Decentralizing risk: The role of the voluntary and community sector in the management of offenders

Abstract

This paper considers the rise of third sector agencies as key criminal justice providers within the context of the marketization of probation and other crime management responses. We posit that the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ has significant implications for the voluntary and community sector in particular and criminal justice provision in general. Pointing towards incremental colonization of the third sector by criminal justice concerns, we trace the creeping discourse of economic risk, exemplified by the commodification of provision, increased contractualization of services and the application of cost–benefit measures. We argue that government policy is being driven by a behavioural economics of risk that attempts to ‘nudge’ the sector in discrete directions through the use of incentivization, market competition and steers toward entrepreneurship. In such a context, the position of marginal groups with high needs but potentially poorer outcomes may be perilous, consigning high risk and ‘at-risk’ groups to further exclusion.