Showing papers in "European journal of probation in 2015"

The impact of supervision on the pains of community penalties in England and Wales: An exploratory study

Abstract: This article explores the pains experienced by nine offenders subjected to (supervised) community and suspended sentence orders in an English Probation Trust between July 2013 and January 2014, arguing their importance for both deontological and consequentialist penal objectives. It identifies six major groups of pains and explores the extent to which their incidence and experienced intensity were affected by the supervisory relationship, which intensified or reduced some pains but left others materially unaffected. Despite the limitations of this exploratory study, implications can still be drawn for penal policy, both in England and Wales and across Europe.

Hook for change or shaky peg? Imprisonment, narratives and desistance

Abstract: Given the twin challenges of the fiscal costs of high levels of imprisonment and of high reconviction rates post-release, the question of whether imprisonment can (and does) contribute to processes of desistance is a crucial one. This article discusses the repeated, and controversial, research finding that some prisoners see themselves as transformed by imprisonment. It argues, with reference to the narratives of Scottish prisoners, that this is not owing to intentional rehabilitative input, but driven by the need to craft a positive future. The article explores under what circumstances a transformation narrative is most likely to emerge and whether such narratives have the power to make desistance more likely.

The myriad of challenges with correctional change: From goals to culture

Abstract: Presently, many correctional organizations seek to change both policy and practice to improve offender outcomes. The occupational roles played by both staff and management represent an imperative p...

Working against the odds: How probation practitioners can support desistance in young adult offenders

Abstract: This article seeks to explore how probation practitioners may work with young adult offenders (YAOs) to assist them in moving away from crime, by considering how a more desistance and relational fo...

Consent and probation: An analogy with contract law

Abstract: The Journal EJprob recently published a special issue on consent in sentencing. The EPR (2010) refer to consent on numerous occasions, and in most legal systems consent is required at the sentencin...

Picturing Probation: Exploring the utility of visual methods in comparative research

Abstract: A previous review of research on the practice of offender supervision identified the predominant use of interview-based methodologies and limited use of other research approaches (Robinson and Svensson, 2013). It also found that most research has tended to be locally focussed (i.e. limited to one jurisdiction) with very few comparative studies. This article reports on the application of a visual method in a small-scale comparative study. Practitioners in five European countries participated and took photographs of the places and spaces where offender supervision occurs. The aims of the study were two-fold: firstly to explore the utility of a visual approach in a comparative context; and secondly to provide an initial visual account of the environment in which offender supervision takes place. In this article we address the first of these aims. We describe the application of the method in some depth before addressing its strengths and weaknesses. We conclude that visual methods provide a useful tool for capturing data about the environments in which offender supervision takes place and potentially provide a basis for more normative explorations about the practices of offender supervision in comparative contexts.

From probation work to criminal sanctions work: Key changes in social work with offenders in Finland from the 1960s to today

Abstract: The article addresses key changes in Finnish probation work’s rationalities, mentalities and technologies from the 1960s to the present, examining them within a wider governance theory framework. T...

Beyond compliance: Participation, co-production and change in justice sanctions

Abstract: This article explores the place and potential of a more participatory and co-productive justice practice, using the particular lens of compliance. In recent years, compliance has come to be associated with new managerial and correctional forms of justice. Yet, emerging theoretical and empirical analyses attest that individual compliance is a complex and multi-dimensional dynamic. It is not particularly responsive to mechanisms of enforcement and control, and where enforced compliance is achieved it does not emerge as a particularly valuable justice outcome. These findings, and others, suggest the relevance of a more co-productive justice pursuit – one that recognises and supports the participation, potential and progression of those required to comply.

