‘Shifting logics in criminal justice’: Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

In this piece, we introduce a special issue celebrating Professor Joanna Shapland’s 40-year contribution to criminology and criminal justice. It is derived from an international conference hosted by the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Sheffield on ‘Shifting Logics in Criminal Justice’, which took place on 12–14 April 2023. In the introduction, we reflect on Joanna Shapland’s contributions to the fields of victims, restorative justice, desistance and policing, before providing an overview of the seven papers in the special issue that examine these key themes in her research. There are three papers on the theme of desistance, respectively, by Robin G�lnander, Stephen Farrall and Laura Abrams; two on on policing by Pieter Leloup, and by Jacque de Maillard and Megan O’Neill; and two on restorative justice by Rebecca Banwell-Moore, and by Joanna Shapland, Jamie Buchan, Steve Kirwood and Estelle Zinsstag.

This special issue of Criminology and Criminal Justice brings together articles from an international conference hosted by the Centre for Criminological Research (CCR) at the University of Sheffield on ‘Shifting Logics in Criminal Justice’, which took place on 12–14 April 2023. This conference was held in honour of our colleague and former CCR Director, Professor Joanna Shapland, and the publication of the special issue coincides with her retirement from the University (and appointment as Emeritus Professor) in September 2024. The conference celebrated Joanna’s 40-year contribution to criminology and criminal justice, in particular to the fields of victims, restorative justice (RJ), desistance and police studies. Therefore, the articles included in the special issue focus on these areas of scholarship. Each one includes a reflection on the influence of Joanna’s work in their field while also speaking to the overarching theme of ‘Shifting Logics in Criminal Justice’.

In the remainder of this introduction, we set the scene by providing an overview of Joanna’s main contributions to research in the areas of victims, RJ, desistance and policing. This provides context and a point of departure for the subsequent articles in the special issue. First, we examine Joanna’s initial interest in victims and its evolution into an interest in RJ. Second, we consider her research on desistance. Third, we look at her successful ‘side interest’ of police scholarship. Finally, we provide a brief overview of the articles included in the special issues, including their main themes and conclusions about criminal justice continuities and changes.

From victims to restorative justice: An evolutionary story

It has been more than twenty years since Joanna Shapland embarked on a major research project that would bring her to the forefront of RJ research internationally (see Shapland et al., 2011). It is in this field that her influence has arguably been the greatest; although, as this introduction will illustrate, this is a debatable point. But either way, it is important to recognise that in coming to focus on RJ at the turn of the century, Joanna was building on a very significant body of work on victims of crime as important but often neglected stakeholders in the criminal justice process. Thus, her contributions in the realm of RJ were built on the very firm foundation of an extant body of research that dates back to the 1980s.

Victims in the criminal justice system

In 1985, Victims in the Criminal Justice System by Joanna Shapland, Jon Willmore and Peter Duff was published. From the vantage point of today, it is easy to forget that, prior to this, there was not a substantial literature on victims’ experiences or perspectives, and as such, this was something of a landmark. ¹ Indeed, Andrew Ashworth (1993) has described the study as ‘trailblazing’. The book was the product of a Home Office-funded longitudinal study (1978–1982), which examined the experiences of victims of violent crime in relation to their journeys through the criminal justice system. The research charted the experiences of some 276 adult victims of crimes (which included physical assaults, sexual offences and robberies) from their reporting of the crime to the police, through court proceedings to the seeking of compensation from the courts or the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. Up to four interviews were conducted with participants over a 3-year period, with almost 80% of the initial sample taking part in all four interviews, such that the study featured an impressively high retention rate.

In drawing attention to what victims themselves had to say about their treatment at the hands of criminal justice agencies, the findings of this study were extremely significant. Recalling Nils Christie’s (1977) then very contemporary thesis centred on the idea of Conflicts as Property, the findings of this study showed the crucial importance of victims' rights to participation and information in their own case. The authors’ analysis provided compelling evidence that what victims wanted, above all else, was to be recognised as central actors in the criminal process, with rights to be kept informed about key decisions in their case and especially the final outcome.

This is a finding that is as relevant today as it was then, and unfortunately, there remains a yawning gap between what victims continue to say they want and the service they actually receive (e.g. Victims Commissioner, 2023). That gap between the rhetoric of a system with victims at its heart–and the reality of what they experience–has also been borne out in many subsequent research studies, including some by Joanna’s own doctoral students over many years (e.g. Hall, 2009; Banwell-Moore 2024).

