Managing risk and changing priorities for probation practice and youth justice.

Source: (2010) In, Katherine Doolin, et. al, eds., Whose criminal justice? State or community?. Hook, Hampshire: Waterside Press. Pp. 107-122.

This chapter will provide an account of how risk-led approaches are operationalised in criminal justice agencies, including an exploration of risk assessment tools, relevant processes, procedures and management arrangements. It explores the extent to which risk assessment processes and offender management are illustrations of a more centralised and standardised system of criminal justice. It asks who these developments have been for, and contrasts the growing technicality of practice and the performance driven culture within agencies, with the reality that practitioners need to establish and sustain relationships with individual offenders within their communities. It also poses the question about whether an increasing emphasis upon risk avoidance militates against the strengths-based approaches that are now being recommended to support sustainable desistance from offending. (excerpt)