This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to probation. It brings together themes of policy, theory and practice to help students and practitioners better understand the work of probation, its limitations, its potential, but above all its value. Setting probation in the context of the criminal justice system, the book explores its history, purposes and contemporary significance. It explains what probation is and the practical realities of working with offenders in the community. The book also covers the governance of probation and how policy and practice are responding to contemporary concerns about crime and community safety. This book encourages readers to appreciate the practical and theoretical strengths and shortcomings of contemporary probation practice. This revised and updated new edition includes a full description and discussion of recent reforms in the probation service and the Transforming Rehabilitation policy agenda. It also offers further discussion of international perspectives on probation, including international developments and collaborative efforts between countries. This book is essential reading for trainee probation officers and students taking courses on probation, offender management, treatment and rehabilitation, working with offenders and community justice.

In the aftermath of Martinson's 1974 "nothing works" doctrine, scholars have made a concerted effort to develop an evidence-based corrections theory and practice to show "what works" to change offenders. Perhaps the most important contribution to this effort was made by a group of Canadian psychologists, most notably Donald Andrews, James Bonta, and Paul Gendreau, who developed a treatment paradigm called the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model, which became the dominant theory of correctional treatment. This approach was more recently challenged by a perspective developed by Tony Ward, Shadd Maruna, and others, called the Good Lives Model (GLM). Based in part on desistance research and positive psychology, this model proposes to rehabilitate offenders by building on the strengths offenders possess. GLM proponents see the RNR model as a deficit model that fixes dynamic risk factors rather than identifying what offenders value most, and using these positive factors to pull them out of crime. Through a detailed examination of both models' theoretical and correctional frameworks, The Future of Correctional Rehabilitation: Moving Beyond the RNR Model and Good Lives Model Debate probes the extent to which the models offer incompatible or compatible approaches to offender treatment, and suggests how to integrate the RNR and GLM approaches to build a new and hopefully more effective vision for offender treatment. A foreword by renowned criminologist Francis T. Cullen helps put the material into context. This book will be of much interest to scholars and students studying correctional rehabilitation as well as practitioners working with offenders.

This book draws on the latest literature to highlight a fundamental challenge in offender rehabilitation; it questions the ability of contemporary approaches to address this challenge, and proposes an alternative strategy of criminal justice that integrates control, opportunity, and autonomy. * Provides an up to date review of the links between cognition and criminal behavior, as well as treatment and rehabilitation * Engages directly with the antisocial underpinnings of criminal behavior, a major impediment to treatment and rehabilitation * Outlines a clear strategy for communicating with offenders which is firmly rooted in the "What Works" literature, is evidence-based, and provides a way of engaging even the most antisocial of offenders by presenting them with meaningful opportunities to change * Provides hands-on instructions based upon the real-life tactics and presentation of the high-risk offender * Offers a way forward for a more meaningful and effective system of criminal justice

This book queries the concept of rehabilitation to determine how, on a legislative and policy level, the term is defined as a goal of correctional systems. The book explores what rehabilitation is by investigating how, at different moments in time, its conceptualization has shaped, and been shaped by, shifting norms, practices, and institutions of corrections in California. The author calls for a rethinking of theoretical understandings of the corrections system, generally, and parole system, specifically, and calls for an expansion in the questions asked in reintegration studies. The book is designed for scholars seeking to better understand the relationship between correctional systems and rehabilitation and the full scope of rehabilitation as a legislative goal, and is also suitable for use as teaching tool for historical, textual, and interviewing methods.

Dynamic risk factors are the children of risk prediction. They were identified to help practitioners assess risk of recidivism and to set treatment targets likely to reduce reoffending. This resulted in the development of intervention programs designed to modify the characteristics of individuals and their environments associated with crime. The predictive nature of their legacy lies in their ability to provide reliable information about the likelihood of future reoffending. In this respect, dynamic risk factors are useful complements to static risk factors such as age, gender, and history of offending, and add incremental validity to recidivism prediction. Their treatment utility resides in the fact that practitioners increasingly rely on the identification of dynamic risk factors to direct correctional assessment and interventions. Thus, dynamic risk factors have a dual status. They are both useful predictors of reoffending and measures of risk status, and potential causes of reoffending, capable of serving an explanatory role as well as a predictive one. It is a simple and powerful conceptualization that has streamlined forensic and correctional research, program development, and the delivery of treatment. Despite its conceptual elegance we believe that the dual conceptualization of dynamic risk factors is problematic and these difficulties spill over into their role in assessment, assessment, treatment, and desistance contexts. In this publication, the nature and function of dynamic risk factors are investigated and their strengths and limitations identified. This book was originally published as a special issue of Psychology, Crime and Law.