Victims in the Criminal Justice System obviously centred on victims and their experiences. However, it also revealed some important realities about the relationships between victims and offenders. First, it found that violent crimes often involve parties that are known to one another. Of the victims of assault in the study, 39% were assaulted by offenders known to them in some way. But it also showed that follow-up contact between the offender and the victim was not uncommon: 55% of the sample experienced some kind of follow-up contact with their offender, including some who had had no prior relationship. 54% of those victims who had contact expressed some level of upset, and in some cases this was severe. Nevertheless, 15% of the victims in the study said that they would like the opportunity to meet the offender again and find out what they were like (Shapland et al., 1985: 180). Thus, this was one of only a few studies to date that turned a spotlight on important but hitherto neglected aspects of the relational side of crime and which pointed to the potential benefits of enabling a future encounter between victims and offenders: one that would make it possible to ask questions, to potentially quell residual fears, and to make plans to avoid conflict in the future.

Evaluating restorative justice

Victims in the Criminal Justice System was an incredibly rich study, and one which put Joanna Shapland in the right place at the right time to take up the challenge of leading the biggest evaluation of RJ schemes in the UK to date. The project commenced in August 2001 and ran for just over 6 years.

The study involved the evaluation of three RJ schemes in different parts of England. These schemes were delivering a mixture of direct and indirect mediation and conferencing, mostly in relation to offences committed by adults, and many (unusually) at the more serious end of the spectrum, including burglary, robbery and violent offending. The largest of the three schemes, run by the Justice Research Consortium, used an experimental design (a randomised controlled trial); for the other two schemes, control groups were created by the research team. In total, over 800 RJ events delivered by the three schemes were examined. Of these, 285 were observed, and wherever possible, feedback was elicited from participants via interviews or questionnaires, before and after RJ took place. Having access to information about both processes and outcomes enabled the team to examine relationships between them. The ‘gold standard’ outcome measures, funded under the Home Office’s Crime Reduction Programme, were always going to be reoffending and cost-effectiveness, but Joanna always ensured that the experiences and impacts for victims received their fair share of attention as the evaluation proceeded.

The key findings of the study can be summarised as follows:

• A majority of victims chose to participate in face-to-face meetings with the offender when offered by a trained facilitator.

• Over 80% of the victims who took part were satisfied with the process and the outcome.

• Victims who took part were more satisfied with the criminal justice response than those who did not, and victims of more serious offences found it particularly helpful.

• Taking part in RJ conferencing reduced the frequency of reoffending of offenders.

• RJ conferencing was value for money in that the savings in terms of reduced reoffending were considerably more than the cost of running the schemes (£9 savings for every £1 spent).

• Reductions in reoffending were linked to whether: the offender wanted to meet the victim; the offender was observed to be actively involved; the conference made them realise the harm they had done; and the offender felt the conference was useful.

• (Source: Shapland et al., 2011).

In short, the study revealed very high rates of satisfaction from the victims who took part and a general keenness to take up the offer of RJ when it was made, even in the more serious cases. Moreover, while RJ did not stop reoffending, conferencing was shown to reduce its frequency and to generate a cost-saving overall, such that RJ proved to be good value for money. Furthermore, where there were reductions in reoffending, these were associated with certain features and experiences of conferencing on the part of offenders. Thus, through the study’s incorporation of mixed methods, it enhanced understanding of the important relationship between processes and outcomes. The study also destroyed some myths about RJ that were dominant at that time: for example, that victims of more serious crimes would not want to participate; that it would be difficult to deliver RJ in more serious cases safely; and that RJ could not or should not be offered at a variety of points in the criminal justice process (Shapland et al., 2011: 183).

