Making ‘What Works’ work: challenges in the delivery of community penalties

Context is often crucial. As the Probation Service moves to apply ‘What Works’ in offender rehabilitation, what is crucial about the context? The ‘community’ setting of ‘community’ penalties presents both special challenges and rich opportunities. In some of these Cropwood papers there are important insights, which could help the Probation Service to overcome the challenges and exploit the potential of its community setting. ¹