Analysing Criminal Justice Policy-Making: Towards a Policy Networks Approach?

Abstract

This chapter examines the increasingly fashionable and salient concept of policy networks as a way of understanding criminal justice policymaking. More broadly, network analysis has been an increasingly prominent form of analysis in understanding economic, political and social life (Knoke, 1990; Law, 1992; Castells, 1996). Indeed Castells argued that ‘as a historical trend, dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasingly organized around networks’ (1996: 469). Networks are often portrayed as alternative forms of coordination to those of hierarchies and markets (Thompson et al., 1991; Maidment and Thompson, 1993; Jackson and Stainsby, 2000). In ideal terms, whereas the principle of command underpins hierarchies and that of competition underpins markets, it is the principle of cooperation, stemming from shared interests and interdependence, that underpins networks. In reality, of course, a specific system may be characterised by a mix of these three coordinating principles, with perhaps one such principle dominant (Hay, 1998: 39).

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