What are prison offender managers’ experiences of delivering New Me MOT?
The Journal of Forensic Practice
ISSN: 2050-8794
Article publication date: 22 July 2024
Issue publication date: 2 January 2025
Abstract
Purpose
The New Me MOT toolkit is part of the His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) accredited offending behaviour programmes, consisting of a series of short exercises that enable offender managers to support graduates of the programmes to generalise their learning. This study was commissioned by HMPPS with the aim to evaluate the delivery of the toolkit in custody, through exploring probation prison offender managers’ (POMs’) delivery experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
Convenience sampling was used to recruit participants from male prisons in England and Wales via semi-structured interviews (n = 8), and data was analysed through thematic analysis.
Findings
Five overarching themes with related subthemes were identified: New Me MOT is useful, flexible toolkit, motivation of the prisoner, limited resources and lack of structured guidance.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should consider investigating POMs’ experiences from other prison establishments, to explore any possible additional findings about what impacts New Me MOT delivery in custody.
Practical implications
Suggestions were made to improve the future delivery of the toolkit across HMPPS. This is fundamental to support the behavioural change process.
Originality/value
No previous research on New Me MOT exists. This study findings showed that, based on the experiences of eight POMs interviewed, there are factors which aid and obstruct the toolkit delivery. This suggests that POMs might miss opportunities to prioritise generalisation of work for those most in need, target their criminogenic needs and tailor the toolkit content according to participants’ personal circumstances.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank her supervisor, Louise Fusco. Her patience, advice and unsurpassed knowledge of the topic area have been invaluable, for all of which the author is extremely grateful. The author would also like to thank everyone who participated in the data collection, and HMPPS for their contribution through the recruitment process for this research. Without them this work would have not been possible.
Citation
Pagano, C. and Fusco, L. (2025), "What are prison offender managers’ experiences of delivering New Me MOT?", The Journal of Forensic Practice, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 38-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-12-2023-0071
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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