Abstract
There may be huge uncertainty in England and Wales about the future shape of youth justice and the organisation of the probation service, but behind the scenes and internationally those who think about the theory and practice of offender supervision appear remarkably resilient. This fat collection of 24 essays, sandwiched between an editorial introduction and conclusion, is the result of a network (Collaboration of Researchers for the Effective Development of Offender Supervision, CREDOS) established in 2007 which has since met three times and involves members from Australia and North America as well as Europe. Disappointingly, however, despite the fact that their inaugural meeting took place in Italy, all the contributors are, with the exception of two Dutch academics, from common law jurisdictions. As Friedrich Lösel (2012) has highlighted in a forthcoming essay, most of the research on what works in offender supervision remains confined to the English-speaking world, which makes one wonder whether tricks are being missed.
With the exception of Tom O’Connor and Brad Bogue’s account of Circles of Support in Canada, for example, there is practically no mention of volunteers or mentoring schemes and though there is a useful essay from Gill McIvor on judicial involvement in offender management, her evidence and attention is entirely restricted to drugs and other specialist courts in common law countries. Her summation of the arguments against judicial involvement, judges ‘overstepping the mark’ by straying into ‘professional’ terrain for which they have no ‘expertise’, would strike many Continental lawyers as curiously lop-sided. In England and Wales granting the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) powers effectively to punish through out-of-court sanctions, and the parole board, on the basis of recommendations from probation officers, effectively to re-sentence growing numbers of indeterminate sentence prisoners, might equally be seen as a serious abrogation of the role of the judiciary, making decisions accountably, in open court, according to the rule of law (see Padfield et al., 2012).
Much of the book is framed by the risk-need-responsivity (RNR), Good Lives Model (GLM) and ‘desistance’ debate. RNR is explained by James Bonta and Don Andrews. They argue that the RNR approach ‘does not exclude attention to personal levels of distress’ (p. 35, emphasis in original): ‘achieving personal satisfaction for offenders’ involves giving attention to both types, criminogenic and non-criminogenic, needs. Nonetheless Tony Ward, who explains GLM, argues that ‘risk is best considered in contextual terms rather than conceptualised purely as constituted by individual deviancy’ (p. 51): offenders are more than ‘bearers of risk’. Thus, he argues, we know that rehabilitation programmes are effective in reducing recidivism, what is less clear is how. ‘Intervention plans that offer people a chance at a more fulfilling life as well as a less harmful one’ (p. 61) are what should be aimed for and, Shadd Maruna and Thomas LeBel maintain in their account of desistance theory, this will result best through a ‘relational process best achieved in the context of relationships with others’ (p. 81).
The argument surrounding the RNR, GLM and Desistance paradigms is as much a product of the manner in which RNR, the market leader in the English-speaking penal policy world, has been employed administratively by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and parallel agencies as anything inherent in the model itself. As Maguire et al. (2010) have pointed out, the suggestion that RNR: placed too much emphasis on quantitative data, promoted centralization and top–down administration, contained demanding procedures of accreditation and audit, reduced diversity and creativity in practice and gave too much weight to standardized cognitive behavioural programmes, has to a large extent been a reaction to the introduction of evidence-based policies and quality management rather than RNR per se. As the editors of this collection suggest in their conclusion (p. 535), the apparently competing paradigms are more compatible than appears at first sight. There is now a huge diversity of interventions grounded on RNR tenets well supported by solid research evidence and the fact is that all penal systems must strike a balance between ensuring effective organisational management and promoting human dignity and positive relationships.
The editors’ introduction to this collection is entitled ‘What’s new and exciting’. I doubt anyone will get excited by the contents. But there is evidence of solid progress which deserves positive recognition by those civil servants and politicians who will determine the future of our youth justice and probation services.