The marketisation of rehabilitation: Some economic considerations

Albertson, Kevin; Fox, Chris

doi:10.1177/0264550518820122

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Assessing risk is the sole province of the NPS, which advises the courts on sentencing and determines where offenders are allocated; CRCs are expected to ‘innovate’ to reduce reoffending, working with offenders serving community sentences and providing ‘Through the Gate’ continuity of service (MoJ, 2013b). Preferred providers for the 21 CRCs were announced in October 2014, with private companies assuming responsibility for the contracts in February 2015 (Albertson and Fox, 2019). Indeed, the extent to which the tendering process benefited large, multinational corporations has contributed to the belief that ideology was the primary driver of the TR reforms (Burke and Collett, 2016).…”

Section: ‘Business As Usual’? Probation Identity and Culture After Trmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Albertson and Fox (2019) assert that the public are, in general, suspicious of marketisation and privatisation. For Hedderman and Murphy (2015), however, a lack of public interest in the probation service and the work it performs resulted in very little media coverage of, and thus opposition to, TR .…”

Section: ‘Business As Usual’? Probation Identity and Culture After Trmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The time lag between the point at which a prospective provider would pay their fixed costs (rents, utilities, staffing, etc.) and the realisation of (unpredictable) outcome-based payments meant PbR contracts that were overdependent upon results disincentivised potential bidders (Albertson and Fox, 2019).…”

Section: Pbr and The Probation ‘Marketplace’mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

Tidmarsh

2020

European Journal of Probation

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This article reviews developments in probation in England and Wales since 2010, a decade in which services were exposed to the logic of competition and profit. In 2014, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government’s Transforming Rehabilitation ( TR) reforms promised an end to a top-down, target-centric culture of state intervention by outsourcing services for low-to-medium risk offenders to 21 privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). And yet, just four years after the reforms were implemented, the Conservative government announced that CRCs’ contracts would be terminated, with all offender management services returned to the public sector. With a focus on the private sector, the article argues that radical change to the probation service’s structure has entrenched a focus on centrally-administered performance targets and audit. In other words, contrary to the decentralising rhetoric at the core of TR, the decade has in many ways produced more of the same managerialism that the reforms were presented as a means to displace. The result has been a general decline in the quality of probation services.

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Section: ‘Business As Usual’? Probation Identity and Culture After Trmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ‘Business As Usual’? Probation Identity and Culture After Trmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

Tidmarsh

2020

European Journal of Probation

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“…The model of payment for CRCs involved initial funding through government contracts and a Payment by Results (PbR) model, where CRCs would be financially rewarded for demonstrable reductions in offending. This model was considered flawed as some argued there would be no way of demonstrating cause and effect – specifically that any reductions in offending could be directly attributable to CRCs (Albertson and Fox, 2019). Others noted the fact that the reforms were based on a false premise, that is, that probation services were not adequately addressing recidivism among people who were sentenced to short prison sentences; pointing out that this cohort was not in fact subject to probation supervision prior to the TR reforms (Cracknell, 2018).…”

Section: Setting the Scenementioning

confidence: 99%

A legitimate business? Representations of privatised probation in England and Wales

Carr

Robinson

2020

Crime, Media, Culture

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The Transforming Rehabilitation reforms implemented in England & Wales in 2014 witnessed the transfer of responsibility for a large proportion of the work of the public sector probation service to 21 newly created Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs), which were contracted out to a range of providers dominated by private sector interests. This part-privatisation of probation services has raised important questions about the legitimacy of the new organisations in the eyes of both internal and external audiences, and about the ‘legitimation work’ that the CRCs might engage in to address any legitimacy deficits they themselves perceive. This article presents the findings of an analysis of the websites of all 21 CRCs, and considers what these externally facing representations of the CRCs suggest about legitimation work in the private probation sector. Our analysis suggests that CRCs use some of the same strategies of legitimation that have been found in another ‘tainted trade’ – the private security industry – and are similarly ambivalent about what – and to whom – they are marketing their ‘business’. We suggest that our analysis sheds new light on old questions about how the somewhat intangible goods of probation work can be captured and communicated to a mixed constituency of potential stakeholders, as well as raising new questions about the role of websites (and other marketing materials) in that endeavour.

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“…Further coverage in the journal has charted the vagaries of implementation, for instance through foreseeable difficulties in Payment by Results (Albertson and Fox, 2019) and the casting aside of smaller local voluntary services under the behemoth of large-scale procurement processes (Corcoran et al, 2019). Meanwhile in more recent years, we have published some of the areas in which practice innovation had been taking place and where some staff articulated a sense of excitement about the potential for the probation role.…”

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confidence: 99%

Reunified probation. All aboard the ‘justice fleet’

Carr¹

2021

Probation Journal

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Probation services in England were re-unified and brought back into public ownership on 26 June 2021, following the privatisation and division of services that took place under Transforming Rehabilitation. Probation in Wales had already been brought fully under the public ambit in December 2019, following the collapse of the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC), which had operated there. The re-unification of probation services has been welcomed across a range of quarters, from trade union bodies and parliamentarians to the probation inspectorate. However, many who have welcomed the decision have also noted the heavy toll that years of disruption have had on probation services in England and Wales. A disruption that has been particularly marked in the impact on the probation workforce.We have previously published articles in the journal about the significant effects of Transforming Rehabilitation on staff across probation services both in the lead up to and following the implementation of the reforms. For instance, Phillips et al.(2016) documented the feeling of 'relentlessness' amongst staff who experienced the move towards the supervision of primarily 'high-risk' cases in the National Probation Service (NPS). In a practitioner response, Lee (2017) observed the need for enhanced supervisory supports, particularly to address the emotional impacts of working with high degrees of trauma among service users. A Special Issue of the journal marking the fifth anniversary of Transforming Rehabilitation (Volume 66, Issue 1, 2019), included an article by Walker et al. (2019), which documented the stresses and workload pressures experienced by staff in CRCs and the NPS, and which for some, led to their decision to leave probation work altogether.Further coverage in the journal has charted the vagaries of implementation, for instance through foreseeable difficulties in Payment by Results (Albertson and Fox, 2019) and the casting aside of smaller local voluntary services under the behemoth of large-scale procurement processes (Corcoran et al., 2019). Meanwhile in more recent years, we have published some of the areas in which practice innovation had been taking place and where some staff articulated a sense of excitement about the potential for the probation role. It is clear therefore that reunification will mean different things to staff depending on their position and experiences to date.

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The marketisation of rehabilitation: Some economic considerations

Cited by 12 publications

References 52 publications

The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

The probation service in England and Wales: A decade of radical change or more of the same?

A legitimate business? Representations of privatised probation in England and Wales

Reunified probation. All aboard the ‘justice fleet’

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