Based on semi-structured interviews with 22 senior politicians, political advisers and policymakers in criminal justice, we document what we call pessimism bias: a deep-seated sense that even desirable reforms are not feasible. We took an anthropological perspective to uncover what it feels like to work in the Home Office or Ministry of Justice. For our participants, life at the sharp end of penal policymaking felt deeply stressful. They described a siege mentality, living in fear of crises and feeling deeply unsupported by colleagues with little interest in criminal justice. This leads to a narrowing of horizons, an excessive focus on day-to-day management and a mental crowding-out of attempts to achieve long-term change. We contrast this perspective with rival claims that politicians either do not wish to seek change for ideological reasons or do not perceive any need for reforms, which are unsupported by our evidence. Disagreements between politicians and penal reformers, therefore, are as much about what can be done as what should be done. We suggest that reformers and academics could usefully focus their efforts not so much on persuading politicians of what needs to change, but rather that it is worth their while – and not too risky – to make those changes in the first place.

We build in this paper on work that analyses the portrayal of people subject to the justice system (often labelled as ‘offenders’ in policy discourse). Much existing work focuses on ‘dangerous offenders’ and/or ‘sex offenders’. We, however, focus on what we term the ‘generalised offender’ (i.e. prisoners serving relatively short, determinate sentences), analysing how this group are framed in political discourse. Sensitised to questions posed by desistance literature, we analyse speeches given by senior British politicians, during the natural ‘case study’ that is the lifetime of the Ministry of Justice (2007-present). This period spans Labour, coalition-led, and Conservative governments. We explore the ways in which the ‘generalised offender’ is characterised, setting out narrative components that we have identified and exploring their nature and intended role in relation to broader policy change. In sum, we identify a notable seam of purportedly rehabilitation-supportive framing, resilient across the 25-year period. We discuss the relationship between these framings and wider political, and politico-economic, context, and in so doing recognise the attenuated—even false—promise of rehabilitation-oriented political scripts.

This paper examines how life imprisonment was introduced, implemented, and then ultimately abolished in Norway, with little controversy or debate, in 1981. The paper places this story of life imprisonment within the context of broader theoretical and empirical debates on Nordic penal exceptionalism and the abolition of life sentences, both nationally and internationally. Given the development of punitive penal policy discourses across many western jurisdictions, the abolition of life sentences without tabloid hysteria appears exceptional. However, when analysed in the context of an evolving penal landscape, both internationally and in Norway, a more complex narrative emerges. Norway might have abolished formal life sentences, but its growing use of indefinite post-conviction detention indicates that it has replaced them with a more hidden, informal type of life imprisonment.

Restorative justice has been supported by Scottish politicians of varied political persuasions as an approach that has value in responding to criminal harm. It is variously advocated for its potential to address the needs of victims of crime, hold people responsible for crime to account, reduce re-offending, provide an effective alternative to standard criminal justice processes, and offer a more constructive response than punitive sanctions. And yet, rarely does restorative justice reach the status of a mainstream tool for responding to crime. So why is it that a general political consensus regarding the benefits of restorative justice fails to result in it becoming a standard component of criminal justice systems? Drawing on an oral history study of restorative justice in Scotland from the 1980s to recent times, this presentation provides an account and analysis of how restorative justice has developed and evolved over several decades, with a consideration of the political framing of its potential. As will be shown, despite general political rhetoric advocating restorative justice, below the surface lie important distinctions regarding the nature of restorative justice and how it ought to be used. For instance, there are strong differences of opinion regarding its use as an alternative to prosecution or its suitability in response to domestic abuse or sexual offending. Moreover, the purposes and practices of restorative justice have varied across time and places, from its early origins as an alternative to court, through to its focus on youth offending, to its more recent formulation as a way of meeting the needs of victims of crime. This presentation will explore how an understanding of the relationships between policy, practice and politics sheds light on the supposed implementation gap for restorative justice, with implications for innovation and change in criminal justice more generally.