This aim of this research is to contribute to an examination of the effects of the transition toward risk analysis on the work of practitioners within the criminal justice system, in particular the probation service of England and Wales. The intention here is to focus on the impact on practice and interventions in the shift from traditional casework methods to risk assessment and some of the contradictions and problems this raises. On the basis of a small pilot study, two issues are highlighted: first, whether the successful application of risk assessment systems presupposes the very casework skills which these systems were designed to replace; second, whether deskilled practitioners working under increasing resource constraints tend to inflate the levels of risk presented by clients and mis-refer them to inappropriate cognitive therapy programmes, with the ultimate result that clients needlessly end up in custody.
The current debate about the privatisation of probation in the UK has tended to set up a false dichotomy between state and private that diverts attention from the fact that privatisation as part of a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ intends, in fact, to continue the domination of the risk management approach. What is emerging is a public–private combination of increasingly centralised public sector probation and the private ‘security-industrial complex’ of global security corporations. An important consequence of this process is the annihilation of both residual elements of voluntary sector and community work within probation itself and of the smaller private charities and third sector organisations that have long collaborated with probation in traditional desistance work. This complex dynamic is a reflection of some of the key internal inconsistencies of neoliberalism as a political strategy.
20participants rather than researchers document the issues of inquiry by taking photographs. Photovoice 21 is grounded in the larger research tradition known as Action Research or Participatory Action
22Research, which broadly strives to increase knowledge and facilitate conscious-raising of the topic 23 and outcomes of research issues through democratic processes of involvement (Fals-Borda, and
The lives and experiences of those on probation supervision are often invisible and dismissed as unimportant or worse 'an easy option'. This article reviews two different studies in England and Ireland, which utlised an innovative technique, Photovoice, to foreground the challenges that are faced by probationers on their journey towards desistance. The difficulties they face such as stigma, social judgement and exclusion are exposed as well as their need for emotional calm, support and understanding from their supervisors and the wider community. Photovoice as a methodological and creative tool is revealed as a novel and expressive means to develop insight into probation supervision and an effective technique for undertaking cross-national research which can communicate across cultural boundaries.
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