PERU’s Kevin Wong and Director of the Averment Group Rachel Horan’s recently published Howard Journal paper: The role of needs assessment in the effective engagement of people with convictions argues for “the potential for needs assessment and sentence planning to transcend their core justice functions and set the tone for effective engagement between probation supervisee and supervisor.”    They draw on lived experience – analysis of interview and observational data from probation supervisors and supervisees’, collected during the testing of a new needs assessment and sentence planning tool which aimed to integrate the risk, needs responsivity model with desistance principles. They concluded that disagreement can lead to co-production and more effective engagement; and highlighted the potential for the physical case management and supervision environment to positively influence this. A video of Kevin and Rachel talking about their findings can be viewed by Clicking here