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Abstract

This article looks at the marketization of the criminal justice system from a user perspective. Using a combination of personal and professional experience, the author explores the development of a market within the system, starting with an examination of what the system is trying to achieve. The ‘primary customer’ of the system is then discussed, highlighting in the author’s view how the emphasis of NOMS has been moving away from the person serving a sentence as being its primary customer. This then leads into a discussion of how a market has developed within a system that doesn’t have its main consumer as its primary customer, and some of the potential problems that this causes. While slightly pessimistic about the way that the market currently operates, the article concludes by calling for a shift in who is seen as being NOMS’s primary customer, if a fair and effective market is to be developed in the future.

Keywords

marketization NOMS personalization privatization voluntary sector

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The marketization of the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

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References