Punishment & Society

As an exemplar of modern penality’s ‘normalizing sector’ (Garland, 1985), probation is deeply implicated in the purported shift towards a ‘new’ or ‘postmodern’ penal rationality with risk management rather than normalization at its heart. This article reviews the emergence of risk management in recent criminological theory and goes on to explore the emergence of risk and risk management in the Probation Service in England and Wales during the 1990s. Drawing on the author’s recent empirical research it then presents an analysis of the dynamics of offender supervision in probation which, in common with a growing number of studies in other penal contexts, reveals that the increasing dominance of risk-based reasoning has not ushered in an approach conforming entirely to theoretical formulations of risk management. It is argued that in the context of probation supervision two relatively distinct ‘modes of governance’ are emerging, based on a distinction between those offenders assessed as posing a serious risk of harm to the public, and those who are not. It is argued that these modes of governance constitute different but complementary adaptations to the purported shift from normalization to risk management, or from ‘old’ to ‘new’ penologies.

An examination of the quality of operations at private and public prisons is essential to making informed decisions about the desirability of using private and public prisons. Previous studies have used survey data collected from staff and inmates to compare prisons based on the proportions or percentages of staff making favorable evaluations of different items. As argued here and elsewhere, the previous studies have been flawed by methodological shortcomings. An approach is demonstrated here that allows for an examination of the aggregate measurement properties of survey items as well as for making comparisons of different prisons. The data are from surveys administered to staff at 96 federal prisons and two private prisons. The results demonstrate that not all survey items can be used indiscriminately to compare prisons, and when comparisons are made, it is essential to control for individual-level and institutional-level factors that are not related to institution performance but still influence survey results.

Advocates’ claims about restorative justice contain four myths: (1) restorative justice is the opposite of retributive justice; (2) restorative justice uses indigenous justice practices and was the dominant form of pre-modern justice; (3) restorative justice is a ‘care’ (or feminine) response to crime in comparison to a ‘justice’ (or masculine) response; and (4) restorative justice can be expected to produce major changes in people. Drawing from research on conferencing in Australia and New Zealand, I show that the real story of restorative justice differs greatly from advocates’ mythical true story. Despite what advocates say, there are connections between retribution and restoration (or reparation), restorative justice should not be considered a pre-modern and feminine justice, strong stories of repair and goodwill are uncommon, and the raw material for restorativeness between victims and offenders may be in short supply. Following Engel, myth refers to a true story; its truth deals with ‘origins, with birth, with beginnings... with how something began to be’ (1993: 791-2, emphasis in original). Origin stories, in turn, ‘encode a set of oppositions’ (1993: 822) such that when telling a true story, speakers transcend adversity. By comparing advocates’ true story of restorative justice with the real story, I offer a critical and sympathetic reading of advocates’ efforts to move the idea forward. I end by reflecting on whether the political future of restorative justice is better secured by telling the mythical true story or the real story.

The politics of law and order played only a modest role in the British General Election of 2001. But that role was shaped by a near consensus between New Labour and Conservative agendas for more punitive policies towards persistent offenders and the rediscovery of the criminal rather than the crime as the rationale for sentencing policy. The article explores the background and character of this climax to a decade of realignment.