The Politics of Inertia

The chapter explores the ever more complex policy debates that surrounded the efforts to extend a system of early release to short sentence prisoners. It begins with an overview of the main candidates for reform and the strengths and weaknesses of these policy options. It explores the Home Office Review of Parole in England and Wales and considers why these recommendations were so quickly abandoned in the face of political and judicial pressure. It then goes on to examine the passage of the Criminal Justice Act 1982, a significant piece of legislation which resulted in wide-ranging reform of parole in England and Wales. The chapter concludes with a number of reflections upon the policy inertia of the early 1980s and what that reveals about the changing aims and techniques of criminal justice at this time.