A Culturally Informed Audit of Psychological Formulations Completed in Prison and Community Settings on the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway

ABSTRACT

Background

People from ethnically minoritised backgrounds are significantly over-represented within the criminal justice system, as are those with personality difficulties. The offender personality disorder pathway offers services for people with personality difficulties associated with serious offending and aims to work in a culturally attuned way with individuals from ethnically minoritised backgrounds.

Aims

To establish a baseline of how culturally informed formulations are within our services.

Methods

Twenty-one formulations from community services were audited, and two audits of 23 and 24 formulations, respectively, were carried out in our custodial service. Training was implemented between these two audits. Formulations were audited using two tools: the London Pathways Partnership (LPP) formulation audit tool and the London Pathways Unit (LPU) culturally informed formulation (LPU-CIF) audit tool. The latter was not used in the community audit.

Results

There was a broad range of means on the LPP formulation audit tool and the LPU-CIF and both were below adequacy. There was a narrower range of scores on the LPU-CIF. The LPU-CIF scores increased across all items between the two audits but were below the threshold of adequacy.

Conclusions

The audits suggest that formulations across both services are easily understood, psychologically informed and include developmental histories. However, they do not adequately consider people’s cultural experience and protected characteristics. Although not without limitations, these audits highlight a need for further training to develop staff’s confidence and competence when developing formulations for people under our service.