Lorana Bartels, Swift, certain and fair: Does Project HOPE provide a therapeutic paradigm for managing offenders?
| Author | Rick Sarre |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865817749903 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Review
Lorana Bartels, Swift, certain and fair: Does Project HOPE provide a therapeutic paradigm for
managing offenders? Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2017; 219 pp. ISBN 9783319584447,
$129.00 USD (hbk)
Reviewed by: Rick Sarre, University of South Australia; adjunct, Umea
˚University, Sweden
I was drawn to this book by the title. Not only do most people agree that justice should
be swift, certain and fair, but there is always a market for a published study that
evaluates the effectiveness of an innovative program, in this instance Hawaii’s
Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) initiative. The book gives the crim-
inological readership an opportunity to see another aspect of ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’
(more commonly referred to now as ‘therapeutic justice’) in action, through what are
becoming referred to as ‘solution-focused’ courts.
What is the idea behind HOPE? It is that judges and magistrates will be uncompro-
mising in their response to persons failing to meet their probationary conditions, espe-
cially in relation to drug-related crime (where most of the focus has been). If one doesn’t
do what one has agreed to do, then the response is swift and certain (and, its proponents
would argue, fair). These conditions include submitting to random drug tests. Dr.
Bartels became interested in HOPE following a seminar in Canberra in 2013. She has
now systematically produced a comprehensive overview of the idea, interspersing a
literature review with her own observations of Hawaii’s HOPE court.
In 2004, Judge Steven Alm was becoming increasingly frustrated at a ‘revolving door’
of failed probationary candidates in Honolulu. He decided to do something about it,
and set in place a procedural regime that he was able, within his general discretion, to
implement without legislative fiat. Such judicial activism has a precedent in Australia.
Adelaide Magistrate Chris Vass in 1999 initiated an Aboriginal court after observing the
plight of Indigenous offenders at the hands of a ‘one size fits all’ justice system in South
Australia. These courts have now successfully spread around the country.
To reduce it to its simplest form, the idea behind the HOPE program is ‘tough love’.
Sometimes offenders need to have a line drawn in the sand, say its proponents, and will
thereby be deterred from future offending. Thus, probation officers are given less dis-
cretion (in responding to breaches). The HOPE project operates on the premise that
deterrence is far more effective if it holds out the prospect of an immediate and highly
probable (yet relatively mild) punishment as opposed to the prospect of deferred and
low probability exposure to more severe punishment.
HOPE (or one of its permutations) has now been widely adopted across the United
States. Its implications for desistance theory are important, and while there is reference
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2017, Vol. 0(0) 1–3
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865817749903
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