Best practice principles

Existing best practice frameworks FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE

The two most recent key studies made explicit and specific reference to principles of best practice in community service. It might be that this indicates a growing interest in the identification and implementation of effective practice principles in community service more generally and would make this review, a timely one. The overall quality of supervision provided to offenders in the community by the Probation Board of Northern Ireland (PBNI) was evaluated against the practice standards outlined in the PBNI’s Best Practice Framework incorporating the Northern Ireland Standards (2011). This approach was wholly implemented on 1 April 2012 and introduced the following four main changes to the Northern Ireland Standards:

1. 
   introduction of a Best Practice Framework;
   
2. 
   three varying Levels of Application, (Lower, Standard and Higher), throughout the PBNI’s work, based on the ‘risk’ principle and in recognition that client cases are individual and require distinct and differing degrees of assessment, planning, intervention and review;
   
3. 
   development of Best Practice Guidance to aid professional judgement when applying the standards; and
   
4. 
   an improved emphasis on evaluating effectiveness including inputs, outcomes and the PBNI as a learning body .
   

The developers of the Best Practice Framework suggest that it ‘takes into account existing models of practice and research findings, including those from research into desistance and what is effective practice.’ These include the principles of RNR and program integrity, multi-modal approaches that target an offender’s preferred ways of learning, readiness to change, motivation and strengths, and community oriented approaches that are within community context and use social network supports . In addition, the following key concepts from desistance research are promoted as part of the framework:

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  staff are required to have an awareness of what encourages desistance;
  
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  as each offender has a distinct set of risk, needs, strengths and responsivity issues, assessment, case plans and interventions should be individualised;
  
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  incorporate strengths of offenders and their social networks and opportunities for offenders to foster, practice and exhibit new knowledge and skills;
  
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  offenders must be able to recognise opportunities for change (e.g. ways in which work can assist to reduce risk of recidivism);
  
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  necessity for practical assistance to cope with and address social problems;
  
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  the supervising officer’s role may need to be more active in the early stages to sustain belief and hope that change is possible, in order to support desistance;
  
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  the offender can be assisted to accept more responsibilities as supervision and desistance progresses;
  
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  ‘personal redemption’ as in making amends can be a significant part of desistance and can include assisting others to cease offending and positive offender reparation opportunities;
  
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  importance of creating, boosting and continuing motivation, and harnessing what people are motivated to do (approach goals) and not motivated to do (repel goals);
  
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  importance of incentives to fortify and maintain change;
  
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  importance of relationships to encourage desistance, including that between worker and offender; and
  
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  importance of significant others and means to support desistance including family involvement and engagement
  

It is evident that important elements of the Best Practice Framework do indeed appear to be grounded in research findings about effective probation practice. The Framework has been used as the partial basis of the most recent evaluation of the PBNI’s supervision of offenders in the community, but has not itself been empirically tested. That is, no experiment has been undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of complying with the PBNI Best Practice Framework to derive desired outcomes from community service. It has been included in this review as an example of what exists in other jurisdictions in terms of attempting to define and accord with principles of best practice in community corrections.

In his study on use and effects of restorative community service at the Clark County Juvenile Court (CCJC) in Washington State, USA, Wood makes mention of ‘best-practice literature on the use of community service in restorative justice, for those that support its use within this approach.’ Unfortunately, he is not clear about what this literature actually is, but it seems likely, given his reference to the fact in his methodology, that he is referring to best-practice guidelines provided to him by the court as background information to the study . Nonetheless, in light of the uniqueness of this explicit pairing of a restorative justice approach with community service, it appears worth examining as part of this review. According to , key aspects of best-practice within the use of restorative community service include:

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  proportionality of the community service work to the offense;
  
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  relevance of the community service work to the offense and/or harms caused;
  
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  the quality and purpose of service work, including work that meets local and immediate community needs;
  
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  the use of community service work as a part of a larger set of restorative programs and practices that ideally include the use of victim–offender mediation, restitution, victim services, etc.; and
  
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  and service that is ‘victim’ driven to the greatest degree possible.
  

To this end, Wood notes the use of Victim Offender Mediation (VOMs) and input driven by victims through its Victim Impact Program (VIP) in the CCJC. In VOMs, victims could request that offenders undertake their community service work at a specific kind of location, often a setting that would be related to the crime. According to Wood, where victims made no specific requests:

‘community service was linked to existing local organisations in ways that fit with Bazemore and Maloney’s (1994, p. 29) argument that youth should “be placed in positive, productive roles in the community which allow them to experience, practice, and demonstrate ability to do something well that others value.”

While the findings of Wood’s study cannot be generalised to other community service schemes, they are a valuable contribution to the research in providing some guidance for ways to more overtly enhance the restorative nature of community service and address the concerns of those who see community service in its current form as merely ‘symbolic restitution’ (Bazemore & Maloney 1994).