Book Review: F. McNeill and B. Whyte, Reducing Reoffending, Social Work and Community Justice in Scotland, Willan Publishing, Cullompton, 2007, £19.99 Pb, ISBN 978—1-84392—218—6
| Author | Linda Piggott |
| Published date | 01 August 2008 |
| Date | 01 August 2008 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14732254080080020703 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews 181
The fi nal chapter serves to bring together the main focus of the previous chapters with an em-
phasis on the use of evidence and its infl uence on policy development. It concludes by looking to
the future and provides a brief summary of the move towards integrated services for children, since
the late-1990s, via initiatives such as Youth Offending Teams, Sure Start and Connexions.
Overall Hayden’s text provides a comprehensive review of the literature relating to children in
trouble from the domain of families, schools and communities. It works best when introducing and
reviewing original research. When it is not, it is in danger of providing material that has been re-
viewed in other texts. Nevertheless it is an interesting and, in parts, a thought provoking text that
would be most useful for students or professionals about to begin their studies and/or careers. It is
less likely to be useful for academics as it does not contribute signifi cantly to the theoretical debates
in this area or advance our knowledge of the empirical literature.
F. McNeill and B. Whyte, Reducing Reoffending, Social Work and Community
Justice in Scotland, Willan Publishing, Cullompton, 2007, £19.99 Pb, ISBN
978–1-84392–218–6.
Reviewed by: Linda Piggott, Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster
University, UK.
Unlike the rest of the UK, Scotland does not have a separate probation service. The Kilbrandon
Report (Kilbrandon Committee, 1964) established the pre-eminence of a welfare-based approach
and led to the integration of probation and aftercare services within generic social work depart-
ments. The functions undertaken by probation offi cers are, therefore, the responsibility of the
criminal justice social workers employed by Local Authorities. This foundation is the basis for
practice that offers more than the correctional approach and the increasingly punitive penal policies
of England and Wales that work to an agenda dominated by an emphasis on public protection
concerns, performance management culture and targets.
The Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2005 identifi es probation as a social work service
with the underlying assumption that community supervision can protect the rights of the victim
and those of the offender. Nevertheless, the Scottish system is facing changes as a result of the in-
creasing preoccupation with risk, which involves a shift from assessing risk of custody to assessing
risk of reconviction and harm. McNeill and Whyte focus on the continuing overuse of custody in
Scotland and the concentration of the use of custody within certain deprived populations, and aim
to show that, alternatively, the principles of community justice might satisfy the stated require-
ments of public safety and offender reintegration.
Part I examines the changes and challenges faced by community justice in Scotland by exploring
historical continuities and discontinuities, analysing the problem of the reduction of reoffending,
reviewing evidence on desistance, and examining social work practice in Scotland in relation to
desistance processes. Part II describes the legal contexts and processes of criminal justice social work
services. Part III looks to the future and offers the concepts of human capital and social capital as
a means of migrating ‘case management’ towards ‘change management’, as a better alternative to
‘offender management’.
Using evidence from a number of research projects, McNeill and Whyte indicate that to become
‘desistance ready’, young men need to feel included in their social world and that processes of
desistance are characterized by ambivalence and vacillation. They suggest that as well as providing
‘treatment’ that builds human capital, the social worker should act as an advocate, providing
a conduit to social capital. Desistance is seen as a process which requires a social work approach
that builds on strengths, rather than focusing on weaknesses, and throughcare and resettlement are
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