Reviews : Privatising Criminal Justice Roger Matthews (ed) Sage, 1989, £9.95 pbk
| DOI | 10.1177/026455059003700310 |
| Date | 01 September 1990 |
| Author | Keith Skerman |
| Published date | 01 September 1990 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
138
REVIEWS
Comments,
contnbutions
and
sugges-
tions
to
Martin
Copsey,
Department
of
Social
Policy
and
Professional
Studies, University of Hull, HU6 7RX
Alternatives
to
Women’s
Imprisonment
Pat
Carlen
Open
UP,
1990;
£8.99
pbk
.
’Oh
Good,
another
Pat
Carlen’,
said
a
colleague
when
she
saw
this
book
on
my
desk,
’Can
I
read
it
after
you?’
This
comment
signified
the
kind
of
friend-
ly
respect
with
which
Pat
Carlen
is
largely
regarded
by
women
probation
officers.
She
is
always
readable,
quotable
and
frequently
demonstrates
and
articulates
those
things
you
instinc-
tively
thought
were
happening.
As
a
Professor
of
Criminology
she
also
gives
the
lie
to
the
notion
that
successful
women
only ’get
there’ by
abandoning
the
feminist
ethic.
This
book
is
as
uncompromising
in
its
analysis
as
one
would
expect
from
her
previous
work.
It
begins
with
a
summary
of
current
trends
in
women’s
criminality
and
an
examination
of
education
and
pre-release
schemes
available
to
them
in
institutions.
The
book
concludes
that
such
schemes
as
are
available
are
so
undermined
by
penal
regimes
and
demands,
as
to
be
useless
to
the
women
involved.
Turn-
ing
to
alternatives,
the
author
has
surveyed
a
range
of
accommodation
schemes
for
women,
and
a
variety
of
probation-run
and
self-help
projects;
the
common
theme
she
identifies
seems
to
be
how
they
are
all
struggl-
ing
in
the
face
of
economic
and
ideological
opposition,
some
of
it
sadly
from
colleagues
and
management.
She
goes
on
to
explore
the
economic
and
political
trends
of
the
last
ten
years
and
how
they
have
specifically
operated
to
women’s
detri-
ment,
examining
the
empty
rhetoric
of
government
statements
about
reducing
imprisonment
and
crime
contained
in
recent
Green
and
White
Papers.
From
this
critical
base
the
book
offers
a
broad
strategy
for
the
virtual
obolition
of
women’s
imprisonment
and
the
development
of
constructive
alter-
natives
from
the
then
available
resources.
Carlen
ends
with
the
sugges-
tion
that
by
experimenting
in
this
way
with
the
development
of
resources
for
women,
which
more
effectively
offer
them
a
service
which
might
enable
them
to
change
their
lives,
we
might
learn
important
lessons
about
how
to
tackle
male
criminality.
Karen
Buckley
SPO, Nottingham
Privatising
Criminal
Justice
Roger
Matthews
(ed)
Sage,
1989,
£9.95
pbk.
~
~ - ~
/
This
collection
of
8
contributions
from
=
both
sides
of
the
Atlantic
looks
at
,
whether
privatisation
can
injure
the
;
control
of
crime
and
the
administration
.
of
justice.
All
authors
use
succinct,
il-
l
lustrated
arguments
to
debate
issues
i
such
as
penal
policy;
policing;
the
ex-
panding
role
of
the
voluntary
sector;
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