A seamless partnership? Developing mixed economy interventions in a non-custodial project for women
| Author | Mary Corcoran,Claire Fox |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895812454750 |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
13(3) 336 –353
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895812454750
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A seamless partnership?
Developing mixed economy
interventions in a non-custodial
project for women
Mary Corcoran
Keele University, UK
Claire Fox
University of Manchester, UK
Abstract
The movement towards localism, partnerships and governing ‘networks’ has renewed academic
interest in the voluntary sector role in multi-agency work in criminal justice fields. This article
argues that strategic partnerships which service systems for managing offenders are organizing
into more complex formations which are poised to alter academic understanding of power
relationships and roles among partners. Using Adelbart Evers’ (2005) concept of ‘hybridization’,
the complexity of service delivery partnerships and the varying interchanges among participating
agencies is discussed. The analysis focuses on the start-up and first year of operation of the
‘Chestnut Centre’, a community-based project for diverting women from custody based in a city
in the midlands of England. The results are presented as a case study of participants’ reflections
on power and legitimacy in the partnership; experiences of collaborative working; approaches
towards service users; and perceptions of multi-agency partnerships.
Keywords
Hybridization, occupational cultures, strategic partnership, voluntary sector, women’s
community centres
Introduction
Following developments in other areas of social policy, strategies for dealing with
offending have been increasingly devolved to crime and safety partnerships comprising
Corresponding author:
Mary Corcoran, Research Institute for the Social Sciences, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, UK.
Email: m.corcoran@crim.keele.ac.uk
454750CRJ13310.1177/1748895812454750Criminology & Criminal JusticeCorcoran and Fox
2012
Article
Corcoran and Fox 337
local authorities, voluntary and statutory agencies and community groups. The growing
political interest in involving citizens and non-governmental actors in partnerships
reflects a desire to engage locally informed, legitimate and accountable solutions to
crime and insecurity, as well as bolstering communitarianism by directly engaging citi-
zens in solving problems on their doorstep (Norman, 2010). Additionally, harnessing the
expertise of local groups and service users in identifying their priorities is intended to
address some of the practical limitations of state-institutionalized responses to the com-
plex insecurities or unmet needs of disenfranchised communities, including offenders
(Mills, 2009). But whereas the ‘community’ has been the most obvious locus for opera-
tionalizing crime and offender management partnerships in recent decades (Crawford,
1999; Spalek, 2008), governments have simultaneously pursued programmes for inte-
grating voluntary and charitable organizations into consultative, advisory and eventually
operational partnerships in criminal justice at national as well as local levels.
Since the 1990s, governments have promoted a greater role for voluntary sector and
for-profit organizations as direct public services providers. While statutory–voluntary
sector involvement is not new (Gill andMawby, 1990), funding and political reforms
under the previous and present governments have generated an unprecedented growth in
new spaces for voluntary–state partnership (Gojkovic et al., 2011). As the composition
of such partnerships working directly with offenders, victims and community groups
becomes more diverse, significant questions emerge about their roles, levels of account-
ability and possible legal constraints that might govern ‘public’ and ‘private’ agencies
working in the statutory domain (Corcoran, 2011; Shapland, 2007).1
While scholarly interest in the role of voluntary sector actors in criminal justice is
growing there are empirical gaps in understanding how statutory–voluntary partnerships
are operationalized (Bryans et al., 2002; Vennard and Hedderman, 2009). This article
addresses some lacunae by examining local, multi-agency responses to supporting
women offenders and former prisoners, focusing on the start-up and first year of opera-
tion of the Chestnut Centre, a ‘Women’s Community Centre’ or ‘one-stop shop’ based in
an English midlands city.2
The analysis draws on research on multi-agency working among statutory criminal
justice agencies, although this literature scarcely references the role of non-state agen-
cies, even as peripheral actors. Furthermore, the extant literature on voluntary sector
involvement in criminal justice is largely predicated on bilateral models of partnership
based on ‘purchaser–provider’ or grant aided models involving (usually) statutory
funders and voluntary contractors. In this context, past research has been concerned with
disparities between funders and contractors in what Wolch (1990: 221) defined as a
‘dynamic of interdependency’, wherein voluntary organizations were functionally drawn
into the orbit of their statutory paymasters. Two decades later, scholars were still com-
menting that ‘to engage with the state is to work within the rules, organisational cultures
and discourses determined by state agencies, whereas disengagement would lead to a
withdrawal of resources’ (Harvie and Manzi, 2011: 91).
Without proposing that such critiques are redundant, this article argues that the extant
research largely predates policy initiatives such as commissioning and the furtherance of
‘mixed economies’ in public service delivery which are transforming the contemporary
environment for forging partnerships (Gibbs, 2001; Gill and Mawby, 1990; Poole, 2007).
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