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Findings from a recent survey among employers in the north-west of England suggest that personal support is the most favoured type of support both for employers and for ex-offenders when considering employing (or employing more) ex-offenders. The findings also reveal that employers need more information on the relevance and the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, as well as guidance on risk assessment and management procedures, in order to enable them to make informed decisions about, and increase their confidence in, employing ex-offenders.

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Tactical military networks present a challenging environment for the delivery of information services. A tactical network must support a dynamically changing force in the face of physical and electronic threats and where bandwidth is scarce. The network manager faces an almost impossible task to deliver vital information with the required quality of service in the face of changing operational priorities. This paper describes a structured methodology to assess emerging technologies such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) which can deliver increased agility and reduce the operator burden in tactical networks. It presents initial results from the application of this methodology. (Abstract)

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Increases in the women's prison population in the UK, in line with many other industrialised countries, is occurring at an alarming rate and yet the types of offences for which women are imprisoned and the lengths of sentences they receive suggest that most present little risk to society. However, the personal and social costs to these women and their families of being imprisoned, and the economic costs to society, can be immense. Through an analysis of official statistics, this article explores some possible explanations for the growth in female imprisonment set within the framework of effective practice with a particular emphasis on the actuarial approach to managing offenders.In 1990 women comprised 2.8% of the total prison population in England and Wales and by 1999 this figure including sentenced, non-sentenced and non-criminal prisoners had risen dramatically to approximately 5% of the average daily population of 64,771 in English and Welsh prisons (Home Office 2001b). The implications of this increase in the number of women in prison have been debated in the literature on the subject from the UK, the USA, Australia and Canada. This literature has tended to focus on the financial and overcrowding pressures on the female prison estate (NACRO 2001;Pollock 2002;Owen 2001), women's social exclusion including the erosion of family ties (Caddle and Crisp 1997), and resettlement needs (Blanchette and Dowden 1998;Morris et al. 1995;Eaton 1993; DauvergneLatimer 1995;Rumgay 2000), but an analysis of the possible reasons behind such an increase have been largely neglected. This article addresses this issue using official statistics to inform possible explanations for current levels of female incarceration and sets this rise within the context of recent developments in risk assessment under the recent 'What Works' strategy exemplified by the accredited programme initiative.The end of the 20th century witnessed the 'rise of the risk society' and the preoccupation with risk and risk management was evident in criminal justice (Ericson and Haggert 1997). The probation service, for a number of political and professional reasons, embraced a shift to both actuarial and clinical forms of risk management, and these strategic management interventions are the consequence of the wider theoretical shift towards evidence-based practice based upon cognitive behavioural psychology (see,

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The United Nations Third Survey of Crime and Criminal Justice (United Nations 1987) contains data on global criminal justice expenditure. The data show that between 1982 and 1986 there was a trend of increased expenditure on criminal justice. At the same time crime rates increased. This paper examines criminal justice expenditure in different parts of the system, in an attempt to discover whether there are patterns to global criminal justice expenditure. The author concludes that criminal justice expenditure is more concerned with political and ideological objectives than with feasible criminal justice outcomes.