POLICY FELLOWSHIPS

Our colleague, Dr Danna-Mechelle Lewis is a VC Senior Research Fellow, sitting within the Centre for Crime and Policing, at Northumbria University.  Her Primary research interests are Risk and Mattering.  She is interested in risk, risk-taking and risk-management practices within family and criminal courts and probation.  She is also interested in the effect of mattering on risk-taking behaviour and desistance from offending.  Her other research interests include coercive control, in particular gaslighting, at individual and organisational levels.    

Danna-Mechelle is currently working on the research project 'Policy Fellowship with the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation: Outcome Measures Linked to Desistance.' Find a brief summary of the policy fellowship below: 

Working in partnership with the Ministry of Justice and HM Inspectorate of Probation, the aim of this research is to explore the range of outcome measures needed to better understand and support desistance from offending and (reductions in) reoffending (CAPE 2022).   

Current outcome measures of desistance from offending do not go far enough in providing the breadth and depth of understanding needed to evaluate the needs of different individuals when targeting and tailoring interventions or when capturing any potential impact, improvement, or progress made towards desistance.   

Achieving the research aim will mean stakeholders, such as the Ministry of Justice, HM Inspectorate of Probation, the Youth Justice Board, HMPPS and the Probation Service, will be best placed to effectively target resources aimed at reducing recidivism.  It will also go some way to providing resourceful services, where the "offending journey" can be interrupted to reduce the financial impact of offending and reoffending, but to also manage the risk of harm to victims of crime and individuals who commit offences. 

Danna-Mechelle  also currently teaches across the Criminology and PCDA programmes and provides NVivo training to academics, postgraduates, and researchers.