The ‘New Careers’ Experiment in Rehabilitating Offenders: Last Messages from a Fading Star

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper traces the history, and assesses the impact, of an innovatory project in which current and ex-offenders were provided with the opportunity to gain practical social work experience and training for long-term rehabilitative purposes. Based on earlier American schemes in which members of disadvantaged or discriminated against groups received training and support for non-professional careers in human services agencies, the project can claim a measure of success. But the evidence also suggests that a demonstrated potential for individual change is not always matched by agency interests and ideologies. The findings are considered in relation to the philosophy and provisions associated with the 1991 Criminal Justice Act. The Bristol New Careers Project came into existence in April 1973 following the efforts of NACRO and its supporters and with funding provided by the Home Office. It offered what was then a radical dis posal for young adult male offenders at serious risk of receiving a borstal sentence: probation supervision and hostel residency coupled with a programme of training in practical social work. This was, in effect, an early excursion into the realms of empowerment, the aim being to build marketable skills on top of relevant life experiences, and thereby help talented but disadvantaged young offenders move from being a focus of intervention to being active practitioners in the provision of social and community services. Although novel in the UK, the ideas on which the Project was based had originated in America during the 1960s. In an effort to combat the effects of growing poverty the US federal government had at that time