Marginal gains or diminishing returns? Penal bifurcation, policy change and the administration of prisoner release in England and Wales
| DOI | 10.1177/2066220319895802 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/2066220319895802
European Journal of Probation
2019, Vol. 11(3) 139 –152
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/2066220319895802
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Marginal gains or diminishing
returns? Penal bifurcation,
policy change and the
administration of
prisoner release in
England and Wales
Thomas Guiney
Oxford Brookes University, UK
Abstract
Prisoner release has emerged as a key site of penal policy contestation in England and
Wales. A series of crises have undermined public confidence in the parole system and
reopened longstanding debates over the confused normative basis of prisoner release
policy and practice. This article attempts to locate current concerns within an ideational
interpretation of penal policy change. It will argue that prisoner release has been
fundamentally re-shaped by a bifurcated penal strategy that emerged as one possible
response to the unique challenges of late-modern crime-control. Over time this strategy
has provided an enduring guide to collective action and a political template for successive
penal reform programmes. However, there are signs that we may now be reaching
the conceptual limits of this strategy. While the logic(s) of bifurcation will continue to
yield marginal political gains in the short-term, this article concludes that the long-term
prognosis is one of diminishing returns with significant implications for the legitimacy,
effectiveness and administrative coherence of prisoner release in this jurisdiction.
Keywords
Bifurcation, early release, law and order, parole, penal policy, sentencing
Introduction
Prisoner release has emerged as a key site of penal policy contestation in England and
Wales. What was once a secretive and paternalistic procedure, to be administered by a
small coterie of experts in the shadow of the prison gates, has become a matter of intense
Corresponding author:
Thomas Guiney, Oxford Brookes University, Tonge Building, Headington Campus, Oxford, Oxfordshire
OX3 0BP, UK.
Email: tguiney@brookes.ac.uk
895802EJP0010.1177/2066220319895802European Journal of ProbationGuiney
2019
Original Article
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