Prevention of Reoffending

The need to prevent convicted prisoners and other offenders from reoffending constitutes a major challenge for both criminal justice and penitentiary systems. Reoffending rates are considerable - in many instances they are even high - while the issue is tremendously complicated. Rehabilitation (sometimes described as resocialisation, reintegration or treatment) is an important tool to prevent reoffending, but has clearly become less self-evident in many jurisdictions in recent decades. This volume therefore first of all focuses on the value of restoring offenders to a useful life from the perspective of prisoners, their family, society, the tax-payer, prison staff and administration and victims, as well as from a criminological viewpoint. Notwithstanding these actual values of rehabilitation measures, their application alone may not be sufficient to prevent someone from reoffending. This particularly applies to high risk offenders, i.e. those who pose a substantial risk of further serious offending, such as sex offenders, terrorists, and members of organized criminal groups. This volume therefore also considers measures to deal with high risk offenders during and after their sentence, and the arguments for and against their use. La necessite d'empecher les detenus condamnes et autres delinquants de repasser a l'acte est le defi de taille que la justice criminelle et les systemes penitentiaires se doivent de relever. Les taux de recidive sont considerables (il n'est pas rare qu'ils soient meme eleves) et le probleme est extremement complexe. La rehabilitation (parfois decrite comme resocialisation, reinsertion ou encore traitement) est un outil important pour prevenir la recidive, bien qu'au cours des dernieres decennies, son importance se soit clairement amoindrie dans bon nombre de juridictions. Aussi, le present ouvrage se concentrera avant tout sur la valeur de la reintegration des delinquants dans une vie utile, tant du point de vue des detenus, de leur famille, de la societe, du contribuable, du personnel et de l'administration penitentiaires et des victimes, que d'un point de vue criminologique. Bien que la valeur des mesures de reinsertion soit bien reelle, leur seule application peut s'averer insuffisante pour prevenir la recidive. C'est particulierement vrai dans le cas des delinquants a haut risque, c'est-a-dire ceux qui presentent un risque important de nouveau delit grave, tels que les delinquants sexuels, les terroristes et les membres de groupes criminels organises. Cet ouvrage...