The Handbook on Risk and Need Assessment: Theory and Practice covers risk assessments for individuals being considered for parole or probation. Evidence-based approaches to such decisions help take the emotion and politics out of community corrections. As the United States begins to back away from ineffective, expensive policies of mass incarceration, this handbook will provide the resources needed to help ensure both public safety and the effective rehabilitation of offenders. The ASC Division on Corrections & Sentencing Handbook Series will publish volumes on topics ranging from violence risk assessment to specialty courts for drug users, veterans, or the mentally ill. Each thematic volume focuses on a single topical issue that intersects with corrections and sentencing research.

Corrections officials faced with rising populations and shrinking budgets have increasingly welcomed "faith-based" providers offering services at no cost to help meet the needs of inmates. Drawing from three years of on-site research, this book utilizes survey analysis along with life-history interviews of inmates and staff to explore the history, purpose, and functioning of the Inmate Minister program at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka "Angola"), America's largest maximum-security prison. This book takes seriously attributions from inmates that faith is helpful for "surviving prison" and explores the implications of religious programming for an American corrections system in crisis, featuring high recidivism, dehumanizing violence, and often draconian punishments. A first-of-its-kind prototype in a quickly expanding policy arena, Angola's unique Inmate Minister program deploys trained graduates of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout the prison. Inmates lead their own congregations and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cell block visitation, delivery of familial death notifications to fellow inmates, "sidewalk counseling" and tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and delivering "care packages" to indigent prisoners. Life-history interviews uncover deep-level change in self-identity corresponding with a growing body of research on identity change and religiously motivated desistance. The concluding chapter addresses concerns regarding the First Amendment, the dysfunctional state of U.S. corrections, and directions for future research.

As organizations grapple with the challenges of hiring, they must also consider how they will engage with some of the most marginalized individuals in our society, such as individuals who have a criminal history. Many individuals are interested in returning to the workplace after obtaining a conviction. However, many of these individuals will encounter substantial barriers and exclusion when attempting to access employment in various occupations and industries. For our society to function, all individuals must have an opportunity to positively contribute, and organizations can no longer sit on the side-lines. Organizations have a responsibility to engage in hiring practices that encourage entry, not exclusion. Now Hiring allows readers to consider their individual biases, as well as their organizational employment practices and processes, and assess how these factors may be altered to increase hiring for individuals with a criminal history. Young encourages readers to think more broadly about the role of organizations and the responsibility that organizations have beyond their immediate stakeholders. Most importantly, Now Hiring prompts conversation and serves as a reminder that our current system is not sustainable. As we await other long overdue changes to various systemic issues, organizations must figure out how do their part. Providing entry to the workplace after a criminal history is a place to start.

Written with passion and understanding, Jail Bird explores how it is possible to reach out to those vilified in the press and by society at large, and to work for the good of all, recognising the humanity in those who commit crimes. Sharon Grenham-Thompson is an Anglican minister and former prison chaplain at Bedford Jail in the UK, where she was responsible for running a large multi-faith team. Jailbird explores her motivation to help those who are the least in society. "Totally gripping and extremely personal, this fluid biography comes gushing down the mountain like a raging floodwater. I literally couldn't put it down. In fact I read the whole thing in one session." Chris Evans - BBC Radio 2 Presenter

From role-plays with street gangs in the USA to Beckett in Brixton; from opera productions with sex offenders to psychodrama with psychopaths, the book will discuss, analyse and reflect on theoretical notions and practical applications of theatre for and with the incarcerated.
Theatre in Prison is a collection of thirteen international essays exploring the rich diversity of innovative drama works in prisons. The book includes an introduction that will present a contextualisation of the prison theatre field. Thereafter, leading practitioners and academics will explore key aspects of practice &endash; problemitising, theorising and describing specific approaches to working with offenders. The book also includes extracts from prison plays, poetry and prisoners writings that offer illustrations and insights into the experience of prison life.

