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The article focuses on the political commitment to rehabilitate citizens who committed various degrees of crimes in Great Britain. The government considers sentencing and punishment practices within the British criminal justice system when it published the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders. The paper covers sentences for threatening someone with offensive weapons, sexual and violent crimes. The impact of the paper on probation is also discussed.

Despite important moves towards gender equality, the experience of the night-time city remains profoundly different for women and men. The visibility of self-styled ‘gentleman’s clubs’ where female dancers perform for a predominantly male clientele has been taken as prime evidence of this persistent inequity. Opposition to such clubs has hence been vocal, with the result that many local authorities in England and Wales have moved to ban clubs within their jurisdiction utilising the powers of the Policing and Crime Act, 2009. This paper explores the arguments that have persuaded policy-makers to refuse licences for such venues, particularly the idea that sexual entertainment causes specific harms to women. The paper does not question the veracity of such arguments, but instead explores why sexual entertainment venues have become a target of feminist campaigning, situating this opposition in the context of long-standing debates about the vulnerability of women in the night-time city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reducing re-offending amongst ex-prisoners is of paramount importance for both penal and societal reasons. This paper advances an argument that the current prisoner risk assessment instruments used in the UK neglect to account for environmental determinants of re-offending. We frame this position within the growing literature on the ecology of recidivism, and use the principles of environmental criminology to stress the importance of the opportunities for crime that are present in an ex-prisoners' neighbourhood. We conclude by considering the implications for policy and discuss how these might conflict with the practical realities of managing ex-prisoners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ways of how the British government can use civil law to regulate the press. It recounts that in the mid-nineteenth century, the government was prepared to pursue the ideology of the press. It also points out the need to explore the ideological distinction between the criminal and civil law to understand the nature of contemporary regulation of the press.

The criminal law looks set to play a larger role in regulating healthcare. Until recently, health professionals only faced the prospect of criminal liability if it could be proved that their gross negligence resulted in the death of a patient. In such a case, the professional could face a charge of gross negligence manslaughter (GNM). Prosecutions for ‘medical manslaughter’ have generated concern among doctors worried about what is perceived as a rise in the number of doctors facing criminal prosecution and the impact prosecutions are having on healthcare practice. May more frequent resort to the criminal process damage rather than promote better health care? In seeking to try to answer this question, the first problem is that reliable data in this area about how many prosecutions are brought and how they fare are limited due to the way cases are recorded. What evidence does exist is often based on media reports or samples that are not representative. This paper will argue that, while the real risk of being prosecuted for medical manslaughter remains low, such fears should not be dismissed because, as Donald Berwick has argued, ‘fear is toxic’ – for health professionals and their patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the history of the probation service’s contribution to sentencing and revisits the changing theories and understandings that have influenced this role at different times. Through most of its history probation was seen as an alternative to punishment and required the consent of the probationer. Since the 1990s these fundamental assumptions have been changing, and the article explores some of the social and political context of these changes. It argues (with the help of John Augustus, Charles Dickens and others) that the probation service’s input of social information into sentencing has been a contribution to social justice, but recent changes in the reporting role have made this much more difficult. Finally, some suggestions are made about how probation’s traditional input into sentencing might be restored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from an exploratory study of court work in two English Magistrates’ courts which was conducted in 2017. The study involved two principal research methods: observation of the daily activities of court team members and semi-structured interviews with 21 members of the two teams, which took place towards the end of the research. The aim of this article is to provide an insight into contemporary probation work in Magistrates’ courts, in the wake of two major reform programmes: Transforming Rehabilitation and Transforming Summary Justice. The findings of this study raise questions about the contemporary relevance of the ‘narrative of decline’ that has featured in previous research and commentary on court work, and further suggests that – whilst it is early days – the creation of specialist court teams has not inevitably led to the ‘incorporation’ of probation workers into the dominant court culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relationships and tensions between the sentencing, statutory supervision and legal rehabilitation of lawbreakers under UK legislation. It does so with reference to both the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, which allows some criminal records to become ‘spent’ after a set period of time, and the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014, which was designed to significantly expand statutory supervision arrangements. The article also demonstrates how, post-supervision, many former lawbreakers are cast into a state of ‘civic purgatory’, before suggesting that a more fully integrated approach to rehabilitation is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a response to Tracy Almond’s article ‘Asset: an assessment tool that safeguards or stigmatizes young offenders?’ Almond takes the position that Asset, the Youth Justice Board assessment tool, is poorly designed, labels young people unhelpfully, and that the criminal justice system (CJS)’s approach to dealing with young people is increasingly out of step with the social care approach. She explores developments in alternative approaches to working with young people which would be more ethical, and concludes that Asset is structurally inadequate and morally unsound. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The status of enforcement procedures may appear at first glance to be an academic debate with little application to probation practice. Yet the answer to this singular question determines how probation trusts should respond to a variety of court based challenges, which if mishandled has the potential to open the door to litigation against individual trusts. A breach of a community order is not a criminal offence, nor do enforcement proceedings form part of the criminal law. Regulatory statutes such as the Criminal Procedures and Investigations Act therefore do not apply. However, English case law has determined that a criminal standard of proof applies to enforcement cases and therefore some elements of the Criminal Procedure Rules do have resonance. Yet there is no right of appeal against a finding of breach and avenues of redress for both offender and the prosecution are limited to general provisions enshrined in English Law. Uncertainty surrounds the admissibility of other evidential areas. The robustness of evidence presented to the court can be improved by relatively modest amendments to practice and forestall possible 'reasonable excuse' defences. However other initiatives derived from general legal practice, are fraught with potential dangers when applied to Community Order enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The award in 2009 of contracts to operate private prisons to consortia which included charities has reignited debates in the UK about the costs of state patronage among the voluntary sector. This article argues that the controversy has highlighted current dilemmas of institutionalization arising from the interpenetration of civil and penal spheres, as public policy nurtures an emergent ‘penal voluntary sector’. Moreover, the article identifies the key drivers of institutionalization: (i) the mainstreaming of the voluntary sector as a plank of penal reform; (ii) the growth of penal service markets; (iii) the discursive construction of a unitary ‘sector’ of market-oriented service providers amenable to regulatory and audit disciplines; (iv) the discursive sidelining of critical analysis of the aforementioned trends. These developments, although contested, underpin a dominant ‘realism’ which combines penal common sense with adaptive pragmatism within the sector in a turbulent economic and political climate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author examines the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (ROA) in Great Britain. It revealed the ineffectiveness of the act in helping former offenders return to normal life. The proposal to revise the act to reduce the disclosure period for convictions and the need for immediate action in the rehabilitation of young and first offenders are also discussed.

There can be little doubt that the long-term effects of the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) will occupy the minds of many academics and policy implementers for some time to come. Like many others, this article is influenced by this recent piece of legislation, and reflects on one element of the Act, namely the possible outcomes of Part IV, sections 61-64, the drug treatment and testing orders. Specifically, the article discusses the potential consequences of 'coerced treatment' for those charged with implementing the new scheme and the tensions between health and the criminal justice system such orders may bring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specific offences of racially aggravated crimes were established in Britain by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. A number of offences with a racial aggravation now attract a higher penalty than those without. The United States has a long experience of similar legislation. But critics of so-called 'hate crime' laws in the US argue that the legislation has failed to fulfill expectations. It is therefore timely to ask what are the objectives behind the legislation in Britain, and what are the prospects for achieving them? This article argues that the most significant impact of the legislation is likely to be on the criminal justice agencies expected to deal with racially aggravated crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]