12,328 research outputs found
On the musical compositions of Christopher Hobbs
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From nationalisation to privatisation, or bringing capitalism to the people
No full textThe chapter starts by exploring the contested term ‘privatisation’ and proposes the adoption of a multi-modal framework that encapsulates the wide range of sector-specific variants. The chapter continues by identifying the ideological roots of privatisation and explores the role of transatlantic think tanks in disseminating ideas. In tracing the trajectory of privatisation, the authors argue that whilst the model of privatisation of the industrial sector differs from that of the Welfare State, the technical, legislative, administrative, political and ideological precedents established by early forays into privatisation provided the platform for the later more innovative and creative incursions of the private sector into public service provision.The chapter continues by exploring the enabling environment—the interconnecting social, economic and political factors—that served as the launch pad for the seismic shift in public policy thinking and action: a shift that transformed the State from one founded on social democratic principles into a hollowed out one shaped by neoliberalism. With the foundations established, the bulk of the chapter is given over to a discussion of the different stages of privatisation
Privatising criminal justice: history, neoliberal penality and the commodification of crime
No full textExplores the social, cultural, and political context of privatisation in the criminal justice sector. In recent years, the criminal justice sector has made various strategic partnerships with the private sector, exemplified by initiatives within the police, the prison system, and offender services. This has seen unprecedented growth in the past thirty years, and a veritable explosion under the tenure of the Coalition government in the United Kingdom.This book highlights key areas of domestic and global concern and illustrates, with detail, case studies of important developments. It connects the study of criminology and criminal justice to the wider study of public policy, government institutions, and political decision making. In doing so, Privatising Criminal Justice provides a theoretical and practical framework for evaluating collaborative public and private sector response to social problems at the beginning of the twenty-first century
Public sector outsourcing, the contract culture and the myth of the regulatory State
No full textIn this chapter, the authors debate the emergence of the regulatory State and the systemic flaws in the regulatory apparatus exposed by incidents of malfeasance, disasters and scandals. The chapter explores how the privatisation and market imperatives have increasingly become associated with the loss of transparency and good governance, poor performance, corner-cutting, lax contract scrutiny and oversight, malpractice, negligence and on occasions culpable criminality. In this section, the authors explore how the expansion of privatisation has given rise to a plethora of regulatory bodies, leading some to argue that the Welfare State has been replaced with the regulatory State. Despite this, the authors argue that as the boundaries between the public and the private sector have become increasingly permeable, the regulatory State has incrementally conceded its authority to commercial interests. As a powerful new public-sector oligopoly of multi-national private contractors has emerged and governments have become increasingly dependent upon them, the ‘too big to fail’ companies have exploited for profit the systemic fault lines
Interrogating the failed probation experiment, or it wasn't broken, so why did they try to fix it?
No full textWith private companies predators rather than partners and the Probation Service particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of successive governments’ forays into privatisation, in a series of incremental changes, the Probation Service was progressively softened up for ‘selling off’ to the private sector. This chapters focuses exclusively on the balkanisation of the Probation Service, with the majority of community sentences and rehabilitation packaged off and outsourced to the private sector through the policy of transforming rehabilitation. With the ‘new’ National Probation Service marginalised, reduced to initial risk assessment, advising courts on sentencing options and the direct management of convicted lawbreakers deemed ‘high risk’, the various steps involved in turning the policy vision into a programme of action from consultation, to green papers, to bills and enacted legislation, and its humiliating reversal after a mere four years of operation, are traced.Charting the resistance by penal reformers, trade unionists and parliamentary allies; the concerns and warnings issued by opponents during the consultation stage; and the series of excoriating reports compiled by government watch-dogs during the period of its implementation, the authors explore how the short-lived failed experiment of outsourcing the delivery of low- to medium-risk offenders, driven by ideological dogmatism, political hubris and austerity underfunding, transformed a first-class service into one ‘not fit for purpose’: a disastrous development that ultimately forced the Ministry of Justice to abandon the project, with the announcement of a partial U-turn in 2019, followed a year later by total U-turn, removing the private sector from the delivery of all core aspects of the provision of probation services
The private and public police, or there and back
