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Abstract: 

Probation is the main community corrections delivery system worldwide. In anticipation of the forthcoming World Congress on Community Corrections to be held in Los Angeles on July 14–16, 2015, these articles provide important background to the discussions and conversations that will occur at the Congress. In “Probation: Myths, Realities, Challenges” Professor Fergus McNeill, who currently teaches criminology and social work at the University of Glasgow and is leading the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action on offender supervision in Europe, urges us to recognize the potential costs and harms as well as the benefits of supervision, and calls for a more critical and measured advocacy for probation. In “Probation: A Global Conversation,” Steve Pitts skillfully builds from the proposed changes in the delivery of community sanctions and measures in England to a wider conversation on the changes and challenges facing probation/community corrections worldwide. This article provides a comprehensive account of the developing global conversation on community sanctions and measures. Steve Pitts works with the National Offender Management Service in the United Kingdom and is directly involved with its commercial and consultancy activity Just Solutions International. He was involved in the development and delivery of the first World Congress held in London in October 2013. In our regular “Worth Reading” column, our book review editor Russ Immarigeon has assembled a collection of timely publications that cover topical issues that correctional professionals continue to encounter. Some of the topics discussed are capital punishment (it is in decline worldwide), women in crime (a revisiting of the work of Freda Alder), voices of American prisoners (oral histories of inmates of Sing Sing Prison), racial disparity (a look at the historic stigma and recent efforts to correct and remove disparity and a call for the use of multisystemic approaches), community education (the development and implementation of the “inside-out” model that involves university students and prisoners taking a university course together), probation policy and practice (an examination of the politics, governance, and control of probation).

Keywords: Transforming Rehabilitation Strategy; Community Stabilization;World Congress on Probation

Affiliations:  1: Journal Editor.