Introduction

At first sight, Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) may appear to be an obvious example of the dominance of ‘risk’ in current criminal justice and penal policy. However, although risk-based governance (O’Malley, 2004) is clearly a significant feature of modern society, there are still ‘unresolved struggles for pre-dominance between risk-based reasoning and other resources of knowledge, influence and prestige’ (Loader and Sparks, 2007, p 85). This suggests that the implementation of risk-based ways of working can be affected by interaction with other practice paradigms, as well as factors such as organisational culture or the professional values of practitioners.

A related assumption that requires further consideration is the belief implicit in much of the guidance on MAPPA from the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and the Youth Justice Board (YJB) that the introduction of a set of formalised procedures will lead to consistent and rigorous action that will reduce the risks to the public posed by some offenders (YJB, 2006; Ministry of Justice, 2007). Although the guidance is careful to avoid the claim that risk can be eliminated, there is an inherent expectation that procedural conformity will occur and will be beneficial. The reality is inevitably much more complex, however, with research showing considerable variation in practice both between different regions of the country and also between the adult and youth justice systems (Kemshall et al, 2005; Sutherland and Jones, 2008).

The impact of MAPPA is shaped both by its formal structures and by the day-to-day processes through which practitioners apply these requirements. This inevitably involves a combination of both rules (the prescribed framework) and discretion (such as decisions about individual cases that cannot be defined in guidance) or, in other words, a mixture of formal and informal practice. This is an area that has so far received little attention in the literature on MAPPA, yet it is an avenue that can help us understand issues such as the observed variance in practice or the impact of different professional cultures on the operation of MAPPA (Nash, 2006, 2007).

Just as understanding sentencing decisions requires an appreciation of the fact that they are ‘socially produced and socially practised’ (Tata, 2002, p 4), so a greater awareness of contextual factors is important for developing our understanding of MAPPA.