This Open Access edited collection seeks to improve collaboration between criminal justice and welfare services in order to help prepare offenders for life after serving a prison sentence. It examines the potential tensions between criminal justice agencies and other organisations which are involved in the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders, most notably those engaged in mental health care or third sector organisations. It then suggests a variety of different methods and approaches to help to overcome such tensions and promote inter-agency collaboration and co-working, drawing on emerging research and models, with a focus on the practice in European and Scandinavian countries. For academics and practitioners working in prisons and the penal system, this collection will be invaluable.

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.

This book considers the governance of autistic defendants and offenders in the UK courts. Utilising the social model of disability, it considers the dominant strategies of governance, including 'vulnerability', which the author argues obscures the rights of disabled people in the criminal justice system. In doing so it sheds light on how this group should be governed. Drawing on rigorously-researched case studies of autistic adult defendants through the court process, the book brings together relevant legal and policy literature, criminological and criminal justice theory and disability studies to provide insight into the 'dividing practices' that affect the governance of disabled defendants' conduct. Using interviews with elites and practitioners, textual analysis, and court observation of eight autistic adult defendants through their court process, the book investigates why the status of autistic defendants as disabled under the Equality Act 2010 has been overlooked in criminal justice policy and criminal court decision-making. It explores the impact of the 'collateral' effects and 'symbiotic harm' of the criminal justice process on family members who support these defendants through the criminal justice process.

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

Baz Dreisinger travels behind bars in nine countries to rethink the state of justice in a global context Beginning in Africa and ending in Europe, Incarceration Nations is a first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world. Professor, journalist, and founder of the Prison-to-College-Pipeline, Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them, creating a jarring, poignant view of a world to which most are denied access, and a rethinking of one of America’s most far-reaching global exports: the modern prison complex. From serving as a restorative justice facilitator in a notorious South African prison and working with genocide survivors in Rwanda, to launching a creative writing class in an overcrowded Ugandan prison and coordinating a drama workshop for women prisoners in Thailand, Dreisinger examines the world behind bars with equal parts empathy and intellect. She journeys to Jamaica to visit a prison music program, to Singapore to learn about approaches to prisoner reentry, to Australia to grapple with the bottom line of private prisons, to a federal supermax in Brazil to confront the horrors of solitary confinement, and finally to the so-called model prisons of Norway. Incarceration Nations concludes with climactic lessons about the past, present, and future of justice.

This book showcases innovative justice initiatives from around the world which engage offenders, practitioners and communities to reduce reoffending and support desistance and positive change. It is groundbreaking in bringing together inspiring ideas and pioneering practices to analyse how ‘justice done differently’ is making a difference. The voices and experiences of the people at the forefront of these innovative initiatives are presented throughout the book, including offenders, corrections staff and directors, the judiciary, scientists and academics, volunteers and community organisations. Strengths-based research methods are used to investigate and celebrate best practices and ‘good news stories’ from the field. The authors raise critical questions about what is considered innovative and effective, for whom and in what context, presenting their own conceptual approach for analysing innovation. With initiatives drawn from diverse jurisdictions and cultures – including the UK, Europe, Australia, Asia, the US and South America – this book showcases original ideas and refreshing developments that have the potential to transform rehabilitation and reintegration practices. The book’s substance and style will resonate with practitioners, students and academics across the interdisciplinary fields of criminology and criminal justice.