‘Shifting logics in criminal justice’: Introduction to the special issue

From victims to restorative justice: An evolutionary story

It has been more than twenty years since Joanna Shapland embarked on a major research project that would bring her to the forefront of RJ research internationally (see Shapland et al., 2011). It is in this field that her influence has arguably been the greatest; although, as this introduction will illustrate, this is a debatable point. But either way, it is important to recognise that in coming to focus on RJ at the turn of the century, Joanna was building on a very significant body of work on victims of crime as important but often neglected stakeholders in the criminal justice process. Thus, her contributions in the realm of RJ were built on the very firm foundation of an extant body of research that dates back to the 1980s.

Desistance from crime

Joanna Shapland’s research interest in desistance from crime began through some conversations with Anthony Bottoms. At around the turn of the millennium, he had become interested in the mechanisms underpinning people’s compliance with laws and was keen to undertake empirical research on desistance–a topic that was then beginning to attract increased attention internationally (see e.g. Sampson and Laub, 2001). Such a research study would need to be conducted in a largish city, so his thoughts turned naturally to Sheffield, which he knew well, having worked at Sheffield University from 1968 to 1984. He therefore began some exploratory discussions with Joanna, and in due course this led to their joint leadership of the Sheffield Desistance Study (SDS), the fieldwork for which took place in 2003–2007.

Overviews of the main results from the SDS fieldwork have been published elsewhere (Bottoms and Shapland, 2011, 2016), but here we want to highlight two articles for which Joanna was the leading or sole author. The first is an early article on the social values of the SDS sample (Shapland and Bottoms, 2011), and the second article reports Joanna’s follow-up of the official reconvictions of the sample in the ten years after the end of the SDS fieldwork (2007–2017) (Shapland, 2022).

As background, it is necessary to provide some basic information about the SDS. This was a prospective longitudinal study that was deliberately focused on men born in certain consecutive years (1982–1984), so that sample members would be approximately at the peak of the well-known ‘age-crime curve’ at the beginning of the fieldwork (Bersani and Doherty, 2018: 313). The final sample consisted of 113 men, initially aged 19–22, of whom four-fifths self-identified as White British. The aim was to interview each individual four times, at intervals of 9–12 months, and the study achieved a good retention rate – 78% of sample members completed the fourth interview.

For practical reasons, all sample members needed to be either in prison or under supervision by the probation service at the time of the first interview. However, it proved to be much easier to secure consent from those in prison, so the sample was much more recidivistic than had originally been anticipated. The mean number of standard list offences for which they had been convicted or cautioned before the first interview was as high as 17.6. Unfortunately, the men also had poor schooling and employment records: 93% had been excluded from school at some point, 86% had left school with no qualifications and in 12 months at liberty before the first interview, 76% had not held any regular job (58% had no employment of any kind and 18% had cash-in-hand jobs only). This was, therefore, a group of men with few positive features on their CVs.

Police scholarship: A successful ‘side interest’?

Though Joanna’s police scholarship has been an avocation relative to her contributions to victimology, RJ and desistance research, it has been a successful one. She has grappled with questions and topics which have set the terms of the debate, often thinking about the issues in comparative ways. Here, we focus on four main strands of Joanna’s police scholarship: the police function, plural policing, police-academic partnerships and restorative policing.

First, some of Joanna’s research has grappled with critical questions at the heart of police scholarship about what it is that the police do or perhaps should do. Such matters have continually preoccupied police scholars from the 1960s to the present, including most recently in the Police Foundation’s (2022) Strategic Review of Policing (Police Foundation, 2022). One of Joanna’s earliest contributions to police scholarship of this kind was a journal article in a special issue of the British Journal of Criminology in 1987 on the question of ‘why police?’. This co-authored journal article with Jon Vagg drew on one of Joanna’s most cited policing publications, Policing by the Public, which was first published in 1988 and republished in 2023 (see Shapland and Vagg, 2023 (1988)).

In their special issue publication, Shapland and Vagg (1987) consider the relative roles of the police and the public in processes of social control. Their central claim was that members of the public routinely engage in policing, for example, when they engaged in ‘watching and noticing’ in their local neighbourhoods (p. 56), with some also intervening when anything suspicious arose. Moreover, they argued that these informal actions complemented, supported and extended the work of the police, whose main roles, by contrast, were to deal with ‘real crime’, that is, serious crime and intractable nuisance crimes, to collate information about crime and to provide a visible reassuring presence and symbol of order and normality. This piece therefore contributed to what have since become standard narratives about the important distinction between the police and policing (Bowling et al., 2019). As Shapland and Vagg (1987) note, policing is not just carried out by the police but by a range of other actors and organisations, including members of the public.

Shapland and Vagg (1987) also noted the mundane and minor nature of police work. Across the different sites in their research, the public were found to mostly worry about low-level criminal damage (e.g. to cars), problems with parking, noise, young people hanging about and littering. Their study is, therefore, part of the canon of work that has challenged the dominant view of the police as ‘crime fighters’, that is, helping to reduce and control crime. In reality, their role is broad and varied, involving ‘potential crime’ more so than actual crime (Shapland and Vagg, 2023 [1988]). They have what Bowling et al. (2019: 102) describe as an ‘omnibus’ role. Shapland and Vagg (1987), therefore, helped consolidate these debates about the wide-ranging omnibus role of the police, which have since become commonplace.

