This thesis presents a body of work for the award of the Professional Doctorate in Social Work. Presented as three discrete but connecting projects, it is united by a broad interest in criminal justice sanctions and services and by a particular interest in the progression of participatory, person-centred and progressive approaches within that space. Project one consists of a recognised prior learning claim for 50% of the award and draws on four peer-refereed published papers. The first three papers contribute to developing criminological and professional debate on ‘what works?’ in supporting desistance from crime. The final paper locates recent justice ‘developments’ within Bauman’s analysis of consumerism and related debates about the commodification of public services. Project two reports on a funded study that set out to evaluate the impact of a staff training programme on the practice of community service supervision within a Scottish local authority. The commission and focus of this project reflects sustained attention to questions of what works in reducing re-offending and supporting desistance within community sanctions, and the reconsideration of these questions in spaces traditionally constructed in punitive rather than rehabilitative terms. The findings suggest that community service can provide people who offend with important opportunities for progression, desistance and change and that staff training has an important contribution to make to the progression of these outcomes. However, the findings also indicate that staff training is one of many important variables in this complex and multi-dimensional endeavour. Connecting with the above themes, the final and most substantial project presented explores the place and potential of those sentenced within criminal justice sanctions and services. Specifically, it explores the potential of co-production within this complex, contested and constrained space. As will be demonstrated, this is an important and topical area of inquiry, as are the methods used to progress it. The conclusion of this project is that co-production matters in justice. The detail and implications of this conclusion for justice policy, practice and research are discussed and explored.

The use of community service to promote learning and civic responsibility in higher education has blossomed since the 1980s. The problem addressed in this study was that although the X University initiated the required community service program in 2004, it had not assessed the effectiveness of the program from students' perspectives. Using Kolb and Kolb's conceptual framework on experiential learning, a qualitative case study was used to evaluate the perceptions of 13 4th-year students who had participated in the required community service program during their 1st-year of study. The research questions were focused on students' perceptions on how community service influenced their attitudes towards philanthropy. Data were coded and themes developed using key words from the interviews. Findings from 1-on-1 interviews revealed 4 themes: support for effective community service programs, students' personal growth and development, giving back to society with gratitude, and students' self-awareness in attitude towards the needy. The study results indicated that, the required community service program made a change in participants' lives and influenced their attitudes towards being sensitive to people with need. It is also likely to make them more philanthropic and affect positive social change. The resulting project consisted of an evaluation report recommending the reassessment of how the program is introduced to 1st-year students. Potential social change impacts include improved student experiences, as well as helping other universities in Kenya to learn from X University's experience to introduce similar community service programs.

Increasingly, student orientated service outreach programmes (community service) are being incorporated into the broad curriculum of Australian High Schools. The assumption made is that such programmes have tangible benefits for students, the community and the schools themselves. Schools that operate out of a Christian paradigm have the added incentive of seeking to assist students give personal expression to religious commitment through the service of others. This study tests the assumption that participation in community service or service outreach activities has positive benefits for the students involved. It explores the effect that student involvement in school-facilitated community service programmes has on three personal domains; self-esteem, sense of engagement with community, and attitude to Christianity. This is a quantitative study utilising a questionnaire instrument to collect data from participants. The questionnaire is a compilation of three pre-existing and previously validated instruments, each of which focus on one of the three research areas. Combined, they provide 74 items which are answered using a Likert scale with response choices ranging along a six point continuum from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. The sample consists of a total of 225 participants drawn from students across years 10 to 12 from five Catholic High Schools in the Brisbane metropolitan area. All of these schools have single sex enrolment. Male and female participants are equally represented in the sample. In total, 80% of the sample participated in their school’s community service/service outreach programme. Information related to students’ community service involvement, the type of service undertaken, the duration of such service, and prior community service experience, was also collected from participants. No treatment is being introduced or manipulated in this study; rather, the research examines ‘between-participant’ and ‘within-sample’ differences associated with students’ participation (or non-participation) in existing community service/service outreach programmes in their schools. As such, the research is ex post factor in nature. Initial confirmatory factor analysis is undertaken to validate the integrity of the combined instrument. This is followed by a Cronbach’s alpha reliability study of the 12 component scales of the combined instrument; the results of which prove to be consistent with those previously reported. In subsequent analysis of the data, significant correlations are identified between six pairs of dependent variables. With statistical significance set at the 95% level, MANOVA is then utilised to determine the effect of a number of factors on scale scores. In addition to the primary focus on the effect that participation/non-participation in school community service programmes has on student selfesteem, engagement with community and attitude to Christianity, other influencing conditions explored include; type of community service, duration of community service, prior community service involvement, and gender. The principal finding of this research is that a statistically significant relationship is evident only between students’ participation in school-facilitated community service programmes and their attitude to social justice. Attitude to social justice is a constitutive element of the larger construct, ‘sense of engagement with community’. Analysis of the data reveals no significant association between community service participation and either self-esteem nor attitude to Christianity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings in the light of the earlier review of relevant literature.

