Structured decisions about Dutch probation service interventions
| Author | Jacqueline Bosker,Cilia Witteman,Jo Hermanns |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550513478317 |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Comment Piece |
Comment Piece
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Structured decisions
60(2) 168–176
ª The Author(s) 2013
about Dutch probation
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550513478317
service interventions
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Jacqueline Bosker
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
Cilia Witteman
Radboud University, Netherlands
Jo Hermanns
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abstract
There is convincing evidence that structuring decision making leads to better decisions.
Comparing structured and unstructured professional decisions on a wide variety of
topics in medicine, psychology or social welfare, it was found that structured decisions
were as good as and often better than unstructured decisions. This can be explained
by the fact that professionals, like anyone else, make errors of judgement. In different
professional settings decision support tools have therefore been developed and
implemented. As far as probation is concerned, tools for risk assessment are currently
used in many countries. Assessment of the risks of recidivism and criminogenic needs
thus have become structured, yet decisions on interventions are still to a large extent a
matter of professional judgement. This is problematic, since this decision is funda-
mental in the probation process, and can have a large impact on the effectiveness of
probation and on the life of the offender. Dutch probation practice shows that the
quality of intervention planning indeed leaves something to be desired. Structuring the
decision process for intervention planning, without replacing the professional, may
improve the quality of probation work. It would seem to be a logical next step in the
development of assessment tools.
Corresponding Author:
Jacqueline Bosker, University of Applied Science Utrecht - Research Centre for Social Innovation
Heidelberglaan 7 , Utrecht 3584 CS, Netherlands.
Email: jacqueline.bosker@hu.nl
Bosker et al.
169
Keywords
Dutch probation service, effective practice, RISc, risk assessment, structured decision
making
Introduction
Decisions of probation officers can have a great impact on the lives of offenders and
on the safety of the public. One of the tasks of the Dutch probation service is to
advise the Public Prosecution Service, the courts and the prison system about ways
to minimize the chances of recidivism by offenders and to promote their reinte-
gration in society. In order to be able to provide good advice the Dutch probation
service has introduced instruments that can assist probation officers to make a
decision. The Dutch probation service is not alone in this. The use of assessment tools
is becoming a standard for many probation services in Europe, the United States
and Canada (Bonta, 2002; Hanson and Morton-Bourgon, 2007). More and more
organizations in the criminal justice system use forms of structured prediction to sup-
port their decision making. For example, forensic hospitals use instruments for risk
assessment, the Dutch Public Prosecution Services use a system (‘BOS Polaris’)1 to
assist in the formulation of sentencing demands and an instrument (‘BooG’; Korde-
laar, 2002) has been developed at the Netherlands Institute of Forensic Psychiatry
and Psychology (NIFP) to enable structured decisions to be made about whether or
not to produce a report on the mental faculties of an offender.
What instruments of this kind have in common is that a conclusion can be
reached by answering a standard set of questions, sometimes supported by a
weighting of the answers and decision rules to generate advice. Instruments for
offender risk assessment have evolved over time. Initially, actuarial instruments were
developed, containing mainly static risk factors such as age or prior convictions.
Although these instruments can validly predict recidivism, they lack information
about dynamic criminogenic needs, such as drug abuse or unemployment, which
are also relevant for intervention planning (Bonta, 2002). Therefore instruments
have been developed that contain both static and dynamic risk factors. Some of
these instruments produce an automatic conclusion on the risk of recidivism and are
thus actuarial instruments, for example the Offender Assessment System (OASys;
Home Office, 2002). Other instruments only provide a structure by prescribing
which risk factors should be assessed, after which the professional draws the
conclusion. These systems thus structure but do not replace professional decisions,
for example the Historic Clinical Risk - 20 (HCR-20; Webster et al., 1997) for
assessing the risk of violent recidivism.
This article examines the assumption that more structure leads to higher quality
decisions, and discusses how this relates to the expertise of the probation officer. It
describes that structuring the decision making process in probation so far has been
focused on risk and needs assessment, but that intervention planning is still purely a
matter of professional decisions. This leads to the conclusion that further structuring
of the decision making process in the probation service is indeed desirable.
170
Probation Journal 60(2)
Structured decisions are better than
unstructured decisions
There is convincing evidence that structuring decision making leads to better results.
As long ago as 1954, Meehl published a study comparing structured (mechanical/
statistical) predictions and clinical predictions (professional judgement without
instruments). The predictions concerned diverse topics, such as probation outcome,
academic success and the outcome of electroshock therapy in schizophrenia. After
comparing 20 studies Meehl concluded that the statistical (formal) approach pro-
duced predictions that were as good as and often better than those produced by the
clinical...
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