Probation Governance, Identity, and Practice

Reviews / Votes

The book is a timely analysis of the key tensions that have shaped, and continue to shape, the probation service in England and Wales. Locating the probation service and its many faces within a Foucauldian framework, Tidmarsh argues that governmentality provides an overarching lens through which to explore how probation contributes to the health and wellbeing of individuals and of society. By weaving together original empirical data with insights from across criminology, sociology and law, the book not only provides an invaluable analysis of governance in our neo-liberal era but it makes an empathetic plea to reconceive of the probation service as an important public good. A must read for anyone interested in how to humanely reform institutions within a deeply broken criminal justice system.

Insa Lee Koch, Professor of British Cultures, Universitaet St. Gallen

This is a must-read for policy-makers as well as probation leaders, inspectors and criminologists. The book charts significant changes in the organization of Probation since its inception in compelling fashion. Drawing on Foucault's theory of governmentality, the author suggests that the Probation Service can, and ought to, perform a civilizing role as an organising 'node' which brings together social welfare, treatment, and community spheres. But this axial role has been undermined both by organisational crises and the impact of the politics of austerity over time, leading to what has been described as 'an insidious form of neo-liberalism' that has weakened capacity and vision for Probation. There are strong and persuasive argument for the decentring of current organisational practices and a revisioning of probation as a more localised and 'grounded' practice. It is a book which pushes forward debate!

Loraine Gelsthorpe, Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Cambridge

Departing from the common but misleading metaphor that criminal justice institutions swing pendulum-like between punitive and rehabilitative goals Matt Tidmarsh provides the first proper genealogy of probation in the UK. Probation Governance, Identity, and Practice: Making, Unmaking, Remaking unpacks how probation has been a site of struggle among competing actors and political logics in the course of more than a century. Tidmarsh's sophisticated and clearly presented analytic framework will be a boon to students of other criminal justice institutions and other national experiences.

Jonathan Simon, Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, University of California, Berkeley