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Abstract: 

Since its inception in 1964, ICCA has had an international focus; it has held conferences in Bermuda, Canada, and Europe as well as the United States. Over the past few years, there has been an increase in participants from other countries such as Australia, China, Korea, New Zealand, England and Wales, and Scotland and an increase in Canadian participation. This is in keeping with the goals and objectives of the association in its efforts to further collaboration and, by sharing information and knowledge about policies and programs, to learn from each other’s experiences as together we advance the role of community corrections in our respective countries. Thus, in this issue of JCC , we have articles from Africa, the United Kingdom, and China that both challenge and complement our efforts in our own countries. Dr. Uju Agomoh, writing from an African perspective, provides us with an interesting strategy for counteracting the widespread approaches to criminal offending that are fuelled by vengeance. She reviews and reports on innovative methods from a variety of countries and applies them to situations in an African context. This results in seeing how the policy and program approaches can be adapted to meet needs in various cultural contexts. The article provides ample program descriptions to give the reader an opportunity to evaluate the lessons learned from a number of places and is another example of the value of collaborative and comparative efforts underway in the community corrections arena. Tim Newell, a former prison governor in the United Kingdom, has contributed an informative article regarding his experiences with restorative justice in the context of the resettlement of offenders in the community. Having experienced restorative work in the prison environment and the value of this approach in the form of the therapeutic community upon retiring, he continued to increase his knowledge and skills in restorative practice and is participating in a research project designed to test the effectiveness of this approach. His account suggests that there is room for the use of restorative practice in U.K. resettlement work, and I believe that restorative practice is equally applicable in the North American context for our reentry and reintegration programs. In recent years, the Chinese criminal justice system has been developing policy and programs for community corrections. The Chinese have sent professors and practitioners to Europe and North America and have invited community correctional experts to China to engage in training and in technical assistance. The advances are remarkable. In this article, Drs. Yuan Bin and Guo Jing note the role of the College for Criminal Law Science in theoretical research on community corrections as well as in engaging with the Chinese government, community correctional institutions and other university departments. ICCA presents another of the association’s policy positions on issues important to community correctional practice. This policy statement contains background information and a set of recommendations regarding the use of GPS technology for offender monitoring. Russ Immarigeon, our book review editor, has once again compiled an interesting reading list of six books on topics of relevance to practitioners. One review describes a chronicle, in photographs and text, of young men’s lives in the Bronx. A second considers the origins of U.S. justice in an 18th century philosophical treatise published in Italy. Two additional reviews deal with recently published handbooks on social work practice with vulnerable and resilient populations and gender, sex, and crime. Another two deal with racism in American prisons, and race, gender, and sentencing in Canada.

Keywords: The Role of Corrections in Development; Responsible Restorative Resettlement; Legislative Research on Community Corrections in China; Global Positioning Satellite System Monitoring

Affiliations:  1: Executive Editor.