Persistent Young Offenders: An Evaluation of Two Projects (Welfare and Society)

Based on some of the most interesting research of the last ten years, this book discusses effective practice in work with persistent young offenders. It contrasts two major evaluations of projects for juvenile offenders, one of which was successful and the other less so. The projects, Freagarrach and CueTen, were funded by The Scottish Office and the Scottish Executive. Freagarrach was evaluated over five years from 1995 and CueTen over three years (its entire lifespan) from 1996. This book makes the findings of these projects available to a wider readership, setting them in a wider discursive framework than is appropriate in a government report. The authors identify the factors that made Freagarrach a more successful project than CueTen, arguing that an understanding of these factors is important in drawing general conclusions from the experience of the two projects, and that this is particularly the case because some of these factors have received little attention in recent discussions of 'what works' in community-based programmes for offenders. This is a detailed and thorough study of work with juvenile offenders, which will be of particular value to those interested in less punitive approaches. It will be of interest both to practitioners and to academics in criminology, social policy and social work.

David Lobley was former Research Officer in the Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, UK. He was the researcher for the entire period of the CueTen evaluation and for the second half of the Freagarrach evaluation. He has also been the researcher on Scottish Office-funded projects on pilot witness support schemes and electronic monitoring of offenders, and is currently researching witness support services for the Scottish Executive. He was co-author of the published reports from all these projects. David Smith is Professor of Criminology at Lancaster University, UK, having been Professor of Social Work from 1993-2002. He directed all the research projects on which David Lobley worked, and has also recently researched and published on racist violence. He was recently a member of a Home Office-funded team researching the experiences black and Asian men have of the probation service and the criminal justice system.