The Voluntary Sector and Criminal Justice

Anthea Hucklesby, Mary Corcoran, Anthea Hucklesby, Mary Corcoran

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349578627, 9781137370662
• eBook ISBN: 9781137370679
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

The voluntary sector has a long history of involvement in criminal justice by providing a variety of services to offenders and their families, victims and witnesses. This collection brings together leading experts to provide critical reflections and cutting edge research on the contemporary features of voluntary sector work in criminal justice.
At a time when the voluntary sector's role is being transformed, this book examines the dynamic nature of the voluntary sector and its responses to current uncertainties, and some of the conflicting positions with regards to its present and future role in criminal justice work. It also examines the potential impact of economic, political and ideological trends on the role and remit of voluntary sector organisations which undertake criminal justice work.

1

Introduction

Anthea Hucklesby and Mary Corcoran

The voluntary sector’s role in criminal justice is being transformed. Instead of supplementing the services provided by statutory criminal justice agencies it is becoming enmeshed in the day-to-day operation of the criminal justice system. Since the 1990s successive governments have actively engaged the voluntary sector in determining local crime, justice and community safety strategies. More recently, policies have aimed to increase the involvement of voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) in services which have hitherto been provided by statutory agencies. These policy developments are premised on a blend of neoliberal political rationalities for restructuring state welfare systems into ‘mixed-service markets’ and communitarian aspirations to liberate the untapped social capital, expertise and consensus of the voluntary sector in securing justice at community level (Norman, 2010). Whilst voluntary sector–state partnership and contracting out are not new, a combination of funding and political reforms under successive governments has generated a profusion of new spaces for collaboration, which are unprecedented in scale. However, behind these new formations in the national and regional voluntary sector and criminal justice landscapes reside the overwhelming majority of small- and medium-sized organisations which continue to provide the backbone of volunteering, civic engagement and local service delivery.

VSOs are longstanding providers of support to suspects, defendants, offenders, victims and witnesses and their families. Historically, they have augmented state service provision. In performing this role they have relied largely on short-term, insecure funding streams which have resulted in ad hoc, patchy and short-term service provision with little strategic direction. Recently, traditional funding streams have been either replaced by competitive commissioning or squeezed as a result of the financial crisis to the point where many VSOs face financial stress at a time when they are being asked to contribute significantly to criminal justice policy and practice. These conditions have resulted in turbulent times for the voluntary sector (Macmillan et al., 2013).

The radically heightened expectations of what VSOs are being expected to deliver is resulting in qualitative changes in their role. The prospect of closer partnerships with state and for-profit organisations may present advantages for VSOs in offering strategic direction, continuity of service provision and financial stability. However, it also presents challenges in terms of whether VSOs have the capacity, capability, infrastructure, expertise or willingness to deliver particular services for the criminal justice system; legal, ideological and ethical questions about taking on quasi-punitive and formal sentencing and enforcement roles; and the compatibility of service provision and advocacy and campaigning roles. The longer-term ambition of rendering VSOs fit for purpose to deliver public services necessarily incorporates them into the pervasive managerial, audit and performance management systems that operate in the statutory sector. At the same time, the onus is placed on statutory criminal justice agencies to ensure effective oversight and accountability structures are in place to support and monitor the work of VSOs as well as ensuring that high-quality services are provided and statutory duties are met in terms of equality and data protection, for example.

From one perspective, these developments herald a turning point by which the sector’s historical strengths of mutuality and service are deployed to help make public services more responsive, democratically accountable and relevant to all sections of society (Putnam, 2000). From a different vantage point, the forging of partnerships by means of greater commercialisation and subordination to contract and audit cultures threatens to capture the ‘soul’ of the voluntary sector (Salaman, 2013). A third factor, and one which has been largely glossed over in the political rhetoric, relates to the need for a clear delineation of the voluntary sector’s commitment to social justice in the sphere which can epitomise legal injustice. Viewed from within the sector, the prospect of working more closely with the state and for-profit organisations has the potential to jeopardise the very independence which ultimately underpins its claim to a distinctive social mission and function (Independence Panel, 2014). As a consequence, and with some controversy, the chameleon sector finds itself once again in the position of reinventing its relationships with markets, governments, communities and individuals as well as reasserting its independent social and civic mission (Civil Exchange, 2014). Although it may be too soon to conclusively measure the impact of economic and policy factors on the future shape and role of the voluntary sector in criminal justice, these factors are undoubtedly likely to be transformative – for better or for worse.