The study established Joanna as one of the leading authorities on RJ, and its findings not only informed the UK government’s first Restorative Justice Action Plan (Ministry of Justice, 2012) but also provided the evidence base for new legislation which promoted pre-sentence RJ (Crime and Courts Act 2013, s.44 and Schedule 16). Joanna has continued to be very active in the field of RJ, not just as a researcher but also as an advocate for embedding and extending the offer of RJ to a wider range of potential beneficiaries–especially victims and offenders in cases of more serious crime (e.g. D’Souza and Shapland, 2023). Between 2009 and 2011, she was involved in a European Commission-funded project on the promise of conferencing in Europe; moving on to research restorative policing in Yorkshire with Adam Crawford and others (2015–2018); and in 2014 to an important and influential role as Chair of the RJ Forum (Scotland). In that role, she helped bring together a range of voluntary and statutory agencies to discuss and advance the RJ agenda in Scotland. She was also heavily involved in writing the Scottish Government’s guidance on RJ which was published in 2017 and the action plan which emanated from that. Other research studies have followed, including one with colleagues in Scotland on which Joanna writes in this special issue.

To come back full circle, it is worth mentioning that Joanna has also continued to publish on the subject of victims of crime throughout her career, and she has been involved in the International Review of Victimology since its first edition was published in the late 1980s, initially as Associate Editor and then, from 2002, as Executive Editor. Therefore, victimology is arguably a ‘golden thread’ that has run through her work, like the printed words in a stick of rock, even though her work has, in fact, always been diverse, and it has expanded in its diversity over the years, as we shall see below.

Desistance from crime

Joanna Shapland’s research interest in desistance from crime began through some conversations with Anthony Bottoms. At around the turn of the millennium, he had become interested in the mechanisms underpinning people’s compliance with laws and was keen to undertake empirical research on desistance–a topic that was then beginning to attract increased attention internationally (see e.g. Sampson and Laub, 2001). Such a research study would need to be conducted in a largish city, so his thoughts turned naturally to Sheffield, which he knew well, having worked at Sheffield University from 1968 to 1984. He therefore began some exploratory discussions with Joanna, and in due course this led to their joint leadership of the Sheffield Desistance Study (SDS), the fieldwork for which took place in 2003–2007.

Overviews of the main results from the SDS fieldwork have been published elsewhere (Bottoms and Shapland, 2011, 2016), but here we want to highlight two articles for which Joanna was the leading or sole author. The first is an early article on the social values of the SDS sample (Shapland and Bottoms, 2011), and the second article reports Joanna’s follow-up of the official reconvictions of the sample in the ten years after the end of the SDS fieldwork (2007–2017) (Shapland, 2022).

As background, it is necessary to provide some basic information about the SDS. This was a prospective longitudinal study that was deliberately focused on men born in certain consecutive years (1982–1984), so that sample members would be approximately at the peak of the well-known ‘age-crime curve’ at the beginning of the fieldwork (Bersani and Doherty, 2018: 313). The final sample consisted of 113 men, initially aged 19–22, of whom four-fifths self-identified as White British. The aim was to interview each individual four times, at intervals of 9–12 months, and the study achieved a good retention rate – 78% of sample members completed the fourth interview.

For practical reasons, all sample members needed to be either in prison or under supervision by the probation service at the time of the first interview. However, it proved to be much easier to secure consent from those in prison, so the sample was much more recidivistic than had originally been anticipated. The mean number of standard list offences for which they had been convicted or cautioned before the first interview was as high as 17.6. Unfortunately, the men also had poor schooling and employment records: 93% had been excluded from school at some point, 86% had left school with no qualifications and in 12 months at liberty before the first interview, 76% had not held any regular job (58% had no employment of any kind and 18% had cash-in-hand jobs only). This was, therefore, a group of men with few positive features on their CVs.

The ‘values’ article

Given the main characteristics of the SDS sample, the ‘values’ article perhaps reports some unexpected findings. In conclusion, the article found that ‘the Sheffield data strongly support Matza’s (1964) thesis that offenders are not strongly committed to delinquent norms’ (Shapland and Bottoms, 2011: 270); indeed, sample members held some ‘surprisingly conformist values, for example, with regard to future aspirations . . .. and to the importance of staying within legal boundaries’ (p. 256).

The data on future aspirations, collected during the first interview, are particularly interesting. Participants were asked open-ended questions, with no prompts: ‘You have told me what kind of person you see yourself as; what kind of person would you like to become, say in three years’ time?’. The principal answers were classified as follows (p. 262):

• Going straight/ being drug- and alcohol- free (40%);

• Living a normal/regular life (32%);

• Being successful (27%);

• Be a good person/ be responsible (25%);

• Be a family man (21%).

