Following John Howard

Apologies to my faithful readership for the gap in postings. All three of you deserve better. I have been very engaged and absorbed over the last week or so meeting the impressive services and staff of the John Howard Society of Canada in the very different cities of Toronto and Ottawa. Last week found me in Toronto after a weekend enjoying the Falls and some of the country around the great Lake Ontario.

John Howard is actually lots of independent organisations covering Canada, each John Howard Society being entirely self sufficient and autonomous. John Howard Toronto obviously serves the most populous city in the country and I had some  insightful experiences and conversations with staff there. The model and structure of the organisation was recognisable to me as it follows the kind of voluntary sector charity/business model with which I am familiar. I was naturally most interested in how they approach issues of learning support among ex offenders and found there too that we were very much speaking the same language though perhaps with a more focussed edge.

Talking with their drug and alcohol worker, Peter, alerted me once again to the importance of recognising how every issue impacts upon every other. The likelihood of someone coming out of the prison system with an incomplete education is high. The likelihood of that person having some kind of learning support need is also high. The likelihood of substance dependency being one aspect of fall out  from these experiences is similarly high, and so it goes on. So many of my conversations therefore, as in this case, have begun with the matter of learning disability and quickly moved on to questions around homelessness, employment, and, as here, drug and alcohol misuse. Peter described the kind of holistic philosophy that determines how he engages with someone, seeing the presenting 'issue' as a part of a whole life experience. How a person learns and the limitations that may impact upon that process are key to how they address every other factor and I found my conversation with him both illuminating and reflective in helping me to place even concepts like 'disability' and 'support' in a much wider perspective.

David of JHS Toronto's housing office kindly took me to two local prisons: one was the old Toronto Jail which has been impressively renovated into a functional office/heritage site, the other was the current remand prison. Displaying alternate skills as a tour guide he talked me through some fascinating local history, pointed out places of interest and peppered all of it with references  to Coronation Street and Greenock Morton FC (on which two subjects his knowledge far exceeded mine.) Once in the working prison I had a very useful encounter with the educator there with whom I began what I hope will be a continued conversation by email across the Atlantic. 

Gratitude to Greg, the Director of JHS Toronto, and all his team for their generous sharing of their time, experience and insight.

JHS covers the whole of Canada, which is not like covering the whole of Scotland. Obviously. Getting your head around what kind of distances and changes in landscape, climate and culture can be involved here is a challenge in itself when your idea of a long journey is Glasgow to Aberdeen. (I have met people here who do only slightly less than that to go to a gym!) One tangential issue (for me) which has emerged as a consequence of understanding this is the experience of the aboriginal people of Canada who are disproportionately represented within the criminal justice system here in much the way that African Americans are in the US system or the poor are in UK prisons. Among all of these groups in all of these  societies learning/educational impairment, disability, difficulty, whatever name we want to give to it, runs through every other identifying feature. 

I could have travelled to JHS Newfoundland or JHS British Columbia to explore this further but it is actually being highlighted as much as anywhere here in the lovely, and much closer, city of Ottawa. As the nation's capital it is here that many of the aboriginal and Inuit people are sent to complete sentences, are then often left homeless and unsupported far from all that is familiar and are unwelcome back home because of their ex offender status. JHS here is exploring how specialist support services can reach out to this extra marginalised group and how to address their particular learning needs.

While here I also had the instructive opportunity to speak with Jan who runs literacy programmes for JHS Ottawa and whose ARCHES project is making great headway into structuring access to employment for forensic mental health and learning disabled people. She and I talked with and about some of the people who receive these services and found a growing consensus around the idea that the more the individual is enabled to identify their own strengths and areas for development, the more likely they are to achieve. An echo of Canada's own research quoted below in a previous post.

As in Toronto I found people more than willing to discuss strategies, share experience and throw around ideas all of which has added hugely to my own thinking. How we provide better services for people with learning support issues in the criminal justice system is of course my first question, but increasingly I find it impossible to ask without also asking how our funding strategies might change, how we define and diagnose what an issue or a need really is, and, crucially, what our ultimate aim is. My thanks to Don Wadel and his team in Ottawa and JHS Ottawa's Board who kindly had me at their meeting, for encouraging and stimulating some wider thinking.

(How it used to be. Toronto's 'old' jail. How far have we come is the obvious question.)

