Community Sentences and their Outcomes in Jersey: the fourth report

This report is the fourth in a continuing series which aims to provide a regularly updated evaluation of the outcomes of the Jersey Probation and After-Care Service’s work and its contribution to community safety, crime reduction and the rehabilitation of offenders. The work of probation services is notoriously difficult to measure and evaluate. There are hundreds of probation services in the world: the largest survey of probation work in Europe alone covers 32 countries (Van Kalmthout and Durnescu 2008) but very few of them are able to document the outcomes of their work or to specify what difference they make to offenders. The Jersey service is one that can, largely thanks to the conscientiousness of its staff and managers and the quality of data that they provide. As a result, Jersey’s probation work has attracted widespread attention and has contributed to the establishment of an international research network studying probation practice (CREDOS, the Collaboration of Researchers for the Development of Effective Offender Supervision). Research related to Jersey’s probation work has been discussed in many international criminological conferences, and the research collaboration between Swansea University and the Jersey Probation and After-Care Service has also provided the basis for the Jersey Crime and Society Project, a series of linked research projects which now also include a study of the Parish Hall Enquiry system (Miles 2004; Miles and Raynor 2005, 2014) and a review of Youth Justice (Evans et al. 2010).