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Book review: Community Programmes Handbook
This book review has been written by Justin Atkinson, one of the Howard League's e-campaigners.
Justin Atkinson is an investment professional who has been interested in the impact of prisons on society ever since reading Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit" at school. Justin read Oriental Studies (Japanese) at Cambridge University and subsequently qualified as a lawyer and as a member of the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute. He was part of a voluntary team which successfully appealed a Jamaican death row conviction at the Privy Council in 2005. Justin also volunteered at the Toynbee Hall free legal advice centre between 2002 and 2006. Justin is about to move with his wife and daughter to Scotland where he will join the pan-Asian equities investment team at Alliance Trust. Why not take a look at his new blog which he recently launched to help find better solutions for society than prison
Find out more about e-campaigners, including how to apply.
The Howard League for Penal Reform's "Community Programmes Handbook" is a useful reference book about award-winning community programmes in the United Kingdom. The Howard League for Penal Reform published the book in 2008 to bring together the lessons from the first two years of its Community Programmes Awards. Barbed, a social enterprise staffed by prisoners and run by the Howard League inside Her Majesty's Prison Coldingley (until bureaucracy sadly killed the project), designed the book including its striking cover.
Following the foreword by Frances Crook, Director of the Howard League, the book opens with different perspectives from members of the judging panel of the Community Programmes Awards, including representatives from the International Centre for Prison Studies, the National Offender Management Service, the probation service and the judiciary. One of the key messages these opening pages convey is that there is still some work required to convince the public - and sentencers - of the merits of community programmes compared to other sanctions.
The remainder of the book should help to convince its readers that community programmes are often a better solution than, for example, short custodial sentences of under a year. It describes some of the successes achieved by award-winning community programmes in the following categories: early interventions with young people; dealing with factors that contribute to offending; restorative justice and mediation; young people; education, training, employment and mentoring; unpaid work and training; high risk offenders; and resettlement.
The descriptions of the community programmes generally start with a real life example of how the community programme helped a participant to take responsibility and make amends for what s/he did and return to living a law-abiding life in the community. These stories are followed by details about, among other things: the origins of the community programme, what it aims to achieve, how it is funded, who it is targeted at, how effective it is, who it is staffed by, how many participants it serves, and the benefits it provides.
These details make the "Community Programmes Handbook" a useful reference book, especially for organisers of community programmes and for sentencers. Contact details are also provided regarding each of the award-winning programmes for anyone requiring further information.
Buy a copy of the Community Programmes Handbook
Find out about the Community Programmes Awards 2010
The Howard League online