Research Interviews with young offenders

The example earlier in this chapter concerning the research into Drug Treatment and Testing Orders involves a heinous discovery. The researcher had thought about the sorts of disclosures that are likely to be made and concluded that it is likely to be drugs offences and property offences committed in order to pay for drugs. The researcher did not consider that a participant may have caused someone’s death. Would you have thought of this if you had been conducting this piece of research?

Think about the following scenario and work out how you would deal with confidentiality.

Research with Young Offenders

You are conducting interviews with young offenders who are serving their first custodial sentence to determine whether incarceration has deterred them from carrying out further offences. Each participant will be interviewed on three occasions:

• At an early stage of his sentence when he is trying to adjust to custody.
• Just before the end of the sentence when he is anticipating his release.
• Six months after his release to see whether he has committed any offences.

The participant in question is a 16-year-old boy (Paul) who is serving a three-month custodial sentence for repeated offences involving the theft of motor vehicles. At your first interview, it is clear that he is finding life in prison difficult.

• What disclosures do you think would be made?
• Would you be prepared to offer absolute confidentiality to Paul?
• If not, in what way would you limit confidentiality?

What disclosures do you think would be made?

A starting point for considering the disclosures that could be made by Paul would be to think about the sort of offences that you know that he has committed in the past. He is imprisoned for stealing motor vehicles so offences related to stealing cars, driving and possibly damaging them are foreseeable. This might lead you to contemplate the following:

• Paul might tell you that he has stolen a great many more cars than he was convicted for stealing. In other words, he might confess to unsolved offences of the same nature.
• He may provide details of other offences connected to the theft of the vehicles. For example, he may have burgled houses or mugged drivers to obtain car keys. He may also have caused damage to cars by breaking into them or by crashing them whilst driving them. A whole host of possible driving offences such as speeding or going through red lights are also linked with the theft of motor vehicles. In essence, you should foresee that he has committed other offences in order to obtain the cars or that he has committed driving offences or offences arising from damage caused to the cars one the cars were obtained.
• Following on from that, there may be other consequences of the reckless road use that is often associated with the way that stolen cars are driven: perhaps Paul ran over an elderly man on a zebra crossing who may have sustained serious injuries but the police had never realised that he was the driver responsible.
• Did you think about why Paul was stealing cars? He may just have been joy-riding but he could have been stealing cars to order. Perhaps the cars were used as getaway vehicles in armed robberies.

Offences such as armed robbery or the injuries involved in hitting a pedestrian or other road user are a step removed from those most usually associated with car theft so it is important to think as broadly as possible about the situation in order to anticipate the sorts of offences that might be committed.

Of course, it is not only disclosures related to previous offending that might be made in this situation. You are talking to Paul about his experiences of prison life so it may be that he makes other disclosures related to this perhaps involving drugs or violence:

• Paul may have become involved in drug dealing in prison. Perhaps he tells you that this girlfriend is smuggling drugs in to him during visiting hours that he is selling to other prisoners. This is an ongoing situation so would you respect his confidence?
• Perhaps Paul has become involved in violence in prison. Would you feel able to maintain confidentiality if he told you that he was planning to attack another prisoner? If you do not report what he has told you, someone may be seriously injured or even killed but doing so involves a breach of confidentiality.
• Would it matter why Paul was planning violence? Perhaps he has told you that he plans to use violence to retaliate against his cell mate who has been sexually abusing him since they started to share a cell. Perhaps Paul has been fighting with other prisoners and tells you that he has stolen a knife from the kitchen for his own protection.
• Paul might tell you about criminal acts that are being perpetrated by others. Would you uphold the promise of confidentiality that you made then or would it depend on the type of offence and the identity of the perpetrator? He may tell you that his cell mate is dealing drugs or that a prison officer is smuggling mobile telephones into the prison and selling them to prisoners? Would you breach confidentiality if Paul told you that he was being physically or sexually abused by a prison officer?

Remember that an ethical dilemma may be raised by disclosures that reveal that the participant is vulnerable to harm as well as if he reveals that he may cause harm to others. Some of the disclosures listed above relate to harm that Paul is suffering but there may be others:

• Paul may be experiencing so much difficulty in adapting to prison life that he has started to self-harm or he may tell you that he is contemplating suicide. Would you breach the promise of confidentiality in order to protect Paul?
• Paul may tell you that he cannot cope with prison so is planning an escape. Could this be kept confidential or would you feel obliged to share this information with prison authorities?

One of the difficulties that a researcher faces in such a situation that makes the decision even harder is that it is not always possible to judge the truthfulness of the disclosures. Perhaps Paul is exaggerating his offending history so that he appears a more impressive criminal figure. He may be telling you that he is being bullied or beaten to attract your sympathy. He may make up stories about life in prison to shock you or to take up more of your time because talking to a researcher is a break from the mundane routine of prison life. There are any number of reasons why a person being interviewed might invent facts and this creates an added challenge for the researcher who has first to decide whether the story may be true and then make a decision about the ethical dilemma it raises.

Would you be prepared to offer absolute confidentiality to Paul?

There are only two possible responses to this question: yes and no. Both answers are equally valid. From the point of view of the effectiveness of the research and your ability to achieve your objectives, a promise of absolute confidentiality is likely to be instrumental in gaining the trust of the participant: it may be the case that prisoners will only agree to be interviewed if they can be assured of absolute confidentiality. However, it is a promise that should only be made if you are prepared to stick to it. It would be ethically questionable to make such a promise as a means of gaining access to research participants and then to retreat from the promise as soon as there is any disclosure of wrongdoing.  If you are not prepared to offer absolute confidentiality, think about what limitations you would place upon it and how this would be communicated to the participant.

If not, in what way would you limit confidentiality?

The answer to this depends upon what sorts of disclosures you would feel morally obliged to pass on to others. This rests on your own sense of what is and what is not acceptable to be kept a secret.

• If you feel that you would be morally compromised if Paul disclosed any offences to you for which he had not been caught and punished then you could use this as the basis for setting the parameters of confidentiality. You could tell Paul that he should not tell you about any offences that he has committed unless they have been the subject of criminal proceedings. You would probably want to emphasise to him that this includes offences that he may have committed since he had been imprisoned as well as undetected offences committed prior to his arrest and imprisonment.
• You might feel that you could maintain confidentiality in relation to offences surrounding his theft of motor vehicles but not unrelated offences. This means that you would have to phrase this very carefully so that Paul was clear about what you considered to be an unrelated offence. For example, would you consider that the injuries caused to a pedestrian from reckless driving in a stolen car was or was not related to the offences of car theft?
• You could limit confidentiality on the basis of future harm either to Paul or caused by Paul to others. Again, this would need to be communicated with clarity and precision so that Paul was sure about what sorts of disclosures would be kept confidential. For example, would you consider the dealing drugs in prison fell within causing harm to others or not? Problems could arise if there are limits placed upon confidentiality if both parties are not in agreement about what sorts of disclosures are no longer protected.

Remember, it is not unethical to promise only qualified confidentiality but you should ensure that the participant is clear about the boundaries of confidentiality so that they do not inadvertently disclose something that you will feel obliged to share with others. It is your responsibility as a researcher to ensure that participants do not step over the boundary that you have created so you will need to be very clear in explaining what sorts of disclosures are not covered by confidentiality.