Secure Recovery is the first text to tackle the challenge of recovery-oriented mental health care in forensic services and prison-based therapeutic communities in the UK. Recovery as an emergent paradigm in the field of mental health presents a challenge to all services to embrace a new clinical philosophy, but nowhere are the implications more profound than in services that are designed to meet the needs of mentally disordered and personality-disordered offenders, both men and women. The chapters collected together in this book represent a cross-section of experiences in high, medium and low secure services and prison-based therapeutic communities in England and Scotland that have begun to implement a recovery orientation to the rehabilitation of offenders with mental health needs. Secure Recovery sets out a road map of guiding principles, practical and evidence-based strategies for promoting service user participation in their care and treatment and further demonstrates the adaption of traditional treatment approaches, and the development of innovations in rehabilitation, as well as tackling training for staff teams, and the evaluation of service delivery. This book provides a valuable resource and an inspiration to practitioners working across forensic mental health settings, increasing understanding of contemporary challenges and suggesting ways of moving forward.

The Baby Peter and Dano Sonnex incidents were high profile cases in which two key public services, namely child protection and probation, both failed in their tasks of protection of the victims and the public. In this book the author graphically describes media and political reactions and then proceeds to analyze the common problems both social work and probation practice face under conditions of economic recession and drastic reductions in funding. This new paperback version comes with a foreword from Shadd Maruna, Professor of Justice and Human Development and Director of the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Queen's University, Belfast, UK.

This book deals with child soldiers' involvement in crimes under international law. Child soldiers are often victims of grave human rights abuses, and yet, in some cases, they also participate actively in inflicting violence upon others. Nonetheless, the international discourse on child soldiers often tends to ignore the latter dimension of children's involvement in armed conflict and instead focuses exclusively on their role as victims. While it might seem as though the discourse is therefore beneficial for child soldiers as it protects them from blame and responsibility, it is important to realize that the so-called passive victim narrative entails various adverse consequences, which can hinder the successful reintegration of child soldiers into their families, communities and societies. This book aims to address this dilemma. First, the available options for dealing with child soldiers' participation in crimes under international law, such as transitional justice and criminal justice, and their shortcomings are analyzed in depth. Subsequently a new approach is developed towards achieving accountability in a child-adequate way, which is called restorative transitional justice. This book is in the first place aimed at researchers with an interest in child soldiers, children and armed conflict, as well as international criminal law, transitional justice, juvenile justice, restorative justice, children's rights, and international human rights law. Secondly, professionals working on issues of transitional justice, juvenile justice, international criminal law, children's rights, and the reintegration of child soldiers will also find the subject matter of great relevance to their practice. Dr. Leonie Steinl, LL.M. (Columbia) is a Researcher and Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the Humboldt-Universitat in Berlin.

This book explores the origins of the so-called 'punitive turn' in penal policy across Western nations over the past two decades. It demonstrates how the context of neoliberalism has informed penal policy-making and argues that it is ultimately neoliberalism which has led to the recent intensification of punishment.

Mounting a vigorous critique on existing approaches to transnational policing, this book lays out an argument situating transnational policing within contemporary transformations of the capitalist state and imperialism, looking at the particular case of regional police cooperation against sex trafficking in Southeast Europe.

This book deals with fundamental and at times controversial issues in juvenile justice that reach beyond the individual juvenile justice systems of various countries. The book concludes with a number of recommendations for improvements in juvenile justice.

2012 Winner of the Outstanding Book Award presented by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Academic Title from 2011 by Choice Magazine Too often, the criminal justice system silences victims, which leaves them frustrated, angry, and with many unanswered questions. Despite their rage and pain, many victims want the opportunity to confront their offenders and find resolution. After the Crime explores a victim-offender dialogue program that offers victims of severe violence an opportunity to meet face-to-face with their incarcerated offenders. Using rich in-depth interview data, the book follows the harrowing stories of crimes of stranger rape, domestic violence, marital rape, incest, child sexual abuse, murder, and drunk driving, ultimately moving beyond story-telling to provide an accessible scholarly analysis of restorative justice. Susan Miller argues that the program has significantly helped the victims who chose to face their offenders in very concrete, transformative ways. Likewise, the offenders have also experienced positive changes in their lives in terms of creating greater accountability and greater victim empathy. After the Crime explores their transformative experiences with restorative justice, vividly illustrating how one program has worked in conjunction with the criminal justice system in order to strengthen victim empowerment.

