Servant of the Crown: A Civil Servant's Story of Criminal Justice and Public Service Reform

Servant of the Crown takes the reader inside Whitehall to see how issues of the day were handled and policies formed as the author progressed to working alongside Home Secretaries and other senior politicians. Charting high profile events and everyday activities, it covers government's approaches towards political, strategic and operational situations, looking also at traditions of public service and freedom under the law. Centrally the book discusses the relationship between civil servants and ministers; also with judges, magistrates and criminal justice services across a 30-year time frame (from the late-1950s to the early-1990s). It includes an explanation of the author's understanding of a civil servant's duty as a servant of the Crown, historically and in a world where public services have become increasingly subject to political intervention. The book is illustrated by examples of the interaction between political and professional points of view, covering situations familiar to the police, courts and correctional services.Equally it will be of interest to students of government, especially those concerned with how policy is formulated in answer to the immediacy of political events or the continuum of knowledge and experiences of civil servants (whichever administration is in power). With a Foreword by the Rt Hon Sir John Chilcot, GCB.

Acknowledgements; About the Author; Foreword; Introduction; 1. Confidence and Optimism; 2. Prisons and Politics - the 1960s; 3. Borstals, Detention Centres and Women's Prisons; 4. Prisons in Crisis; 5. New Approaches to Crime and Justice 6. Managing the System; 7. Probation and the Probation Service; 8. Wider Responses to Crime; 9. Towards the Criminal Justice Act 1991; 10. The Home Office as an Organization; 11. Principles, Values and Culture; 12. Later Years: Social and Political Change, and Some Conclusions; Appendix 1: Transforming the Home Office - I; Appendix 2: Transforming the Home Office - II; Index.