It might be useful to look more closely at one small but possibly important point in any rehabilitation scheme - "The Offending Behaviour Course".

Various prison-run courses, aiming to help towards rehabilitation, are run extensively in a great many prisons and their attendance is still being encouraged for all and sundry. There is great kudos to be gained by any prison that shows growing numbers of attendees. Both prisoners and staff can enthusiastically tick the right boxes to show their popularity. Unfortunately, the rates of re-offending amongst those who have done the courses are actually higher than amongst those who have not.

Why this failure? Consider the situation.

Ten years ago, when the concept of courses, devised by a Canadian, was first introduced into the prison estate, there was quite a respectable success rate in spite of initial scepticism.

In the mid-1990's, the courses being run were simply called "Offending Behaviour Courses" and attendance at these courses by prisoners was entirely voluntary. The courses were conducted at first by the resident prison Probation Officers, each wing in a prison having its own resident Probation Officer, and a senior Probation Officer would oversee the work.

At that time, a wing Probation Officer did a diverse job which involved assisting a prisoner with family problems and, by being present all day on the wing, making himself available to be seen by any prisoner at a moment's notice.

When "Offending Behaviour Courses" were introduced, they were a voluntary thing and inmates were asked to submit their names if they wished to take part. This in effect meant that the prisoners who applied had, in fact, for their own reasons, already made a conscious decision to attempt to rehabilitate themselves. It is an acknowledged fact that one volunteer is worth ten pressed men.

Today, prisoners are cajoled and bullied onto courses which in effect means that they resent their attendance from the start and really only comply so as to ensure that they receive the correct tick in the correct box on their records.

Content of the courses

In the 1990's the courses involved a number of categories as follows: The list is not exhaustive, but the general idea can clearly be seen. "Offending Behaviour Courses" were quite comprehensive. The courses themselves ran for a total of six weeks in the education department of the prisons from 9:00 am to 11:30 am, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm every working day of the week. This gave a course time of six hours per day, five days a week for six weeks - a total course time of 180 hours. A very concentrated few weeks.

Today's courses are split into separate parts, the above list having been turned into individual courses which then give any prisoner ticks for any of these divisions. It looks good on paper - lots of ticks - but is of little actual value considering that today the participants, who can take separate sessions as is convenient, are there under duress mostly and have little intention of putting into practice anything suggested. To continue, due to over-expansion of the scheme, today's courses are run by poorly-trained staff with input from trainee psychologists who are really only doing it to widen their experience.

In the early days, attendees were encouraged to talk about matters as they came up and to discover for themselves answers to problems through discourse and interaction. Lessons learned that way are very effective. But now, attendees are given the answers to all the problems and merely have to learn them by heart to obtain the required pass result at the end of the course. It is not unusual for a prisoner who has completed the course to pass the correct answers and responses on to the next course attendees to help them to gain the right ticks.

Consequently, the courses being run today are in effect pretty useless. We see the proof of that in the rising re-offending rates which are actaully higher amongst those who have done the courses than amongst those who have not - perhaps thay have learned to play the system through having been on the courses!

There are those who are unwilling to believe the figures that prove the above point. Those, perhaps with a vested interest, are blindly continuing on the same tack. The practice of burying heads in sand and pretending there is nothing wrong is a disservice to all concerned. We see the results daily.

What went wrong?

The answer is quite simple. The courses fail now because of their very success in the past. It was decided that these courses should be expanded, but there was expansion without understanding of the reasons for the success. The good idea was totally undermined by the approach taken by the authorities.
    Reasons for first success and now what?
  1. First, the element of voluntary participation - this must be maintained, even by a little bribery (some reward system perhaps): more carrot but certainly no stick
  2. The concentrated interaction for all concerned must have been deeply felt. Expansion has lost this. The dumbing down must be reversed.
  3. The course tutors who had the grasp and confidence to hold the group together were obviously excellent and now not so easily recruited. It will be no use to continue without teachers of this calibre.
There were not the staff or the facilities to put the expansion into practice. The full "Offending Behaviour Courses" were dumbed down. The nine subject course was split into nine separate courses, which could be taken at different times and all were given new titles. Staffing levels had to be filled by current staff, which meant that untrained prison officers were then forced into the matter. They were given some training themselves to learn how to conduct these simple question-and-answer courses (which, of course, they are not) and they were off! Something was being done! We had the boxes all ticked to prove it! The public could sleep soundly in their beds at night as prisoners would now be released into society without risk of their re- offending.

The fact that the prison officers were being used to help carry out this farce made matters worse. By this time we had prisoners who had absolutely no desire to be a part of courses which were being run by prison officers who had even less desire to be there and who were, like the prisoners, only going through the motions. The officers had taken to giving the inmates the answers which would get the right result at the end of the course which would, in turn, give a high number of boxes ticked.

On paper this all appeared to be an excellent scheme that was working admirably because the vested interests wanted it all to seem that way. The prisoners by now had caught on to just what the authorities wanted and were very able to play that game - the prison officers weren't far behind. Meanwhile, the probation service had decamped from being stationed internally in every prison and had become "seconded". Probation officers no longer knew every inmate on their books, their families or their personal problems.

What of the future?

Unbelievably, the schemes have now been extended to those in the community who have offended, and things have grown progressively worse. A probation service which was already completely over-extended has been asked to take on even more work which they, quite frankly, are not equipped to do.

As more and more people have been forced into taking these, by now, pointless courses, the courses have been again seen to be too complicated for the numbers required to take part; they have been dumbed down still further to allow the uninterested people running the courses to process as many bodies as possible - and that is the current position.

It seems certain that what is needed is a drastic change of direction and perhaps some new thinking. Courses CAN be effective, but there has to be intelligence and inspiration behind them.

But most important of all, there must be a willingness and genuine desire on the part of the attendees. Compelling the unwilling does no good to anyone involved and in fact can be entirely counter-productive.

Dr Franklyn Wilkinson BA, MA, PhD.
Whitemoor Prison R60852
March
Cambridgeshire, PE15 0PR