scholarly journals ‘They Were Very Threatening about Do-Gooding Bastards’: Probation's Changing Relationships with the Police and Prison Services in England and Wales

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob C Mawby ◽  
Anne Worrall
Keyword(s):  
Voluntary Sector ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Probation Service

In recent decades the probation service has been encouraged to work closely with a range of public and voluntary sector agencies. This article examines probation's changing relationships with the police and prison services drawing on sixty interviews with current and former probation workers. Analysing probation-prison and probation-police relationships pre- and post-1998 and drawing on Davidson's (1976) typology of inter-organisational relationships, the article argues that, despite both structural and cultural transformations, there remain cultural continuities in each organisation that create tensions, the significance (both positive and negative) of which should not be under-estimated.

Surviving the revolution? The voluntary sector under Transforming Rehabilitation in England and Wales

2020 ◽  
pp. 221-238
Author(s):  
Kevin Wong ◽  
Rob Macmillan
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Voluntary Sector ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Future ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Revolution

Regarded by commentators as an emollient to soothe critics of the part privatisation of the public probation service, the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms in England and Wales promised an enlarged role for the voluntary sector in the resettlement and rehabilitation of offenders. Whether such changes mark a decisive turning point or in the fullness of time represent just another twist in the long and messy narrative of voluntary sector provision of offender services remains an open question. This chapter will examine the role and fortunes of the sector during the tumultuous period between 2014 and 2019 and identify what lessons can be learnt for the future.

Some Practical Implications for Policy and Practice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Henham
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Community Based ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
National Regulation ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Practical Implications

This chapter explains the practical consequences of what has been proposed. It begins by evaluating current models and suggested approaches for incorporating public opinion into sentencing, explaining how the proposed changes would differ. It then sets out some practical reforms to sentencing in England and Wales, including greater coordination between the national regulation of sentencing discretion through the Sentencing Council and regional or community-based sentencing practices. Regional branches of the Sentencing Council are also advocated. In addition to further practical reforms, a greater role for the Sentencing Council in the ethical surveillance of sentencing, the development of new procedural rules, and enhanced training for judges and magistrates are proposed. Finally, a closer working relationship between the Sentencing Council, the courts, the CPS, defence lawyers, and the Probation Service is advocated to develop guidance clarifying their role within the new sentencing framework.

scholarly journals Transforming Rehabilitation: The micro-physics of (market) power

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-126
Author(s):  
Matt Tidmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Market Mechanisms ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
The Impact

This paper explores the impact of the introduction of competition and profit to the probation service in England and Wales following the implementation of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. The paper adapts the ideas advanced in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to draw similarities between the characteristics of ‘disciplinary institutions’ and a micro-physics of (market) power in probation under Transforming Rehabilitation. It utilises Foucault’s ‘instruments’ of disciplinary power – hierarchical observation, normalising judgement, and the examination – as lenses through which to highlight the unintended consequences of the installation of market techniques within the service. The paper argues that the constraints peculiar to instilling decentralising market mechanisms that were presented as a means to liberate practitioners and reduce reoffending have entrenched further the centralising tendencies associated with managerialism.

scholarly journals When access is denied: Conducting an interview through letter writing

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412093612
Author(s):  
Emma Burtt
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Qualitative Interview ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Valuable Alternative ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Probation Service

Access to prisons in England and Wales is becoming ever more restricted to researchers and all projects must have sufficient links to Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) priorities to be considered. What are the alternatives when there is no such link or when access has otherwise been denied? This article focuses on one possible solution – conducting a qualitative interview via letter. Drawing on my own experience of conducting such interviews with prisoners maintaining innocence, I document how the method can work in practice. Although not without difficulty, written interviews are capable of producing rich, qualitative data and provide benefits to both the researcher and researched when compared to traditional face-to-face interviews. I ultimately demonstrate how interviews via letter offer a valuable alternative when interacting with people, not only in prison but across all secure estates.

scholarly journals The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Matt Tidmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Radical Change ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Public ◽  
Performance Targets ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Medium Risk ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Privately Owned

