This book brings together a collection of chapters that explore the relationship between the private sector and criminal justice. This is undoubtedly a controversial topic, which excites a range of fears, consternations and anxieties among expert and lay audiences. It gives rise not only to fundamental normative and ideological debates about how societies ought to respond to âcrimeâ and administrate âjusticeâ but also to descriptive and analytical questions concerning how criminal justice structures, agencies and processes function and, crucially, with what effect. It is also a subject that often generates highly polarised debates, pitching the worst excesses of the state against the most grotesque failings of the market. Hence, objections over the curbs to freedom and liberty of an over-powerful, over-bureaucratic and centralised state sit alongside and jar against normative concerns about the extent to which the intrusions of the market threaten public interest goals of ensuring ethical, proportionate and fair criminal justice practices. The contentious nature of these debates is unsurprising. Criminal justice interventions are underpinned by recourse to coercive force and have significant implications for the freedom, rights and life chances of citizens. How criminal justice as a set of institutional practices is authorised, exercised and regulated, therefore, has crucial implications for the lived experience of citizens. Introducing private, market-based values and incentives into this highly politicised endeavour raises fundamental questions about the extent to which these accord with democratic and accepted values and the interests of the public, more broadly. The entanglements of state and market in how criminal justice responses are formulated and operationalised thus generate debates that attend to the very heart of the political, legal and social order.
Central to these debates are claims about the virtues and the vices of the public and private sectors which emanate from both sides. The debates are shaped by the different and arguably irreconcilable norms and values attributed to each (Jacobs 1994). Whereas the public or governmental sector is widely held as acting on behalf of collective or âsocietalâ interests, the private sector is routinely contrasted as serving more individualistic, corporate and profit-motivated interests (Johnston 1992; Jones and Newburn 1998). This distinction informs many of the key areas of debate, as it resonates powerfully through a series of fundamental questions about âhow justice is doneâ, âhow it is perceivedâ and, crucially, âwhose interests it servesâ. Yet the extent to which the public and private sectors can be simplistically characterised in a crude binary comparison has become increasingly questioned (Cohen 1985; Weintraub 1995). A series of political and economic transformations have led to a blurring of the boundaries between the two sectors, resulting in the public-private distinction becoming empirically less clear and conceptually more complex. Indeed, making sense of the effects of these unfolding developments requires new ways of thinking that recognise the complexity of contemporary interconnections between the public and private sectors. For example, the âcontracting outâ (or âcontracting inâ) of public service functions by the state to private sector agencies queries the extent to which these services can be characterised as wholly âpublicâ. The widespread adoption of private sector management techniques into public sector organisations has also eroded differences between sectors. Likewise, the frequent cross-over of personnel between the two sectors blurs rigid demarcations in the values, cultures and identities of their respective workforces (White 2010). It is also important to note that âthe private sectorâ particularly is heterogeneous, encompassing a wide variety of organisations and ways of working. The âpublic sectorâ too is diverse particularly when viewed from a global perspective. Devolution and the localism agenda in the UK are also ensuring that the public sector needs to be viewed increasingly as âpublic sectorsâ. The waters are muddied further by the changing nature of the voluntary sector and the growth of different types of organisations, such as social enterprises, which blur traditional distinctions between public, private and voluntary sectors by bringing a public service ethos into a for-profit operating model (Corcoran and Hucklesby 2016). As the chapters in this book show, âcriminal justiceâ has been widely caught up in these broad processes of change, resulting in a complex assemblage of public, private and voluntary sector agencies functioning interdependently in various ways and at various points in the criminal justice process.
The chapters in this collection demonstrate the ongoing need for new empirical enquiry and analytical reasoning, as well as the evolving nature of contemporary debates. Whilst only the more ardent libertarians would argue that âcriminal justiceâ should not be a core function of the state, current debates tend to explore the influence of neoliberal forms of governance and administration on how that responsibility is fulfilled and with what effects. Central to these debates has been the critical shift of the post-modern era from âgovernment to governanceâ, in which the act of governing is no longer tied to monopolistic âcommand and controlâ modes of government, but draws on the capacities of a more pluralised or ânodalâ set of institutional formations (Rhodes 1997; Rose 2000). A key allied trend has been the rapid marketisation of public services, resulting in the emergence of significant commercial opportunities for the private sector to exploit. In this, neoliberal traits of governing have brought to the fore a range of strategies and policy doctrines promoting and embedding ideologies of âeconomic liberalismâ, in which public bodies have been exposed to market disciplines and quasi-markets have been established across the public services, for example, through the widespread introduction of purchaser-provider distinctions. As aspects of public service delivery have been increasingly transferred to the private sector, the role of the state has shifted towards âsteeringâ the activities of others rather than ârowingâ itself (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). A mixed economy of service provision has subsequently emerged, bringing together coalitions of state, market and voluntary sector organisations to compete for market advantage, often in tangled but fragile webs (Crawford and Lister 2004a, b; Corcoran and Hucklesby 2016). Yet for some, as Mashaw (2006: 135) suggests, the growth of markets in public service delivery is not just conceptually destabilising, it is also ideologically upsetting.
