Sign-In
Cart
Between Punishment and Rehabilitation: How Probation Officers Build Their Professional Identity. A Comparative Study of Restorative Justice
Paperback
ISBN13: 9789731666624
Publisher: Editura Lumen
Published: Jul 29 2026
Pages: 314
Weight: 0.93
Height: 0.66 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Who is the probation officer: an agent of state control, or a helping professional working toward reintegration? In post-communist Europe that question has no settled answer - and the way practitioners themselves answer it shapes the fate of thousands of people serving non-custodial sentences.
Drawing on years of qualitative and quantitative fieldwork in North-Eastern Romania and the Republic of Moldova, Antonio Sandu examines how probation officers build their professional identity at the intersection of two competing paradigms: retributive justice, centred on punishment, surveillance and desert; and restorative justice, centred on repairing harm, victim-offender mediation and the restoration of social equilibrium.
INSIDE THIS BOOK
Based on in-depth interviews, focus groups and survey research with probation officers, beneficiaries and allied professionals, the study maps five thematic axes of professional identity:
- The normative and institutional framework of probation practice - Human resources development, professional socialisation and occupational dilemmas - The probation officer-supervised person relationship, from case management to therapeutic alliance - Value-centred probation: constitutive and operational values in practice - Victim-offender mediation and the restorative justice paradigm
A parallel quantitative study on retributiveness and public perception of non-custodial sanctions shows how limited public knowledge of probation services fuels punitive attitudes - and how that pressure reaches back into daily professional practice, into courtroom expectations and into the political appetite for alternatives to imprisonment. The book closes with a theoretical model of the social construction of probation, concrete public policy proposals, and an assessment of training needs for practitioners in both countries.
WHY IT MATTERS
Probation systems are path-dependent: they carry the institutional history of the societies that built them. Romania and Moldova established their services in the shadow of a prisonocentric penal culture, importing Western models into very different institutional soil. This book explains what happens when those models land - why identical legislation produces divergent practice, why professional terminology shapes professional identity, and why reform imposed by administrative mandate so often undermines the practitioners it is meant to support. Comparative empirical work on probation in this region remains rare in English-language criminology; this volume brings two neighbouring systems, shaped by a shared past and separated by divergent European trajectories, into direct dialogue.
WRITTEN FOR
Criminologists, penologists and sociologists of law; social workers, psychologists and probation practitioners; policy makers and public administration specialists engaged in criminal justice reform; and graduate students in criminology, social work, public policy and restorative justice.
Grounded in social constructionism, communicative action theory and appreciative inquiry, and supported by a full bibliography, interview guides and research instruments, this volume offers both a rigorous empirical contribution to comparative criminology and a practical resource for anyone shaping the future of community sanctions in Central and Eastern Europe.
Antonio Sandu is Professor at Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava and doctoral supervisor at the University of Oradea, Romania. He is the author of more than 20 volumes and 150 scholarly papers in ethics, social work, social philosophy and law.
Also from
Sandu, Antonio
Also in
Criminology
Boy with a Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner's Fight for Justice
Trounstine, Jean
Paperback
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
Unreasonable Women: Three Stories of Violence, Imprisonment, and Extraordinary Survival
Van Der Leun, Justine
Hardcover
Face to Face with Whitey Bulger: An FBI Agent's Account of Capturing and Debriefing Boston's Most Notorious Gangster
Teahan, Rich
Ward, Bob
Paperback
The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America
Galvin Almanza, Emily
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice (Large Print Edition)
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Paperback
Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block
Leflouria, Talitha L.
Hardcover
One in Five: Why Child Sexual Abuse Is Our Biggest Public Health Crisis--And What We Can Do to Stop It
Malone, Luke
Letourneau, Elizabeth J.
Hardcover
Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction
Gonzalez Van Cleve, Nicole
Hardcover
The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal about American Justice
Vartkessian, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast (Large Print Edition)
Colloff, Pamela
Paperback
How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention
Washington, John
Paperback
Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators
Kaba, Mariame
Hassan, Shira
Paperback
If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened: The Life and Times of a Domestic War Correspondent
Glawe, Justin
Paperback
Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime
Weinman, Sarah
Hardcover
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.
