Showing papers in "European journal of probation in 2017"

Electronic monitoring: The experience in Australia:

Abstract: Electronic monitoring (EM) has been introduced in over 30 countries around the world. In most English-speaking countries, it has moved well beyond experimental status and become a regularly applied penal measure. Australia has been lagging behind this world trend, as EM has yet not become dominant in our correctional landscape. This is even though sanctions that utilise radio-frequency and/or global positioning systems (GPS) monitoring have existed in Australia for decades. This article critically examines overseas evaluative findings of EM in relation to recidivism, cost-effectiveness and net-widening, as well as some of the issues and concerns that are associated with EM. The article then summarises and explains the limited Australian EM experience to date. It predicts that increased application of EM in Australia seems likely and should be evidence-based. In this context, there is an urgent need for increased understanding about the use and impact of EM in Australia. The article concludes with some observations about the importance of comparative analysis in this context.

Freedom, so close but yet so far: The impact of the ongoing confrontation with freedom on the perceived severity of punishment:

Abstract: The severity of a particular sentence is often assumed to be reflected by its degree of liberty-restriction: a five-year prison sentence is considered more severe than a one-year prison sentence, and imprisonment is considered more severe than electronic monitoring. Yet, the relationship between the degree of liberty-restriction and the experienced severity is more complex. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in two Belgian and two Norwegian prisons, and phenomenological interviews with electronically monitored offenders, this article argues that a lesser degree of liberty-restriction can result in a more painful experience of this liberty restriction, but still contributes to the offenders’ reintegration.

Transforming Rehabilitation during a penal crisis: A case study of Through the Gate services in a resettlement prison in England and Wales:

Abstract: In 2013, the UK government published plans to radically reform resettlement provision for released prisoners via a Through the Gate scheme to be introduced as part of its Transforming Rehabilitatio...

Probation officers for young offenders in 1920s Scotland

Abstract: Relatively little is known about early probation systems in Scotland. While there has been growing interest in Scottish probation history, many aspects of early 20th century probation practice remain unexplored. This article looks in particular at the role of early juvenile probation officers, their background, their ethos, their guiding principles and methods. Probation in 1920s Scotland was a controversial topic that provoked much debate, chiefly concerning the appropriate personnel to act as probation officers and under what conditions should they operate. The article examines these debates regarding probation reform in the interwar period.

Prisoners and their children: An innovative model of ‘whole family’ support:

Abstract: The article reports key findings from an evaluation of ‘Invisible Walls Wales’ (IWW), a multi-agency ‘through the gate’ project in HMP Parc, South Wales, based on an innovative model of ‘whole fami...

Advancing electronic monitoring in Scotland: Understanding the influences of localism and professional ideologies:

Abstract: Scotland has one of the highest prison population rates in western Europe, coinciding with a recent growth in interest in electronic monitoring (EM) as a potential mechanism for diversion and decar...

HOPE probation: A new path to desistance?:

Abstract: This article seeks to understand Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) program through a desistance framework. The article commences with a brief overview of the literature on desi...

Creating spaces for change: Engaging civil society to harness change in criminal justice practice:

Abstract: In a context of neoliberal penality, crime is falling yet prison populations continue to rise. Governments profess to recognise the problem yet have had little impact on underlying trends in crimin...

Electronic monitoring and supervision: A comparative perspective:

Abstract: The use of electronic monitoring (EM) has grown rapidly in Europe and elsewhere and is likely to continue to do so. EM is a technological tool that allows to monitor the location of individuals via an electronic ankle tag, to track the movements of individuals either in real time or retrospectively. This special issue of the European Journal of Probation focuses on the relationship of EM with supervision in four jurisdictions (Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and Scotland) and the question whether EM is mainly used as a stand-alone order or as an integrated measure; that is, alongside other supervisory conditions. It also contains a contribution with an initial round up of Australian experiences with EM.

“You’ll never stand-alone”: Electronic monitoring in Germany:

Abstract: Electronic monitoring (EM) in Germany is used only exceptionally in cases of high-risk offenders released from prison after fully having served a prison sentence or after release from the preventive detention measure (added to a prison sentence in cases of “dangerous” violent or sex offenders). About 70 cases on a daily total of more than 36,000 supervision of conduct cases are under global positioning system (GPS)-EM. Only in one federal state (Hesse) EM on radio frequency technology is also used to avoid pre-trial detention or in regular probation/parole cases. Numbers remain very low also in this context. EM is always combined with a probation or supervision of conduct order, which means that it is embedded in the rehabilitative work of the probation services. The German judiciary and crime policy are very reluctant to expand EM, as there is no pressure from the prison system (no overcrowding) and the “ordinary” probation service (without EM) works quite efficiently.

The highly reintegrative approach of electronic monitoring in the Netherlands

Abstract: This contribution describes the way electronic monitoring (EM) is organized and implemented in the Netherlands. It will become clear that the situation in the Netherlands is characterized by, in particular, two features. The application of EM is highly interwoven with the Probation Service and its reintegrative objectives, a characteristic that dominates the organization and use of EM to a great extent. Paradoxically, EM is hardly used in the Netherlands as an autonomous (stand-alone) replacement for short prison sentences. The most straightforward explanation for this situation is that the Netherlands does not really need EM to replace prison capacity since its prison population already decreased drastically since 2005. A second explanation is that the intense involvement of the probation service in the enforcement of electronic monitoring has as a side-effect that these sanctions are not accepted as punitive sanctions, but fully framed into the rehabilitative perspective.

Electronic monitoring and reintegration in Belgium

Abstract: Electronic monitoring (EM) was introduced to Belgium in the late 1990s and ever since its use has been changing and expanding. The objectives and political discourse driving the introduction and ex...