Collectively, these answers spell out a dominant and rather straightforward wish to be living a ‘normal, regular life’ in the future. Thus, as other data also confirmed, most sample members wished to desist from offending, although some qualified this by adding ‘I’m not sure whether I can’ (pp. 262–263).

This uncertainty was often justified because, during the 3–4 years of the SDS fieldwork, 80% of the men were reconvicted, although with a declining frequency. The values article therefore needed to confront the question why they had continued to offend despite their ‘strongly conventional social aspirations’ (p. 270).

Matza’s (1964) earlier answer to a similar question (relating to adolescents rather than to young adult males) was based on the neutralisation (or justification) of the crimes committed, but this explanation was not replicated for the Sheffield sample (pp. 270–271). Instead, the explanation centred on the implications of what became the key conclusion of the Sheffield study, namely that, for recidivist offenders, ‘desistance is the process of learning to live a non-criminal life when one has been leading a largely criminal life’ (Bottoms and Shapland, 2016: 109).

When thinking about such a process, both the men themselves and their social circumstances need to be considered. The men’s ultimate values were conventional, as seen especially in the ‘aspirations’ data, but they had grown used to committing offences, so crime was clearly not a ‘no go area’ for them. Moreover, the task they had set themselves–in essence, adopting a new way of everyday life with different routines–was not straightforward. As the ‘values’ article put it: ‘wishing to desist is one thing, actually getting there and doing it is another. . . in moments of tension, it is easy to revert to previous patterns of behaviour’ (pp. 271, 272).

In addition, the circumstances in which the men were attempting to desist were not at all easy because they typically had a longish criminal record (to which other people often react negatively), plus a lack of qualifications and a poor work record. This mixture of ‘their own lack of human and social capital’ and ‘societal structures which tend not to be . . . integrative’ therefore created an ‘obstacle-strewn path’ (p. 277) for those making serious attempts to desist, as is illustrated in some published SDS case studies (Bottoms and Lanskey, 2023). Looked at in this way, it is not so surprising that the SDS data could and did reveal both strong aspirations to lead a ‘normal, regular life’ and continued offending.

The 10-year follow-up

The ‘headline’ results from Joanna’s 10-year follow-up study (from the end of the SDS fieldwork in August 2007 to August 2017) are rather depressing. Two of the men in the original sample had died, but of the remaining 111, all but six (94.6 %) were further convicted during this decade (Shapland, 2022: 277). This was actually a higher reconviction rate than the 80% rate during the original fieldwork (see above).

But further analyses revealed a more complex picture–and one that is broadly consistent with the findings of the ‘values’ study. Two findings were particularly important. The first concerned the percentage of sample convicted at least once during each year: here, the conviction rate declined steadily from 48% in the first 2 years of the follow-up (2007–2009) to 22% in the last 2 years (2015–2017) (Figure 2, p. 278). Second, following Donald West’s (1963) finding that the criminal careers of habitual offenders can often include apparently crime-free gaps, Joanna uncovered some very significant gaps in the careers of the SDS sample. Specifically, 85% had at least a 2-year conviction-free period, 68% had at least a 3-year gap and 53% (more than half the sample) had at least a 4-year gap (p. 282). West (1963) found that conviction-free gaps often occurred when the man in question was in a supportive social situation, and that finding has been replicated in SDS case studies (Bottoms and Lanskey, 2023).

Towards the end of the ‘follow-up’ article, Joanna summarised some of the results as follows:

[T]here were decreases in the frequency of offending over the ten-year period [and] some major crime-free gaps . . .. Desistance seemed to be gradually decreasing in frequency, so that even persistent offenders could desist, but it was not usually a sudden effect or the result of turning points posed by the external environment (Shapland, 2022: 284).

‘Turning points’ are a staple of the wider desistance literature, so Joanna here is suggesting that offenders like those in the SDS, with substantial criminal records, are perhaps treading a different, longer, more gradual and very ‘hard’ path to desistance (p. 285). Reflecting further on the relationship between the ‘values’ article and the 10-year follow-up, it seems important to add that, despite the men’s many subsequent failures, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their aspirations for a normal life expressed back in the first interview. Policy-wise, this leads to a reflection on whether there might be, in future, ways of alleviating what the ‘values’ article called the ‘obstacle-strewn path’ to desistance for such men, created by ‘their own lack of human and social capital’ and by ‘societal structures which tend not to be . . . integrative’ (Shapland and Bottoms, 2011: 277).

