Rethinking What Works with Offenders: Probation, Social Context and Desistance from Crime

Description

When it was published twenty years ago, Rethinking What Works with Offenders made a major contribution to criminological knowledge on why people stopped offending, and the impact the probation service had on the desistance process. Unlike other studies that had relied on official conviction data, it was the first to make use of self-reported data, including interviews with men and women on probation, and their supervising Probation Officers. It reconceptualised probation outcomes in terms of degrees of success rather than as 'successful' or 'unsuccessful' and offered important policy implications of these conclusions. The Twentieth Anniversary edition contains the original text along with a new Preface by Shadd Maruna and Fergus McNeill locating the book historically and assessing its continued importance to Criminology. It also includes a new chapter by the author reporting on the key findings of the follow-up interviews in 2004 and 2010-12, reflecting on key developments in the field and developing a theory of assisted desistance. Furthermore, it features four new essays from Mark Halsey, Isabelle Fortine-Dufour, Martine Herzog-Evans and José Cid reflecting on the importance and legacy of the book. This book presents an important and challenging range of findings on 'what works' in probation and with offenders and remains essential reading for anybody professionally concerned with the present and future of probation. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of tables and figures Acknowledgements Acknowledgements for the twentieth anniversary edition Foreword Foreword to the twentieth anniversary edition Part 1 Introduction 1 Probation, social context and desistance from crime: introducing the agenda 2 Realism, criminal careers and complexity 3 The study Part 2 Probation, motivation and social contexts 4 Defining ‘success’ 5 The focus of probation 6 Resolving obstacles: the role of probation supervision 7 Motivation and probation 8 Probation work: content and context 9 Motivation, changing contexts and probation supervision Part 3 Persistence and desistance 10 Desistance, change and probation supervision 11 The factors associated with offending Part 4 Conclusions 12 Probation, social context and desistance from crime: developing the agenda 13 Rethinking . . . 20 years later: what happened next? Commentaries Reflections on Rethinking What Works with Offenders A commentary on Rethinking What Works with Offenders A commentary on Rethinking What Works with Offenders From ‘what works’ to desistance in probation? A commentary Appendix References Index Case index