These chapters move on to consider the values embedded in criminal justice practices and in the organisational or political structures that help shape them. The attempt is not to be exhaustive, but to provide comment on major areas of criminal justice and penal policy. The authors of the first five chapters highlight tensions and barriers, but also look for possibilities and potential to develop policy and practice so that values and principles are more transparent and more open to healthy and constructive challenge. The final two consider issues of justice and inherent values more broadly, in the one case, exploring the divide between public and private actors and interests and, in the other, questioning the nature of state reparation and its actual, rather than its claimed, impacts.

In Chapter Nine, Fergus McNeill and Stephen Farrall consider the role of probation officers – and of helping relationships more generally – in assisting individuals to desist from crime. The research literature talks about desistance as a journey, a process of change; individuals do not ‘become good’ overnight but typically practise new ways of being and relating to others over time. The authors argue that where probation officers and others espouse positive virtues and values, this can engender hope and belief in the capacity to change. They ask what might be needed in terms of practitioner qualities and characteristics and in terms of organisational and systemic change to transform penal practice.

In Chapter Ten, Jean Henderson also confronts questions about the probation service's culture and priorities, and the importance of holding strong professional values in the current penal climate, dominated by concerns about risk and public protection. She explores the challenge for new and learning practitioners in this environment and considers the impact of the structural and other changes ahead which mean that ‘probation services’ will not be the sole preserve of the probation service. Can professional values help guard against fragmentation and inconsistencies as more organisations enter the offender management marketplace?

Developing the theme of professional education, Craig Paterson and Ed Pollock use Chapter Eleven to reflect upon the values of community policing and why the police service in the UK, compared to our European neighbours, has experienced resistance to incorporating these values into street-level policing.