Reflecting on #DWP's mindless return to conditionality & sanctions (despite it being a totally inappropriate response at this time & an ineffective & often counter-productive approach for many people) got me thinking about policy driven by a misplaced sense of morality 1/10
The assumption behind conditionality & sanctions is that people need the threat of losing their benefits to motivate them to find work. This is implicitly justified on the basis that people are getting something from the state & so have a moral duty to do something in return 2/10
Similar morality narratives shape (& are used to justify) policy around drugs and alcohol, homelessness, immigration &, most obviously, the criminal justice system. But the associated approaches of reward & punishment tend to be pretty ineffective in terms of outcomes 3/10
I think there's two reasons for this. The first is that these narratives misdiagnose why people are in the situations they are in & acting the way they are. They assume that people are just making poor moral choices, rather than being guided by their circumstances. 4/10
The second reason is that this assumption leads to policy responses that make the same mistakes about what is driving people's behaviour - they tend to focus on trying to push people to simply make better moral choices rather than trying to changing their circumstances. 5/10
These policies are particularly unpleasant given that they are usually decided by people who haven't experienced anything like the circumstances of the people affected & assume that this is because of their moral character & the choices they have made, rather than fortune. 6/10
If you actually spend time with people who are experiencing issues such as poverty, mental health problems, substance misuse, homelessness, contact with the criminal justice system etc, you realise that circumstances tend drive behaviour more than vice versa. 7/10
Effectively telling people in these situations, through policy, to just try harder & make better decisions is ignorant, patronising, offensive, undermining & disempowering. It often leads, as with DWP, to people simply mistrusting the system & trying to avoid contact. 8/10
Fortunately, emerging thinking & evidence for policy approaches such as unconditional benefits, housing first, & relational & asset-based practice in health & social care, is showing that being non-judgemental & assuming the best of people leads to better outcomes. 9/10
However, it's often easier & more politically expedient for those at the top to stick with these tired old narratives about whether people are deserving & responsible, despite the decades of poor outcomes. Genuine political courage needed to change direction. 10/10
