Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book adopts a case study approach to analyse the development of community punishment in a selection of European jurisdictions. The case studies comprise a part purposive, part convenience sample, drawn from different parts of Europe. The approach has been developed not with a view to expose examples of sameness and difference in the field of community punishment and thus, ultimately, to contribute to theory building. In providing not just accounts of sameness and difference, but analyses of how and why things are as they are and how they came to be so, contributors and collection of case studies aim to push at the boundaries of existing explanations of penality and of penal change. The book addresses a real lacuna in comparative penology.