Showing papers by "Anthony Bottoms published in 2013"

Compliance and community penalties

Abstract: The main purpose of this chapter is to attempt to provide some enrichment of the debates about the effectiveness of community penalties. I shall seek to achieve this by placing such debates within a broader theoretical framework, namely that of theories of compliance.

Morality, crime, compliance and public policy

Abstract: I am very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this symposium in commemoration of the life and work of Sir Leon Radzinowicz. I count it a signal honour to have been elected to the Wolfson Professorship of Criminology here in Cambridge, the chair to which Leon Radzinowicz was appointed as the founding holder, and which he subsequently occupied with such distinction. In addition to this institutional connection, I was privileged also in recent years to become one of Leon Radzinowicz’s friends. Now that he is no longer with us, I miss those meetings and long telephone calls when he would be genuinely interested in my activities and well-being, but also shrewdly pertinent in his questions, the whole laced with a wonderful sense of humour. He cared passionately about the progress of the work in the Institute of Criminology, which he had striven so hard to establish successfully (see Radzinowicz 1988); and in the years when I was the Institute’s Director (1984-98), he was always a great source of support and encouragement.

Alternatives to Prison

Abstract: In march 2003, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation announced the establishment of an Independent Inquiry into Alternatives to Prison, chaired by Lord Coulsfield, a recently retired Scottish appeal judge. This chapter discusses the use of prison. Simultaneously with the Coulsfield Inquiry’s deliberations, the think-tank CIVITAS published a report arguing that the rise in the prison population in England and Wales was probably causally linked to the recent reduction in crime – that is, more severe punishments had created a reduction in crime through deterrent and incapacitative effects. The chapter highlights concerns the potential for various alternatives to prison to achieve reductions in re-offending. Unfortunately, some commentators have made some very rash statements on this topic in recent years – including the official Halliday Report of 2001, which dared to speak of a possible 16 percentage point reduction in the national re-offending rate if offender behaviour programmes were ‘developed and applied as intended’.