What are prison offender managers’ experiences of delivering New Me MOT?

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.