About

‘Offender Supervision in Europe‘ is  COST Action 1106. COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is Europe’s longest-running intergovernmental framework for cooperation in science and technology funding cooperative scientific projects called ‘COST Actions’. With a successful history of implementing scientific networking projects for over 40 years, COST offers scientists the opportunity to embark upon bottom-up, multidisciplinary and collaborative networks across all science and technology domains. For more information about COST, please visit www.cost.eu

Offender supervision in Europe has developed rapidly in scale, distribution and intensity in recent years. However, the emergence of ‘mass supervision’ (i.e. in the community) has largely escaped the attention of legal scholars and social scientists more concerned with the ‘mass incarceration’ reflected in prison growth. As well as representing an important analytical lacuna for penology in general and comparative criminal justice in particular, the neglect of supervision means that research has not delivered the knowledge that is urgently required to engage with political, policy and practice communities grappling with delivering justice efficiently and effectively in fiscally straitened times, and with the challenges of communicating the meaning, legitimacy and utility of supervision to an insecure public.

This Action aims to remedy these problems by facilitating cooperation between institutions and individuals in different European states (and with different disciplinary perspectives) who are already carrying out research on offender supervision or, in the case of early stage researchers, are attracted to that field. It will review and synthesize existing knowledge and then enrich it through interdisciplinary and comparative work and capacity building. The Action will thus provide a European forum on offender supervision for academics, policymakers, practitioners and interested citizens.

The Action commenced in March 2012 and runs for four years. We will be organise conferences, working group meetings, short-term scientific missions and training schools for researchers. If you want to be kept up to date about our activities, please subscribe to the RSS feed so as to receive regular information.

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is Europe’s longest-running intergovernmental framework for cooperation in science and technology funding cooperative scientific projects called ‘COST Actions’. With a successful history of implementing scientific networking projects for over 40 years, COST offers scientists the opportunity to embark upon bottom-up, multidisciplinary and collaborative networks across all science and technology domains. For more information about COST, please visit www.cost.eu