ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 by Maurice Vanstone is entitled ‘Who needs experts?’ This chapter focuses less on the process of the privatisation of the Probation Service and more on how the principles of public service have been undermined by successive governments. In so doing, it traces briefly the history of privatisation within the penal and criminal justice systems, elaborates on its social and political context, rehearses the arguments for and against the deployment of the private sector in the criminal justice field, offers an explanation as to how workers adjust to being transferred from public to private sector environments, and delineates some important features of probation as a reconstituted public service.
