Probation: ‘A deceptive substitute for real contact’?
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550510379777 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Probation: ‘A deceptive substitute for real
contact’?
Jon Keeler, Prisoner resident, HMP Long Lartin
Abstract In a critical and challenging personal reflection on recent developments
in criminal justice, the author, a long-term prisoner, argues that the prisoner’s ‘voice’
has been subjugated with the dominance of risk- and control-based polices and
practice, and accuses the probation service of being complicit in this process.
Keywords actuarialism, offender management, prisoner perspective,
responsibilization
The shift from welfare liberalism to neo-liberalism that began in the Thatcher era and
has been consolidated under New Labour post-1997 involved a reimagining of
offenders, victims and solutions to crime. One aspect of this is the strategy of ‘respon-
sibilization’ – that making crime everybody’s business, rather than the sole respon-
sibility of the ‘specialists’ (i.e. police and probation), has had the possible side effect
of raising general levels of mistrust and fear of crime. Without giving up its sovereign
power the state has shifted, or expanded, its point of leverage from crime prevention
experts to governing through a new set of ‘responsibilized actors’ (Garland, 2001).
The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act gave formal expression to the process by set-
ting new statutory obligations on local authorities to provide annual Crime Preven-
tion Strategies and to ensure that those objectives are intermeshed with every other
policy area. Previously distinct domains such as housing, health and education, and
within the Criminal Justice System, police, prisons and probation, are now ‘partners
in crime’ with a joint responsibility to reduce offending. The 1998 Crime and
Disorder Act thus blurred boundaries between state, private, and voluntary institu-
tions and diffused responsibility, social control, and also blame for failure by new
statutory obligations for crime prevention.
Contrast this with a previous age in which Edwina Currie waved handcuffs at a
Tory Party conference to the cry, ‘Give us the tools and we’ll do the job!’ The police
were given the tools in massive new resources and unprecedented crime fighting
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright ª2010 NAPO Vol 57(3): 304-313
DOI: 10.1177/0264550510379777
www.napo.org.uk
http://prb.sagepub.com
Comment
304 Downloaded from http://prb.sagepub.com at SAGE Publications on February 5, 2010
To continue reading
Request your trial