The market doesn’t care

IMPACT

This article theorizes some consequences of skewing relational (care) labour into more transactional forms of marketized public service areas; with particular reference to contracted criminal justice services in England and Wales. The authors attribute this to an interplay of the incentives of the corporate sector and those of governments which form a collective ‘artificial intelligence’ promoting marketization. This creates unintended consequences. Whereas corporate incentive structures minimize transaction costs and optimize profit, recent UK governments have incentivized economic productivity over socially beneficial indicators in public services. The article finds that narrowly transactional calculations of value in the commissioning of care services may produce short-term fiscal incentives for commissioners (usually the state) and corporate suppliers and ‘care resellers’, but generate longer-term supply-side problems. The article concludes by signposting how more pluralistic forms of collaboration among government, commerce and third sectors can be differently—and more socially—conceived. There are lessons to be learned in the article for all capitalist economies.

ABSTRACT

Governments marketize the delivery of care supposedly for reasons of economic efficiency or innovation. The authors theorize that marketization is, in fact, motivated by government incentives which increase transactional activity, creating the illusion of (economic) growth. This occurs at the cost of devaluing relational aspects of social care, with consequences for workers and users. The voluntary sector is especially construed as a domain where social productivity is supposedly reliant on strong relational values, and distanced from primarily transactional, profit-pursuant activity. Marketization of this sector presents a clear example of depreciating relational values relative to transactional economic activity.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• corporate economy
• criminal justice
• incentive structures
• marketization
• public governance
• relational economy
• voluntary sector

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Corcoran

Mary Corcoran is Professor of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences, University of Keele, UK. She publishes on the role of NGOs in criminal justice, prisons and resettlement, and penal policy. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8661-3147

Kevin Albertson

Kevin Albertson is Professor of Economics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. His recent work considers the implications of a low-to-zero (economic) growth economy, and the wellbeing aspects of relational—as opposed to transactional—socio-economic interactions. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6678-5590