Exploring risk management in probation practice

As an exemplar of modern penality’s ‘normalizing sector’ (Garland, 1985), probation is deeply implicated in the purported shift towards a ‘new’ or ‘postmodern’ penal rationality with risk management rather than normalization at its heart. This article reviews the emergence of risk management in recent criminological theory and goes on to explore the emergence of risk and risk management in the Probation Service in England and Wales during the 1990s. Drawing on the author’s recent empirical research it then presents an analysis of the dynamics of offender supervision in probation which, in common with a growing number of studies in other penal contexts, reveals that the increasing dominance of risk-based reasoning has not ushered in an approach conforming entirely to theoretical formulations of risk management. It is argued that in the context of probation supervision two relatively distinct ‘modes of governance’ are emerging, based on a distinction between those offenders assessed as posing a serious risk of harm to the public, and those who are not. It is argued that these modes of governance constitute different but complementary adaptations to the purported shift from normalization to risk management, or from ‘old’ to ‘new’ penologies.