Table Of ContentPenal Policy and Social Justice
Also by Barbara A. Hudson and published by Macmillan
Justice through Punishment
Penal Policy and
Social Justice
Barbara A. Hudson
150th YEAR
M
MACMILLAN
© Barbara A. Hudson 1993
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First published 1993 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-49576-6 ISBN 978-1-349-23071-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23071-6
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
For Harry and Adam
Contents
Preface IX
Introduction 1
1 Developments in Penal Policy during the 1980s 17
2 Penal Policy and Social Structure 55
3 Penal Policy and Social Policy 89
4 Penal Policy and Criminal Justice 122
5 Some Ideas Whose Time Has Come 149
6 Punishment, Justice and the Problem of Law 178
Bibliography 201
Index 219
vii
Preface
This book started life as a research project with Middlesex Area Proba
tion Service, and I am grateful to the management and staff there for
encouragement to undertake the original sentencing survey, and for
agreement that the questions it seemed to generate were interesting to
people other than myself, as well as for practical help with data collec
tion. The latter stages of the book's development have been enriched by
a new partnership with Northumbria Probation Service, and again I am
grateful to colleagues at all levels of the service for sharing with me
some of their hopes and their concerns about the way penal policy is
affecting criminal justice practice.
A grant from the Leverhulme Trust enabled me to have some time
between leaving Middlesex and commencing my duties with the Univer
sity of Northumbria, and this was crucial in allowing me some space to
further analyse the original data and develop the theoretical ideas which
enabled me to see what was happening in the Middlesex courts as part of
a much more general trend. In turning a collection of data into a book
with wider themes, I have been much assisted by comments by Maureen
Cain and Carol Smart on my ftrst proposals, and by the patience and
timely advice of Steven Kennedy and Frances Arnold at Macmillan. For
help with bringing it some way down to earth again, I am indebted to the
anonymous reviewer used by the publisher. In providing evidence to
support my central contention that whatever the differences in penal
policy with respect to crimes, the same groups of people are penalised
everywhere, I am grateful to Dick Whitfield for his list of contacts, and
to Inkeri Antilla, David Biles, Else Holm, Jacqueline de Plaen and
Knut Sveri for the helpful material they so generously sent to me.
For encouraging me to believe that I had something worth saying and
had better get on and say it, thanks to Andrew Ashworth, Dee Cook,
Tony Jefferson, Roger Matthews and, especially, Pat Carlen. Between
carrying out the original research which prompted the book and finally
getting down to writing it, I have moved from being a researcher,
employed by the probation service, back into teaching. Colleagues at
Newcastle have been supportive, students have been challenging; Heather
Scott and Mat Curran in particular have managed not to look too bored
when hearing for the umpteenth time about problems with this or that
chapter, and their convivial friendship has been sustaining throughout.
ix
X Preface
This book has had an embarrassingly long gestation period. Changing
jobs, moving from one end of the country to another, as well as the often
bewildering speed of developments in the penal policy field, made it
difficult to settle down to the task of writing. New people to get to know,
new courses to write, the beauty of the Northumbrian countryside and
the acquisition of a large garden have all proved unchallengeable ex
cuses or irresistible temptations not to work on the book, but I can only
hope that the final result is the better for having a longer than envisaged
time for reflection between the original idea and its realisation.
Above all, and as ever, I am grateful to Adam and Harry for love and
patience. They have both assisted in countless ways: thanks Adam for
doing the ironing and helping with tedious chores like checking refer
ences; thanks Harry for always listening (or at least convincingly pre
tending to) and for keeping the sherry flowing.
Barbara A. Hudson
Introduction
One afternoon in the mid-1980s, a very senior Home Office official
addressed an audience of senior probation officers who were gathered
in the autumn sunshine of a south coast resort to consider how best to
develop probation practice in the light of evolving penal policy. He told
them that the need was to adopt styles of work focusing on offending and
acknowledging themselves as punishment; the days of probation as
social work were over, the service must recognise its role as unequivoc
ally part of the penal system. Its special purpose was, he said, to provide
appropriately constructive but none the less punitive programmes that
would encourage sentencers to allow offenders whose crimes were in
the middle range of seriousness to remain in the community, thereby
helping the Home Office achieve its objective of ensuring that only the
most serious offenders were sentenced to imprisonment. In fact, he
was outlining the policy that is now well known as twin-tracking, the
main strategy for the achievement of which is increased provision of
punishment in the community. When the staff conference ended, man
agers and probation officers set about this task of devising and imple
menting strategies to increase the number of people convicted of
medium-serious crimes (such as burglary) on their caseloads, and re
duce the number of first offenders.
This scene was being enacted up and down the country. Probation
services rapidly developed offending behaviour groups, intensive pro
bation programmes, alcohol and addiction courses, and they accepted
in large measure the role allotted them by government of being the
principal 'transmission mechanism' for translating penal policy into
penal practice. Like juvenile justice in the early 1980s and American
probation in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, probation services in England
and Wales seemed to accept that it was their clinging on to out
moded social work models, their lack of target hardening, their lack of
offence focus in court reports and in post-sentence work, that enabled
the courts to send so many non-violent, non-serious offenders to prison.
All the probation services in England and Wales drew up statements of
objectives and priorities which prioritised local reductions in imprison
ment rates, and raising the criminality profile of their probation and
community service caseloads.
As a probation service research officer I, together with others in the
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