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Bringing policy reform to fruition is an enterprise fraught with difficulty; penal policy is no different. This paper argues that the concept of 'storylines', developed within policy studies, is capable of generating valuable insights into the internal dynamics of penal policy change and particularly the 'commmunicative miracle' whereby policy participants sufficiently align to achieve reform. I utilize the part-privatization and part-marketization of probation services in England and Wales ('Transforming Rehabilitation') as a pertinent case study: a policy disaster foretold, but nonetheless inaugurated at breakneck speed. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, I demonstrate the means by which the 'rehabilitation revolution' storyline resolved (at least temporarily) the tensions and problems inherent in the reform project; without which it would have struggled to succeed. We see that storylines play at least three important roles for policy makers: they enable specific policies to 'make sense', to 'fit' in line with their pre-existing beliefs. They provide a sense of meaning, moral mission and self-legitimacy. And they deflect contestation. In closing, I consider the implications for scholars of penal policy change.

This paper utilizes the notion of 'policy disasters' to examine the policy developments that led to the part-privatization and marketization of probation services in England and Wales – Transforming Rehabilitation. Specifically, it examines the 'internal' component of policy disasters, drawing on semi-structured interviews with senior policymakers and other relevant sources. The findings presented demonstrate that the policy dynamics relating to Transforming Rehabilitation specifically, and the departmental budget as an important underlying component, were both distinctly 'unbalanced'. This is argued to be an important explanatory factor in its damagingly swift implementation and operationalization. In closing, the paper reflects on the policy studies notion of 'policy equilibrium' to consider whether the policy landscape relating to probation in England and Wales has reached a 'steady state', or whether the ongoing apparent failings of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms may result in a further round of considerable policy change.

AbstractAbstract: This article offers an interpretive political analysis framework, exploring and asserting its value for understanding penal change. It is argued that this approach serves, in part, to emphasise the importance of the minutiae of political activity: the crucial impact that apparently minor decisions, unimportant participants, or particular 'rules of the game' can play in specific outcomes. It emphasises the importance of human agency and meaning: the relationship between politics and fate. It facilitates the connections of particular 'micro' analyses with 'macro' accounts of penal change. I argue that the approach set out here thereby enables us to place centre stage the beliefs and practices of policy participants, and the political dynamics of policymaking. By doing so, particular case studies serve as valuable 'windows' into the meanings in action that iteratively make sense of, respond to, and thereby (re‐)constitute the realities in which actors operate, specific penal outcomes, and broader penal change.

AbstractThis article explores some of the key pathologies of English penal politics by applying an interpretive political analysis perspective to the specific issue of the plight of the 'prisoners left behind', the thousands of indeterminate‐sentenced IPP (imprisonment for public protection) prisoners who remain incarcerated, notwithstanding the abolition in 2012 of this sentencing option targeted at 'dangerous offenders'. The article draws on research findings from an ESRC funded study of penal policymaking to examine why the Gordian knot of the prisoners left behind has proved to be so hard to untangle. The broader lessons of this specific story are then set out. In particular, it is argued that the public and political debate around criminal justice has become damagingly narrow over recent years.

This article offers an interpretive political analysis framework, exploring and asserting its value for understanding penal change. It is argued that this approach serves, in part, to emphasise the importance of the minutiae of political activity: the crucial impact that apparently minor decisions, unimportant participants, or particular 'rules of the game' can play in specific outcomes. It emphasises the importance of human agency and meaning: the relationship between politics and fate. It facilitates the connections of particular 'micro' analyses with 'macro' accounts of penal change. I argue that the approach set out here thereby enables us to place centre stage the beliefs and practices of policy participants, and the political dynamics of policymaking. By doing so, particular case studies serve as valuable 'windows' into the meanings in action that iteratively make sense of, respond to, and thereby (re‐)constitute the realities in which actors operate, specific penal outcomes, and broader penal change.

This volume draws on over 60 in-depth interviews with key policymakers to tease out the beliefs, traditions, and political processes that propelled the creation, contestation, and ultimate demise of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence

AbstractReform of the parole system has emerged as the cause célèbre of a resurgent law and order politics. Successive governments have seized upon the symbolic power of parole to demonstrate 'toughness' with respect to violent and sexual offending, to express solidarity with the victims of crime and reaffirm a populist credo that purportedly stands in opposition to an unaccountable and out of touch penal elite. Published in March 2022, the Ministry of Justice Root and Branch Review of the Parole System represents a continuation of this well‐rehearsed political strategy, but arguably goes further than ever before in its willingness to dispense with established norms, rules and practices. This article surveys the contemporary politics of parole in England and Wales and reflects upon what these developments reveal about the shifting contours of a creeping authoritarian conservatism premised upon nostalgia, nationalism and the projection of a strong, centralised state.