Harry Annison | University of Southampton (original) (raw)

Book(s) by Harry Annison

Dangerous Politics, Oct 8, 2015

Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability, and Penal Policy brings together relevant lite... more Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability, and Penal Policy brings together relevant literature in law, criminology, and politics to provide insights into the nature of British penal politics, the role of the judiciary and pressure groups, and the interrelation between risk, the 'public voice', and penal politics.

Peer-reviewed Journals by Harry Annison

This article analyses how penal policymakers interpret, rationalize and thereby instantiate ‘exte... more This article analyses how penal policymakers interpret, rationalize and thereby instantiate ‘external’ change. In order to do so, it presents a critical reconstruction of penal policymaking during the 2010-15 UK coalition drawing on interviews with senior policymakers. It explores how policymakers sought to respond to the uncertainties of this unusual period in British politics. We see the ‘shallow roots’ of the 2010-15 coalition: in the face of novel challenges, policymakers grasped for traditional, exclusionary, rationalities and practices. This study demonstrates the complex interaction between conditions ‘out there’, the rationalities and practices of specific policymakers, and eventual policy outcomes.

Theoretical Criminology, Feb 1, 2014

This article engages with the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence of the UK Crimina... more This article engages with the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence of the UK Criminal Justice Act 2003, a prominent measure against ‘dangerous offenders’, in a ‘substantively political light’ (O’Malley, 1999). It provides an interpretation based on policymakers’ beliefs and traditions. I argue that the perceived need for the IPP sentence and its ultimate form was the result of New Labour ministers’ reliance on the Third Way political ideology and its implications for criminal justice policy. In addition, in terms of the policymaking process, I suggest that the ‘Westminster tradition’ conditioned policymakers’ actions in relation to the IPP sentence, in ways that were crucial to its outcome. The article concludes with an examination of the moral significance of these beliefs and traditions by reference to Bauman’s discussion of the dangers of a modern ‘garden culture’.

Journal of Law and Society

This article presents an interpretive politics of the judiciary, arguing for the value of interpr... more This article presents an interpretive politics of the judiciary, arguing for the value of interpretive political analysis in understanding developments in case law and judicial activity. It sketches out a senior judicial tradition, which is argued to guide but not predetermine the actions of the British senior judiciary. A case study, the senior judiciary’s response to the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence, is presented which draws on case law, extra-judicial speeches and interviews with five relevant serving or retired senior judges. It is argued that this case study demonstrates the senior judiciary to be politically attuned actors, often highly sensitive to the broader context in which their judgments sit, while equally being determined to act with fidelity to the law and the responsibilities inherent in membership of an independent, impartial judiciary. In closing, it is argued that the IPP case law suggests that the senior judicial tradition, and its inherent tensions, limits the extent to which the senior judiciary feel equipped to oppose the ‘pre-emptive turn’ in criminal justice.

The rise of branded programmes and interventions is an important, but largely under-explored, dev... more The rise of branded programmes and interventions is an important, but largely under-explored, development in criminal justice. This article draws on findings from a study of a British Integrated Offender Management (IOM) scheme to ground a broader theoretical discussion of the meaning and implications of the increasing centrality of such ‘brands’. This article focuses primarily upon the ways in which criminal justice practitioners might draw upon brands in order to (re-)construct their professional identities. On-going fundamental reforms of criminal justice organizations, which have tended to blur the traditionally clear distinctions between professional roles, have made this need to reinforce (and indeed reconstruct) practitioner identities ever more pressing. The article closes by considering the prospects and limitations of criminal justice brands. It is argued that while brands may play an important role in ‘ethically orienting’ relevant practitioners, there is a danger that the absence of appropriate structural underpinnings may prove to be highly counter-productive.

Papers by Harry Annison

This chapter decentres the UK Ministry of Justice, exploring notions of what it is and what it is... more This chapter decentres the UK Ministry of Justice, exploring notions of what it is and what it is for. The department (MoJ) celebrated its tenth birthday on 9 May 2017 and its origins make it a rich site of competing meanings-inaction. This chapter draws on four sets of 'elite' interviews conducted between 2009 and 2017 to explore the traditions drawn upon, and the dilemmas faced, by MoJ policymakers. In sum, it is argued that we are faced not with a monolithic institution but Ministry/s of Justice. We identify competing and overlapping traditions centred upon liberalism, public protection, rehabilitation and managerialism. In closing, the chapter considers whether these understandings are increasingly coloured by narratives of departmental decline.

This chapter explores the contribution to be made by interpretive political analysis (IPA) in und... more This chapter explores the contribution to be made by interpretive political analysis (IPA) in understanding the extent to which participants in penal policymaking can be considered to be reflexive. Further, it considers the extent to which IPA might facilitate the improvement of reflexivity amongst penal policymakers. Relevant forms of reflexivity are first set out. Research conducted for the monograph Dangerous Politics (Annison, 2015) is then drawn upon in order to explore this issue empirically. In closing, the potential value of IPA to the improvement of penal policymaking, via a promotion of individual and collective reflexivity, is discussed.

