ABSTRACT
This chapter explores hostel workers' accounts of risk, danger and vulnerability, and considers their attempts to assess and manage risk as individuals and as a team. The assessment and management of risk is high on the agenda of the Probation Service in the late 1990s and penal policy generally. In the wake of public anxiety abut the risk of 'dangerous' offenders and the inability of the criminal justice system to deal adequately with those who commit crime, the government has responded through the publication of policy documents including Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public and Protecting the Public - The Government's Strategy on Crime in England and Wales, and legislation such as the Criminal Justice. Referrals to approved hostels are usually made by probation officers or bail information staff, sometimes working in prisons, although at Victoria House a member of staff visited a women's prison on a weekly basis to allow women prisoners the opportunity to self-refer.
