Transforming Rehabilitation: The micro-physics of (market) power
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Author | Matt Tidmarsh |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474519850573 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Transforming
Rehabilitation: The
micro-physics of
(market) power
Matt Tidmarsh
University of Leeds, UK
Abstract
This paper explores the impact of the introduction of competition and profit to the
probation service in England and Wales following the implementation of the
Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. The paper adapts the ideas advanced in Foucault’s
Discipline and Punish to draw similarities between the characteristics of ‘disciplinary
institutions’ and a micro-physics of (market) power in probation under Transforming
Rehabilitation. It utilises Foucault’s ‘instruments’ of disciplinary power – hierarchical obser-
vation,normalising judgement, and the examination – as lenses through which to highlight
the unintended consequences of the installation of market techniques within the ser-
vice. The paper argues that the constraints peculiar to instilling decentralising market
mechanisms that were presented as a means to liberate practitioners and reduce
reoffending have entrenched further the centralising tendencies associated with
managerialism.
Keywords
Foucault, managerialism, marketisation, probation, Transforming Rehabilitation
Introduction
The Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms fundamentally restructured the
delivery of probation services in England and Wales. The Conservative-Liberal
Corresponding author:
Matt Tidmarsh, School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Email: lwmt@leeds.ac.uk
Punishment & Society
2020, Vol. 22(1) 108–126
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1462474519850573
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Democrat Coalition government (2010–2015) came to power in the aftermath of
the most severe financial crisis since the 1920s, framed as a problem of public
sector profligacy (HM Government, 2010). A key determinant for their criminal
justice reform was an ‘unsustainable rise in the prison population’ (MoJ, 2010: 8),
which had spiralled the costs of justice. Yet, although Ministry of Justice (2016)
analysis of sentencing trends in recent decades attributes increases in the prison
population to a greater reliance on immediate custodial sentences, longer terms of
imprisonment, and more recalls to prison, the Coalition government chose to focus
on the perceived inadequacies of supervision in the community under successive
New Labour administrations (MoJ, 2010). A top-down, target-centric ‘Whitehall
knows best’ culture, it was argued, had been imposed upon probation, standardis-
ing practice, stymieing practitioner autonomy, and contributing to persistently
high rates of reoffending (MoJ, 2010: 6, 2013a). Freed from the regulatory
embrace of the state, competition for probation services would emancipate private
providers to find ‘innovative’ new ways to reduce reoffending while being more
cost-effective for the taxpayer (MoJ, 2013a). As such, TR split the probation ser-
vice into two types of organisation: the publicly owned National Probation Service
(NPS) now manages offenders who pose a high risk of harm to the public, while 21
privately owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) supervise low-to-
medium risk offenders (MoJ, 2013b). CRCs are paid through a ‘Payment by
Results’ (PbR) mechanism, the stated aim of which is to give providers greater
discretion in how they deliver services by shifting the emphasis from outputs to
outcomes (MoJ, 2013b).
This paper argues that the constraints peculiar to instilling decentralising market
mechanisms that aimed to liberate practitioners and reduce reoffending have
entrenched further the centralising tendencies the Coalition government chose to
associate with probation practice under New Labour. The first part of the paper
explores the development of probation in England and Wales, highlighting the
similarities between the service and Foucault’s (1977) concept of a ‘disciplinary
institution’ (p. 139). The paper, thereafter, draws upon Foucault’s (1977: 170)
‘instruments’ of disciplinary power – hierarchical observation,normalising judge-
ment, and the examination – as lenses through which to explore the unintended
consequences of the introduction of competition and profit under TR. Applied to
probation, hierarchical observation refers to the ‘architecture’ of TR and how it was
constructed. The PbR mechanism represents a ‘penal accountancy’ (Foucault,
1977: 180) that has inhibited ‘innovation’ and continued to normalise judgement,
as practitioners remain subservient to a similar system of targets that TR was
supposed to displace. Finally, the examination is manifest in government inspec-
tions of TR, which are utilised to highlight how the logic of competition and profit
exert disciplinary power over practitioners: they are Foucault’s (1977) ‘supervisors,
perpetually supervised’ (p. 177).
The paper differs from Foucault’s general approach in that it does not seek to
present TR, nor its architects, as plotting a strategic course to evermore discipline
and control; rather, it applies these ‘instruments’ as examples of an unintentional
Tidmarsh 109
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