Evaluating voluntary sector involvement in mass incarceration: The case of Samaritan prisoner volunteers
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520915823 |
| Author | Philippa Tomczak,Christopher Bennett |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
Evaluating voluntary
2020, Vol. 22(5) 637–657
! The Author(s) 2020
sector involvement in
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1462474520915823
mass incarceration: The
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
case of Samaritan
prisoner volunteers
Philippa Tomczak
University of Nottingham, UK
Christopher Bennett
University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Mass incarceration and supervision operate through a mixed economy. Using the case
study of Samaritans’ emotional support for prisoners in distress in England and Wales,
we present an original framework of five normative criteria to facilitate nuanced assessment
of voluntary sector criminal justice participation. This is an urgent, significant task for
theory and practice: we need to find forms of public input that can deconstruct bloated
penal systems. Whilst citizen involvement can be a positive form of ‘people power’, our
assessment of Samaritans’ ostensibly welcome humanitarian intervention reveals how it
deflects attention from severe shortcomings of the penal system. In the context of mass
incarceration, we conclude that voluntary sector and citizen involvement in individualised
service delivery alone risks obscuring deep problems and delaying much-needed change.
This topic is particularly timely, given increasing non-state involvement in criminal justice
and the global problem of prison suicide.
Keywords
non-profit, peer, penal voluntary sector, prison, volunteer
Corresponding author:
Philippa Tomczak, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD,
UK.
Email: Philippa.tomczak@nottingham.ac.uk
638
Punishment & Society 22(5)
Introduction
Criminal justice researchers should pay more attention to the increasing
involvement of volunteers and voluntary organisations in criminal justice institu-
tions,1 evaluating in what respects this is a positive and/or negative development.
Nuanced assessment of voluntary sector criminal justice participation requires
explicit normative criteria with defence of the values underpinning the assessment
(Bennett, 2017). There are many potential benefits of voluntary sector and civil
society action in criminal justice (e.g. Akashi, 2018). Dzur’s democratic optimism
(2012) would emphasise the hope and possibility of public involvement
directing state institutions to greater democracy and the public good.
Alternatively, Wacquant’s critical pessimism (2010) would regard public involve-
ment as a mere duping of citizens by states captured by for-profit sectors. Our
account provides a middle way between these approaches: public involvement has
potential to trigger much-needed reform, but current operating methods and con-
texts preclude this.
Evaluating one case of voluntary organisation involvement in criminal justice,
the Samaritans Prison Listener Scheme, we demonstrate that it should not be
welcomed without reservation. Despite this Scheme’s humanitarian motivation
and substantive contributions to ameliorating prisoner distress, it can deflect atten-
tion from essential deep reform of the scale and conditions of imprisonment.
Viewing this case through the lens of normative political theory, we then develop
an original five-dimensional framework of criteria to facilitate nuanced assessment
of voluntary sector criminal justice participation. These criteria are: (i) does it resist
harmful excesses and capture, making criminal justice institutions more compliant
with non-negotiable humanitarian obligations?; (ii) does it benefit individual
volunteers?; (iii) does it assist the state in serving the public good?; (iv) does it
increase democratically valuable forms of public participation in state institu-
tions?; and (v) does it bring the shortcomings of those institutions to light and
motivate reform? Samaritans are by no means the only voluntary organisation to
have prioritised service delivery over advocacy, in criminal justice (Tomczak and
Buck, 2019b) and beyond (Stroup and Wong, 2017). We do not suggest that
Samaritans should be withdrawn, but seek to articulate the compromised nature
of their work and the conflicting demands under which all voluntary organisations
and citizen volunteers participate in imprisonment.
Although we focus on imprisonment, mass incarceration has occurred in
parallel with mass supervision in the community (McNeill and Beyens, 2013;
Miller, 2014; Phelps, 2017), and volunteers and voluntary organisations are impli-
cated across criminal justice institutions globally (Tomczak, 2017; Tomczak and
Buck, 2019a). Our analysis has implications for other forms of voluntary sector
and citizen involvement in criminal justice across jurisdictions. It is also pertinent
for other sectors increasingly reliant on volunteering, inter alia health and social
care (Naylor et al., 2013) and public museums (Goodlad and McIvor, 2005).