Naturally Fyodor has been much in my mind through the last two weeks as questions of the why and wherefore as well as the practicalities have been sharpening up. Rodya has committed what he thinks is not only the perfect crime but a justifiable one. Does his desperation make it ok? Is society's inevitable retribution any more reasonable than the crime? Or is it also nothing more than a desperate attempt to stay in control and exercise domination? Some of my conversations in the last two weeks have wandered into the socio/political (well, they've made a B-line for it actually). Hardly surprising or avoidable when discussing crime and punishment. Probably enough simply to observe with Fyodor that we do better when we are as brave about asking 'what is right?' as we are about asking 'what works?' 

A Little Extra

Want to see a picture of a snake? I mean a real one?

A snake.

Border Posts

So here I am in Canada and its different. First of all I am so glad I took the train. People whose opinion I respect told me, 'Don't take the train in the US. You're crazy. Nobody does that.' Well, I didn't get where I am today  by listening to people I respect, so.......I took the train. And a pleasure it was. Manhattan on Thursday saw  38 degrees and getting out of it was very welcome. The train is 'The  Maple Leaf' and it leaves Penn Station each day at 7.15 for Toronto. The journey takes an admittedly elongated 12 hours but travels beautifully up the Hudson River Valley to Buffalo and across the border at Niagara. I stopped over there to see the Falls and came up to Toronto the next day.

The Canadian Falls at Niagara, 13th September 2013

I have time this week to do some reflecting and further preparation for my full week of meetings starting on Monday with the John Howard Society of Canada (www.johnhowardsociety.ca) in Toronto and Ottawa. I've been looking at a pilot study which was facilitated by Correctional Services of Canada (the Prison Service here) which sought to determine how people with learning disabilities who were in custody could firstly, be identified, and secondly, be supported educationally during their sentence. The study evidenced that a critical factor in determining whether or not someone found their way into the criminal justice system was the completion, or not, of a high school diploma. (This echoed for me my conversation with Dwight back at the Delancey Street Foundation. ) The study went on to look at how someone with a learning disability, clearly disadvantaged in this area, could be supported to achieve a comparable outcome. The results showed that the greater the level of self-determination people had in identifying their own problems and thinking about how to address them, the more likely a successful outcome was. In other words, curriculum or content -led responses initiated by psychologists and educationalists worked less well than a collaborative approach between the educator (facilitator) and the person. 

(Assisting Offenders with Learning Disabilities: Brown, Fisher et al 2003.      www.publications.gc.ca/collections)

It doesn't sound like advanced chemistry but as I heard a guy in prison say recently, 'If the simple stuff works why don't we do more of it?' Indeed.  This sounds to me a lot like the personalisation 'agenda' currently in the ascendancy in the UK and the question remains in this context, as it does there, 'Who is best served by the way we do things?' That very question is given some robust treatment in another study conducted here by the Learning Disability Association of Canada. In an iconoclastic article which blows away some sacred cows they have looked at why, when general crime rates in Canada have been consistently falling, have more mentally disordered offenders been coming before the Courts. The idea, also common in the UK in some circles, that this is due in part to the closure of big institutional care facilities is debunked on the grounds of history : given that most of these closed 30 or 40 years ago why would this suddenly be a problem? Good question. One likely alternative explanation they suggest is that the criminal justice system finds it more expedient to have more low level offenders identified as needing treatment rather than have them dealt with through the penal system. While this may seem like a good thing it may also have the side effect of people coming to Court who would never previously have been identified as 'offenders'. This is a complex argument but it at least leads us to question what the unseen pitfalls of diversion away from the criminal justice system may be.  (www.ldac-tabac.ca ;   www.ldac.net/files/Winter 2009)

What is the 'right thing' to do in these circumstances is tricky if we take the 'right thing' to be moral as well as effective. As Fyodor says through the voice of Pokerev, his provocative student:

'Duty, conscience, they say. I'm not going to speak against duty and conscience, but how do we really understand them?' 

Canadian sunset, 16th September 2013.

Words and Pictures

It has come to my attention that some faithful readers are finding my blog posts a bit 'wordy', bit long on the sentences, bit too much reading and not enough easy-on- the-eye aesthetics. ( See, that was probably too long a sentence just there.) They prefer shorter sentences and more pics. So here are two short sentences coming up followed by pictures:

This is a photograph of Niagara Falls.

This is the Niagara Gorge from The Maple Leaf train which goes from New York to Toronto via Niagara and on which I travelled yesterday having left.........oh, sorry! ....This is the Niagara Gorge.