A human rights-based approach to community justice: Adding value to desistance focused practice

Abstract: The article explores what is meant by a human rights-based approach to supervision and how such an approach can converge with desistance focused practice in order to impact on its effectiveness. Placing the discussion in the wider context of human rights developments in social services and of desistance focused approaches to effective supervision in the community, I explore the extent to which a human rights approach can add legitimacy to a desistance approach, identifying common themes between the approaches that would support this case. My findings support the contention that a human rights-based approach to supervision can add value to practice that supports desistance from crime.

Post-script: Guide, guard and glue – Electronic monitoring and penal supervision:

Abstract: This issue of the European Journal of Probation provides us with contemporary, considered and thoughtful analyses of the development of electronic monitoring (EM) in the context of penal sanctions and measures in five jurisdictions: Australia, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland. The guest editor of this special issue – Professor Kristel Beyens – deserves great credit for pulling together such an interesting and important collection of papers. She has asked me – as someone deeply interested in penal supervision but to some extent detached from debates about EM – to offer some closing reflections. In what follows, I try to do that, not through any attempt to synthesise the analyses of these excellent papers, but rather simply by sharing the thoughts and questions they provoked in this reader. Perhaps the obvious place to start is with my ‘detachment’ hitherto from EM. Despite the encouragement of wiser colleagues (like Mike Nellis and Kristel Beyens) to engage more with EM in my work on supervision, I have always been hesitant. On the one hand, like everyone else, I find it impossible to dispute the important influence of technologies on social (and therefore penal) policies and practices – and on the evolution of social life and social control in late-modernity. To make this case, I need only examine the way that my own life has been progressively re-framed by new technologies. My smartphone is my guide and my guard – and the glue that, in one sense, fixes together my social and personal relations. In fact, this single handheld device digitally mediates most of my social relations. It is not that I do not have an ‘analogue life’ where I meet and relate to ‘real’ people in the flesh; rather, it is that even those interactions are planned, ordered and facilitated by that device. So, I shudder at the fearful prospect of the loss of my smartphone, even if I also sometimes resent its omnipresence and fear its omniscience: Better than any person perhaps, it knows (and records) my plans, my contacts, my movements, my curiosities, my purchases, my networks, and so forth. Yes, I can silence its tones and alerts, but even then I hover around it – curious as to the digital ‘action’ that I might be missing. And the digital world does seem to be where most of the action is. Even so, when it comes to thinking about penal supervision, perhaps like many probation academics and practitioners of my generation (or older), the centrality of humanhuman interactions and relationships has been drilled into me, both in my professional 700544 EJP0010.1177/2066220317700544European Journal of ProbationMcNeill 2017

Innovation and Criminal Justice: Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue on 'Innovation', December 2017

Abstract: This Special Issue of the European Journal of Probation considers examples and influences of innovation within criminal justice and community contexts. It offers some timely and insightful contribu...

Book Review: Hannah Graham, Rehabilitation Work. Supporting Desistance and Recovery:

Abstract: Given that Herzog-Evans has achieved the extraordinary feat of providing a guide to the French equivalent legislative morass, surely she should also have succeeded in shaming the French Government/legislature into working towards considerable simplification? Do not get me wrong: this is a wonderful, detailed and surely highly reliable and useful book. The only shame is that prisoners’ rights should be so complex.

Book Review: Martine Herzog-Evans, Droit de l’exécution des peines

Abstract: Not many readers of this journal will actually read this book – it is a designed as a detailed guide for legal practitioners in France, and it is not for the faint-hearted. The current edition is 1500 pages long. But that does not mean that it is not a rich treasure trove waiting to be mined. French sentencing law is very different to its English equivalent. Judges impose the sentence swiftly and briefly. This sentence can then be adjusted appropriately as the offender progresses through the sentence – hence the need for juges d’application des peines. But this book is not simply about the application of punishments – but more about the exécution or implementation of sentences. What is the difference? Many of the distinctions in French law are difficult for the outsider (well, for me, anyhow) to grasp. Reading this book puts the words and concepts into their detailed context – and it really helps the outsider to get under the skin of a very different legal scheme. It is not only concepts (words) such as application/ exécution that are difficult to understand. We find in France a variety of jurisdictions, and quasi-jurisdictions, a variety of players in the process, none of which neatly align themselves with other systems. Of course not – politics and constant change is a feature of the French system, as elsewhere. Do not get me wrong – I would criticise those systems that appear fossilised in the 19th century, but you can have too much change, and too much complexity. In order to be fair, the law must be transparently clear. It is worth exploring the coverage of Martine Herzog-Evans’ book to spot some crucial differences with other jurisdictions. It starts with a useful short Titre (Part) 0 (why is this not 1?) on sources, divided into four chapters. Herzog-Evans is of course herself a comparatist, with a keen eye on pan-European developments, and she cannot resist a wise commentary in the Introduction as she seeks to educate legal practitioners. Thus, she comments on page 4 that the concept of ‘community sanctions and measures’ has no legal meaning (valeur juridique), strictly speaking, but a value under the umbrella of the Council of Europe. Chapter One serves as a reminder that both France and England ‘enjoy’ a mind-boggling and confusing array of relevant law. I was once taught to believe that the French, with the benefits of a codified system, enjoyed more consistency and coherence than us poor common law souls! But the reality is, of course, that the line between what goes in the Code pénitentiaire, the Code pénal and the Code de procédure penale is not straightforward, and underneath these, there is a morass of delegated 724938 EJP0010.1177/2066220317724938European Journal of ProbationBook Reviews 2017