Following the disturbances seen across the country last month, there was much talk about the severity of sentencing and the level of the use of prison both for remand purposes as well as for punishment. While these issues need to be addressed, it’s also important not to loose sight of the soft skills that are required when developing a working relationship with offenders, whether as a prison or a probation officer or in any other capacity.

Heather Munro, the new head of the London Probation Service recently highlighted this when she expressed a ‘new’ approach to managing offenders: respect. Over a lifetime of probation work, she has come to believe that listening to offenders when they express needs and treating them with the same respect businesses show their customers can help to change behaviour and reduce reoffending.

“If we want to cut crime, then vengeance and punishment, disguised as public protection, can no longer remain the cornerstone of the criminal justice system. We should stop reinforcing the loveless and disrespectful world offenders know so well and instead subject them to the tough love that has been denied them at home. We need individual, person-centred programmes to help them change because change is possible in anyone who has the capacity to be honest.”

When respect is at the heart of the relationship, this can be the catalyst to motivate an individual to enter into an alliance with the officer and participate in a process, even if not convinced or its effectiveness. Often, the client will be starting supervision in a state of personal crisis using phrases such as being ‘at absolute rock-bottom,’ ‘I was so depressed,’ ‘I didn’t think I would pull through.’ Problems relating to drugs, alcohol, depression, mental health and relationships would feature heavily in their lives. From this starting point, the offender would have low expectations of the process benefitting them. This entry-point highlights the importance for the officer to develop and sustain a respectful attitude and vision towards the client. (See blog entry: Emotional Proximity, 29/7/11)

When this occurs, the client group will describe the most important qualities in their officers as ‘listening, understanding, approachability, and empathy. Trust is also a dominant quality, inspiring confidence, honesty and truthfulness. When such a relationship develops between the two parties, this underpins each stage in the course of offender supervision: a full assessment, delivering meaningful messages, persuasion of active engagement in methodology, supporting the offender through lapse or relapse (which frequently resembles an act of friendship), and final disengagement from supervision.

However, change doesn’t occur in a vacuum: it is a complex interaction between the offender, the officer, and the range of interventions deployed. At the heart of the relationship lies the trust that offenders speak of which allows them to engage with the work required of them. Offenders will describe such a relationship as one of friendship and trust: ‘someone I could talk to,’ ‘a safe geezer,’ ‘she treated me like an equal.’

If evidence-based practice is to continue to be the key to effective supervision, more and more we need to hear about the successes that are out there. We need to hear about these anecdotes within the Criminal Justice Service, within the community, within the local media, and within the national media. These stories must not be overlooked when devising new structures for service delivery.

An old Romany saying is that, ‘Stories have wings. They fly from mountain-top to mountain-top.’ It’s you and I that give them flight.

Respect | Relationship

Recently, while in South Africa, I read the book by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 'No Future Without Forgiveness.' This book is an account of the last days of aparthied and the workings of the Truth and Reconcilliation Council which the Archbishop chaired. What could be more powerful than the forgiveness associated with those times.

Here is an extract that explores and throws light on what it is to forgive, through the eyes of Desmond Tutu.

"When you embark on the business of asking for and granting forgiveness, you are taking a risk. In relations between individuals, if you ask another person for forgiveness you may be spurned; the one you have injured may refuse to forgive you. The risk is even greater if you are the injured party, wanting to offer forgiveness. The culprit may be arrogant, obdurate or blind; not ready or willing to apologise or to ask for forgiveness. He or she thus cannot appropriate the forgiveness that is offered. Such rejection can jeopardise the whole enterprise ….

…. In forgiving, people are not being asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember, so that we should learn not to let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously and not minimizing it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence. It involves trying to understand the perpetrators and so have empathy, to try to stand in their shoes and appreciate the sort of pressures and influences that might have conditioned them.

Forgiving means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetra­tor in his own coin, but it is a loss that liberates the victim. A recent issue of the journal Spirituality and Health had on its front cover a picture of three U.S. ex-servicemen standing in front of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. One asks, "Have you for­given those who held you prisoner of war?" "I will never forgive them," replies the other. His mate says: "Then it seems they still have you in prison, don't they?” Vol. 2, No, 1 (New York, Trinity Church: Spirituality & Health Publishing).

Does the victim depend on the culprit's contrition and confession as the precondition for being able to forgive? There is no question that, of course, such a confession is a very great help to the one who wants to forgive, but it is not absolutely indispensable. .... If the victim could forgive only when the culprit con­fessed, then the victim would be locked into the culprit's whim, locked into victimhood, whatever her own attitude or intention. That would be palpably unjust.

I have used the following analogy to try to explain the need for a perpetrator to confess. Imagine you are sitting in a dank, stuffy, dark room. This is because the curtains are drawn and the windows have been shut. Outside the light is shining and a fresh breeze is blowing. If you want the light to stream into that room and the fresh air to flow in, you will have to open the window and draw the curtains apart; then that light which has always been available will come in and air will enter the room to freshen it up. So it is with forgiveness.

The victim may be ready to forgive and make the gift of her forgiveness available, but it is up to the wrongdoer to appropriate the gift - to open the window and draw the curtains aside. He does this by acknowledging the wrong he has done, so letting the light and fresh air of forgiveness enter his being.

In the act of forgiveness, we are declaring our faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to make a new beginning on a course that will be different from the one that caused us the wrong. We are saying, here is a chance to make a new beginning. It is an act of faith that the wrongdoer can change. According to Jesus, (Matthew 18:22)  we should be ready to do this not just once, not just seven times, but seventy times seven, without limit – provided, it seems Jesus says, your brother or sister who has wronged you is ready to come and confess the wrong they have committed yet again.

That is difficult, but because we are not infallible, because we will hurt especially the ones we love by some wrong, we will always need a process of forgiveness and reconciliation to deal with those unfortunate yet all too human breaches in relationships. They are an inescapable characteristic of the human condition.

Once the wrongdoer has confessed and the victim has forgiven, it does not mean that is the end of the process. Most frequently, the wrong has affected the victim in tangible, material ways. Apartheid provided the whites with enormous benefits and privileges, leaving its victims deprived and exploited. If someone steals my pen and then asks me to forgive him, unless he returns my pen, the sincerity of his contrition and confession will be considered to be nil. Confession, forgiveness, and reparation, wherever feasible, form part of a continuum."

Empathy | Attitude | Reconciliation | Relationship | Forgiveness