This volume of essays arose out of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded seminar series on the third sector in criminal justice (RES-451-26-0823) which ran between 2011 and 2013. It brings together critical reflections and cutting-edge research on the contemporary features of voluntary sector work by capturing the dynamic nature of the voluntary sector, its responses to the current climate, and identifying some of the conflicting positions with regard to its current and future role in criminal justice work. The volume examines the current and future potential impact of economic, political and ideological trends on the role and remit of VSOs at a time when it is perceptibly evolving from familiar models of voluntary sector service provision to one in which VSOs are potentially becoming embedded in the criminal justice administrative apparatus. In the remainder of the introduction we provide an overview of the policy context in which VSOs were operating at the time the chapters were written (2014–2015). The aim is to provide a context to debates which follow. Before doing this we define the subject of this book: the voluntary sector involved in criminal justice service provision.

Defining the voluntary sector in criminal justice

The voluntary sector has been involved in criminal justice for a long time (Carey and Walker, 2002) and in many different ways including as service providers and/or reform/campaign organisations. Yet, defining the voluntary sector which is involved in criminal justice is not an easy task. As many of the authors in this volume point out, the number of VSOs working exclusively with service users involved in criminal justice is, in some way, relatively small (Clinks, 2014). For many VSOs offenders or crime victims are just one of their service user groups. Their work focuses on an area in which many offenders and/or victims have needs and it is on this basis that they intersect with the criminal justice system. Indeed some VSOs may unknowingly be working with service users caught up in the criminal justice process whilst others may play down their work with offenders because of concerns about spoiling their reputation, therefore making those who work with offenders particularly difficult to identify. VSOs may also be involved in assisting with offenders’ and victims’ needs, which may or may not be linked directly to their offending or victimisation. In the main, this book is about VSOs who consider themselves as working with or alongside the criminal justice system and openly acknowledge that at least some of their service users are involved in the criminal justice system to a greater or lesser extent. Many of these VSOs have dual roles as service providers and advocacy/campaigning organisations. The tensions which this potentially creates are among the themes of this volume.

The organisations which comprise the voluntary sector involved in criminal justice are also diverse in terms of size: there are a few large national organisations, some regional organisations and many local organisations. The local organisations range in size and include very small VSOs run by one or two people and most have turnovers of less than £100,000 (Gojkovic et al., 2011). In recent years there have been mergers between some of the medium and large VSOs resulting in advantages of scale but potentially threatening some of the traditional values and working practices associated with the voluntary sector. New types of organisations have also emerged such as social enterprises which blur the already indistinct boundaries between voluntary and private sector organisations. Despite the plethora of organisational models, certain consistent features of VSOs remain (Etherington and Passey, 2002). VSOs are non-profit-making and many of them have charitable status. Consequently, they are governed by their charitable aims and are required to comply with charities law. VSOs are governed by trustees and/or directors who are volunteers and who are ultimately responsible for the management and financial affairs of the organisation whether or not they employ paid staff to run the VSO on a day-to-day basis. The diversity of the sector, however, means that policy developments and changes in the environment in which VSOs operate will impact on different parts of the sector in different ways.

Finally, we have chosen to use the terms voluntary sector and VSOs in this volume. We could have used several others, amongst them the third sector (which includes mutual and social enterprises as well as VSOs) or the voluntary and community sector. The advantage of using the term voluntary sector is that it has a long history and is understood internationally. There are drawbacks, however. The inclusion of the word ‘voluntary’ is a misnomer suggesting that the services provided are free and exclusively by volunteers, that is, unpaid helpers. The reality is rather different. Whilst some VSOs rely entirely on either volunteers or paid staff, most have a mixture of both.

The policy context

Recently governments have sought to increase the involvement of VSOs in core criminal justice activities. Policy is rapidly moving towards a mixed economy of service provision within criminal justice whereby core services, which have traditionally been provided only by statutory sector agencies, are supplied by a tripartite structure of statutory, private and voluntary sector organisations working singly or in partnership (MoJ, 2010, 2013; NOMS, 2014). In theory, the voluntary sector should be in a strong position to take this opportunity, having been involved in providing services in criminal justice for a considerable period of time. Nevertheless, its role is potentially being transformed from a provider of supplementary, ‘nice to have’ services to a provider of core criminal justice services, and in doing so arguably co-opting it, or at least parts of it, into the apparatus of the state (Maguire, 2012).

