ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, writing about working with offenders in a social work series may seem an awkward anomaly. In his address to the 1995 National Probation Conference, Michael Howard (then Home Secretary) refuted the idea that punishment in the community should be equated with social work with offenders. Qualitative approaches appeared the most congruent with the aims of the initial research. Such approaches are particularly suited to research which is exploratory and stresses the importance of context, setting and the subject's frame of reference. Qualitative data can be collected using a range of methodological techniques and presented to a audience through meaningful descriptions of how social life is accomplished. The problem of crime and strategies of crime increasingly receive political, media and public attention. This growing interest is also reflected in the growth of Criminology as an academic discipline which has resulted in a proliferation of research on crime, criminals, victims and criminal justice.
