The context for this dissertation is the growing use of voluntary sector organisations and private companies as providers of probation services in England and Wales. The study focusses on the everyday experience of probation supervision in an increasingly multi-agency environment and explores this experience from the point of view of probation workers and the people they supervise. The objectives of the study are to examine whether the probation service makes a distinctive contribution to this work, to investigate the interactions between supervisees, probation supervisors and workers from other agencies, to explore the purpose of different elements of community orders and to understand whether supervisees adopt different approaches to compliance with different elements of their orders. Drawing on empirical interview data, supplemented by data from probation service case records and from fieldwork notes compiled while in probation offices undertaking interviews, I identify patterns, themes and associations which help us understand the new structures and relationships. The research concludes that, for supervisees and supervisors, the involuntary nature of community supervision is significant. The supervisees in this study viewed the requirements of their community orders as legitimate because the orders were imposed by the court. They complied with these requirements in order to avoid breach proceedings, few would have volunteered for the services that they were receiving from the probation service or elsewhere. They attached more weight to instructions from probation supervisors than to those from key workers from other agencies. Supervisees viewed their orders as both a punishment and a help, without drawing a distinction between services received from the probation service and from other agencies. Thus the research makes a significant contribution to knowledge by outlining the importance of these relationships, between worker and supervisee and between worker and worker, in a new context of provision.

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This thesis examines why courts in the United States of America (US), India and South Africa refer to foreign law in death penalty cases. To gain an understanding of what drives the apex courts of the US, India and South Africa to cite foreign law when considering domestic death penalty issues, this thesis proposes a three-part matrix to both assess the relevant case law and to analyse the academic literature on cross-citation. Firstly, it will be demonstrated that judges in national courts cross-cite comparative law out of a primary interest in constitutional interpretation. Cross-citation is used in this manner to assist judges in their domestic interpretative tasks. Secondly, it will be illustrated how courts that engage in the citation of foreign law also seek guidance from other jurisdictions as to the content of shared values, such as what type of punishment does not fundamentally and unlawfully violate the right to human dignity. Finally, this thesis assesses to what degree courts from the three selected jurisdictions are additionally referencing or applying a customary international law norm when citing foreign sources. The argument is made that the domestic courts under examination engage with comparative law in the context of a broader transnational normative project, taking the international human rights framework that developed after the Second World War as a key reference point. In doing so, this thesis argues that these courts are at times recognising and developing emerging customary norms, and at other times giving effect to and enforcing applicable international human rights law.