The latest publications added to the SCCJR database. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk (C) SCCJR What is the role and value of criminology in a democratic society? How do, and how should, its practitioners engage with politics and public policy? How can criminology find a voice in an agitated, insecure and intensely mediated world in which crime and punishment loom large in government agendas and public discourse? What collective good do we want criminological enquiry to promote? In addressing these questions, Ian Loader and Richard Sparks offer a sociological account of how criminologists understand their craft and position themselves in relation to social and political controversies about crime, whether as scientific experts, policy advisors, governmental players, social movement theorists, or lonely prophets. They examine the conditions under which these diverse commitments and affiliations arose, and gained or lost credibility and influence. This forms the basis for a timely articulation of the idea that criminology’s overarching public purpose is to contribute to a better politics of crime and its regulation. Public Criminology? offers an original and provocative account of the condition of, and prospects for, criminology which will be of interest not only to those who work in the fields of crime, security and punishment, but to anyone interested in the vexed relationship between social science, public policy and politics. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=262 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT Reassurance policing was trialled in England from 2002 to 2005, emphasizing police visibility and public consultation on locally identified priorities. In this article, I ask ‘whatever happened to reassurance policing?’ This may seem a strange question to ask. With the expansion of neighbourhood and citizen-focused policing, the policing pledge, and a single public confidence performance target, reassurance policing seems to be alive and well. However, by focusing on four early intentions for a reassurance approach, I question this assumption. Reassurance is found to be a part of British policing, but it could be much more. Contemporary examples where policing could (and perhaps should) be more reassuring are provided.     http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=261 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT This month the SCCJR update contains information about publications on community payback orders, desistance and offender management research, reconviction among drug court participants, youth crime and youth justice.  It also includes links to video and audio clips by Fergus McNeill and Shadd Maruna.  To subscribe to our newsletter click here.   http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=260 Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT The Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice and the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research held a seminar in the Thistle Hotel, Glasgow on Tuesday 23rd February 2010 to discuss the community payback order which has been proposed by the Scottish Government in the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill. The purpose of the seminar was to clarify the intentions behind the proposed new Scottish Order; how its success would be judged; and how it could be made both effective and acceptable, to sentencers, to the press and to the public.  This report provides a summary of discussions during the event. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=259 Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT This review, commissioned by the Scottish Government, evaluates the impact and effectiveness, including cost effectiveness, of the Glasgow and Fife Drug Courts. This will inform future policy and funding regarding Drug Courts. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=256 Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT Pilot Youth Courts were established at Hamilton Sheriff Court in June 2003 and at Airdrie Sheriff Court in June 2004. The Youth Courts were evaluated, published in April 2006, revealing that the Youth Courts had been successful in meeting their objectives, as far as could be assessed at that time. The particular strengths of the Youth Court were noted as being the fast-tracking of young people to and through the court, the reduction in trials, the availability of a wider range of resources and services for young people and ongoing judicial review. It was too early at that stage to ascertain whether the Youth Courts had had an impact on offending behaviour. This review assesses the Youth Courts’ impact on reoffending rates, with regard to the impact on the Youth Courts of the recent reforms of summary justice. The current Administration announced in January 2008 that a decision would be made about any further Youth Courts in the light of this review. This review has been conducted by the Community Justice Services Division of the Scottish Government. An analysis of reconviction data was also undertaken by SCCJR's Gill McIvor. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=257 Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT Based on findings from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, this article challenges the evidence-base which policy-makers have drawn on to justify the evolving models of youth justice across the UK (both in Scotland and England/Wales).  It argues that to deliver justice, systems need to address four key facts about youth crime: serious offending is linked to a broad range of vulnerabilities and social adversity; early identification of at-risk children is not an exact science and runs the risk of labelling and stigmatizing; pathways out of offending are facilitated or impeded by critical moments in the early teenage years, in particular school exclusion; and diversionary strategies facilitate the desistance process. The article concludes that the Scottish system should be better placed than most other western systems to deliver justice for children (due to its founding commitment to decriminalization and destigmatization). However, as currently implemented, it appears to be failing many young people. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=258 Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT This report provides a literature review on desistance from crime which explores the purposes of offender management; understanding and supporting desistance; desistance and the process of offender management; desistance and compliance with offender management; and, desistance and the credibility of offender management.   The review was commissioned  by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to open up lines of enquiry which NOMS may then pursue through its policy programme – specifically its emerging work on offender engagement. The report was commissioned and should be interpreted not as a systematic literature review of desistance research, but rather as a deliberately discursive and speculative paper which aims to scope out some of the implications of desistance research for offender management, rather than to make any definitive statement either about desistance research or about its interpretation in practice. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=255 Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) was formally established in late 2006 and has been fully operational since 2007.  This document details our major activities, outputs and achievements from 2007 until March 2010.  