Transforming Rehabilitation in England and Wales: The First Two Years

• In Event: Transforming Rehabilitation? Critical Commentaries on a Strategy of Criminal Justice Reform in England and Wales

Abstract

The Transforming Rehabilitation (Ministry of Justice 2013) agenda represents a radical departure in the way that rehabilitative services are delivered in England and Wales. The existing Probation Trusts will have been replaced by a significantly smaller National Probation Service dealing with high-risk public protection cases. The supervision and delivery of services to those offenders assessed as low and medium risk is in the process of being contracted to a range of providers on a payment by results basis. Notwithstanding the wider ideological and political issues, offender rehabilitation and public protection now face some severe challenges in the form of fragmentation, local accountability, communication, staff morale and occupational status and culture. This presentation considers the policy drivers behind these developments and possible outcomes in shaping the future of rehabilitative enterprises in England and Wales.

Author

• Lol Burke, Liverpool John Moores University, UK