This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of assessment and intervention planning with young people who offend. It will help equip practitioners with the knowledge and professional skills central to these critically important tasks in youth justice. Assessment in Youth Justice includes learning features such as review questions and case studies, plus an online resource. It covers varied theoretical and practical topics, including decision-making, use of standardized tools, report writing, and improving assessment quality. It also takes into account current UK policy developments along with a range of literature on assessment in criminal justice and social care. Assessment in Youth Justice encourages readers to think critically about their role in assessment and planning, to engage with current debates, and to take practical steps to enhance their own practice.

Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders is a fully up-to-date, comprehensive and user-friendly guide on those offenders who are often assessed as being dangerous. Outlining, evaluating and commenting on specific methods, regimes and strategies for dealing with dangerous offenders throughout each chapter, this book begins by considering what a dangerous offender is and providing a brief historical account of how the label has been used for different types of offender over the last three or four centuries. The book examines sentencing policy in addition to early and current dangerousness legislation, evaluating the available sentences specifically designed for dangerous offenders and assessing their use and appropriateness. The role of risk and risk assessment tools is discussed, considering what risk assessment is, the way in which it works and how over recent times it has become more reliable and valid. It looks at the practical realities of how serious sexual and violent offenders are dealt with by the penal system in England and Wales. Finally, specific offender groups are considered, including female offenders, children and young people and mentally disordered offenders. Each chapter considers whether there are any differences in terms of policy, assessment and management strategies when sentencing and managing each distinct group; and if not whether any such modifications are required. This book will be key reading for students of law, criminology, social policy, psychology and sociology and of interest to criminal justice professionals including the police, prison officers, probation officers, psychologists, lawyers and judges.

Restorative justice (RJ) and restorative approaches (RAs) are becoming increasingly valued as a way of responding to a wide range of conflicts, including problem and offending behaviours. The growth in the use of RJ and RAs has been described as a 'global social movement' that sets out to repair harm, reduce conflict and harmonise civil society. This report takes a close look at the implementation of an RJ approach in the challenging environment of children's residential care homes. It will appeal to people who are interested in the use of RJ, particularly its use with children and young people, as well as those interested in problem and offending behaviours in relation to children in care.

This new and important title explores one of the most contentious and sensitive topics in criminal justice: the release and resettlement of life-sentenced offenders. Life after Life Imprisonment provides an in-depth analysis of the post-prison experiences of 138 discretionary life-sentenced offenders, all of whom were released from prison across England and Wales during the mid-1990s. Using accessible and engaging data the book examines key legal developments within the criminal justice system for discretionary life-sentenced offenders, explores the frontline experiences of criminal justice practitioners charged with the responsibility of supervising life-sentenced offenders and analyses the 'stories' or life narratives of a group of individuals who have committed some of the most serious crimes. The book also examines the process of recall for life-sentenced prisoners and explores key factors associated with failure in the community. This work therefore contributes to a variety of different areas of theoretical concern to legal scholars and criminologists as well as to applied areas of interest to practitioners in the field. Significantly, the book offers a major insight into how societies respond to serious crimes and identifies important elements of successful reintegration for released life-sentenced offenders.

Prisoners' Rights: Principles and Practice considers prisoners' rights from socio-legal and philosophical perspectives, and assesses the advantages and problems of a rights-based approach to imprisonment. At a time of record levels of imprisonment and projected future expansion of the prison population, this work is timely. The discussion in this book is not confined to a formal legal analysis, although it does include discussion of the developing jurisprudence on prisoners' rights. It offers a socio-legal rather than a purely black letter approach, and focuses on the experience of imprisonment. It draws on perspectives from a range of disciplines to illuminate how prisoners' rights operate in practice. The text also contributes to debates on imprisonment and citizenship, the treatment of women prisoners, and social exclusion. This book will be of interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of penology and criminal justice, as well as professionals working within the penal system.

Procedure is not just a programme or a nexus of formalities. It is something done by legal experts and lay participants in a highly concerted ensemble. Procedure frames and advances all law-relevant activities. This book, written by three authors from different disciplinary backgrounds, provides an in-depth comparison of criminal defence work in different legal cultures. Via an ethnographic comparison, this book also shows how defence work responds to the challenges of different procedural regimes and how it contributes to their individual outcomes. Criminal Defence and Procedure opens up new horizons for legal comparison, inviting novel understandings of procedural law as well as possibilities of legal reform.

This book is about relating the concepts of rape and murder in both senses of the term; that is the way rape and murder are linked and related and also how stories of rape and murder are related or told.

