The purpose of practice frameworks: Commentaries of the special issue on practice frameworks in correctional psychology

Abstract

In this special issue, invited authors with expertise in correctional and forensic psychology (and related disciplines) were offered an opportunity to reflect on the idea of practice frameworks given their own research interests, expertise and practice experiences. In this article we provide a commentary on these contributions with the view of further developing the idea of ‘practice frameworks’ in a way which can better help guide theoretical work, empirical research, and practice in the correctional domain. We begin by reflecting on the nature of practice frameworks and why we think that they are important. We then consider each of the three levels that comprise practice frameworks and how these elements are realized in the diverse practice frameworks considered by the contributors to this special issue. We conclude with some thoughts about some important future directions for the idea of practice frameworks.