ABSTRACT
Underpinned by the tenets of ANT, Chapters 4, 5 and 6 illustrated the diversities present amongst the ‘bewildering variety’ of penal voluntary organisations in England and Wales (Kendall and Knapp, 1995: 66). Key diversities included: charities’ functions, the scale of charities’ operations; the relative proportion of volunteers and paid staff within charities; charities’ emphases on employing exservice users; charities’ focus on voluntary participation in their programmes; charities’ income ranges and sources; and the varied interactions between charities and statutory criminal justice agencies. Indeed, the only constants amongst the diverse charities which comprise the penal voluntary sector were that they were registered as charities with the Charity Commission, and that their client group included (ex-)offenders and/or their families and victims. Although all charities must demonstrate their pursuit of charitable objectives to comply with the requirements of the Charity Commission, these organisations have more points of difference than similarities. As such, it is almost impossible to make claims which hold across the penal voluntary sector. It is therefore crucial that scholars maintain awareness of the diversities within the sector, and note that arguments which are true for certain charities ought not to be extrapolated across the heterogeneous penal voluntary sector. Although there are some acknowledgements of this diversity within recent scholarship (see Chapter 2), it has not been sufficiently explored. The political impacts of this reductionism and the benefits of broader accounts are explored below.
