Nathan Monk

This article explores the tensions and threats to the occupational identity of practitioners working with offenders, and identifies areas where the positive aspects of the probation service’s values and humanitarian approach might endure under the changes being brought about by the Coalition’s Transforming Rehabilitation agenda. It does so by reviewing change in the probation service and the nature of employee engagement with the service, drawing on recently published research with probation officers and trainee probation officers. It also reflects upon the literature analysing organisational change in the youth justice system and multi-agency working in children’s services, as well as the author’s own experience and views as a manager experiencing change and, currently, as an academic working with probation service officers (PSOs) on qualifying programmes for probation officers. Systems and structures may alter, but the process and pace of adaptation for individuals working within them is markedly slower, with resistance and reworking rather than radical overhaul, of occupational and professional identities. The article goes on to anticipate issues that might arise as the probation service and its workforce is divided across public, private and voluntary sectors.

This article presents the results of intervention research that compared the impact on victims of restorative and conventional approaches to juvenile justice. Using a quasi-experimental design that allowed for statistical control of select pre-intervention differences, victims were compared on nine variables across the domains of accountability, relationship repair, and closure. A brief review that describes and locates each variable in the literature is offered to provide clarity about their conceptual meaning. The findings support the conclusion that restorative responses in the aftermath of harm are significantly more beneficial for victims than conventional approaches.

This paper aims at analysing the evolution of the enforcement of non-custodial sentences in Italy. In 1975, a new role was introduced, that of the justice social worker, with the duty of supervising the so-called “non-custodial measures”.

In Italy, the available studies on the topic are rather limited in number, whereas in the United Kingdom there has been a rich production, in terms of both theoretical reflection and empirical research. This is why several of the remarks put forth in this paper stem from a comparison between the two systems, as well as from an exploratory qualitative analysis carried out by means of semi-structured interviews proposed to individuals working in the enforcement of non-custodial sentences in both countries, i.e. experts in the officers’ training.

The objective of this research is to investigate the ambivalence of the role of justice social workers, deriving from the coexistence of assistance and control. Starting from the model presented by Bondeson (1994), the evolution of the Italian system for the enforcement of non-custodial sentences will be described through the control-assistance dichotomy and focusing on training, a variable that deeply influences the placement of justice social workers along the control-assistance continuum.

Burgeoning prison populations and the growing use of compulsion in welfare policies across much of the western world has stimulated a great deal of academic discussion. Drawing on U.S experience Wacquant (2009) argues that a ‘centaur state’ has emerged which involves the ‘double regulation of the poor’ by the development of workfare and the expansion of the prison system. This article critically discusses the salience of these ideas to the U.K. It draws upon historical analysis to reveal the important continuities with the inter-war period which was also characterised by rising prison populations and the introduction of workfare in the brutalising form of labour camps. It then considers recent attempts to join up welfare and penal policies and finds that these have been frustrated by the behaviour of front-line staff operating in a context of acute resource constraints and growing workloads.