ABSTRACT
Privatisation discourses in criminal justice have tended to focus on the police and prisons. Prompted by the marketisation in 2014 of a large proportion of the Probation Service in England and Wales, this chapter will examine the role of neoliberalism and the private sector in the development of prison alternatives in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Drawing on examples from England and Wales, the USA and other jurisdictions, it will be argued that, while some marketisation in criminal justice is inevitable in mixed economies – and may contribute to a climate of innovation – the State’s present ideological commitment to profit-driven community-based supervision of offenders is fundamentally unethical, does not make economic sense and is unlikely to ‘work’ in terms of either rehabilitation or public protection.