Extrapolating our framework is not straightforward; however, consideration of
Tomczak and Bennett
639
organisational and institutional differences, varying penal-welfare cultures and
conditions, and geo-political, socio-cultural and legal intricacies is required (e.g.
Pratt and Eriksson, 2013).
Citizen involvement in mass incarceration
Recently, the US and the UK have both dramatically increased the scale of
imprisonment. The USA and the UK have seen pronounced penal surges brought
about through neoliberal socioeconomic policies (Wacquant, 2010) and the redef-
inition of social problems as problems of crime and justice (Rodger, 2008). The
social welfare and penal policies used to manage precarious populations
employ deterrence, surveillance and graduated sanctions to modify conduct
(Miller, 2014). Amidst weakened welfare provisions, prisons are increasingly
used to ‘invisibilize problem populations—by forcing them off the public aid
rolls. . . and holding them under lock’ (Wacquant, 2010: 199). The US has devel-
oped into a global outlier in mass imprisonment, becoming four to five times more
punitive (in terms of incarceration rates per 1000 crimes) between 1975 and 2000
(Wacquant, 2010). England and Wales’ prison population has risen by 70% in
the last 30 years, maintaining the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe
(along with Scotland), in the context of static or falling crime rates (Prison Reform
Trust, 2018).
Mass incarceration evokes images of a repressive state, with criminal justice as a
closed, inaccessible niche concealing the dirty work of dealing with those who will
not or cannot play by the rules (Christie, 1977; Dzur, 2014). However, mass incar-
ceration has occurred alongside – and arguably through – increasing citizen
involvement in criminal justice (Miller, 2014). Governments around the world
are shifting from state-dominated criminal justice to models where responsibility,
costs and risks are shared by public, private and voluntary organisations (Garland,
2001; Ransley and Mazerolle, 2017). The roles of private/for-profit criminal justice
work have received substantive articulation and nuanced analysis,2 but the
voluntary/non-profit sector has garnered less attention. Yet, it is significant in
criminal justice around the world: including the UK, Nordic countries, France,
USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Uganda. Although voluntary
organisations and volunteers have a long history of criminal justice involvement,
the sector’s recent growth is one of the defining global shifts in ‘offender
management’.
The voluntary sector is the USA’s primary provider of prisoner re-entry pro-
gramming, managing ‘more people, more poor people, and more poor people of
color’ than the world’s largest prison system (Miller, 2014: 307). In England and
Wales, the criminal justice voluntary sector workforce is larger than that of the
public prison and probation services combined, and the criminal justice system
could not function without its voluntary sector and volunteer staff (Tomczak and
Buck, 2019b). Mass incarceration and supervision are thus directly enacted by
citizens to some extent and not purely imposed by a repressive state on its subjects.
640
Punishment & Society 22(5)
Given the many negative direct and collateral consequences of criminalisation
(e.g. Hoskins, 2019), we urgently require normative evaluation of ‘civilian’
involvement in criminal justice.
Scholars have been generally reluctant to engage in explicit normative assess-
ment of criminal justice developments (Bennett, 2017). Yet, failure to fully
explain in which respects we should accept, welcome and deplore large-scale
citizen involvement in punishment impedes analysis and meaningful reform
attempts.
Citizen
association
is
intimately
connected
to
democracy
(Tocqueville, 1835) and informs the ideal of participatory democracy/rule by
participation, which in turn offers potential to resocialise an authoritarian penal
welfare state that is resituating towards the market (Powell, 2009). But, does
greater public involvement in criminal justice provide ‘a cultural restraint
against more punitive policies’ (Crawford, 2004: 696) and return it to demo-
cratic control? Or does it at best paper over cracks, shoring up mass incarcer-
ation and supervision? These questions require urgent and nuanced attention:
we need to find forms of public input that can tame and reform bloated penal
systems (Gottschalk, 2006). We therefore develop our assessment of the Scheme
into a normative framework with explicit dimensions through which increased
public involvement in criminal justice can be evaluated. Our dimensions of
assessment are based on an articulated –...
To continue reading
Request your trial