Considering the question of how levels of security allow state power to be increased to the point at which it infringes essential civil liberties, this book explores the creeping power of the executive and the unfeasibility of widespread use of the Human Rights Act as a bulwark against the oppressive use of state power.

Over the past two decades, concern about adolescent sex offenders has grown at an astonishing pace, garnering heated coverage in the media and providing fodder for television shows like "Law & Order." Americans' reaction to such stories has prompted the unquestioned application to adolescents of harsh legal and clinical intervention strategies designed for serious adult offenders, with little attention being paid to the psychological maturity of the offender. Many strategies being used today to deal with juvenile sex offenders--and even to define what criteria to use in defining "juvenile sex offender"--do not have empirical support and, Frank C. DiCataldo cautions, may be doing more harm to children and society than good.

The Perversion of Youth critiques the current system and its methods for treating and categorizing juveniles, and calls for a major reevaluation of how these cases should be managed in the future. Through an analysis of the history of the problem and an empirical review of the literature, including specific cases and their outcomes, DiCataldo demonstrates that current practices are based more on our collective fears and moral passions than on any supportive science or sound policy.

Over the last decade, the reformed youth justice system has seen increases in the numbers of children and young people in custody, a sharp rise in indeterminate sentences and the continuing deaths of young prisoners. The largest proportion of funding in youth justice at national level is spent on providing places for children and young people remanded and sentenced to custody. The publication of the Youth Crime Action Plan during 2008 and the increasing emphasis on early intervention provides a framework to consider again the interface between local services and secure residential placements. This report brings together contributions from leading experts on young people and criminal justice to critically examine current policy and practice. There are vital questions for both policy and practice on whether the use of custody reduces re-offending or whether other forms of residential placements are more effective long-term. The report looks at current approaches to the sentencing and custody of children and young people, prevention of re-offending and a range of alternative regimes.

The 2008 UK government Youth Crime Action Plan emphasises prevention and early intervention in different aspects of work with young people who offend or are considered to be 'at risk' of offending. Much of this approach includes targeted work with families and work to reduce the numbers of young people entering the youth justice system. This report takes a critical look at early intervention policies. Through contributions from leading experts on youth work and criminal justice it considers the development of integrated and targeted youth support services and the implications for practice of early intervention policies; analyses the causes of serious violent crime through consideration of issues that address gangs and guns; provides an evaluation of the government's early intervention strategy through the examination of its Sure Start programme and other family initiatives; identifies the psychobiological effects of violence on children and links them to problem behaviour; considers the impacts of family intervention projects and parenting work and compares approaches to early intervention across different jurisdictions and examines the lessons for practice in England and Wales.

This book examines youth justice in a UK and international context, while drawing on the author's experience in Scotland to highlight the challenge facing all jurisdictions in balancing welfare and justice. It explores the impact of political ideas and influences on both the structural and practical challenges of delivering youth justice and practice initiatives including early intervention, restorative justice, structured risk assessments, intensive supervision, maintaining change over time, and practice evaluation. The theoretical framework draws on social learning theory and the tradition of socio-education/social pedagogy as reflected in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is the only book to focus specifically on the application of evidence to service delivery within youth justice. It will be an essential text for social work students undertaking university-based modules or practice-based learning in services which address youth crime and youth justice, as well as other students interested in the application of criminology and youth justice principles. It will also be valuable for practitioners involved in delivering youth justice services, including those on post-qualifying social work training courses.

After decades of rigorous study in the United States and across the Western world, a great deal is known about the early risk factors for offending. High impulsiveness, low attainment, criminal parents, parental conflict, and growing up in a deprived, high-crime neighborhood are among the most important factors. There is also a growing body of high quality scientific evidence on the effectiveness of early prevention programs designed to prevent children from embarking on a life of crime.
Drawing on the latest evidence, Saving Children from a Life of Crime is the first book to assess the early causes of offending and what works best to prevent it. Preschool intellectual enrichment, child skills training, parent management training, and home visiting programs are among the most effective early prevention programs. Criminologists David Farrington and Brandon Welsh also outline a policy strategy--early prevention--that uses this current research knowledge and brings into sharper focus what America's national crime fighting priority ought to be.
At a time when unacceptable crime levels in America, rising criminal justice costs, and a punitive crime policy have spurred a growing interest in the early prevention of delinquency, Farrington and Welsh here lay the groundwork for change with a comprehensive national prevention strategy to save children from a life of crime.

