area for further research.

Staff involvement was initially made contingent upon the suggestion of at least one offender as a potential participant from amongst their client base. They were specifically asked to suggest offenders who were likely to be willing and able to take part effectively, in order to avoid attrition, and who would enrich the sample in terms of the criteria discussed in section 4.2.2. I retained final discretion and approached the offender personally, explicitly ensuring them of my independence from both the Probation Service and the broader government to reassure them that I was not subservient to (or reconnoitring for) the host institution (cf. Noaks and Wincup 2004: 63-66).

Offenders were presented with the opportunity to attend a ‘consent and information meeting’ at their usual Centre, timed to coincide with a supervision session so that they could complete two tasks in one visit.9

Assuming that they were willing to attend, they were presented with a written PIS (Appendix A). I went through this with each offender orally to enable the participation of those with low levels of literacy, and gave them the opportunity to ask questions. Once offenders were satisfied that they were informed about the study, they were presented with a consent form (Appendix B) and given the choice to: sign it there and then; take it away to consider whether or not they wished to participate; or decline to participate altogether.10

Having agreed to take part, offender-participants could choose to withdraw at any time up to the conclusion of data collection (on 31st January 2014) by informing me or their supervision officer. In practice,

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For consent and information meetings, as well as attendance at both interview sessions, offenders were compensated for their travel costs. In addition, each interview session attended was rewarded with a £10 gift voucher as an incentive to participate, at the suggestion of the Trust liaison, who warned of the reluctance of offenders to participate in the Trust’s own research.

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In some cases, multiple offenders were put forward by staff, approached and agreed to take part. Where this happened, the shortfall in staff numbers was resolved by recruiting additional staff (without asking them to suggest potential offender participants from their own client bases). When multiple staff recommendations were made, they were approached in the order in which they suited the sample criteria laid out at 4.2.2.

three offenders did withdraw, and all data provided by them up to that point were destroyed.

Upon signing up to the study, participants were assigned a code based upon: their Centre (OC or IC); the capacity in which they were involved in the study (Offender, ‘O’, or Staff, ‘S’); and a number based upon the order in which they were recruited (codes assigned to withdrawing participants were reassigned). So, the first recruited offender from OC was code-named ‘OCO1’, whilst his supervisor was ‘OCS1’.

4.2.2 Sample Criteria for Offender-Participants

Whilst it was important to ensure that both samples added to the utility of the study as a means of answering my research questions, the focus of the study upon offenders’ lived experiences meant that it was appropriate to adopt a more structured approach to the recruitment of offenders. Staff were recruited on a convenience basis: they either volunteered to participate based upon information circulated by the SPO of the Centre, or agreed to take part after being approached by me individually.

In contrast, offender participants were recruited via a purposive sampling method in order to maximise the diversity of the small sample necessitated by the work intensive nature of qualitative research (Silverman 2010: 141-143). Under a purposive model, the sample is constructed so as to include as many relevant differences in offender- participants’ experiences as possible. By maximising diversity and highlighting differences as well as similarities, such a sample improves the validity of the data generated by enabling one to explore the extent to which themes present in one set of circumstances are also extant elsewhere. This reduces the possibility that extraordinary circumstances in one case will skew the overall findings. Ultimately, however, a purposive sample is aspirational, to the extent that it aims to diversify the sample as much as possible within the constraints of which individuals are actually

willing and able to participate at the time. The sample that results is therefore by no means perfectly diversified; but it is more so than it would be if staff recommendations were uncritically accepted.