ABSTRACT
Due to this ‘limited attention devoted to charitable organisations’ by scholars (Armstrong, 2002: 345), understandings of the penal voluntary sector are ‘lacking’ (Mills et al., 2011: 195). The sector thus remains ‘a descriptive rather than theoretically rigorous concept or empirically defined entity’ (Corcoran, 2011: 33; see also Mills et al., 2011; Armstrong, 2002). This text addresses this significant gap in knowledge by conceptualising the penal voluntary sector in England and Wales. It demonstrates that charitable involvement in criminal justice is more complicated, troubling and full of potential than scholars have opined thus far. It explores the heterogeneity of penal voluntary organisations, considering the what, how and so what questions. Namely, it explores what voluntary organisations are doing with prisoners and probationers and how voluntary organisations manage to undertake this work, and questions the effects of charitable work on prisoners and probationers. The resultant conceptualisation of charitable involvement in criminal justice looks both within and beyond the penal service market and contains multi-level analyses of charities that are fully state funded, partly state funded and not state funded. This text also offers a detailed and innovative application of actor-network theory (ANT) to a criminological subject. Although this account of the penal voluntary sector was underpinned by ANT, it can still be appreciated by readers who do not wish to engage with ANT, who should feel free to skim or skip ANT sections. However, this text does set out an innovative theoretical and methodological approach to structured research that was inspired by ANT and has many further applications for criminology, penology and beyond. Although I do not claim to provide a programmatic or comprehensive ‘ANT approach’, I anticipate that the approach I have assembled and applied here will be useful for future research involving multiple partner organisations in the increasingly complex, hybrid and privatised landscape of penal service delivery (such as in restorative justice programmes), and for studying other parts of the voluntary sector at policy and practice level. This text is situated in the specific jurisdiction of England and Wales, but is highly relevant to studies of the penal voluntary sector in other jurisdictions. Indeed, I hope to stimulate a rich tradition of penal voluntary sector research. Section 1.4 below explores the importance of the voluntary sector in a number of other jurisdictions, and points out important variations which affect the applicability of this research to other jurisdictions. I now define and locate the penal voluntary sector.
