This final section responds to issues of values, the hierarchy of credibility and the structural positioning of superordinates and subordinates (Becker, 1967) in producing ethically defensible research, policy and practice. Any attempt to produce evidence-based policy and practice is bounded by disputes that occur at all levels of engagement. The selection of research method, the foregrounding of particular policy priorities, subject often to the whim of changing government ministers, and the appropriateness of engagement bounded by ethical probity must all be explored in explicating the direction of travel.

In Chapter Sixteen Kevin Wong explores the implications for policy and practice in the voluntary and community sector (VCS) of a ‘sound bite’ commitment by the incoming Coalition government to the concept of the ‘Big Society’. He explores the way which the VCS has often been privileged in its structural positioning in relation to the service delivery of offender management services previously undertaken by the public sector. He points to a relative lack of scrutiny of its provision in comparison to the regular auditing and inspection of public services. He also explores the relative ineffectiveness of attempts to provide infrastructural support to the VCS through initiatives such as ChangeUp, Futurebuilders and others as the VCS seeks to engage more centrally in the delivery of public services.

Anne Robinson, in Chapter Seventeen, focuses on the impact of changing policy priorities in the provision of youth justice services since the inception of the New Labour government in 1997. She points to the overarching changes in policy direction that have served to challenge the innovative potential of the multi-agency youth offending teams created in that year. A commitment to evidence-based practice has produced somewhat stultified and prescriptive enforcement-led interventions, which have only been loosened in recent years. The creation of a separate professional identity of the ‘youth justice worker’ and the implications for multi-agency work are also examined. She points out that policy and practice is now constrained by the climate of austerity and the attendant public service cuts, which have hampered positive change in the initial years of the new Coalition government.

Chapter Eighteen, by Kevin Albertson, Katherine Albertson, Chris Fox and Dan Ellingworth, explores the role of economics in supporting evidence-based policy and practice. This chapter challenges the assumption that economics can provide a value-neutral mechanism for evaluating different criminal justice interventions.