Tidmarsh, M orcid.org/0000-0002-6063-9805 (2022) Professional Legitimacy, Identity, and Practice: Towards a Sociology of Professionalism in Probation. The British Journal of Criminology, 62 (1). pp. 165-183. ISSN 0007-0955
Abstract
This paper draws from Foucauldian understandings of the sociology of the professions to explore legitimacy, identity, and practice in probation after the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms to services in England and Wales. A discourse of ‘professionalism’ was crucial to the Coalition Government’s mobilization of TR; however, the contested nature of the term is rarely acknowledged in a probation context. Based on an ethnographic study of a privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Company, the paper demonstrates how professionalism in probation has been reshaped by punitive, managerial, and rehabilitative ‘adaptations’. It argues that professionalism has been detached from its ideal-typical groundings, becoming a malleable practice of (self-)government which is integral to how probation professionals demonstrate their legitimacy to multiple (and competing) actors in a network of accountability – the state, the public, offenders, adjacent organizations, and, additionally, private providers. Accordingly, appeals to a discourse of professionalism are a source of meaning for staff and a disciplinary mechanism that governs their conduct ‘at a distance’.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Law (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 02 Sep 2021 14:47 |
Last Modified: | 24 May 2023 00:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/bjc/azab045 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:177360 |