Nathan Monk

Given the government’s commitment to localism, social inclusion and transfer of power from politicians to communities embodied by the Big Society  agenda, we question whether these principles have been adequately translated within ‘Payments by Results’ and the supposed ‘Rehabilitation Revolution’ Green Paper. Of all the communities in our diverse society, offenders should specifically be included to encourage them to become more responsible citizens and, therefore, participate fully in creating a more responsible society? However, accessing offender voices in the prison setting can often prove challenging, as will be discussed. The authors have been involved in using qualitative methodologies in evaluations of predominately voluntary sector arts and media projects with prison communities since 2005. With these data, this article explores opportunities for encouraging citizenship status in the prison community. Prisoners engaging with these projects report significant impacts of their engagement, including increases in their feelings of self worth, hope and belief in their own personal capacity to alter the way they behave.

The coalition government have pledged a commitment to a shift from ‘Big Government’ that presumes to know best, to the ‘Big Society’ that trusts in people for ideas and innovation to mend Britain’s ‘broken society’. While the policy implications of this shift remain opaque at this stage, further work has been undertaken to articulate what this strategy entails (see Cabinet Office, 2010). Five key themes have emerged which promise a dramatic shake-up of the system. This paper focuses on the theme that most closely relates to notions of ‘Big Society’ – restorative justice. In the current economic climate it is perhaps unsurprising that the coalition is supportive of restorative justice, as it mirrors the desire to redistribute power from central government to local communities and individuals. The Liberal Democrat experimentation with Community Justice Panels (now being referred to as Neighbourhood Justice Panels or NJPs) in the run-up to the general election has been highlighted as a measure that will be introduced to combat low-level offending and antisocial behaviour. This is given particular consideration as it involves local communities and victims themselves responding to offending behaviour rather than the state. NJPs, it is claimed, have a dramatic impact on recidivism rates in comparison to the traditional criminal justice process and a corresponding reduction on police time and resources. However, as Crawford & Newburn (2002) highlight, England has traditionally adopted a more punitive approach towards dealing with offending behaviour due to widespread public anxiety about crime and political competition to secure votes. Thus, this paper seeks to explore the potential implementational difficulties and resistance that may come from communities and criminal justice practitioners, particularly the police, to this model.

Recent proposals for a new approach to criminal justice policy have been heralded by the coalition government as ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’. This article assesses the validity of the claims in relation to the intended shake-up of offender rehabilitation. In considering the wider economic and social context of the reforms, various drivers of change are discussed, including increasingly high rates of re-offending and reimprisonment, the ambition of the government to create a so called ‘Big Society’, and the cuts in public spending detailed in the recent Comprehensive Spending Review. It argues that, in emphasising notions of civic responsibility and by seeking to introduce a ‘reducing re-offending market’, the government has absolved itself from directly addressing important structural problems, which inhibit many offenders from successfully giving up crime. It concludes that, rather than signal a paradigm shift in approach to offender rehabilitation, the proposals constitute a repackaging of measures rooted in strategies of risk, containment and crime prevention

The article considers the impact of targets set for criminal justice agencies on the effort to prevent youth crime. Targets are frequently counter-productive because organisations concentrate on the target rather than the work it is supposed to promote. In the case of youth crime, there have been apparently impressive reductions in the number of young people entering the criminal justice system as first offenders. Whether this is primarily the result of prevention of offending or diversion from the system is unclear. This uncertainty is discussed, along with contradictory policy directions in the response to youth crime which suggest the importance of prevention along with trends which may lead key organisations to turn against it.

‘Institutions always have a history, of which they are the products’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1971: 72)

This article argues that the histories of probation must be taken into account when implementing standardised probation practice because the current  configuration of probation still depends on these social and historical conditions. I show this by outlining the origins of probation in England and Wales and the United States before discussing how the two services developed in different ways and were based on varying notions of the offender. I then demonstrate how some of t hese differences have persisted into the early twenty-first century and argue that the origins of the services have impacted on the uptake of evidence based practice, professional ideology and unified services. Finally, by drawing on Berger and Luckmann, and Jones and Newburn, I suggest that a top-down approach of implementing change can undermine and deprecate previous ways of working with offenders and that the origins of community sanctions might militate against any notion of uniform provision.

One of the effects of 2004 National Standards (Youth Justice Board 2004) appears to have been that greater emphasis is now placed upon timely and efficient administration, rather than the content and quality of options presented in the youth court by Youth Offending Teams (YOTs), (Smith, 2007). This is partly to do with the constantly changing agenda for YOTs (Thomas, 2008), and the resulting confusion of professional identity for many YOT staff (Souhami, 2007). Without the clear commitment to children’s rights YOTs have become susceptible a variety of influences affecting decision making in court, not least the punitive intolerance described by Muncie and Goldman (2006), prevalent within youth justice since the 1990s. This can mean that YOTs have a confident, but collusive relationship with magistrates, rather than providing an independent voice within the court. This article argues that YOTs need to develop a confident relationship with magistrates, which does not compromise their integrity and primary commitment to the child’s best interest and their communities. Furthermore the development of such a relationship has the potential to modify the punitive culture of many youth courts.

This paper considers the place of metaphor and analogy in criminal justice discourse. Thinking (and speaking) metaphorically is an unavoidable aspect of the framing of social problems. Some examples are offered of the ways in which these figures of speech and thought may influence how we think about these matters, variously generating new ideas or perhaps constraining other possibilities. Metaphors may also be emotionally evocative, influencing feelings as well as thoughts. It is argued that the (often concealed and embedded) assumptions that metaphors import or sustain need to be exposed and sometimes challenged, if liberal criminology is to make its due contribution in debate about criminal justice policy. We need new ways of thinking and talking about the relationship between crime and criminal justice. In the second part of the paper, a specific analogy is drawn – between, on the one hand, crime and criminal justice and, on the other hand, health and medicine. Several points of correspondence are identified and some ideas that are perhaps more familiar in the sociology of medicine are used to illuminate criminal justice. This analogy exposes some of the assumptions in criminal justice debate and offers another way of thinking and talking about policy.