Courage of Our Convictions
| Author | Shak Banfield,Michael Day,Louise Tuhill,Dominic Raeside,Diana Geliot,Reg Hall,Rod Thomas |
| Published date | 01 September 1988 |
| Date | 01 September 1988 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058803500318 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
118
LETTERS
•
Deadline
date
for
Letters
in
the
December
issue
is
November 1
st
Holistic
Elegance
I
was
dismayed
to
read
Jean
Hine’s
comments
(PJ June
1988)
on
my
piece,
because
it
would
suggest
that
I
had
not
managed
to
communicate
what
I
sought
to.
In
fact,
my
position
is
exact-
ly
the
obverse
of
what
she
perceives
it
to
be
and
I
agree
with
every
word
she
says.
I
realise
clearly
that
what
I
call
’orthodox
social-science
methodology’
is
being
replaced -
my
own
work
is,
in
a
modest
way,
an
example
of
that.
The
point
I
wish
to
make
is
that
David
Bale’s
s
work
emanates
from
the
very
centre
of
the
mainstream
of
that
methodology,
being
reduc-
tionist,
analytic
and
deductive.
There
is
ab-
solutely
no
fault
to
be
found
with
that,
if
what
we
seek
to
examine
is
the
gross
characteristics
of
populations.
Indeed,
I
think
David
has
con-
structed
an
instrument
in
his
’Basic
Risk
Score’
which
should
be
implemented
nationally
in
order
to
create
an
objective
baseline
describ-
ing
the variation
in
sentenceing
climates
across
the
Country.
That
would
accord
with
Colin
Bridges’
plea
on
behalf
of
the
Inspectorate,
at
the
recent
Seminar
held
at
the
Home
Office
on
the
use
of
prediction
in
the
Service,
for
a
uniform
system
which
could
support
real
comparisons.
However,
the
pursuit
of
local
validation
is
nonsense.
The
more
‘sophisticated’
(in positivist
terms)
the
instrument,
the
more
painstaking,
time-consuming
and
frequent,
both
temporally
and
geographically,
must
the
validation
be.
And
yet
all
that
cost
will
not
actually
produce
a
predictive
instrument
of
any
more
utility
than
that
it
will
’guide’
or
’focus’
the
practitioner’s
judgement.
In
his
commentary
on
my
piece
David
Bale
attributes
my
attitude
to
a
tendency
toward
Lud-
dism.
In
fact
the
impulse
informing
the
work
at
Macclesfield
springs
from
an
opposite
source.
What
we
are
seeking
to
do
is
to
replace
the
pondrous,
mechanical
devices
or
normative
prediction
with
something
more
elegant
and
suited
to
this
electronic
age
of
information
technology.
Our
methodology
seeks
to
be
holistic,
synthetic
and
inductive
in
order
to
reflect
the
practice-led
nature
of
the
Service.
We
seek
to
side-step
the
problem
of
local
validation
by
creating
a
system
which
reflects
reality,
rather
than
attempting
the
costly
(and
ultimately
unattainable)
task
of
predicting
the
future.
DON
MACLEOD
Probation
Officer,
Macclesfield
Courage
of
Our
Convictions
The
excellent
and
well
argued
letter
from
the
Birmingham
Court
Welfare
team
(PJ
June
1988)
concludes,
with
regret,
that
a
level
of
pro-
fessional
sharing,
whilst
possible
with
Judges
who
appreciate
their
approach
to
the
prepara-
tion
of
welfare
reports,
has
eluded
them
in
their
dealing
with
magistrates.
We
sometimes
share
a
similar
frustration
but
even
more
so
when
it
is
our
own
collegues
who
seem
so
firmly
wedd-
ed
to
the
legal
framework,
within
which
they
feel
constrained
to
work.
Time
and
time
again,
we
see
that
perpetuating
the
adversarial
model
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