Rethinking What Works with Offenders Probation, Social Context and Desistance from Crime

When it was published twenty years ago, Rethinking What Works with Offenders made a major contribution to criminological knowledge on why people stopped offending, and the impact the probation service had on the desistance process. Unlike other studies that had relied on official conviction data, it was the first to make use of self-reported data, including interviews with men and women on probation, and their supervising Probation Officers. It reconceptualised probation outcomes in terms of degrees of success rather than as 'successful' or 'unsuccessful' and offered important policy implications of these conclusions. The Twentieth Anniversary edition contains the original text along with a newForeword by Shadd Maruna and Fergus McNeill, locating the book historically and assessing its continued importance to Criminology. It also includes a new chapter by the author reporting on the key findings of the follow-up interviews in 2004 and 2010-12, reflecting on key developments in the field and developing a theory of assisted desistance. Furthermore, it features four newcommentaries from Mark Halsey, Isabelle F.-Dufour, Martine Herzog-Evans and José Cid reflecting on the importance and legacy of the book. This book presents an important and challenging range of findings on 'what works' in probation and with offenders and remains essential reading for anybody professionally concerned with the present and future of probation.

Preface, Shadd Maruna and Fergus McNeill, Part 1 Introduction, 1 Probation, social context and desistance from crime: introducing the agenda, 2 Realism, criminal careers and complexity, 3 The Study, Part 2 Probation, motivation and social contexts, 4 Defining 'success', 5 The focus of probation, 6 Resolving obstacles: the role of probation supervision, 7 Motivation and probation, 8 Probation work: content and context, 9 Motivation, changing contexts and probation supervision, Part 3 Persistance and desistance, 10 Desistance, change and probation supervision, 11 The factors associated with offending, Part 4 Conclusions, 12 Probation, social context and desistance from crime: developing the agenda Index, 13 Rethinking … 20 years later: What Happened Next?, 14 Critical International Reflections on Rethinking What Works with Offenders by José Cid, University of Barcelona, Spain, Martine Herzog-Evans, University of Rheims, France, Isabelle Fortine-Dufou, Laval University, Canada and Mark Halsey, Flinders University, Melbourne, Australia.

Stephen Farrall is Professor of Criminology at the University of Derby, having previously been Professor of Criminology at the University of Sheffield (2010–2018). As well as his research on desistance from crime, he is well known for his work on the fear of crime and his studies on the long term impacts of Thatcherite social and economic policies on crime.