In our quest for finding what works in penal practice, we too often forget to ask questions of how it works the dynamics, relationships and social interactions involved in the important process of helping people change their lives. With contributions from an outstanding, international team of penal researchers, Durnescu and McNeills volume is a much needed response to this gap in the literature.
Shadd Maruna, Director of the Institute of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Queens University Belfast, UK
Focusing on practice (rather than policy) and on work with offenders in the community (more than in prison), this excellent book fills a gap in the literature. Scholars from different countries present research and conceptual discussions that illuminate how practitioners approach and understand their work and the professional skills and personal qualities needed to support (ex-)offenders in the process of change.
Professor Rob Canton, De Montfort University, UK
Understanding Penal Practice
Criminological and penological scholarship has in recent years explored how and why institutions and systems of punishment change and how and why these changes differ in different contexts. Important though these analyses are, this book focuses not so much on the changing nature of institutions and systems, but rather the changing nature of penal practice and practitioners.
Bringing together leading researchers from around the world, this collection unites studies that aim to describe and critically analyse penal practice with studies that investigate its effectiveness and prescribe its future development. Reversing penologys usual preoccupation with the prison, the book focuses mainly on penal practice in the community (i.e. on probation, parole, offender supervision and community corrections).
The first part of the book focuses on understanding practice and practitioners, exploring how changing social, cultural, political and organisational contexts influence practice, and how training, development, professional socialisation and other factors influence practitioners. The second part is concerned with how practitioners may be best supported to develop the skills and approaches that seem most likely to generate positive impacts. It contains accounts of new practice models and approaches, as well as reports of research projects seeking both to discover and encourage effective practices.
This book explores internationally significant and cutting-edge theoretical and empirical work on the cultures, practices, roles and impacts of frontline practitioners in delivering penal sanctions. As such, it will be of interest to researchers in criminology, social work and social policy as well as correctional policy makers and those involved in community supervision.
Ioan Durnescu is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work at the University of Bucharest. Ioan is also the founder and editor of the European Journal of Probation (www.ejprob.eu) and author of a number of books and articles published in Romania and abroad. Together with Professor Anton van Kalmthout he co-edited Probation in Europe and before becoming an academic he worked for the Prison Department and Probation Department in Romania.
Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow where he works in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Prior to becoming an academic in 1998, he worked in residential drug rehabilitation and as a criminal justice social worker.
Routledge frontiers of criminal justice
1 Sex Offenders, Punish, Help, Change or Control?
Theory, policy and practice explored
Edited by Jo Brayford, Francis Cowe and John Deering
2 Building Justice in Post-Transition Europe
Processes of criminalisation within Central and Eastern European societies
Edited by Kay Goodall, Margaret Malloch and Bill Munro
3 Technocrime, Policing and Surveillance
Edited by Stphane Leman-Langlois
4 Youth Justice in Context
Community, compliance and young people
Mairead Seymour
5 Women, Punishment and Social Justice
Human rights and penal practices
Margaret Malloch and Gill McIvor
6 Handbook of Policing, Ethics and Professional Standards
Edited by Allyson MacVean, Peter Spindler and Charlotte Solf
7 Contrasts in Punishment
An explanation of Anglophone excess and Nordic exceptionalism
John Pratt and Anna Eriksson
8 Victims of Environmental Harm
Rights, recognition and redress under national and international
Matthew Hall
9 Doing Probation Work
Identity in a criminal justice occupation
Rob C. Mawby and Anne Worrall
10 Justice Reinvestment
Can the criminal justice system deliver more for less?
Chris Fox, Kevin Albertson and Kevin Wong
11 Epidemiological Criminology
Theory to practice
Edited by Eve Waltermaurer and Timothy A. Akers
12 Policing Cities
Urban securitization and regulation in a twenty-first century world
Edited by Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby
13 Restorative Justice in Transition
Kerry Clamp
14 International Perspectives on Police Education and Training
Edited by Perry Stanislas
15 Understanding Penal Practice
Edited by Ioan Durnescu and Fergus McNeill
First published 2014
by Routledge
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2014 Ioan Durnescu and Fergus McNeill; selection and editorial material, individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of Ioan Durnescu and Fergus McNeill to be identified as the authors of the editorial material and the authors of their individual chapters has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Understanding penal practice / edited by Ioan Durnescu and Fergus McNeill.
pages cm. (Routledge frontiers of criminal justice)
1. Punishment. 2. Corrections. 3. Justice, Administration of.
I. Durnescu, Ioan. II. McNeill, Fergus.
HV7419.U53 2013
364.6dc23
2013014872
ISBN: 978-0-415-63581-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-08722-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
