FOOTBALL TABLES (16K Spectrum)
SU8403w024096OnProbationFootballTables.tap
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NOTE: this is unindexed on The Type Fantastic as of April 2020.


ON PROBATION

Colin Berg puts the SPectrum to work helping offenders in the Cheshire area.

When Colin Berg, senior probation officer for south-east Cheshire, wants to know how often the courts are following the recommendations made by his team, or how much time its members are spending on each aspect of their work, he looks it up on his Spectrum. He also uses Spectrums in his work as training officer for the whole Cheshire area and is looking into the ways they can help him educate not only his children but some of the offenders in his care.

Berg's campaign for the computerisation of probation work began when he first saw an advertisement for the newly-released ZX-81. Pleased with the idea of a computer for less than £100, he sent for one immediately. The day it arrived, his wife and children happened ot be away and before he knew where he was, he had worked his way through nine chapters of the manual.

The programs he wrote for the ZX-81 formed the basis for those he uses today. When the Spectrum appeared, he promptly ordered the new machine, adapting his old programs to run on it.

The program of which Berg makes the most use is the one which correlates all the facts about the offenders in the Congleton area for which he is responsible. Based on the Campbell Systems Masterfile, the program records the age, sex, previous convictions and offence of each client, before which court he or she is appearing, whether the probation officer recommended probation, and what sentence was imposed.

"The program allows us not only to make statistical analyses of what is going on in our area but also to monitor how effectively we are working as probation officers," Berg explains: "If the courts are not following our recommendations in most cases, that means our reports are not good enough. On the other hand, if, say, they are following those of any particular officer too often, that might mean that he is predicting how the court will react, instead of trying to influence its decision."

Berg's program also uncovered another unexpected fact. "We found that whereas most officers tend to recommend probation for about one in 15 men, the figure was more like six out of seven for women," he says. "Further, whereas on average the courts grant probation when we ask for it for men about 70 percent of the time, they were granting it every time in the case of women."

Things really took off for Berg and his Spectrum in 1982 when he organised a management conference and decided to devote an afternoon to the use of computers. "I had several borrowed computers set up for people to experiment with and intended to begin by demonstrating Masterfile to show how it could replace index cards. But there was much hostility to overcome."

Asked to record their views on computers at the start of the session, the 20 or so probation officers attending filled a foolscap sheet of paper with phrases like "more trouble than they're worth, business toys, a threat to confidentiality", and more in the same vein.

By the end of the afternoon, however, they had all changed their minds. "When one of them asked me how many 16-year-olds in Congleton had three previous convictions, I was able to supply the answer in a few seconds", says Berg.

He performed the same miracle a few minutes later when someone wanted to know the average number of convictions on his case-load. "Masterfile is a very good program which, as it happens, can supply averages at the touch of one key. Everyone was duly staggered, especially as it would have taken two days to supply that fact without the computer."

Armed with the favourable reactions he had forced from his audience, Berg visited his chief probation officer and asked for £800 with which to buy four Spectrums. His evidence was so impressive that he was given £1,000, which paid for four Spectrums, four black-and-white TV sets, four tape recorders and two ZX printers. He now runs regular workshops to introduce the use of computers in probation work.

Besides using the Spectrum to analyse and monitor results, Berg has been looking at ways in which it can improve the performance of individual officers. One program, adapted from a commercial decision-making tape, is designed to help officers make up their minds on whether to recommend probation in any particular case.

"The program asks them to enter all the facts which might be relevant, such as family background, recent release from jail, whether it is a serious or petty offence, previous convictions, and so on," Berg explains. "They then have to allot scores to each of those factors according to importance. The aim is to force people to clarify their thoughts and make an informed decision."

One officer who used the program recently commented that his final verdict must be correct, since the computer had produced it. "I had to point out that the decision was his, not that of the computer", says Berg.

Berg has also written two management development programs for use on training courses. One is based on the Kolb method of classifying learning patterns and the other on Dr Meredith Belbin's theories on teams and the roles of individuals within them. "Using the program, we have members of a team analyse their functions within it and then other people's. It can be a painfully revealing process  but is often helpful in making the team function better", Berg explains.

Part of a probation officer's work is to supervise and provide support for probationers and Berg's main interest at the moment is using the Spectrum to work directly with the client. "Many of the people in our care are illiterate and innumerate and I think there is plenty of scope for computers in remedial education", he says. "They are especially useful for anyone who has difficulty relating to other people."

Besides his own programs - a complicated maths game, a spelling game and the football/multiplications table game printed below - Berg thinks that commercially-produced tapes can be helpful in teaching certain simple skills. He tests them on his three children, aged 11, nine and five, and has founf the Hornby Software golfing game, Troon, useful for teaching angles and scale.

"If you wrote a program which tried specifically to teach people about angles, no-one would want to know," he says. He thinks the Train Game, from Microsphere, is useful for teaching the layout of a computer keyboard as well as forward planning, and is toying with the idea of using Gangster, a strategy game from CCS, as a way of teaching simple calculations and organisation.

"I think it would have instant appeal to some of my clients", he says.

Berg spends an average of 10 hours a week with his computer - "more if I get carried away", he says. He reckons that it takes him about an evening to write a program and many more evenings to tinker with it until he is satisfied. He thinks his interest in computers is linked to a taste for maths which he never really developed.

Born and raised at Barry, South Wales, Berg went to the local grammar school where he planned to do a degree in music, maths and science. "We were not allowed to mix science and arts subjects, so I took a degree at Swansea university in music, English and economics." He followed it with a course in sociology and entered the probation service in 1971.

Berg has no regrets about his chosen career and has kept music - or more precisely, the French horn - as his hobby, along with model railways and preaching occasionally in the local Baptist church. The Spectrum still occupies most of his leisure time and he is entirely happy with its performance. Although he has received a mail order form for the Microdrive, for the moment he is biding his time. "Every time I have rushed to buy a Sinclair product, the price has fallen shortly afterwards", he says. "This time I think I shall wait and see."


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Text and program typed by Jim Waterman, April 2020.
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