The Probation Service as part of NOMS in England and Wales: fit for purpose?

2013 ◽  
pp. 136-152
Keyword(s):  
England And Wales ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Fit For Purpose

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 Love in the time of Covid-19: a case-study of the complex laws governing weddings

Legal Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Rebecca Probert ◽  
Stephanie Pywell
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Marriage Law ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
General Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Impact

Abstract During 2020, weddings were profoundly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. During periods of lockdown few weddings could take place, and even afterwards restrictions on how they could be celebrated remained. To investigate the impact of such restrictions, we carried out a survey of those whose plans to marry in England and Wales had been affected by Covid-19. The 1,449 responses we received illustrated that the ease and speed with which couples had been able to marry, and sometimes whether they had been able to marry at all, had depended not merely on the national restrictions in place but on their chosen route into marriage. This highlights the complexity and antiquity of marriage law and reinforces the need for reform. The restrictions on weddings taking place also revealed the extent to which couples valued getting married as opposed to having a wedding. Understanding both the social and the legal dimension of weddings is important in informing recommendations as to how the law should be changed in the future, not merely to deal with similar crises but also to ensure that the general law is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.

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.

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

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.

Understanding the privatisation of probation through the lens of Bourdieu’s field theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Jake Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Rehabilitation Needs ◽  
The Way

This chapter contributes to the growing body of criminological work to use Bourdieu’s field theory to understand changes in policy and practice in criminal justice. The chapter uses the privatisation of probation services in England and Wales as a case study to argue that although probation practitioners vociferously opposed the reforms, their attempts to prevent them were always unlikely to succeed. This is because Transforming Rehabilitation needs to be understood as the culmination of a longstanding process of symbolic violence which resulted in the depreciation of relevant forms of capital amongst practitioners and their allies. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the reforms before turning to a discussion of Bourdieu’s field theory. I argue that because ‘capital’ links field and habitus – in that capital is the product of the way in which habitus and field are, or are not, attuned to one another – this is an important mechanism of field theory which has, hitherto, been neglected. I argue that as probation practitioners’ habitus has remained relatively stable over the last fifty years, the changing field led to a delegitimation of the forms of capital owned by practitioners which left them unable to mount a successful defence of a public probation service.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document