Outsourcing Probation Services in England and Wales: Theorizing and Documenting Change

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

In September 2013 the Ministry of Justice published details of how its Transforming Rehabilitation agenda would restructure the delivery of offender management services in England and Wales. Within these reforms approximately 70% of the activities carried out by a public sector probation service were to be outsourced to the private sector through the establishment of 21 community rehabilitation companies (CRCs). This thematic panel features three papers that have emerged out of an ESRC funded project titled Devolving Probation Services: An ethnographic study of the implementation of the Transforming Rehabilitation Agenda (ESRC Ref ES/M000028/1) that involved the research team conducting 14-months of observation and interview-based research to capture, in one case study area, the experience of staff during this period of profound organizational change through the creation, early development, and sale of a CRC.

Sub Unit

• Area VII: Criminal Justice Policy and Practice / 38: Corrections

Individual Presentations

• Probation Migration(s): Examining Occupational Culture in a Turbulent Field - Lol Burke, Liverpool John Moores University, UK

• Transitioning and Transforming Probation: The Personal and Professional Challenges for Leaders Engaged in Delivering Public Sector Reform - Matthew Millings, Liverpool John Moores University

• Patrolling the Borders of Risk: The New Bifurcation of Probation Services in England & Wales - Gwen Robinson, University of Sheffield

Chair

• Gwen Robinson, University of Sheffield