Police scholarship: A successful ‘side interest’?

Though Joanna’s police scholarship has been an avocation relative to her contributions to victimology, RJ and desistance research, it has been a successful one. She has grappled with questions and topics which have set the terms of the debate, often thinking about the issues in comparative ways. Here, we focus on four main strands of Joanna’s police scholarship: the police function, plural policing, police-academic partnerships and restorative policing.

First, some of Joanna’s research has grappled with critical questions at the heart of police scholarship about what it is that the police do or perhaps should do. Such matters have continually preoccupied police scholars from the 1960s to the present, including most recently in the Police Foundation’s (2022) Strategic Review of Policing (Police Foundation, 2022). One of Joanna’s earliest contributions to police scholarship of this kind was a journal article in a special issue of the British Journal of Criminology in 1987 on the question of ‘why police?’. This co-authored journal article with Jon Vagg drew on one of Joanna’s most cited policing publications, Policing by the Public, which was first published in 1988 and republished in 2023 (see Shapland and Vagg, 2023 (1988)).

In their special issue publication, Shapland and Vagg (1987) consider the relative roles of the police and the public in processes of social control. Their central claim was that members of the public routinely engage in policing, for example, when they engaged in ‘watching and noticing’ in their local neighbourhoods (p. 56), with some also intervening when anything suspicious arose. Moreover, they argued that these informal actions complemented, supported and extended the work of the police, whose main roles, by contrast, were to deal with ‘real crime’, that is, serious crime and intractable nuisance crimes, to collate information about crime and to provide a visible reassuring presence and symbol of order and normality. This piece therefore contributed to what have since become standard narratives about the important distinction between the police and policing (Bowling et al., 2019). As Shapland and Vagg (1987) note, policing is not just carried out by the police but by a range of other actors and organisations, including members of the public.

Shapland and Vagg (1987) also noted the mundane and minor nature of police work. Across the different sites in their research, the public were found to mostly worry about low-level criminal damage (e.g. to cars), problems with parking, noise, young people hanging about and littering. Their study is, therefore, part of the canon of work that has challenged the dominant view of the police as ‘crime fighters’, that is, helping to reduce and control crime. In reality, their role is broad and varied, involving ‘potential crime’ more so than actual crime (Shapland and Vagg, 2023 [1988]). They have what Bowling et al. (2019: 102) describe as an ‘omnibus’ role. Shapland and Vagg (1987), therefore, helped consolidate these debates about the wide-ranging omnibus role of the police, which have since become commonplace.

As the preceding discussion illustrates, Joanna’s observation of police functions has arisen, in part, from an interest in the role of actors, other than the police, in policing. Her early work focused on the role of the public in policing, but her subsequent work examined the role of police-sponsored auxiliaries and the private sector in policing, which is the second major strand of her police scholarship. Hofstra and Shapland (1997) examined the role of auxiliaries in the Netherlands. Increasing crime, concerns about reduced police foot patrol and reduced informal social control, prompted the introduction of these auxiliaries. The Stadswacht or city guard or city wardens engaged in patrol work but did not have powers of arrest, and the Politiesurveillant or police patroller was a new rank of police officers who were higher in status than city wardens but below the rank of police constables. They engaged in patrol but did not have police powers. These two sets of auxiliaries acted under the auspices of the police, not private security companies, making them a form of state-sponsored policing. Hofstra and Shapland (1997) concluded that these ‘new’ policing actors demonstrate the development of ‘a plurality of police-controlled agents . . . and that there is a need to start finessing and firming up our ideas of the important elements that describe and distinguish policing and different agents who seek to accomplish it . . .’ (p. 279).

This call to arms has since been taken up by many police scholars in England and Wales and internationally, including by Leloup (2024). The issues that Hofstra and Shapland (1997) raised are also still very much alive. O’Neill et al. (2022) have recently written about police auxiliaries in England and Wales, France and the Netherlands (O’Neill et al., 2022), of course citing Hofstra and Shapland (1997) (See also Van Steden (2017)). They note that, in the Netherlands, city wardens who lacked formal police powers, at the time of Hofstra and Shapland’s (1997) research, have given way to Municipal Law Enforcement Officers with powers to fine and to make arrests.

