Offenders in the post-industrial labour market : from the underclass to the undercaste?

UK policy makers have increasingly sought to improve the employment prospects of offenders to help reduce re-offending. Yet the past 40 years have witnessed profound changes in the nature of work. This article examines how offenders have been affected by economic transformation and the possible implications for re-offending. The author finds that the possession of a criminal record was a minor inconvenience to finding work in the industrial labour market of the 1960s. However, deindustrialisation and the growing service intensity of the economy have relegated many to the margins of the labour market with potentially profound implications for re-offending.