The Honest Politician’s Guide to Prisons and Probation. By Roy King and Lucy Willmott (Routledge, 2021, 274pp. £38.99 pbk)

Abstract

King and Willmott’s The Honest Politician’s Guide to Prisons and Probation seeks to provide ‘an authoritative account of the crisis which has gradually engulfed the prison and probation services since 1991’ (Preface). This book provides an interesting descriptive account of a period of much importance, drawing on interviews with all surviving Home Secretaries and Justice Secretaries of the period. Insights are also provided via interviews conducted with Director Generals of the Prison Service and Probation Service, Chief Inspectors of Prisons and Probation, and the four most recent Lord Chief Justices. The opening chapter provides a brief history of prisons and probation in England and Wales from 1990 to the present. Chapters 2–6 then provide an oral history of each political period (with chapter 6 providing views from Lord Chief Justices across the whole time span). Chapter 7 then provides a (slightly disconnected) ‘Agenda for Action’, in the spirit of Morris and Hawkins’ Honest Politician’s Guide to Crime Control (1970), which sets out a normative argument for a better criminal justice system. There is much for the intelligent general reader (the intended target of the book: p. 2) to enjoy.