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Practitioner Niches in the (Penal) Voluntary Sector: Perspectives from Management and the Frontlines

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Abstract

Voluntary sector and non-profit studies require theoretical frameworks facilitating better understandings of what occurs on the ground. Following Lipsky’s (Street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public service, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980) formulation of street-level bureaucracies, scholars have emphasized workplace hierarchies, reproducing dichotomous ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ conceptualizations of practice which can obscure the full complexity of practitioners’ workplace relationships. In this paper, we offer a thematic model of (collective) action that centres the ‘division of labour’ across, and relations between, professional niches that are differentiated by their ‘helping’ orientations, workplace tasks, and responsibilities to service users rather than their organizational status or salaries. We mobilize qualitative research undertaken in the penal voluntary sectors of Canada and England to highlight the mutually constitutive efforts of frontline and management work with criminalized service users. Drawing on and extending Alinsky’s ‘river dilemma’, we conceptualize practice in the (penal) voluntary sector as organized according to the differing choices practitioners make about whom to ‘help’ and how to intervene, which have consequences for social policy, service delivery, and advocacy work.

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Notes

  1. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Nonprofit Policy Forum, Voluntary Sector Review, and Voluntas.

  2. Exceptions (Robison 2016; Tilton 2016; Quinn 2019).

  3. Other activists may intervene at the mid- and downstream locations, offering critiques of frontline or managerial practice and/or seeking to reorient ‘helping’ priorities.

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Acknowledgements

Quinn gratefully acknowledges funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), the University of Toronto Department of Sociology, and the American Society of Criminology Division on Women and Crime. Tomczak gratefully acknowledges funding from the University of Manchester (School of Law Scholarship 2010–2014), the Leverhulme Trust (Early Career Fellowship 2015–2018), the British Academy (Rising Star Engagement Award 2017–2018), and the University of Nottingham (Nottingham Research Fellowship, 2018–2021). Both are greatly appreciative of Rachelle Purych's commissioned illustration of our theoretical model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Kaitlyn Quinn

  2. Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Kaitlyn Quinn & Philippa Tomczak

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  1. Kaitlyn Quinn
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  2. Philippa Tomczak
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Correspondence to Kaitlyn Quinn.

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This research received university ethical approval, participants gave informed consent, and pseudonyms are used throughout. The authors have no conflicts of interest.

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Quinn, K., Tomczak, P. Practitioner Niches in the (Penal) Voluntary Sector: Perspectives from Management and the Frontlines. Voluntas 32, 78–89 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00301-x

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