Paperback
Don't Fight Back: And 10 Other Myths about Crime, Personal Safety, and Gender-Based Violence
Stone, Meg
Paperback
Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida
King, Gilbert
Hardcover
How to Survive a Murder Investigation: A True Story of Death and Danger in the Ozarks
Townsend, Catherine
Hardcover
Making Things Right: Activities that Teach Restorative Justice, Conflict Resolution, Mediation, and Discipline That Restores Includes 32 De
Claassen, Roxanne Harvin
Claassen, Ron
Paperback
Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Hunt for the Nation's Most Elusive Serial Killer
Graysmith, Robert
Paperback
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest
Olsen, Gregg
Paperback
The Best Part of Prison: The Power of Second Chances and Reclaiming Life Out of Darkness
Crosson, Jesse
Paperback
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life, Freedom, and Justice
Hinton, Anthony Ray
Hardin, Lara Love
Paperback
No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
Snyder, Rachel Louise
Paperback
Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison
Tyler, Gary
Hardcover
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.
Paperback
Marked by Time: How Social Change Has Transformed Crime and the Life Trajectories of Young Americans
Sampson, Robert J.
Hardcover
Bookin' in the Big House: What I Learned Leading a Women's Prison Book Club
Devoto, Pat Cunningham
Paperback
Vida Y Muerte del Cartel de Medellín / Life and Death of the Medellin Cartel
Lehder, Carlos
Paperback
Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men's Issue, and How You Can Make a Difference
Katz, Jackson
Paperback
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.
Paperback
A Murderer's Guide to Cleaning: And Other Stories from My Life as a Probation Officer
Baxter, Elizabeth
Hardcover
The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century
Harrington, Joel F.
Paperback
The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History
Talty, Stephan
Paperback
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America
Hinton, Elizabeth
Paperback
Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants in America
Hiemstra, Nancy
Conlon, Deirdre
Paperback
Little Book of Conflict Transformation: Clear Articulation of the Guiding Principles by a Pioneer in the Field
Lederach, John
Paperback
Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison
MacIntyre, Ben
Paperback
Bulletproof--Healing After Gun Violence & Trauma: A Guide for Survivors, Caregivers, and Clinicians
McMahon, Jill
Paperback
Un Himno a la Vida. Mi Historia / A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides
Pelicot, Gisèle
Paperback
Healing the Gun Violence Epidemic: Ending Violence, Rebuilding Communities, and a Trauma Surgeon's Vision for Restoring Hope
Rogers, Selwyn O.
Paperback
Liberty's Prison: The Inmate's Son Who Radically Reformed an American Prison
Liberty, Randall
Graf, Christine
Hardcover
Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison
Yusuf, Aishatu R.
Soble, Leslie
Busansky, Alex
Paperback
The Big Book of Restorative Justice: Four Classic Justice & Peacebuilding Books in One Volume
MacRae, Allan
Pranis, Kay
Zehr, Howard
Paperback
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
Gourevitch, Philip
Paperback
Playing the Victim: How the Powerful Deny and Attack Survivors of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Genocide
Cheung, Kylie
Paperback
In Guns We Trust: The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms
Kole, William J.
Hardcover
The Anatomy of Motive: The Fbi's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals
Olshaker, Mark
Douglas, John E.
Paperback
The Coroner's Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence
Keel, Terence
Hardcover
Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
McDiarmid, Jessica
Paperback
Blood in the Water (Pulitzer Prize Winner): The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
Thompson, Heather Ann
Paperback
The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
Eisenberg, Emma Copley
Paperback
Be Good to Your Body: Getting Back to God's Design in a World of Wellness Trends, Quick Fixes, and Conflicting Health Advice
Dooley, Jordan Lee
Hardcover
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail
Young, Rusty
McFadden, Thomas
Paperback
Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back
Davis, Joshua Clark
Hardcover
Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Hunt for the Nation's Most Elusive Serial Killer
Graysmith, Robert
Paperback
Exploring Crime Analysis: Readings on Essential Skills, Fourth Edition
Int'l Assoc of Crime Analysts
Paperback
G-Dog and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles
Fremon, Celeste
Paperback
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
Twohey, Megan
Kantor, Jodi
Paperback
No Right to Remain Silent: What We've Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech
Roy, Lucinda
Paperback
Broken Windows Behind Bars: Transforming Jail Operations Through Order and Accountability
Klucznik, Shaun
Paperback
Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
Miller, Reuben Jonathan
Paperback
American Murder Houses: A Coast-To-Coast Tour of the Most Notorious Houses of Homicide
Lehto, Steve
Paperback
Deadly Force Encounters, Second Edition: Cops and Citizens Defending Themselves and Others
Christensen, Loren W.
Artwohl, Alexis
Paperback
La Chica de Nadie: Mi Historia de Supervivencia Y Lucha Por La Justicia / Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Roberts Giuffre, Virginia
Paperback
Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate
Prejean, Helen
Paperback
The Anatomy of Motive: The Fbi's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals
Douglas, John E.
Olshaker, Mark
Paperback