Encounters of a different kind

Abstract

This article draws on the results of multi-method research studying the discourse of Belgian sentencing judges and report writers in relation to the use and evaluation of social reports. To understand the Belgian context, the legal framework and its underlying assumptions, as well as the institutional and cultural background to the use and evaluation of social reports, are explained. Social reports focus on the social background of the offender. Their production is embedded in a rehabilitative framework of supervision and guidance which prioritizes community-based sanctions, but which does not fit very well with judges’ neo-classical approach to sentencing. Our analysis suggests that the relatively marginal use of social reports in sentencing is an illustration of judges’ professional ownership of ‘their’ decision, and adherence to their own penal culture. Judges base their decision making on an official legal dossier which contains many different ‘voices’, both judicial and non-judicial. Compared to other documents, such as ‘moral’ reports by the police for example, social narratives are accorded less authority. As for the international penological debate on changing penality, we see little evidence of actuarial risk-based practices in the sentencing phase. Social reports are still requested and constructed within an individualizing needs-based approach. On the other hand, although the Belgian picture is changing and heterogeneous, we can see that new public management techniques are beginning to find their way into the Belgian criminal justice system, paving the way for a more managerial approach to the implementation of community-based sanctions.

Neither the Magic Bullet Nor the Big Bad Wolf: A Systematic Review of Frontline Judges’ Attitudes and Coping Regarding Managerialization

“…In our selection, 15 articles are conceptual, while 20 are empirical. Among the empirical articles, 17 adopt a qualitative approach (most often based on observations and/or interviews), two use quantitative data (Eells & Showalter, 1994; Lienhard & Kettiger, 2018), and one relies on a mixed approach (Beyens & Scheirs, 2010).…”

“…Only two articles explicitly relate NPM to the work of frontline judges based on an SLB approach (Biland & Steinmetz, 2017; Dallara & Lacchei, 2021). Although, overall, only five articles directly refer to the SLB framework (e.g., Cowan & Hitchings, 2007; Hersant, 2017), some articles refer to similar notions, such as the discretion of judges (e.g., Beyens & Scheirs, 2010; Eells & Showalter, 1994) or their routinization of some tasks (e.g., Mouhanna & Bastard, 2010). As far as courts are concerned, 20 articles deal with the judicial system of a state as a whole, while 10 focus on criminal courts.…”

Probation

“…We still know little about how sentencers actually read and understand PSRs. Th e research by Tata and his colleagues ( 2008 , 2010 ) in Scotland, by Beyens and Scheirs ( 2010 ) in Belgium and by Wandall ( 2010 ) in Denmark have begun to open up this issue, but much remains to be done. What is clear from their work is that sentencers read reports in diff erent ways to that which the writers intended, that writers encode their messages for various reasons, and that diff erent sentencers read reports diff erently.…”

Signs of Resistance? Swedish Probation Officers' Attitudes towards Risk Assessments

“…These are devoid of any reference to the risk-concept and thus pre-sentence reports remain "traditional" social inquiries -although Wandall notes that the subsequent use of the reports in court may well draw on the concept of risk. In a study of Belgian presentence reports, Beyens and Scheirs (2010) found that the justice assistants (i.e. the equivalent of probation officers) usually have a social work education, and that the presentence reports they produce also have a social emphasis.…”