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Book Review: Rehabilitating and Resettling Offenders in the Community

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorDavid Wood
DOI10.1177/0264550513490124a
Date01 June 2013
Published date01 June 2013
Subject MatterBook Reviews
PRB490124 195..202
Book Reviews
197
Rehabilitating and Resettling
Offenders in the Community
Anthony Goodman
Wiley-Blackwell; 2012; pp 248; £32.99, pbk
ISBN: 978-0-47099-170-1
Reviewed by: David Wood, Team Manager, Merseyside Probation
Trust
Rehabilitating and Resettling Offenders in the Community is a unique book. Whilst
in many respects it covers a familiar path in terms of the theme of its contents, it does
so from a specific and definite perspective utilizing political and personal obser-
vation. The book’s content is drawn from a mixture of academic texts, personal
experience and individual interviews the author has collated over his years as a
practitioner and academic. Anthony Goodman, now Professor of Criminal and
Community Justice Studies at Middlesex University, previously worked as a pro-
bation officer and uses his experiences as a practitioner in London along with his
current academic experiences of working with practitioners to inform his writing.
This approach provides the text with a perspective to which practitioners will easily
relate and one which will illuminate the world of the practitioner to those
approaching the text from an academic or studious background.
The book starts with a helpful introductory chapter outlining Goodman’s experi-
ence, approach and perspective on the topic on which he is about to embark. This is
of immense value as it allows the reader to make an informed assessment throughout
the remainder of the book of the perspective being taken in the writing. Its use is
certainly apparent in the three chapters on penal and probation history that follow as,
whilst covering familiar territory in the story of community interventions, they veer from
a general narrative of events towards a more politically and policy focused analysis.
These chapters provide the reader with the opportunity to grapple with the complex
range of factors and motivations that have historically, and contemporarily, continued
to steer developments in probation provision. There is then a break...

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