Thomas Guiney, Getting Out: Early Release in England and Wales, 1960–1995
| Author | Arie Freiberg |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211018761 |
| Published date | 01 October 2022 |
| Date | 01 October 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Thomas Guiney, Getting Out: Early Release in England and Wales, 1960–
1995, Clarendon Studies in Criminology, Oxford University Press:
Oxford, 2018; 320 pp.: ISBN 9780198803683, £70.00 (hbk).
The furore that surrounded the release of convicted rapist John Worboys in England in
2018 and the subsequent resignation under political pressure of the chair of the Parole
Board has thrown the spotlight yet again on the place of parole in the criminal justice
system.
Parole, or any form of release prior to the expiration of the formally announced sen-
tence of the court, has always been controversial and has occupied a legally ambiguous
space between the judiciary and the executive. Rarely regarded as a right rather than a
privilege, it has sometimes been viewed as giving offenders undue leniency and at
other times it has been regarded as undermining the sentence of the court. More recently
is has been seen as posing a risk to the society into which prisoners are ‘prematurely’
release and, independent of any penal philosophy, it has often been used as a means of
relieving pressure on overcrowded prisons.
In Getting Out, Thomas Guiney provides an historical case study of the development
of parole in England and Wales based on an approach described as ‘historical institution-
alism’, which is one that focuses attention on the way that institutions shape political
behaviour and outcomes rather than upon the role that great people or great ideas have
in influencing public policy (Chapter 2).
Forms of parole, early release or release on licence or tickets of leave have been in
existence for over 170 years. Release on licence schemes came with the advent or
penal transportation while modern forms of parole were introduced in the United
States and New Zealand in the early twentieth century and in Canada and various
Australian states from the mid-1950s. In this context, the England and Wales seems to
have been a late adopter (Chapter 3).
Writing in the tradition of Radzinowicz and Hood, Bailey and Scull, Guiney method-
ically traces the steps that were taken to introduce parole in England and Wales, the public
and private debates regarding the nature of the system, how it changed over the decades in
the face of the pressures of growing prison numbers, high profile incidents involving
released prisoners, political differences between Labour and Conservative governments,
internecine differences between various government agencies, the subtle private pres-
sures of the judiciary, the demands of non-government organisations and the scrutiny
of review bodies. The book is the product of a close study of Home Office archives,
the personal papers of key participants, parliamentary debates, reports of government
and advisory bodies and secondary sources, some of which had to be obtained through
freedom of information requests.
In some respects, this book is a little solipsistic, focusing as it does on a particular
moment in history in England and Wales. For readers in the UK, this is likely be of
great interest as it documents, in minute detail, the policy debates, key players and pol-
itical and social circumstances that led up to the Criminal Justice Acts of 1967 (Chapter
4), 1982 (Chapter 6) and 1991 (Chapter 8). However, for readers outside the UK, the
Book Reviews 745
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