Engagement skills: Best practice or effective practice?

(from the chapter) This chapter will seek to explore the different engagement skills that are utilised when working with offenders and the practical problems involved in such work. It will be argued that while the opportunity still exists to do constructive work with offenders, there is a tension between managing offender needs and managing organisational needs. The prevailing climate in the criminal justice sector would suggest that organisational needs now dominate, yet there are some signs that a shift back towards offender-centred engagement is both desirable and compatible with the effective practice mantra (Burnett and McNeill 2005). In order to show some of the fundamental ways in which practitioners engage with offenders we will explore some of the engagement models of practice including motivational interviewing techniques, pro-social modelling and the cycle of change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)