As prisons are public institutions, they depend on public spending and legitimacy – the economic viability of their operations but also their moral performance. Capitalism is driven by profitability and investments are dictated by market flows (Deleuze and Guattari, 1984). What became referred to as New Public Management (Osborne and McLaughlin, 2002), transformed the civic state in the 1980s, adding neo-liberal ideas, such as market regulation through competition to neo-conservative ideas of moral and social responsibilities of the state and its institutions. Such ideas were pioneered by successive Conservative governments under Margeret Thatcher and subsequently adopted, indeed embraced, by Tony Blair’s New Labour in the 1990s and early 2000s. Public spending of state institutions was placed at the heart of the debate, with the market testing of ‘failing’ public institutions (Le Vay, 2016; James, et al., 1997). This followed a Home Office inquiry into the state of the entire prison system (Home Office, 1979) and the aforementioned Woolf report investigating prison riots and state of public prisons in the UK (MOJ, 1991). It initiated the introduction of three new procurement strategies for prisons: management only, market testing and Private Finance Initiative (PFI now PF2) prison contracts in the UK (LeVay, 2016, p.14). Rising crime rates in the 1980s and rising prisoner numbers in the 1990s (up to 2010) placed significant strain on existing institutions, providing momentum for the government’s introduction of PFI solutions and attractive investment opportunities for private companies (ibid, p.20). Between 1992 and 2005 privately financed prison building programs overtook public funding.
The Carter Review (2003) had initiated the establishment of a National Offender Management Service (NOMS) ‘set up to bring prisons and probation together’ (LeVay, 2016, p.31). It, therefore, concentrated on developing a joint-up, end-to-end management of individual offenders from conviction and sentencing to reintegration (Home Office, 2004a; DfES, 2003a). The report, however, also recommended further competition between the private and public sector emphasising ‘contestability’ - the targeting of resources to create a cost-effective and affordable system (Carter, 2003, p.13). This included the creation of evidence to determine the effectiveness of and ‘what works’ in offender reform (ibid, p.31). A prison rating system was shortly introduced to enable measuring the performance of private and public institutions for public protection, reducing re-offending, decency and resource management and operational effectiveness. The performance rating system (1-4) introduced in 2003 was heavily criticised as furthering a focus on efficient structures and processes in prisons rather than the individual transformation of prisoners (PRT, 2004, p.4). It equally shifted emphasis to the recording and evidencing of transformation, through numbers and ‘box ticking’, rather than developing appropriate processes and social relations within institutions (Liebling, 2004). A recurring focus on reducing re- offending rates individual prison ratings, according to Matthews (2003), became even more complicated through the continual flow of offenders through custodial and non-custodial agencies and institutions (p.244). He argued that it might favour measurable short-term interventions.
However, according to Le Vay (2016) the design of NOMS had several flaws. ‘More than half of the programmes in prisons were funded by bodies outside NOMS, and that government had no legal power to compete probation’ (ibid, p.31). Therefore, different measures needed to be introduced to control public spending. ‘A system built on commissioning services’ and ‘a phased programme of contestability’
were seen to lead to ‘services provided by the best possible partnerships and providers’ (Home Office, 2006, p.8). Social Impact bonds initiated by then Justice Secretary Jack Straw in 2010 extended this system of privatisation and market testing to public funding of voluntary, private and community engagement in prisons invigorating the private prison market at the end of the decade. Funding for services provided in prisons became increasingly dependent on measurable outcomes through payment-by-results models (MOJ, 2010), measuring service and prison regime effectiveness through reductions of re-offending rates. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government (2010 – 2015) outlined new strategies to improve service delivery, innovative practices and affordability in offender rehabilitation through PbR and competition (MOJ 2011c). However, a fiscal crisis placed emphasis on managing public spending rather than offender and their rehabilitation (see for instance NOMS’ decreased budget in 2014-15).
