The voluntary sector has a long history of involvement in criminal justice by providing a variety of services to offenders and their families, victims and witnesses. This collection brings together leading experts to provide critical reflections and cutting edge research on the contemporary features of voluntary sector work in criminal justice. At a time when the voluntary sector's role is being transformed, this book examines the dynamic nature of the voluntary sector and its responses to current uncertainties, and some of the conflicting positions with regards to its present and future role in criminal justice work. It also examines the potential impact of economic, political and ideological trends on the role and remit of voluntary sector organisations which undertake criminal justice work.

Winner of the 2017 British Society of Criminology Book Prize The penal voluntary sector and the relationships between punishment and charity are more topical than ever before. In recent years in England and Wales, the sector has featured significantly in both policy rhetoric and academic commentary. Penal voluntary organisations are increasingly delivering prison and probation services under contract, and this role is set to expand. However, the diverse voluntary organisations which comprise the sector, their varied relationships with statutory agencies and the effects of such work remain very poorly understood. This book provides a wide-ranging and rigorous examination of this policy-relevant but complex and little studied area. It explores what voluntary organisations are doing with prisoners and probationers, how they manage to undertake their work, and the effects of charitable work with prisoners and probationers. The author uses original empirical research and an innovative application of actor-network theory to enable a step change in our understanding of this increasingly significant sector, and develops the policy-centric accounts produced in the last decade to illustrate how voluntary organisations can mediate the experiences of imprisonment and probation at the micro and macro levels. Demonstrating how the legacy of philanthropic work and neoliberal policy reforms over the past thirty years have created a complex three-tier penal voluntary sector of diverse organisations, this cutting-edge interdisciplinary text will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists of work and industry, and those engaged in the voluntary sector.

This volume examines how volunteers and non-profit programs encourage institutional change in prisons and offer individual support and services to people who are housed behind bars. Through a diverse set of chapters, including two that are co-written by current prisoners, the volume spans the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and juvenile and adult facilities. The book showcases the exciting, groundbreaking, and yet often unrecognized work that the voluntary sector provides in correctional settings. Collectively, the chapters highlight beneficial practices while raising critical questions about the role of the voluntary sector in prison and reentry settings. The chapters also offer useful information about how to implement innovative prison programs that promote health, education, and peer support.

All the world’s criminal justice systems need to undertake direct work with people who have come into their care or are under their supervision as a result of criminal offences. Typically, this is organized in penal and correctional services – in custody in prisons, or in the community, supervised by services such as probation. Bringing together international experts, this book is the go-to source for students, researchers, and practitioners in criminal justice, looking for a comprehensive and authoritative summary of available knowledge in the field. Covering a variety of contexts, settings, needs, and approaches, and drawing on theory and practice, this Companion brings together over 90 entries, offering readers concise and definitive overviews of a range of key contemporary issues on working with offenders. The book is split into thematic sections and includes coverage of: Theories and models for working with offenders Policy contexts of offender supervision and rehabilitation Direct work with offenders Control, surveillance, and practice Resettlement Application to specific groups, including female offenders, young offenders, families, and ethnic minorities Application to specific needs and contexts, such as substance misuse, mental health, violence, and risk assessment Practitioner and offender perspectives The development of an evidence base This book is an essential and flexible resource for researchers and practitioners alike and is an authoritative guide for students taking courses on working with offenders, criminal justice policy, probation, prisons, penology, and community corrections.

This collection offers a comprehensive review of the origins, scale and breadth of the privatisation and marketisation revolution across the criminal justice system. Leading academics and researchers assess the consequences of market-driven criminal justice in a wide range of contexts, from prison and probation to policing, migrant detention, rehabilitation and community programmes. Using economic, sociological and criminological perspectives, illuminated by accessible case studies, they consider the shifting roles and interactions of the public, private and voluntary sectors. As privatisation, outsourcing and the impact of market cultures spread further across the system, the authors look ahead to future developments and signpost the way to reform in a ‘post-market’ criminal justice sphere.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the role of the third sector--voluntary or nonprofit groups--in the delivery of public services in the United Kingdom. It details the historical development of the relationship between the government and the third sector, reviews major debates and controversies that have accompanied the increasing reliance on third-sector work in recent years, and explores the various fields in which third-sector activity is prominent.

Peer mentoring is an increasingly popular criminal justice intervention in custodial and community settings. Peer mentors are community members, often with lived experiences of criminal justice, who work or volunteer to help people in rehabilitative settings. Despite the growth of peer mentoring internationally, remarkably little research has been done in this field. This book offers the first in-depth analysis of peer mentoring in criminal justice. Drawing upon a rigorous ethnographic study of multiple community organisations in England, it identifies key features of criminal justice peer mentoring. Findings result from interviews with people delivering and using services and observations of practice. Peer Mentoring in Criminal Justice reveals a diverse practice, which can involve one-to-one sessions, group work or more informal leisure activities. Despite diversity, five dominant themes are uncovered. These include Identity, which is deployed to inspire change and elevate knowledge based on lived experiences; Agency, or a sense of self-direction, which emerges through dialogue between peers; Values or core conditions, including caring, listening and taking small steps; Change, which can be a terrifying and difficult struggle, yet can be mediated by mentors; and Power, which is at play within mentoring relationships and within the organisations, contexts and ideologies that surround peer mentoring. Peer mentoring offers mentors a practical opportunity to develop confidence, skills and hope for the future, whilst offering inspiration, care, empathy and practical support to others. Written in a clear and direct style this book will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, social theory and those interested in learning about the social effects of peer mentoring.

Over the past few years, opposition to the privatisation in public services in the United Kingdom and elsewhere has grown, especially in areas related to criminal justice. Privatisation has existed within the British criminal justice system at least since the early 1990s, but the privatisation of the Probation Service in 2014 was a significant landmark in this process and signalled a larger programme of privatisation to come. Criminal Justice and Privatisation works to examine the impact of privatisation on the criminal justice system, and to explore the potential effects of privatising other areas including the police and the security industry. By including chapters from practitioners and academics alike, the book offers an expansive overview of the criminal justice system, as well as observations of the effect of privatisation at ground level. By also exploring the way the private companies are paid, how they operate and what private companies do, this book offers an insight into and the future of privatisation within the public sector. Written in a clear and direct style this book will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, social theory and those interested in learning about the effects of privatisation.

This book is the first volume to explore criminal justice work and criminological research through the lens of emotional labour. A concept first coined 30 years ago, emotional labour seeks to explore the ways in which people manage their emotions in order to achieve the aims of their organisations, and the subsequent impact of this is on workers and service users. The chapters in this edited collection explore work in a wide range of criminal justice institutions as well as the penal voluntary sector. In addition to literature review chapters which consolidate what we already know, this book includes case study chapters which extend our knowledge of how emotional labour is performed in specific contexts, and in relation to certain types of work. Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology covers topics such as prisoners who die from natural causes in prison, to the work of independent domestic violence advisors and the use of emotion by death penalty lawyers in the US. An accessible and compelling read, this book presents ground-breaking qualitative and quantitative research which will be critical to criminologists, criminal justice practitioners, students of criminology and academics in the fields of social policy and public service.

This volume contains an Open Access Chapter Leading scholars on Irish penal history and theory explore trends and debates that have surrounded patterns of punishment in Ireland since the formation of the State and foreground often absent perspectives in criminology and punishment.