PRACTICING COMMUNITY SUPERVISION Chair: Gwen Robinson Chair: Gwen Robinson

175 mentoring in custody can be successful at meeting the distinct criminogenic needs of female offenders. It will also look to understand the nature of the mentor-mentee relationship and the perceived impact peer mentoring can have on attitudes to reoffending.

0225 - HEALTH AND WELLBEING PROMOTION AMONG FEMALE PRISONERS: WHAT BENEFITS DOES A HORTICULTURE PROGRAMME HOLD?

Anastasia Jablonska (United Kingdom)¹ 1 - Royal Holloway, University of London

Women in prison are noted to have a worse health status than men in prison and the general population. Additionally, research suggests that women’s health declines whilst they are in prison. This research paper seeks to identify not why does women’s health decline, but what can be done to promote women’s health in prison. The central questions are what are women able to do to promote their health themselves whilst in prison, and are they interested in doing so? Research to date is limited in this area, but suggests prisoners do want to make healthy choices, however the opportunity to do so varies across establishments. The women interviewed for this research were all enrolled in horticulture programmes in the prison, and so for many this occupation held health promoting benefits of its own. This research paper will demonstrate that women in prison do want to promote their health and wellbeing, and that they have the opportunity to do so through choosing healthy meals and being physically active. Being involved in a horticulture programme enhanced these views, and many women reported wanting to continue these healthy behaviours once released. This paper will end with a discussion of these findings in light of the research available about the health and wellbeing among women prisoners, which often portrays these women to be very unhealthy with no hope of changing this whilst being in prison.

3.11 PRACTICING COMMUNITY SUPERVISION

they perform different tasks and there are different pre-employment requirements in terms of education levels. This presentation draws on an ongoing empirical study investigating how professionalism has been addressed, and constructed, since the mid 1990’s. At this point in time both prison officers and probation officers were included in the same, joint in-house training program. The current training program is also investigated to allow for an analysis of the development during the past 20 years. Based on official documents, findings reveal a rather limited internal discourse on the issue of professionalism within the PPS. The outlook on professionalism is however constant over time in the sense that the link between professionalism and the organization is strong and explicit. What has changed however is the knowledge base upon which this professionalism is grounded. Findings show a shift from a pluralistic approach to knowledge, often related to the probation officers pre-employment education as generic social workers, to a more homogenous body of knowledge. In terms of knowledge content, the impact of the evidence based practice is strong, and it will be argued that this shift in the knowledge content calls the issue of professionalism into focus.

Applying profession theory, the role and impact of professionalism within the PPS is investigated; especially from the perspective of the Continental (and Scandinavian) tradition of profession studies, since this perspective emphasizes the strong link between the state and professions, as opposed to the Anglo-American tradition. A possible development of an

‘organizational professionalism’ is investigated, and here the implications for practice will be addressed too. A professionalism strongly linked to an organization differs from the connotations often associated with professionalism, one example being the role and extent of professional discretion in decision making.

0227 - A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE MONITORING OFFICER Marijke Roosen (Belgium)¹

1 - Vrije Universiteit Brussel

The use of technology in the penal system creates new ways of monitoring offenders. One striking example of how technological innovations create new modes of control is the use of electronic monitoring (EM). The technological devices that are being used, facilitate interactions “at a distance”, where there is no longer any need for face-to-face interactions between the controller and the person being controlled. Due to the lack of face-to-face interactions, EM is a very efficient means of exercising control. A large number of offenders can be controlled by only a limited number of professionals. It is furthermore a rather impersonal way of exercising control, as the controller might never meet the persons he controls. These characteristics, very typical for EM, distinguish the work of the monitoring officer from the work of other penal actors, such as the prison officer.

This presentation will focus on the (unique) characteristics of the work of the monitoring

177 0228 - EXPERIENCING TRANSFORMING REHABILITATION IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Lol Burke (United Kingdom)¹; Matthew Millings (United Kingdom)¹; Gwen Robinson (United Kingdom)²

1 - Liverpool John Moores University; 2 - Sheffield University

In 2014 the coalition governments Transforming Rehabilitation reforms led to the wholesale restructuring of probation services in England and Wales. As part of the reconfiguration of probation services, more than half of the employees of public sector Probation Trusts were transferred to 21 new Community Rehabilitation Companies set up to manage medium-and-low-risk offenders and destined for sale in the criminal justice marketplace. This presentation draws on the findings of an ethnographic study of the formation of one CRC, with a specific focus on the impact upon staff as they moved from a public sector to a quasi-private organisation. Applying the typology developed by Waring & Bishop (2011), the presenters attempt to explain how occupational identities are constructed and defined in this volatile organisational landscape in order to illuminate how individual workers navigate change. The implications for what constitutes a probation culture and identity is also considered in the light of the findings of Mawby and Worrall (2013).

0229 - INVESTIGATING THE MANAGEMENT OF COMPLIANCE IN PROBATION PRACTICE THROUGH THE LENS OF EMOTIONAL LABOUR

Andrew Fowler (United Kingdom)¹; Jake Phillips (United Kingdom)¹ 1 - Sheffield Hallam University

The concept of emotional labour has been operationalised in a range of criminal justice institutions as a way of shedding light on the way in which practitioners manage their emotions in potentially difficult working conditions. However, the concept has not been used in research in the context of compliance and probation practice. In this paper we will argue that this is a significant gap in knowledge because the inherently relational nature of much probation work means that emotions play a considerable role in the practising of probation especially when it comes to managing compliance. Emotional labour requires the worker to learn 'feeling rules' distinguished by Hochschild (1983: 56) as: 'surface acting,' which is feigning emotions and 'deep acting' where the worker genuinely attempts to feel emotions they wish to display. The relationship is seen as a key tool in probation practice and the creation and nurturing of professional relationships is inherently emotional. In this sense, practitioners manage their emotions in order to achieve the organisation’s aims, a critical component of what emotional labour is.

In this paper we will present the emerging findings from a small piece of research which uses emotional labour to explore the creation of the officer-probationer relationship and the

management of compliance in England and Wales. Thus, the paper will contribute to our understanding of both the ‘relationship’ and compliance - two important aims and mechanisms of probation practice. Using emotional labour in the context of probation will also allow us to think about sources of burnout, stress, and low morale. We will end the paper by drawing on existing literature to think about the implications of the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda on the way in which probation practice can be seen as a form of

‘emotional labour’ and what might lie in store for practice as changes to the structure of probation in England and Wales are implemented.

3.12 ANALYSING AND MODELLING CRIME AND PLACE