Within this increasingly pluralised and marketised landscape, we have seen a proliferation of outsourcing arrangements in which the private sector is contracted by the state to deliver public service functions. These contractually governed arrangements have become commonplace in prison and probation services, but are also increasingly evident in the policing and security sectors where they are often referred to as âbusiness partnershipsâ. Whilst a variety of terms have been deployed to describe the context surrounding the growth of these large-scale public-private collaborations, including the âhollowed-out stateâ (Rhodes 1994), ânew public contractingâ (Vincent-Jones 2006) and âgovernment by contractâ (Freeman and Minow 2009), they are often referred to under the rubric of âprivatisationâ. Given there are different degrees of privatisation, such collaborations might be understood as a form of âweak privatisationâ (Cohen 1985: 64), or âlow-level privatisationâ (Zedner 2004: 276), in which the state seeks to retain a degree of control. Yet the extent to which the concept of âprivatisationâ adequately captures the breadth of contemporary ideas, policies and developments involving the private sector and criminal justice is debateable. As a concept, âprivatisationâ is often loosely deployed to describe a wide range of processes and practices that structure the allocation of goods and services, from âoutsourcingâ or âcontracting inâ specific (inward- and outward-looking) services or functions of public bodies to the wholesale transfer of one or more public services to the private or âfor-profitâ sector (Matthews 1989). It is thus a broad, container concept, the precise meaning of which is subject to much debate (see Starr 1988). Given this, the title of this book was chosen purposively to circumvent the definitional minefield associated with the term âprivatisationâ. Moreover, we wished to avoid imposing an analytical straightjacket on our contributors, instead allowing them to develop and explore the concepts that they felt best captured the developments they wished to discuss. In so doing, our aim was to encourage expansive and open-ended analyses of the broad range of contexts in which the private sector is, or has been, involved in the delivery of criminal justice functions. As such, the focus of this book is not âprivatisationâ per se, but rather the myriad of questions raised by the shifting nature of relations between âthe private sectorâ, âthe public sectorâ and âcriminal justiceâ.
Whilst there is a long history of entanglement between public and private sectors in the delivery of âcriminal justiceâ (Spitzer and Scull 1977), private sector involvement has expanded significantly over the last two decades. In the USA, for instance, since the advent of the first US private prison of the modern era in 1983, âprivate correctional facilitiesâ have become commonplace. In 2015 over 8 per cent (126,300) of the total prison population of 1.53 million were housed in privately run facilities, equating to 7 per cent of state prisoners and 18 per cent of federal prisoners, with 6 states housing over 20 per cent of their prison population in private facilities (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2016). In the UK, 14 prisons in England and Wales (and a further 2 in Scotland) are currently run by 3 private sector companies (G4S, Serco and Sodexo), resulting in 19 per cent of the UKâs prison population being held in private prisons (Prison Reform Trust 2016). In addition, all of the electronic monitoring provision in England, Wales and Scotland is privately operated and many of the new Community Rehabilitation Companies, who are responsible for the supervision of all low to medium risk offenders in the community, are either lead by or involve private sector organisations. Furthermore, a range of âback-officeâ, âmiddle-officeâ and more recently âfront-lineâ police functions add to the significant presence of private security personnel generally and in quasi-public spaces specifically. In 2012, for example, Lincolnshire Police signed a 10-year contract with the security company G4S for the provision of 18 functions, including inter alia the running of the forceâs custody services, force control room, crime management bureau, firearms licensing, criminal justice unit, human resources unit, fleet management and facilities and estates. The contract is worth in the region of ÂŁ200 million, accounting for 18 per cent of the forceâs annual budget (see White 2014). As well as showing the breadth and depth to which outsourcing can penetrate a public police force, this pioneering initiative also reflects how companies with a history rooted in the security industry have diversified to supply a range of organisational support functions, often marketed as âgovernment solutionsâ.
Although there is a dearth of aggregated data on the size of markets in criminal justice globally, some indication is available from the scale of the operations of the leading multi-national corporations. G4S, for instance, with a global workforce of over 600,000 is the worldâs third largest private sector employer. In the UK alone it supplies a range of âcriminal justiceâ and âcareâ services which include the management and provision of adult prisons and youth detention centres, court facilities, police custody suites, police call handling centres and immigration and detention centres. Similarly, in the USA, the Corrections Corp of America (CCA) operates within each link of the supply-side chain for incarcerating prisoners, from designing, constructing and managing prisons. Housing nearly 70,000 prisoners in over 70 prison and other detention facilities, most of which it owns, it is the fifth largest provider of correctional services in the USA, behind the federal government and three States. Furthermore, âjustice servicesâ are increasingly being provided by global âfacilities servicesâ conglomerates. One of the largest is Sodexo currently involved in both prison and probation services in England and Wales. Sodexo began as a food services and facilities management co...