This article seeks to trace the development of probation services in the Russian Federation in recent years. It illustrates those developments by reference to two contrasting projects involving collaboration between Russian and European Probation Services. The first is a pilot training project for probation officers organized by a Human Rights NGO in Russia, whilst the second is an EU led policy and practice initiative with the Russian Ministry of Justice to strengthen alternative sanctions and to introduce electronic monitoring on a pilot basis.

French prison based probation services merged with their community based counterparts in 1999. This reform was aimed at placing the service under the wing of prison services and to reduce the influence of the judiciary. Despite still adhering to their rehabilitative goals and to a one-to-one pre-Martinson type of supervision, French probation services have long abandoned social work. Their exceptionally heavy caseload, a prevailing prison thinking, their newly acquired judicial work and managerialism explain this evolution. French probation services present an odd mix of old traits, insularism, and denial of recent scientific progress, with penal transferring, modern management and frenetic law reforming. All this has generated an identity crisis along with work-related stress.

The use of probation in Japan is similar in some respects to probation in England and Wales (E&W) and unrecognizable in others. This article provides an outline of the structure and operation of probation in Japan and draws comparisons and contrasts with probation in England and Wales. It is intended to provide an overview for those who know little about Japanese criminal justice in general and about Japanese probation in particular. The focus in on accessible English language sources that will enable readers to follow up their interest and deepen their knowledge.

While America is renowned for its enormous prison industrial complex, less academic attention has been paid to the state of probation intervention. The probation population has long been rising more swiftly than the prison population, and one in 45 adults in the USA is now subject to community supervision. This article explores the development of American probation and considers a series of key contextual issues, including the fragmented nature of the US probation system and the philosophies which underpin it, supervision fees, privatization, and the arming of probation officers, in order to illuminate how the community corrections system functions. The Justice Reinvestment initiative is also considered, and the impact of budgetary pressures upon probation is taken into account.

In 2008 the Norwegian government published a White Paper called Punishment that Works, outlining correctional policy for a period of five to ten years. The central message of the White Paper could be summarized as ‘less use of prison and better rehabilitation’. It was intended that a decrease in the use of prison would lead to an increase in the use of community-based sentences and ways of serving prison sentences. Better rehabilitation implies increased use of services and facilities outside the prison system. Both tendencies favour an intensified development of probation work. Whilst the future for probation work in Norway therefore generally looks positive the authors also consider some of the challenges to the proposed policy.

This article reports on research conducted for the Youth Justice Board (YJB) which sought to establish the prevalence of racially motivated offending (RMO) amongst young people and the level of provision for such offenders. The article examines trends in youth RMO over the period 2002-2007 and explores the characteristics of offenders, geographical trends of RMO and sanctioning outcomes. Analysis demonstrates that of those young people referred to youth offending service (YOS) teams for RMO, the vast majority were male and white. There was a noticeable ‘North-South’ split in RMO, with levels in the North generally higher than in the South and sanctions for racially motivated offences were more severe than for offences generally. The paper calls for further investigation into the legislation and practice around youth RMO.