Using vignette methodology to research the process of breach comparatively

Abstract: Comparative research related to any aspect of the process of breach in either the pretrial, sentencing or release phases is relatively rare. Comparative studies of decision making in the specific context of breach process are particularly lacking. One reason for the dearth of research in this area is the many challenges presented by comparative research across different jurisdictions. This article focuses on the development of a vignette methodology to explore the decision-making aspect of the breach process from a comparative perspective across a number of different European jurisdictions. The vignettes are designed to explore the decision-making aspects of two different types of breach process – the process of breach that follows on from a breach of conditions of early release from prison and the process that follows a breach of conditions attached to the completion of an unpaid work order. The article begins by contextualizing the research in debates about the relationship between compliance, legitimacy and Rising prison populations. It critically examines the nature of vignette methodology and then discusses the specific challenges of using vignettes in comparative research as well as the development, piloting and evaluation of the decision-making vignettes in focus. We conclude by discussing some of the challenges we faced and particularly our challenge in terms of the development of the methodology – enhancing the comparability of the findings. (Less)

Judges’ perception on causes of criminality and justifications for crime

Abstract: Judicial decision-making has been long studied, particularly sentencing, from a number of perspectives. Many researches have focused on the factors affecting the decision-making process, analysing ...

How was your day? Exploring a day in the life of probation workers across Europe using practice diaries

Abstract: This article presents a reflection upon the preliminary analysis of diary research conducted during the period 2014–2015 in five European countries (England, France, Norway, Romania and Slovakia). The authors gathered and analysed data from a pilot project that used semi-structured diaries to generate data on probation workers’ daily lives with a view to understanding ‘a day in the life’ of probation officers across jurisdictions. The findings open up questions in relation to diary research in probation practice (diary format, follow-up interview, etc.) and we use this article to discuss the relative advantages and benefits of using diary research in this area. We conclude with the argument that diaries as a method of social research hold considerable potential for conducting research in the context of probation but acknowledge that the method we employed requires some development and greater clarification in terms of the aims of the research.

Interpreting performance in offender supervision: The use of observation as a data collection method:

Abstract: Empirical research on practicing offender supervision seems to be rather scarce in many European jurisdictions. Existing studies tend to be mostly descriptive and use interviews and surveys as meth...

Fish out of water? Introduction to the Special Issue on innovative methods for comparative research on offender supervision practice:

Abstract: This is the second Special Issue of the European Journal of Probation that has its origins in the ongoing work of a European academic network, the COST Action on Offender Supervision, which commenced its work in 2012.1 The first of the Special Issues, published in December 2014, brought together a collection of articles on the theme of consent and cooperation in the context of offender supervision (see Morgenstern and Robinson, 2014). This was a theme that cut across the work of all four of the Working Groups that make up the COST Action, which address: Experiencing Supervision; Practising Supervision; Decision-Making and European Norms, Policy and Practice. In this second Special Issue, our focus is methodological, and the articles it includes were commissioned from two of the Action’s Working Groups, whose members have been engaged in a common purpose for the last two years or so. That common purpose has been the development and piloting of innovative methods for studying aspects of offender supervision practice comparatively. To explain the specific origins of our methodological endeavours, it is necessary to revisit a review of the European literature on the practice of offender supervision that we conducted in the first year of the COST Action (Robinson and Svensson, 2013). This review, which collated overviews of research in 15 jurisdictions, reached a number of general conclusions. The first was that, notwithstanding significant variations between jurisdictions, there was surprisingly little empirical research into the ‘everyday’ practice of offender supervision in Europe. We further found that, looking across the studies conducted to date, two methods dominated: namely, interviews and surveys. This led us to conclude that extant research on offender supervision in Europe had rather more to tell us about what practitioners say they do, but rather less about what they actually do. A third finding was that the empirical studies conducted to date were overwhelmingly within a single jurisdiction, such that there was almost no comparative research on which to report. Indeed, we found only one study that included a comparative element in its design (Bauwens, 2011). Meanwhile, a parallel review of the research literature by members of the DecisionMaking Working Group (Boone and Herzog-Evans, 2013) revealed a particular gap in research in relation to the construction of and reactions to breaches of community 610241 EJP0010.1177/2066220315610241European Journal of ProbationEditorial 2015

Book Review: Lol Burke and Steve Collett, Delivering Rehabilitation: The Politics, Governance and Control of ProbationBurkeLolCollettSteve, Delivering Rehabilitation: The Politics, Governance and Control of Probation, Routledge, pp. 200: ISBN 9780415540384, £26.99 (pbk)