This study explores whether students in the mandated Ontario high school community service program consider their service requirement to be meaningful; the relationship between meaningful service and subsequent service; and other factors related to a meaningful experience and future service. A secondary analysis was conducted using a survey of 1,341 first-year university students, collected by a research team led by Steven Brown of Wilfrid Laurier University. The main finding is that meaningful service is a predictor for subsequent service and can contribute to individual and social change. Meaningful service opportunities help address a gap in service learning literature, which is the impact of service on communities, perhaps by underestimating the capacity of youth to contribute to social change. Three policy recommendations emerge: curriculum should be created to enable students to serve more effectively; program structure is necessary for reflection; and nonprofit agencies can meet both of the above needs.

This study explores whether students in the mandated Ontario high school community service program consider their service requirement to be meaningful; the relationship between meaningful service and subsequent service; and other factors related to a meaningful experience and future service. A secondary analysis was conducted using a survey of 1,341 first-year university students, collected by a research team led by Steven Brown of Wilfrid Laurier University. The main finding is that meaningful service is a predictor for subsequent service and can contribute to individual and social change. Meaningful service opportunities help address a gap in service learning literature, which is the impact of service on communities, perhaps by underestimating the capacity of youth to contribute to social change. Three policy recommendations emerge: curriculum should be created to enable students to serve more effectively; program structure is necessary for reflection; and nonprofit agencies can meet both of the above needs.

This report examines a nonprofit executive education provider, The RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service (RGK), as a conduit to understanding challenges that nonprofit executive education providers in the U.S. are experiencing in the current economic environment. These challenges include attracting participants (who are presently less likely to invest in executive education because of budget constraints), cutting costs, increasing revenue, coping with slashed budgets, and trying to stay innovative by developing timely, relevant content that meets nonprofit leaders’ evolving needs and desires during economic hardship. RGK aims to strategically use its limited resources to expand its executive education programming, called the Strategic Management Program (SMP), in hopes of increasing revenue while better meeting the needs of its local nonprofit leadership community. This report provides the first steps in planning for SMP’s strategic expansion with a market analysis that will give RGK a thorough understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of current SMP programming, as well as a comprehensive view of the environment in which the SMP is operating. The market analysis is achieved through examining the external environment, RGK’s internal SMP environment, and a target audience assessment. Second, the report gives specific recommendations and strategies for expanding SMP, based on insights garnered from the market analysis and other research. / text

This dissertation addresses the questions: How do activists sustain hope while increasingly aware of social complexity? How is agentive hope related to experiences of systemic power relations, including class, race, and gender? In a political climate increasingly circumscribed by neoliberal and neoconservative policies and rhetoric, the question of how scholars and teachers, both formal and informal, can support hopeful, agentive, social democratic citizens becomes critical. Employing a mixed genre format, based in an ethnographic position informed by Virginia Dominguez's “politics of love and rescue” and Hirokazu Miyazaki's "method of hope," I examine hope and its relationship to diversity and citizenship through analysis of in-depth field research conducted in undergraduate citizenship education courses. Through both traditional anthropological analysis and a full-length, ethnographically inspired novel, I explore activists' motivation, life stories, and political values, asking how their ability to sustain hope for the short term and the long term articulates with their lived experiences of systemic power relations and their visions of citizenship. Key factors in sustaining a long-term orientation toward hope include perspective-taking ("the wide angle lens"), loving relationships, and doing and reflecting on direct action, especially across social boundaries. I conclude that reflective, relational, action-focused pedagogies can effectively support diverse groups of hopeful, agentive citizens committed to progressive visions of social justice.

Community service as an alternative to imprisonment at its inception was taken up very strongly by the judiciary as part of the reform of the criminal justice system in Uganda. The successful enactment of the Community Service Act, Act no: 5/2000, was an achievement towards the implementation of the programme in the country. However, its implementation as an alternative sentence is currently proceeding at a slow pace. The Ugandan law still allows courts to exercise their discretionary powers with regard to either using prison sentences or community service. Courts still seem to prefer to use imprisonment irrespective of the nature of the offence, thus leading to unwarranted government expenditure and prison overcrowding. An additional problem is that some offenders come out of prison having been negatively affected by their interaction with even more serious offenders. This study was undertaken to establish whether community service as an alternative to imprisonment can be effective with regard to reducing recidivism and to accelerating reconciliation and reintegration of minor offenders back into their communities.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Irvine, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-96).