The revival of throughcare: Rhetoric and reality in automatic conditional release

Mike Maguire*, Peter Raynor

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The 1991 Criminal Justice Act in England and Wales introduced, for those sentenced to one to four years, the concept of a sentence served half in prison and half in the community, subject to supervision and the possibility of recall. This arrangement is known as Automatic Conditional Release. This paper reports some findings from a research project evaluating its first two years of operation. It discusses the contradictory forces and ideas which led to the introduction of the scheme and shows how these are reflected in problems of implementation. Accounts are given of the reactions of prisoners and licensees, and the attempts of practitioners to adapt traditional concepts of 'throughcare' to the requirements of a new form of supervision. It is concluded that compulsory post-release supervision 'works' in the sense that licensees tend to complete it successfully and to regard it as helpful, but that it is seriously flawed in practice by lack of clarity about its purpose and difficulty in allocating appropriate resources.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1-14
    Number of pages14
    JournalBritish Journal of Criminology
    Volume37
    Issue number1
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 1997

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'The revival of throughcare: Rhetoric and reality in automatic conditional release'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this