Articles

Scotland is a devolved political jurisdiction within the UK, but has always had separate criminal law and justice arrangements, including, since 2017, an executive agency called Community Justice Scotland.  While official use of the term “community justice” in Scotland is a twenty-first century innovation, practice in the field  is especially distinctive – shaped principally by the 1968 Social Work (Scotland) Act, which created the system of 'justice social work' in local authorities (replacing the Scottish probation service). Since then it has diversified to include third sector agencies working with people involved in the criminal justice system, restorative and non-state-centred models of justice, and expanded roles for justice social work in prisons and in post-release supervision. The Act has, relatively, protected Scottish community justice from much of the 'de-social working' and the explicitly neo-liberal, punitive-managerialist agenda that has characterised probation policy…

The introduction of COVID-19 restrictions meant that probation practitioners worked from home, engaging and supervising people on probation remotely. However, limited research has explored the personal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on probation practitioners who supervise women. Women on probation are often a marginalised group, who have multi-faceted and complex needs, and were at even greater risk and disadvantage during the pandemic. The current paper explores the experiences of probation practitioners, who were responsible for supervising, supporting and safeguarding women on probation during COVID-19. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-one probation practitioners working remotely for five Community Rehabilitation Companies. Probation practitioners reflected on their challenging role, often thwarted by a myriad of practical obstacles, and heightened emotional turmoil due to the triple-edged sword of unification, the pandemic and working with complex women.…

There is a rising interest in penal abolitionism internationally. In the US, longstanding calls for radical alternatives to the criminal legal system gained significant momentum with the killing of George Floyd, connecting with Black Lives Matter activism and calls to defund the police. In the UK, alongside a long tradition of penal reform, an abolitionist pulse has remained evident among critical criminologists. This theoretical position has attracted increasing attention within the mainstream of the discipline and there has been a growth in scholarly and academic engagement with the ideas of abolitionist theory and practice, recently for example, in the work of Coyle and Scott (eds) (2021) Scott (2018 and 2020) and activist collectives such as Cradle Community (2021).

The paper considers the thinking articulated in the White Paper, ‘A smarter approach to sentencing,’ and evaluates its potential impact on probation practice in England and Wales. Both authors are experienced probation practitioners, now concerned with the training of future Probation Officers. A specific focus of the article considers the retention of practitioners, at a time when the attrition of staff is significant. (HMPPS, 2022a.)

Many organisations offer mentoring schemes to support people leaving prison and resettle back into the community. Mentorship relationships are complex but despite this, there remains limited theoretical and/or research informed tools to guide mentorship practices and hereby the success of ex-prisoner mentorship. The aim of the paper is to contribute to this shortfall by presenting a theoretically informed framework to assist reflection on mentorship practices and the mentorship relationship: the Recognition Reflection Framework (RRF). The framework has potential to provide mentors with a tool to reflect on ex-prisoners´ need for recognition of worth if they are to desist from crime. The paper describes the theoretical development and preliminary validation of this reflection framework, underpinned by a strengths-based mentoring approach, and developed through the merger of concepts from recognition theory, person centred care and therapeutic alliances. We present this framework as a…

The proportion of older prisoners has increased dramatically meaning there are currently 13,283 prisoners over the age of 50 in UK prisons. Increased frailty and disability have exposed issues in relation to supporting Older, Frail and Disabled People in prison (OFDPs) with their functional health needs and accessing formal health and social care services. This paper discusses the experiences of providing care and support for OFDPs living with health and social needs, the factors that intensify the OFDPs experience of disadvantage and makes recommendations for policy and practices. Data was collected using qualitative methods, namely ethnography and semi-structured interviews. The data was coded and thematically analysed and interpreted using ethics of care and critical realist philosophical frameworks. The data reflects the experiences and perspectives of prison officers, prisoner caregivers, OFDPs and the researcher. The research renders visible the influence of institutional…