This article reports on the findings of a small-scale Scottish study which drew on participant perspectives to explore the attention given to probationers’ social contexts in supporting desistance from crime. In light of findings from previous studies which suggest that recent developments in the design and delivery of effective programmes have contributed to a neglect in attention to offenders’ social contexts, this article presents a more optimistic picture whilst providing some insight into how desistance-focussed interventions can more effectively assist change in this area.

This article aims to set current developments in `offender management' services in England and Wales and in Scotland within the contexts first of a discussion of Bauman's analysis of crime and punishment in consumer society and second of wider debates about the commodification of public services. Rather than examining the formal commodification of offender management through organizational restructuring, `contestability' and marketization, the authors examine the extent to which the substantive commodification of offender management is already evidenced in the way that probation's products, consumers and processes of production have been reconfigured within the public sector. In the concluding discussion, they consider both some limitations on the extent of commodification to date and the prospects for the containment or moderation of the process in the future

This article is about the place of those sentenced in criminal justice sanctions. Specifically, it reports on the findings of a co-productive qualitative inquiry that sought to explore the place and possibility of service user co-production within justice sanctions, drawing on the experience of people with convictions. The conclusion of the article is that participation and co-production matters in justice sanctions. The detail and implications of this conclusion are discussed.

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