Alumni Interview with Ruth Stephens

Can you briefly summarise your time at the Institute of Criminology?

So, I'm a fairly senior practitioner in HMPPS. As such, I've always had quite a light-touch relationship with the Institute over a number of years.

But in 2021, I applied for a place on the Master of Studies in Applied Criminology, Penology and Management that was being sponsored by HMPPS. This is a part time postgraduate degree that involves three residential study blocks based at the Institute each year, for a two-year period. All of the teaching in the study blocks was based at the Institute, where we also received supervision from a member of academic staff.

My time on that course began in April 2022, and I graduated this year in July 2024. In the first year, I completed several essays that were aligned to the learning that was completed in each study block. In my second year, I designed a research project that I then undertook as a student researcher. I wrote a thesis of my research and its findings, and that's what led to my graduation.

What convinced you to study Criminology?

Continuous personal and professional development has always been really important to me. I've been in the justice sector for nearly 30 years, and although relatively senior, I'm still surprised by the people in it and what drives their behaviour, which seems to change constantly. So, it was really important to me that I developed my own understanding both to keep my interest in my work, but also to make me a better practitioner.

Why did you decide to come to Cambridge?

Despite being relatively experienced for a long time, it didn't occur to me to study at Cambridge. I didn't think I could do Cambridge. It was quite an intimidating prospect.

But then, seeing a number of my colleagues who undertook their own studies, and seeing how it changed their perspective about their work and their sense of accomplishment when they had completed their studies, made me look into it a bit closer.

At the time of my studies, I was the governor of a high security prison in HMPPS. It took a lot of personal and professional organisation for me to invest the time I needed to do a Masters. I also wanted to do it in a way where it benefited the organisation, and I felt that the relationship between the Institute of Criminology and HMPPS gave me confidence that I'd be able to do that.

Can you briefly describe your thesis?

In summary, I looked into violence in high security prison settings.

Nobody wants to see violence in prisons, but unfortunately violence rates have been increasing, and our strategies for dealing with it haven't really changed. So, I thought it needed looking at through a new lens.

I used situational action theory [SAT] as a framework to guide my research into what it is about the high security prison setting and the people it holds that guide violent choices. I was really interested in using SAT to explore this issue, because it argues that violence is the potential output of the convergence between a prisoner and their propensities, and a setting’s crime inducing features.

I thought it was really important to look as much at what guides people away from violence as well as their actual violence. Because we hold people in high security prisons who've committed such dangerous offences, such serious offences that they are deemed too risky to live in free society, for up to four decades or the rest of their natural life. And if that's the case, why isn't there more violence in the prison setting? What is it about the setting and those within it and how they live that inspires violence, free existence. What can we learn from that, and how can it shape future approaches? That's what I did research into.

I found that SAT was really useful in exploring this problem, but it was massively underutilised. This was the first time we'd used SAT to explore prisoner behaviour in our jurisdiction.

One of the first conclusions in terms of the actual relationship between people, their settings and violence. The settings are massively, massively relevant to people's violent choices whilst they're in prison. Largely it is their experience of being in that setting and the people they are surrounded by that guides their behaviour.

There's some similarity in that finding with other SAT studies, which say the environment that the person occupies is relevant and guides their behaviour. People in this study found that the influence and expectations of peer groups, and their behaviour, were greater incentives than any official HMPPS strategies in guiding their own violent behaviour.

But actually, most prisoners wanted a violence-free lifestyle. The length of prison sentences created a loss of hope, that made prisoners feel that they had few choices other than to follow the behaviour of the dominant group.

Overall, whilst prisoners recognise the intent of formal approaches and strategies to deter violence, for those serving long, indeterminate sentences they were ineffective, and at times counterproductive. I found that informal strategies designed to counter these feelings of hopelessness and trigger the development of self-control through moral education were most likely to provide more realistic and durable non-violent options and disrupt habitual violence propensity giving officials opportunities to intervene.

What have you gone on to do since graduating?

I've presented my research findings in a number of forums across HMPPS. That included other prison leaders across the long-term high security prisons estate, which is the group of prisons within which I governed.

I also presented to the Wales Prison and Probation leadership team, a group of colleagues in psychology, and a group of prisoners in my own prison. I've shared my thesis with the evidence-based practise team, had some feedback on them, and used my findings to shape local policies and approaches.

