The past 30 years have been a period of renegotiation, adjustment and repositioning in the power structure of Great Britain, in criminal justice and more generally. The social and professional elites that formed the ‘establishment’ lost their influence during the 1980s and gave way to a different elite with different social values and a stronger orientation towards business methods and individual achievement (Oborne, 2007). At first subtle and later more pronounced changes took place in relationships between government and the judiciary as courts’ judgments came to have more political significance, especially as a consequence of the 1998 Human Rights Act and the formation of the Supreme Court in 2009. The civil service became less valued and less respected as a source of wisdom and expertise, or as an institution with any authority or even identity of its own. Governments claimed to be committed to ‘evidence-based policy’, but they had no great regard for professional judgement or experience. The police and the prison and probation services all came under closer political scrutiny and received closer attention from ministers – a healthy development where it led to greater openness and accountability, but having what proved to be unfortunate consequences when ministers tried to take management into their own hands. The services negotiated their relationships with ministers with different degrees of success, reflecting the differences in the power they were able to exercise – a great deal for the police, quite a lot for the prison service, and less for the probation service.

The relationships in criminal justice, especially between government, the judiciary, the police and the prison and probation services and the civil service are continuing to evolve, and are likely to do so more rapidly as the present coalition government pursues its plans for devolution to the private sector and localisation. It is a game played for high stakes (the gambling metaphor is not inappropriate), and the players need to know what they are doing.

The changing scene

Within the criminal justice sector, several new features established themselves on the scene during the 1980s. Government, the judiciary and the criminal justice services began to realise that traditional assumptions and practices could not deal adequately with issues of race and ethnicity, and that minority groups would not receive justice unless changes were made.