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Abstract: 

More than 300 people assembled in London in October 2013 on the occasion of the first World Congress on Probation. The Congress highlighted two powerful themes in an emerging global probation conversation: “effectiveness”—especially desistance—and “communities”—in particular, the varied contexts within which service users live, or to which they return, and how interactions between users and their communities are moderated by probation and related services and in turn influence effectiveness. This article reviews presentations from the Congress on the Transforming Rehabilitation Programme, a major probation change program in the host jurisdiction England and Wales, and considers numerous other probation developments in jurisdictions as far apart as Africa, Asia, Europe, the Far East, and North and South America. The author suggests that one of the more enduring legacies of this first Congress may prove to be a stronger thirst for global insight in the probation field, and of conversations to support enquiry.

Keywords: World Congress on Probation, Transforming Rehabilitation Programme, desistance, international probation

Affiliations:  1: National Offender Management Service.