ABSTRACT
As was shown in Chapter 1, the Probation Service began to explore the implications of a commitment to anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practice in the last quarter of the twentieth century. What might be regarded as the corollary of work with minority ethnic people, however — work with the perpetrators of racially motivated offending — has developed slowly and unevenly. There is even evidence that some probation staff have tended to avoid contact with racist offenders. In this chapter, possible reasons for such avoidance are explored, as are the ideas of probation staff who have sought to confront rather than evade the issue. The chapter draws on research on the perpetrators of racist violence who were contacted through the Probation Service in Greater Manchester (Ray et al. 2002, 2003a, 2003b), and discusses recent attempts to develop resources intended to help practitioners working with this category of offenders.