As the preceding discussion illustrates, Joanna’s observation of police functions has arisen, in part, from an interest in the role of actors, other than the police, in policing. Her early work focused on the role of the public in policing, but her subsequent work examined the role of police-sponsored auxiliaries and the private sector in policing, which is the second major strand of her police scholarship. Hofstra and Shapland (1997) examined the role of auxiliaries in the Netherlands. Increasing crime, concerns about reduced police foot patrol and reduced informal social control, prompted the introduction of these auxiliaries. The Stadswacht or city guard or city wardens engaged in patrol work but did not have powers of arrest, and the Politiesurveillant or police patroller was a new rank of police officers who were higher in status than city wardens but below the rank of police constables. They engaged in patrol but did not have police powers. These two sets of auxiliaries acted under the auspices of the police, not private security companies, making them a form of state-sponsored policing. Hofstra and Shapland (1997) concluded that these ‘new’ policing actors demonstrate the development of ‘a plurality of police-controlled agents . . . and that there is a need to start finessing and firming up our ideas of the important elements that describe and distinguish policing and different agents who seek to accomplish it . . .’ (p. 279).

This call to arms has since been taken up by many police scholars in England and Wales and internationally, including by Leloup (2024). The issues that Hofstra and Shapland (1997) raised are also still very much alive. O’Neill et al. (2022) have recently written about police auxiliaries in England and Wales, France and the Netherlands (O’Neill et al., 2022), of course citing Hofstra and Shapland (1997) (See also Van Steden (2017)). They note that, in the Netherlands, city wardens who lacked formal police powers, at the time of Hofstra and Shapland’s (1997) research, have given way to Municipal Law Enforcement Officers with powers to fine and to make arrests.

In the same period of the late 1990s, with Lode van Outrive, Joanna also edited a book in 1999 in French and English about policing and social control in the context of the public–private divide (Shapland and Van Outrive, 1999). This book charts the growth of private security, relative to the public police, in England and Wales, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. It also charts some of the challenges that arise from this growing plurality, including, with respect to overlap, conflict and role confusion; private sector bodies setting policing priorities without democratic control and public interest in mind; and the lack of regulation and licensing of private security in the UK relative to other European countries at the time.

In writing these publications, Joanna was at the forefront of emerging and important debates about who does policing, whether ‘the’ police, auxiliaries or the private sector. Through her research in this period and also through her earlier work on citizen involvement in policing she therefore contributed to the growing realisation of a potential shift to ‘a more complex, fragmented and differentiated patchwork of policing’ (Crawford, 2012: 147). As Jones and Newburn (2006) noted, ‘policing is now authorised and delivered by diverse networks of commercial bodies, voluntary and community groups, individual citizens, national and local governmental regulatory agencies, as well as the public police’ (p. 1).

Given Joanna’s interest in the partnering of the police with citizens, auxiliaries and the private sector, it is unsurprising that she has contributed to debates about other kinds of police partnerships, namely, partnerships between the police and academics, which is the third theme in her police scholarship. Her role in this respect has not only been scholarly but also practical, supporting and participating in police–academic partnerships (e.g. the Sheffield University Policing Research Group and the N8 Policing Research Partnerships), as well as writing about them.

Based on a review of the existing international literature, in which Joanna played a significant role, Bacon et al. (2021) not only note the benefits of police–academic partnerships but also their fragility and elusiveness, as a result of cultural differences, unreliable funding streams and difficulties in sustaining individual and institutional relationships across the professional divide. Therefore, any optimism about police-academic partnerships needs to be cautious and founded on strategies to help sustain them. These include having personnel in police organisations responsible for responding to requests for research; bringing together key individuals at regular intervals to exchange ideas; and committing to the implementation of initiatives that research and evaluation have shown to be beneficial. This publication therefore helped temper the largely enthusiastic embracing of police-academic partnerships in the existing literature.

The fourth major theme in Joanna’s policing research is restorative policing, in which police officers or police staff act as facilitators of RJ, such as during interactions on the street or during diversionary processes in the police station (Shapland, 2009; Shapland et al., 2017). Joanna’s work has therefore been critical in charting the formal embracing of RJ by the police, particularly Street RJ (Marder, 2017), from the late 2000s onwards, the role of frontline practitioners in this and the resulting challenges, as well as inspiring a new generation of researchers to continue to examine some of these issues (See Banwell-Moore, 2024).

These challenges have included the gaps between the processes and principles of RJ and police practices on the ground. For example, Shapland et al. (2017) found that street police-led RJ omitted ‘the features of restorative conferencing which are most closely associated with its observed effectiveness’ (p. 52). In some cases, there was little or no consultation with the victim or offender, meaning these parties were therefore precluded from engaging in dialogue or in providing input into decision-making. She has also helped to document why the gaps between the principles and practices of RJ arise in restorative policing. Shapland et al. (2017: 65) point to variations between forces with respect to the training they provide on RJ, and whether the police see RJ as part of their proper role and therefore use their discretion to deploy it. She has also shown how, even where RJ is established, this can be easily side-lined by austerity-led budgetary pressures and a reduced workforce (Shapland et al., 2017: 48–49).

