Book Review: Confronting Crime: Crime Control Policy under New Labour
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/147322540400400308 |
| Author | Margaret Greenfields |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
much more accessible form. As a member of the team which developed, and then
evaluated, Asset, it is perhaps unsurprising that her conclusions are broadly positive
but she also properly attempts to engage with some of the concerns that most
frequently exercise practitioners. The contribution on ISSP is also authored by one of
the national evaluators of that programme. To a degree, the chapter has been overtaken
by publication of the national evaluation initial report and, given the findings contained
within it, the contention in Robin Moore’s chapter that things augur well for ISSP
appears, in retrospect, rather overoptimistic.
From this reviewer’s perspective, the collection suffers to a certain extent from a
lack of critical edge. In this context, the contributions of the editors themselves might
be considered among the most thought provoking, even though they are primarily
concerned with probation work. Colin Robert’s survey of the emerging evidence in
relation to offending behaviour programmes concludes that while such interventions
‘have an influence on some offenders, for the majority, the programmes by themselves
are unlikely to deliver the outcomes in reducing offending that have been expected of
them’(emphasis in the original).
Pick of the bunch though, is probably Ros Burnett’s discussion of one-to-one
work. She carefully develops an argument that the rejection of the traditional probation
casework on the basis of the What Works research is a misinterpretation of the
evidence, relying on ‘overgeneralised descriptions of traditional practice’. She defends
‘non-directive’individual work, predicated on high quality relationships between worker
and offender, as being integral to encouraging the motivation that is crucial to
desistance. The analysis, as Burnett notes, is equally relevant to youth justice practice.
In all, this is a useful volume with much to commend it. Some contributions may
however benefit from being read alongside more critical accounts of the developments
they consider.
Michael Tonry, Editor, Confronting Crime: Crime Control Policy under New
Labour, Willan Publishing (Cambridge Criminal Justice Series), Cullompton,
Devon, 2003, £30.00 Hb, 1-84392-022-0.
Reviewed by: Margaret Greenfields, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy,
Buckingham Chilterns University College.
This fairly substantial hardback volume (11 chapters, 251pp) is an edited collection of
papers drawn from two sources: a Cambridge Crime Policy Conference held in
November 2002, and the fruits of the Cambridge Sentencing Policy Study Group which
met regularly between October 2000 and April 2002. The focus of these academic
meetings was an exploration of sentencing and correction policy issues which formed
the basis of the Halliday Report
1
and the subsequent White Paper
2
based upon those
proposals, a conflation of recommendations which ultimately passed into law as the
Criminal Justice Act of 2003.
1
Halliday, J. (2001) The Halliday Report (Making Punishments Work: Review of the Sentencing Framework for England and
Wales). London, The Home Office.
2
Justice For All (2002) London, The Home Office.
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