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J' Accuse: Probation Evaluation-Research Epistemologies

Part One: The Critique

Keele University, UK

Each year thousands of men and women are made subject to probation orders, community service orders, drug treatment and testing orders and such like. Each year new ideas emerge on how best to supervise the recipients of such interventions, and each year new pieces of `evidence' are cited as examples of the failure of one scheme or the success of another. The discourse of the argument put forward in this article is that the investigation of probation outcomes is seriously flawed in many respects, and that, in effect, an overarching `rethink' is required. This would encompass not just what is known about probation outcomes, but how this is known. In short, the investigation into community sentences is flawed at an epistemological level, although, of course, there are also serious problems with this body of work in the conceptual and methodological arenas. The ultimate price that we (as a society) may face for producing faulty or dubious evidence is that, over time, more men and women will be made subject to sentences inappropriate to their needs, depriving them of the chances to both desist and to lead lives which are not blighted by an involvement in crime.

Key Words: desistance • evaluation • measuring outcomes • probation supervision

Criminal Justice, Vol. 3, No. 2, 161-179 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/1466802503003002002


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