cjm 97: Criminal justice marketisation
This edition, guest edited by Dr Mary Corcoran marks the first anniversary of the launch of the competition to bid for contracts to deliver probation services under the banner of Transforming Rehabilitation.
Today, discussion about the market revolution in criminal justice has been rendered more contentious by successive phases of privatisation, outsourcing, and deregulation in the UK over three decades.
Proponents justify these as the painfully necessary application of commercial shock to reform moribund state services. Privatisation, of course, is one aspect of a broader cultural and political alignment of institutional and social behaviour with the laws of the market.
More pragmatically, the lure of market solutions has gained currency among centre-right and centre-left governments (with some marginal differences) in the UK and elsewhere in pursuit of the elusive alchemy of greater efficiency, cheaper costs and better services.
Despite the heat of the debate, the deployment of concepts of marketisation remains inconsistent and contested. The articles in this edition explore various aspects of this complex set of issues.