Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- List of Acronyms
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Marketisation and Privatisation in Criminal Justice: an Overview
- Part I Introduction and Theoretical Frameworks
- Part II Experiences of Marketisation in the Public Sector
- Part III Marketisation and the Voluntary Sector
- Part IV Beyond Institutions: Marketisation Beyond the Criminal Justice Institution
- Conclusion: What Has Been Learned
- Index
6 - The ‘Soft Power’ of Marketisation: The Administrative Assembling of Irish Youth Justice Work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- List of Acronyms
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Marketisation and Privatisation in Criminal Justice: an Overview
- Part I Introduction and Theoretical Frameworks
- Part II Experiences of Marketisation in the Public Sector
- Part III Marketisation and the Voluntary Sector
- Part IV Beyond Institutions: Marketisation Beyond the Criminal Justice Institution
- Conclusion: What Has Been Learned
- Index
Summary
Introduction
They can be anything they want to be …
At the end of the day, their potential they reach that themselves, and they make the decisions to get there themselves …
Okay, academically, they might not go to Trinity but that doesn't mean they can't be productive young people within the mainstream.
These quotes from Irish youth justice workers about young people in trouble with the law and their possible futures are benign and well intentioned. At first sight, they could be interpreted as typical of meritocratic discourses that emphasise an equal-level playing field of life chances, when coupled with individual will and effort. Yet I will argue in this chapter that these quotes exemplify the diffusion of marketised governance from administrative policy discourse to professionals’ constructions of young people and their offending behaviour. I will show how the prioritisation of marketising principles ‘traverses’ from policy to practice discourse, thus shaping contemporary realities of Irish youth justice work. More broadly, this chapter is based on the premise that marketisation understood as a governmental regime (Corcoran, 2014: 57) encompasses more insidious, subtle and softer aspects than ‘hard’ marketisation strategies such as ‘privatisation’ or ‘monetisation’. Borrowing from Carol Bacchi's seminal ‘What's the Problem Represented to Be’ (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2009), I also suggest that these softer aspects of marketisation become visible in the way that ‘problems’ and ‘solutions to problems’ are written or talked about. The importance of language and discourse as a vehicle through which marketisation operates also chimes with Wendy Brown's observations on the antipolitical language of governance. She argues that its presence is indicative of the fact that ‘economics has become the science of government’ (Brown, 2015: 77) as part of neo-liberalism's ‘stealth revolution’ (Brown, 2015). It is therefore important to problematise this antipolitical discourse of governance, as I attempt to do in this chapter in relation to contemporary Irish youth justice policy.
I will first outline how I use both Brown's and Bacchi's work as scaffolding to deconstruct governance reforms undertaken as part of the modernisation of the Irish youth justice system. The next section will then show how these reforms are exemplary of the soft power that marketisation entails and how administrative governance alters the relationship between the state, the voluntary sector and citizens.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Marketisation and Privatisation in Criminal Justice , pp. 91 - 106Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020