Aside from that, I've moved into a new role. I'm no longer the governor of my previous prison, instead I'm working across a number of prisons in the long term, high security estate in more of a project management role, supporting delivery of improvements in different services. That’s been really interesting, because it's increased my exposure to wider stakeholders across different organisations, across government, and it's making me work very differently to the way that I've worked for the last 17 years.

Can you give some examples of how you have used learning from the course in your career?

There's a couple of different examples.

The learning that I that I undertook, I used to shape local practises through the development of our safety strategies and individual prison level. I used what I’d learnt to inform safety measures and consequences to violent behaviour.

I also try to take something out of each of the learning blocks that we did.  One example of this was that I did an essay on self-legitimacy and used what I learned in that block to develop a more informed offer for the staff group in the prison. I used a mix of reflective practice communities and discussion forums to feed a culture of positive feedback within teams to breed self-legitimacy within them. That was supported by the introduction of development initiatives such as action learning sets, where people problem-solve within their own teams, rather than focusing entirely on more traditional training modules like understanding how to perform a task.

I've focused more on development that is intended to boost staff confidence, brought in specialist coaching teams, that talked about the importance of building confidence, making every member of staff that we employ across the organisation see themselves as a leader. All of that came from that module.

What was the most important thing criminology taught you?

I think there are three things really.

Firstly, on a professional level, the sum of everything I learned. It gave me an appreciation that, in many ways, the experience individuals have of the justice system becomes a barrier to us meeting our objectives around encouraging risk-free behaviour and rehabilitation.

We spend a disproportionate amount of time on enforcement; consequential policies which provide short term solutions. Prisoners in my own research described it as putting an Elastoplast on a broken limb. It’s a short-term solution and it isn't going to have a massive impact. And as a fiercely proud practitioner, it was quite humbling to think that we might be getting it wrong.

Ultimately, we need an approach where prisoners want to make those choices and feel that they've got the psychological safety within the environment that allows them to do that, rather than feeling they have to because we're watching, and they'll be in trouble if they don't.

Secondly, also very humbling, the scale of things about the justice system I knew relatively little about or was completely misinformed around, was remarkable.

For example, I've never worked in a woman’s prison, but assumed I understood the way they operated. I was massively uninformed on the unique set of issues women in prison or women on probation face, so learning more about issues such as those was hugely important to me.

And finally, on a personal level, being able to say at this stage of my life and career that I'm a Cambridge graduate means more than I ever dreamt I would achieve. The confidence it's given me is immeasurable. The fact that I'm showing my kids, my friends, my colleagues what can be done when you put your mind to it, I think it's just brilliant.

What would you say to somebody who was going to study Criminology?

I'd say cast away your doubt gremlins.

Cambridge is very good at what it does, and it really wants people to do well, so the support and guidance available from the university and the Institute makes something very intimidating. Very achievable actually.

But I'd say equally, it's really important to keep an open mind, particularly if you've got some exposure or experience within the justice sector, don't presume you know everything. One of the benefits of a course like this is that it really challenges hive mind thinking. So, you'll be surrounded by people that have got varying degrees of experience or interest in every aspect of the justice system and across different jurisdictions. So, the quality of the content, discussion and debate you'll have will really enrich your experience if you study criminology at Cambridge.

Make the most of the University's history and the facilities available to you. When you're having a bad day, if you've hit an academic brick wall, go for a walk in the halls and buildings where people like Byron, Rosalyn Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton may have had their own academic brick walls. You know, that's really inspiring. Make the most of where you are.

Is there anything you would like to have known about Cambridge when you started?

I think the College and the course do a pretty good job of keeping us informed. But there are two things I would say.

The first one is more about studying after many years of being in a workplace. And that is, I didn't really understand how to use supervision. It’s many, many years since I've been in an academic setting, so I didn't really understand what it was for. So, for probably half of the first year, I didn’t get the value out of supervision that I subsequently got. Maybe something setting out how and what supervision is for would have been helpful at the start.

The other thing is just a little bit more about the place really. I tried to make the most of the setting. Cambridge is such a unique and special place. I wanted to be able to take something away as an experience of the setting. And it probably took me a few a few weeks, months to be able to properly explore what was available to me as a part time student. I tended to base myself at the Institute or at Homerton and nowhere else really.

It was only after a while that I developed a slightly more adventurous approach and went looking to see what else the University could offer in terms of my learning. So yeah, it would have been useful to know what other opportunities and facilities were available to us as students before we'd gone. But I'm really splitting hairs coming up with those two issues, because there is a very good communication package that comes out in general.

September 2024