The End or the Beginning of an Era? Politics and Punishment Under Margaret Thatcher’s Government

Abstract

This chapter considers the influences and processes which shaped the government’s penal policies during the period from the beginning of Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1979 to the early 1990s. It reviews the government’s political agenda and the political context at the time, including its reforms of public services more generally; its sources of advice; its use of evidence and research; the constraints it faced; and the policies themselves, especially as they related to prisons, probation and sentencing. The government’s penal policies were relatively mild compared with those that followed in later years, but there was a constant tension between the government’s demand for economy and effectiveness and the political pressure for increased severity of punishment. Developments during that period also laid the foundation on which later governments could construct the more centralising and more punitive policies which followed.