The first volume of the Trends in Corrections: Interviews with Corrections Leaders Around the World series introduced readers to the great diversity that exists cross-culturally in the political, social, and economic context of the correctional system. Presenting transcribed interviews of corrections leaders, it offered a comprehensive survey of correctional programming and management styles used across nations. The general conclusion drawn from the inaugural publication was that the correctional leaders interviewed exhibited striking similarities despite vast differences in the social and political climates in which they worked. They all appeared to struggle with some of the same issues. With a fresh set of interviews exploring further cross-cultural differences and similarities, Volume Two extends the reach to several new countries, including Slovenia, Slovakia, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, and France. The interviews are conducted by scholars or practitioners with intimate knowledge of correctional practice and who are familiar with the correctional system in the country of the interviewees. They expand the knowledge base by asking correction leaders specifically about the impact of the economic downturn on corrections in each country, the changes in correctional practice they've experienced, and how they think about and evaluate trends and developments. This revealing series affords correctional leaders an unprecedented opportunity to express their views on current practices and the future of corrections in their countries, facilitating the development of solutions to corrections challenges worldwide. This book is a volume in the Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts and Corrections series.

This book provides a comprehensive dissemination of theoretically grounded and empirically sound research on sex offenders and sex offending. It uses diverse methodological approaches with implications for the research of criminal justice policy and practice. The chapters derive from and focus on different geographical contexts and generate empirical evidence concerning sex offenders and sex offending including: low sex recidivism rates; a lack of sex offender specialization; little to no evidence of sex offending continuity from adolescence to adulthood; and a host of collateral consequences of sex offender registration and notification policies with limited deterrent effect or public safety benefit.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the "Journal of Crime & Justice."

The United States of America is in possession of the largest prison population in the world, with 2.3 million people currently behind bars. This number is predominantly and disproportionately made up of communities of colour and poverty. Between 1987 and 2007, the U.S. prison population tripled; the direct result of various tough on crime public policies. Organizers and scholars use the term prison industrial complex (PIC) to name the structure that encompasses the expanding economic and political contexts of the detention and corrections industry in the USA. The PIC is a network that sutures capital, communities and the State to a permanent punishment economy. The term the PIC aims to capture the range of material and ideological forces that shape the growth of detention: the political and lobbying power of the corrections officers unions, the framing of prisons and jails as a growth industry in the context of deindustrialization, the production and sales of technology and security required to maintain and expand the state of incarceration, and the naturalization of isolation as a logical response to harm.

Education and Incarceration highlights the significance of centering agency and autonomy, and documents scholars who work to be accountable to justice movements and communities, not simply to academic disciplines or to research. Additionally, as emerging scholars committed to challenging the PIC, these authors struggle to build multi-layered analytic and material tools for resistance within and beyond the walls of schools, jails and prisons. This book provides snapshots of practices in motion: activist scholars working to engage, to be accountable to families, communities and larger justice movements, and to build abolition democracies.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Race Ethnicity and Education."

Probation: Key Readings presents a comprehensive selection of key readings in community penalties. It is divided into six sections, each with a detailed introduction from the editors. Section one showcases central policy perspectives on the role, tasks and significance of the probation service since its inception in 1907, demonstrating the key shifts in political opinion that have taken place. Section two considers the history and development of probation and other community penalties, including accounts of the emergence and origins of such penalties. Section three looks more theoretically at these developments, illustrating the extent of professional and academic debate about the purpose of probation in a changing criminal justice climate through the models of practice that have been proposed and elaborated at different times in the history of the service. Section four examines practice, including some of the key programmes that have been developed such as day centres, drug programmes, intensive supervision projects, together with innovative experiments in community engagement. It covers various techniques and approaches to working with offenders, such as casework, groupwork and partnership working. The fifth section includes various articles on the theme of diversity, a longstanding concern of probation staff. Finally, section six looks at the arguments around effectiveness, including how it is measured and the Nothing Works/What Works debate.

