Delivering Rehabilitation : The Politics, Governance and Control of Probation

Do offenders have the right to be rehabilitated and should the state be responsible for their rehabilitation? Should the public expect punitive and coercive approaches to offender rehabilitation? Why should the state be interested in the reform of individuals and how can helping offenders be justified when there are other disadvantaged groups in society who are unable to access the services they desperately need? Finally, why does the state appear to target and criminalise certain groups and individuals and not others?

These are just some of the questions asked in this new text, which offers an analysis of the delivery of rehabilitative services to offenders over the past two decades. It focuses particularly on the ideological and political imperatives of a neoliberal state that intends to segment the work of the Probation Service and hand over the majority of its work to the private sector. Issues covered include:

• governance, politics and performance of probation,
• occupational culture and professional identity,
• markets, profit and delivery,
• partnership, localism and civil society,
• citizenship, exclusion and the State.

This book is aimed at academics, practitioners, managers and leaders within the field of corrections and wider social policy. It will also appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates specialising in criminal justice, criminology, politics and social policy.

Lol Burke is a Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice at Liverpool John Moores University. He has worked as a Probation Officer and Senior Probation Officer and was involved in the delivery of probation training prior to his current appointment. Lol has written extensively on probation policy, practice and training issues and is co-author of Redemption, Rehabilitation and Risk Management: A History of Probation (2011) with Prof. George Mair. Lol is currently editor of the Probation Journal and a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Probation. He is also a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform’s Research Advisory Group, the European Society of Criminology Working Group on Community Sanctions and CREDOS (an international collaboration of researchers for the effective development of offender supervision).

Steve Collett worked for three North West probation areas over nearly three decades, retiring from the Cheshire Probation Trust in December 2010 after ten years as its chief officer. He also taught social work & social policy in further/higher education in the early 1980s before returning to Probation to take up a joint appointment with Merseyside Probation & Liverpool University (1987-1991). Steve has been an Honorary Fellow within the Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology since then and following his retirement in 2011, he was made an Honorary Reader in criminology within the School of Law at Manchester University. In 2012, he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University. Steve has been a member of the Probation Journal Editorial Board for over 20 years and was a founding vice chair of the Probation Chiefs Association.