Despite the growing interest in security amongst governments, organizations and the general public, the provision of much security is substandard. This book explores the problems facing security, and sets out innovative proposals to enhance the effectiveness of security in society, at national and organizational levels.

Sexual offenders - arguably the most hated and feared of all offenders - commit their crimes in our communities and are then hidden from public view as they serve long prison sentences. However, despite the public's understandable anxiety, our criminal justice systems hold to the premise that almost all offenders have the right to hope for rehabilitation, even redemption. Therefore the majority of sexual offenders return to live in our communities, closely monitored by criminal justice agencies and subject to rigorous controls. This book provides an authoritative guide to working with sexual offenders, with a focus on managing those who are reintegrating into the community. It includes those with the most striking histories of trauma and psychological difficulty, and those who have previously failed in their attempts at resettlement. It covers helpful theoretical ideas, such as attachment theory and models of desistance, as well as the latest evidence base for good quality risk assessment. The book supports practitioners on the front line of this work by providing them with evidence-based guidance. It presents a multitude of case examples and practice tips that can support effective decision making and achieve safe outcomes, as well as help such offenders build worthwhile community lives.

Privatisation was introduced into the probation service on the 1st June 2014 whereby work with medium and low risk offenders went to a number of private and voluntary bodies, work with high risk offenders remained with the State. The National Probation Service (NPS) covered State work whilst the 35 existing Probation Trusts were replaced by 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). Staff were allocated to either side of the divide but all remained as probation officers. The effect was that the existing probation service lost control of all but 30,000 of the most high risk cases, with the other 220,000 low to medium risk offenders being farmed out to private firms. Privatisation was justified as the only available way of achieving important policy objectives of extending post release supervision to offenders on short sentences, a group who are the most prolific offenders with high reconviction rates yet who receive no statutory support. This book describes the process by which the probation service became privatised, assessing its impact on the probation service itself, and on the criminal justice system generally. It considers both the justifications for privatisation, as well as the criticisms of it, and asks to what extent the probation service can survive such changes, and what future it has as a service dedicated to the welfare of offenders. It demonstrates how the privatisation of probation can be seen as a trend away from traditional public service in criminal justice towards an emphasis on efficiency and cost effectiveness. This book is essential reading for criminology students engaged with criminal justice, social policy, probation, punishment and working with offenders. It will also be key reading for practitioners and policy makers in jurisdictions where there is an interest in extending their own privatisation practice.

This highly topical book integrates theory and practice about children and their education provision in secure accommodation. Bridging the fields of education, health, and youth justice, it provides a unique interdisciplinary perspective outlining the importance of taking a holistic approach to the education and rehabilitation of children who are 'locked up'. The book has brought together contributors from across the UK and beyond to share their academic research, practical knowledge, and experiences working with children and young people. Shedding light on the intricacies and realities of working in the context of secure settings, the book is divided into the following five parts: Contextualising the field Practice insights Case examples and models of practice Inclusion and voice Recommendations from research Children and Their Education in Secure Accommodation unravels the complexity of the topic and offers 'whole-system' perspectives, as well as a child-centred view, on the issue of educating and rehabilitating children and the needs and rights of children in such settings. With unique and valuable insights from those involved in policy or provision, this book will be an essential text for researchers, practitioners, and students in this interdisciplinary field.

At a time when Europe is witnessing major cultural, social, economic and political challenges and transformations, this book brings together leading researchers and experts to consider a range of pressing questions relating to the historical origins, contemporary manifestations and future prospects for juvenile justice. Questions considered include: How has the history of juvenile justice evolved across Europe and how might the past help us to understand the present and signal the future? What do we know about contemporary juvenile crime trends in Europe and how are nation states responding? Is punitivity and intolerance eclipsing child welfare and pedagogical imperatives, or is 'child-friendly justice' holding firm? How might we best understand both the convergent and the divergent patterning of juvenile justice in a changing and reformulating Europe? How is juvenile justice experienced by identifiable constituencies of children and young people both in communities and in institutions? What impacts are sweeping austerity measures, together with increasing mobilities and migrations, imposing? How can comparative juvenile justice be conceptualised and interpreted? What might the future hold for juvenile justice in Europe at a time of profound uncertainty and flux? This book is essential reading for students, tutors and researchers in the fields of criminology, history, law, social policy and sociology, particularly those engaged with childhood and youth studies, human rights, comparative juvenile/youth justice, youth crime and delinquency and criminal justice policy in Europe.