No full textChapter 6 is the first of two consecutive inter-related chapters on policing which examine and evaluate the development of both public and private policing perspectives, primarily in the context of England and Wales but also drawing on relevant comparative theoretical and practice models when appropriate. In this chapter the customary system which preceded considerations of public policing is offered as a precursor to the development of the public sphere and centralised governance. The creation of the new police, moreover public policing, and the increasingly complementary blending of private security are then examined as counterpoints through the social, disciplinary and technological changes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up until the post–Second World War apex for the public service role in policing, which has frequently been termed the ‘Golden Age’.The challenges of recession and discord which followed the post-war boom are then explored with the perceived need for the modernisation of public policing prior to the emergence of the New Right politics of the late 1970s, highlighting the impact on policing practice and its administration enacted by consecutive Conservative administrations led by Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s and the progress of the private security industry as amalgam and supplement, reflecting that this era provided the catalyst for the profound relational changes between the public, the police and private enterprise that have influenced and informed the policy of all governments that have followed, regardless of personality or ideological tinge
Prison privatisation and normalisation in the neoliberal State: between dispersal of decency and diffusion of duty
No full textChapter 9 follows on from and builds on the content of Chapter 8 in mapping the development of privatisation within the prison system of the United Kingdom. It does this by chronologically exploring four overlapping intensive phases of criminal justice policy, covering the last 40 years in critical overview. The first considers aspects of the ideological justification for the use of competition as a tool of penal reform in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ensuing clamour for its adoption and its formal realisation as government policy under the Conservatives. The second explores the rapid manufacture and public acceptance of a private prison complex under the Major administrations at the start of the 1990s—a move which conceptually owed much to the American model but was supplied with a distinctly British flavour. The third phase evaluates the response of a succession of Blairite Labour governments between 1997 and 2010, firmly against penal privatisation in opposition but shown to be exacting neoliberalists in governance. Finally, the last decade is scrutinised, a period framed by austerity and intense social change, where normalised penal privatisation went beyond rationalisation towards a culture of denigration and drift
International influences on criminal justice policy-making
No full textIn recent years, increasing attention has been given to the similarities between penal policies that operate in different jurisdictions in advanced, industrial western states. Linked to the notions of globalisation and the spread of neoliberalism, public policy writers have sought to explore the interaction between macro- level economic and social changes that characterise ‘late modern’ capitalist societies, and the micro- level decision- making of individual political actors in nation states. With this in mind, this chapter is designed to help you to critically evaluate the international infl uences on British penal policy, in particular the importance of the USA as an exporter of ideas about crime control and punishment to England and Wales. The focus of the chapter is recent specifi c policy developments that refl ect the degree to which the importer state moulds the policy that it transfers in to domestic sensibilities and professional and organisational procedures and practices. When reading this chapter, you will be introduced to key aspects of penal policy, namely privatisation and ‘three strikes and you’re out’ mandatory sentences, and will be encouraged to distinguish between the symbolic politics of the rhetorical and the real
Introduction
No full textThis introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the theoretical building blocks of privatisation and traces its development across four decades. It explores the contested term ‘privatisation’ and proposes the adoption of a multi-modal framework for analysis that encapsulates the wide range of sector specific variants. The book discusses how, despite claims to the contrary whilst in opposition, privatisation emerged as an accepted aspect of the party’s political agenda. It also discusses the key themes of: globalisation, neoliberalism, risk, responsibilisation and securitisation; development of the United States as the penal workshop of the world; and the transfer of penal policy ideas and products to the United Kingdom. The book also explores how the Probation Service was vulnerable to the vagaries of successive governments’ forays into privatisation and in a series of incremental changes, including increasing outsourcing of peripheral services, softened up for selling off to the private sector
The free market panacea and putting the State up for sale
No full textWhilst critics make a compelling case that private profit and public good are incompatible; that privatisation undermines the guiding principles public purpose and public service; that fundamental public services, such as education, health care, defence and criminal justice should be protected from the vagaries of the profit motive; and that the delivery of public service should be underpinned by transparency, accountability and objectivity, over the last four decades, privatisation has become an accepted part of policy across the political spectrum.In this chapter, the authors chart key developments between 1997 and 2020. This encompasses the 13 years of New Labour government, the coalition government austerity years, the return of Conservative administration in 2015, and the 2020/1 COVID-19 crisis.<br/
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