Probation: Key Readings will be essential reading for practitioners, trainees and students of probation.

Here are the stories of a dozen men on probation from the busiest criminal court in Massachusetts who met together on a college campus for three months to read and talk about Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Bill Russell, as well as Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, and other authors who write about major life changes not only issues that have gotten probationers in trouble, such as anger and violence, substance abuse, or family breakdown, but also background problems like poverty and racism, the need for social justice, the weakening of community bonds, and the thinning of spiritual sustenance."Changing Lives" presents its students with two challenges: personal self-examination in the reflective mirror of literary experience and group participation in a democratic classroom in which civic virtues are fostered by being exercised. Probationers see themselves in the characters they read about, and they acquire new attitudes as they talk with one another about their own plight. The classroom promotes respect for other voices and points of view, and they learn to take each other seriously in new ways. "Changing Lives" provides a safe haven for reflection and earnest conversation, in which students no longer have to bluff or be cool, guarded, or evasive. Self-esteem grows as they discover they can hold their own in heartfelt debate, not just street corner banter. And because the classroom puts them on equal footing with authority figures teachers, probation officers, and even judges a new social awareness begins to emerge. The goal is partly to validate one s personal worthiness and partly to build a new citizenly identity to replace the labels they have always been stuck with. Reawakening moral consciousness and a fresh commitment to society is essential if probationers are not to cycle endlessly through the limbo of street life and jail time. "

Brings together the growing amount of evidence on the assessment and treatment of offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Written by a team of international experts, this comprehensive and informative book provides a contemporary picture of evidence-based practice for offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities. By adopting a scientist-practitioner position directed at an academic level with practitioner guidelines, it provides a valuable reference source for professionals from allied disciplines who are using or seeking to apply research for this client group. The Wiley Handbook of What Works for Offenders with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: An Evidence Based Approach to Theory, Assessment and Treatment is divided into five sections: Introduction, Phenotypes & Genotypes and Offending Behavior, Validated Assessments, Treatment, and Conclusions. The Introduction offers an overview of the entire book and is followed by a second overview covering the ethics of evidence-based practice. After that come chapters on protecting the rights of people with intellectual disabilities in correctional settings, and behavioral and cognitive phenotypes in genetic disorders associated with offending. The third part of the book studies the assessment of individuals with anger and violence issues, inappropriate sexual behavior, alcohol abuse, and emotional difficulties. Next comes a section that looks how to offenders can be treated. The final section discusses future directions and requirements for offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Provides an overview of the ethical challenges and issues faced by those who work with intellectually and developmentally disabled offenders Focuses on proof of treatment effectiveness and validation of assessment methods to direct readers toward "What Works" Features contributions from authors across the entire English-speaking world including the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand The Wiley Handbook of What Works for Offenders with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: An Evidence Based Approach to Theory, Assessment and Treatment will appeal to all who work in the field of offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including nursing staff, social workers and probation officers, medical and psychology staff, and more.

The first authoritative volume to look back on the last 50 years of The Open University providing higher education to those in prison, this unique book gives voice to ex-prisoners whose lives have been transformed by the education they received. Offering vivid personal testimonies, reflective vignettes and academic analysis of prison life and education in prison, the book marks the 50th anniversary of The Open University.

Pro-social modelling refers to the process by which the worker acts as a good motivating role model in order to bring out the best in people. The worker engages the client in an empathetic relationship within which they actively reinforce pro-social behaviour and attitudes and discourage anti-social behaviour and attitudes. It has come to be recognized as fundamental to effective work with offenders in the Probation Service, Youth Justice and the Prison Service. It is also equally relevant in other fields such social work, youth work, health care, education, management and parenting.

This updated and expanded new edition builds upon the highly successful first edition to provide an accessible guide to what pro-social practice is and how to do it, offering support and practical guidance for managers and practitioners seeking to implement and develop pro-social practice. It has been updated throughout, drawing on a wide range of evidence to relate theory to practice. It includes a wholly new chapter containing five case studies showing pro-social modelling being used in a police force, a prison, an Approved Premise, an educational establishment, and within community supervision Key areas of guidance include:

This major new book brings together leading researchers in the field in order to describe and analyse internationally significant theoretical and empirical work on offender supervision, and to address the policy and practice implications of this work within and across jurisdictions. Arising out of the work of the international Collaboration of Researchers for the Effective Development of Offender Supervision (CREDOS), this book examines questions and issues that have arisen both within effectiveness research, and from research on desistance from offending. The book draws out the lessons that can be learned not just about what works, but about how and why particular practices support desistance in specific jurisdictional, cultural and local contexts.

