The Penal Voluntary Sector

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"Philippa Tomczak presents a detailed and nuanced account of the roles and effect of the charitable sector in prisons in England and Wales. In so doing, she develops a fresh approach to penal power that should reorient the field of study."

Mary Bosworth, Professor of Criminology and Assistant Director of the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, UK

"This book challenges some of the orthodox claims that the voluntary sector has been captured by either states or markets. Using actor-network analysis, it argues that the responses of voluntary sector to decades of neo-liberalism and penal punitiveness are nuanced, fluid and complex. Philippa Tomczak makes a compelling, critical intervention in a rapidly evolving and exciting field of study. It is high on my reading list."

Mary Corcoran, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Keele University, UK, and editor of The Voluntary Sector and Criminal Justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

"In the past few decades we have seen the emergence of an increasingly complex, hybrid and privatized landscape of penal service delivery, with more and more elements of the voluntary sector being drawn into the new neoliberal marketised penal economy too. This book is a very valuable addition to the literature on the changing relationship between the voluntary sector and the state, raising important questions about the relationship, which organisations are involved, how it works, what effects there are on consumers, and what complexities and concerns there are in new relationship. The book is both insightful and timely and will be of interest to students and scholars of criminal justice, policy-makers and practitioners across the field. "

Loraine Gelsthorpe, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Deputy Director, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK

"Tomczak's sophisticated, empirical exploration of the voluntary sector's involvement in that most involuntary of sectors, the UK's penal system, simply could not be more timely or more badly needed. It fills an enormous gap in the criminological literature while opening up dozens of new avenues for new research. A real path-breaker."

Shadd Maruna, Professor of Criminology, University of Manchester, UK