Transatlantic crossing, or the appeal of American know-how in the age of risk, responsibilisation and rising crime

Hamerton, Christopher and Hobbs, Suzanne (2022) Transatlantic crossing, or the appeal of American know-how in the age of risk, responsibilisation and rising crime. In, Privatising Criminal Justice. 1 ed. Abingdon. Routledge, pp. 64-85. (doi:10.4324/9781315709819-44).

Abstract

This chapter addresses two key themes: globalisation, neoliberalism, risk, responsibilisation and securitisation and the development of the US as the ‘penal workshop’ of the world and the transfer of penal policy ideas and products to the UK. In this chapter, the authors outline the theoretical underpinnings of privatisation and specific penal policy manifestations. The authors explore how, since the forging of the ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK between Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, a key feature of UK penal policy has been the willingness of successive UK governments to gain inspiration from America crime control and punishment policy solutions.

Although at the outset, the private corrections and security industry operated on the periphery, supplementing public provision, as the privatisation agenda gained political, ideological and fiscal momentum (accelerating with the austerity agenda), a myriad of different private/public configurations emerged, blurring the boundaries between the two. Private provision no longer operates at the margins but has become normalised, increasingly replacing the public sector in the delivery of key services in the criminal justice system.

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Contributors

Author: Christopher Hamerton

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