The Palgrave Handbook of Global Rehabilitation in Criminal Justice (eBook)

This handbook provides a unique overview of rehabilitation as practiced internationally in criminal justice. Through the contributions of a diverse group that includes, among others, academics (some of whom are former practitioners), research students, a judge, and a probation chief, it reflects common features of criminal justice in different countries and documents their diversity and celebrates their vitality. In recent times the idea of 'law and order' has been expropriated by populist, authoritarian and doctrinaire regimes, almost always and nearly everywhere in the service of arbitrary and unjust rule. By and large this handbook does not include such regimes. But 'law' itself also has the capacity to constrain rulers, and 'order' in the form of social peace is a universally approved civic asset. In part, the book provides a counter-narrative demonstrating that although criminal justice dispositions such as probation, prisons, and parole can be represented as a 'via dolorosa', rehabilitation as illustrated in these pages can become a journey that leads by degrees towards the possibility of a better life. The handbook will be of interest to students, academics, practitioners, managers, policy makers and all those who wish to gain insight into the why and the how of rehabilitation in criminal justice systems across the world. 

Maurice Vanstone is Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Swansea University, UK. He is the author of Supervising Offenders in the Community: A History of Probation Theory and Practice (2004) and co-editor (with Philip Priestley) of Offenders or Citizens? Readings in Rehabilitation (2010).

Philip Priestley is a former probation officer, academic and author of Victorian Prison Lives (1985). He has directed thirty broadcast films for UK television, including Video Letters (BBC 2 1991); Prix Europa, Berlin. He helped start services to victims and probation day centres as alternatives to prison. He is co-editor (with Maurice Vanstone) of Probation and Politics (2016).