Ok?

For those of you with longer attention spans I'll be updating with words over the next two weeks after my meetings and visits with the John Howard Society of Canada in Toronto and Ottawa. I'm also hoping to meet up with a fellow Churchill Fellow while I'm here. Many more long sentences to look forward to! Happy weekend :)

Meeting Delancey

Delancey Street in lower Manhattan was once the place immigrants to the United States flocked to: moving into overcrowded apartments with already established relatives; finding their way around this complex, fast and inclusive city; looking for work; saving and dreaming of the better life they had come to find. Today, in a dormitory town in upstate New York, The Delancey Street Foundation (www.delanceystreetfoundation.org) uses the immigrant model of displacement, integration and hope to enable those who have ' hit the bottom' to find a new place in the world and move on to a better life. Meeting the men (the New York facility is all male though provision exists elsewhere for women) in this community has been moving, enlightening and at moments perplexing as I've wondered 'can it really be this simple?'

Delancey works on the premise that those who have had the experience are the best teachers. In this case the experience is usually of prison but may also simply be an inability to control drug or alcohol dependency and to cope with life. People self- refer and are interviewed by other residents before being accepted, or not. A willingness to commit to at least two years of the communal life Delancey offers is the essential criteria. Some are put off right there but those who realise they have exhausted every other avenue and have the need to come and stay are clear that this is not a 'programme' but a home and a way of life.

I started my day yesterday on my first visit to them by meeting some of my own limitations. Back home at work I recently completed a day on the Myers Briggs personality indicator and learned, to no surprise, that I am a big-picture kind of a person. Short on detail. As though to demonstrate I took the Metro North train to Brewster, New York from Grand Central, navigating my way downtown from my accommodation in Harlem. Only to discover that the train runs on the Harlem line and stopped feet from my building on its way out of Manhattan. A whole hour and several dollars later I reflected, not for the first time, that a little more planning and a little less rushing in would have made for a more efficient start. But then.....I wouldn't have seen the newly refurbished Grand Central Station (and it is simply gorgeous) or got to pretend that I was Diane Lane in The Cotton Club about to board a train to LA with Richard Gere. I digress.

The point being that during the time I spent with the people of Delancey I found myself reflecting that most of the things that limit people are different in degree rather than kind. Most of us have dependency issues for example: coffee, food, smoking. It's  just that for most us they don't become socially disruptive. Most of us suffer from lack of insight (as demonstrated by me), prejudice, 'blind spots', but we don't think of ourselves as having learning difficulties. Most of us do wrong but don't end up in prison. Not to minimise or trivialise the extent to which that degree can make a profound difference, but I was struck throughout my visit by the commonness of human experience and how Delancey has struck some gold in holding people to the necessity of undergoing the painful process of understanding themselves before they can hope to live well with others. Something familiar in that.

I met Robert, the facilitator at Brewster, and Jimmy who has been there for four years. Both talked of how their criminal, drug and alcohol dependent histories had brought them here. The thing that was different about Delancey, they said, was that they had been challenged by people who had been where they had been to take responsibility for their own situation, to see the truth of how they came to be here and to think differently about themselves. The constant challenge to do better seemed to be the key. The phrase 'like looking in a mirror' came up a lot. I was very interested to meet Dwight, a teacher who had nurtured a serious drug dependency while holding down a responsible job. Never fired and never in prison, Dwight was hospitalised to the point where he knew he had to make a radical change or die. He chose Delancey and now teaches the newly arrived to such a standard that when they leave those who can have achieved a high school diploma or the equivalent. Dwight described to me how he uses a professional assessment tool to gauge each persons ability and educational level. Learning difficulty is often highlighted as an issue and in these cases individuals are supported away from the group classroom setting and given one to one tuition with a more experienced resident whom he has trained in tutoring others. Where the difficulty is more profound
he will take over the support himself. Dwight was clear that a certain level of capacity was necessary for life at Delancey and someone with a more profound learning disability requiring specialised support could not find it there. He agreed, however, that at the milder end of learning disability and certainly what is usually labelled learning difficulty, the over representation among the people coming to Delancey from prison is evident and for them, who receive no other support, the personal commitment and attention they find at Delancey makes an appreciable difference. In this respect I was able to relate closely through the services we provide at Cornerstone (www.cornerstone.org.uk/communityjustice) where just such differences are being made. Delancey and Dwight demonstrated to me how much more could be done through a few simple but radical adjustments. But I  was impressed most by his use of the phrase 'unspeakable joy' in describing the satisfaction of his work. When did you last year someone talk of their job like that?

