Inside or Outside the Criminal Justice System? The Example of Community Chaplaincy
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12320 |
| Author | JANE DOMINEY |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 3. September 2019 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12320
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 313–328
Inside or Outside the Criminal
Justice System? The Example of
Community Chaplaincy
JANE DOMINEY
Senior Research Associate, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
Abstract: This examines explores the ways in which voluntary sector organisations work-
ing in the area of crime and justice operate both inside and outside the criminal justice
system, moving between the worlds of the correctional services and the community. It
examines the inclusionary and exclusionary nature of the control exercised by the penal
voluntary sector and raises questions about legitimacy and the work of the sector. The
article takes the example of community chaplaincy to develop these debates, drawing on
empirical evidence from a study conducted in 2016 and 2017. It explores the nature
of community chaplaincy mentoring relationships, setting this in the context of the faith-
based foundation of community chaplaincy. It concludes that the organisation must exist
in both the community and the correctional worlds, adopting and shifting positions that
reflect the needs of service users, volunteers, commissioners and funders.
Keywords: community chaplaincy; mentoring; penal voluntary sector;
practitioner-service user relationship; volunteers
This article is about the relationship between the penal voluntary sector
and the correctional world (Senior et al. 2016) of prison and probation
in England and Wales. In particular it considers the faith-based voluntary
sector, explores the nature of relationships built between staff and service
users, and examines the concept of inclusionary control (Tomczak and
Thompson 2019). It raises questions about legitimacy and the work of the
penal voluntary sector (Beetham 2013; McNeill and Robinson 2013).
The penal voluntary sector is large and diverse (Mills, Meek and Go-
jkovic 2011; Tomczak 2017a). Taking the example of community chap-
laincy, this article explores the extent to which the work of the voluntary
sector is distinctive from that of the statutory sector. Community chap-
laincy is used here as an illustration; it is not argued that it is somehow
representative or typical of the sector (or even the religiously inspired
(Kaufman 2018) organisations within the sector) as a whole.
The voluntary sector in the UK has long been involved in criminal
justice, campaigning for reform and providing services for individuals in
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2019 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 3. September 2019
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 313–328
trouble. The Howard League for Penal Reform dates back to 1866 and
the roots of the probation service lie in voluntary endeavour (Nellis 2007).
However, the relationship between public, voluntary, and private sectors
in criminal justice has shifted considerably over the past 25 years in re-
sponse to changing politics and economics. The ideological commitment
to shrinking the size of the State and using mechanisms of competition
and outsourcing to procure services from the private sector has affected
all areas of public service in England and Wales. The work of the proba-
tion service became increasingly shaped by managerial processes (Senior,
Crowther-Dowey and Long 2007) and, as far back as the 1990s, the gov-
ernment set specific targets for the proportion of the probation budget to
be spent on services delivered by agencies from the private and voluntary
sectors (Home Office 1992).
The Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms of 2015 marked the
moment of wholesale marketisation (Burke and Collett 2015; Ministry of
Justice 2013). These reforms saw the creation of Community Rehabilitation
Companies (CRCs), new commercial entities responsible for the commu-
nity supervision of all but those offenders assessed as posing the highest
risk of harm. The financial model for CRCs required the companies to be
able to manage budgetary risk, as the payment mechanism included an ele-
ment of payment-by-results. Consequently,a private sector prime provider
led all but one of the successful bids for the CRC contracts (Dominey and
Gelsthorpe 2018).
The voluntary sector has also been shaped and steered by the forces that
have driven public sector reform. Corcoran (2011) analysed this process,
charting the way that ideas about the commercialisation of the voluntary
sector were developed and shared by politicians, senior managers of vol-
untary sector organisations, and civil servants. She identified the way that
ethical questions about the role of markets and the expansion of criminal
justice responses to social problems were neglected in the dominant policy
discourse, suggesting that, for many in the voluntary sector, the option was
to modernise or perish.
TR promised a starring role for the voluntary sector. The reforms were
heralded as a means of bringing the sector’s innovation and creativity to
the task of reducing reoffending. Successful bidders for CRC contracts con-
structed supply chains comprising voluntary sector organisations selected
for particular expertise or link with a specific community.
Many voluntary sector voices were sceptical about these promises from
the outset, and the experience of the early years of TR suggests that this
scepticism was well founded. Clinks (the infrastructure organisation for the
penal voluntary sector) has monitored the reform’s impact on the sector.
Through a series of reports (Clinks 2015, 2016, 2018a) it has concluded
that TR has left the sector ‘under represented, under pressure and under
resourced’. HM Inspectorate of Probation (2018, p. 5) sounds an equally
gloomy note, describing an ‘exasperating situation’ in which the voluntary
sector is less, not more, involved in probation work.
The policy documents that preceded the TR reforms stressed the dis-
tinctive and constructive contribution that the voluntary sector makes to
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