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Towards “the Field of Corrections”: Modernizing the Probation Service in the Late 1990s
Author(s) -
Nellis Mike
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9515.00152
Subject(s) - modernization theory , authoritarianism , government (linguistics) , prison , public administration , odds , service (business) , public service , conservative government , political science , political economy , politics , sociology , economics , law , democracy , economy , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , logistic regression
The Probation Service in England and Wales has been caught up in the New Labour government’s broader programme of “modernization”. In a document more radical than anything produced under the previous Conservative government, New Labour has proposed that the Service be brought under centralized control, that its name be changed to reflect its new primary purpose of public protection, and that it be brought into closer structural alignment with the Prison Service. This paper discerns in the case made for centralization and the need for closer ties with prisons an authoritarian impulse which is deeply at odds with the Service’s own local traditions, and questions whether the undoubtedly necessary process of modernization must take the form being proposed by the government.