‘Penal Drift’ and the Voluntary Sector
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12307 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 3. September 2019 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12307
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 430–449
‘Penal Drift’ and the Voluntary Sector
MIKE MAGUIRE, KATE WILLIAMS and MARY CORCORAN
Mike Maguire is Professor of Criminology, University of South Wales;
Kate Williams is Professor of Criminology, University of South Wales;
Mary Corcoran is Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Keele University
Abstract: This article explores the concept of ‘penal drift’ – the gradual adoption of
criminal justice culture, language, and working practices – in voluntary sector organ-
isations (VSOs) commissioned to deliver services to offenders. It identifies increases in
coerced attendance, obligations to report non-compliance, targets to reduce reoffending,
and contracts to ‘process’ high caseloads, as factors behind such drift, which can jeopar-
dise relationships with service users and the sector’s traditional ‘value-driven’ approach.
It is concluded that most VSOs have so far managed to resist these threats and to balance
contractual obligations with adherence to core values. However, this comes at a cost in
staff time and energy and is difficult to sustain. There are concerns that the longer-term
effects may be quite damaging to the sector.
Keywords: criminalisation of social policy; offender management; penal drift;
Transforming Rehabilitation (TR); voluntary sector
Introduction and Background
For some years, social scientists have been drawing attention to a phe-
nomenon broadly described as the ‘criminalisation of social policy’ (Rodger
2008a, 2008b), whereby social problems are increasingly redefined and re-
sponded to as problems of crime and justice. Related observations are
encapsulated in concepts such as Foucault’s (1975) ‘carceral archipelago’,
Garland’s (2001) ‘culture of control’, Simon’s (2007) ‘governing through
crime’, and Wacquant’s (2009) ‘penalization and punishment of the poor’.
Rodger (2008b) writes:
The criminalizing of social policy involves two key processes. The first is boundary
blurring . . . the adoption of principles of operation which obscure the purpose of
social intervention such as that between welfare and punishment, and the second is
displacement of goals, as the objectives of social policy subordinate issues of welfare
to those of crime prevention. (p.18)
In this article we explore a particular variant of such processes: the dif-
fusion of criminal justice related values, practices and dispositions into
the sphere of voluntary sector organisations (VSOs).1We have referred
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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. 430–449
to this elsewhere as ‘penal drift’ (Corcoran et al. 2017, 2018; Maguire
2016), indicating its affinity to ‘mission creep’ or ‘mission drift’ – a famil-
iar concept in the voluntary sector literature, signifying the migration of
charitable organisations away from their founding principles and priorities
(Poole 2007).
Concerns about penal drift intersect with broader long-standing con-
cerns about the ‘capture’ or co-option of welfarist or humanitarian ‘third
sector’ agents by State funders, and their incorporation into what Wolch
(1990) called a ‘shadow state’: an emerging body of proxy state actors in-
creasingly engaged in the direct delivery of public services. This issue has
become more salient in recent years, as the increased presence of corpo-
rate as well as State interests in the development of ‘penal service mar-
kets’, has created a more complex, fluid, and precarious environment for
the voluntary sector (Corcoran 2011; Goddard 2012; Hallett 2017; Singh
2012). Evers (2005, p.738) contends that the ‘traditional clear-cut separa-
tion of market based, state-based, and civil society . . . service units has
become increasingly insufficient’ for understanding contemporary inter-
organisational relationships at the macro level of the design and delivery
of welfare. Rather,we need to conceptualise all ‘service systems and institu-
tions’ as undergoing greater or lesser degrees of ‘hybridisation’, inasmuch
as their relationships are ‘shaped simultaneously by all three possible sec-
tors, their values and their steering mechanisms’ (p.738).
At the meso level, it has further been argued, a rising trend for partner-
ship and collaborative inter-agency work has created a conducive frame-
work for exchanges in cultures, outlooks, methods, and practices, across
different occupational groups and across statutory, business, and volun-
tary sectors (Corcoran and Fox 2013; Mawby, Crawley and Wright 2007;
Sarkis and Webster1995). However, the close proximity of different sectors
generates a tendency towards ‘elite isomorphism’ (Poole 2007) or forms of
organisational cloning driven by senior management, whereby the weaker
(usually voluntary sector) partner relinquishes elements of its mission, oc-
cupational practices, structures and/or ethos to those of more dominant
partners.
Valuableas these debates have been to understanding the broad features
of ‘capture’, they only take us some way towards appreciating the micro-
dynamics by which such changes are occurring in the contemporary penal
voluntary sector. This article draws on findings from a large-scale empir-
ical research project2to examine such processes more closely, exploring
concrete examples of, and stakeholders’ views about, the penetration of
working practices, mindsets, language, and organisational cultures associ-
ated with criminal justice agencies into the world of VSOs.
A major factor in the emergence of this phenomenon in England and
Wales, it is argued,has been an e xpansion in the ‘outsourcing’ of the deliv-
ery of criminal justice services – to some extent to voluntary organisations –
through the process of competitive commissioning. Clearly, the involve-
ment of the third sector in work with convicted offenders is nothing new
(Mills, Meek and Gojkovic 2011; Tomczak 2014) and it has often involved
referrals to VSOs from probation agencies, paid for through ‘partnership’
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2019 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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