Presentation to Third Sector Research Centre/Auril, University of Birmingham, 27 October 2010

1. Altering independence? Managerial
perspectives on the impact of market reforms
on the English and Welsh criminal justice
voluntary sector
Andrew Neilson, Assistant Director
The Howard League for Penal Reform

2. The criminal justice sector
• The English and Welsh criminal justice
sector has seen a decade of
unprecedented expansion
• Spending on law and order rose by the
equivalent of half a percentage point of
GDP between 1999 and 2006 to 2.5 per
cent of overall GDP (Solomon et al 2007)

4. What has all this expansion
meant for the voluntary sector?
• We know the broad voluntary and
community sector (VCS) has experienced
year-on-year increases in statutory
funding since 2000
• Reasonable to expect the criminal justice
VCS has also benefited from this

5. However, the picture is unclear
• Mapping voluntary and community sector
organisations (VCOs) working with
“offenders and their families is made more
difficult and more complex by the fact that
organisations are funded and
commissioned from a wide variety of
sources. Statistics are not yet available
from prisons and those from probation
need updating” (Ministry of Justice 2008)

6. Recent reforms
• The National Offender Management
Service (NOMS) was established in 2004,
merging prison and probation services to
create ‘end-to-end offender management’
• NOMS introduced ‘contestability’, creating
a market in corrections
• Definitive strategy for engaging VCS only
published in 2008 - four years after NOMS
was first formed

7. Nacro’s bid to ‘run a prison’
• In 2008 it was reported that criminal
justice VCO Nacro had joined a
consortium with private security company
G4S to bid for the building and running of
new prisons
• Ultimately, Nacro lost out on their bids to
another consortium led by Serco. This
consortium included the VCOs Catch 22
and Turning Point

8. My research
• Interviews with six senior managers in the
criminal justice VCS
• VCOs selected: a major service provider,
a small service provider, a campaign
group, a user-led organisation, an
infrastructure body and a funder
• Looking at the impact of these market
reforms on the criminal justice VCS
• In particular, looking at impact on the
concept of voluntary sector independence

9. Independence means the
freedom for VCOs to...
• Agree values based on their own
experience and vision and not external
pressures
• Carry out work that delivers the stated
purpose of the organisation
• Negotiate robustly with funders and
partners
• Challenge others and engage in public
debate
(Baring Foundation 2006)

10. Findings: impact of market
reforms
• Market reform has created confusion in
government and in the VCS
• There is suspicion in the VCS as to the
government’s motives in relation to market
reform

11. Mixed motives
“I think part of the government genuinely
believed in the good of the voluntary sector.
Other parts of it were just happy to use the
voluntary sector as a respectable way of
opening up the market to something it
thought others wouldn’t like, which was the
private sector, and others have genuinely
thought about it as a way of reforming
criminal justice”

12. Findings: impact of market
reforms
• Market reforms have led to an increased
business focus in criminal justice VCOs,
with an emphasis on efficiency and
improved accountability
• While this was broadly welcomed by most
participants, the majority also expressed
some reservations as to whether
contestability was the best mechanism to
deliver these outcomes

13. The business focus: one
perspective...
“...it makes more sense for us to work in a
way that maximises the proportion of the
income that we have in delivery of the
services to our users. So in other words,
maximising your potential in terms of your
social purpose. For me, that’s a solid
argument for behaving more like a
business.”

14. The business focus: another
perspective...
“It’s very sad when you see charities carbon
copying each other and cutting each other’s
throats to get a contract. And actually
selling out the client group to get a
contract...a lot of charities are quite willing to
go down the tick-box route, do what the
contract says and not go beyond that
because they’re not getting paid for it.”

15. Findings: impact of market
reforms
• Market reforms were universally seen by
participants as being negative for small
VCOs
• As with TSRC working paper, participants
identified a gap between the rhetoric and
reality around commissioning

16. Findings: VCOs in consortiums
to manage prisons
• There was a perceived lack of
transparency to these bids
• A tension between ‘what works’ and
ideology
• The majority expressed concern about
potential conflicts of interest for the VCOs
involved

17. VCOs ‘running’ prisons: one
perspective...
“...from a voluntary sector point of view, you
get in early, you get to influence the debate
and the agenda, you get to work in an
environment where you can deliver high
quality work and...you get actually for your
staff to work in decent conditions...It makes
it conducive for the delivery of high quality
work for our service users, which is what it’s
all about.”

18. VCOs ‘running’ prisons: another
perspective...
“You can’t be a carer and a jailer..if you are
there to support ex-offenders and their
families or you’re there in a supportive role,
you can’t be there locking them up as well.
It sends conflicting messages...it must be
soul destroying to walk in an office and
know that your campaign says one thing
and your posters say one thing, but you’re
actually doing another and basically, you’re
a fraud.”

19. Findings: voluntary sector
independence
• Participants defined independence as
particular: ie. independence as
representing the individual organisation,
its existence and independence of action
• Participants also defined independence as
general: ie. relating independence to the
sector as whole, and what makes the
sector distinct and different

20. Findings: voluntary sector
independence
• Independence is at threat for small VCOs
in a very real way: ie. market pressures
mean their very existence is under threat
• Fears around government motives and
instrumentality threaten independence of
action

21. Independence and
instrumentality
“...the dialogue between the sector and the
State is much more frequent, it’s much more
familiar, it’s much wider, it happens around
a lot of different service areas...while all
those conversations have increased, they’ve
increased around business matters, if you
like, rather than wider social concern
issues.”

22. Independence and
instrumentality
“[I wonder] whether the government and
whether commissioners and NOMS really
do see any value in the voluntary sector or
whether it’s lip service...it’s tempting to see it
as lip service at the moment because
there’s nothing in place to really assist the
voluntary sector in stepping up to the role it
needs to take...are we the window dressing
for some really rather nasty things, or are
we at the heart of delivery?”

23. Findings: voluntary sector
independence
• Independence in the sense of
distinctiveness is also at threat through a
blurring of the private, voluntary and
statutory sectors
• At the same time, this blurring is leading
to a divide in the existing voluntary sector
which is likely to widen in the near future

24. The future for criminal justice:
cuts, with or without results
• Ministry of Justice faces six per cent year
on year cuts for the next four years after
comprehensive spending review
• Target to reduce prison population by
3,000 and plans to build a new 1,500
place prison dropped
• Introducing a ‘payment by results’ model
in the community which will seek to
expand private and voluntary sector
provision of statutory services

25. Thank you
www.howardleague.org