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On 16 May 2011, the Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford, hosted Mr Andrew Bridges' valedictory lecture on the occasion of his retirement as Chief Inspector of Probation. Mr Bridges, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Criminology (then called Centre for Criminological Research) in 1996, was introduced by Professor Roger Hood, the then Director of the Centre, who also led the Q and A session. The lecture was attended by academics, probation practitioners and managers, officials from the Ministry of Justice and National Offender Management Service and heads of youth offending teams. Andrew Bridges paid tribute to all those who have done excellent work with offenders and done a difficult job well. Against a backdrop of an often polarised and two-dimensional debate on criminal justice, Mr Bridges highlighted the work of the many practitioners who had influenced and engaged someone under supervision and made them less likely to reoffend.