Probation, Privatisation and Legitimacy
| Author | LOL BURKE,GWEN ROBINSON,MATTHEW MILLINGS |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12198 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
The Howard Journal Vol56 No 2. June 2017 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12198
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 137–157
Probation, Privatisation and
Legitimacy
GWEN ROBINSON, LOL BURKE
and MATTHEW MILLINGS
Gwen Robinson is Reader in Criminal Justice, University of Sheffield; L ol
Burke is Reader in Criminal Justice, Liverpool John Moores University;
Matthew Millings is Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice, Liverpool John
Moores University
Abstract: This article considers the recent partial privatisation of probation services in
England and Wales from the theoreticalperspective of legitimacy. Drawing in particular
on Beetham’s (1991) work, we argue that the question of legitimacy in respect of priva-
tised probation services is a complex one which requires attention to the multiple – and
different – perspectives of key stakeholders or constituencies in the probation field. We
argue that in the probation context there are five key stakeholder groups: the general
public; offenders and victims; ministers and civil servants; sentencers; and probation
employees and their representatives. We consider what is known about the perspectives of
each of these groups in turn, before concluding that privatised probation services need
to be aware of both the legitimacy deficits they face and the complex dynamics likely to be
involved in its cultivation with these different constituencies.
Keywords: probation; privatisation; legitimacy; Transforming Rehabilitation
(TR); Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs)
Legitimacy has been described as a vexing concept (Ansell 2001) but it is
also one which is increasingly being recognised as important in the crimino-
logical field. More than 20 years ago, Richard Sparks (1994) suggested that
legitimacy was ‘an issue for every practice of punishment or sanctioning’
(p.16) and one which ‘delimits in very large measure the very arena within
which penological debate must take place’ (p.26). Since then, criminological
research on legitimacy has predominantly centred on policing (for exam-
ple, Tyler 2006; Hough 2007; Bradford, Jackson and Hough 2014), though
there has been some engagement with legitimacy in studies of imprison-
ment (for example, Sparks, Bottoms and Hay 1996; Liebling 2004; Crewe
2007); the criminal courts (Shute, Hood and Seemungal 2005); and penal
policies (Bottoms 2003; Snacken 2013). Meanwhile, in the probation field,
questions of legitimacy have received scant attention (though see Digard
2010; McNeill and Robinson 2013; Irwin Rogers 2015) and, to date, have
not been brought explicitly to bear on the dramatic reconfiguration of
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2017 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol56 No 2. June 2017
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 137–157
probation services which occurred in June 2014 under the Coalition Gov-
ernment’s TransformingRehabilitation (TR) reform programme (Ministry
of Justice 2013a, 2013b).
The TR programme has entailed the replacement of the 35 English and
Welsh public sector Probation Trusts by a new National Probation Service
(NPS) responsible for the supervision of high-risk offenders, and 21 new
Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) responsible for the supervi-
sion of medium- and low-risk offenders. Both the NPS and CRCs are new
organisational entities in the criminal justice field, but whilst the NPS re-
mains in the public sector,contracts to run the 21 CRCs have been awarded
to eight new providers, seven of which are private sector companies or part-
nerships led by private sector interests.1CRCs are now responsible for the
lion’s share of offender management work: the National Audit Office esti-
mates that around 80% of new cases are allocated to CRCs, and that in July
2015 they managed some 61% of the 243,000 offenders under supervision
(National Audit Office 2016).
This significant step toward the outsourcing of criminal justice services
has received remarkably little attention from the media (Phillips 2014;
Hedderman and Murphy 2015) or from scholars beyond the probation
field; yet it is a move that is deserving of serious critical attention, and
which coincides with growing academic interest in the outsourcing of other
aspects of criminal justice, most notably policing (for example, White 2014;
Lea and King forthcoming; Hucklesby and Lister forthcoming). This ar-
ticle thus aims to contribute to critical scholarship in the probation field,
but also to inspire further attention to the dynamics of legitimacy in other
criminal justice contexts, particularly those affected by outsourcing.
In this article, it is argued that the question of legitimacy in respect of
privatised probation services is a complex one which requires attention to
the multiple, and different, perspectives of key stakeholders in the pro-
bation field. The article begins by setting up a theoretical framework for
thinking about legitimacy which draws, in particular, on Beetham’s (1991)
work but also looks to the literature on organisational legitimacy for useful
resources. This framework adopts an empirical, rather than a normative,
approach to the question of legitimacy: that is, it does not seek to evalu-
ate legitimacy with reference to a set of norms or criteria specified by us.
Rather, it suggests that legitimacy is best understood as a social process:
a product of the evaluations of social audiences or constituencies which
may bring different norms, values and expectations to bear on their judg-
ments. The article goes on to consider the main constituencies which are
implicated in an analysis of the legitimacy of probation work. Inspired by
Rod Morgan’s (2003) reflections on the main users and beneficiaries of
probation work, it is argued that these include: the general public, offend-
ers and victims, ministers and civil servants, and sentencers. However, we
contend that there is another important constituency which merits consid-
eration: that of probation employees and their representatives, who have
tended to be ignored in discussions of legitimacy in criminal justice con-
texts. In the remainder of the article we consider the perspectives of each
of these five groups in turn, with reference to extant evidence from or
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2017 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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