This article reviews developments in probation in England and Wales since 2010, a decade in which services were exposed to the logic of competition and profit. In 2014, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government’s Transforming Rehabilitation ( TR) reforms promised an end to a top-down, target-centric culture of state intervention by outsourcing services for low-to-medium risk offenders to 21 privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). And yet, just four years after the reforms were implemented, the Conservative government announced that CRCs’ contracts would be terminated, with all offender management services returned to the public sector. With a focus on the private sector, the article argues that radical change to the probation service’s structure has entrenched a focus on centrally-administered performance targets and audit. In other words, contrary to the decentralising rhetoric at the core of TR, the decade has in many ways produced more of the same managerialism that the reforms were presented as a means to displace. The result has been a general decline in the quality of probation services.

The Assessment of Risk in the National Probation Service of England and Wales

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Lancaster ◽  
Jeannie Lumb
Keyword(s):  
England And Wales ◽  
Probation Service

scholarly journals Frivillige organisationers resocialiserende arbejde i Kriminalforsorgens institutioner

2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76
Author(s):  
Annette Olesen ◽  
Anders Brinck Rosenholm
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Voluntary Sector ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Not For Profit ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Voluntary Organisations

AbstractOutsourcing in the criminal justice system is experiencing growth in the not-for-profit sector in many Western countries. There is, however, no indication of this trend in the Danish Prison and Probation Service. On the contrary, the collaboration between the penal voluntary sector and the Danish Prison and Probation Service is not formalised and knowledge about the penal voluntary sector in Denmark is scarce. This article uses original empirical data to map out the delivery of rehabilitative programmes by the penal voluntary organisations within prison and probation facilities. It also addresses the challenges and potentials of the informal collaboration between the Danish Prison and Probation Service and the penal voluntary  sector.

scholarly journals The impact of local commissioning on victim services in England and Wales: An empirical study

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley Simmonds
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Voluntary Sector ◽  
The Political ◽  
Value For Money ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Audit Culture ◽  
Victim Services ◽  
Victim Support ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact

This paper follows on from earlier work in which I discussed the potential impacts of the local commissioning of victim services by Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in England and Wales. The introduction of this elected role and the devolution of responsibility to local PCCs was said to raise a range of issues for both victims and the voluntary sector, given that agencies within this sector are major providers of support for those affected by crime. Before 2014 the approach to the funding of victim services was not particularly of concern, save for questions being asked in the ‘audit culture’ of the early 2000s, around the extent to which the government-funded agency Victim Support could be said to be providing ‘value for money’. However, these concerns gained momentum with the incoming Coalition government of 2010, and by 2014 local commissioning by PCCs had been implemented. This meant the previous mixed economy of victim services provision via the largely centrally funded organisation ‘Victim Support’ as a ‘national victims’ service’, and an array of smaller and more financially independent victim agencies who had to bid for pots of funding much more competitively, has given way to the political appeal of a free market for all. In order then to explore the reality of this shift, a piece of empirical research was undertaken with voluntary-sector agencies in the far southwest of England. Essentially the research provides evidence that the issues raised in my earlier work have indeed come to fruition.

The Death of Offenders in England and Wales

Crisis ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghazala Sattar
Keyword(s):  
Policy Implications ◽  
Death Certificates ◽  
Accidental Death ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Drugs And Alcohol ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Mode Of Death

Summary: The death of offenders in the community has received considerably less attention than the death of prisoners, although limited research suggests that community offenders may be even more vulnerable to death than prisoners. This study compared the nature and extent of death among prisoners (n = 236) and offenders serving community sentences or ex-prisoners receiving postcustodial supervision by the Probation Service (n = 1,267) in England and Wales in 1996 and 1997. Information contained in death certificates was used to code for mode of death. Prisoners and community offenders were found to be reasonably similar in vulnerability to suicide/self-inflicted death; however, the risk of accidental death and homicide was greater for community offenders, and drugs and alcohol played a bigger part in their deaths. The policy implications of the findings are discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document