Abstract: A project of “strong democracy”, dependent on connected citizens rather than atomised and compliant citizens, needs to be argued for well beyond the limits of the prison reform. Finally, the book is full of references about the democratic importance of inclusion. The value of enfranchisement is perhaps portrayed as a form of inclusion of the prisoner. However, this idea in general tends to be in tension with the idea of political freedom, and derived from it, with the idea of self-government. If democracy is not going to be conceived of as a form of self-government but as a project of social inclusion, we should perhaps start thinking about the right to vote and other rights of participation as social rights that aids the rehabilitation of the offenders rather than political rights that allow the people to govern themselves, as Peter Ramsey (2013) has suggested. To conclude, this book addresses a topic that has been publicly discussed using symbolic and normative arguments, rather than being empirically grounded and drawing on documented claims. In this regard, the book makes important contributions to particular aspects of the complicated debate on prisoner disenfranchisement, and it partially compensates for the “lack of data on basic topics such as how many prisoners vote” (p. 3). It is a compelling read for those interested in this issue from an empirical perspective, in particular to understand the process that follows after enfranchisement. However, it is clearly a work that transcends such debate and contributes to the defence of the wider and more important idea that prisoners should remain not only bearers of rights, but also active members of the political community. Therefore, Citizen Convicts should also be considered by those with a serious interest in prisons as political spaces and prisoners as political actors in democracy.

Book Review: M. Schinkel, Being Imprisoned: Punishment, Adaptation and Desistance

Abstract: stated that 12 years should be considered as the absolute minimum age of criminal responsibility, there still are at least 5 Countries that apply a lower MACR, countries that allow the minors to be prosecuted in front of an Adult Court (the so called ‘flexible model’) and countries that prohibit this possibility (the ‘strict model’). However, the authors are aware that a comparison of 11 Countries with different legal traditions could in some way affect the evaluation of their own legal systems. They argue that the situations in these different countries should be understood in the context of their principal legal traditions (inquisitorial and adversarial) when considering developing their approach to the protection of the rights of the juvenile defendants in a more effective way. The authors conclude that the Scottish system and the Swiss system are closest to meeting international standards. They share a focus on the young offender above all as a child and, as such, they recognise the need for a child-centred approach both before and during his/her punishment in order to be re-educated and to prevent recidivism. For these two countries, the punishment applied by the state is more akin to the educational disciplinary approach that parents exercise with their children than a criminal sanction per se. In fact, the most effective response to youth offending is to offer young people an alternative opportunity to take a different approach to their lives. In this sense, the young person is recognised as a person who needs help as do as his/her victims. The book is a valuable resource for academics as well as students with an interest in juvenile justice systems and it is also a very rich source of contemporary references for those interested in pursuing the subject in more depth. Moreover, the inclusion of re-capitulatory tables and concluding paragraphs at the end of each paragraph helps the reader to focus on key information and to find specific information easily, in case of the need of a rapid consultation.

Book Review: S.M. Bucerius and M. Tonry, The Oxford Handbook of Ethnicity, Crime and Immigration:

Abstract: practitioner. It is described by the editors as a way of closing the ‘governmentality gap’ between ‘penal rhetoric’ and ‘penal reality’ (p. 4). This ‘gap’ is ‘the discursive and social space in which those penal actors charged with delivering punishments invent and give meaning to official or formal conceptions of punishment’ (p. 5). These ideas are interrogated throughout the first part of the book, including a comparative study of volunteers working in the probation service in Germany and Japan, and studies examining professional ideologies in the USA and correctional officer training in Canada. These thematic traces draw together a rich and varied collection of research studies that together enact the principle that ‘different forms of research – critical, explanatory and evaluative – (and therefore different kinds of researchers) need one another’, to challenge and explain the world (p. 334). The editors conclude with a hope that this volume will lay the foundation for a more explicit integration of these different modes of research; however, there is something powerful in this collection’s ability to describe and prescribe at the meta level, and live its own methodology.