Abstract
In 2014, the coalition government’s Transforming Rehabilitation reforms led to the wholesale restructuring of probation services in England and Wales. As part of this reconfiguration of probation services, more than half of the employees of public sector Probation Trusts were transferred to 21 new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) set up to manage medium- and low-risk offenders and destined for sale in the criminal justice marketplace. This article presents the findings of an ethnographic study of the formation of one CRC, with a specific focus on the construction and negotiation of identities. We identify a number of key themes, prominent among which is ‘liminality’: i.e. the experience of being betwixt and between the old and the new, the public and the outsourced. Other themes discussed in the article include separation and loss, status anxiety, loyalty and trust, liberation and innovation.
Highlights
This article contributes to a growing body of literature which is exploring the experiences of those most intimately involved in and affected by the outsourcing and privatization of criminal justice services and functions: namely, those workers who are employed to deliver them
In contrast to the outsourcing of other discreet pieces of criminal justice work, the competitive tendering process in respect of Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) was spread across England and Wales, making it difficult to accurately predict who would be responsible for delivering probation services in particular parts of the country, and the size of the contract package area portfolios they would eventually develop
The reforms have been met with considerable opposition from within probation and its advocates, not least the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) whose campaign to keep probation in the public sector culminated in a judicial challenge to the measures. Given both the context we have described and the findings of recent research on ‘worker migration’ from the public to the private sector, we began our research with a working hypothesis that the transfer of probation workers to CRCs could have significant implications for workers’ identities
Summary
This article contributes to a growing body of literature which is exploring the experiences of those most intimately involved in and affected by the outsourcing and privatization of criminal justice services and functions: namely, those workers who are employed to deliver them. Prospects for retaining (formerly) public sector staff within fields that are increasingly being subject to private sector influence This paper examines these themes in relation to the case of the outsourcing of probation services in England and Wales and in particular focuses on the views and experiences of workers immediately in and around the point at which the existing public sector probation service was dissolved and the journey toward privatization commenced. In contrast to the outsourcing of other discreet pieces of criminal justice work, the competitive tendering process in respect of CRCs was spread across England and Wales, making it difficult to accurately predict who would be responsible for delivering probation services in particular parts of the country, and the size of the contract package area portfolios they would eventually develop. It was a process that was as challenging for probation staff—trying to comprehend who their future employers would be—as it was for bidders who could not develop medium and longerterm planning without knowing the location, size or number of CRC package areas they would be awarded.
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