Themes in the special issue

It is difficult to do justice to a career such as Joanna’s, as significant and varied as it has been in its contribution to both criminology and criminal justice research. However, by selecting authors and topics which align with Joanna’s varied interests, we hope that this special issue will be a fitting dedication to our much-admired and respected colleague. Contributors are professional associates or past students (or both) and all have enthusiastically agreed to contribute to this celebration of an outstanding professional career.

Contributors to the special issue have drawn on Joanna’s 40 years of research on desistance, RJ and policing in a range of ways. On the theme of desistance, Robin Gålnander and Stephen Farrall each shed light on the persistence of desistance, responding to Joanna’s call for a better understanding of recidivism and desistance in the light of a changing penal policy landscape (Shapland, 2022). In his article, drawing upon his research with 10 Swedish women with conviction histories, Gålnander queries what it means to desist, arguing for the importance of viewing ‘setbacks’ as a ‘temporary derailment’ (p. 29) of desistance rather than its total failure. Similarly, in his article, Stephen Farrall attends to what Joanna has referred to as the ‘short-termist’ tendency of criminologists and policymakers when it comes to their measurement of ‘what makes for desistance’ (p. 15). With a focus on the reconvictions of a sample of former probationers over a 25-year period, Farrall interrupts this trend by framing desistance as something that is, more often than not, subject to continual re-establishment over time. In doing so, Farrall also deals with the dearth of available theoretical and empirical work on ‘crime free gaps’ (Shapland, 2022) and their implications for the maintenance of desistance processes. In the final article on the topic of desistance, Laura Abrams expands on theories of desistance, with a particular emphasis on Joanna’s research, by exploring the role of agency in the desistance journeys of ‘youth lifers’ over several decades of incarceration.

In the next set of articles, Pieter Leloup considers, like Hofstra and Shapland (1997), the broader concept of policing rather than the police, as well as examining the role of the private sector therein, much in the same vein as Shapland and Van Outrive (1999). In other words, Leloup draws on the now ‘axiomatic’ view, to which Shapland contributed, that policing occurs beyond the realms of the public police. He examines the political influences on the introduction of private security, especially the manned guarding sector in Belgium from the 1990s onwards and on the formal state regulation of this private sector. In particular, using Goffman’s (1974) notion of framing, he argues that frames, linked to the functions of the private sector and how these could be harnessed to address broader state and societal concerns, were used to convince dissenters and to support the expansion of laws that brought into being and legitimised the existence of the private sector in policing roles.

Continuing with the theme of political framing, but this time of the police, rather than policing, Megan O’Neill and Jacques de Maillard turn our attention to the conundrum of why the reform of police stops ‘took off’ in Scotland but not in France, in spite of these stops receiving similar levels of attention in similarly ‘hot’ political climates. By focusing on this divisive police practice – owing to the over-representation of young people in Scotland and racial minorities in France – the authors pay homage to Shapland’s contributions to the field, in terms of her recognition of conflict in public and police priorities (Shapland and Vagg, 1987, 2023 (1988]). O’Neill and de Maillard argue that reform of police stops ‘from above’ by the police and political actors occurred in Scotland, not because of the focus on youthful as opposed to racial minorities (which might have suggested the opposite reform trajectory in each jurisdiction), but rather because Police Scotland was at an important historical juncture, which combined with an appetite for change among the new majority of Scottish National Party parliamentarians. By contrast, the police union’s opposition to change in France, combined with a lack of political will, for example. As such, they show that a ‘hot’ political climate will only result in reforms to police stops if other conditions are also met.

Our final pair of articles concern RJ. In the first of these, Rebecca Banwell-Moore tackles the disappointing reality of victims’ levels of participation in RJ in England and Wales. She argues that a ‘whole system’ approach to the implementation of RJ is the only way to ensure that victims receive the consequences they are entitled to. In advancing this argument, she not only draws inspiration from the implementation of RJ in other jurisdictions but also from domains beyond criminal justice (public health and education in particular), where ‘whole system approaches’ have been used to respond to contemporary problems including childhood obesity and educational exclusion. She also draws explicitly on the findings of a study of restorative policing by Shapland et al. (2020) which sought to identify good practice in ensuring the meaningful involvement of victims in RJ processes.

Finally, Joanna Shapland, Jamie Buchan, Steve Kirkwood and Estelle Zinsstag consider the role of risk and its mitigation in the context of RJ. Drawing on their research with experienced practitioners from across Europe, they argue that risk in RJ incorporates a distinct paradigm, which is more individualistic, strengths-based and co-produced than that which is dominant in criminal justice settings more broadly. The authors argue that the framing of risk in the context of RJ has emerged in line with its dominant values and suggest that such an approach has the potential to inform thinking about (and responses to) risk in the criminal justice system more generally. The final article is thus very much in keeping with the theme of the 2023 conference, namely, the ‘Shifting Logics of Criminal Justice’, both actual and potential.