The Honest Politician’s Guide to Prisons and Probation

Through a comprehensive analysis of legislative and organisational changes and interviews with all the key players, The Honest Politician’s Guide to Prisons and Probation provides an authoritative account of the crisis which has gradually engulfed the prison and probation services since 1991.

Setting out the nature and extent of the crisis, King and Willmott show how the Woolf agenda was overridden in a process of political churn, through explorations of the Conservative Government until 1997, New Labour from 1997 to 2010, and the Coalition and Conservative Governments since 2010. Uniquely, interviews with all surviving Home Secretaries and Justice Secretaries of the period include insightful and candid reflections upon their time in office, and how they saw the future.

Views from both inside and outside the prisons and probation services are also explored, based on interviews with the Director Generals of the Prison Service and of the new National Probation Service, Chief Inspectors of Prisons and Probation, and the four most recent Lord Chief Justices, including Lord Woolf himself.

Concluding by drawing on this collective wisdom, King and Willmott set out what is needed for an effective and sustainable future. It is essential reading not just for those in Westminster, but also practitioners in criminal justice, advocacy organisations, thinktanks, and scholars and students in Criminology, Criminal Justice, British Politics and Public Policy.