Exploring the Ministry of Justice, Explaining Penal Policy
Southampton Law School
Much of my research, and my teaching, explores issues of penal policy and in particular the political and policymaking processes that are involved in criminal justice policy. Issues relating to prisons, punishment, policing and so on are often highly emotive, technically complex and subject to fierce political debate.
As part of this ongoing work, in a recent paper I considered the history of the UK Ministry of Justice and what it âisâ: what are the traditions (the collections of beliefs) that underpin the ongoing activities of those within the departmentâs concrete obelisk home? I suggest that understanding what the department âisâ in this way, is an important consideration when trying to understand particular policy developments such as those highlighted above. (Note that while the Ministry of Justice is part of the UK government, responsibility for criminal justice in Scotland is a devolved matter: the MoJ is therefore responsible for policy in England and Wales).
Drawing on âeliteâ research interviews conducted with nearly 100 policy participants (including ministers, senior civil servants, MPs, and many more), I argued that there exist four âMinistriesâ:
- A liberal department centred upon justice and fairness;
- One determined to achieve the rehabilitation of offenders;
- One obsessed with public protection;
- One steeped in new managerialism
For some the Ministry of Justice is (or was) the âbalancing departmentâ, âthe ones who did the checks and balancesâ (research quotes from civil servants). For others, public protection is the dominant paradigm: avoiding high profile, serious incidents in the community, and ensuring âsecurity of the [prison] estateâ (research quote from special adviser) is the overriding concern.
For others still, rehabilitation was the raison dâetre of the department (those parts tasked with prisons and probation policy, in particular). While often operating more at the level of rhetoric than reality, it was a ânoble aimâ that sustained the department (civil servant), and indeed recurs in public debate with striking frequency.
Finally, for some managerialism had come to dominate, with aspirations for âan end-to-end criminal justice systemâ (Lord Falconer, evidence to Constitutional Affairs Committee, 2007) flowing into benchmarking of prison services against the private sector, and talk of âcapability gapsâ, âbusiness critical requirementsâ and âdoing better for lessâ.
These traditions â ideas about what the department is, and what it is for, collide and combine; they compete. In turn the department has been buffeted by a series of dilemmas â questions that raise profound questions about its nature and role. These include:
- Is its political head a judicial representative (in his role as Lord Chancellor) or a government minister (as Justice Secretary)? Can he or she be both?
- Is the Ministry of Justice a centralised department, or an assortment of largely discreet parts?
- Are the âpolicyâ and âoperationalâ aspects (of prisons, probation, legal aid, and so on) to be fused, or kept separate?
- Is the goal of the department patient implementation of policy, or political responsiveness to immediate events?
These concerns, and developing such âinternalâ narratives of a government department, may seem inward-looking, self-regarding, and to pale into insignificance compared to the serious concerns identified at the beginning of this blog post.But as I have argued in a recent paper for the
British Journal of Criminology, the activity in any department is characterized by a complex interplay between perceived conditions âout thereâ (austerity, election cycles, and so on), âinternalâ considerations (informed by the traditions and dilemmas identified above) and work on specific policy areas.
Therefore, if one seeks to understand developments in a particular policy area â and as importantly, to consider how to achieve positive change in that field â a crucial part of this enterprise requires understanding this âinternalâ aspect of policymakersâ concerns.
The working paper âDecentring the UK Ministry/s of Justiceâ is available here
The finalized paper is published as a chapter entitled âWhat is Penal Policy? Traditions and practices in the UK Ministry of Justiceâ, in Narrative Policy Analysis: Cases in decentred policy, edited by RAW Rhodes and published by Palgrave Macmillan in May 2018.
The paper âThe Policymakersâ Dilemma: Change, continuity and enduring rationalities of penal policyâ is published in the British Journal of Criminology and available here
A longer version of this blog post is available at the BSC (British Society of Criminology) Blog site: https://thebscblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/13/exploring-the-uk-ministry-of-justice-explaining-penal-policy/