Understanding Penal Practice

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.

Introduction, Ioan Durnescu and Fergus McNeill, Part 1: Understanding practice, understanding practitioners, 1.Professional ideologies in the United States' probation and parole,Danielle S. Rudes, Jill Viglione and Faye S. Taxman 2.Correctional officer training in Canada, Denis C. Bracken 3. Who works in the probation service in Romania, Ioan Durnescu, Vlad Grigoras, Florin Lazar and Smaranda Witec 4. Explaining French probation: social work in a prison administration, Martine Herzog Evans 5. Probation practices and Übergangsmanagement in Germany: state of play and challenges, Pascal Décarpes 6.Volunteers in the probaiton service: a comparison between Germany and Japan, Helmut Kury and Mai Sato 7. Redefining professionalism by seeking legitimacy in probation? A comparison between Belgium and England and Wales, Aline Bauwens and Lol Burke 8. Understanding 'the relationship' in English probation supervision, Jake Phillips 9. What quality means to probation staff in England in relation to one-to-one supervision,Joanna Shapland, Angela Sorsby, Gwen Robinson, Camilla Priede, Stephen Farrall and Fergus McNeill 10. Staff-prisoner relationships, moral performance and privitization, Alison Leibling and Ben Crewe 11. Changing lives, changing work: social work and criminal justice, Fergus McNeill Part 2: Supporting practitioners, improving practice 12. Staff skills and characteristics in probation history: a literature review, Ioan Durnescu 13. Co-producing desistance: who works to support desistance? Beth Weaver 14.Practicing the Good Lives Models (GLM), Chi Meng Chu, Tony Ward, Gwenda M. Willis 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, Guy Bourgon, Leticia Gutierrez and Tanya Rugge 17. Supervision skills and practices: the Jersey study, Pamela Ugwudike, Peter Raynor and Maurice Vanstone 18. Supporting practitioners to engage offenders, Sue Rex and Nigel Hosking, 19. Sources of professional effectiveness, Anneke Menger and Andrea Donker 20. Wraparound care as a booster of the crime reducing effects of probation, Jo Hermanns, Anneke Menger, Rene Butter, Laurens de Croes, Donnalee Heij and Lonieke Casteleijn 21. Aligning the purposes of probation with professional and learning competencies: basic conditions for a new professionalism, Bas Vogelvang Conclusion: changing penal practice, Ioan Durnescu and Fergus McNeill.

Ioan Durnescu is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work. Ioan is also the founder and editor of the European Journal of Probation (www.ejprob.eu) and author or a number of books and articles published in Romania and abroad. Together with Professor Anton van Kalmthout he co-edited Probation in Europe. Before becoming an academic he worked for the Prison Department and Probation Department in Romania. Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminologyand Social Work at the University of Glasgow where he works in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Prior to becoming an academic in 1998, he worked in residential drug rehabilitation and as a criminal justice social worker.