Book review: Reimagining Probation Practice: Re-forming Rehabilitation in an Age of Penal Excess

Reimagining Probation Practice is the third book in an evolving series about desistance and rehabilitation. The first two volumes explore McNeil’s desistance theory and his four forms of rehabilitation, the personal, the moral, the social, and legal or judicial rehabilitation. This third volume continues to explore desistance, but the book’s focus is actual probation practice. The book describes the main themes and job functions of probation and explains how the work can be reimagined and reformed for the better. Each chapter includes a brief critical history of a key area of probation practice and the authors highlight opportunities to promote desistance, drawing on the four domains. The authors are front-line practitioners and academics, which gives them greater appeal and credibility. The editors present a compelling analysis of the challenges in the reunified probation service. They conclude that the policy changes over the last few decades have gradually impinged upon effective practice and the relational processes necessary to help people ‘get sorted’. The editors go on to highlight the risks of correctional rehabilitation. The importance of social reintegration and social justice reverberates throughout the book. Readers are invited to think about desistance as not just an individual process or journey but rather a social movement. There is an appeal to probation workers to consider the moral dimensions of the work rather than moralise and then seek to create a dialogue to repair relationships and make reparation. The implication is that a focus on personal rehabilitation is inadequate – we need to commit to social, moral, and legal/judicial rehabilitation. This is helpful and gives a clear vision about how things could be if there was a greater commitment to rehabilitation. Book review The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice