How Do Interviewers and Children Discuss Individual Occurrences of Alleged Repeated Abuse in Forensic Interviews?

Police interviews (n = 97) with 5- to 13-year-olds alleging multiple incidents of sexual abuse were examined to determine how interviewers elicited and children recounted specific instances of abuse. Coders assessed the labels for individual occurrences that arose in interviews, recording who generated them, how they were used, and other devices to aid particularisation such as the use of episodic and generic language. Interviewers used significantly more temporal labels than did children. With age, children were more likely to generate labels themselves, but most children generated at least one label. In 66% of the cases, interviewers ignored or replaced children’s labels, and when they did so, children reported proportionately fewer episodic details. Children were highly responsive to the interviewers’ language style. Results indicate that appropriately trained interviewers can help children of all ages to provide the specific details often necessary to ensure successful prosecution

Sentencing Women in the Transformed Probation Landscape

In 2013 the government promised that new reforms would ‘deliver better outcomes for women offenders’ (Ministry of Justice, 2013b, p.16). This was a bold statement and a laudable ambition. However, this strategy – called and aimed at Transforming Rehabilitation - will only be successful if sentencers are aware of (and support) the options that new providers put in place to achieve its goals. This chapter considers current levels of awareness of the new reforms among magistrates. Highlighting reservations about the suitability of community provision, and a lack of awareness about developments under Transforming Rehabilitation, it emphasises the lack of information that magistrates receive on this issue. Supplementing the findings of a recent research project conducted with 168 magistrates (see Birkett, 2016), this chapter provides a post-Transforming Rehabilitation ‘update’, drawing on 24 semi-structured interviews and a survey of 86 magistrates sitting across England and Wales. As such, it places particular focus on developments that followed the implementation of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014, the legislative measures underpinning the government’s flagship Transforming Rehabilitation policy agenda

The experience of young people transitioning between youth offending services to probation services

Jayne Price, The experience of young people transitioning between youth offending services to probation services, Probation Journal (Vol. 67 Iss. 3) pp. 246-263. Copyright © 2020 (SAGE). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.This article explores the experience of transitioning from youth offending services to adult probation services upon turning age 18 years whilst incarcerated. The significant differences in the level of provision has been described as a ‘cliff-edge’ (Transition to Adulthood Alliance, 2009). Drawing upon interviews with young people held in institutions, stakeholders and survey data from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), it is argued that the drop in support is exacerbated by poor communication between institutions and services which has harmful implications for young people during this crucial period of developmental maturity and beyond custody

Enhancing Community Resilience: Assessing the Role That Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Law Enforcement (LEA) Staff Associations and Networks Can Play in the Fight Against Radicalisation

This chapter discusses the concept of community resilience and explains it in the context of the fight against radicalisation and CVE. Adopting Michael Ungar’s (American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 81:1–17, 2011) definition of resilience, the chapter argues that resilience is not the attribute of a community but the end product of a process whereby identified community capabilities (e.g. willingness to address problems) are harnessed and supported by culturally sensitive resources offered by culturally aware and capable service providers in which the community has trust and confidence. It is argued that the community will naturally navigate to such resources and that resilience will occur because the community is empowered to negotiate and work in partnership with the resource providers to address the adversity (i.e. problem of radicalisation/CVE). The chapter also acknowledges the important role that British Black, Asian and minority police officer staff associations and networks have been playing in engaging with and helping minority ethnic communities in the UK, including addressing issues of radicalisation, and argue that this valuable resource within the British LEA is undermined by very low numbers of BAME officers in counterterrorism activities