Collaboration and Innovation in Criminal Justice: An Activity Theory Alternative to Offender Rehabilitation

Drawing on original research on community-based alternatives to offender rehabilitation, this book provides an up-to-date depiction of the challenges faced by front-line workers at the interface between criminal justice and welfare systems striving to address needs and provide multifaceted solutions.

Using an innovative theoretical approach predicated on activity theory (AT) to dissect the problem, the book makes the case for co-created rehabilitation strategies that address the needs of offenders – which can only be achieved with the involvement of health and social welfare services as a means to provide a holistic support to individuals – and regard for the dilemmas front-line professionals face to deploy such strategies – which means shifting the top-down paradigm of policy implementation for co-created solutions. The book explores how AT can be used to help design commensurate interventions that give voice to all the interested actors involved in the rehabilitation process and provide readers with tools that help translate theory into practice.

This book is essential reading for students, researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders focusing on co-created, bottom-up alternatives to imprisonment that benefit both offenders, community and the state.

Paulo Rocha is an attorney specialising in international law with a PhD in social sciences obtained at the University of Stavanger, Norway. His research interests are collaboration and innovation strategies in the public sector. He is the author of "Performance-Based Policy in Offender Rehabilitation" and "Tracing the Historical Development of a Service Model for Interagency Collaboration," among other papers.