Book Review: Community Penalties: Change and Challenges
| Author | Tony Leach |
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455050104800416 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews-p301-309 22/11/01 9:16 am Page 1
controversial analysis of the history of the
Service since the Second World War.
While not everybody would agree with the
REVIEWS choices that Nellis himself clearly would
have made, he catalogues a long list of
missed political opportunities, which
ultimately led to the government imposing
a sense of direction on a Service which
lacked the ability to formulate one for
itself.
Even more impressive is Anthony
Bottoms’theoretical framework for
compliance, a useful antidote to the
obsession with enforcement coming from
elsewhere. He sets out to examine
“how and why offenders comply with
community penalties.” This paper is
worthy of a separate review of its own. He
sets out four main kinds of compliance
and analyses the relevance of each to
community penalties, applying social
theory to real-life situations. What he does
not do, but what desperately needs to be
done, is to translate his theoretical
Community Penalties: Change and
analysis into everyday practice guidelines.
Challenges
Anthony Bottoms, Loraine Gelsthorpe
The third unmissable paper is that by
and Sue Rex (eds)
another of the editors, Loraine Gelsthorpe,
Willan Publishing, 2001; pp255;
on the implications of the Human Rights
£30.00, hbk ISBN 1-903240-49-2
Act and a commitment to diversity for the
management of community penalties. She
This book is a collection of papers from
argues that more attention needs to be
the 24th Cropwood Round Table
given to social and cultural differences,
Conference held in June 2000. The
particularly in relation to involvement in
authors are mainly academics, who are
crime and desistance and that universal
well-disposed towards the Probation
programmes run the risk of ignoring these
Service, and a number of them have in
crucial factors. She also argues that
the past worked as probation officers. The
Human Rights legislation will inevitably
collection as a whole represents a
lead to greater accountability to the
birds-eye view of the Service from
offender for...
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