This book demonstrates that alternative approaches to criminal rehabilitation succeed in developing pro-social attitudes and in improving mental, physical and spiritual health for youth and adults in prison and community settings. The use of mindfulness is highlighted as a foundational tool of self-reflexivity, creative expression and therapy.

Drawing on original research on community-based alternatives to offender rehabilitation, this book provides an up-to-date depiction of the challenges faced by front-line workers at the interface between criminal justice and welfare systems striving to address needs and provide multifaceted solutions. Using an innovative theoretical approach predicated on activity theory (AT) to dissect the problem, the book makes the case for co-created rehabilitation strategies that address the needs of offenders – which can only be achieved with the involvement of health and social welfare services as a means to provide a holistic support to individuals – and regard for the dilemmas front-line professionals face to deploy such strategies – which means shifting the top-down paradigm of policy implementation for co-created solutions. The book explores how AT can be used to help design commensurate interventions that give voice to all the interested actors involved in the rehabilitation process and provide readers with tools that help translate theory into practice. This book is essential reading for students, researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders focusing on co-created, bottom-up alternatives to imprisonment that benefit both offenders, community and the state.

Can offenders be rehabilitated? Can this be done in ways that benefit the community as a whole, as well as offenders? This book is about the history, theory, practice and effectiveness of rehabilitation. It shows how different beliefs about the value of rehabilitation and about 'what works' have influenced criminal justice policy and practice at different times, and it identifies a number of promising approaches for the future. Everyone interested in the rehabilitation of offenders should read this book.

Documented evidence suggests that community safety is best achieved through policies promoting human services rather than relying totally on prisons and that promoting intervention in an individual's own environment (known as 'ecological integrity') is closely associated with effective intervention. This is the first book to focus on the transfer of knowledge of worldwide effective offender rehabilitation programs. Prominent researchers and practitioners in the criminal justice field have contributed their extensive knowledge of what it takes to implement effective correctional practices with ecological integrity. * Reviews "real world" challenges of program effectiveness and survival * Offers effective, evidence based, innovative alternatives to imprisonment of offenders * Offers a common multi-level systems perspective as a framework for the international case studies featured * The first book to focus on the transfer of knowledge and best practice through the concept of "technology transfer"

Offender rehabilitation theory and practice have traditionally focused on curing "offenders" of their deviant tendencies by changing their habits, opportunities, personality and outlook on life. Consequently, a number of interventions have been developed within the criminal justice system that are said to be involved in helping offenders. Success is measured by recidivism rates. To this end, rehabilitation has become an important aim of sentencing, whether it be in the form of incarceration, community or monetary penalties. Recently, the foundations of rehabilitation theory and practice have been shaken. Rehabilitation is now seen by many as a threat to offenders' rights and humanitarian principles. Some have even argued that rehabilitation practices are harmful to offenders' chances of correction. Alongside these concerns, the entire paradigm on which our modern criminal justice systems are based has also been questioned. Alternative visions of justice have been moved out of the shadows in the hope that more effective processes are developed for safer and more just societies. One of these visions is encapsulated in restorative justice, which is based on the foundation of promoting human goods in the pursuit of restoration of harm and the correction of deviant behaviour. Restorative justice practices, such as mediation, circles and conferencing bring to the fore states of affairs, activities and experiences that are strongly associated with well-being and higher level of personal satisfaction and social functioning. They aim to create empathy and remorse, and through constructive and honest dialogue create a sense of responsibility in the "offender" and a feeling of empowerment and justice in the "victim". Within this framework, the labels of "victim" and "offender" collapse. A new approach to crime reduction and offender rehabilitation is thus needed. This ground-breaking, edited volume aims to respond to this call by bringing together inter-disciplinary thinking from criminology, affect-script psychology, sociology, political sciences and human rights, psychology and positive psychology, design and arts and social work. The inter-disciplinary dialogue that this book promotes aims to advance the restorative justice field, its tools, practices and evaluation techniques by bringing rehabilitation theory into the restorative justice debate, and vice versa.

On any given day in America, more than 1.5 million people are locked up in state prisons and local jails, at costs that approach $20,000 per inmate each year. Crime and incarceration generate heated, but often contradictory, political debate; voters consider prisons the only real sanction for crime, but adamantly resist new taxes to pay for them. Sensible Justice explores creative solutions some states and cities nationwide have devised to tackle the prison problem.

As the UK and many other western societies face up to the consequences of a rapidly increasing prison population, so the search for alternative approaches to punishment and dealing with offenders has become an increasingly urgent priority for government policy and society as a whole. This book reports the results of the research programme commissioned by the Coulsfield Inquiry into Alternatives to Prison, which was funded by the Esmée Fairbairn 'Rethinking Crime and Punishment' initiative. It is written by leading authorities in the field, and provides a comprehensive, authoritative and wide-ranging review of the range of issues associated with the use of noncustodial sanctions, examining experiences in Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as England and Wales.