This qualitative study explores practitioners’ perceptions and experiences of a brief joint working intervention within the Offender Personality Disorder community pathway. Ten practitioners were recruited through purposive sampling and took part in online semi-structured interviews, which were analyzed using thematic analysis. Themes suggested that joint working helped probation practitioners to better understand the people they supervised and to develop new ways of working. Collaboration, responsive working, established relationships, and active engagement were highlighted as good practices. Challenges included power dynamics, probation practitioners’ fear and cynicism, limited timeframes, and external pressures. The study highlights the benefits of a relational approach to joint working and makes practice recommendations. This study was conducted by the Research Involving Service Users Excels (RISE) team. RISE was made up of people with lived experience of prison, probation, and forensic mental health systems, alongside National Health Service and probation employees.
BhaskarR. (1978). A Realist Theory of Science. Harvester Press.
4.
BraunV.ClarkeV. (2013). Successful Qualitative Research: a practical guide for beginners. Sage.
5.
BraunV.ClarkeV. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. Sage.
6.
BrownS.VöllmB. (2013). Case formulation in personality disordered offenders: Views from the front line. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 23(4), 263–273. https://doi.org/10.1002/cbm.1887
7.
CampbellC.CraissatiJ. (2018). Managing personality disordered offenders: a pathway approach. Oxford University Press.
8.
ChowR. T. S.YuR.GeddesJ. R.FazelS. (2025). Personality disorders, violence and antisocial behaviour: Updated systematic review and meta-regression analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science, 227(1), 481–491. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2024.226
9.
CraissatiJ.PhillipsO.HigginsC. (2023). Transforming a specialist community service model for working with men with sexual convictions and personality difficulties. Journal of Forensic Practice, 25(2), 114–123. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-07-2022-0036
10.
DomineyJ. (2019). Probation supervision as a network of relationships: Aiming to be thick, not thin. Probation Journal, 66(3), 283–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0264550519863481
11.
FellowesE. (2018). The ultimate shock absorber: Probation officers’ experience of working with male service users on the offender personality disorder pathway. Probation Journal, 65(2), 152–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/0264550518755310
12.
HaighR.BenefieldN. (2023). The development of a relational practice movement. In LarkinM.Boden-StuartZ. (Eds.), Relationships and mental health: Relational experience in distress and recovery (1st ed., pp. 259–282). Springer International Publishing.
13.
HenninkM.KaiserB. N. (2022). Sample sizes for saturation in qualitative research: A systematic review of empirical tests. Social Science & Medicine, 292, 114523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114523
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and National Health Service England. (2024). Guidance for delivering the OPD Core Offender Management Service: Principles and best practice. Internal HMPPS and NHSE report: unpublished.
21.
JarrettM.TrebilcockJ.WeaverT.ForresterA.CambellC. D.KhondokerM.VamvakasG.BarrettB.MoranP. A. (2024). The offender personality disorder (OPD) pathway for men in England and Wales: A qualitative study of pathway user views about services, perceived impact on psychological wellbeing, and implications for desistance. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 52(1), 98–118. https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241286829
22.
JohnstoneL.BoyleM. (2018). The Power Threat Meaning Framework: Overview. British Psychological Society.
23.
JoyM.OsherF. C. (2022). Collaborative reduction of criminal justice involvement for persons with mental illness. In SowersW. E.CohenM.LehmannJ. F. (Eds.), Textbook of community psychiatry (pp. 469–483). Springer.
24.
LadS.WalkerK. (2022). An interpretative phenomenological analysis on the experience of probation officers in managing people with antisocial personality disorder. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 68(9), 989–1010. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X221113526
25.
LivesleyW. (2003). Practical Management of Personality Disorder. Guilford Press.
26.
LoganC. (2010). Personality disorder and violence: Making the link through risk formulation. Journal of Personality Disorders, 24(5), 610–633. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi.2010.24.5.610
27.
MapplebeckC.RamsdenJ.LowtonM.ShortS.BurnF. (2017). Embedding psychological thinking: An evaluation of a regional training model for probation staff. Journal of Forensic Practice, 19(1), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-12-2015-0053
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2017). Mental health of adults in contact with the criminal justice system (NICE Guideline NG66). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng66/resources/mental-health-of-adults-in-contact-with-the-criminal-justice-system-pdf-1837577120965
31.
O’MearaA.LewisC.DaviesJ. (2025). Does psychological support, training and guidance for probation practitioners lead to improved outcomes for service users and staff? A systematic review of offender personality disorder (OPD) pathway community delivery. PloS one, 20(2), e0318428. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0318428
32.
OostermeijerS.MorganA. J.RossA. M.GrimmondT.ReavleyN. J. (2023). Stigmatising attitudes of probation, parole and custodial officers towards people with mental health issues: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 28(1), 165–199. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12227
33.
PluckG.BrookerC.BlizardR.MoranP. (2015). Personality disorder in a probation cohort: Demographic, substance misuse and forensic characteristics. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 25(5), 403–415. https://doi.org/10.1002/cbm.1938
34.
RoskesE.FeldmanR. (1999) A collaborative community-based treatment program for offenders with mental illness. Psychiatric Services, 50(12), 1614–1619. https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.50.12.1614
35.
SingletonN.GatwardR.MeltzerH. (1998). Psychiatric morbidity among prisoners in England and Wales. Office for National Statistics.
36.
StaniszewskaS.BrettJ.SimeraI.SeersK.MockfordC.GoodladS.AltmanD. G.MoherD.BarberR.DenegriS.EntwistleA.LittlejohnsP.MorrisC.SulemanR.ThomasV.TysallC. (2017). GRIPP2 reporting checklists: tools to improve reporting of patient and public involvement in research. Research Involvement and Engagement, 3(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-017-0062-2
37.
TidmarshM. (2024). Gender in a ‘caring’ profession: The demographic and cultural dynamics of the feminisation of the probation service in England and Wales. Probation Journal, 71(3), 234–254. https://doi.org/10.1177/02645505231221240
38.
TremlinR. C.BeazleyP. (2024). A systematic review of offender mental health stigma: Commonality, psychometric measures and differential diagnosis. Psychology, Crime & Law, 30(2), 125–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2022.2072842
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