The adjustments are, to be fair, a lot more than tweaking. Delancey is entirely self-funding. I know. I couldn't get my head round it either. But they explained. They simply won't seek or accept government or other external funding because then, as Robert told me, 'it becomes their facility, not yours'. As I nodded he smiled knowingly, drawing on 20 years with this group of people who have resisted all the temptations of big money and the business model. To find out more about how this works I will attend the Delancey Street Foundation course in San Francisco early next month. For the moment my deepest thanks to Robert, Jimmy, Russell, Dwight, John and Tommy (82 years old and 42 years with Delancey) who all generously gave of their time and themselves to further my understanding.

Plant pots made with multi coloured sand in Delancey workshop.

Training in new skills is integral to life at Delancey but everything is done in house, skills passed from one to the other.

The men's dorm in the grounds of Delancey at Brewster.

It's all in the diversion

They advised us, the people at the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, to remain open to the unplanned for possibility ; not to be so fixed to a tight itinerary that we were unable to take advantage of the unforeseen yet insightful diversion. In the first week of my fellowship travels I have already experienced the wisdom of that advice. The first few days spent with the people of the Court and Probation Service in Central Florida provided a good enough start in themselves but the unscheduled addition was the invite from my hosts to spend the weekend experiencing another part of the culture and landscape of 'the South'. The coast of Georgia, a little north of Florida, is rich in that verdant, swampy, flat scenery that backdrops so many movies and showcases so much literature. In Savannah I walked past the childhood home of Flannery O'Connor and listened to the accents and cadences of the characters of Alice Walker. I also thought a lot about how often a lucky diversion can deepen and enrich a carefully planned experience.

The people I saw in Court in Daytona might get 'lucky' and find themselves also being diverted away from what seems like a foreseeable outcome. Diversion from prison, and perhaps from the criminal justice system altogether (though that is more arguable), may in fact be their only hope of reclaiming a fruitful life. For people whose capacity to make informed choices is further limited by learning impairment that possibility of diversion offers something even more valuable. The Scottish Government is currently looking at the issue of learning disability in its criminal justice system and some of us who are engaged in the provision of support in this area are looking at it with them. At this early stage of seeing the good practice here, I am certainly reflecting on how a little diversion, a modest alternative, a slight deviation from a planned route can go a long, long way towards changing the course of things. For me, the weekend in Georgia may just mean I start seeing the whole picture here through more culturally sensitive eyes. For the people before the Court back in Daytona it could mean the chance of a whole other life.

What does Fyodor say? Well, his character, Raskolnikov suffers from two complaints that often accompany those branded 'criminal': a desperate need for money and a strong sentimental attachment to his mother. Neither of these is helpful is guiding him to see things clearly so he is bound to act out of despair and torment rather than a careful consideration of consequences. Interestingly the Russian word for 'crime' which Dostoevsky uses (not that I'm reading this in Russian, it says it in the foreword!) literally means 'over-stepping'; as though people simply , and perhaps mistakenly , breach a boundary. Quite a long way from the idea that those who commit most criminal offences are scheming and malevolent anarchists out to take advantage of the rest of us. Hapless is more like it. This has the ring of truth and Raskolnikov, or , Rodya , as he's known his mum, is planning what will amount to his own downfall with meticulous care. Not a diversion in sight.

I'm reading about him meantime in my basic but clean, old fashioned boarding house room in Harlem. It's in an old Brownstone on 141st Street and the sounds of insects and birds have been replaced by car radios and sirens. Tomorrow the train from Grand Central takes me upstate to the Delancey Street Foundation in Brewster, New York where I hope to see what the results of a lucky diversion can actually mean.

The Court House, Savannah, Georgia

Along the way up to New York a brief stop in this part of the South offers a lot more than the professional interest of this beautiful Chatham County Court House in Savannah. 

But it is beautiful, and posted here as a little homage to the notion that the law can reach for the highest ideals. 

Speaking of high ideals Happy Birthday to my golden dome of a sister who embodies a few herself. Enjoy the weekend everyone. More from New York and Delancey Street services after Monday.

The Courts and Probation

It was Labor Day of course. Not Labour Day! (Thank you to my switched-on amiga in Glasgow) . 

