Prisoner release has emerged as a key site of penal policy contestation in England and Wales. A series of crises have undermined public confidence in the parole system and reopened longstanding debates over the confused normative basis of prisoner release policy and practice. This article attempts to locate current concerns within an ideational interpretation of penal policy change. It will argue that prisoner release has been fundamentally re-shaped by a bifurcated penal strategy that emerged as one possible response to the unique challenges of late-modern crime-control. Over time this strategy has provided an enduring guide to collective action and a political template for successive penal reform programmes. However, there are signs that we may now be reaching the conceptual limits of this strategy. While the logic(s) of bifurcation will continue to yield marginal political gains in the short-term, this article concludes that the long-term prognosis is one of diminishing returns with significant implications for the legitimacy, effectiveness and administrative coherence of prisoner release in this jurisdiction.

中文翻译：

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边际收益还是收益递减？英格兰和威尔士的刑事分歧、政策变化和囚犯释放管理

囚犯释放已成为英格兰和威尔士刑事政策争论的关键场所。一系列危机削弱了公众对假释制度的信心，并重新开启了关于囚犯释放政策和实践的混乱规范基础的长期辩论。本文试图在对刑法政策变化的概念性解释中找出当前的关注点。它会争辩说，囚犯的释放已经被一种分叉的刑罚策略从根本上重新塑造，这种策略是对后现代犯罪控制的独特挑战的一种可能的回应。随着时间的推移，这一战略为集体行动提供了持久的指导，并为后续的刑事改革方案提供了政治模板。然而，有迹象表明我们现在可能正在达到这一战略的概念限制。