The Changing Career of the Correctional Officer: Policy Implications for the 21st Century

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Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Most offenders will also have been actively committing crimes prior to their first conviction.

Although the actual numbers parameters describing the categories differ, the nature of their behaviour as seen in terms of convictions is qualitatively the same. They are convicted at a constant Poisson rate committing offences at random and a constant proportion stop offending after each conviction. There is much greater uncertainty concerning the trivial offender category.

The Changing Career of the Correctional Officer

Their offences are technically crimes regulatory offences, minor public disorder offences, motoring offences, etc but many in the general population would not consider them as criminals and we have not included them, apart from the subcategory who also commit standard list offences, in our main criminal categories.

The theory does not specifically consider the social or psychological causes of the offending behaviour, although in Chapter 6 we identified significant correlations between our risk categories and psychological assessment scores. Also our group structure is not necessarily complete, in that there are almost certainly special categories and subcategories of offenders. Examples of special categories include those whose offending is induced by mental illness or psychological abnormality eg paranoid schizophrenics, paedophile sex offenders, serial rapists, and mass murderers who are all very different from offenders in general but thankfully relatively rare.

Another such group probably consists of around half of life-sentence prisoners who have very low probabilities of recidivism. However, in the p. Selecting subsets of offenders leads to some variation in the parameters proportions in the categories, recidivism probabilities and rates of conviction although this variation is generally much less than the differences in parameters between the main categories. With the exception of the mentally ill, our theory assumes that for individuals crime is a lifestyle choice see also Walters ; West and Farrington and at each offence the individual makes a decision.

Without consequences such behaviour is unlikely to change. Being caught is an essential element in desistance, and the greater the certainty of capture the greater the deterrent effect. However, being caught is not, in itself, sufficient. For those destined to join our criminal categories, offenders need to be made aware of the extent to which their behaviour is unacceptable to society at large.

In our view it is the criminal justice system process 1 that appears to have the most influence on the life-choice decision to no longer commit crime, or at least to modify behaviour to avoid serious breaches of the law. The penalties imposed on conviction may well serve several other penological objectives, but there is no substantive evidence from our analysis that the particular sentence influences the decision to desist from further offending.

Crime prevention is of course a major vehicle for the reduction of crime, but it is not one that our analysis was concerned with see Farrington and Welsh ; Welsh and Farrington , Although reducing opportunities for crime could well impact on the parameters of our model it is not clear what that impact might be. Our theory suggests that overall crime reduction objectives might be achieved by policies to:. Doubling the probability of conviction given a crime halves the total amount of crime committed by known offenders in the long term;.

These will have a disproportionate impact in reducing crime. In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, Farrington ; see also Farrington, Coid, and West identified a number of factors from childhood which could be used to predict later offending and conviction. In a systematic review of evaluations of early intervention programmes, Farrington and Welsh concluded that many programmes were effective in reducing childhood antisocial behaviour and later delinquency.

Beelmann and Raabe , from a review of articles and a meta-analyses of childhood interventions, found that prevention measures addressing high-risk categories produced higher effect sizes than universal strategies. Common sense, the evidence base, and our theory suggests, that preventing the onset of offending would be a very effective strategy for reducing crime and early intervention would seem to be the most likely option for long-term criminality reduction see Farrington ; Farrington and Welsh These programmes are not necessarily focused on crime but rather on community cohesion, improving parenting skills, the provision of facilities for families and improving social responsibility and good citizenship.

All of these interventions are likely to reduce criminal involvement and have been in the political rhetoric for many years.

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There have been programmes based on these ideas but, in England and Wales over the time period covered by the Offenders Index OI cohorts, not on a scale that would show up in our analysis. Sure Start was initially aimed at children under school age and their families, particularly in less advantaged areas, and it has shown some encouraging results Melhuish et al The next opportunity in the life course would be to deal more effectively with early-onset offending.

During the period of the OI cohorts there has been a progressive tendency to divert offenders away from the criminal justice system and a reluctance to prosecute and impose formal sanctions on even quite serious young offenders, particularly for pre- and early teenagers.

