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The number of reported cases for Japanese Penal Code offenses amounted to 2.5 million in 1997 and increased every year, reaching 3.6 million in 2002 and 2003. However, the number decreased from 2004 to 2008 to 2.5 million. Almost throughout the same period, the number of cases and persons cleared remained comparatively steady between 1.3 and 1.5 million and 1 and 1.2 million respectively, but the latter finally fell below one million in 2011. In this chapter I describe such a rise and fall as a “Mt. Fuji-line” that appears as a mountain-shaped curve on a graph.

The Japanese government reacted to the increase of crimes, which was seen as a reflection of a weakened or broken security and safety. The most effective policy, it was thought therefore, was to increase the number of policemen. This policy followed the strategy of New York City, made famous by its then Mayor Giuliani, who declared “A War on Crimes” and increased the number of police officers by ten thousand to revive New York from “A Crime City.” As criminologists have experienced so-called “labeling shocks” and learned from the approach of symbolic interactionism, criminologists can no longer simply accept that statistical data reflect weakened or broken security issues. Agencies of criminal justice, especially police officers, use such data as statistical evidence to show that the crime situation got worse.

I argue that the rise and fall of crimes, especially the increasing and decreasing number of reported cases, reflects changes of crime control policies. I analyze the Mt. Fuji-line from 1998 to 2011. The increase of crimes as well as the weakened or broken security and safety functioned as evidence that justified the reinforcement of police power and a new criminal justice shift for a lay judge system in the rising phase (1998–2003). Since the concept of a bigger justice system needs, however, lots of personnel and material sources, the Japanese government eventually gave up sustaining it. Agencies used their discretion to skip petty crimes and divert suspects because of a reduction of excessive burdens and inappropriate prison population, but they stepped into a new stage to adjust their burdens, keeping their own empowered framework of criminal justice system. These changing policies resulted in the reduction of crime in a falling phase (2004–2011).

These phenomena are explained from the viewpoint of Jürgen Habermas’ crisis theory. I conclude that the framework and capacity of the Japanese criminal justice system grew far bigger and that original functions of crime control through criminal procedure became weaker by being outsourced to other peripheral social systems and agencies. Thus the crime control system has been successful in bringing about a net-widening effect.

The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion of the value of early diversion schemes, underpinned by the principles of restorative justice (RJ), for First Time Entrants (FTEs) into the criminal justice system (CJS).

The paper focuses specifically on the findings of a 12-month study into the introduction of “Triage” by one Youth Offending Team (YOT) in the northeast of England.

Re-offending data suggested that Triage is more effective in reducing re-offending than conventional justice practices, due to the restorative nature of the scheme. However, the qualitative data raised a number of issues, particularly relating to problems of “net-widening” and the impact of recording processes on young people's desistance, as well as the role of victim engagement in the process. These issues could undermine the long-term effectiveness of Triage and its successful application within other youth justice contexts.

The paper aims to contribute further understanding regarding the impacts of RJ practices on reducing re-offending compared to traditional processes, and in particular, consider the role of implementation issues in the production of outcomes and impacts.

In the current chapter, we discuss the shape and contours of the field of probation in Romania as they appear in scientific literature and mass media, focusing on the concerns academics and professionals have voiced about Romanian probation. We analyse the timeframe from 2014 to 2021, after the introduction of the country’s New Penal Code (NPC). We structure our argument as follows. The chapter begins with a short incursion into the historiography of probation as a field in Romania. The focus, however, is on the adoption of a NPC in 2014, as this was a significant moment that led to changes for both probation workers and probationers. While we present the first 25 years since probation was instituted in Romania in 1997 as a period of experiments, trials and errors, we aim to highlight the development and consolidation that occurred in the period after 2014 (see Durnescu 2008, 2015; Preda, 2015a, 2017; Sandu, 2016). The NPC was intended to bring forward a reconfiguration of the probation system in Romania (Preda, 2015b). Beyond the promise of the NPC, the 2014–2021 period is one where probation edges into the public sphere via extensive media coverage, including the considerable number of probationers or a string of protests by probation counsellors who felt overworked and overwhelmed. We continue the chapter by analysing the composition and the dynamics of the probation population, always looking beyond the mere numbers to other analytic markers (i.e. numbers of obligations and lengths of the probation period). We conclude the chapter by arguing that our discussion of the ‘weight’ of supervision adds to the current understanding of mass supervision by looking at the aggregated impact that different social, political, penal and cultural factors have on probation practice. In other words, large caseloads, limited human resources, precarious material conditions and negative organisational cultures are likely to generate supervision experiences that can be better interpreted by looking and thinking beyond numbers.

