Reducing Reoffending

by Fergus McNeill, Bill Whyte

Reducing Reoffending provides a critical overview of social work and community justice in Scotland, taking full account of recent developments. The book is divided into three comprehensive sections. Part one of the book provides a critical analysis of the challenge of reducing reoffending in Scotland and locates this challenge within its historical context. Part one also reviews the available evidence about when, how and why people stop offending; about desistance from crime. This analysis exposes not only the complexities of desistance processes, but also the many difficulties that offenders face in making the related transition. Part two of the book provides an account of the legal contexts of criminal justice social work services in Scotland analysing both the role that social work plays in the sentencing process and its role in supervising offenders in the community. The final part the book addresses questions of how the practice of supervision might be best developed so as to support desistance and reduce reoffending, though the books final conclusion is that reducing reoffending requires a much broader commitment to promoting and realising justice in the community.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 10, 2013

About the author

Fergus McNeill has been creating computer games since the early eighties, when he started writing interactive fiction titles. Over the following years he became well-known in the industry, both for his own content, and his adaptations of other authors’ material, including working with Terry Pratchett to create the first Discworld game.
Moving from interactive fiction to interactive movie adaptations, Fergus set up and managed the development studio for SCi (now Eidos) where he co-wrote and directed voiceover scripts for a number of games including the award-winning Kingdom O’ Magic.
Now CEO at an iPhone game development studio, Fergus lives in Hampshire. He is 43, married, with a teenage son. Eye Contact is his debut novel, and the first of a three-book series.