In the cohort some offenders, approximately 2 per cent, were convicted at age 10, but this number reduced in successive birth cohorts to , , 71, and 39 in the , , , and cohorts respectively. The pattern is somewhat different if we consider those convicted up to the mid-teens. By age 16 about 20 per cent of offenders in the cohort had one or more convictions. This proportion reduced only slightly in the and cohorts to about 19 per cent of the estimated lifetime offender cohort size. But the proportion of unders reduced significantly to 14 per cent for the cohort and only 7 per cent for the cohort.

Our estimates of criminality see Table 2. The cohort estimate at However, the criminality estimate from the sentencing sample is also about 20 per cent, and should not be so error prone, suggesting that the cohort estimate might not be too low. If correct, this reduction in criminality might be seen as evidence of the success of the police cautioning policies.

But if the reduction p. To effect a reduction in crime would require recidivism after cautioning to be lower than after conviction. However, after controlling for prior differences between cautioned and convicted youth, Farrington and Bennett and Mott found little difference in reoffending between them. Criminality estimates in successive cohorts from to suggest that, despite the progressively increased use of cautions up to age 16, criminality remained comparable to, or above, the cohort level. This in turn suggests that convictions were merely delayed with a commensurate increase in pre-conviction crimes see also Farrington and Maughan The cohort and the sentencing sample, however, do seem to indicate a reduction in criminality.

The authors have insufficient information on the effectiveness of cautioning in more recent years to resolve this issue but this is clearly an important area for more rigorous evaluation. We define the efficiency of conviction as the ratio of convictions to recorded offences. We assume that offenders, in particular our high-risk offenders, commit many more offences than they are convicted of.

For example, Farrington et al in the Cambridge Study found that there were 39 self-reported crimes for every conviction occasion.

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Based on a comparison between victim survey and conviction data, Farrington and Jolliffe concluded that, in England and Wales in , there were only seven convictions per 1, burglars, 17 convictions per 1, vehicle thieves, six convictions per 1, robbers, and 25 convictions per 1, assaulters. Our theory suggests that conviction is the trigger for desistance. In the cohort data there is a tendency for higher recidivism probabilities after shorter inter-conviction times.

However this does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. In the cohort, following inter-conviction times of less than six months, the recidivism probability was 0. But this apparently higher recidivism probability could p. For inter-conviction times between six months and a year the reconviction probability was 0. For inter-conviction times greater than a year the probability decreased steadily to about 0. There is also some evidence that high-rate offenders in particular, tend to slow down between the penultimate and last conviction.

This slowing down is unlikely to be an ageing effect as was demonstrated in Chapter 5 Figures 5. It would also be counter-intuitive to believe that being caught and convicted more quickly would encourage recidivism rather than desistance. Policies to improve the efficiency of conviction should therefore hasten the end of the criminal career and hence reduce crime. Goldblatt and Lewis summarized substantial evidence that various kinds of treatment programmes can reduce recidivism. Such programmes were not widely used in the period from until , during which time the bulk of data for the research leading to our theories and models was collected.

If such programmes are effective in practice they will lead to decreases in the recidivism parameters and would have a significant long-term effect on crime. The Way Ahead Home Office outlined many policies aimed at reducing crime and improving the operation of the criminal justice system. Among these policies was a commitment to target persistent offenders.

PPOs were then prioritized by the police, prisons, p. In the short term, PPOs were also given rehabilitation training and post sentence support to aid resettlement. An important element of the programme was close coordination between all the agencies involved. Dawson and Cuppleditch reported on an evaluation of the Prolific and other Priority Offender programme. The evaluation comprised three components: Although the interview components provided interesting and informative anecdotal evidence of the impact of the programme, our particular interest here is the reconviction analysis and how the theories developed in this book clarify and help to explain the results.

This system enabled the researchers to extract conviction information on all PPOs identified in the first two months of the programme the PPO cohort. A monthly count of cohort convictions was made for the three and a half years prior to and one year and nine months after September see Figure 8.