In the same period of the late 1990s, with Lode van Outrive, Joanna also edited a book in 1999 in French and English about policing and social control in the context of the public–private divide (Shapland and Van Outrive, 1999). This book charts the growth of private security, relative to the public police, in England and Wales, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. It also charts some of the challenges that arise from this growing plurality, including, with respect to overlap, conflict and role confusion; private sector bodies setting policing priorities without democratic control and public interest in mind; and the lack of regulation and licensing of private security in the UK relative to other European countries at the time.

In writing these publications, Joanna was at the forefront of emerging and important debates about who does policing, whether ‘the’ police, auxiliaries or the private sector. Through her research in this period and also through her earlier work on citizen involvement in policing she therefore contributed to the growing realisation of a potential shift to ‘a more complex, fragmented and differentiated patchwork of policing’ (Crawford, 2012: 147). As Jones and Newburn (2006) noted, ‘policing is now authorised and delivered by diverse networks of commercial bodies, voluntary and community groups, individual citizens, national and local governmental regulatory agencies, as well as the public police’ (p. 1).

Given Joanna’s interest in the partnering of the police with citizens, auxiliaries and the private sector, it is unsurprising that she has contributed to debates about other kinds of police partnerships, namely, partnerships between the police and academics, which is the third theme in her police scholarship. Her role in this respect has not only been scholarly but also practical, supporting and participating in police–academic partnerships (e.g. the Sheffield University Policing Research Group and the N8 Policing Research Partnerships), as well as writing about them.

Based on a review of the existing international literature, in which Joanna played a significant role, Bacon et al. (2021) not only note the benefits of police–academic partnerships but also their fragility and elusiveness, as a result of cultural differences, unreliable funding streams and difficulties in sustaining individual and institutional relationships across the professional divide. Therefore, any optimism about police-academic partnerships needs to be cautious and founded on strategies to help sustain them. These include having personnel in police organisations responsible for responding to requests for research; bringing together key individuals at regular intervals to exchange ideas; and committing to the implementation of initiatives that research and evaluation have shown to be beneficial. This publication therefore helped temper the largely enthusiastic embracing of police-academic partnerships in the existing literature.

The fourth major theme in Joanna’s policing research is restorative policing, in which police officers or police staff act as facilitators of RJ, such as during interactions on the street or during diversionary processes in the police station (Shapland, 2009; Shapland et al., 2017). Joanna’s work has therefore been critical in charting the formal embracing of RJ by the police, particularly Street RJ (Marder, 2017), from the late 2000s onwards, the role of frontline practitioners in this and the resulting challenges, as well as inspiring a new generation of researchers to continue to examine some of these issues (See Banwell-Moore, 2024).

These challenges have included the gaps between the processes and principles of RJ and police practices on the ground. For example, Shapland et al. (2017) found that street police-led RJ omitted ‘the features of restorative conferencing which are most closely associated with its observed effectiveness’ (p. 52). In some cases, there was little or no consultation with the victim or offender, meaning these parties were therefore precluded from engaging in dialogue or in providing input into decision-making. She has also helped to document why the gaps between the principles and practices of RJ arise in restorative policing. Shapland et al. (2017: 65) point to variations between forces with respect to the training they provide on RJ, and whether the police see RJ as part of their proper role and therefore use their discretion to deploy it. She has also shown how, even where RJ is established, this can be easily side-lined by austerity-led budgetary pressures and a reduced workforce (Shapland et al., 2017: 48–49).

Themes in the special issue

It is difficult to do justice to a career such as Joanna’s, as significant and varied as it has been in its contribution to both criminology and criminal justice research. However, by selecting authors and topics which align with Joanna’s varied interests, we hope that this special issue will be a fitting dedication to our much-admired and respected colleague. Contributors are professional associates or past students (or both) and all have enthusiastically agreed to contribute to this celebration of an outstanding professional career.