The Scandinavian penal exceptionalism literature has focused largely on imprisonment but has yet to explore other aspects of the penal field in detail. This chapter provides an overview of the penal field in Norway and how community sanctions and measures have evolved within it. The author uses the work of Wacquant and Bourdieu to argue that there are three important levels within the Norwegian penal field: political, policy and practice. The author also discusses how drivers from the political and policy levels are affecting community-based penal practice. Using McNeill’s dimensions of mass supervision, the author discusses the implications of these changes for three less-explored aspects of punishment in Norway: the serving of short sentences at home on electronic monitoring, supervision of people under 18 and ‘punishment debt’ enforcement.

The Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 extended post-release supervision to individuals serving short prison sentences while introducing an extended array of actors into the resettlement field. This paper aims to explore the barriers that prison practitioners and community probation workers faced in their attempts to provide resettlement support, and how in response to these barriers, these practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies.

This empirical research features the perspectives of 19 prison, probation and third-sector actors within a case-study area in England. Qualitative interviews were carried out, alongside observations and field notes of daily practice.

Findings indicate that despite the promise of additional support, practitioners face significant barriers inhibiting their ability to provide effective resettlement assistance. The three specific barriers identified are institutional, temporal and political-economic. In response, practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies, shifting blame vertically down to service users and horizontally towards the other actors involved in managing these individuals.

This article concludes with a brief overview of the latest iteration of resettlement practice, before exploring how a desistance-focused approach by practitioners may improve resettlement outcomes.

These findings help to expand our understanding of the responsibilisation literature, particularly how responsibilisation operates at a practitioner level, and how barriers become refracted and reframed into responsibilisation strategies. This article also draws on the “mass supervision” literature to demonstrate how the introduction of multiple agencies obfuscates individual responsibility for resettlement and large caseloads erode supervisory practice.

The development of information technologies has led to the restructuring of the boundaries within and between organizations in a number of areas of social life. Examines the impact of a specific form of information technology being introduced in the field of punishment and control – the electronic monitoring of sentenced offenders. Electronic surveillance and home imprisonment are features of the current restructuring of the boundaries between prison, work and family life. It is both the physical and the cultural boundaries between “home” and “prison” that are being readjusted. Over the past 200 years these two spheres of social life have been constructed around incompatible sets of values. However the complex contradictions involved in making the boundaries between these two spheres more permeable have not been fully explored in current penal discourses.

To discuss and review the shift to computer enhanced self‐monitoring CCTV surveillance systems of public spaces and the social implications of this shift.

A review of the research and evaluation literature concerning CCTV surveillance systems culling out the history of public space CCTV systems and the concerns associated with first and second generation CCTV surveillance.

The main difference between first and second generation surveillance is the change from a “dumb camera” that needs a human eye to evaluate its images to a computer‐linked camera system that evaluates its own video images. Second generation systems reduce the human factor in surveillance and address some of the basic concerns associated with first generation surveillance systems such as data swamping, boredom, voyeurism, and profiling. Their enhanced capabilities, though, raise new concerns, particularly the expansion of surveillance and its intrusiveness.

Additional research is needed to assess CCTV surveillance on a set of social dynamics such as informal guardianship activities by citizens.

The adoption of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems should not be an automatic response to a public space security problem and their deployment should not be decided simply on the technology's availability or cost.

This paper provides a concise overview of the concerns associated with first generation CCTV surveillance and how the evolution of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems will alter and add to these concerns. For researchers it details research questions that need to be addressed. For practitioners and government officials considering the use of public space CCTV surveillance it provides a set of issues that should be considered prior to system adoption or deployment.