National Standards for the Probation Service: Managing Post‐Fordist Penality
Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: The debate surrounding post‐Fordism was focused primarily on changes in the ‘late industrial’ technology of work and the new social relations of production with which this is associated. This analysis has rarely reached into the domain of punishment and discipline, which is perhaps surprising given the historical demonstration of an ‘elective affinity’ between the nature of work regimes and the form of discipline to which offenders are subject. If we have indeed entered a new era of technological and social relations of production (‘post‐Fordism”) then we might expect there to be consequential changes in the administrative contours of criminal justice. The exploration of this conjecture has a set of three interwoven elements. Firstly, there is a review of the historical background to the structural affinities between work and penality, as well as an indication of some emerging contemporary resonance between them. Secondly, this will be given a measure of empirical reference through examining the nature of the modern probation service, and in particular the extensive network of guidelines, contracts, monitoring and inspection which serve to ‘regulate’ not only offenders but also the working practices of the probation officer. Finally, we conclude by suggesting that the new penality is a continuation of the modern strategies of punishment and discipline, which in its revised form can indeed be seen as post‐Fordist (though certainly not postmodern).
Authors: Paul Sparrow, Graham Brooks, David Webb
Institutions: Nottingham Trent University, University of Birmingham
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1993701299