Key themes addressed in this book include:

• New directions in theory and paradigms for practice
• Staff skills and effective offender supervision
• Different issues and challenges in improving offender supervision
• The role of families, significant others and social networks
• Understanding and supporting compliance within supervision
• Exploring the social, political, organisational and historical contexts of offender supervision

Offender Supervision will be essential reading for academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students, policy makers, managers and practitioners interested in offender supervision.

Probation and Parole Departments must provide for the protection of society as well as the rehabilitation of the offending individual. Probation and Parole: Current Issues presents leading authorities offering various broad and specific aspects of the controversial topic along with the latest research. This handy source provides illustrative examples of current hot button issues and can be used as an excellent core or complement textbook for a probation and parole class. Issues discussed range broadly from mental health considerations to rehabilitation options. The book provides wide multi-national perspectives of the issues, including research and comparisons on juvenile recidivism between the United States and Australia. This crucial work provides a detailed look at the research on individuals in the system, the programs for those citizens that are successful, and those methods that may be ineffective. A study is also presented with data on the positive impact of Assertive Community Treatment workers who provide mental health treatment in the community. The book is extensively referenced and includes several figures and tables to clearly present data. This book is a useful resource for educators, students, and anyone in the probation and parole field. It was published as a special issue of the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation.

The first biography of the prison reformer Alexander Paterson (1884-1947). Sir Alexander Paterson (1884-1947) is best remembered for his role as Commissioner of Prisons and as the individual responsible for some of the greatest British innovations in the field of penal practice. All major prison reforms of his day can be associated with his name. One of the key characteristics of Paterson's reform drive was that he brought a much more 'scientific' approach to penology, encouraging psychiatrists and psychologists to work in prison. He was the prime mover behind the rapid expansion and transformation of the Borstal System and the introduction of open prisons, gaining Britain an international reputation for being at the forefront of penal reform. Harry Potter's account is the first biography of Alexander Paterson and it is based on unpublished material from government and family archives. Besides his achievements as prison reformer, Paterson's life encapsulated many trends in English society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: from the influence of Liberalism and Unitarianism in the industrial heartland of his youth, the Idealist philosophy of Thomas Hill Green at Oxford, to the impact of school and university 'missions' in the dark reaches of London. At Oxford he became friends with Clement Atlee. He also knew the radical Winston Churchill and it was Churchill who in 1910 first appointed him to a leading role in the aftercare of prisoners. Paterson's most formative years were undoubtedly spent living in a slum dwelling in South London when he devoted his time and energy to the Oxford and Bermondsey Medical Mission, one of the university settlements so common at the time - Attlee famously spent years in Hailesbury boys' club and Toynbee Hall in the East End. Paterson went on to publish a best-selling book - Across the Bridges - on his experiences in the South London slums. After a distinguished service in the Great War, Paterson devoted the rest of his life to the prison service at home and to penal reform abroad. Given current debates about prison reform and the general challenges the penal system is facing, revisiting Paterson's life and work will be a timely endeavour. Harry Potter - criminal barrister, historian and former prison chaplain - is ideally suited to write this biography.

Prisoner resettlement is high on current political and policy agendas. The high reconviction rates of ex-prisoners have been acknowledged for many years but the rapidly rising prison population has meant that more prisoners than ever before are released. This together with the pressure this puts on to the infrastructure of the prison estate and the publication of two influential reports which highlighted the problems faced by prisoners leaving prison has concentrated attention on attempts to ensure that prisoners do not return to prison once released. The resettlement of prisoners is now a priority policy area linked directly to Government initiatives to reduce reoffending. The renewed policy interest in prisoners resettlement forms the context of this volume, which brings together current knowledge and understanding about prisoners resettlement. The book draws on the contributors extensive experience as researchers and practitioners in the field and includes contributions from acknowledged experts. Prisoner Resettlement provides a comprehensive review and analysis of resettlement policy and practice in England and Wales in the early part of the 21st century. In particular it: critically reviews current policy, theory, practice and research on prisoners resettlement explores practice issues through case studies of two resettlement initiatives and an examination of accommodation provision and voluntary sector involvement in prisoners resettlement; and examines the particular issues raised by the resettlement of different groups of prisoners including women, minority ethnic groups, prolific and priority offenders and high-risk offenders.