It includes a complete list of all our publications and research projects, highlights specific research case studies and sets out our plans for the future.  Please direct any queries about the report to enquiries@sccjr.ac.uk or contact Claire Lightowler on 01786 467716. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=254 Mon, 31 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT There is sustained academic and policy interest in the point of contact between the police and public, not least because reassurance and other policing strategies hope to improve the quality of these interactions and thus to enhance public trust and confidence in the police. It is therefore important to understand how people judge such encounters. What are the characteristics of a positively received contact, and what are the features of the encounter most important to subsequent confidence in policing? The procedural justice model developed by Tom Tyler and colleagues in the United States predicts that fair, decent and appropriate treatment – and not results – is key in securing public support for the police. By fostering feelings of procedural justice and motive-based trust, and indicating shared group membership, fair treatment is linked to improvements in police legitimacy. Using data from the Metropolitan Police’s Crime Victims Survey this paper tests some of the key predictions of the model, and consistent evidence of a procedural justice effect is presented. Decent treatment and proper actions are consistently valued over outcomes and are associated with higher expected levels of confidence and greater acceptance of police actions and decisions. But police legitimacy is not simply created through contact but exists prior to it. Easton’s twin concepts of diffuse and specific support are used to unpack respondent’s opinions, and levels of diffuse support are shown to affect the ways in which encounters are experienced and assessed. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=253 Fri, 21 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT This month the SCCJR update includes information about our recent publications on culture change and community justice, crime surveys, women offenders, community service, tackling addiction and a range of other things too. You can subscribe to receive this via our home page or contact enquiries@sccjr.ac.uk. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=252 Wed, 19 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT The ability to compare crime rates using recorded offences is limited because crimes are defined and recorded in different ways across the different jurisdictions within the UK. Crime surveys offer a more standardised approach to comparing crime rates and trends.  The population of the UK is covered by three separate crime surveys; the British Crime Survey (BCS) which covers England and Wales; the Scottish Crime Survey (SCS) and the Northern Ireland Crime Survey (NICS).  The geographic coverage of these surveys reflects the three jurisdictions within the UK.  This paper aims to map differences between the BCS, SCS and NICS which may influence the estimates of victimisation.  Although this paper concentrates on victimisation rates the analysis presented could be expanded to other substantive areas, for example fear of crime or perceptions of the criminal justice system.  This paper is based primarily on an analysis of information contained in the published technical reports for each survey. To that extent we have been limited by how the ranges of topic covered, and level of detail given, varied between technical reports.  While these differences do not directly affect the comparability of the different surveys, they limit researchers’ ability to conduct comparative research because it is not immediately apparent the extent to which the surveys may vary in terms of methodology and content.    The issues covered in this paper can be grouped into three broad categories: The sample: who and how many people are asked?;    The questions: what are people asked about?  Are they asked in the same way?; Coding: how are the answers people provide turned into data?. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=250 Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT This research report reviews the international research on the management of change within community justice organisations. It specifically explores: 1.   The nature and character of occupational, professional and organisational cultures in community justice. 2.   How such cultures respond to, accommodate and resist change processes. 3.   How and why processes of change succeed and fail in criminal justice organisations. 4.   Effective approaches to the management of change in criminal justice. The review of change management is located within a wider analysis of what is known about occupational, professional and organizational cultures within criminal justice and within public sector organizations more generally, and of how practitioners respond to policy changes. This review was originally undertaken to inform the work of the Scottish Government’s Performance Improvement Strategy Group, against the backdrop of the ongoing work of the National Advisory Body. Its origins lie in the group’s recognition that both policy implementation and organisational change are complex and difficult to achieve in this area; the prospects for the success of any change initiative are likely to be determined not only by the strength of its own evidence base and theory of change, but also by the cultural and organizational conditions within which its implementation takes place. The review remains equally relevant (if not more so) in the context of the development of the Scottish Government’s Reducing Reoffending Programme.   http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=251 Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT This article considers the development and use of unpaid work as a penal sanction in Scotland, including its gradual introduction at differing points of the criminal justice process. It is argued that the community service order in Scotland – intended to serve as an alternative to imprisonment - has become a well-established sentencing option, though other penalties involving unpaid work have met with more conditional support. Community service has broadly resisted political pressures aimed at increasing its profile and punitiveness though there is a risk that contemporary policy developments that are aimed, ironically, at decreasing the Scottish prison population may, instead, result in its diversionary capacity being undermined. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=248 Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT Current criminological research is particularly interested in the question whether or not we are witnessing a punitive turn and it seems that Western democracies today punish differently than a few decades ago.  The ‘new punitiveness’ literature (Pratt, et. al., 2005) and David Garland’s (2001) study on the culture of control have fuelled an ongoing debate and research on this question.  There are however many ways to compare penal practices and measure punitiveness. Leading comparative research by Cavadino & Dignan (2006) for example relates variations in incarceration rates to contrasting kinds of political economy. http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/view_pub.php?id=249 Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT