Criminal justice as a production line: ASAP and the managerialization of criminal justice in the Netherlands
| Author | Renze Salet,Jan Terpstra |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819828332 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819828332
European Journal of Criminology
2020, Vol. 17(6) 826 –844
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370819828332
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Criminal justice as a
production line: ASAP and the
managerialization of criminal
justice in the Netherlands
Renze Salet and Jan Terpstra
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Abstract
Since the 1990s criminal justice systems in West European countries have increasingly been
affected by the process of managerialization. The managerialization of criminal justice may result
in fundamental tensions between different sets of values: efficiency and cost-effectiveness against
values such as the rule of law or careful decision-making. This article concentrates on one example
of the managerialization of criminal justice: the policy programme ASAP (As Soon As Possible) in
the Netherlands, aimed at making the settlement of cases of high-volume petty crime both faster
and more efficient. The introduction of ASAP has resulted in a strong standardization of work
processes and strict time limits, for both the police and the public prosecution service. In this
article we analyse how ASAP operates in practice and to what degree the policy goals of ASAP
are realized. This analysis shows that the introduction of ASAP has transformed an important
part of the Dutch criminal justice system into an assembly or production line. This example of the
managerialization of criminal justice has resulted in important tensions between, on the one hand,
managerial values and, on the other, the values of occupational (legal) professionalism.
Keywords
Criminal justice, managerialism, police, NPM
Introduction
Since the 1980s, the public sector of many countries has been confronted with an increas-
ing emphasis on efficiency, effectiveness and economy. In imitation of what was sup-
posed to be the normal practices of the private (commercial) sector, public services were
seen as needing to improve their productivity, and were increasingly subjected to tighter
Corresponding author:
Renze Salet, Department of Criminal Law & Criminology, Faculty of Law, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO
Box 9049, Nijmegen 6500 KK, The Netherlands.
Email: r.salet@jur.ru.nl
828332EUC0010.1177/1477370819828332European Journal of CriminologySalet and Terpstra
research-article2019
Article
Salet and Terpstra 827
managerial control and stricter performance management. Many of these measures have
been based on what is called the New Managerialism, which is closely related to the
discourse on the New Public Management (NPM) (Clarke and Newman, 1997;
McLaughlin and Murji, 2001; Osborne and Gaebler, 1993; Pollitt, 1993).
Although the New Managerialism has often been seen as a worldwide movement, in
fact its influence differs between countries. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, its
impact has been very significant. In most of the Central and especially South European
countries, the effect of the New Managerialism has been less important (Kickert, 2007;
Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000). From the early 1990s, this process of managerialization has
also occurred in the police and the criminal justice system, initially especially in the
Anglo-Saxon countries, and often somewhat later than in other public sectors (Freiberg,
2005; McLaughlin and Muncie, 2000; McLaughlin and Murji, 2001; McLaughlin et al.,
2001; Painter, 2005; Raine and Wilson, 1997; Senior et al., 2007). In the following years,
the police and criminal justice agencies in some of the continental West European coun-
tries were also increasingly affected by these processes of managerialization, although its
impact often remained relatively modest compared with most of the Anglo-Saxon coun-
tries (Beyens and Scheirs, 2010; Lange and Schenk, 2003, 2004; Ritsert and Pekar, 2009;
Terpstra and Trommel, 2009; Van Sluis et al., 2008).
Since the 1980s, there has been much debate about what is distinctive about New
Managerialism. Following Clarke and Newman (1997), it can be understood as a cultural
formation referring to a set of managerial views, values and practices, legitimated by the
supposed superiority of private sector management and aimed at improving the perfor-
mance and efficiency of the public sector. However, as has often been previously noted,
the New Managerialism does not represent a coherent complex of ideas but consists of
many often contradictory views, techniques and practices, drawn from a wide variety of
sources (Ferlie et al., 1996; Hood, 1991; McLaughlin and Murji, 2001).
The New Managerialism is generally seen as a strategy to reduce the power of both
bureaucrats and professionals, once valued as the pillars of the modern welfare state.
With the rise of the New Managerialism, they have been framed as ‘old-fashioned’ sym-
bols of the ineffectiveness and waste of the public sector (Clarke and Newman, 1997;
Pollitt, 1993). According to Pollitt (1993), the measures imposed on bureaucrats and
professionals to limit their discretion and to improve efficiency were often based on a
sort of neo-Taylorism, with its strong emphasis on standardization of work processes,
strict time limits and quantitative performance management. The main difference from
classic Taylorism is that it is now applied to public services. New Managerialism has
resulted in many conflicts because of the fundamental clash between different sets of
values: efficiency and cost-effectiveness against professional or bureaucratic values such
as the rule of law or justice (Freiberg, 2005; Jones, 1993; McLaughlin et al., 2001).
To understand the impact of the New Managerialism on public sector services, Evetts
(2009) made a distinction between two ideal types of professionalism. In her view, the
New Managerialism is promoting a new ‘organizational’ professionalism, undermining
the classic, ‘occupational’ professionalism. Organizational professionalism emphasizes a
discourse of control, hierarchical structure, standardization of work procedures, and
external forms of regulation and accountability. Occupational professionalism, on the
other hand, is manifested by a discourse of collegial authority, trust, practitioner
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