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The inference was that the PPO programme halted the worsening criminal behaviour, reducing it significantly and setting in train a steady continuing reduction in convictions. Although not specifically stated in the evaluation report, we suspect that selection as a PPO was triggered by a conviction in, p. Dawson and Cuppleditch Because of the conditioning of the sample and stability in the number of active offenders over time we would expect the build up of monthly convictions to follow the mirror image of the residual career length profile.

In the PPO data the conviction rate reduces more slowly than predicted, over the first three months from September to December, but then continues to fall rapidly for a further two months. We would suggest that the slower than predicted initial decline is the result of the catch and convict element in the PPO programme which was intended to speed up the reconviction process with the aim of reducing the active population more quickly. This appears to have happened as after four months the conviction rate which is proportional to the active population is well below the prediction, continuing the initial trend.

In any event the PPO programme appears to have been successful and the resulting conviction rate profile has a rational explanation in terms of the theories and models described in this book. As part of the evaluation, Dawson and Cuppleditch set up a counterfactual sample of offenders based on Propensity Score Matching PSM to act as a control group. Offenders were matched case by case with the PPO cohort sample, on several characteristics including gender, age, and detailed criminal history. Judging from their description, the matching procedures were rigorous.

The monthly conviction rates of the PSM sample are plotted as the irregular line in Figure 8. However the evaluators were perplexed by the profile obtained.

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The PSM conviction rate profile was very p. In our view the problem has arisen due to the conditioning of the counterfactual sample.



There is no mention of date of conviction in the matching criteria. From the graph we suspect that for the PSM offenders their last convictions prior to the start of the PPO selection period occurred evenly over the previous 12 months and that their inclusion in the sample was not conditional on a conviction during the PPO selection period. The number of active offenders would therefore be reduced by 6 per cent each month over the period from September up to, judging from the graph, possibly January The solid line, overlaying the PSM conviction profile, in Figure 8.

The rehabilitate and resettle component of the PPO programme contained some elements of offender treatment and our analysis above suggests that recidivism may have been reduced significantly. That programme contained a variety of interventions including drug treatment, close supervision, and assistance with resettlement and it is not clear which element or combination of elements were responsible for the observed results or indeed whether the reduction in recidivism would persist beyond the observation period.

Notwithstanding these reservations the indications are encouraging and the reduction in the conviction rate and the apparent shortening of the residual career length suggest a permanent change. A long term, up to 10 years, follow up of the PPO cohort and a more detailed analysis of recidivism and inter-conviction times would be needed to verify the effectiveness of the PPO programme. The PPO analysis above has provided a practical example of the way our theory can be used to explain observations which otherwise p. In the PPO programme example the theory provided a plausible counterfactual and was able to explain why the PSM sample produced an unhelpful control, which in the event is entirely consistent if the conditioning of the data is taken into account.

In any evaluation research it is very important to have a clear understanding of the processes involved and a well founded expectation against which to measure the outcome. In this section we will outline what we might expect from policy interventions aimed at influencing criminality, recidivism, rate of offending or rate of conviction. Perhaps the most important implication of our theory is that the criminal justice system does control crime. The vast majority of offenders cease offending because of the activities of the CJS.

Criminal Policy Implications

This means that changes to the CJS may lead to reduced or increased levels of crime. However, perhaps the most effective way to reduce crime is to reduce criminality, ie to stop individuals becoming criminal in the first place. For each potential high-risk offender diverted completely from a life of crime by early intervention, an average of between 19 and 31 recorded crimes would be averted.

For potential low-risk offenders an average of between 4 and 7 recorded crimes would be averted. For high-risk offenders the above estimates are probably very conservative; if unrecorded and unreported crimes are included the averages could be very much greater. Overall approximately 5 per cent of the population fall into our high-risk categories and in Chapter 6 we showed that a significant proportion of the high-risk category could be identified from psychological characteristics.

If early interventions were focused on these most vulnerable individuals a disproportionate 5 reduction in crime could be achieved. Low-risk potential offenders would be more difficult to target as they appear to be similar, psychologically, to non-offenders and the bulk of non-standard list trivial offenders. Reducing the size of an offender category would result in a pro rata reduction in the crime committed by offenders in that category. Policies aimed at reducing recidivism can also have a significant and disproportionate impact on crime.

Again this is particularly true for high-risk offenders.