Nathan Monk

The core concept of restorative justice has long existed and been practiced in Taiwan’s criminal justice system. It has however, been marginalised for a very long period of time. That was until 2003 when Taiwan began pursuing a polarised approach to its criminal policy with both ‘leniency’ and ‘punishment’ policies coexisting. Restorative justice has become a key component of Taiwan’s leniency criminal policy. This paper examines current restorative justice practices in Taiwan. After providing a short history of restorative justice in Taiwan, the paper will focus on the various legislative bases for restorative justice at different levels within Taiwan’s criminal justice system. Restorative justice practices examined by this paper include mediation, deferred prosecution, and the restorative justice pilot programme. The paper concludes by comparing each of these restorative justice practices and suggests that mediation and deferred prosecution should be applied to more types of crime. Additionally, the paper concludes that more research needs to be done to evaluate these practices.

The expansion of new occupations concerned with community safety and anti-social behaviour following the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 brought with it demands for relevant professional education and training. This article discusses the development of an academic programme designed to meet these needs, which emphasised the importance of theoretical and critical reasoning for practitioners, and contrasts it with divergent developments in professional training for probation officers and youth justice workers. The article concludes by reflecting on the likelihood that future qualifying programmes for the new community justice occupations will follow probation and youth justice in adopting a restricted ‘skills and competencies’ approach to professional training.

Professional doctorates are becoming increasingly well established in UK higher education, with a growth in the number and diversity of programmes being offered. Several institutions have now developed professional doctorates which are targeted at criminal justice professionals. Although there is an increasing body of research which has examined the impact of professional doctorates, this has tended to focus on the more established programmes, such as education, engineering and business administration. This article explores the role of professional doctorates in the specific context of the Criminal Justice Sector. It provides an overview of the relationship between higher education and criminal justice institutions and explores some of the tensions between academic and administrative criminology. It compares recruitment, programme structures, curriculum content and assessment across selected programmes and considers how these reflect complex sets of relationships between different higher education institutions and different professions within the sector. It concludes with a discussion of the future role of professional doctorates in the sector and analyses the implications for higher education institutions and criminal justice professionals, and for criminal justice education and training as a whole.

This article explores the higher education contribution to the qualifying training of police officers and probation officers and asks whether university study is an essential, desirable or indulgent ingredient in the education of people entering these careers. Claims for the benefits of higher education in vocational training for criminal justice work are examined, as is the extent to which possible benefits are delivered in practice. The importance of a graduate workforce, the potential for the experience of higher education to lead to organisational culture change, practice in the area of diversity and the exercise of professional discretion are all investigated. The article concludes that, in order to make an essential contribution to the training of these criminal justice workers, universities must deliver programmes that offer real academic challenge and opportunity. The article draws on research and policy as well as the authors’ experience as teachers and trainers in practice settings and in higher education.

The possibility of a consistent approach to the training of probation officers throughout Europe has been discussed for some time. A combination of factors has led to this idea being given increased attention recently; these include the adoption of the European Probation Rules, recent EU framework decisions and the agreement of the Stockholm programme promoting alternatives to prisons and the European Training Scheme. The promotion of a European
approach was given new impetus by a conference in Agen, France in December 2009, organised by the European Organisation for Probation (CEP) with the aim of harmonising probation training in Europe, sharing good practice and highlighting new initiatives.

This article will outline the factors that influence the debate on European probation training and set out the arguments for adopting such an approach. It will also identify possible difficulties and obstacles that might hinder a curriculum development process. The article will conclude with some suggestions of a way forward in developing a European approach. It will be argued that a useful early project will be to set benchmarks for probation training throughout Europe.

This paper explores the current training of youth justice practitioners and suggests that there is now a polarisation between the teaching of youth justice in England and Wales into an unhelpful vocational-academic dichotomy. The paper traces the development of the youth justice foundation degree and identifies a need to balance criticality with ‘underpinning knowledge’ by taking seriously the process of developing learning within the work setting. The paper concludes by recommending a ‘synthesised curriculum’ which would facilitate both employer engagement and ‘academic integrity’. This curriculum, in turn, may contribute to the development of ‘informed practitioners’ capable of addressing the very pressing needs of youth crime and antisocial behaviour.

In the last decade, the number of people in drugs treatment in England has more than doubled to a total of 207,580 in 2008/9. The increasing access to drugs treatment has been accompanied by an expansion and development of the drugs workforce. This development has taken the form of a ‘professionalising strategy’ and includes the introduction of national occupational standards to establish levels of competence required of those working in the drug treatment field and enhancement of career pathways. This paper charts the growth of the drugs workforce over time, examines the changes in terms of their training and education, and considers the impact of contemporary policy development on their practice. In particular, it will explore the process of ‘criminalising’ drugs work and the conflicts and contradictions this has created for those working in the field. The paper will also consider the recent debates relating to the organising ideologies for drug treatment and how the current emphases on recovery, reintegration and personalisation might impact on the training and the practice of the drugs workforce.