The Impact Of Managerialism On Prison Policy From The 1980's

INTRO: This research report will look at managerialism and its impact on prison policy from the 1980’s. By doing this, it will explore prison development and the cause of prison riots in 1990’s and the government’s response, leading to our prisons today. Then it will proceed in looking at NOMS role in Prison and Probation services in England and Wales.

Managerialism is a set of beliefs and practices, according to Pollitt (1993), better management can solve various problems that exist in public sectors. Managerialism according to McLaughlin (2001), aims to fracture and realign relations of power within the criminal justice system, therefore focusing on the operation of the system rather than treatment of victims and suspects.
The main change in penal policy has not been towards more emotive or expressive punishments but the 'development of more administrative and impersonal styles of regulation', new styles of managerialism have been introduced, which appear to develop alongside punitiveness, and the role they have played in shaping the criminal justice system has been widely
reported (Matthews, 2005).

Prior to the 1980’s, the crisis of containment derived from three high profile escapes, Wormwood Scrubs’s George Blake in 1966, Winson Green’s Charles Wilson in 1964 and Wandsworth’s Ronnie Biggs in 1965 (Fitzgerald and Sim 1982).
As a result, the 1966 Mountbatten Report (Home Office 1966) proposed a significant upgrading of physical security in the prison estate. Mountbatten proposed that all male prisoners should be classified into four categories: A, B, C or D. Category A meant the most serious Prisoners. In the 1970’s the penal crisis entered a new phase made of violent and peaceful prisoner protests because of the physical and psychological deprivations of confinement causing prison officers to be physically violent against those prisoners involved in protests (Fitzgerald 1977). The concept of rehabilitation at this point was seen to be designated to be a failure. (Fitzgerald & Sim
1982)

In the early 1980s, a new liberal penological consensus developed in opposition to less eligibility, treatment, and training, and positive custody. Supported by the acceptance of due process and the just deserts model of punishment, but then also embraced the priorities of managerialism. It was argued that, if ‘taken seriously’, the idea of ‘humane containment’ could act as a realistic replacement ideology for the now discredited rehabilitative ideal.
The 1969 White Paper “People in Prison” explained what Humane Containment meant, To “contain” prisoners in “safe” custody and to undermine the inhumane aspects of imprisonment (King and
Morgan 1980)
King and Morgan maintained that the use of the prison as human warehouses should be grounded in three principles: minimum use of custody, minimum use of security and normalization. The first two principles meaning prisons should be used as little and with the lowest degree of security as possible. Normalisation has nine prime elements for example improved community ties and locality of custody; living standards equivalent to those on benefits; prisoners to be gainfully employed; restrictions of the official secrets legislation to be lifted; reasonable access to means of communication, to name a few. It was this agenda that laid the platform for a new liberal penological consensus on the aims of imprisonment (King and Morgan 1980)
However, like less eligibility, treatment and training, and positive custody, the liberal penological consensus was not without its critics. The promotion of normalization by King and Morgan (1980) is confronted with a major paradox: prisons are deeply abnormal environments and cannot be otherwise (Rutherford 1985; Stern 1987).