Introduction

This chapter will explore three developments within the CJS system that occurred from the 1990s onwards under Conservative and New Labour administrations: Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP), joint enterprise and the whole-life tariff. The chapter begins with a discussion of the influence of left realism on New Labour and how NPM led to significant changes across the CJS, and ends with a discussion of the reform of the Mental Health Act (MHA) and the notion of Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD).

Left Realism

In this section, I will discuss the broad impact of the influence of Left Realism on New Labour's penal policies. Before he became leader and created New Labour, Tony Blair engineered a significant shifted in the party's position on law and order. He was determined that Labour would not be out manoeuvred by the Tories on penal policy. However, it would be a mistake to see this as purely a strategic political move as these shifts were underpinned by Blair's communitarian beliefs. These moves were a response to the Thatcherite law-andorder agenda and an attempt to reconnect with voters on this core issue. Left Realism emerged within criminology a decade before the election of New Labour. However, it is possible to see its impact on some key notions of New Labour policy. Left Realists were ultimately critical of the way that New Labour approached questions of community and crime.

Left Realism was most closely associated with the work of such criminologists as Young and Lea. It can be understood as a response to and a recognition of the political success of Thatcherism and penal populism. Hall was one of the first to identify the implications of the shifting political and economic trends of the 1970s. In ‘The great moving right show’, Hall (1979) saw that the mixture of economic liberalism and social conservatism that Mrs Thatcher represented was a new and influential political force. The article was published in January 1979 before Thatcher's election in May of that year. The post-war social-democratic settlement was unravelling at that point, most clearly in the Winter of Discontent (López, 2014). Hall's article was very prescient in that it recognised that ‘Thatcherism’ (a term that he coined) had a popular appeal.