Reducing Reoffending provides a critical overview of social work and community justice in Scotland, taking full account of recent developments. The book is divided into three comprehensive sections. Part one of the book provides a critical analysis of the challenge of reducing reoffending in Scotland and locates this challenge within its historical context. Part one also reviews the available evidence about when, how and why people stop offending; about desistance from crime. This analysis exposes not only the complexities of desistance processes, but also the many difficulties that offenders face in making the related transition. Part two of the book provides an account of the legal contexts of criminal justice social work services in Scotland analysing both the role that social work plays in the sentencing process and its role in supervising offenders in the community. The final part the book addresses questions of how the practice of supervision might be best developed so as to support desistance and reduce reoffending, though the books final conclusion is that reducing reoffending requires a much broader commitment to promoting and realising justice in the community.

Show the incarcerated how to find forgiveness in unforgiving surroundings As the prison population in the United States increases by more than 1,000 inmates each week, prison ministry programs must have a working blueprint for dealing with the shame, humiliation, hate, and loneliness of incarceration at both the adult correctional and juvenile detention/probation levels. Prison Ministry: Hope Behind the Wall demonstrates how a ministry can adapt Latin American Liberation theology to address oppression and bring prisoners into the community of Christ. Author Dennis Pierce, former chaplain at the Joliet Correctional Center in Illinois (where the Fox Network's 2005 Prison Break series is filmed), presents a functioning approach to forgiveness and reconciliation, combining pastoral counseling, Christian education, Bible studies, and worship to help inmates develop self-esteem and an overall feeling of self-worth through compassion and empathy. Prison Ministry: Hope Behind the Wall provides an alternative resource on our prison system for chaplains, pastors, priests, and students working in theology, ethics, or counseling. Instead of the usual descriptive narratives of inmates' lives or discussions of statistical approaches, this unique book combines a theological model with a viable programmatic approach to confront the oppression of incarceration and reverse its effects. The book looks at the vital issues facing juveniles in the criminal justice system (the transition from county jail to a correctional facility, victimization, rejection, under-stimulation, homosexual rape) and examines the creation of non-threatening niches to address coping structures needed to move toward forgiveness and reconciliation. Prison Ministry: Hope Behind the Wall examines: meeting the incarcerated defining prison's emotional ethos dealing with human breakdowns oppression in maximum-security prison components of empowerment needed for prison ministry Prison Ministry: Hope Behind the Wall also includes case studies of four inmates, an extensive bibliography, a glossary of prison terms, sample Bible studies, and sermon topics. The book is invaluable for anyone dealing with incarcerated youth and young adults in civilian or military correctional or juvenile detention facilities.

Winner of the 2021 ESC Book Award. Despite its dramatic proliferation and diversification in recent decades, supervisory forms of punishment in the community (like probation, parole and unpaid work) have been largely invisible in scholarly and public discussion of criminal justice and its development in late-modern societies. The long-standing pre-occupation with the prison, and more recent concerns about 'mass incarceration' have allowed the emergence of 'mass supervision' to remain in the shadows. Pervasive Punishment insists that we remedy this neglect and exemplifies how we can do so. Drawing on thirty years of personal, practice and research experiences, it offers a compelling and rich account of the scale and social distribution of mass supervision, of the processes by which it has been legitimated, and of how it is experienced by those subject to it. Its innovative approach invites readers to look at, listen to and imagine punishment beyond the prison, through the use of innovative and creative methods including photography, song-writing and story-telling to explore and to represent 'mass supervision'. By so doing, this book offers new insights into how and why combining social science and creative practice can help develop a different kind of democratic dialogue about contentious social issues like crime and punishment. Though focused on the UK and the USA, the methods used in and analysis developed in this book will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners elsewhere.