Understanding Penal Practice: (Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice)

Criminological and penological scholarship has in recent years explored how and why institutions and systems of punishment change – and how and why these changes differ in different contexts. Important though these analyses are, this book focuses not so much on the changing nature of institutions and systems, but rather the changing nature of penal practice and practitioners Bringing together leading researchers from around the world, this collection unites studies that aim to describe and critically analyse penal practice with studies that investigate its effectiveness and prescribe its future development. Reversing penology’s usual preoccupation with the prison, the book focuses mainly on penal practice in the community (i.e. on probation, parole, offender supervision and ‘community corrections’). The first part of the book focuses on understanding practice and practitioners, exploring how changing social, cultural, political, and organisational contexts influence practice, and how training, development, professional socialisation and other factors influence practitioners. The second part is concerned with how practitioners can be best supported to develop the skills and approaches that seem most likely to generate positive impacts. It contains accounts of new practice models and approaches, as well as reports of research projects seeking both to discover and to encourage effective practices. This book explores internationally significant and cutting-edge theoretical and empirical work on the cultures, practices, roles and impacts of frontline practitioners in delivering penal sanctions. As such, it will be of interest to researchers in criminology, social work and social policy as well as correctional policy makers and those involved in community supervision.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part 1: Understanding practice, understanding practitioners, 1. Professional ideologies in the United States' probation and parole 2. Correctional officer training in Canada, 3. Who works in the probation service in Romania, 4. Explaining French probation: social work in a prison administration, 5. Probation practices and Übergangsmanagement in Germany: state of play and challenges, 6.Volunteers in the probaiton service: a comparison between Germany and Japan, 7. Redefining professionalism by seeking legitimacy in probation? A comparison between Belgium and England and Wales, 8. Understanding 'the relationship' in English probation supervision, 9. What quality means to probation staff in England in relation to one-to-one supervision, 10. Staff-prisoner relationships, moral performance and privitization, 11. Changing lives, changing work: social work and criminal justice, Part 2: Supporting practitioners, improving practice 12. Staff skills and characteristics in probation history: a literature review, 13. Co-producing desistance: who works to support desistance? 14.Practicing the Good Lives Models (GLM), 15. Effective supervision in youth justice: a comparison of data sources, Chris Trotter 16. Supporting probation officers' evidence-based professional development in the strategic thinking initiative in community supervision (STICS): Ongoing clinical support activities and the individuals who lead the charge, 17. Supervision skills and practices: the Jersey study, 18. Supporting practitioners to engage offenders, 19. Sources of professional effectiveness, Anneke Menger and Andrea Donker 20. Wraparound care as a booster of the crime reducing effects of probation, 21. Aligning the purposes of probation with professional and learning competencies: basic conditions for a new professionalism, Conclusion: changing penal practice.