A finalized, peer-reviewed, authoritative version of this working paper is published in Armstrong, Blaustein and Henry (eds, 2017) Reflexivity and Criminal Justice: Intersections of Policy, Practice and Research, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

This paper summarizes the research published as Dangerous Politics (OUP, 2015), which utilizes th... more This paper summarizes the research published as Dangerous Politics (OUP, 2015), which utilizes the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) story as a case study of sentencing and penal policymaking.

Drawing on over 60 in-depth interviews with key policymakers, the research project analysed the creation, contestation, amendment and abolition of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence, spanning both Labour (2001-2010) and Conservative-led (2010-2015) governments. The IPP sentence stands as one of the most striking examples of the expansion of preventive sentencing. The research sought to investigate the beliefs, traditions and political processes that underpinned these developments, and to consider the wider lessons for academic and policymaker audiences.

Policing and Society, 2015

Political Studies Review, 2014

The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 2013

As part of the wider ‘What is Justice?’ symposium, the Ideas for Justice project is speaking to p... more As part of the wider ‘What is Justice?’ symposium, the Ideas for Justice project is speaking to people about their understanding and experience of justice today. The interviews are being conducted by Harry Annison and Philippa Budgen. In this update on the ‘Ideas for Justice’ project, we reflect on the interviews that have been published so far.

Howard League ECAN, Jan 2013

Explorations of penal politics have tended to operate at the levels of macrosociological analysis... more Explorations of penal politics have tended to operate at the levels of macrosociological analysis or proximate historical reconstruction, a situation exemplified by penologists' approach to the politics of risk and dangerousness (Pratt 2000, Tonry 2004). In this paper, I discuss the creation, amendment and subsequent abolition of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence, the most prominent and far-reaching instance of recent sentencing measures targeted at 'dangerous offenders' in England and Wales. I argue that an interpretive political analysis, an 'interpretation of relevant actors' interpretations' (Bevir and Rhodes 2003, 2006) of the problems, constraints and compulsions which they faced in relation to the IPP sentence demonstrates the central role which the British Westminster tradition (Rhodes, Wanna and Waller 2009) played in legitimizing the acts of politicians and officials, both for the actors themselves and for 'interested observers' (Colebatch 2002). This paper is thus intended as an initial exploration of the extent to which the Westminster tradition, informing views of what constituted legitimate political activity, can serve to operate as a mediating device between extant cultural tendencies, party political contestation and other proximate concerns in the analysis of penal politics.

Criminology & Criminal Justice, Jul 2011

The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, May 2010

how the law is experienced in practice, the difference between law and perceptions of it and the ... more how the law is experienced in practice, the difference between law and perceptions of it and the extent to which law contributes to prison culture or quality of life. This book, then, offers a solid prisoner and practice-oriented legal knowledge foundation, synthesising often dispersed and disorderly sources of legal norms in a way which will prove invaluable to prisoners, prison staff, lawyers and non-lawyers alike.

Chapters by Harry Annison

Fundamental Rights and Legal Consequences of Criminal Conviction, 2019

Judicial responses to challenges brought by prisoners serving the indeterminate sentence of impri... more Judicial responses to challenges brought by prisoners serving the indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) have largely focused on the failure of the British government to provide adequate resources to the prison and parole systems. There has been some, though perhaps not enough, attention given by the courts to the harmful effects of indeterminate sentences on prisoners and the practical difficulties they face in demonstrating reduced risk. In this paper, we point to two related issues that are prompted by the IPP sentence, which have broader implications for criminal justice policy. First, the extent to which the risk logics underpinning the sentence (and particular notions of rehabilitation that comes with this) is an appropriate foundation on which to base on-going imprisonment of individuals for what they may do in the future. Second, the question of how punitive and preventive (ie pre- and post-tariff) elements of dangerousness-oriented sentences should be conceived – and the importance of their distinction.

We suggest that interrogating extant risk logics, and taking seriously the punitive-preventive distinction, has significant implications for how the predicament of those subject to IPP sentences should be addressed. More broadly, it poses questions about how the perennial problem of dangerous offenders should be approached going forwards.

Books by Harry Annison

The legal position of convicted offenders is complex, as are the social consequences that can res... more The legal position of convicted offenders is complex, as are the social consequences that can result from a criminal conviction. After they have served their sentences, custodial or not, convicted offenders often continue to be subject to numerous restrictions, in many cases indefinitely, due to their criminal conviction. In short, criminal convictions can have adverse legal consequences that may affect convicted offenders in several aspects of their lives. In turn, these legal consequences can have broader social consequences. Legal consequences are often not formally part of the criminal law, but are regulated by different areas of law, such as administrative law, constitutional law, labour law, civil law, and immigration law. For this reason, they are often obscured from judges as well as from defendants and their legal representatives in the courtroom. The breadth, severity and longevity and often hidden nature of these restrictions raises the question of whether offenders' fundamental rights are sufficiently protected. This book explores the nature and extent of the legal consequences of criminal convictions in Europe, Australia and the USA. It addresses the following questions: What legal consequences can a criminal conviction have? How do these consequences affect convicted offenders? And how can and should these consequences be limited by law?