January 2012

The digest for January 2012 is split into four themes, providing summaries of interesting articles regarding Offenders' and Victims' Experiences, Criminal Justice Practice,  Causes of Offending and Desistance, and Parenthood and Offending.

Offenders' and Victims' Experiences

Juvenile Victims in Restorative Justice Findings from the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments

The British Journal of Criminology

This article builds on the earlier finding from a quantitative research project that both victims and offenders find restorative justice more satisfying than going through the court process. Through a reanalysis of the original data, it suggests that juvenile victims actually preferred the court process than restorative justice and that the greater the harm involved in the offence, the less satisfied victims are with restorative justice. A further qualitative analysis found that young people are unhappy about adults dominating the process.

Reintegration or stigmatization? Offenders’ expectations of community re-entry

Journal of Criminal Justice

This article examines the extent to which 1030 adult male offenders expected stigmatisation or reintegration after their release from a boot camp programme. The authors found that most offenders expected reintegration more than stigmatisation, but that this varied by the strength of their social bonds, level of self-control and ethnicity.

Criminal Justice Practice

Co-Producing Community Justice: The Transformative Potential of Personalisation for Penal Sanctions

The British Journal of Social Work

This article examines how the concept of personalisation in social work services has been little applied to criminal justice social work. The author argues that not only offenders but also victims and communities should be seen as ‘service users’, so that it is not only the individual’s rights and identity that are considered, but their context, and a co-productive endeavour takes place between offenders, victims, service providers and communities.

The Myth of Evidence-Based Practice: Towards Evidence-Informed Practice

The British Journal of Social Work

This article argues against the evidence-based practive (EPB) model that practice should not just be informed by evidence, but also by theory, experience and the interaction between the practitioner and the client. They propose an evidence-informed practice (EIP) model that includes all these and calls upon the practitioner’s creativity to implement it, rather than prescribing rigid steps.

The community order in England and Wales: Policy and practice

Probation Journal

The generic community sentence was introduced in England and Wales in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This article traces its development and looks at the use of this new order, comparing it with the suspended sentence order.

'We Now Breach More Kids in a Week Than We Used to in a Whole Year': The Punitive Turn, Enforcement and Custody

Youth Justice

This article examines the punitive turn in the youth justice system in England and Wales, which is thought to be responsible for the high numbers of children in prison in that jurisdiction. It focuses on the shift in the way that youth justice practitioners enforce orders and how this can be understood as an indicator of changes in the wider practitioner culture, which has become less tolerant.

Practical Wisdom and the Ethic of Care in Probation Practice

European Journal of Probation

This articles describes the findings from interviews with 15 experienced probation officers from one probation area. The interviewees had trained as officers before the punitive turn, in a more welfarist era, and the study found that they managed to hold onto their focus on rehabilitation and to emphasise the client-worker relationship.

A brief motivational interviewing intervention with prisoners: when you lead a horse to water, can it drink for itself?

Psychology, Crime and Law

This article examines the impact of a brief offending-focused motivational interviewing (MI) intervention on recidivism, which was significantly reduced in a sample of high-risk male prisoners who undertook MI, compared to those who did not. The men who were offered the intervention became more ready to change, which was associated with lower reconviction figures. The authors point out that this is an interesting result, because it is generally thought that high-risk offenders need much more intensive programmes to tackle their offending and that programmes need to tackle criminogenic risk factors directly, rather than just focusing on motivation.

Causes of Offending and Desistance

Influence or Convenience? Disentangling Peer Influence and Co-offending for Chronic offenders

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

This article discusses the role of peer influence in chronic offending. Recognising that peer influence is not likely to be the cause of such offending, but that chronic offenders do offend with others, the authors formulated an hypothesis that chronic offenders should mention peer influence less often as a reason for their offending compared to other types of offenders, but be as likely as others to offend in a group. They found this hypothesis held for their data and argue that in these cases the offender is offending with others because of selection and cooperation processes, rather than any normative peer influence.

Time is Money: The role of personal finance in reducing re-offending

Prison Service Journal

This articles examines the financial problems faced by prisoners. It describes how many prisoners are in real financial trouble before they enter prison, which then exacerbates these, because it cuts them off from communication with creditors and removes the responsibility from prisoners to manage their financial day-to-day lives. The author makes several suggestions to improve this situation, including supporting prisoners in sorting out ongoing debts, making sure they have a bank account before release or know how to open one and the promotion of money awareness.

Young male offenders in community-based rehabilitative programmes – self-reported history of antisocial behaviour predicts recidivism

International Journal of Social Welfare

This article examines the recidivism rate at 18 months for 189 young Swedish male offenders who were referred to community-based rehabilitative programmes (n= 189). Sixty percent of this group were suspected of new crimes after 18 months, with 48% suspected of violent crimes. The article discusses how their histories of antisocial behaviour identified three sub-groups amongst the offenders, who had different problems and different needs for intervention.

Parenthood and Offending

The well-being of children of incarcerated mothers: An exploratory study for the Netherlands

European Journal of Criminology

This article examines children’s experiences when their mother is in prison. Findings are that many of the children were already not living with their mother before her incarceration and that the behavioural problems and low levels of well-being reported by the children may also originate in negative events before the mother’s imprisonment.

Parents as prisoners: A study of parent–child relationships in the Children’s Court of Victoria

Journal of Social Work

This article examines the impact of having a parent in prison on family life and the way in which children are cared for. The authors examined the cases of 156 children who were before the Melbourne Children’s Court on child protection matters and also had experienced parental imprisonment. The problems in these children’s lives (including physical and emotional harm, poor development or lack of care) were recognised as being linked to their parent’s offending, but yet no co-ordinated response between child protection and the justice system was in place. The authors argue that early intervention for such children is essential, in order to minimise the instability and disruption they experience and that child protection service protocols with the corrections system should be developed.

Parenthood and crime: The role of wantedness, relationships with partners, and ses

Journal of Criminal Justice

This article examines the role parenthood plays in desistance. Four waves of interviews with adolescents and young adults were analysed, as well as more in-depth interviews with 22 people. The findings suggest that the most disadvantaged young men and women were less likely to stop committing crime after becoming a parent than those who were more advantaged. However, when the pregnancy was wanted females from different socioeconomic backgrounds all showed signs of reducing their offending.