Nathan Monk

Alcohol misuse has become central for policy makers with approaches to addressing and providing solutions a persistent challenge. Alcohol Treatment Requirements (ATRs) were introduced through the legislation of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, making available to the courts an ATR as one of the possible requirements of a community order for offenders who have committed an alcohol-related offence. This form of ‘coercive treatment’ is delivered collaboratively with the criminal justice system and the National Health Service (NHS) working in partnership. Those sentenced to the ATR are predominantly young male, persistent offenders presenting with severe alcohol problems. As part of a research project funded by the NHS, qualitative participant observations were undertaken during treatment delivery on the ATR. This paper presents an analysis of the interactions observed between male offenders and female alcohol workers. Explored is the nature of coercive treatment and how young men sentenced to treatment engage with the process. The analysis utilises positioning theory to show how control and compliance operate within a complex, relational and interactive encounter that while focussed on alcohol consumption and behaviour change are impacted upon by wider cultural and social issues.

Several changes to the UK criminal justice system have led to an increasing visibility and engagement with victims after decades of concentrating mainly on offenders. Victim-focused policies have advanced from homogenising  responses to victims of crime through to appreciating the diversity in victims’ needs and wants, while also seeking to reduce or prevent future victimisation. However, several ‘victim-focused’ crime prevention policies are paradoxically dependent on the creation of a victim in the first place. This paper considers this contradiction in relation to two recent Coalition Government proposals. Both the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme and plans to criminalise stalking behaviours rely upon victimisation already having taken place. The paper argues that these supposedly ‘preventative’ proposals are in fact responsive and problematic as their implementation relies upon the creation of victims. Furthermore, it suggests that rather than effectively preventing abuse, victims’ voices are instead being used to enhance and expand legislation. The paper suggests that criminal justice policies alone are unable to prevent violence against women and that more engagement needs to occur outside of the criminal justice arena.

This article reports on the results of case study research into the implementation and operation of a community court in an English city. The research was premised upon an understanding of the likely challenges posed by the introduction of a new modality of ‘doing justice’, as represented by community courts, with their more therapeutic and restorative orientation and procedural differences to ‘mainstream’ summary justice. It uncovered a number of implementation difficulties, including the unintended consequences of decisions about the location of the court’s jurisdiction; a lack of ‘joined up’ policy as conflicting initiatives served to undermine the court’s operation; and the resistance of practitioners which limited the capacity of the court to engage in the teamwork requisite for community courts. The article discusses these difficulties in the context of a critical understanding of government policy-making, with its emphasis more upon political and ideological symbolism than pragmatism. It suggests that in pragmatically taking forward the community court idea, serious thought nevertheless needs to be given to the appropriate location of problem-solving within the criminal process, and to the need for consistency in the more individualized approach of the community court, since both issues underpinned some of the difficulties uncovered by the research.

This paper offers an overview of representations of the British probation service in three fictional media over a sixty year period, up to the present time. While there were never as many, and they were never as renowned as  representations of police, lawyers and doctors, there are arguably more than has generally been realised. Broadly speaking – although there have always been individual exceptions to general trends – there has been a   shift from supportive and optimistic representations to cynical and disillusioned ones, in which the viability of showing care and compassion to offenders is questioned or mocked. This mirrors wider political attempts to change the traditionally welfare-oriented culture of the service to something more punitive. The somewhat random and intermittent production of probation novels, films and television series over the period in questions has had no discernible cumulative impact on public understanding of probation, and it is suggested that the relative absence of iconic media portrayals of its officers, comparable to those achieved in police, legal and medical fiction, has made it more difficult to sustain credible debates about rehabilitation in popular culture.

This paper describes research into the education, training and employment (ETE) status of young offenders in Leicestershire, England. The study uses data collated by the Youth Offending Service (YOS) of over 600 young offenders which includes offending history, sentence outcomes, disposals, gravity scores (seriousness of offences), ASSET scores (for assessing risk and need) and ETE status. The analysis confirms that around 30% -of young offenders aged 16 years or older were likely to be not in education, education, employment or training (NEET). The Youth Justice Board (England and Wales) policy demands that 90% of young offenders should be in ETE (YJB 2006). This study has uncovered a shortfall which has revealed some important continuities in the proportions of young people that disengage in ETE. The analysis outlines that the ways in which actuarial mechanisms like ASSET are currently used is not fully exploiting the potential of these kinds of assessments. Certain features of ASSET can indicate potential risks of NEET and could thus provide practitioners with early indicators to make referrals and seek out meaningful ETE. Leicestershire YOS is currently reviewing the ways in which they target, assist and support this particular cohort in response to this research.

Extant research indicates that restorative justice can deliver benefits which the traditional Criminal Justice Process cannot, ranging from victim satisfaction to reducing offender recidivism (Zehr, 2005; Bergseth & Bouffard, 2007). This qualitative review explored victims’ perceptions of a restorative justice process, implemented as victimoffender mediation. It provides an insight often neglected within extant studies, into the contributory factors which victims perceive as being important to the success of a restorative process. Utilising mix-method data collection (Denzin, 2009; Jupp, 2001), questionnaires were completed at the pre-panel stage to ascertain victims’ perceptions of the restorative process. The results informed interview schedules which were employed within thirty-five semi-structured interviews (Leidner, 1993; Oakley, 2004), conducted with individuals following the conclusion of their restorative meeting. Within the pre-process questionnaires, victims indicated feeling well prepared for their panel. They stated that this process was the most appropriate resolution and all but one victim did not desire an alternative resolution/process. Within the qualitative interviews victims identified the high quality of preparation as being crucial for the process to succeed. Additionally, the independence of the facilitator, combined with the presence of the Police during Panels was identified as being of central importance. Victim Satisfaction remained high throughout the review, consistent with previous research (Umbreit & Coates, 1992; Umbreit et al, 1997; Hayes et al, 1998; Umbreit et al, 2006; Campbell et al, 2005; Wilcox & Hoyle, 2004), with many victims attributing their satisfaction to aspects of the process identified above.

This article explores the contention that the police service within England and Wales demonstrates difficulty in carrying out long-term reform and modernisation in response to criticism and critical case recommendations. It provides an exemplar in the form of the introduction of the Police Learning and Development Programme (IPLDP) within the police service in 2006 as a means to provide the required initial education to new-to-role police officers. The argument is made that the specific sub-culture located in the area of the operational police response team acts to reduce the impact and effectiveness of reform and, in failing to take into account and mitigate such blocks to modernisation, provides a critical weakness in the change management processes of the police service. These contentions are briefly considered relative to the structures and operational cultures found within the Prison Service and the Probation Service. Work in these areas suggest possible conditions under which policy and practice reform within the police service may be more effectively delivered over the longer term.