Regulating Justice: The Dynamics of Compliance and Breach in Criminal Justice Social Work in Scotland

Not only does Scotland imprison more people than most European countries, but our prison numbers are also rising despite a fall in crime levels. The Scottish Government is attempting to reduce imprisonment through increased use of community based disposals (probation orders, community service orders, community payback orders, supervised attendance orders) and early prison release schemes (parole and non-parole licence). However, the number of offenders who fail to comply with such orders (known as 'breach') appears to be increasing. Forty-one per cent of community-based disposals were subject to breach applications in 2009/10, resulting in many offenders being subsequently imprisoned, thus exacerbating the prison population and undermining positive work being undertaken by supervising social workers in the community. Reasons for non-compliance amongst offenders can include a perceived lack of legitimacy or fairness of a sentence by an individual offender or an inability to remember, or to afford travel to, appointments with supervising social workers. But also breach can result from overly risk-averse supervising officers or Parole Board members, or overly high expectations placed on offenders given community-based sentences by the judiciary. Not only can offenders' chaotic lifestyles affect their capacity to comply, but also sentencers and practitioners may overly depend on breach procedures as a means of responding to concerns regarding public protection and agency accountability.

Several commentators have expressed concerns about the lack of research on compliance with community-based disposals, the impact of imprisonment on post-release compliance and why the system reacts to breaches in the ways that it does. This proposed research will thus be the first to more fully and systematically understand the dynamics of compliance and breach in Scotland. A total of 548 face to face interviews will be conducted with offenders (both those currently complying and those failing to comply), social workers and managers, the judiciary, defence lawyers, court staff and police in three case study areas in Scotland (Community Justice Authorities comprising 13 of the 32 local authority criminal justice social work departments) and with Parole Board members, prison staff and Scottish Government policy makers nationally. These in-depth interviews will be combined with quantitative data collection Scotland-wide on compliance and breach within community-based disposal and post-custodial licences over the last five years.

The analysis will be informed by existing (albeit limited) literature on compliance and breach, but also the themes emerging from the statistical data and face-to-face interviews will inform a theoretical framework and typology of breach and compliance which will be of use not only to future criminal justice policy makers, academics and practitioners, but also to other academic and professional disciplines outside of the criminal justice arena.

The findings from this research will be disseminated to academics, policy makers, practitioners and the general public through reports, conferences, articles, a consultation exercise and workshops, and media coverage, and the data collected from this research will be archived in the Economic and Social Data Service for future use by other researchers.

This research is timely and highly relevant to current policy and practice challenges in Criminal Justice in Scotland. Compliance with community-based or post-prison release orders demonstrates one element of the effectiveness of such interventions. However, it is not just effectiveness in reducing reoffending that is the rationale for these interventions. Scotland has seen a constant rise in its prison population in recent decades, and discussions are ongoing within Government to build a 'super' prison in north-east Scotland. Allowing an expansion of prison numbers will not, however, reduce reoffending in the longer term, and indeed may even exacerbate it. Equally, there has been a trend towards the enforcement of community penalties at the possible expense of proactive support to individuals to reduce their offending behaviour. Whilst this may seek to allay public concerns in the short term, it is likely to be counterproductive in the longer term if offenders themselves lack confidence in the effectiveness of such interventions. Not only is offender reintegration in local communities important for sustaining desistance from crime through offering support, employment or stable accommodation for example, but also the development of viable and effective community-based alternatives to custody will more likely increase public and judicial confidence in criminal justice social work interventions. Thus, the challenge for the judiciary and criminal justice social work in particular is to ensure that community-based interventions are realistic, engaging and positive experiences for offenders which encourage their compliance. Currently, for example, over 40 per cent of offenders allegedly fail to comply with their community-based sentences, and yet their 'punishment' for this may be the same sentence again but for longer or with additional, more onerous requirements.

The above demonstrates the likely cost inefficiencies in the current system of enforcement - money is being channeled into dealing with non-compliance when it could better be spent on ensuring interventions encourage meaningful engagement by offenders. Equally, understanding more about the dynamics of compliance and breach from various perspectives will enable professionals to intervene in more meaningful ways with offenders in the future. Thus, it is anticipated that this research will have a long term impact on policy (in terms of questioning the need for further prison places or questioning enforcement practices at the expense of consensus-building approaches between supervising social workers and offenders), and on practice (in terms of identifying more constructive ways of gaining the cooperation of offenders in community-based interventions). Having a key policy maker from the Scottish Government and ADSW, social work managers and offenders on the Research Advisory Group will be a crucial means of influencing policy and practice.

As well as documenting the findings from this research on websites accessed by professionals and academics, articles on the research will be published in the Probation Journal and Euro Vista, both targeting practitioners in criminal justice social work across Europe. It is proposed that a consultation exercise, with offenders and criminal justice social workers who were respondents in the research, will take place in each case study area towards the end of the fieldwork period, not only to discuss the findings but also to draw up Research Action Plans for implementation by senior managers and policy makers at half-day workshops in each case study area. These will enable key stakeholders both locally and nationally to discuss the findings, agree recommendations and implement Research Action Plans. The Research Team will use Survey Monkey to elicit progress and feedback from these stakeholders after the workshops and at 6 months thereafter, to monitor progress on the Research Action Plans.