ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the professional context, especially the end-of-life care setting, where the question will be whether professional attitudes differ with respect to the needs of the offender. The degree of social distance is, however, critical in the shaping of compassion. The accounts of community palliative care nurses regarding experiences with offenders in the community or in the context of hospitals or hospices provide a useful insight about the formation of compassionate attitudes towards the offender. M. Lipsky argues that street-level bureaucracy embraces a professional contradiction: the conflict between a service 'model of human interaction, caring, and responsibility' and a bureaucratic 'model of detachment and equal treatment under conditions of resource limitations and constraints'. The professional dilemma between sympathy or the Hobbesian adiaphorisation is primarily shaped by the lenses of the work setting and the needs of the professional to preserve an alienated, namely precise, work scope.
