Thesis-1988-Heygate.pdf (9.87 MB)
A study of the interaction between the Court Intake and Assessment Team and the treatment teams of the Leicestershire Probation Service and its effects on client careers and standards of professional provision
thesis
posted on 2018-06-01, 14:06 authored by Stephen B. HeygateIn 1976 the Leicestershire Probation Service established a two-tier
system for its work in the assessment and supervision of
offenders. The first tier, the Court Intake and Assessment Team,
prepared Social Enquiry Reports on offenders not known or not
currently being supervised by the agency. If the court made a
supervision order the case was transferred to the Treatment Teams,
the second tier, who carried out the supervision. Previous research
had only examined the work of the intake team in isolation. The aim
of this thesis was to examine the intake team in the context of the
treatment teams, the offenders and the expectations placed upon it
by the agency.
The main purpose of the thesis was to trace and evaluate the
offender's career with the Probation Service from his original
contact with an Intake Officer for the preparation of the report to
the supervision he received by the Treatment Team officer. Within
that main aim are several important areas. These were whether, by
setting up a specialist report-writing team, the courts received
reports of higher quality than hitherto and whether the intake team
was gearing its recommendations to include or exclude particular
types of offenders. The concept of targeting became an important
issue within the thesis. The thesis shows how a needs/risk scale
used at the report-preparation stage could assist officers in
targeting offenders for supervision. The examination of the use of
labelling within reports and case records, the transfer process that
existed and the amount of supervision offered showed up serious
flaws in the intake system. Furthermore, the thesis showed that the intake system created tensions for the officers working within it,
especially the Treatment Team ones. The conclusion of the thesis is
that the intake system as researched should either be disbanded or
seriously modified.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Publisher
© Rev. S.B. HeygatePublisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
1988Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy at Loughborough University.Language
- en