The aim of this book is to provide a collection of essays that outline and discuss criminal justice practice in relation to risk and rehabilitation, with particular reference to substance misuse and mental health problems. These problems, which often constitute the ‘bread and butter’ of criminal justice caseloads, are often complex and appear to be intractable, thus presenting difficulties to a criminal justice system predicated upon notions of rational choice, punishment and deterrence. It is precisely because of some of the perceived difficulties in working with these issues, and because of the numbers of people in the criminal justice system...

Ideas of risk and risk management pervade our everyday lives through prominence in politics, economics, finance and an overriding concern with health and safety. It has become, as Wilkinson (2010, p 26) describes, ‘a cultural prism through which the character and tendencies of processes of rationalization are brought into view’. The development of risk practices within criminal justice are discussed by Clift (Chapter Two, this volume), but it is important to recognise that they are but one part of a wider cultural development that has sought, through using actuarial approaches, to establish security for states, communities and individuals.

Uncertainty has...

Risk is now firmly embedded as a key concept within criminal justice through legislative requirements, the practice of risk assessments that determine both sentencing and parole decisions, and resource allocation to the supervision of offenders in the community. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 continued the principle of bifurcation enshrined in the Criminal Justice Act 1991: first, through establishing the treatment orders discussed in this volume; and, second, by cementing the prioritisation of risk and sentencing in relation to the risk of potentialfutureharm (see Ashworth, 2011). On the basis of this legislation, criminal justice practitioners, and most notably probation...

This chapter will review the care pathways available to mentally disordered offenders who have a dual diagnosis (hereafter referred to as dually diagnosed clients [DDCs]). There is no prescribed legal definition for dual diagnosis (also known as co-morbidity), which serves to complicate an already complex debate around the provisioning of appropriate services for this client group. There is a great deal of debate concerning the nature of dual diagnosis (for a review of the main models, see Mueser et al, 1998) and a subsequent lack of definitional clarity. For the purposes of this chapter, the broad spectrum guidance offered by...

Recent debates in criminology and criminal justice surround the contemporary place and respective importance of the grand narratives of risk and rehabilitation (Garland, 2001). Ward and Maruna (2007, p 2) note that for the general public, rehabilitation has had a chequered history, becoming somewhat of an unfashionable word of late; while O’Malley (2010, p 3) suggests that the concept of risk has enjoyed a rather more favourable evaluation to become the predominant way of governing all manner of problems. The significance of both concepts being bound and studied together is highlighted by the fact that between 2002 and 2007, the...

The Probation Service, while increasingly focused on public protection, remains concerned with the rehabilitation of offenders and, although it has slipped to the bottom of the list, rehabilitation remains as one of the Service’s five aims alongside protecting the public, reducing reoffending, punishing offenders in the community and ensuring offenders are aware of the effects of crime on victims and the public (National Probation Service, 2001, p iv). Rehabilitation has been described as ‘full restoration to the formerly errant citizen of his/her rights and responsibilities’ (McNeil, 2010, p 9), which would suggest that the focus of rehabilitation is on the...

Managing risk and promoting rehabilitation are often uneasy bedfellows. Issues of risk frequently invoke punitive and restrictive measures, whereas rehabilitation often calls for positive and empowering interventions. Many criminal justice initiatives have tried to strike some balance between the two. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 certainly does a lot to further notions of assessing and managing risk and dangerousness, including the introduction of the legal notion of ‘the dangerous offender’, and demonstrates how issues of risk and dangerousness permeate criminal justice practice (see Clift, Chapter Two, this volume). At the same time, however, there are also glimmers of rehabilitation in...

The Alcohol Treatment Requirement (ATR) became available to the courts as a sentencing option for offences committed on or after 4 April 2005 by people aged 18 or over as defined in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. It is one of 12 requirements that can be applied to a Community Order for six months to three years or a Suspended Sentence Order for six months to two years (for discussion of the Drug Rehabilitation Requirement, see Gough, Chapter Four, this volume, and Heath, Chapter Five, this volume; for discussion of the Mental Health Treatment Requirement, see Pakes and Winstone, Chapter...

Improving the quality and effectiveness of one-to-one work with offenders in order to reduce reoffending has become a stated aim of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). A strategy to achieve this, as the Probation Circular 10/2006 (NPS,2006) states, is through offender engagement via effective consultation and involvement of offenders in developing services: ‘Involving offenders and ex-offenders in shaping the services which affect them is likely to lead to greater responsiveness to offenders’ needs and learning styles. This is an important factor in improving retention and completion rates.’

For many Probation Trusts, this was their first awareness that they were not...

Therapeutic jurisprudence is a perspective that regards the institution of justice as a social force that is capable of producing both therapeutic and anti-therapeutic outcomes. Given this recognition of the harm that may occur as the result of a legal intervention, an emphasis is placed on empirically based scholarship to determine the impact of the judicial process on the individuals before it. For example, what is the deterrence outcome of experimental or traditional legal procedures? The progressive aspect of this philosophy is in its problem-solving rather than punishment-for-punishment’s-sake orientation. Accordingly, this philosophy opens the door to less coercive forms of...

Within the UK and most industrialised countries, rehabilitation has been one of the espoused aims of criminal justice, which is taken in part to reflect a ‘civilised’ society through a commitment to human rights. In practice and at least since the 18th century (see Gough, Chapter Four, this volume; Priestly and Vanstone, 2010), it is an inherently political and ideologically contested concept intertwined with debates concerning the aims, nature and justification of punishment and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Over a timeline of 40 years, debates concerning ‘offender’ rehabilitation largely based upon a narrow positivism have gone from ‘Nothing...