A new public sector operating model was introduced outlining the contracting out of all but core custody services and detailed service specifications. Spending cuts affected not only service delivery but also increased staff-prisoner-ratios in private as well as public institutions (Le Vay, 2016, p.185) leading to deteriorating prison conditions. Additional cuts to services delivered in prisons such as education led to prison riots in the male estate in 2016 and 2017 (see for instance Johnston, 2016; 2017) but also increased suicide rates and violent incidences in prisons. The Prisons and Courts Reform Bill 2016-17 (House of Commons, 2017) outlined new prison reforms emphasising again on prisons as places for offender reform and rehabilitation. Prison ‘governors will take control of budget for education, employment and health and they will be held accountable for getting people of drugs, into jobs and learning English and maths’ (MOJ/NOMS/HM Courts & Tribunal Services, 2017). However, with the dissolution of parliament in May 2017 following
the general election, the bill and prison reforms were placed on hold and then dropped despite wide initial cross-parliamentary support. Although, a new Conservative government had since been formed there seems to be no change to investments in rehabilitation. Crook stated (2018) ‘the new team at the Ministry of Justice […] will concentrate on cleaning up jails […] not system change’.
However, it is important to understand how privatisation and tendering techniques affected the management of rehabilitation in prisons.
Managerial Technologies
The results of contracting out public services - the measurement of prison performance against set goals and objectives created distinct managerial technologies for the management of offender rehabilitation including education.
Privatisation furthered an opening of market flows and the deterritorialisation of an institution into streams of code and procedures (Prison Service Orders (PSOs), prison rules, key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets) for the management of offenders responding to the seven pathways into crime perspective of which education and employment is one (NOMS, 2009). The introduction of KPIs and targets was and is instrumental for the institutional management of public accountability and legitimacy (Harding, 1997; Gaes, et al., 2004). They are non- material actors reflecting the changing prison values and priorities (Mennicken, 2014, p.34). They were designed to transport moral values, prison purpose, criminogenic needs, risks, and reformative thinking into prison administration and operation. They equally transport results back into wider policy thinking to determine ‘what works’, which created a distinct economic argument for prison education (as discussed in this chapter).
KPIs and targets are manifested in specifically private but also public prison contracts to measure the efficiency and accountability of individual prisons (ibid) their reformative potential and adherence to standards. Payment-by-results schemes (MOJ, 2010) highlight the continuation of market testing solutions for offender rehabilitation and management, executed by diverse agencies such as educational providers producing data streams to substantiate their existence in individual institutions, but also to substantiate the management of individual institutions (as PFI prisons). Performance measures were reformed to account for prisoner experiences (such as Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MPQL tool) Liebling, et al. 2011; Liebling, 2012), quantifying softer prison values as staff-prisoner relations in new prison evaluations (NOMS, 2015). It remains to be seen how these will affect prison operations and aid prisoner rehabilitation.
Whilst performance measures introduced through prison privatisation have initially shifted the debate to prison values, purpose and public accountability, the resulting decentralisation of the prison system reduced those debates to accountability and performance of individually managed institutions rather than the overall system itself. Additionally, as evident from the conflicting status of the prison, ‘institutions are refractory […] they do not perform as society would like them to […] and officials develop ways both of denying the failure of the institution to perform as it should and explaining those failures which cannot be hidden’ (Becker, 1967, pp.242/43). Therefore, the institutional local management of offender rehabilitation is indistinctly linked with the global management of public perception and accountability. It transformed offender rehabilitation into KPIs and targets measuring effectiveness of privatised service operations. Although changes initially promised service improvements, re-offending rates remained at similar levels (MOJ, 2016e).
KPIs and targets place an emphasis on the investment in prisons in terms of positive outcomes –as places for offender rehabilitation through effective time and space management within, but also public protection. Whilst some observers welcomed and reported positive changes through the competition introduced via privatisation (Le Vay, 2016), others noted that the widening of the prison-industrial complex to private business interests led to ‘developing low-cost, ‘no frills’ prisons, which rely on increasingly automated and impersonal systems of control’ (Matthews, 2003, p.244) aided through information and communication systems. This includes prison education and its management and the tools used and developed to measure efficiencies and impact, which are now analysed in more detail.