The motivations for greater involvement of VSOs have been dressed up in the cloak of greater civil society engagement in criminal justice, fostering greater public involvement in dealing with the crime problem (Morgan, 2012; Maguire, chapter three, this volume). VSOs have continued their traditional role of filling gaps left by statutory criminal justice agencies and supplementing the services they provide by becoming increasingly involved in core criminal justice activities. At the same time, government policy has colonised some areas of service delivery which have traditionally been the preserve of the voluntary sector. These include the provision of statutory support to prisoners released from prison having served sentences of less than 12 months from February 2015 and the increasing number of mentoring schemes funded by the government (MoJ, 2013). The landscape is not simply one in which more and more criminal justice services are being provided by the voluntary sector but one in which the voluntary sector is being expected to become the service deliverer of government policy. The government has asked the voluntary sector to do two things: one, to operate or at least become more involved in providing some services which have hitherto been provided by the state and, two, to maintain involvement in providing services in its traditional areas of operation but to do so from inside the criminal justice system and with government funding. It is not then a return to the 19th and early 20th centuries when VSOs operated largely outside of government control but one where the concern is that VSOs are becoming agents of the state. Such concerns are not new, as Dacombe and Morrow demonstrate in chapter four.

Government attempts to increase the involvement of VSOs in criminal justice services are motivated by a number of factors. Austerity measures have led to considerable cuts in criminal justice budgets and all agencies are being required to find new ways of doing the same (and in some cases more) for less. The voluntary sector is viewed as a resource which can provide services more cost-efficiently than the statutory sector and potentially access sources of funding not available to statutory agencies (Hucklesby and Worrall, 2007). A second related driver has been the radical transformation of public services. Diversifying the providers of public services to include private and voluntary sectors is one part of a broader reform package which includes localism – devolving responsibility, decision-making and budgets and ‘improving the transparency, efficiency and accountability of public services’ (HM Government, 2010; HM Treasury, 2010: 8). The third motivation is linked to a policy trend to harness the power of civil society and strengthen its involvement in the lives of citizens and residents. It is claimed that the voluntary sector has a key contribution to make in all these regards and is quantifiably ‘better’ at providing services than the statutory sector. It is viewed as an innovative, nimble and flexible sector which is embedded in, and reaches out to, communities and particularly hard-to-reach groups. It can therefore contribute to transforming public services by providing innovative programmes and services, which may cause a ripple effect in the public sector, at a reduced cost (Etherington, 2006; Morgan, 2012).

Whilst supporters from within and beyond the voluntary sector will extol similar virtues of the sector, they also question some of the assumptions which form the basis of government policy. Primary amongst these is that the voluntary sector should not be viewed as a cheap or in some cases free resource. A considerable infrastructure is required to ensure that the voluntary sector can provide appropriate services; moreover, ‘volunteers’ are not free, and they, at least, require training and expenses (Hucklesby and Worrall, 2007). Second, moves to increase its involvement in criminal justice will inevitably result in some of the voluntary sector’s positive attributes being undermined (Maguire, 2012). For example, the requirements of being contracted to provide government services will increase bureaucracy and make VSOs less innovative and flexible.

Of greater concern to some commentators is that the fundamental values of the voluntary sector and its critical voice may be threatened (Corcoran, 2008; Silvestri, 2009; Mills et al., 2011). At its heart are anxieties that the voluntary sector will lose its independence and legitimacy and be co-opted into the state’s apparatus (Carlen, 2002; Hannah-Moffat, 2002). Concerns have also been raised about mission drift, whereby the values and objectives of VSOs might change to align more closely to government or partners’ agendas in order to receive funding to provide services alone or in partnership. Values may be further undermined via involvement in coercive aspects of the criminal justice system. Hitherto these have been almost the exclusive roles of statutory organisations (for an exception see Hucklesby, 2011). Greater involvement of VSOs in the criminal justice system, especially in its coercive elements, potentially threatens their trusted status and credibility amongst communities and hard-to-reach groups, putting at risk their work in local communities and thereby contradicting the basis of their appeal to the ‘localism’ agenda of the coalition and current conservative governments. Alongside the Lobbying Bill 2015, which seeks to define campaigning as ‘political’, it also puts at risk the dual roles many VSOs perform as service providers and advocacy/campaigning organisations, and potentially the VSOs’ charitable status.

A key element of government plans under the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) agenda (MoJ, 2013) is the introduction of Payment by Results whereby service providers will be paid according to reductions in reconviction rates which follow an intervention. Payment by Results is a controversial payment mechanism, particularly because it uses a binary measure of reconviction and transfers financial risks onto the service providers (Fox and Albertson, 2011, 2012). It also encourages ‘cherry-picking’ (working with those least likely to reoffend) and ‘parking’ (not working with those at high risk of reoff...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Index