Bringing community wealth building to justice: back to a mutual future for probation?

AuthorDave Nicholson/Mick McKeown
PositionManchester Metropolitan University/University of Central Lancashire
Pages150-168
150
British Journal of Community Justice
©2021 Manchester Metropolitan University
ISSN 1475-0279
Vol. 17(2) 150168
https://doi.org/10.48411/p3jp-bf72
BRINGING COMMUNITY WEALTH BUILDING TO
JUSTICE: BACK TO A MUTUAL FUTURE FOR
PROBATION?
Dave Nicholson, Manchester Metropolitan University
Mick McKeown, University of Central Lancashire
Contact details: david.nicholon@stu.ac.uk; mmckeown@uclan.ac.uk
Abstract
In this think piece and position paper we consider mutual and cooperative solutions to key
resettlement challenges, we believe to be germane to a focus on the future of probation
post 2020. We argue that Senior and colleagues (2016) identification of the relational co-
production of rehabilitation within local communities as key to successful probation can
equally well be understood in terms of ‘mutuality’ and cooperation in service delivery. We
argue that this essence of probation can be re-captured in contemporary rehabilitation
services by integrating probation practice more with the community, ideally in a context of
broader efforts towards achieving economic fairness within localities. We report on one
such initiative tied in with the distinct form of new municipal local economic development,
defined as community wealth building being pioneered in Preston in the North West of
England. This ‘Preston Model’ provides a context for discussing particular cooperative
development work designed coproductively to better support offender resettlement. Our
work in ‘ bringing the Preston Model to Justice’ arguably has great potential for wider
application in the quest for successful community re-entry and a positive impact upon
desistance.
Keywords
Community wealth building; Cooperatives; Prisons; Probation; Desistence.
Bringing Community Wealth Building To Justice: Back To A Mutual Future For Probation?
151
INTRODUCTION
A clear lesson of the recent reversals of the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms (MoJ,
2013) is that ideologically driven, ill-thought out privatisations of functioning public services
represent a stark failure of the neoliberal project (Dominey & Gelsthorpe, 2020; Ludlow,
2014; Roberts, 2018; Walker et al., 2019). Yet, before those of us, from an opposing
ideological perspective, get carried away with this returning of vital services to the public
realm we might consider a more sophisticated view than that offered in sometimes
simplistic insourcing-outsourcing debates. Our deliberations in this regard might address
questions of efficacy and worker and service user experiences within the public sector and,
if we are honest, acknowledge various shortcomings. Whilst we remain committed to state
funding and responsibility for probation and offender resettlement services at scale, we
note that equivocal outcomes alongside staff and service user dissatisfactions are not the
sole monopoly of organisational forms associated with neoliberal ideologues. We contend
that the means by which we organise this work is an essential dimension of realising better
results for all stakeholders. In this paper, we present a workable, cooperative, democratised
organisational form for offender resettlement allied to alternative approaches for realising
fairer local economic justice.
To make this case we marshal ideas that connect appreciation of cooperative models of
employment to ideals of coproduced relational care and support within a more mutual
approach to offender resettlement and desistance. We have taken up these ideas in a place,
Preston in the North West of England, which is becoming known for its efforts to refashion
a more equitable local economy and have levered this into a specific through the prison
gate project. We describe progress to date on our development work to establish
cooperative enterprises offering employment and support through co-ownership to groups
of individuals associated with the Offender Personality Disorder pathway and we argue that
this specifically mutual approach to working with offenders builds on Senior et al’s (2016)
identification of ‘relational co-production’ as the essence of probation and, as such,
mutuality in offender rehabilitation services constitutes a contemporary reframing of the
traditional probation mission to ‘advise, assist and befriend’.
Mutuality and cooperation
Arguably, a grave error of neoliberal privatisation programmes is that these have been
driven by both an atavistic desire to dismantle a mistrusted public sector, and an
understanding of society, which overly privileges supposedly self-interested independent
individualism over inter-dependent social relations between individuals who hold a wealth
of regard for others. It seems more than obvious that if we view people engaged with the
criminal justice system and striving to escape an offending identity as atomised individuals
within a singularly self-centred society, then they, and we, are in some trouble. Desistance
from offending only occurs in a relational context of inter-dependence (Weaver, 2012;
2014), not as a decision of some lone ‘sovereign individual’ of neo -liberal imagining
(Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1996). Senior et al (2016) see a key element in the ‘essence of
probation’ as being the support and enabling of people involved with the criminal justice
system to escape offending and an offending identity through such inter-dependent social
relations, hence their restating of ‘relational co-production’ as key to the traditional
probation mission.

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