Re-examining Risk and Blame in Penal Controversies: Parole in England and Wales, 2013–2018

Abstract

This chapter considers the lessons that high-profile controversies in parole in England and Wales might provide for our understanding of dominant conceptions of risk and populism in the sociology of punishment. Sparks’ (Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order. Routledge, London, 2000) earlier examination of risk and blame in a series of scandals facing English prisons in the mid-1990s is utilized as a point of comparison and a methodological sensitizing device: the former in that this provides us with a means by which to consider what might have changed in the two decades separating these high-profile episodes; the latter in that I seek, as Sparks did, to consider what insights these ‘sorry stories’ might provide for penal theory. I thus discuss broader cultural trends regarding the recognition and involvement of ‘publics’—including victims, families, prisoners and others—in penal policy. I suggest that these developments have implications for our understanding of risk and populism, and the dominant theoretical narratives that have tended to accompany conceptions of these terms.