An idea whose time had come: Parole, indeterminacy, and the personalization of punishment [chapter 3]

The chapter traces the emergence of parole onto the policy agenda in England and Wales between 1960 and 1968. It examines the long-term historical trends in early release administration and how this gave rise to a reform agenda that was shaped by the prevailing optimism and confidence of the 1960s. It goes on to examine growing criminological support for indeterminate sentencing and the influence of the landmark Longford Committee Report Crime: A Challenge to Us All. Here it will argue that the initial policy scoping for a parole system in England and Wales was heavily influenced by the ‘rehabilitative ideal’ and a desire to give administrative expression to prevailing support for indeterminate and the personalization of punishment. The chapter concludes with an overview of the intense policy discussion that gave rise to the parole framework articulated in the ‘Adult Offender’ White Paper

After Worboys: what next for the parole system in England and Wales?

A fair, transparent, and robust process for the termination of prison sentences is critical to the effective operation of our criminal justice system, writes Thomas Guiney. In light of the Worboys case and the attention drawn to the parole system as a result, he explains what reforms are necessary in order to build a modern parole process that is fit for purpose

Marginal gains or diminishing returns? Penal bifurcation, policy change and the administration of prisoner release in England and Wales

Prisoner release has emerged as a key site of penal policy contestation in England and Wales. A series of crises have undermined public confidence in the parole system and reopened longstanding debates over the confused normative basis of prisoner release policy and practice. This paper attempts to locate current concerns within an ideational interpretation of penal policy change. It will argue that prisoner release has been fundamentally re-shaped by a bifurcated penal strategy which emerged as one possible response to the unique challenges of late-modern crime-control. Over time this strategy has provided an enduring guide to collective action and a political template for successive penal reform programmes. However, there are signs that we may now be reaching the conceptual limits of this strategy. While the logic(s) of bifurcation will continue to yield marginal political gains in the short-term, this paper concludes that the long-term prognosis is one of diminishing returns with significant implications for the legitimacy, effectiveness and administrative coherence of prisoner release in this jurisdiction

Is the party really over? Parties, partisanship and the politics of crime.

Political parties occupy a contradictory position in the criminological literature: at once active participants in the political contestation of crime but virtually absent from contemporary debates concerning the relationship between crime and democratic theory. In this paper, I present a ‘rational reconstruction’ of party and partisanship as distinctive modes of political association that are vital to liberal democratic systems that take seriously (1) the value of political pluralism and (2) the limits of public reason to yield definitive answers to the crime question. Currently, political parties are failing to perform these mediating roles satisfactorily and I conclude that a stronger normative commitment to an ‘ethic of partisanship’ can help to revitalize our representative democracies and foster a better politics of crime

Excavating the archive: reflections on a historical criminology of government, penal policy and criminal justice change

This article makes the case for greater use of systematic archival research as a methodological tool of historical criminology. Drawing upon the authors’ historical study of ‘early release’ in England and Wales (Guiney 2018), it reviews the legal framework underpinning the current ‘right of access’ to official records and demonstrates how greater engagement with this underused public resource can reveal a richer understanding of government, penal policy-making and the continuities and dislocations within contemporary criminal justice. It goes on to consider the methodological challenges of gaining access to historical sources in criminological settings and concludes with a number of reflections upon the evolution of the discipline at a time of digital abundance and significant changes in government record keeping practices

Excavating the archive: Reflections on a historical criminology of government, penal policy and criminal justice change

This article makes the case for greater use of systematic archival research as a methodological tool of criminology. Drawing upon insights from the author’s 2018 historical study of ‘early release’ in England and Wales, it reviews the legal framework underpinning the current ‘right of access’ to official records and demonstrates how greater engagement with this underused public resource can reveal a richer understanding of penal policy making and the continuities and dislocations within contemporary criminal justice. It goes on to consider the methodological challenges of gaining access to historical sources in criminological settings and concludes with a number of reflections upon the evolution of the discipline at a time of digital abundance and significant changes in government record keeping