‘Personalisation’

Abstract

When the Coalition government's 'rehabilitation revolution' was first articulated, innovation was an important theme, encompassing innovation by frontline staff, by organizations working within a mixed economy and even social entrepreneurs. Under 'Transforming Rehabilitation' innovation remained a stated aim of criminal justice reform, but the scope of innovation envisaged seemed to narrow. This paper describes the early stages of a socially innovative project to develop and implement a personalised approach to offender rehabilitation in the context of TR. It draws on the concept of 'desistance'. This in turn leads to consideration of community capacity building and market development that draws on experience from the social care sector. A number of early challenges and plans to overcome them are discussed. Challenges include the inherent uncertainty of the innovation process; the importance of collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders including service users and local community organisations; innovating during a period of organisational change and wider public sector cuts; and the public presentation of personalised working with offenders. Plans to address these challenges include moving gradually from small-scale proto-typing to larger pilots and close collaboration between service providers and evaluators.

Towards a desistance-focused approach to probation supervision for people who have committed Intimate Partner Violence: A digital toolkit pilot study

“…This also supports assertions made elsewhere (e.g., Morris and Graham, 2019) that CDM clips can be combined into personalised profiles of desistance-focused activity. These findings are apt given that personalisation to the individual and their circumstances is a significant factor in both effective probation supervision (e.g., Fox and Marsh, 2016) and technologies designed to support desistance (see Ross, 2018). It is notable that while the flexibility of SRT was considered an advantage by some, elsewhere it also led to uncertainty.…”