The History of Probation in the UK - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The History of Probation in the UKSocial Work History NetworkLondon 25th May 2017

Dr Philip Whitehead

Professor in criminal and social justice

Teesside UniversitySlide2

What to explore in the time we’ve gotExplore the origins of the probation system in 19th century

Conditions of existence and surface of emergence (Garland)

Always an interest in origins and wanted to write about it (

Whitehead and Statham 2006; 30 years after Bochel in 1976

) – do the job and

understand

its history, tradition, culture, and role in CJS

Tried to bring this long history up to date in

Transforming Probation

(2016)

Welcome relief to talk about history than the last 20 to 30 years of political impositions; intellectual detachment/emotion and rageSlide3

Before 1876 and the first PCM of CETSThe era of Victorian liberalism and ideology of laissez-faire individualism

19

th

c. conception of the offender – freedom and equality under the law, individual responsibility, imbued with Enlightenment reason, rational choice (the

ontology

of the human subject)

This conception was reflected in the politico-economic and ideological conditions of existence: laissez-faire capitalism, minimalist state, freedom of the individual in a market-driven society, individual choice and responsibility (ring any bells?), which justified and legitimated a penality of retribution, deterrent penal and social policies, the prison system

In other words, mid-Victorian criminal justice and penal policy meshed with a particular state formation, view of the world, ideology, belief system, understanding of human behaviour

We cannot understand criminal justice or penal and social policy unless we take account of the politico-economic conditions of existence and concepts of state, ideology, class, power. For Garland (1985)

Punishment and Welfare

to a large extent penality is structured by its political and social context; it rests on a particular platform that we can excavate and explain (

reference to Marxist theory

)Slide4

From 1880s disruption of Victorian penality(History of CJS and timescales)

CHANGES

–

a changing political and economic context; recession, poverty, deprivation, inequality, social deprivation (Booth and Rowntree surveys); arguments and need for social reform? Working class agitation, trade unions, beginnings of the labour movement. The legitimacy of the Victorian prison was also being questioned

CRISES

– changes elicited 2 related crises: a) role of the state in socio-economic issues; b) regulation, management, containment, and control of troublesome populations – the problem of order

RESPONSES

– a) social work and probation; b) social security, beginnings of welfare state and reforming liberal government 1906-14; c) positivist criminology and questioning of classicism; d) eugenics movement Slide5

ConsequencesAfter the 1880s, through to the reforming liberal government of 1906-14, we see the reordering of the political, social, economic, and criminal justice realm

This is the context within which, the conditions of existence and surface of emergence, for the emergence of the probation system between 1876 and the

Probation of Offenders Act 1907 Slide6

Victorian penal complex and sanctions Death

Penal servitude

Imprisonment

Detention in a reformatory school (industrial)

Corporal punishment -

whipping adults and birch juveniles

Release on a recognizance (

PCM after 1876, 1879, 1887)

Fine

Criminals differed from non-criminals only by the fact of lawbreaking. Voluntary action, utilitarian deeds, individual choice so that 19

th

c. penality is a mix of classical justice, deterrence, retribution and reform

.Slide7

Modern penal complex 1895-1914Extended grid of disposals:Probation

Borstal

Preventive detention

Detention in inebriate reformatory

Detention in institution for the mentally defective

Licensed supervision

Supervised fines

Notions of law, justice, deterrence, and retribution remain. But “criminals are presented as individuals to be pitied, cared for, and if possible reclaimed”

(Garland, 1985, p. 27

)Slide8

20th century and recent history – full circle?The disruption to the Victorian penal complex after 1880s ushered in what Garland describes as the

penal-welfare

complex. This era of criminal justice reached into the late-1970s and was dominated by probation and rehabilitation

But this

penal-welfare

complex was, in turn, disrupted from the 1980s: from the post-war settlement, Keynes, Attlee, Beveridge, Temple; to the new dispensation of Hayek, Friedman, Reagan, Thatcher and political ideology of neoliberal capitalism

The new conditions of existence for the erosion of probation – competition, privatisation, markets working their way into people-based organisations. To some extent a

return

to the 19

th

century liberal era – the accountant’s logic

Transformations which have damaged the quality of criminal and social justice, contingent on the erosion of probation/CJS dialectic has stalled