Contributors to the special issue have drawn on Joanna’s 40 years of research on desistance, RJ and policing in a range of ways. On the theme of desistance, Robin Gålnander and Stephen Farrall each shed light on the persistence of desistance, responding to Joanna’s call for a better understanding of recidivism and desistance in the light of a changing penal policy landscape (Shapland, 2022). In his article, drawing upon his research with 10 Swedish women with conviction histories, Gålnander queries what it means to desist, arguing for the importance of viewing ‘setbacks’ as a ‘temporary derailment’ (p. 29) of desistance rather than its total failure. Similarly, in his article, Stephen Farrall attends to what Joanna has referred to as the ‘short-termist’ tendency of criminologists and policymakers when it comes to their measurement of ‘what makes for desistance’ (p. 15). With a focus on the reconvictions of a sample of former probationers over a 25-year period, Farrall interrupts this trend by framing desistance as something that is, more often than not, subject to continual re-establishment over time. In doing so, Farrall also deals with the dearth of available theoretical and empirical work on ‘crime free gaps’ (Shapland, 2022) and their implications for the maintenance of desistance processes. In the final article on the topic of desistance, Laura Abrams expands on theories of desistance, with a particular emphasis on Joanna’s research, by exploring the role of agency in the desistance journeys of ‘youth lifers’ over several decades of incarceration.

In the next set of articles, Pieter Leloup considers, like Hofstra and Shapland (1997), the broader concept of policing rather than the police, as well as examining the role of the private sector therein, much in the same vein as Shapland and Van Outrive (1999). In other words, Leloup draws on the now ‘axiomatic’ view, to which Shapland contributed, that policing occurs beyond the realms of the public police. He examines the political influences on the introduction of private security, especially the manned guarding sector in Belgium from the 1990s onwards and on the formal state regulation of this private sector. In particular, using Goffman’s (1974) notion of framing, he argues that frames, linked to the functions of the private sector and how these could be harnessed to address broader state and societal concerns, were used to convince dissenters and to support the expansion of laws that brought into being and legitimised the existence of the private sector in policing roles.

Continuing with the theme of political framing, but this time of the police, rather than policing, Megan O’Neill and Jacques de Maillard turn our attention to the conundrum of why the reform of police stops ‘took off’ in Scotland but not in France, in spite of these stops receiving similar levels of attention in similarly ‘hot’ political climates. By focusing on this divisive police practice – owing to the over-representation of young people in Scotland and racial minorities in France – the authors pay homage to Shapland’s contributions to the field, in terms of her recognition of conflict in public and police priorities (Shapland and Vagg, 1987, 2023 (1988]). O’Neill and de Maillard argue that reform of police stops ‘from above’ by the police and political actors occurred in Scotland, not because of the focus on youthful as opposed to racial minorities (which might have suggested the opposite reform trajectory in each jurisdiction), but rather because Police Scotland was at an important historical juncture, which combined with an appetite for change among the new majority of Scottish National Party parliamentarians. By contrast, the police union’s opposition to change in France, combined with a lack of political will, for example. As such, they show that a ‘hot’ political climate will only result in reforms to police stops if other conditions are also met.

Our final pair of articles concern RJ. In the first of these, Rebecca Banwell-Moore tackles the disappointing reality of victims’ levels of participation in RJ in England and Wales. She argues that a ‘whole system’ approach to the implementation of RJ is the only way to ensure that victims receive the consequences they are entitled to. In advancing this argument, she not only draws inspiration from the implementation of RJ in other jurisdictions but also from domains beyond criminal justice (public health and education in particular), where ‘whole system approaches’ have been used to respond to contemporary problems including childhood obesity and educational exclusion. She also draws explicitly on the findings of a study of restorative policing by Shapland et al. (2020) which sought to identify good practice in ensuring the meaningful involvement of victims in RJ processes.

Finally, Joanna Shapland, Jamie Buchan, Steve Kirkwood and Estelle Zinsstag consider the role of risk and its mitigation in the context of RJ. Drawing on their research with experienced practitioners from across Europe, they argue that risk in RJ incorporates a distinct paradigm, which is more individualistic, strengths-based and co-produced than that which is dominant in criminal justice settings more broadly. The authors argue that the framing of risk in the context of RJ has emerged in line with its dominant values and suggest that such an approach has the potential to inform thinking about (and responses to) risk in the criminal justice system more generally. The final article is thus very much in keeping with the theme of the 2023 conference, namely, the ‘Shifting Logics of Criminal Justice’, both actual and potential.