ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to suggest how the practice of community supervision might be informed by ways of thinking drawn from the various traditions which have flowed into the movement for restorative justice. It argues that ideas in social and political theory, notably those advanced by A. Giddens, can contribute to social work’s understanding of the meaning of ‘community’, and to its understanding of itself. The strategies which youth justice workers developed during the 1980s have had a few tenacious critics, notably John Pitts, but commentators have generally agreed that they made a major contribution to the ‘substantial decarceration’ of young offenders which took place during the decade. The chapter deals with the recovery of forgotten possibilities, memories of social work’s past which have been all but eradicated from practice today by managerial diktat and the rule-bound proceduralism of National Standards.