My generous hosts introduced me to the local holiday tradition of swimming in the springs then making your own pancakes for breakfast. Mi gusta mucho! We also enjoyed a night at the cinema and saw 'The Butler', the truish story of the elderly African American man who had been the White House butler through 50 years and several presidencies. It was something to see such a film in the south of the US in the week of the anniversary celebrations of the civil rights movement and among a modern,ethnically mixed audience. At the end this diverse audience of Southerners applauded together and I'm happy to say I felt quite privileged to be there.

Yesterday everyone went back to work and I began mine.

The city of Daytona Beach is best known for its various motor races, and its vibrant waterfront is reminiscent of any popular, garish, hotel-lined holiday resort, though bigger and hotter than most. (It is very hot here at the moment. 90+  each day so far.) Yesterday however my destination was the Justice Center where the arraignment Court was taking place. Here people are brought before the Court to enter pleas and, less frequently, set trial dates. Much of it was familiar to me from previous experience as a Court duty Probation Officer. Two things were strikingly different however: the speed with which each case was dealt with and the relative informality of the proceedings. This is largely due to the system of 'plea bargaining' which means that negotiations between prosecution and defence have already taken place and the defendant has agreed to a guilty plea and commensurate sentence.In Court, Judge, Public Defender and State Attorney all engage in the briefest of exchanges before the outcome is agreed. The defendant has little contribution to make and appears, if anything, even more marginal to the proceedings than in a British court. 

One consequence of this is that any detailed assessment of specific need or circumstance is unlikely to be given priority. In talking with the enlightened and reflective Judge afterwards I learned more of how Florida's Circuit Courts have been developing at least one example of possible responses to the kind of oversight this is likely to create. Whether individuals come before the Courts with issues of family breakdown, substance dependency, mental health or, (of particular interest to me) learning difficulty, effectiveness of response will be dependent on correct diagnosis of need. This takes some time, attentiveness and recognition that the person before the Court is an individual. Daytona's 'Drug Court' provides a model which acknowledges that time spent addressing the underlying motivation for offending and properly resourcing alternatives to punishment is more likely to reduce reoffending and improve life chances than simply sentencing. 

The model is so clearly transferable it's almost painful. In fact, here may be one instance where one size may very well fit all, or at least be worth trying on. If a specialist Court can assess people for substance dependency issues can't it also assess mental health and learning support needs? And if that is shown to be more effective in reducing recidivism and increasing opportunity isn't it worth the additional resources in the long run? You'd think. Seeing and hearing all this has been exactly the start to the project I hoped for , but more than that it provides a kind of koan of enlightened thinking that is even more potent in this corner of the world where a quite different approach to criminal justice is arguably more prevalent. Among the many things I've taken already from these early stages is that it's true what they say about America: whatever you find, you can also find the opposite. I'm also a little humbled in my snooty European prejudices about where creative and compassionate thinking occurs: anywhere if you have the right people motivated by the right things. 

Fyodor is also sending up the assumptions of self-righteousness. His central character, Raskolnikov has fallen foul of the belief that meaning well excuses anything and is convinced that his own good intentions will mean even his worst excesses can be explained away. Those of us who spend our working lives in the 'doing good' industries need to take note. Professor Tom Tyler of Yale University, (Google him!) one of the gurus for me of this project and my thinking about criminal justice processes, has developed his 'procedural justice' theory in a manner consistent with the moral direction of a novel like Crime and Punishment: what we do 'for' others may be much less important than how we do it.

I go to Savannah, Georgia at the weekend and fulfil another literary ambition in seeing the setting for 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'. Joy! Before then another Probation Officer tomorrow, more with the Public Defender and finalising a meeting with the drug court Judge when I come back here in early October. More later.

Labour Day

Happy Labour Day! Especially to all who labour. Americans celebrate this holiday as marking the formal end of summer and the return to work, school etc. In reality of course many people have never stopped working or, as the economy of the moment demands, searching for work. The sight of people standing at the edge of highways or in shopping mall car parks holding up placards asking for money to support families produces a combination of wariness and sorrow. Whether real or fraudulent these pleas say something about the fragilities of human life when it is pushed to the edges of society. Not principally what I'm here to think about but there are obvious parallels with the experience of disability, criminality and penology. With this in mind my own modest act of labour/love today was to begin reading Dostoevsky and already his insights into the illusions of all that is deemed 'success' and 'achievement' are providing a basis for examining the effectiveness of what we sometimes glibly call 'support'.