Bringing the Feelings Back: Returning Emotions to Criminal Justice Practice

AuthorCharlotte Knight, Jake Phillips, Tim Chapman

Introduction

This article begins with the paradox that, on the one hand, recent years have seen emotions largely get written out of probation policy whilst, on the other hand, they remain important to practitioners' accounts of their work and feature heavily in terms of their understanding of how to work effectively with offenders. We deal with the second half of this paradox in more depth below by drawing on data that have been generated in three separate but related pieces of research.

The first half of the paradox can be identified in several areas of probation practice and broader criminological theory. The rise of managerialism has been documented in several publications and we do not need to go into this in any great depth. Rather, it is sufficient to point out that the recent tendency to measure the 'success' of probation practice with reference to the wholly quantitative measures of KPIs, timeliness targets and compliance rates illustrates the way in which the 'ineffable' has been sidelined in favour of the concrete.

A separate example comes from research conducted by Phillips (2014) in which he examined the architecture of probation offices and how the layout and use of probation offices served to constitute particular forms of practice and reflected such shifts in policy over recent years. We can see how the design of the building reflects, in many cases, the way in which offenders are seen with a considerable amount of distrust, and that where an emotion does arise it tends to do so in the form of fear. Indeed, it might be argued that the increased securitisation of probation offices through CCTV, panic alarms and key fobs projects an identity of dangerousness onto offenders in a similar way to how risk assessment technologies might impose risky identities (Aas, 2004). We can also look to recent work that has used photographs to generate data on probation across Europe. Carr et al. (2015) asked practitioners to photograph their working environments. Whilst the study was small in scale, to the degree that no concrete conclusion can be drawn, it is interesting to note that one of their initial themes was that of security and that an artefact of probation is 'security'.

These two examples are far from exhaustive in terms of how we might go about demonstrating that probation policy, discourse, and the environments which surround probation practice, have become increasingly devoid of emotion. Yet, as we see below, probation practice is still, as it always has been, about dealing with people, with all their messiness, contradictions, and emotions, and to lose sight of this, through the rise of managerialism and the prioritisation of fear and distrust in relation to offenders, risks severely constraining probation practitioners and their ability to assist offenders in desisting from offending.

This article identifies some key themes in relation to emotions and criminal justice. It traces the exploration of emotion work in three different areas of practice and argues that the rise of managerialism, which contributed to the throwing of the emotional baby out with some of the murkier water of earlier, less structured and unaccountable practice, was a mistake. It explores evidence of preliminary findings from research on emotional labour in the National Probation Service, emotional literacy in probation practice with sex offenders in the Midlands, and the practice of restorative justice in Northern Ireland, to try and make visible the crucial role that emotions play in causing conflict and criminality, but also in offering the opportunity and potential to restore equilibrium, heal the damage caused and bring insights to complex human interactions and behaviour.

The ambivalence of criminal justice policy

Garland (2001) has summarised the changes that had occurred over a twenty year period in criminal justice in the USA and UK. He connected the decline of rehabilitation with expressive justice and an increasingly emotional tone in crime policy particularly related to the fear of crime and the need to protect the public and address the needs of victims. This populist politics led to the reinvention of prison as something that works rather than as a last resort (Garland, 2001). The function of criminology was transformed to generate knowledge and practices, which would be effective to control crime and reduce offending. These trends produced a managerialist approach to the administration of the probation services and ultimately privatisation. This almost paradoxical combination of emotionalism and instrumentalism is sustained by a perpetual sense of crisis. Even though criminal justice has been modernised, it is always seen as failing in some respect.

In this context probation responded to the public's fear of crime by developing its capacity to manage risk and to enforce court orders more rigorously. It also adopted the findings emerging from 'what works' research (Maguire, 1995) and evidence-based practices (Chapman & Hough, 1998). These practices based upon cognitive behavioural psychology addressed emotions such as anger as risk factors, and encouraged a highly technical approach to the application of knowledge through standardised assessment systems and procedures and prescribed offending behaviour programmes designed to teach offenders to make more rational decisions uncontaminated by cognitive deficits or emotion. Paradoxically, while the public's emotional reaction to crime is validated in this discourse, the emotions of offenders are assessed as dangerous and requiring correction.

Bringing back the feelings

Reflections on the way in which people regulate and use their emotions in their work has become a significant area of study and research in recent years. Emotion management and ideas of emotional labour in the home and in organisations such as the service industry and nursing practice have been developing since the 1980s (Hochschild, 1983). Goleman introduced the idea of emotional intelligence in business and management (Goleman, 1995). Bunting wrote of the gendered exploitation of emotional labour and commodification of emotions in the workplace. Orbach described the significance of emotional literacy in a range of settings including within politics, and Killick in an educational setting (Bunting, 2005; Orbach, 2001; Killick, 2006). Knight developed some of these ideas in relation to the use of emotional literacy by practitioners working within a criminal justice sector (Knight, 2014).

Emotional labour has been defined as the display of expected emotions by service agents during service encounters and is seen to stimulate pressure for the person to identify with the service role (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). The use of feeling rules, as developed by Hochschild, implies a control, and to some extent manipulation, of the emotions of the workforce to further the needs of the organisation in satisfying customer demand; initially examined by Hochschild through the meeting of the needs of airline passengers to feel well cared for by the aircrew (Hochschild, 1983). Bolton's typologies of emotion management in the workplace extended this territory by identifying four different ways in which workers can manage their emotions including pecuniary (meeting the financial demands of the organisation), presentational (the 'surface acting' of emotions designed to follow accepted social rules about emotions, such as to be polite, helpful and friendly at all times and to conceal expressions of negative emotion); prescriptive (adhering to notions of professionalism, the control of emotions in line with an 'agreed' notion of professional conduct), and philanthropic, (emotions offered as a gift by the worker to the service user) (Bolton, 2005). Although there is evidence of all of these typologies within criminal justice practice it is the concept of emotions offered as a gift that is most closely associated with the practice of workers with offenders and victims. Emotions can run high, and workers need to be able to manage their own feelings, respond appropriately to the emotions of the service user and use the emotional content of the discourse to enable narratives to be told, heard and reshaped in pursuit of pro-social behaviour and the resolution of conflict. The following three settings provide examples of how emotions impact on, and bring depth and meaning to, practice with offenders and victims.

Emotional literacy as a concept in criminal justice defines the skills that practitioners may use in understanding their own emotions and working effectively and appropriately with the emotions of...

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